A tear slowly slid down Sigrid’s cheek. Dear brother, loyal relative, I honor you for protecting your foster son and your kin.
“You were the best of us, blessed by the gods,” she told her brother, for he was still there with them and could hear what they said.
“Olaf, too, showed manly strength as he watched his foster father die. Not a trace of sorrow or fear showed in the boy’s face, and the Svea honored him.”
Sigrid took a shaky breath and stood up. As a Scylfing, she needed to honor her brother with dignity, not tears and pathos. Head held high, she surveyed the austere warriors standing in the hall.
“Ulf’s sacrifice was not in vain.”
With Axel the kingmaker by his side, Olaf would sit securely on the throne of Svealand, and the Geats would be safe. Sweyn could reclaim his kingdom and the power he had been so infamously deprived of. With cunning strategy she had succeeded in conquering the dragon without causing her closest relatives to lose power. Ulf’s sacrifice was the price for the peace that would now prevail, and he had saved many lives through his death.
“I blame you for Ulf’s death,” Björn growled. “You sent your maidservant to poison Erik, and now your own brother has had to pay for your machinations.”
Sigrid shook her head at her foolish uncle. Even now he couldn’t see what a great triumph this was.
“Erik’s death secured Olaf’s place as king of Svealand just as it secured the peace between the Svea and the Geats. Ulf’s name will be sung of for generations for securing the Scylfings’ power.”
Proudly, she surveyed the hall, where kinsmen and servants were gathered. It was totally quiet now aside from Gynnya’s sobbing. Ylva, nearly paralyzed with grief, stood beside her.
Distrust and loathing were evident on the faces of the chieftains and warriors, and even Edmund stared blankly straight ahead and wouldn’t look her in the eye. These simplistic fools had let Björn’s accusations poison their thinking in this time of grief as everyone sought a scapegoat for the death they were mourning.
“All you’ve managed to do is bring this family strife and death, Sigrid the Haughty,” Björn said, taking a step closer to her. “To honor your brother and the gods, you should follow our fallen Scylfing chieftain to the afterworld on his funeral pyre.”
The men nodded in agreement, and several of them moved their hands to their sword hilts to show that they’d be happy to help her up onto the pyre.
So Björn was looking for revenge. Sigrid calmly looked her uncle in the eye, without showing the least bit of fear.
The poor foolish man. If he thought she was so weak that, overcome by grief, she could be frightened into the flames like a senseless servant girl, he was sorely mistaken.
“What kind of man are you to try to use my brother’s death to kill me so you can steal my land?” she snapped, walking over to the chieftains. “Are the Scylfing leaders going to allow me, the king mother, to be killed when I have served to enhance the power of this family in every way possible? What Björn suggests is treason and punishable by death. Are you all scofflaws, planning to allow this to happen?”
The doubt in the gruff men’s eyes made it clear that the poison sown in their minds had not yet taken full effect. Her uncle Björn hadn’t even considered the laws he himself had sworn to uphold. With Olaf on the throne of Svealand and Geatland, and with the five farms she owned, she was the most powerful woman in the entire North. Björn couldn’t defy her or even get close to her.
“You squirm out of things without honor,” Björn growled.
“I am not the one lacking honor in this,” Sigrid said calmly.
“Her Highness is fully in the right in everything she says,” the aging warrior, Agne, said, once again giving her his support when she needed it most. With his stately gray beard and wise eyes, he moved to stand beside Sigrid. “Ulf would never have put up with this type of insult against his sister.”
Despite Agne’s support, neither Edmund nor any of the other powerful men spoke up for her. Sigrid looked at Edmund, who stood looking at the floor, waiting to find out whether she or Björn would win this power struggle. He didn’t have Agne’s backbone. She would remember that.
Sigrid turned to Björn, whose face was bright red beneath his dark beard.
“Out of respect for my dead brother, I will leave your punishment open for the time being,” she said. “But you should know that I will never forget the words you let fall over my brother’s dead body.”
Head held high, Sigrid looked at each man in turn, and they all reluctantly nodded their heads in deference to her.
“Has a messenger been sent to Ingeborg and the children?”
Sigrid sighed heavily as Björn shook his head. Fetching Ulf’s wife and children and protecting them should have been her good-for-nothing uncle’s first move.
“Send men to bring Ulf’s family. Start building the funeral pyre, and gather gifts for his journey to the afterworld. From this day on, every woman and man in Geatland will wear a dark armband as a sign of their grief that the Scylfings have lost this most prominent member.”
Most of them set to work, but the chieftains remained, resolute and filled with defiance. The power struggle wasn’t over yet.
“Well, what are you waiting for?” Sigrid asked, looking at all the noblemen and household staff.
“We swore our loyalty to Björn when your brother went to the afterworld,” Börje said. “Nothing will change that.”
What devious men these were, weak and impotent. A smile came over Sigrid’s lips.
“The Scylfings are to be led by a man who failed to protect his own chieftain? This doesn’t bode well for the future of the dynasty.”
Björn seethed, but before he could say anything, Sigrid silenced him by raising her hand.
“My father, Skagul Toste, is and remains the Scylfing chieftain,” she reminded them.
“No one even knows if the old man is still alive,” Börje said.
Sigrid smiled as the watchman’s horn echoed in the distance, three short blasts announcing the arrival of a highborn Scylfing.
“Apparently we’re about to find out,” she said calmly.
“The guardian of Zealand may be old, but he’s still on duty,” Sweyn said, personifying the old ring castle that still stood on the windswept sand dunes, their caps flattened with forest.
The wood of the Trelleborg castle’s once-so-mighty circular palisade wall was half rotten, but the grass-covered rampart was still intact, although it now protected the Svea jarl who had taken refuge in the stronghold along with his hird.
King Erik might be dead, but his jarl was planning to fight for the land the Svea had taken and apparently believed he was safe in King Harald Bluetooth’s dilapidated castle. He would come to regret that soon.
Wave after wave of warriors disembarked their ships, which had pulled up along the coastline, and waded ashore to form a ring of blades and iron around the trespasser’s nest. Sweyn loosened his armor a little to relieve the chafing at the back of his neck before turning to Palna.
“Sacrificing the old castle is the fastest way to retake Zealand.”
They couldn’t march into Lejre without dismantling this Svea nest. People needed to know that Sweyn held the victory in his hand, and that meant taking this castle.
“That’s probably not going to be so easy,” Palna said.
“The castle is old,” Åke said, but Palna didn’t respond to his son. Instead he made a show of ignoring him.
Since Jómsborg’s fall, it was as if Åke no longer existed. Sweyn and Åke exchanged a knowing glance before Sweyn once again turned toward the castle.
Luckily his father had built all four of the ring castles that protected Denmark the same way: circular, with gates at each of the compass points. The buildings were laid out in a neat grid inside the ramparts, the moat, and the wooden palisade. The thatched roofs were coated to keep from catching fire, but neither they nor the old, dry wood could withstand a dragon’s breath.
“Let’s see them sweat,” he said, and then turned to Gunnar, the old Jómsviking who lived in one of the farms along the bay and who had hurried over to welcome them.
It was an unexpected and happy meeting. Sweyn remembered the skinny, capable warrior from his childhood, and apart from some gray streaks in his beard, he didn’t seem to have aged at all. He sincerely hoped Gunnar’s cunning and skill hadn’t changed either.
“Are there more than a hundred of them?” Sweyn asked, nodding to the skinny villagers who had gathered with axes and sharpened sticks to join Gunnar in aiding Sweyn.
The old warrior, wearing leather armor that had worn thin, nodded briefly.
“As soon as the Svea jarl and his men heard about King Erik’s death, they started plundering our farms of what little we had left and then took shelter in the castle. The jarl sometimes brags that he rules Zealand in the name of the Svea, but hopefully he’ll soon learn that he no longer does.” Gunnar coughed. “There’s one more thing you need to know, my king. Jelling-Erik, your brother, has been seen visiting the castle.”
So, the rumors were true.
“Then there’s hope of a reunion,” Sweyn said with a smile.
It was as if the gods had gathered to smooth the way for his return. Still, in war nothing could be taken for granted. Arrogance was the weakness of fools.
Sweyn nodded his agreement, and the archers lit their burning arrows from the fires before drawing their bows. The salt-saturated wind was coming from the sea and would carry the fire well.
“Well, they won’t be cold in the castle at any rate,” Åke sniggered.
The men called out orders to the archers, and the berserkers who stood ready to be the first wave started screaming and beating their axes against their shields, formidable to behold with their bear pelts over their shoulders and filled with the gods’ wrath. Their strength gathered like a hammer, ready to crush the enemy. Sweyn felt a shiver of sensual pleasure and anticipation as Palna lowered his arm.
At that signal the burning arrows were launched and began to fall, like a rain of death and destruction, over the walls of the castle. Wave after wave of devouring fire struck the Svea nest, and soon shouts were heard as smoke began to rise to the sky.
The fire master blew his horn, and now the archers aimed their tar-smeared arrows at the eastern gate. The rampart made it hard to aim, and there were no trees or high ground they could use to guide their shots. Still, the arrows kept striking the aging wood, and soon there were enough of them that the wood caught fire.
The Svea extinguished the first of the flames, but they couldn’t keep up for long as the waves of fire continued striking the wood.
“I think they’re going to regret not having taken better care of the castle’s aging woodwork,” Sweyn crowed.
Just then roaring flames blazed up from the gate, and valkyries were swept howling across the sky.
The warriors cheered at the flames, which would generously open the fortification to them. All they needed to do now was wait.
Tar that had been emptied onto the ground caught fire with a roar, and black smoke rose into the dark gray sky.
Sweyn stood, his arms crossed, staring into the flames.
If his deceitful brother was hiding in the castle, things weren’t going well for him right now. The fire, which had started to spread, couldn’t be stopped, and the enemy could only choose between dying in the smoke and flames, and opening the gates and trying to fight their way out. The wind picked up as if Rán herself wanted to see Sweyn win, and the dark smoke settled heavily over the bay.
Death screams could be heard from inside the castle, and from the west gate the battle horn warned that the Svea were going to try to make a break for it.
Sweyn drew Battle-Fire and hollered at the top of his lungs, “Slaughter the trespassers!”
The battle horn sounded an attack, and an otherworldly roar rose to the sky as four hundred warriors rushed toward the castle.
About thirty Svea warriors stood back-to-back outside the gate with their swords and shields raised, ready to try to fight their way out. The wind turned, and the smoke from the castle enveloped them all as if they were journeying to the afterworld.
The archers killed three of them before the Jómsvikings struck. There were flashing blades and wooden shields backlit by devouring flames. A spear tip pierced a Svea warrior’s belly so he bled to death, screaming in the dirt. A sword sliced off a hand; an ax cleaved a skull practically in two.
Sweyn lowered his sword as shrieks of pain and death wails cut through the din of battle.
“Those squealing swine sound like pigs at the slaughter,” Finnvid laughed.
Sweyn coughed from the fire’s thick, acrid smoke.
“They chose to die in battle instead of asking for mercy, and that does them credit,” he said, and scanned the men emerging from the castle now, unarmed, their hands up.
He cared very little about Svea men squandering their lives. All that mattered to him was finding his traitorous half brother, dead or alive. The fire gained new life inside the castle and rampaged like a roaring beast while the smoke stretched to the heavens as a mark of his victory. Out in the surrounding countryside, villagers were starting to gather, shouting out their hatred for the Svea and all who served them. Sweyn could rest assured that the villagers would take their revenge and honor him as their liberator.
“I didn’t see either the jarl or your half brother,” Åke confirmed, returning from the battle, a smile on his blood-spattered face. “They must have chosen the flames over you.”
“They didn’t,” Sweyn replied, striding over to the traitors who had been rounded up.
They were mostly warriors, a few servants, and a handful of women and children. He carefully inspected the prisoners, who stood sullenly looking at the ground. His half brother must be among them, because a traitor like him would be far too cowardly to choose death over a chance of escape. A teenager, his mouth hanging open, stared at him, and a young prostitute cried silently. Sweyn walked up to her and ran his finger gently over her cheek.
“Don’t be afraid,” he told the girl. “Point out the jarl to me and you can go.”
She looked him in the eye, and Sweyn smiled soothingly. She raised her hand and pointed to a handsome man in servant’s clothes.
“You filthy rat!” the disguised jarl yelled at the prostitute as Ragnvald grabbed him and bound his wrists.
Sweyn’s eyes glinted with fury. All that remained now was his brother.
Behind a skinny warrior was a servant dressed in a filthy brown tunic, but his shoes were of the finest leather and his cheeks plump and well nourished.
“My traitorous brother is such a coward that he would rather hide than face me!” Sweyn exclaimed.
There was silence as the captives stared at the ground. Finally Jelling-Erik stepped forward.
“I’m here,” he admitted, disgust on his face. “So kill me, you brute of a traitor.”
How dare he! Sweyn saw right through his half brother’s feigned arrogance. Of all his relations, he had had the highest regard for Erik, and there was no one he had had as much confidence in. Clearly one of the most foolish things he’d ever done.
“Why?” Sweyn asked.
“You turned your back on the gods and the faith of our ancestors,” Erik replied.
Sweyn shook his head at the lie. Jelling-Erik knew that Sweyn still sacrificed to the old gods but that he had also been forced to be on good terms with the cross worshippers to keep the peace with the Saxons and Emperor Otto. His half brother had been in on the decision to protect the churches in Denmark. There must be some other cause for his treason: envy, hunger for power, or whatever it was that sparked to life in his dung heap of a mind.
“You allowed a foreigner to conquer the kingdom, and you let good men die for a lie,” Sweyn said, putting his hand on his sword hilt in outrage.
Palna shot him a warning glance. His f
oster father wanted him to behead his half brother, but Sweyn wasn’t planning to make his trip to the afterworld that easy.
“Jail him until we reach Lejre. He will be punished there as the traitor he is.”
Ragnvald walked over to tie up Erik Haraldsson’s hands.
“I stood beside you when you killed our father,” Erik said with a look of disgust, “because the old man’s mind was clouded with madness. But I came to bitterly regret the loyalty I swore to you. You’re worse than King Harald. You’re a disgrace to the Jellings, you bastard. An ungodly, bloodthirsty brute, who pisses on the ancient ways of our family line and fornicates with foreign gods.”
Sweyn perceived his brother’s desperate fear.
“Enjoy your final hours of life, you unmanly wretch,” Sweyn said, and walked away. “You’re already dead to me.”
His hand shook with rage on his sword hilt.
“What do you want me to do with the rest of them?” Ax-Wolf called to him.
Sweyn stopped and looked at the Svea, who awaited his verdict with their heads down. It would be simplest to kill all the Svea so they didn’t stay in the area and plunder the farms, but that wouldn’t further his cause.
“Take the jarl’s head and stick it on a nithing pole. We’ll carry it when we march into Lejre,” he said, and drank the water Ragnvald gave him. “Every man and woman needs to know that the jarl has been killed and that my brother is a prisoner.”
Ax-Wolf laughed.
“What about the rest of them, then?” he said, gesturing with his ax to the warriors and servants.
“Let them go, but I hereby declare that from this moment on, all Svea are banned from Denmark.” Sweyn pulled his hand over the two braids in his beard and looked at the startled Svea warriors. “Go back home and tell everyone of Sweyn Forkbeard’s magnanimity.”
He looked out over the smoke that hung heavily over the bay.
“I’m going to Lejre with the Jómsvikings.”
“That’s a good plan,” Palna said with a nod of contentment.
Agnatyr had been gone for days, and now he returned; dejection hung like a dark cloud over his shoulders and his face was tense with anger.
Estrid (The Valhalla Series Book 2) Page 27