God of Vengeance (20 page)

Amleth at least had the decency to flush red beneath his beard at that, putting his horn to his mouth and drinking deeply, avoiding Runa’s eye.

She had heard whispers of this but hearing it now, and from the jarl himself, was another thing. She felt as though the bench was a skiff adrift, the reed-strewn floor an undulating storm-stirred fjord.

She felt sea sick.

‘For what it is worth, your brother’s blessing on the marriage would smooth the waters around here,’ Randver went on. ‘My men tell me that the folk of Skudeneshavn have not taken well to the changing tide. More importantly, some of the wealthier karls and more powerful men are watching to see how things unfurl.’

This at least was no surprise. Other jarls would be uneasy about the king’s betrayal of his oathman Jarl Harald, wary too of the newly forged alliance between Gorm and Randver. Calming the waters with Jarl Harald’s people, moreover with his son and daughter, would be no bad thing from where Jarl Randver was sitting at Hinderå.

Like a snail before a crow, Runa retreated back into her shell, wishing she had her mother’s courage. She yearned to stand up and defy them all, as Grimhild had defied some of the very men before her now, her scramasax lashing out like a bear’s claw. But even as she wished it the men and the few women drinking at the other benches turned back to their own conversations and the hall was soon humming once again.

‘Is it true they burnt Jarl Harald’s hall?’ the man beside Randver asked. ‘Eik-hjálmr. That was its name, wasn’t it?’ Runa listened.

Jarl Randver nodded though clearly did not wish to talk about it.

‘A shame,’ his guest said, shaking his head. ‘It was a fine mead hall. Bigger than this one, hey?’ The jarl did not like that, not one bit. Yet he held his tongue, which told Runa that the other man must be someone important. From what she had seen of her captor he was not normally a man to keep his tongue sheathed on a matter that meant something to him. ‘Men said it was a hall to rival Hrothgar’s hall Heorot,’ the guest went on. He made a ring of his arms, fingers laced. ‘Roof posts a man couldn’t get his arms around.’ He looked up at his host’s soot-blackened, smoke-slung roof. ‘Beams you could hollow out and sail across the open sea.’

‘The girl’s people will build me a new one,’ Jarl Randver said. ‘Once they accept that I am their jarl now. Perhaps Amleth and Runa will remain here and I will go there.’ He shrugged as though it meant little, then gestured at a serving girl to fill his guest’s horn and then his own. ‘These things take time.’

The other man nodded. ‘Well when you dig this young Sigurd out of whatever troll hole he’s hiding in, send someone to fetch me for I would like to meet him.’ Randver nodded. ‘What about Jarl Harald’s godi?’ the man went on. ‘Is it true what folk are saying about him? That he escaped a drowning death at Avaldsnes by shape-shifting?’

Jarl Randver was clearly tiring of his guest. He sat back in his chair, his handsome brow furrowed. ‘Do you believe it, Broddi?’ he asked. It was as though the scales were out and he would be judging the man on the answer he gave.

‘A fox’s leg? That’s what they found chained on Biflindi’s flat rock. That is what I have heard,’ Broddi said.

The jarl nodded. ‘So they say.’

‘I suppose foxes can swim, though I have never seen it,’ Broddi said. Then he leant forward. ‘Why don’t we ask the girl? She must know if her father’s priest was capable of such a thing.’ Jarl Randver shrugged and tipped his mead horn towards Runa, inviting Broddi to do what he must. ‘Well, Haraldsdóttir? Could your father’s godi have turned himself into a fox and chewed off his own leg to escape the king’s chains?’

Runa felt a smile nestle on her lips then, the first one since before that day when she had watched her father’s warriors and two of her own brothers slaughtered out in the Karmsund Strait, which seemed so long ago now.

‘I am just surprised he did not change himself into an otter and swim away when the tide came in,’ she said.

THE SWIM BACK
to the island where Olaf and the others were waiting had seemed to take half the time of the one out to Asgot’s rock. That had less to do with the godi’s thin legs adding to the kick and more to do with the renewed strength that flooded Sigurd and Svein’s limbs at seeing the rope of their scheme play out so neatly.

‘Low cunning can be a better weapon than any sword,’ Sigurd’s father had told him once, and having the godi back now was proof of that. But when they were drying by a fire Asgot confirmed that King Gorm was looking for Sigurd.

‘He will not rest until you are dead,’ he said, picking flesh from the bones of a fish he had cooked over the fire. ‘He was beyond fury that his men let you escape that day in the woods.’

‘It was Sorli who let me escape,’ Sigurd said, ‘and Asbjorn and Finn.’ His mind weaved those last moments when his sword-brothers had run at King Gorm and how Biflindi’s men had closed around the king like a fist, giving Sigurd the chance he needed. Sorli and those other two brave men had bought Sigurd’s life with their own.

Asgot blew on the steaming white meat between his fingers then popped the flakes into his mouth. ‘Gorm’s champion Moldof is not the man he was.’

‘He lives?’ Sigurd had watched his father cut the huge warrior’s sword arm off at the elbow. Usually a man bled to death from such a wound, unless he could burn the flesh to seal it and even that could kill him. But Moldof was granite-hard, for all that he would no longer be his king’s prow man.

‘He lives but he broods like a troll-wife in the dark corner of Gorm’s hall because the king is ashamed of him for losing that fight against your father.’

‘We would do well to put a knife in Moldof’s heart at the first opportunity,’ Olaf said, ‘for a one-armed man out to prove himself can be more dangerous than a two-armed man who is happy with a mead horn in one hand and a wench in the other.’ This got some murmurs of agreement.

Asgot fixed his eyes on Sigurd’s. ‘To the king, leaving you alive is like leaving a flame unattended in his hall in high summer. Better to snuff you out, boy.’ He half grinned, licking his fingers. ‘He has men all over Karmøy looking for you, Sigurd Haraldarson, and Jarl Randver will have his hounds sniffing for you from Bokn to Tysvær.’ He glanced at Olaf. ‘You were fools to think Twigbelly or Jarl Leiknir would help you keep your head down. Now that Randver is Gorm’s chained wolf there is not a jarl or any man of note within twenty days’ sailing who will put themselves on the wrong side of those two.’ He picked up his cup and drained it. ‘Not for the runt of a worm-riddled jarl.’

Sigurd looked at Olaf but he simply stared into the fire, having nothing to say that would add any shine to the grim tale Asgot told. Not that Sigurd saw the situation in a better light. They were just eight men and all that remained of his father’s once fearsome war band. The fortunes of the folk of Skudeneshavn had sunk quicker than a quern stone rolled off a jetty and that was the hard truth of it. His sister was Jarl Randver’s prisoner and he was being hunted. This was not the golden wyrd he had always imagined the Norns had spun for him.

‘So we have no ship, no men and no safe hall to shelter in,’ Olaf said glumly. ‘What
do
we have?’

‘Nothing but a cart full of ill-luck,’ Loker said, pulling a louse from his beard and flicking it into the fire.

‘It is true that we do not have men,’ Asgot said then, ‘and neither are we likely to get any, for what fool would tie himself to the mast of a sinking ship?’ He looked from Sigurd to Olaf and back to Sigurd, pointing his cup at him accusingly. ‘But a thousand spears would be no good to us now because we lack that which we need most of all. It is a prize which your father once had but let slip through his fingers.’

‘Silver?’ Hendil guessed.

Sigurd shook his head. ‘The gods’ favour,’ he said.

Asgot nodded. ‘Most men believe their wyrds are spun long before they are born. That if the Norns have woven him a drowning death then there is nothing to be done about it. Or that a bairn who will not take his mother’s breast was wyrded to starve before it ever had the strength to crawl.’ He pursed his lips. ‘And that is true in most cases,’ he said. ‘But there are some men in whom the Æsir and the Vanir take a close interest. These men can unpick the threads of their wyrd for good or ill . . .’ he held up a finger, ‘though more often than not the gods will cut a thread here or tie one there for they cannot help themselves.’ All eyes turned to Sigurd now and he felt the weight of them like a brynja. ‘It may be that you have it in you to be such a man, Sigurd.’ A snarl of teeth showed in the godi’s grey beard. ‘Or it may be that you will starve before you have crawled.’

‘It can be a fool’s ambition seeking the attention of the gods,’ Olaf grumbled.

‘The Allfather must have heard your sword song enough times over the years, Uncle,’ Sigurd said. ‘He must have watched you and my father cut men and heroes down in the red war. You have hardly lived the life of a farmer.’

Olaf arched a brow. ‘That is true, but once you start playing tafl with the gods you run the risk of them tipping up the board for the sulk or mischief of it. They are capricious.’ He fluttered meaty fingers. ‘Flighty as the fucking wind.’

Asgot nodded. ‘Still, the gods like the game and we must play it.’

‘Well if you’re looking for some poor bastard to stick your knife in for some offering, don’t look at me, old man,’ Olaf said. ‘And as you can see we are running low on thralls these days.’ He scratched his beard. ‘Besides which, you slit that unlucky lad’s throat the day we sailed out to fight Jarl Randver and that did not do us much good as I recall.’

‘There are other ways,’ Asgot said.

‘You know how I can draw old One-Eye’s gaze?’ Sigurd asked, for as capricious as the Æsir were, he would rather earn their scorn and die trying something than do nothing and be ignored.

‘I do, Haraldarson,’ Asgot said, but from the twist of his sharp face it looked as if even the thought in his head was painful, which did not bode well.

Asgot seemed to roll the words around his mouth for a while. Or else he was communing with the gods perhaps.

‘Well you might as well stop chewing it and spit it out, priest,’ Olaf said, ‘so that we can all agree it’s a goatshit idea and move on from there.’

Sigurd raised a hand to silence Olaf and to his surprise the man fastened his lips, though he gave a shake of his head to show what he thought of where this conversation was leading.

‘Tell me, Asgot,’ Sigurd said.

‘I will tell you soon enough,’ he said, ‘but first we need to find a place that puts us out of reach of Gorm and Randver’s spears.’

Solveig looked up at them, stroking his beard between finger and thumb. ‘I know a place,’ he said.

They took
Otter
east to Rennisøy, where six of them stayed within reach of the oars while Solveig and Hendil went to buy food and mead with Sigurd’s silver. Then they rowed to Mekjarvik and hopped from island to island, rowing the sheltered waters until they could see a headland due east which men called Tau. Not that many men visited that place. The name itself came from the word
taufr
, meaning witchcraft, for it was said that there was a fen there into which the ancient folk offered sacrifices of blood and silver, food, mead and clear water. And when Solveig had suggested the place Asgot’s eyes had lit up like wicks in cod oil and later Olaf had growled to Sigurd that he would not be surprised to learn that the godi had put old Solveig up to that suggestion, the two of them going back together as far as the time when Yggdrasil was but a seedling.

Still, a place where few men went was a good place to go and even Olaf could not deny that, as they found a suitable mooring and made their way towards a farmstead up on a hill which was the only dwelling within sight. For it was better to square things with whoever lived there first than have them running off scared into the fen or telling others that outlanders had come to Tau.

The farmer’s name was Roldar and he did not care for people much, which was probably why he lived out there in a place where men feared to go. Roldar had a wife called Sigyn, two surly sons named Aleif and Alvi, and a big-boned daughter called Hetha, who Svein made great efforts not to look at, which was a sure sign that he liked the look of her very much. For her part Hetha filled Svein’s ale cup to the very brim so that he had to slurp at it or spill it. Then, before the night meal, she made a show of removing the knotted kerchief from her head to re-braid her straw-coloured hair and all for Svein’s benefit, until her mother hissed at her to come and help her serve up the broth to their guests.

‘So have you seen any ghosts out there?’ Loker asked Roldar before he had even put his lips to the fish broth. They were eating outside because there was not the room for them all by Sigyn’s hearth. It was plenty warm enough and though midsummer had passed the days were still pleasant and long. ‘Any haugbui climbing from his grave or draugr wandering the marsh?’

Olaf glowered because they had hardly begun to talk with Roldar yet and this was not how he had planned to start it.