The Wartooth’s wagon raced on, its wheels daubed red from the blood-soaked soil. Yet as Harald flew east with the wind, two men stepped from Sigurd’s fleeing host and stood their mark. Grettir the Evil was one; Svein Reaper, the other.
They raised their long-swords high and brought them down as one. The blades bit deep. The horses reared up, screaming. The wagon lurched. Tyrfing the Skald was flung wide, knocked senseless. The old war-king and Branni went over with the wagon.
The bloodied wheels spun. The dying beasts pawed at the dirt. King Harald dragged himself up, winded but still unblooded. When he stood, Grettir and Svein Reaper were waiting.
Moments later, Tyrfing opened his eyes. His head was pounding. Groggily he looked up and there saw his lord fighting for his life.
Harald roared defiance, laying about with sword and spear. He was old but still had some speed and skill in him. He needed it, for these two knew their business, probing him, keeping him at distance, making him work. Tyrfing tried to get up, but his head swam and he collapsed again and could only look on through dazed eyes.
Then Branni was there, in his long grey cloak with the hood so far forward that Tyrfing saw only the flash of a single eye. And in his hand, a long ash spear. He seemed taller, though, and as the Wartooth fought his foe, Branni did nothing.
Instead Svein Reaper made his move, darting left, snapping over his hands. The blade cracked Harald’s wrist. His sword fell but he didn’t cry out. Now Grettir came at him, was past his spear, and drove his point deep into the old king’s thigh. Harald dropped his spear and staggered, clutching his leg.
Branni now stepped forward and the two Sveärs, seeing him, strangely shrank back. Harald looked up into Branni’s face, which was hidden from Tyrfing’s view. His mouth gaped, awestruck. ‘So, old friend,’ the skald heard Harald mutter. ‘It’s you.’ Branni nodded.
Harald fell to his knees. Branni spun, his grey cloak whirled, steel flashed. And the Wartooth’s head bumped into the dirt.
Tyrfing moaned and sank his face into the mud. When he looked up again, the king-killers were gone and Branni with them. And afterwards, although the skald looked for him among the living and the dead, Branni was never seen again.
This is how it was later told that Harald fell to the Spear-God himself that day. That his old shieldbrother Branni had been lost at sea and the One-Eyed had taken his place. They said that Odin walked amid his battle-storm of heroes that day.
But who knows the truth of it?
All that can be said for certain is that the Wartooth was dead.
And in all those thousands, this one death was not unnoticed. The cry went up that King Harald had fallen. The Sveär cheered. It even seemed they might rally around their own king. With Harald dead, perhaps the Danes would lose heart.
But there was another to lead them, and the Wartooth’s son roared vengeance when he saw his father’s banner fall.
Erlan was ahead of him, his mind a blizzard, face after face the same. Until he saw it – at last a face that was not his father’s. This one was cold and dead as the metal on which it was stamped. The Kingshelm – his second sight of it that day – spattered with mud and gore.
He drew a deep breath. This was why he was here.
‘SIGURD!’ he screamed with every sinew, remembering the torturous heat, the blood tears streaking Kai’s cheek. ‘SIG-URD!’
A shout beside him. The twins were there. Sigurd’s bannermen turned to face them. ‘We’ll have these!’ Galdalf’s sons leaped ahead, each taking a man.
He yelled Sigurd’s name a third time, his voice a fearful howl. This time Sigurd turned. ‘Hel has come for you, brother!’ Through the sight-holes of the Kingshelm, Erlan saw Sigurd’s eyes flare with dread.
Erlan threw off his helm, heedless of the storm around him. ‘You see me clear, kin-slayer? The blood you’ve spilled cries for you from the halls of Hel!’
The Kingshelm shook with cold laughter. ‘Come then, cripple. I promised Saldas your heart. And she shall have it.’
‘I have no heart, you fool!’ snarled Erlan madly.
He shifted Wrathling in his hand. His shield was a ruin, splinters and rags flapping at its edge. He flung it down and drew his seax.
Sigurd took his guard. Around them, the twins’ war-cries howled, but Erlan saw only this man, this death, without which nothing that day mattered a thrall’s fart.
The first move came suddenly: Sigurd’s blade cut upwards. Erlan parried with his knife. Wrathling swept low but Sigurd dropped his shield and at once resumed the attack.
He moved at surprising speed. Erlan’s dagger had to work fast, up and down, blocking a hail of blows. Twice, Wrathling rang the Kingshelm like a bell, but glanced away unblooded. He tried to get wide of Sigurd’s blade to attack his open side, but the king dropped back on distance, then sprang forward even stronger.
Rage was no good for this fight. Erlan needed to use his head. Sigurd was fresher, faster, a match for his strength, and he had a shield. But Erlan noticed one stroke Sigurd made repeatedly: a high cut from the right for the gap between seax and sword, which so far Erlan had parried.
Sigurd went high again. Erlan left a gap open. Sigurd took the bait, but Erlan was ready. He ducked down and left under the falling blade. A fool’s move if you didn’t know it was coming, but it worked. He punched Wrathling up and right, deflecting the blow, then cut down hard with his seax, feeling the metal bite ring-mail and sink into Sigurd’s wrist.
The kin-slayer screamed but Erlan was already driving his crippled ankle into Sigurd’s knee. The old pain flared as Sigurd went down.
But the king’s flailing edge caught Erlan’s calf a lucky blow. Erlan screamed, fresh pain shearing up his leg, and he went sprawling too. Sigurd was already struggling to get up. Erlan was a dead man if he did. He flung himself forward, grabbing the king’s belt, dragging him back down. Wrathling was gone now. But Erlan was on him.
The Kingshelm was inches away, weirdly impassive, while Sigurd writhed under him like a wounded boar. Erlan got a hand round his neck, then a knee over his shield arm, close enough now to hear his rasping breath. Sigurd sliced at his back again and again, but so close his edge couldn’t bite through his mail. Erlan slashed his seax.
Sigurd screamed. His sword fell. Erlan snarled, sensing triumph, bloodied fingers squeezing the king’s throat while Sigurd squirmed in vain to break free. The Kingshelm jerked loose, revealing half the face beneath, girning with fear and fury. Gold flashed under Sigurd’s chin.
Erlan tried to stab him in the face, to end this, but Sigurd caught his wrist, his gauntleted fingers digging like iron nails into Erlan’s half-healed wounds.
Erlan snarled, spraying Sigurd’s beard with spittle, gripping his throat tighter and tighter. The pain in his left wrist was unbearable. His fingers flexed and the seax fell.
At once Sigurd slammed his fist into Erlan’s side. He felt ribs crack while his hand scrabbled frantically for the knife, but in vain. The Kingshelm flew off. Sigurd’s eyes were bulging. And now Erlan recognized the gold round Sigurd’s neck. It was his gold. His mark of honour. The torque that Sviggar had given him.
Well, if Sigurd wanted it that bad, he could choke on the fucking thing.
Erlan seized it with both hands, crushing the gold into Sigurd’s windpipe. Blood vessels slithered like snakes in his eyes. Erlan pressed harder, laughing madly, his revenge surely a few strangled breaths away.
‘Die, you murdering bastard!’ Erlan whispered, twisting and grinding the gold. ‘Die!’
Then everything happened at once. A flash. Sigurd’s arm whipped up. A voice cried, ‘Erlan!’ and a spear slammed down inches from his face.
He glanced left. Sigurd’s forearm was skewered to the ground, and in his hand, the long seax. Sigurd heaved with fury. But Erlan, seizing his chance, threw his full bodyweight on the golden torque. There was a crack. Sigurd’s head snapped forward. His body shuddered briefly, then his eyes grew hard and still as glass.
Erlan sank, exhausted, onto the dead king’s chest, not caring what came beyond that. Maybe he could lie there for ever.
‘Ain’t time for sleeping yet, boy!’
Erlan looked up at the silhouette standing over him, confused.
‘Want a hand up, traitor?’
He knew that voice. ‘Fat man?’ he murmured. ‘What are you doing here?’ His mind was muddy, unable to form coherent thoughts.
‘Bit of killing,’ replied Einar Fat-Belly. ‘Like everyone else not busy dying. Or already dead.’
Erlan blinked up at him like a man waking from a long sleep.
‘I’d say two dead kings is enough for one day, wouldn’t you?’
Erlan could only stare. It was all enough. Enough for a day. Enough for a lifetime. Enough until the Final Fires and the end of all things.
‘Hold, you barrel of Sveär snot! Your fight’s not over yet!’ Suddenly the bloodied sons of Galdalf were there, on guard and glowering at Einar.
‘Not him!’ yelled Erlan, snapping out of his torpor.
‘What’s he to you, Aurvandil?’
‘A friend.’
‘He’s a Sveär.’
‘Touch him and I’ll split you like a log.’
‘What? From down there?’ chortled Alfarin.
‘That’s fighting talk, that is!’ his brother laughed. He dropped his guard. ‘As you like then, Aurvandil – your fat friend lives.’
‘Wise choice, fellas,’ said Einar, lowering his spear-point. ‘Now then, lad. Are you done rolling in the mud?’
Erlan took Einar’s proffered hand and was duly hauled to his feet. The fighting had swept on towards the lake. The two men gave each other the up-and-down. The fat man looked different. His heavy jowls were ghost-white beneath the mud and filth, the muscles in his face stiff as bark in a rigid grimace.
‘You look bloody terrifying.’
‘You don’t look so pretty yourself.’ Einar turned and gazed down the plain towards the sounds of the routed Sveärs and the ravaging Danes. ‘That’s it then,’ he said simply. ‘No sense the rest of us dying now.’ He pulled out a goat-horn slung on his back and put it to his lips.
The first note rose high and smooth. Then others followed – six sweet notes, rising, falling, repeating over and over in a tune every warrior on the plain would know. It meant a man’s luck had held. It meant the battle’s end, the closing of Valhöll’s gates and the Valkyries’ ride for home.
A strange stillness radiated outwards from Einar with each note, the groans of the wounded and dying lending sombre harmony to the horn’s music. In the distant marshland, the fighting continued.
Some warriors approached. Erlan recognized Ringast among them. He looked half-dead, slathered in blood, his arm clutched tight to his chest. Around his hand was wound a clump of bloody rags.
‘Who told you to sound the battle-end? Who the Hel are you, anyway?’
‘Einar Fat-Belly, some call me.’ Einar sat the horn on his prodigious gut. ‘Guess that’s better than Einar Horn-Blower, if you catch my meaning.’ He gave a husky chuckle.
‘You have no right to end this fight.’
‘Then end it yourself.’
‘Why would I, when victory is nearly ours?’
‘It’s already yours.’ Einar pointed to Sigurd’s lifeless corpse. ‘Your feud just died with him.’
Ringast looked where Einar pointed and, seeing Sigurd, his face changed, a welter of emotions stirring just beneath its surface. ‘Who did this?’ he said in a trembling voice.
‘I did,’ said Erlan.
Ringast nodded. ‘So the gods granted you your revenge.’
‘And you, your victory.’
Ringast heaved off a deep sigh. ‘Aye.’ He looked about him, surveying the bloody plain. ‘At what cost?’ The dead were strewn in every direction, piles of broken bodies scattered as far as the eye could see. Erlan thought of Vargalf – of his dark words in that stinking smokehouse. This was the carnage he had been planning for so long. His master work. Erlan recalled his words with a shudder. And looking at the thousands dead, no one’s victory seemed so complete as Vargalf’s.
‘My father also found his death in the end. I hope he’s satisfied now.’ Ringast fell into a brooding silence.
‘There’s yet a king who lives,’ said Einar.
‘What king?’ muttered Ringast bleakly, staring down at Sigurd’s body.
‘There.’ Ringast looked up. Einar was pointing at him. ‘There’s my new king.’ He dropped to his knee.
The sons of Galdalf were leaning on their shields, blood leaking from a dozen wounds between them. Alfar looked at the fat man and then at his brother. ‘Aye. Hail King Ringast, Lord of Danish Mark.’ He too fell to his knees.
‘Hail Ringast, King of the Sveärs,’ declared Einar.
Ringast looked down at them like they were ghosts risen from the grave, as if he only half-heard their words. But all around him, men were kneeling, relieved, exhausted and muttering their allegiance.
So rises another king, thought Erlan. Hel, these men would kneel to a billy-goat if it meant an end to this slaughter. But not him. And despite the pain throbbing up his wounded calf, he stayed standing.
‘Victory then,’ said Ringast. Then louder. ‘Victory! Call off the slaughter! Victory!’
And the cry rolled eastward. Horns echoed Einar’s call, riding the wind towards the lakeshore. Everywhere men collapsed. And soon the ring of steel had fallen silent. The wailing of the wounded and the dying would take much longer.
Erlan felt sick. Something wet ran into his mouth. He drew his tongue along cracked lips and tasted salt.
Tears...
The battle was over. And Ringast was King Over Them All.
Lilla felt the wind brush against her face.
The rain had stopped. She opened her eyes and for a moment knew nothing but the serenity of the white clouds speeding overhead.
White on blue. So beautiful.
She tried to move and felt something nettle her belly.
‘Be still,’ a voice hushed. So soft. She wondered what had happened to the battle din.
‘I didn’t know whether you’d be coming back.’
Lilla tried to lift her head. ‘I’m thirsty,’ she whispered hoarsely.
‘Drink this.’ A gourd touched her lips. Water dribbled into her mouth. So sweet. She looked up and saw gentle eyes – gold as ripe corn with dark speckles – and a flash of white hair.
‘Gerutha?’
‘I’m here, my sweet.’
Lilla looked at her, confused. ‘Why is it so quiet?’
‘The fighting’s over. The battle’s won.’
‘Won?’ She tried to sit up. Too sudden. She gasped as pain pricked low in her abdomen.
‘Easy, girl, easy.’
Lilla looked down. Her dress was drawn up over her knees. A bright red stain spread like a sunrise over the pale yellow cloth. Suddenly she became conscious of the wetness against her thighs. She looked at Gerutha and noticed a white cloth soaked red in her hand.
‘Whose blood is that?’ she murmured.
‘Why—’ Gerutha shook her head gently. ‘It’s yours, Lilla... It’s yours.’
CHAPTER SIXTY-SEVEN
Night had fallen.
Saldas had waited for word in a fever of agitation, but none had come. Dark thoughts swirled in her head. The break in her arm throbbed in time with the beating of her heart.
She rolled the bones. Again they told her nothing. She had tried to see within herself what had happened. But that sight was now a blur. Broken like her arm.
Once Freki had fallen, she had quit the battlefield, not even staying to see what had become of him. She had been complacent – she knew that now – had sensed the danger too late. And now her arm was badly cracked and needed better care than anything in Sigurd’s baggage train could avail. So she had ridden north with a single escort who was now keeping watch outside her tent.
The man had had the nerve to ask why
they were fleeing when the day was almost theirs. She told him his next question would cost him his tongue. He had held his counsel after that.
She lay back under the rustling canopy, listening to the waves flopping onto the Braviken shore. Out on the firth the prows of Starkad’s war-ships bobbed: sentinels awaiting the return of the men who had sailed them there.
But none had yet returned.
The throbbing in her arm was relentless. Under her instruction the escort had bound it – a temporary dressing that would have to serve for the time being. But she was also tired and, despite the pain, sleep crept over her like a shadow, bringing with it dark dreams. And so it went on, weariness and pain wrestling her in and out of consciousness while she drifted along its border.
Until a sound made her open her eyes. She called her escort’s name but there was no reply. Irritated, she was about to sit up when a breath of wind snapped at the tent-flap. The oil lamp’s flame flickered. She called the escort’s name again. No answer.
The fool must be asleep. She ought to rouse herself and admonish him, but it all seemed too torturous. Better to sleep. Or at least rest. She closed her eyelids and listened to her own breathing and the lap of the firth waters...
Suddenly a hand, rough and hard, closed over her throat. Her eyes snapped open. She tried to sit up but was stuck fast.
Her gaze moved up the arm pinning her, willing her face not to betray her fear. A figure was kneeling by her bed. In the flame’s flicker, she saw a face, a mask, its features lifeless. All but the eyes, which glinted at her, cold and bright as stars.
The Kingshelm.
‘You’re alive,’ she sighed, relief flooding through her as she sank back into the blankets. If Sigurd was alive, that meant victory.
The metal face gazed down on her. It was unsettling. She could hear his breathing, but he said nothing. She suddenly had a horrible fear that he was there because he had fled.
‘Were you victorious?’
A Sacred Storm Page 52