Runar looked thoughtfully at Jorn.
‘Th-th-that’s a big job.’
‘It is, Runar.’ A hint of a smile flashed across Jorn’s face. Runar noticed this and smiled back. Havar and Birkir looked on, confused.
‘A l-lot of things can go wr-wr-wrong on big jobs,’ Runar added.
Jorn put on a convincingly apologetic face. ‘Sadly, they can.’
Runar’s smile was positively angelic. ‘It is very’ – Runar nodded slowly to himself, taking his time to get the sentence out – ‘dangerous when things go wr-wrong for a whole army that is perhaps made up of people who don’t like each other very much.’
By now, the smiles had spread to Birkir and Havar’s faces. Jorn nodded sagely. ‘So what I propose we do, boys, is that we get to Stenvik as quick as we can, so that we can make absolutely sure that we’ve done our very best when the King arrives.’
Within moments they were all back at full gallop.
STENVIK
Harald could barely contain his fury. Thick, yellowing nails, broken and bitten, dug into calloused palms. Oft-broken and scabbed knuckles whitened, forearms tensed. He just needed an excuse. Any excuse and he’d take great pleasure in breaking someone’s face. His nostrils flared and a growl erupted from his throat. Muscles bunched in his arms and shoulders. He throbbed with the injustice of it all. How dare he? Sven, that old goat. And Sigurd. He’d just been following bloody orders. Make sure there are no fights in the market, Harald. Keep an eye out for the traders, Harald. He remembered it well. Of course the best way was to show once and for all who the biggest, meanest dog was. Everyone knew that. It was stupid and unfair. He’d been betrayed. And now, on top of everything, he would have to pay them. Those snivelling little toad-faced pansies who had never tasted the blood on the air, mixed with the smell of charred wood and the music of the screams. Fucking earth-humpers who had never gone in at night, never felt the tingle before the fight, never felt the calm before the storm. Never snuffed out the light in someone’s eyes.
Images came to him. Starlight. Big, bearded men crouching in a longship, gliding silently up a river in green, lush land. Grinning to each other. Fastening axes to wrists with leather straps. Reinforcing shield holds. Checking mail shirts and helmets.
Praying silently to Thor, to Tyr. To Odin himself.
Muttering ‘Tonight I may die,’ but never believing it.
Feeling invincible.
Despite his mood Harald grinned to himself. On that boat, he knew the rules. He knew the game.
In Stenvik, he wasn’t so sure any more.
If only someone would give him an excuse right now.
He needed it. Either that or some of Valgard’s medicine. He needed something and he needed it now.
He turned and headed for home.
NORTH OF STENVIK
Sigmar gave himself to the movement.
The ground seemed to whip past him. Bushes turned to green blurs, trees smudged around the edges. His feet hardly touched the earth. Breathe in, three steps, breathe out, three steps. The rhythm took over and then his heart was beating to the rhythm of his feet to the rhythm of the soil and he was alive, he was part of it, part of the rhythm of nature. He ran.
But anyone could run. Thorvald had taught them how to hunt. To watch. They could run through a forest at full speed and tell you afterwards how many trees they’d seen, how many bushes, where the deer tracks lay.
And now Sigmar was thinking, floating on the rhythm. Smelling, seeing, hearing. Working all his senses, searching for anything that would give Thorvald the information he wanted.
Sjoberg loomed up ahead. A sheer cliff rising some two hundred yards over the sea, it was the best point on their stretch of coast to scout the horizon.
The climb was steep and they were all sweating freely when they got to the top. They did as they had been taught and loosened up their muscles when they stopped, rubbing their thighs and shaking their legs. Only when that was done did they allow themselves two mouthfuls of water each, holding the precious liquid in their mouths for as long as they could. Too much water did nothing but slow you down and they had much ground to cover.
Sigmar snapped out an order. ‘Orn. Horizon. Any ships?’
Little blond, blue-eyed Orn, at twelve the youngest recruit to the scouts for a while, settled in and shielded his eyes from the sun. Aptly named after the eagle, the boy could see for miles. After a little while he turned to Sigmar. ‘There may be something out there but it is very far out. Could have been ships.’
‘Go back, find them, try to see where they’re headed.’
Orn went back to his post. Sigmar watched him frown in concentration. Time passed then he spoke again, voice cracking a little. ‘Out. Far out,’ he said without taking his eyes from the horizon. ‘If I were to guess, I’d say they’re raiders, heading out. Must be out to sea. The only other place in that direction is Wyrmsey.’
‘Wyrmsey,’ Sigmar repeated and scratched his head. ‘Why would anyone want to go there?’
WYRMSEY
Skargrim sat on his rock and watched the last work being done on the planks. Thora walked towards him, all skin and bones and short, spiky black hair bristling every which way. She was a hard woman, Skargrim thought. There was nothing soft about her at all. He saw the nasty scar on her right cheek and smiled. One of her lovers had decided that it would be a good idea to assert his authority, show the bitch who was boss. He’d come out of it a lot worse than she did. She tilted her head back and looked up at him.
‘Now, captain, would I be right in assuming …’
Skargrim raised an eyebrow back at his helmswoman, unable to quite take the smile off his face.
‘… that you’d want these planks made into makeshift bridges …’
Skargrim’s grin widened.
‘… that could be used to cross the ditch … but would be real easy, like, to kick down into it?’
‘I always thought I did well when I picked you, Thora. You’re smarter than you look.’
‘For which we thank Loki. And you only picked me because Ari had that accident.’
‘Yes. That was unfortunate.’
‘He stumbled onto my blade, poor man.’
‘Nineteen times, if memory serves.’
‘Twenty-one. But who’s counting?’
Their conversation was cut short by three strangled, inhuman screams drifting over the sea. Thora shot Skargrim an unreadable look.
‘Best get the men moving on those planks, then.’
‘Not a bad idea,’ Skargrim answered.
On the horizon, five sails billowed. Five ships, glistening black and silver, sliced through the waves and towards Wyrmsey.
Skargrim sidled off the rock as Ingi stalked towards him. Ingi was a short and in later days rather hefty captain with a reputation for cautiousness. While this alone would have labelled him a contemptible coward, he consistently brought home much more loot than any other captain on his stretch of coast, and lost a crew member once in a blue moon. His fighters were well equipped, well trained, hard and disciplined. There was no more give in Ingi’s men than there was in Ingi himself. He had reached his fifties and become one of Norway’s wealthiest chieftains by making plans, sticking to them and seeing them through. And now he was livid.
He peered up at Skargrim.
‘You never told me he would be coming!’
‘Would you have come if I had?’
‘No! Of course not! Are you out of your tiny little mind, you oaf? Do you even know what you’ve bargained for? Do you even know what’s on those boats?’ Ingi stood on tiptoe to be able to scream up at Skargrim’s face rather than his chest.
Skargrim looked down at the man and considered his options. He couldn’t kill him on the spot, as much as he would like to. Some of his six hundred soldiers might take that the wrong way. And besides he rather liked Ingi and secretly admired his methods. There was something to be said for a commander who respected the lives of his men and would
n’t let stupid things like reputation or honour get in the way. And to be fair, he could see why Ingi would be spitting fire at him. Skargrim grinned. The screams still came in from the sea, although more muted now.
‘Smile at this, Skargrim! We’re leaving!’ Ingi made to turn around, and almost walked into Skuld. Neither of the captains had noticed as she walked up to them.
Now Ingi faced her, with Skargrim at his back.
‘I will not take orders from you either, woman. It doesn’t …’ Ingi’s voice trailed off. ‘… It doesn’t … make any … sense.’
She reached out and touched his forearm. Skargrim felt the cold kiss of crisp winter breeze, saw Ingi’s knees start to shake gently and heard the little man’s breath quicken. He observed her from over Ingi’s shoulder. Straight, blonde hair framed her sparkling blue eyes, skin made from clouds and mountain snow, lips of sunset red moving almost imperceptibly. She was fragile, beautiful and desperately vulnerable. He wanted to toss the little man out of the way and embrace her, protect her, shield her from all harm. Her eyes had not captured his, so he could resist the powerful feeling that washed over him, but only just.
Ingi had no such luck.
‘But it makes sense to leave us in the hour of our greatest need?’ she asked, a note of tender, resigned regret in her voice. ‘Leaving your brothers in arms? Denouncing your gods? Abandoning … me?’
Skargrim dared not breathe. He’d seen her do this to other men, and he knew what would follow. She’d use the powers Loki had given her to win him over, feel weaker for it, and then someone would have to die to give her strength. After what seemed like an eternity she continued.
‘If that is how you wish to proceed, Ingi, then do. But know this – you are needed here. And not only needed – you are respected and honoured. Your counsel, your wisdom, your prudence. This is the mighty host of which you and your men are designed to be the backbone. This is where you will write your name in legend. Will you leave us now?’
Skargrim found he was holding his breath.
‘… No,’ Ingi whispered.
Her hands moved slowly, tantalizingly, towards his face. She cupped his cheeks and gazed into his eyes. ‘This pleases me, Ingi. It pleases me greatly. Now go see to your men. Be the leader I know you can be.’
‘Yes. Yes I will,’ Ingi blurted out, and hurried down off the lookout mound towards his camp.
When he was gone, she turned to Skargrim. ‘Do you trust him?’
‘I do.’ She raised an immaculate eyebrow. Skargrim continued. ‘At heart he is a greedy coward, unable to deal with chaos and risk. That is precisely why we want him. He knows, fears and respects battle. If Ingi doesn’t want to do it, we know we’re taking chances that we shouldn’t take.’
Skuld smiled at him. The smile did not reach her cold blue eyes. ‘Tell me again. You sent the promise of gold?’
‘I did. The forest around Stenvik will be crawling with every poacher, thief and blackheart in the south-west. As you instructed,’ Skargrim answered.
‘Good.’
The movement down on the beach broke the spell of her eyes.
The five black and silver ships had landed.
Unlike the other arrivals, nobody rushed to help.
A giant of a man leapt overboard from the lead ship and strode to shore.
‘SKARGRIM!’ he bellowed.
‘WELL MET, EGILL!!’ Skargrim shouted back from his mound.
Egill looked up and raised one slablike fist in salute.
Skargrim walked calmly down towards the beach to meet the newest arrival.
Many of his men had doubted that Egill Jotunn even existed. His crew was the source of much legend, nobody knew where his ships came from or went back to, and various stories flourished, each of them less probable than the other. Now the assembled raiders had a chance to see for themselves.
The man on the beach was a specimen. Skargrim was a sizeable man himself, but Egill was at least a head taller. Some said he was half giant, others that he was Thor’s bastard son. He killed his first man when he was five and legend had it he had once sunk an enemy ship by flinging a ram ten lengths from his own boat and straight through its hull.
Skargrim didn’t care for stories. What he did know was that nobody had yet bested Egill in single combat. Hell, anyone who was dumb enough to take on that mountain of a man without a small army deserved to die. Skuld had told him where to find Egill and his crew, and when he’d seen them he’d decided on the spot that they would need them. As his ships ran ashore gently, they started forming ranks on the beach.
First came the fighters.
They leapt over the side of the ships, swift and nearly silent. Their mail shirts were black, as were their helmets. They wore short axes and longswords at their belts, and held long spears or nasty halberds. No shields. They were strong men who walked proud and looked at the amassed crowd of toughened raiders with a healthy amount of scorn.
Hard as nails, they looked.
But there were also only a hundred and fifty of them.
‘Is that all you brought?’ Thrainn shouted derisively from the middle of his camp. The men laughed. Skargrim winked at Egill and grinned.
From one of the ships came an agonized, strangled howl that sounded almost inhuman. On the beach, over fifteen hundred hardened raiders from all over the north took a simultaneous step back and fell quiet. Skargrim caught Hrafn’s eye. The Finnmark chieftain was grinning like a child with a new toy, bounding up and down and craning his neck to see.
And then they came.
The Twenty.
Shuffling out of the boat, looking miserable, grey-green and seasick. All manner of men. Thick, thin, tall and short, strong and frail. Bald, hairy, bearded, shaven, scabby, clean, young and not so young. Carrying an assortment of weapons. Scythes, spikes, iron knuckles, shortswords, knives, axes, hammers and picks.
And no armour.
Instead, each of the twenty had a filthy, tattered bearskin tied around his waist, complete with gaping half-head.
Egill’s raiders formed a protective circle around them. It was not entirely sure who was protecting who from what, Skargrim thought. Apprehension, even fear, clouded the faces of the men.
A loud voice pierced the tense silence. ‘Welcome to Wyrmsey! Right, you furry goat-fuckers, get your stinky, boil-filled pusspewing arses in gear and come on over. I and the boys have prepared a special sleeping place for you.’ Thora strode in front of the circle of black-clad warriors, pacing back and forth. ‘But mind, if you start any of that howling at the moon nonsense while I’m getting my beauty sleep I’ll come over and smack all of you in the mouth!’
The tension changed the outburst of spontaneous laughter instantly into raucous cheering. Even some of the black raiders cracked a smile. Striding towards Skargrim, Egill exclaimed: ‘That’s a good woman right there.’
‘I know,’ Skargrim said with a grin.
Hrafn nearly crashed into them. ‘Berserkers! You brought berserkers! I’ve never even seen them! I’ve just heard stories! And to be in the presence of Egill Jotunn himself – it is an honour.’ Hrafn bowed low.
Egill roared. ‘Hah! Says Hrafn of the Long Knife, House-burner, Blood-beak, scourge of the North Seas? I am the one who should be giving you my thanks! I’ve heard much about you.’
‘And likewise,’ Hrafn said, clasping Egill’s arm in a warrior’s grip and looking almost comically small in comparison. ‘Berserkers!’ he bubbled.
‘Yes indeed,’ Egill said with a smile. ‘These are the last ones. The Twenty. As far as I know, that’s all that remains. I heard several stories a few years back of a man who murdered nearly half a village in a rage, but he’s the only one who hasn’t sought me out. If I ever see him I’ll name him Third Seven, and he shall sail with me. Every one of the twenty has found us. They say they couldn’t run with other crews because things … unfortunate things had a way of happening.’
‘They did,’ Skargrim agreed.
‘Well
, not with me they don’t,’ Egill added gleefully. ‘I keep these bastards in line, and they love me for it. If we can, we beach when they’re howling, so they can go wrestle a tree or a big rock or something. That way they don’t hurt anyone unintentionally.’
‘What happens if they go wild when you’re out to sea?’ Hrafn asked.
Egill looked at him and grinned savagely. ‘Then they wrestle me.’
Thrainn approached the gathered chieftains. ‘Skargrim. Hrafn. Egill. I am Thrainn Thrandilsson. It is an honour for a captain like me to be on the same island, let alone sail with legends such as you.’ He inclined his head.
Skargrim grinned inwardly. Experience was already serving young Thrainn well.
‘Tell me, Thrainn,’ Egill rumbled. ‘That looks like, what? Three hundred raiders in your camp?’
‘More than four hundred,’ Thrainn said, straightening up somewhat.
‘I will tell you what I think,’ Egill said, eyeing the young man thoughtfully. ‘I reckon anyone can captain a ship if he’s mean enough. Maybe two. But a raiding party of four hundred men will only follow a man who is on his way to becoming a legend in his own right. I have heard tell of you. You sail with us as a northern chieftain of note and I consider you my equal. I look forward to the battle and hope you will prove yourself my superior.’
Thrainn grinned and bowed his head once more. ‘Your generosity is only matched by your size.’
Egill roared again. ‘Hah! The whelp has a tongue on him!’ Ingi approached the assembled chieftains. Skargrim stepped out and made space for him in the circle. When he introduced himself, Egill whipped around with frightening speed and squared up to Skargrim. ‘You lying rat bastard!’ he snarled and pointed straight at the old captain’s face. In a split second the mood changed. Hands moved to hilts obvious and concealed. Feet shuffled into fighting stances. Body weight shifted and Egill continued, scowling. ‘When you summoned us you didn’t tell me we’d be sailing with people who hadn’t lost their mind!’
The silence stretched on into tense confusion, until finally Hrafn cracked up and started giggling so hard he eventually had to lean on Egill, who was shaking silently. Thrainn and Ingi shot each other confused glances. Skargrim grinned wryly.
The Valhalla Saga Page 10