‘Aye, you could be down there combing your beard with the king,’ Svein told the one-armed warrior, watching the hordes below order themselves into smaller groups and crews, cousins and kinsmen drawing together because a man always likes to know the man either side of him in the skjaldborg.
‘I would rather fight the fettered wolf,’ Moldof said, perhaps bringing up Fenrir because all men knew that Týr had lost an arm too, Fenrir having bitten off the limb when he realized that the Æsir had deceived him. Or because Týr was the Lord of Battle and Moldof had a high opinion of his own sword-craft even being an arm short of a whole man as he was.
‘It cannot be easy being a king’s former champion,’ Floki said, which was bound to sting Moldof’s pride like a wasp’s barb in some tender part of the flesh. Floki grinned at Svein and Sigurd knew Floki well enough to be sure that he would still take Moldof’s other arm for the fun of it.
‘What is he like, the oath-breaker’s new champion?’ Olaf asked. Sigurd’s crew stood together in the front row of a shieldwall three men deep and fifty men across, along the spine of high ground running north-south. Behind them the rocks and then the sea. In front, uneven, sloping ground more suited to goats and sheep than men, for which the king was no doubt cursing Sigurd now. Not steep or rocky enough to make Gorm refuse the fight, but difficult enough to cause his men problems when it began.
‘His name is Hreidar and he is a brainless ox,’ Moldof said.
‘Big then?’ Svein said.
‘They’re always big,’ Bjorn said, half glancing at Svein who was Sigurd’s champion in as much as he was his prow man and put the fear of the gods into his enemies with his fiery red hair and beard and his massive smiting axe.
‘Always brainless too,’ Bjarni put in. ‘Big and brainless.’ He shrugged. ‘Big so that they catch the arrows and blades meant for their lord, and brainless so they don’t notice when they’re dead but keep on fighting.’
‘Turd,’ Svein muttered.
‘Hreidar will notice when I put my sword in his belly,’ Moldof said.
‘I would like to see a king or jarl have a normal-sized man as his champion, just for once,’ Bjarni said.
‘You hear that, Sigurd?’ Svein said. ‘Bjarni wants to win this fight by making King Gorm laugh himself to death.’
This had Sigurd’s crew chuckling amongst themselves so that the others in the shieldwall around them must have wondered what could be so amusing given the number of men coming to kill them.
King Gorm’s main shieldwall was four men deep and half as long again as Sigurd’s, albeit a little ragged by comparison because of the hummocks and rocks breaking out of the ground. His best-armoured men were in the front. They were not his own hearthmen but those of other oath-sworn lords, men like Jarl Baugr, Jarl Vragi, Jarl Tósti and Jarl Arnstein Twigbelly. And Jarl Otrygg, whom Bram had recognized by his men’s shields which were all painted red with the black rune Laguz because Otrygg thought of himself as a great sea jarl, which was a joke as far as Bram was concerned.
‘That fat toad hasn’t gone raiding for years,’ he told them all, ‘unless you call fishing raiding for silver.’
Behind these well-armed men, about a third of whom wore mail, were those with good leather armour and skull caps and shields, axes and spears, and behind those were the men who lacked good war gear: men who wore several layers of wool and who must have been drowning in sweat and stinking but who hoped those layers would prevent a blade from biting, though it might still break the bones.
The king’s own hirðmen were at the rear with their lord, a mass of grey and bright painted shields, each boasting brynja and helmet and burdened with the tools of death. And it was not cowardice on Gorm’s part, him being back there behind a bulwark of flesh and iron and oath. Just good sense, for if he took a wound early on his jarls might take the decision to withdraw, even under the pretence of getting their king safely away, and Gorm knew it would take weeks if not another season to assemble such a host again.
‘You know that’s where you should be too,’ Olaf said to Sigurd. ‘At the back. Out of the way.’
Sigurd did not answer that. For his part in the oath which bound him to his men, Sigurd had sworn to lead them into battle, but that was not the reason why he stood at the front now. Even the warriors who had received his promise would understand the need to keep him alive. Simple good sense which stood clear of any oath like a rock breaking the sea’s surface. No, he stood at the fore because he wanted the oath-breaker to see him there. Simple as that. Sigurd wanted that worm to see that he was hungry for the fray, for the revenge which he owed to his family.
Sigurd looked left and right now, drawing strength and courage from the wall he had built. If hatred was a blade the oath-breaker would be dead already, he thought, looking at Svein and Solmund and Olaf, at Hastin and his Jæren men and those other men whom he did not know but who had come to stand with him because of some feud they had with the king.
‘You’ve done what you can, Sigurd,’ Olaf said, mistaking Sigurd’s neck-twisting for misgivings about the way he had set his own host up, or about the ground he had chosen.
At either end of the main shieldwall were two smaller skjaldborgar, wings comprising three rows of twenty-five men each, which sloped back right up to the rocks so that the king’s men would not be able to wrap all the way round their position and come at them from the rear. Not that they would need to. With their numbers they could just keep hammering away at Sigurd’s wall, replacing their front rank over and over until they punched a hole through. Then it would be a savage melee, a chaos of blades and blood, but in the end there could only be one winner.
Behind Sigurd’s main shieldwall was his reserve, some ninety men including Thokk Far-Flyer and his twenty-nine from Sandnes. Most of those with bows who were now ranging down the slope stinging the king’s men would join the reserve when the fight properly began. They would clamber up on to the high rocks behind and from there nock and loose into the enemy masses until their arrows were gone. Then they would take their places in the wall of flesh and iron as other men fell, like new caulking thumbed between strakes to keep the sea from sinking the ship.
A murmur travelled through the line and Sigurd turned to see men touching amulets or rune-carved blades. He heard them whispering to the gods and he knew the reason for it. Asgot. The godi was coming and Sigurd welcomed the chill which ran like ice water down his spine.
‘Let’s see how the oath-breaker likes this,’ Olaf gnarred, a grim smile nestled in his beard, as the men shuffled aside, shouldered into their neighbours to make a channel through which the godi could pass, hefting the gift he had prepared for King Gorm. It was a níðstang, which men called a nithing pole, if they spoke of such things at all. The staff was of hazel and the head mounted upon it was that of a horse, freshly killed so that its blood was running down the shaft to redden Asgot’s hands and arms and clot in the rings of his brynja as he carried it forward. It was heavy by the looks, but the godi was well aware of the seiðr he was weaving and he carried the thing high for all to see, its neck skin flapping in the wind, its dead eyes staring and its bottom lip hanging down revealing its teeth, as if the dead head was giving one final and everlasting nicker against its fate.
And Asgot carried the cursing pole to a clump of rocks a little way down the hill, where all the king’s men could see it.
‘Here I put up this níðstang!’ he called, for those in front and behind. And above. ‘And this curse I turn on King Gorm the oath-breaker.’ He turned the horse head to the left and the right. ‘I lay this curse also on those of you who fight for the oath-breaker this day, for you follow an unworthy man and this makes you less than men yourselves.’ He turned the grim head to the centre of the enemy line again, where the king’s banner flapped wildly. ‘Gorm son of Grimar, I curse you and promise you a bad death. No fame in the wake of your life. It will be as though you never drew breath. Not for you the Allfather’s hall. Just everlasting torment.’
With that he thrust the pole down into a cleft in the rocks and he must have already tested it earlier in the day because it stood straight and solid even in that wind which had the dead beast’s mane flying. Sigurd could see that the godi had carved the bones of that curse into the hazel pole, which made it as real and enduring as the rock behind and the sea beyond. It was a terrible, horrible curse and down there at the foot of that slope King Gorm must have felt as sick as if he had eaten a plate of rotten meat.
Without wiping his bloody hands on the grass Asgot turned and walked back to take his place amongst his crew, and Sigurd nodded to him to say it was a job well done, for all that the nithing pole seemed to have cast an even darker cloud over the day for everyone.
‘Here it is then,’ Sigurd said to himself. He could see now what Gorm intended. Not one single shieldwall, for that would soon be broken up by the ground over which it moved, but many separate skjaldborgar, groups of fifty to eighty which would hit Sigurd’s line at different times, like separate hammer blows or storm-tossed waves in the suck and plunge of a rocky outcrop. And one of those smaller shieldwalls was on the move now, marching up the slope to the beat of their own spear staves against their shields.
‘They’re either all mad or they’ve been at the ale all night,’ Olaf said, watching as Erp and Hastin yelled at their bowmen and slingshot men to retreat back up the slope in the face of this oncoming wall of wood and spear blades, albeit this shieldwall came alone. The other shieldwalls remained rooted to their positions, awaiting their king’s order to attack.
‘I am thinking that they would rather die good and quickly than drag it out,’ Svein said, leaning on his long-hafted axe as if he were on a jetty on a summer’s day, watching the tide creep up the piles.
A gust whipped the enemy’s shield din up the slope and some of the men to Sigurd’s left yelled insults back into the wind.
Jarl Hrani came over and stood beside Sigurd, a half grin on his face. ‘You know who that is?’ he said, nodding down the slope. ‘Jarl Leiknir from Tysvær.’ At that moment the men trudging towards them lifted their shields and held them above their heads, which was their way of telling Sigurd that they came in peace.
‘Ha!’ Solmund blurted. ‘Maybe Asgot’s cursing pole has them pissing in their breeks already.’
‘Jarl Leiknir and I have an understanding,’ Hrani said, which was doubtless the real reason why those men were holding their shields above their heads and why Sigurd’s grin matched Hrani’s own. For Tysvær sat within a day’s sailing of Jarl Hrani’s own hall, and Hrani being the more powerful jarl, Leiknir could not afford him as an enemy. It was still a risk of course, choosing the rebels over the king, but who could say what other factors had tipped the scales in Jarl Leiknir’s mind?
Jarl Hrani strode forward and Jarl Leiknir broke from his men to grip his hand, the two of them binding their fates in a handshake while those king’s men left at the foot of the hill bellowed insults and called them traitors.
‘Put them in the reserve?’ Olaf suggested.
Sigurd shook his head. ‘Rather not have them behind us,’ he said, thinking that he did not know or trust Jarl Leiknir enough to have him out of sight. ‘Put them on the left. Thicken the line there. Let Hrani keep an eye on his friends.’
Olaf nodded and went to speak to the Tysvær jarl as Hrani’s men greeted Leiknir’s men, telling them they had made the right decision and that today they would make their fame. But all this was cut short by the clamour from a dozen or more horns on the wind, riding the gathering gale, some sounding deep as a bull’s bellow, others thin as grass blown between pressed palms.
‘Here we go then,’ Bram said. Behind them the wolf-head banner flapped beneath that great, rune-bitten blade. It sounded like a wind-whipped fire.
‘We’ll sleep well tonight,’ Aslak said.
Sigurd looked at Olaf and Svein. They nodded. Grim now. Ready to do what must be done. Sigurd looked at Floki. The young man’s lips pulled back from his teeth. Not a smile. Something else.
Below, the king’s host was on the move, washing slowly across the rough ground like a dark tide.
‘Svein, have you a saga-worthy throw for me?’ Sigurd asked.
Svein nodded, lifting the spear in his hand. Testing its weight and balance. ‘You will want to see this, Crow-Song,’ he said, walking forward, ‘and stay alive today so that you can put what you see into a song,’ he called over his shoulder.
‘Make it count, lad,’ Olaf growled into his beard, watching Svein walk down the slope as far as the nithing pole which stood there cursing King Gorm with its dark seiðr. Sigurd expected Svein to roll his left shoulder in its socket, make great circles with his arm to loosen the sinew and muscle, to make ready.
He did none of these things.
‘Sigurd Haraldarson claims you for Óðin!’ he roared down at the men coming towards him now, some of whom were loosing arrows which Svein ignored as if they were flies as he pulled his brawny arm back and launched the spear. It flew in a great arc, as if over Bifröst the shimmering bridge which joins the worlds of men and gods, and passed over the heads of their enemies, whose faces were upturned as they watched it soar. Right over the whole host it flew, landing blade first in the ground far behind the king’s banner.
And up came the king’s men, beating their shields, summoning the courage they would need. The fury. The animal which lives inside all men. And the battle began.
Shieldwall. War-hedge. Slaughter-bed? Left foot forward, shoulder turned slightly towards the enemy so that your shield overlaps the man to your right. A rampart of limewood, each shield braced by two men. Leather-rimmed edges kissing dented metal bosses. Swords and spears beating in rhythm against the planks, a din meant to bolster their own courage as much as sap their enemies’. A living thing. A bulwark only as strong as the will and the fear-soaked strength of the men behind it. A shivered wreck when it breaks, a shield-ship with its belly ripped open and destined for the sea bed.
‘Hold!’ Olaf bellowed. ‘Hold them, you whoresons!’
Thunder as the shields clash. Screams too, thin as cold fjord water. Pathetic and shocking from those big grizzled men.
‘Hold!’
‘Fucking kill them!’
‘Keep tight! Tight as a good cunny.’
The weight of the enemy as a whole. The stink of them. The breath of the man leaning into his shield, leaning on you, doing his bit, trying not to die. No room to swing sword or axe. Just rooting yourself to that small patch of ground. A statement of intent. I shall not be the one to move backwards. I shall not yield, not with my brothers around me. They might not see but they would know.
‘Hold!’
Olaf roars and men drink in his voice like mead, for they know he is a god of war.
‘You fucking give them the ground and I’ll kill you myself! Hold!’
Spears jab over men’s heads, thrust from those in the second row, seeking anything soft, looking to slake a thirst. One scrapes off Sigurd’s helmet. It will come again, he knows, but what can he do about it?
‘Heads down!’ Olaf calls, and Sigurd thinks they are for him, those words. ‘The rancid shits will tire before us. Lazy-arsed fucks.’
Not everyone in Sigurd’s shieldwall was fighting. Or pushing. Only some of the enemy skjaldborgar had struck, those jarls and crews most eager for the fame of breaking their king’s enemy perhaps. Fools if they thought it would be over so quickly, that they would start the route that begins when a shieldwall is breached.
Sigurd glanced to his left. A spear-throw along the line he could see Jarls Hrani and Leiknir, braced for the attack, striking their sword pommels against their shields, roaring insults into the teeth of the wind. I would not like to attack Jarl Hrani up this hill, Sigurd thought. He’s a fighter. Like his father was.
Arrows hissed over their heads, shot by men on the rocks who were trying to put a shaft in King Gorm’s face or neck. Worth a try, that, to end this thing before it began. But then, Sigurd ho
ped the king’s shield men were about their business because he did not want a lucky arrow to rob him of his right. Gorm’s death belonged to Sigurd and he would have it.
A thunder of shields and yells, made distant because of his helmet, announced that another of Gorm’s skjaldborgar had struck the line, somewhere to the right, near where Asgrim and his Svearmen were. That clash might as well have been another battle for all that Sigurd could influence it, yet he knew that Asgrim was granite-hard and that those coming up against Jarl Guthrum’s former champion were dead men sooner or later.
That spear blade again, hitting his helmet square this time, thrusting his head back on his neck so that his brain rattled in his skull. Some ambitious turd, that one with the spear, wherever he was. Sigurd locked eyes with those peering over the shield rim opposite. Greying brows above those calm eyes. Not a young man but someone who had done all this before, more than once too. He was biding his time, this front-ranker, taking no risks, keeping his shield locked on his neighbour’s and trusting to the spearman behind to prise the enemy wall open like a knife tip into a clam.
‘Svein,’ Sigurd called, nodding towards the grey-browed man.
‘Aye,’ Svein on his left said, knowing exactly what Sigurd wanted of him. Taking his own opponent’s weight on his shield and gripping his long-hafted axe one-handed, Svein lowered the axe head so that it was between his own hip and Sigurd’s. Then he thrust it beneath their overlapping shields, hooked the bottom rim of the shield pressed against Sigurd’s and pulled, and Sigurd let his own shield go with it.
Grey brows got a face full of his own shield and then those eyes, which knew death when they saw it, widened as Sigurd brought Troll-Tickler up and rammed it forward, its point finding the recess of the eye socket, its edges splitting the bone as Sigurd pushed a foot of steel-edged iron into the man’s face, into the brain until it erupted from the back of the skull.
Sigurd hauled Troll-Tickler back and the man fell, revealing that whoreson with the spear, who had not expected to be forced into the front line so soon, and he died with Troll-Tickler ripping out his guts in a reek of blood and shit.
Wings of the Storm: (The Rise of Sigurd 3) Page 26