‘He’s raiding the plains, mostly,’ Splint-arm said. ‘But he’s being quite clever about it.’
‘He’s split his men up into groups of fifteen to twenty and has them spread out over the largest area possible,’ Uthgar added. ‘They strike, burn farms, kill, rape and run away. No battlefields, no big fights.’
‘All we do is run after war bands,’ Alfrith said. ‘And all of my men are worried that their homes are being hit next.’
‘We’ve nailed a couple of them, though,’ Splint-arm said. There were nods and smiles of grim satisfaction around the fire. ‘Nailed a couple of them right proper. And we would have got the last group, too. Except for that one fucker,’ he added. ‘I told you he was bad news.’
‘Oh, don’t you fucking start,’ Half-face snapped. ‘All week: told you, told you, told you. Well, you tell me about him again and I’ll set fire to your arm.’
‘Oh yeah? And I’ll bang it on your good side,’ Splint-arm shot back. ‘And you’ll thank me for it.’
Half-face made to stand up.
‘Shut up, both of you!’ Alfrith snapped. He swung the stick with the half-cooked fishes at them, pointing at each in turn. ‘There’s nothing you can do when you’re up against one of those.’
Ulfar’s chest felt like it was sinking into itself. He had to sit on his hands and bite his lip.
‘Fucking fucker,’ Half-face muttered. He looked across the fire at Splint-arm and mumbled something. The other warrior nodded back. Argument settled.
‘I’ve never seen anything like it,’ a man with a stump-leg said. ‘I mean, who fights with hammers?’
Alfrith turned to Ulfar. ‘Forgive me, traveller.’ He grabbed a piece of shield and slapped a portion of silvery fish onto it. The blackened skin cracked open, revealing the steaming pink flesh. ‘Here you go.’ Ulfar nodded, still biting his tongue. ‘Will you camp with us?’
‘I am afraid not,’ Ulfar said, fighting hard not to show his excitement. ‘I think I’ll need to be on my way very soon.’
SOUTHWEST COAST OF SWEDEN LATE NOVEMBER, AD 996
It was less of a beach and more of a strip of sand spotted with yellowing tufts of dried grass. At Audun’s back, the sea was a dense blue-grey, and thickening clouds signalled a storm.
‘Hate ships,’ Thormund muttered. ‘Fuckin’ hate ’em. Ain’t right. I’ve got legs for walking, not fucking gills for swimming.’
‘That’s why the smart ones thought to make boats,’ Mouthpiece mumbled. His jaw was still a mess, but he could speak more every day, much to everyone’s misery.
‘You go, then,’ Thormund snapped. ‘You go and roll around out there, pissing over the side, spewing every day, for some stinking fish guts. I’ll stay on land, fuck your wife and steal your horse.’
‘Make sure you get that the right way round, old man,’ Ustain chimed in from up front, and the men chuckled. ‘Although, saying that, it would explain some of the kids I saw up north.’
More laughter.
Sweyn Forkbeard’s waifs and strays were massing on the beach. Ustain looked back at them and raised his voice. ‘Right, you sorry lot!’ he said. ‘We’re going east, then north. The king has a plan, and we’re perfectly placed to make it happen.’
As Ustain continued to shout over the men’s heads, Audun saw Mouthpiece check furtively before sidling back towards him. Someone had learned a lesson or two, then.
‘Wanna watch your back, big man,’ he mumbled. ‘Some of them new boys have been staring at us since we got aboard.’
‘Well, your face is kind of funny,’ Audun said.
‘They haven’t been looking at me,’ Mouthpiece said.
Audun glanced around, but the men all looked the same. Still, he couldn’t quite dismiss Mouthpiece’s words. On the trip across the channel he’d felt … uneasy. ‘Thank you,’ he said.
Mouthpiece shrugged and drifted away again.
‘… so find yourself some running mates and go and break things!’ Ustain finished, to cheers from the men.
The soldiers wasted no time splitting into two groups. Audun was left with Mouthpiece, Thormund, Boy and a handful of the more feeble men from the camp. About sixty yards away, the crew from the old boat stood silently, looking at them.
‘Come on, then,’ Thormund shouted to them. ‘You’re with us.’
One by one the crewmen moved towards Audun’s group, but none of them spoke up. Mouthpiece muttered something about ‘wrong’ and ‘suspicious’, but no one was listening to him.
‘What’s the matter? Cod got your tongue?’ Thormund said.
The sailors exchanged looks. There were nine of them, ranging from a thick-necked bear of a man to two small, weasel-faced boys who could not be a day older than fourteen. In the middle was the man Audun thought looked familiar.
‘Olgeir,’ said the man in the middle, followed by a murmur of other names.
‘Where are you from, Olgeir?’ Thormund said.
‘Around,’ Olgeir answered.
‘Hm. You sound like a Swede. Been sailing much?’
‘Yes – left Sweden a long time ago.’
‘Fine,’ Thormund said. ‘You want to lead?’
Olgeir shook his head.
‘Great.’ The old man pointed to Mouthpiece. ‘That one can’t talk but does when he shouldn’t.’ He glanced at Audun. ‘And that one should but won’t, though he can. I guess I’m in charge,’ he concluded, scanning the group with hopeful eyes.
When no one protested, he rolled his eyes and spat. ‘Off we go, then,’ he muttered. ‘East, then north.’
The sailors turned and started making their way up the bank. On either side the other war bands had already started doing the same.
‘Tell you again – watch your back,’ Mouthpiece mumbled under his breath as he passed Audun. ‘I don’t know why, but it looks like some of them boys don’t care for you at all.’
Audun watched the sailors moving up ahead.
‘I’m used to it,’ he said as he started walking.
*
The sour smoke of wet, burning thatch rolled over Audun, stuck to his clothes and bound with his sweat. Screams rang out as Olgeir’s men rounded up the last of the workers behind the farm.
Thormund stood in front of the barn, barring the weasel-faced boys’ way. The smaller of them had his hands full trying to hold on to a skinny young girl in a soiled dress. Tears streamed down her face as she kicked and squirmed in his grasp.
Audun was vaguely aware that his knuckles hurt.
Thormund’s voice came to him like in a dream. ‘No, you little shits: because she has a father and a brother, and if you take her now they will not stop until they find you.’
‘Come on, old man! We’ll let you watch and everything,’ the bigger boy said. He was of a height with Thormund.
‘No,’ Thormund said.
The smaller boy inched up alongside what had to be his brother, still clinging on to the girl. ‘If you don’t step away right now, you scratchy fart, we’ll let the little bitch go and make sure you have an accident instead.’
Thormund gestured to Audun. ‘Want to go up against him?’
The boys turned and stared. Audun suddenly felt numb and tired. The people in front of him didn’t look real.
He shrugged and walked away from the surprise in Thormund’s eyes. The boys howled in triumph and the bigger one pushed the old horse thief to the side.
The girl’s shrieks died down soon enough.
Later, when they were on their way again, Thormund caught up with him. ‘I don’t need you to save anybody,’ he hissed, ‘but where I come from you do as your chieftain asks you.’
The buzz from the blood-rage, the fist-fights and the four men he’d knocked down had turned into a dull, throbbing ache. It had been an effort to control it, but he’d managed. Now he just wanted to lie down.
He looked at Thormund. ‘It doesn’t matter,’ he said. ‘It won’t change them, won’t change her.’ He saw, or thought he saw, disgu
st in the old man’s face, but he didn’t care. ‘Fate is fate,’ he said.
‘Well, I hope I don’t need your help when I meet mine,’ Thormund said.
Audun thought of the wall, of the blonde woman. ‘Most of us do, sooner or later.’
The old horse thief saw the look on his face and inched away from him, carefully. ‘Just saying, it’s a shame about the girl.’
Audun turned and looked ahead, at the gritty road, at the setting sun, at the back of the man in front of him. ‘It always is,’ he said quietly.
*
After a while, Audun struggled to tell the days apart. They blended, one into the other, like blood into water.
The farms were big, or they were small. The farmhands could fight, or they couldn’t. Sometimes they met men who’d seen battle before, steady hands holding rusted swords that had rested for too long in an oilcloth somewhere.
They died like the rest.
He could remember one thing, though: the weasel-faced brothers had suffered a bit of bad luck. They’d dragged a girl behind a bush, but she had a knife on her and managed to stab them both. Mouthpiece wanted to ask how they’d both been stabbed in the back, but Audun stopped him.
Thormund had been in a good mood since.
The warband, now down to eighteen men, had sought refuge in the dense oak forest and now trudged along the path leading through the trees. Up ahead, voices rang out.
‘… just fucking climb, you lard-arse,’ Thormund snapped.
‘I’ll step to the side, if you don’t mind,’ came Olgeir’s terse reply.
‘Suit yourself,’ Thormund said.
‘What’s going on?’ Mouthpiece mumbled.
‘Trees across the path,’ someone said. ‘Four of them. Weird that they’ve all fallen in the same—’
The forest came alive with war cries and up front, two men leapt out from the cover of the fallen trees, thrusting spears. Thormund disappeared from view. Metal clanged to their left where Olgeir had stepped into the thicket.
Audun whirled on Boy. ‘Play dead, face down. Now,’ he snapped, and Boy fell as if he’d been smacked on the head. He lay on the ground, head buried in his arms.
The moment after the first attacker had burst out from the thicket by the roadside, Audun reached for his hammers and let go of the world.
*
Somewhere on the edge of his senses, he felt the retreat. There was a difference in the fighters, the shift from killing rage to fighting for your life.
The hammers rose and fell; bones broke, blood gushed. The stench of voided bowels was all around him, but Audun didn’t mind. He liked the feeling of life as he dealt death, the heightened senses, the pulse of the blood coursing through his veins.
Most of all he liked the control. With every fight he felt more in charge of the fire that coursed through his body: he was stronger, quicker, more powerful. He could hit harder and take more punishment than ever before.
He didn’t notice the wound until much later, when the others had all been seen to. Boy came up to him, concern written on his pale face, and pointed at Audun’s left leg. Puzzled, Audun looked down. A gash the width of his thumb gaped back at him, crusted over with blood, dirt and ripped cloth.
‘Well, shit,’ he said.
A pinpoint of pain spread and bloomed from the wound, coursing up and down. His thigh muscle cramped and he reeled from the blood loss. His knee buckled, and a fresh wave of pain shot through his leg as he pushed off it to steady himself.
‘Easy there, big man,’ Olgeir said. The soldier was covered in blood and gore from head to toe, but appeared unharmed. ‘You come over here and get that looked at.’
Something about Olgeir’s voice … but the pain in his leg was too bad. Audun limped along to where Mouthpiece was making himself useful patching people up. Three of the soldiers from the camp were dead, as were seven of the attackers.
‘They were waiting for us,’ Olgeir muttered.
‘Fuckin’ rat bastard Swedes,’ someone shouted from the path, and Thormund’s bony hand emerged from underneath a tree, shortly followed by his head. A big, blood-caked lump was prominent in the forest of stray white hairs. ‘Pulled me down and knocked me on the head. Couldn’t even finish the job. Farmers,’ he grumbled as he clambered upright. ‘We got ambushed by fucking farmers.’
‘And if it hadn’t been for my men they’d have farmed your bony arse,’ Olgeir shouted back. ‘Now keep your voice down, old man.’
‘That’s what your mother said,’ Thormund shot back, shambling towards Mouthpiece.
Olgeir smirked. ‘I think you mean my grandmother. And if it was her, your dick will have been snapped clean off.’
‘Speak from experience, do you?’ Thormund said.
Wounds and war were forgotten for the moment as the back-and-forth drew a couple of chuckles from the men.
‘Mouthpiece! Fresh rags for my grandfather here. It’s the least I can do for him after I fucked his wife!’
Thormund’s grin was visible through the winces of pain. ‘Fun for the whole family,’ he said.
‘Well, we are in Svealand,’ Olgeir said to cheers from the men. ‘That’s how they do it in the countryside. Go and get yourself patched up. We’ll see if we can fix the big man, too.’
‘What’s with him?’ Thormund said.
Olgeir answered, but Audun couldn’t make out the words. The colours drained out of the world around him, and he passed out.
*
Audun blinked. His leg stung and itched, but he was too weak to scratch it.
‘… can’t have him limping after us,’ a voice whispered, five or six yards away.
‘If it weren’t for him we’d all be dead,’ another voice replied. Older. Thormund.
‘How would you know? Thought you were knocked out?’ the first man said. Odd accent. Olgeir.
‘Been listening to the men,’ Thormund shot back.
‘Fine. But he’s not coming with us. He can barely move.’
Audun propped himself up on an elbow.
‘Audun,’ Thormund said. ‘How’s the leg?’
‘Hurts,’ Audun said.
‘Can you walk?’ Olgeir said.
‘Don’t know,’ Audun said. He gritted his teeth, bent his leg, put weight on it – and hissed as the pain sparked.
Olgeir looked at Thormund and raised an eyebrow. ‘We’ll have to hide him until he heals and come back for him. They’ll chase us, not him.’
Thormund scowled. ‘Fine. Audun, we’ll—’
‘I know,’ Audun said.
Boy emerged out of the half-light and stood by him as he lay there. He stamped and pointed at the injured man.
Olgeir turned to Thormund. ‘There you go, then. The kid stays with him.’
‘The hell he does,’ Audun said.
‘You don’t have a say,’ Thormund said. ‘You can’t stand and you won’t be on your feet for any number of days. You’re going to need someone to bring you water, find you something to chew – maybe even distract search parties if needed.’
Boy nodded enthusiastically.
Audun scowled and spat. ‘Fucking stupid,’ he muttered, but the decision had been made. Olgeir walked into the shadows to find his men. Thormund went over to where Mouthpiece sat, and Audun could hear them muttering about supplies, bandages and other practical things.
Boy sat down beside him, looked at the leg wound and raised his eyebrows.
‘Yeah, I know it’s not good,’ Audun said. ‘I fucking know.’ Boy shrugged, rubbed his cheeks with the knuckles of both hands and pulled an exaggerated sad face.
Audun stared, incredulous, for a couple of moments. Then, despite the pain, the wet and the cold, he laughed. It was a sharp, rough sound. ‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘I shouldn’t cry about it. I’m still alive.’
As the stars twinkled overhead, Boy smiled at him.
*
Morning crept over them, dull and grey. They’d made their way off the road and found a glade with so
me shelter. Thormund had forbidden fires and they’d posted a double watch, but the ambushers had not returned. The fire was lit the moment dawn gave them sight. Soon enough the smell of burning meat made Audun’s stomach rumble.
‘Have at it, big man,’ Thormund said, passing him a chunk, and Audun wolfed it down, savouring the sharp tang of blood. ‘We’ll be away soon as the men get a bite each, and then you two are on your own.’
Audun grunted. Boy just sat there, silent and watchful.
Mouthpiece sidled up to them. ‘I thought being a King’s Man would be more … honourable,’ he mumbled. ‘No leaving our friends behind.’
‘They have to,’ Audun said. ‘I’m no good off my feet.’
‘Better than me on mine,’ Mouthpiece said.
‘Off,’ Olgeir snapped, and the men all around them made ready to go, even though they were still tearing at half-cooked meat with bloodstained mouths. They checked weapons, adjusted what armour they had and shook out the night’s aches.
‘That’s it,’ Mouthpiece said. ‘See you in a couple of days.’ He stood up and moved over to Thormund.
Before the sun was even properly up, the men were gone. The forest was suddenly very quiet, save the odd bird singing in a tree. Boy busied himself with a small knife he’d taken off a dead man. As he started whittling at a stick Audun leaned back and allowed time to pass. Already the pain in his calf was throbbing less and the wound felt like it was starting to heal.
He closed his eyes. ‘I’m going to sleep. Watch for bears and wolves,’ he muttered. He felt Boy’s gaze on him as he faded into dark dreams of cold iron, high walls and roaring fires.
*
The headache woke him some time later. The sun wasn’t quite at its high point, but the birds were prattling up above. Audun shifted so that his back was against a thick tree and sat up, grimacing with pain. There was no sign of Boy anywhere. He groaned and felt for his calf. The wound was still sore, but the skin had almost healed over. He bent his knee and tried to put weight on the leg, but the pain was still too much.
A rustle in the leaves on the other side of the glade made him twitch and reach blindly for his hammers, but when they weren’t where his hands landed, he looked around quickly, his heart beating faster.
The Valhalla Saga Page 56