by C. R. May
Erik ignored the remark, conscious as he was that they were all in his brother’s power. ‘Give me a skei in the morning then, and I shall be on my way.’
‘I have none to give.’
‘I saw several at the quayside when I arrived.’
‘They are my own ships. I need them to keep the coastline here free from Vikings.’ Bjorn gave a smirk as an idea came to him. ‘I am sure that I could provide you with a knarr. A cargo vessel will be a bit cramped for a company the size of yours, but you don’t have so far to sail after all.’
Erik’s patience was about to give out when Anlaf murmured at his side, and his eyes narrowed as he repeated the suggestion. ‘Maybe a knarr is not such a bad idea.’ He paused to give his brother the opportunity to betray his surprise and delight at the thought of the humiliation before adding with a hard stare. ‘It is the time for you to deliver this year’s skat to our father in Avaldsnes. I could save you the trouble.’
To Erik’s delight the suggestion had clearly wrong-footed Bjorn, but the king of Vestfold recovered quickly. ‘It is no trouble. I shall fulfil my duty without your help.’
Erik glowered. ‘You don’t trust me?’
‘No,’ Bjorn finally admitted. ‘I don’t trust you.’
Erik rose to go, and the sound of wood scraping against wood rolled around the great space as the benches were pushed back and both sets of warriors stood with their hands resting on their sword hilts.
‘You have my thanks for the entertainment,’ Erik said as he stepped from the dais. ‘I am glad that we understand one another. I will be on my way within two days, until then we will camp on the outskirts of the town.’ He gave his brother a hard stare. ‘I shall pay with silver for supplies from the surrounding farms, and trouble you no more.’
‘This is actually a great idea,’ Thorstein said as he stripped the meat from another rib with his teeth and sent the bone spinning away into the reed bed. ‘Who wants to stay in Bjorn’s pissy hall anyway?’
It was late evening, and the heat had finally gone off the land as the men of Erik’s hird sat in contented groups idling away the last of the day. As promised Erik had sent men around the local farms as soon as the tents were pitched and the horses corralled, paying top price for bread, cheeses and freshly brewed ale from the delighted farmers and alewives there. A nugget of hacksilver had brought in a head of beef which the happy farmer had slaughtered and cut up on the spot, and now the men chatted in groups or watched the antics of the wandering birds as swifts and martins swooped and capered inches from the ground. Anlaf had the keenest eyesight in the group and the conversation fell away as they saw him stretch his neck and look away to the North.
‘Is that our boy?’
The lowering sun was a ball of fire on the hills to the West, and Anlaf squinted and shaded his eyes with the shelf of his hand: ‘yes that’s him.’
Erik nodded before calling across to a group of men lounging nearby. ‘Sturla!’
The Romsdaler jumped up and hurried across. ‘Yes, lord?’
‘Nip down to the bank and tell the swimmers to prepare to move.’
The others were pulling themselves to their feet, the idle chatter forgotten as they became men of war again. Erik motioned for them to remain where they were, strolling across to pluck another hunk of meat from the kettle. ‘Stay there for now lads,’ he said as he licked the hot juices from his fingers. ‘But get back into your brynjur now that the sun has westered.’
The horseman had left the road and taken to the fields in his haste to report to his king, and the senior men exchanged looks of anticipation as the great chest of the beast parted the rye before it like the bow wave of a ship. As the sound of men donning mail coats filled the air the rider slowed to a halt before them and slipped to the ground. ‘King Bjorn left the berg through the western gate a short time ago, lord,’ he blurted out. Erik held up a hand before he went on. ‘Slow down Olvir,’ he said as he bent to fill a cup from the ale tap. ‘Here drink this, and then report your news in a calm manner.’ He flicked a look over his shoulder as the last of the swimmers shook the water from their hair and began to dress. ‘These boys know their business, they are not easily spooked. But one day we may be at the head of an army of levy men, farmers, shepherds and fishermen, and they want to see that their leaders are confident of victory not racing about like their arse is on fire.’
The young scout took the cup and drank, his eyes scanning the group of battle hardened veterans as he ordered his thoughts. Thorstein threw him a wink, and the boy visibly brightened at the gesture of support as he lowered his cup and calmly resumed his report. ‘King Bjorn and fifty men left the far gate of the berg and took the western road out past the head of the fjord.’
‘Did he see you?’
‘No lord, I stayed within the woodland the whole time they were in sight.’
‘You are from these parts, where do you think they could be heading?’
‘The king has a hall on the far side of the bay, lord,’ Olvir explained. ‘At a place called Saeheim. I couldn’t follow him without leaving cover, but they were heading directly towards it when I last saw them.’
Anlaf threw Erik a look. ‘It would make sense if those riders earlier were carrying the war arrow to the nearest hersar. If your brother thinks that he only has two days in which to overwhelm us here before we leave, it would be a good place to muster.’
Erik nodded. ‘You are sure of the numbers?’
‘Yes lord, they rode two abreast so it was easy to tally.’
Erik opened his mouth to ask another question, but Olvir anticipated and supplied the answer before he could speak. ‘There are normally twenty or so men at the hall lord.’
Erik rubbed his nose as he thought. The numbers should be roughly equal if he moved fast, and a plan was already beginning to form in his mind.
‘It will be twilight soon,’ Anlaf said, interrupting his thoughts. ‘Miles from home, deep in a hostile land; any sane leader would slip away under the cover of darkness and live to fight another day.’
Erik looked up, and a smile spread across his features as he recognised that they already knew his decision.
22
FIGHT AT SAEHEIM
The horse snorted again and pawed the ground. The rider looked shamefaced as Erik glared in his direction, calming the animal with a stroke of its neck as the king looked back towards the East. The lights of Tunsberg glowed dully on its mount; high above a gibbous moon silvered a screen of shredded clouds. Squares of light perforated the darkness around Saeheim as the inhabitants took full advantage of the warm night to put shutters of wood or scraped hide aside, and Erik cursed again beneath his breath as he waited for the telltale flames to wink into life.
‘Not long now, Erik,’ Anlaf breathed at his side. ‘Even as we sit here, Kolbein is hunched over his fire steel.’
A moment later the first flicker showed in the dockyard below the town, and Anlaf flashed a smile of triumph as his king looked back and arched a brow. The war band walked free of the shadows as the fires began to take hold in the East, and Erik turned his head to address the men as they began to jog across the meadow towards the first of the buildings. ‘Hit them hard, lads,’ he snarled, ‘and leave none living. They thought to redden their sword blades with our blood in the morning. Let us show them how killing should be done!’
After an hour spent wincing at each and every whinny or cough the fall of feet and soft swish of mail sounded thunderous in Erik’s ears, but the need for concealment was thankfully past and a moment later the first cries of alarm came from Saeheim as Kolbein’s handiwork was spotted by the guards there. The men instinctively increased the pace as rectangles of amber light showed where doors had been flung open, and Erik pointed to left and right as the hall of the king reared up before them. A figure stood silhouetted by the light within, and Erik cried a dedication to Oðin as his spear punched the first man to die back into the room and his men bayed their bloodlust like hounds at t
he kill.
Sturla and a few others had been given the task of firing the thatch, and Erik recognised his brother’s panicked cries fill the air as they emerged from a nearby hut carrying their torches. ‘Out! Out! I will not be burned in my own hall like some wretch!’
The first fighters to exit the building were quickly cut down by Erik’s men before they had the room to wield their sword, but soon the pressure began to tell and the crew of the Draki began to bow back on itself as more and more of Bjorn’s men fought their way out of the trap. Sturla and his men were circling the hall, thrusting their brands deep, and soon the roof was aflame from gable to gable as the tinder dry thatch became a torch.
A warrior darted from the crush and Erik dodged aside, recognising the moment when mail links gave way under his powerful upward stab and the sword blade slid into belly and gut. Another reared up an arm’s length before him, a bearded snarl beneath a fringe of steel; Erik brought his own helm crashing forward to shatter teeth and nose into a bloody mash as Thorstein’s arm shot forward to carve the grim rictus of a smile into his throat. Erik stepped forward into the gap, ribs snapping like sun dried twigs beneath his heel as the man fell at his feet. Bjorn was still not in sight, and he called out above clash of steel and roar of flames as he sought out the man whose insults had brought them to this place. ‘King Bjorn? Bjorn Haraldsson? Erik Haraldsson has come to this place to put an end to our squabble!’
The fallen were piled so high in the courtyard now that the newly killed were unable to fall to the ground, some being attacked again and again by Erik’s men until the lopping off of the head or a limb proved to the blood crazed attackers that they were no longer a threat. Thorstein and Anlaf Crow were at Erik’s side, and the trio waded through the carnage as they hunted for Bjorn. The building was an inferno now, long sinewy flames roaring skyward and casting an orange glow over the dead and living alike as they turned over bodies with the toe of a boot or heel of a spear.
Erik glanced at the hall as they worked their way across the courtyard. The doorway through which the men of the Vestfold had raced to their deaths only a short while before was a dragon’s roar of flame as the fire fed hungrily on the warm night air. Twin windows set within the long wall of the hall had become the monster’s baleful eyes, nobody could be alive inside by now; Erik began to fear that his brother had brought shame upon the family of Harald Fairhair by choosing to die within rather than face his assailants, when a cry drew him across to the eastern side of the hall. Sturla was there with Thorgils, a weather-beaten Orkney man, his face bearing the look of a man sat downwind at his oar as a crewmate pissed over the side. Erik glanced down at the body of his brother and gave his killer a reassuring clap on the shoulder as the man began to apologise for the killing. ‘You did me a service Thorgils,’ Erik said as a wave of relief swept across the crewman’s features. ‘No man wants to be remembered as a brother killer, whether that death was deserved or not. Here,’ he said, sheathing his sword and handing his spear across to Thorstein for safekeeping. ‘Help me to mark his wounds. I will have to describe them to his father and I want him to know that he died like a man.’
As Thorgils tugged the king upright, Erik released Bjorn’s belt and worked the brynja from his torso. A flick of his short seax opened up the shirt beneath, Erik tearing the thing away as he looked upon the body of his brother. Nicks and grazes covered the front of Bjorn’s body and a spear thrust to the chest had clearly been the Vestfold king’s death wound; but his back was as white and clear as newly poured milk, and Erik laid a hand on the side of his brother’s face and looked into eyes glazed by death. ‘All I wanted was to rest my men and horses. Was even that little thing too much to ask of you kinsman?’
They had rarely seen the waters of Karmsund so empty of shipping, and Erik had ordered the men to don their war gear as the final few miles went beneath their bows. King Bjorn’s belligerence had taken Erik and his men by surprise, but once the king had paid the price of his hostility Erik had determined that any opposition to his high kingship was best faced down while he was on the spot. There had been amusement at first as the hersar of Vestfold had reached the muster only to discover that the fight was over. Erik had insisted that the men swear allegiance to him before sending them away with fine gifts, but the obvious shock and dismay with which the death of their king had been greeted by high and low born alike was disquieting. Added to that, Bjorn’s wife had managed to spirit their young son Gudrod away to safety with King Olav of Ringerike, Bjorn’s full brother. As yet the lad was young and no threat, but lads had a habit of growing into vengeful men; it was a situation he was sure he would need to return to in time. While Erik had been away wooing the folk of the Vestfold the summer ripened and waned. Now, it would seem, his absence may well have caused his enemies closer to home to seize their chance.
The mood lightened a touch as the ship put her bows beyond the final island before the anchorage and the man stationed in the prow cupped hands to make his report. ‘It’s almost empty lord,’ he called, the relief obvious from his tone: ‘two…no…three warships and a dozen knarr.’
Erik exchanged a look with his senior men. They had taken the best two longships from the harbour beneath Tunsberg, filling the hulls with treasure from the hall on the berg which he claimed as his own by right of conquest. Two skei crewed by the best of his men were a powerful force, but if Halfdan the Black had taken advantage of his absence to install himself as high king at Avaldsnes he could have expected the rest of his hird to be put to the sword and the town filled with enemies. Erik’s feelings of anxiety came down a level but the emptiness was still a mystery, and he called on the rowers to pick up the stroke as the ships swung on their keels and pointed their prows to the land.
Thorstein was keen-eyed, and the big warrior laid a hand on Erik’s sleeve as men began to appear on the foreshore. ‘That is Ulfar Whistle-tooth, lord; and Gauti Thorodsson off the Bison.’ Smiles broke out all across the steering platform as the others saw that it was true. ‘Well, that is our worst fears quashed,’ Erik said. ‘Let us get ashore and discover what we have missed this summer.’
Erik’s eyes flittered across the townscape as the ship neared the jetties. Despite the appearance of two of his styrismen, the events in Vestfold had taught him to be more cautious at all times. It was clear that if the news of his coming had travelled a little quicker before him, Erik would have been greeted with overwhelming force when he had emerged before Tunsberg. It would have been Erik and his men lying bloodied on the field, and if that had occurred he was in no doubt that the assassin’s blade would have found Gunnhild and little Gamli before the summer was out.
The dragons edged alongside, and ropes were tossed ashore as men came to make her fast to the jetty. Erik was first ashore, and he fixed his gaze upon a distant point as he waited for his mind and body to recover from the constant pitch and roll of the sea. His bodyguard came up and he allowed their bodies a moment to remember the sensation of firm land beneath their feet before leading them on. The boards resounded as the men stomped ashore, and the clatter of steel replaced the squawking of gulls as the crewmen crossed the wales.
Ulfar and Gauti waited on the dockside wearing faces wreathed in smiles, and Erik returned the gesture as they gave voice to their happiness. ‘Welcome home, lord,’ they beamed. ‘It has been an eventful summer.’
‘So we can see. How is the king?’
‘At the head of an army, lord,’ came Ulfar’s stunning reply. Erik was taken aback, and Ulfar gave a snort and gestured towards King Harald’s hall. ‘Perhaps your wife is the best one to explain, Erik. She has taken up the reins of kingship here while your father is in the North.’
Erik crinkled his brow at the news. ‘A woman reigning in Norway? If it was any other, I may have been surprised…’
Gauti added a comment of his own as the men chuckled at the absurdity of the situation. A nation full of kings fighting like rats in a sack was in reality being governed by a young Danish
queen. ‘She has become widely respected for the quality of her rede and judgement while the king has been away, lord. She will know far more about kingly matters than us.’
Erik nodded his agreement. ‘Yes, it is best that I discover how the world upended itself while I was away.’ He flicked a look across his shoulder at the body of his hird, lolling around now that any threat had disappeared and eager to get to their cups. ‘Make sure the boys are entertained in the main hall while I talk with Gunnhild.’
Erik took off, angling towards the familiar walls of his own hall before the pair could answer. Folk were venturing from the buildings of Avaldsnes as word went around who the unfamiliar longships contained, men and women alike dipping their heads in supplication as he walked the final few yards and entered his home for the first time since high summer. Gunnhild was sat on her high seat as two men stood before her cap in hand, but she rose and shooed them away when she saw that Erik was home. As the hall steward and his helpers began to usher the supplicants from the building, Gunnhild crossed to the door of their private bower and disappeared inside.
As he had hoped, his wife had freed her hair when he arrived and the pair embraced, kissing hungrily as the tensions of the summer evaporated for them both. As they came apart Gunnhild buried her face in his hair and inhaled deeply. ‘Mountain air and sea spray,’ she murmured before kissing him again. ‘How I yearn to ply the seas, to be free like a man.’ Their closeness had revealed another thing to Erik, and his face broke into a smile as he ran his hand across the fullness of her belly. ‘Yes,’ she said with a look. ‘Freedom is not the only reason for women to envy men.’ Her swollen belly had cooled Erik’s ardour and his mind came back to his father. ‘Where is the king? What have I missed?’
‘King Harald is in the Trondelag,’ she replied with a look of triumph, ‘leading a host against Halfdan the Black.’