‘Blades!’
Two lines of axes and swords formed beside the javelin wall. Birkir’s head rose above the others; on the other end of the line Havar’s cheeks wobbled nervously. The gate shook again. Stones broke loose from the wall.
‘HOLD YOUR LINES.’
Earth and grass gave way as the gate creaked and leaned forward. Jorn darted in front of the gate and turned to face the men.
‘REMEMBER! IF IT BREATHES, IT LIVES! IF IT LIVES, IT DIES TODAY!’
The men roared back at him, determination etched in their stances, in their faces.
Something heavy hit the gate from inside. A voice bellowed ‘NOW!!’ and Jorn just got out of the way before the big slab of wood came crashing to the ground.
Through the arc of the southern gate came the biggest man any of them had ever seen.
*
The last walkway tipped over and crashed to the ground. The few of Hrafn’s men that remained on the wall were overmatched and overpowered. Warriors were thrown over the edge, dead or dying. The remaining raiders shuffled back to their camp, some dragging wounded comrades, others limping on their own. The defenders cheered and shouted insults after them.
Then the south gate came crashing down.
As one, the men on the wall turned to look down on a living legend. Egill Jotunn strode into Stenvik wielding the log he’d used as a battering ram. Ten scrawny, filthy bearskin-clad warriors came with him, screaming garbled obscenities. Roaring, the small team charged the fifty defenders. Those on the wall watched in horror as the first volley of arrows slammed into the berserkers and didn’t even slow them down. Egill threw the log at the spearmen, took out three men and obliterated the first line of defence. In an instant the market square turned into a boiling, heaving mass of bodies, blood and pain.
Sven turned away just in time to see the first murder hole shield rise silently on its hinges, soon followed by the other one. Without thinking he took a running jump and landed on the shield closest to him, slamming it down. Below his feet a howl of rage turned into a feral scream. ‘ENEMY ON THE WALL! TURN AROUND, YOU BASTARDS!!’ Sven yelled.
The shield exploded upwards, sending the old warrior stumbling off. A snarling wild-eyed man in animal skins crawled up out of the hole, foaming at the mouth, keening and howling.
ONBOARD THE NJORDUR’S MERCY
Oraekja opened his eyes and saw only cold. Stars twinkled above him in a sky turning from day to night. She leaned in, looked down and smiled a kind smile. He watched her hand on his chest, felt the freezing, scalding feeling in his heart, felt it spreading through his veins. Felt his body spasm, shake, unfamiliar weight in his legs, in his arms. Felt himself scream again, his throat raw. He watched her mouth move.
‘Sleep now, faithful
Fury’s servant
Cloaked in starlight
Sheathed in darkness
Feel the thunder
Taste the lightning
Legend is your
Destination.’
And Oraekja was no more.
STENVIK
The heat in the smithy was suffocating. Everywhere he looked he saw sharp, jagged edges. Swords and axes. Spearheads. Blood. Audun leaned on his worktable, head spinning. There was too much blood. Too much death. It was in the air, he could taste it. He’d come to Stenvik to hide, to stay away from the blood, but he wasn’t safe, not even here among his tools.
A wave of old, dark thoughts swept him away.
*
Sven barely dodged a murderous swipe from the berserker’s rusty sickle. Up on the wall around him the sounds of weapons clanging mixed with grunts and groans, screams of pain and spine-chilling howls from the men in animal skins.
‘DIE, YOU BASTARD!’ the old warrior screamed as he pivoted and rammed the dagger in his left hand to the hilt through the wolf-skin and into his opponent’s ribcage. ‘DIE!’ Sven kneed the grunting man savagely in the crotch for good measure. Blood spurted along the dagger’s blade as he pinned the berserker’s weapon arm between them.
The stocky, thin-haired berserker did not go down. Instead he turned, looked at Sven and grinned, his face full of broken and yellowing teeth. The wounded man’s head came at him so fast that Sven barely got his nose out of the way.
‘OW! LET GO, YOU GOATFUCKER!’
Sticky, scarlet blood streamed out of the fighter’s side as he pummelled Sven with his left fist, firmly hanging onto a clump of the old man’s big, bushy beard and pulling downwards, trying to dislodge his weapon arm.
‘Oh no you don’t,’ the old warrior grunted as he twisted the dagger savagely and yanked it upwards and out. His opponent coughed and staggered back, bleeding freely from his side. Face contorted in rage, he growled. ‘I know I’ve said to some people that their mother was a bitch, but in your case it might actually be true,’ Sven snarled back at his opponent. Never taking his eyes off the invader, Sven drew a battered old shortsword in his right hand to go with the bleeding dagger.
Paying no heed to the gaping hole in his side, the berserker charged, screaming and foaming at the mouth, madness in his eyes.
Sven stood still.
The sickle swung back, muscles flexing in the madman’s arm. Then he unleashed a killing blow at his target.
Which wasn’t there.
Instead Sven stepped towards the berserker at the very last moment, putting all his weight into the impact, driving both weapons clean through the onrushing attacker. Dagger through the chest, sword through the stomach.
Impaled by the strength of his own charge, the berserker sputtered and coughed. Sven braced against the dying man’s last gasps, feeling the life pour out of the insane fighter. ‘Now stay dead,’ the old warrior snarled through gritted teeth, shoulder to the dying berserker’s chest, head resolutely turned away.
His blades made a wet, slurping sound as he withdrew and a last shove sent the corpse over the wall.
Sven turned around and surveyed the scene. On the east wall Harald and Sigurd were holding their own, but the sheer ferocity of the berserkers’ attack had taken the Stenvik defenders by surprise. Already exhausted, some of the men on the wall had simply been overwhelmed. Their dead bodies had been thrown like rag dolls over the wall or sprawled on the walkway, broken and mutilated.
Down in the market square, things looked no better. The defenders were putting up a brave fight, but they were no match for the sheer brutality of the onslaught. Egill Jotunn had drawn a massive, two-handed sword that he swung in broad arcs, shattering armour and sending sprays of blood sky-high. A circle had formed around him as defenders sought to get out of the way of the killing blade.
And now something seemed to be barrelling into the defenders from behind, from within the town, pushing and ploughing into their ranks, towards Egill.
An axe thudded into the wall next to Sven. A frustrated roar followed too close, way too close and the old warrior jerked to his left as a skinny, scrawny fighter, shaking with fury, yanked the axe back and swung to face him.
*
Shoot and run.
Runar fired again, an arrow thudding into the back of a berserker. The man did not turn, did not seem to notice. Instead his fist went into a defender’s face once, twice, three times, turning it into a bloody pulp. In an instant the vicious warrior was away again, seeking his next target like a starving dog. Something warm spattered Runar’s cheek. He turned to see the crazed light wink out in a berserker’s eyes not an arm’s length away, a serrated knife falling from his limp, lifeless fingers. Birkir pulled hard on his hand axe, working to dislodge it from the bearskin around the dying man’s neck. He managed on the third pull.
‘Move faster, you scrawny fucker,’ Birkir shouted. He smiled and Runar watched as the blood-lust swept him away. ‘COME ON THEN, YOU STINKING DOGS!’ the big man roared as he turned towards the giant in the square. Stepping over the bodies of many defenders and few berserkers he waded into the fight, axe in hand.
Egill spotted him, turned and moved
to meet the new challenger. Runar drew and shot but the angle was wrong. The best he could do was pierce the half-giant’s shoulder. Without breaking his stride Egill pushed at the end of the arrow until the head came through on the other side, then pulled the bloodied shaft out and threw it away.
Birkir screamed as he charged the half-giant.
With frightening speed, Egill danced away.
Turning to readjust, Birkir stepped in a pool of blood and lost his balance. Moving in, Egill took the big fighter’s head clean off with a simple powerful sweep. Time seemed to stand still as Birkir’s body fell to the ground. All eyes were trained on the impossibly large frame of Egill Jotunn, the speed with which he moved, the force in the blade that went through the big man’s neck.
The spell was broken by a loud wet crunch, and then another. At the perimeter two berserkers dropped dead, heads no longer a recognizable shape.
A barrel-chested man moved into Egill’s field of vision. The front of his shirt was rust-coloured and blood dripped off his sleeves. On his head, a mop of blonde, unruly hair. Two big blacksmith’s hammers in his big calloused hands. His blue eyes blazed. His mouth contorted in a cold, fierce smile. The man who had answered to the name of Audun howled, a fierce, primeval sound. Foaming at the mouth, he charged Egill Jotunn.
STENVIK, THE OLD TOWN
Skargrim watched the fight on the wall, heard the screams from inside the town. He did not move. Thora stared at him, eyes ablaze. ‘Do we charge? The men are ready. Give the order!’
‘No. Ingi is right. They’ve retaken the wall, we can’t get up there quick enough and the gateway is a death trap. Running in would be just the same as murdering our men.’ Thora looked over at Ingi, calmly assessing the situation, unmoved by the spectacle. She looked back at Skargrim and spat on the ground.
‘You dickless fucks.’ She stormed off.
Somehow he knew that now Skuld wanted him to stand rather than fight and that she was pleased with the day’s fighting as it was. That it was right.
It didn’t make him feel any better.
STENVIK
Alone in the dark, Lilia remembered. She saw how her mother clutched her baby sister to her breast, saw her cry, saw her scream when her father was cut down by the raiders. In the moonlight they looked like creatures from horror stories; demons come to kill and eat them all. Through cracks in the wall she saw Harald, their leader, calmly cripple and murder men and boys she’d known all her life. Moments later he kicked in their door, grabbed the baby from her mother and bashed it against the wall until it stopped screaming. He threw the lifeless body away like a rag doll, punched her mother in the mouth and threw her outside.
He kept Lilia for himself.
She clutched the dagger and stared at the door.
They’d not take her so easily this time.
*
The massive sword carved the air over Audun’s head, but he didn’t flinch. Didn’t care. It was just metal. He knew metal. On the edges of the blood fury he remembered metal. His hammers were metal. They belonged on swords. Audun put all his weight behind the blow and smashed his hammer up into Egill’s blade.
The smooth arc of the sword was broken. Egill’s eyes flew open as he struggled to regain his balance. He stared at the blacksmith. ‘You … you’re him. The Third Seven. But you’re … different.’ The massive fighter regained his balance and stood firm. ‘Come on then, blood fiend! Show me something I haven’t seen.’
Audun roared, a man on a cliff in a storm, braving the elements, swept away on the tide of blood, the smell of it, the irresistible flow of it. In one fluid motion he launched a hammer at the half-giant’s knee. With stunning speed the sword came down, blocking the blow with a loud clang. Undeterred, Audun swung the other hammer.
Egill screamed in pain as the bones in his left forearm turned to pulp under the metal. A leather boot came up and caught Audun in the chest, sending him sprawling halfway across the square. The smith clambered up again, covered in blood, grinning manically. Around him the men of Stenvik rounded on Egill’s berserkers. Audun didn’t notice. Snarling, he launched himself back at Egill. The blacksmith’s hammer met the half-giant’s sword in mid-air. Grunting with effort, arm hanging limp at his side, Egill roared.
‘You will die like all the others! No one can stop me! I am Egill Jotunn!!’
Audun blocked a powerful swing with the hammer’s head and aimed a vicious stomp at Egill’s shin. His heel landed with a satisfying crunch on top of the half-giant’s foot. Audun followed up with a shoulder barge delivered with all his might to Egill’s chest.
The half-giant doubled over and staggered back. Coughing, he struggled to rise. ‘You cannot defeat me! You cannot—’ A violent cough drowned the rest of the sentence.
‘DIE, YOU TURD-FACED MOTHERLESS RAT BASTARD BITCH-FUCKERS!!’ An incredible shriek cut through the noise. A fresh wave of black-clad warriors streamed through the southern gateway, led by a tiny woman wielding two daggers.
As the last berserker on the wall met his match, the defenders hustled down the steps to meet this new enemy. Across the market square Egill Jotunn limped away, swinging weakly at Audun; the blacksmith batted the sword away without hesitation and moved in.
The hammer connected with the half-giant’s right knee, smashing it. Aloft again almost at once, it smashed into his left knee.
Tendons, knee cap, joint.
Snapped, shattered, broken.
Egill Jotunn roared and fell.
Audun’s hammer split his face and caved his skull in, killing him instantly. The black-clad fighters screamed and cursed, redoubling their efforts.
The sun set on blades rising and falling, the dying screams of warriors and a town fighting for its life.
ONBOARD THE NJORDUR’S MERCY
Skuld stood in the prow, sniffed the air and looked towards Stenvik as day faded into dusk.
‘Come to me,’ she whispered. Weaving its way towards her on top of an almost invisible carpet of shimmering, grey-tinted air inches above ground came a thread so thick as to appear almost solid, silver sparks dancing within.
Her hands moved silently, summoning the life-forces of the newly departed warriors, calling them to her. Letting them deliver her prize.
The last thing she needed.
The final thread.
The soul of a legend.
STENVIK
The market square was littered with bodies. Pools of blood soaked slowly into the ground beneath the stones. Smells mixed in the air and assaulted Ulfar; entrails and death, mostly. He knew those smells now. In the middle of the square Sigurd leaned on the haft of his axe, blood splattered across the front of his tunic. Sven and Valgard were moving towards him, probably to receive further instructions. Ulfar had watched across the square as the last brace of black-armoured warriors retreated through the tunnel with the tiny woman, driven back by two old men and a handful of Westerdrake fighters. He’d been too tired to cheer.
At the far end he saw Audun slink away, unnoticed by the exhausted fighters.
Ulfar followed.
*
‘We would have been massacred,’ Sven said.
‘And we should have been,’ Sigurd growled. ‘I still don’t understand why they didn’t follow through. Why didn’t Skargrim come over the wall?’
‘Does it matter?’ Sven shot back. ‘We’re alive. We’re alive and they’ – his gesture took in a square full of bodies in black armour – ‘are not.’ A rag-tag group made up of the old and wounded was already picking its way through the corpses, shifting one here, rolling another over there, searching for any useful equipment. ‘Their own fault for running that many people through a hole, the bastards,’ the bearded old warrior added.
‘I don’t like this, Sven. I don’t like it at all.’ Sigurd paused, brow furrowed. ‘Set some men to barricade the bloody gate. Use whatever you can. Send Thorvald to round up the women and children. We’re keeping them in the longhouse until I say so. Where the hell is he go
ing?’
Sven and Valgard turned around to see Harald stagger off towards the west gate, stumbling in between houses and out of sight. ‘He’s been on his feet for a long time,’ Valgard ventured. ‘He’s probably just going home for a rest while he can get it.’ He knew exactly how Harald was going to get his rest, but kept that to himself.
‘Well, he’s going in the wrong direction,’ Sven spat. ‘Bloody useless at times, that man. He’s been acting strange in the last week, more so than usual.’
Valgard shrugged. ‘People have their bad days, I guess. Sometimes they come in weeks.’
Sigurd snorted. ‘They do, don’t they.’ He turned to Sven. ‘Get on with the barricade, old man, unless you’d like to walk down to Skargrim’s and get your throat cut immediately.’
‘Might save me dealing with upstart puppies like yourself,’ Sven shot back and smiled.
Valgard rolled his eyes and moved towards the healing station. There would be no shortage of work for him there.
*
Ulfar heard it before he saw it.
Coming around the corner he found Audun on his knees, vomiting hard. Spasms shook the blacksmith’s massive back and shoulders, delivering the contents of his stomach onto the grass behind a small storage hut.
Audun, Stenvik’s mender of iron and hammer-wielding hero in the battle of the market square, was down on his knees, face red, neck veins throbbing, tears streaming down his cheeks.
Words did not come to Ulfar.
Instead, an image of Lilia gently insinuated itself into his head, left a lingering trace, a touch, a suggestion. Drawing the blade that Audun had made for him, Ulfar swiftly cut a piece of his tunic, folded it twice and made a rag. Then he knelt by the blacksmith’s side, held the cloth to his friend’s forehead and waited for the bad time to pass.
*
In the aid tent some of the lucky ones, those with minor wounds, knocks and scrapes, were trading insults and jibes, talking about who had done more damage to the raiders, who’d fought like a girl, who’d been knocked out before he could hurt himself. Valgard listened to their patter as he prepared more bandages. Stars twinkled overhead; the air was cold and crisp. The night was almost over. And what had happened? He had been forced to quietly end the lives of seventeen raiders with his knife, warriors who would never rise again, proud men who would just have become shamed cripples, extra mouths to feed. The dead bodies had been unceremoniously dumped in a pile that would stink of battle if the whole town didn’t already. Valgard spat and tried to breathe with his mouth. They could try and hide the fear if they wanted, try to cover it with bluster, but in the end they’d been lucky. The black warriors had easily been a match for the raiders of the Westerdrake and their prowess could have overcome the situation, coming two and three abreast through a hole in the wall. The Stenvik archers had wounded at least half of them before close combat had even begun.
The Valhalla Saga Page 27