God of Vengeance (28 page)

And that was all the talking there was, for it seemed they had all done this before and there was no mystery in any of it.

The chained man walked to the extremity of his little world which was roughly seven paces in a crescent around the Weeping Stone’s face, then with his foot scored lines in the earth. He did the same thing halfway between those marks and the stone, which spoke of experience, for you would not want to outrun the length of a chain when it is fastened to your neck. In some places you could see old marks but he gouged fresh scars here and seemed unconcerned whilst doing it.

‘Frigg knows what sort of useless sods this lot brought to the last fight,’ Olaf said, noting how calm the chained man was, ‘but this lad will be dead in a sparrow’s fart. Not that he seems to have the wits to know it, which is probably just as well for him.’

‘Put some silver on the giant,’ Svein said, leaning on his own hafted axe, his great arms folded upon the iron head.

‘Aye, but we won’t win much for everyone is doing that,’ Solveig observed.

‘Have you placed your wager, Harek?’ Guthorm called across, to their relief using the name Sigurd had arrived at his farm with.

Sigurd nodded, giving Guthorm a half smile.

‘When did you do that?’ Olaf asked, then saw Aslak emerge from the knot of folk around Fastvi and her scales. ‘You fox,’ he muttered. ‘You put it on the lad, didn’t you?’

All eyes were on Sigurd. Solveig was muttering that he might as well have tossed the silver into the sea for at least that way you might get Njörd’s favour.

‘Sigurd put the silver on the big man,’ Svein said, ‘for anyone can see that he is a warrior and will cut the thrall in half.’ Sigurd looked at the giant with the long-axes and his guts knotted because Svein was right, the man looked like a champion, his hair braided for battle, his arms criss-crossed with scars and adorned with silver rings. He was a man to put at your prow and turn your enemy’s bowels to sour water and Sigurd suddenly thought he should have used that silver – enough to buy a good sword – to buy the giant’s loyalty.

Instead of putting it on Guthorm’s thrall, who had yet to grow a man’s beard.

‘Wait,’ Olaf said, ‘what is that I see in Sigurd’s face?’ He frowned and turned to Aslak. ‘Have we put our silver on the boy?’

‘Our silver?’ Hendil said with raised brows, and got a cold look for it from Olaf.

Aslak glanced at Sigurd, who nodded. ‘And we were not the only ones,’ Aslak said, ‘though most went for the giant.’

‘You are very quiet about all of this, godi,’ Olaf said. ‘What do you have to say of it?’

Asgot tilted his head to one side as he studied the young man with the crow-black hair. ‘There is a reason he is kept on a chain,’ he said.

‘It is because otherwise he would run east as fast as those young legs could carry him,’ Solveig said, ‘for who would want to be lashed to a stone and made to fight a troll like that?’

‘Bad enough that he has no mail or helmet, but they are not even giving him a shield,’ Loker said. Eid handed the thrall a hand axe and he seemed happy enough with it, testing its weight and balance as he strode back to the Weeping Stone.

‘Well what good would a shield be against him?’ Hendil said, nodding towards Lame-Leg’s man who was grinning at his opponent now, and Hendil’s point was not one you could argue with. That much muscle behind a long-axe could see the blade slice straight through a shield and the arm holding it.

‘Well I am looking forward to this,’ Svein said. He was not the only one. Those who had come up to the Weeping Stone had made a half circle around it, the hum of their excitement like that of bees near a hive.

Sigurd saw Guthorm nod at Lame-Leg who stood shoulders back, chest out, chin high like a man who knows he is about to be proved right. He swept a hand out before him in a gesture that told Guthorm to begin the fight and this gave rise to shouts of encouragement from the crowd, most for Lame-Leg’s man but some for the black-haired youth.

Who spun the axe butt over blade, the haft slapping into his palm.

The giant hawked and spat a gobbet of something nasty into the tall grass. ‘Tell your nithing ancestors you are coming,’ he said, ‘that you will join them in Niflheim soon.’ This put shivers into some because Niflheim was the dark world, a place of freezing mists and rivers of ice where those who died a poor death were bound. ‘I am Waltheof, son of Asgaut. I would boast of deeds and of the men I have killed, but there does not seem much point.’ With that he held the long-axes out wide, twirled them once in great cart-wheel circles, and strode forward.

And the chained man threw his axe.

It spun end over end twice and embedded itself in the giant’s forehead with a crack that echoed off the Weeping Stone. There was a collective gasp from the crowd as the big man stood for a long moment, the axe sticking from his head the way you might leave it in a block after chopping wood, blood leaking from his skull to drip from his nose. Then, still gripping the long-axes by their hafts, the giant pitched forward and slammed onto the earth as dead as any standing stone put up in memory of a lost husband and son.

‘Óðin’s arse,’ Olaf rumbled. ‘That hardly seems fair.’ He looked at Sigurd. ‘That’s the sort of thing you’d do,’ he rumbled, perhaps recalling the fight in Eik-hjálmr when Sigurd had laid him low with a well-placed foot.

‘Still it was a brave thing, throwing the axe,’ Aslak said. ‘What if he had missed?’

Sigurd shrugged. ‘He didn’t miss,’ he said.

‘Well I for one am happy about it,’ Loker said, ‘for the silver will come in useful.’

But most of those gathered around the Weeping Stone were not happy and they were letting Guthorm know about it to the extent that Guthorm’s spearmen guarding Fastvi and the silver were beginning to sweat. Neither was Guthorm happy about it by the thunderous look of him. He snarled something foul at his thrall and hid it with a smile.

‘Seems our host did not want it over so fast,’ Hagal said, which was true, for such a thing was not good for business.

Lame-Leg was so furious that he had yet to summon the words, as two of his friends took hold of his dead champion, one foot each, and dragged him away, the axe’s haft scoring the earth as he went.

‘That thing will take some getting out,’ Solveig observed.

The chained man went back to the rune stone and sat down against it, digging dirt from his fingernails and waiting for the storm to pass through the gathering.

‘You cannot call that a fight, Guthorm!’ Lame-Leg managed, spraying his own beard with white flecks.

Guthorm held his arms out wide. ‘Maybe you will have better luck next time, In-Halti.’ Lame-Leg looked around for support but the others were over the thing now, many of them off crowding round Fastvi to be the first to make their wagers on the next contest. Sigurd gave Aslak some more silver and his friend nodded and ran to join the throng.

‘The lad again?’ Olaf asked.

‘Would you bet against him?’ Sigurd asked, which had Olaf scratching his bush of a beard.

‘Just because the boy can throw an axe straight doesn’t make him a fighter,’ Loker said, ‘and whoever fights him next will be ready for that trick.’

This was true enough, Sigurd admitted.

‘You have missed your chance, In-Halti,’ Ofeig Grettir said, wafting ringed fingers in Lame-Leg’s direction. ‘Now it is my turn to feed the worms with this troll shit of a thrall.’ He gestured at one of his four men to step forward and so the warrior did, though he did not look quite as cocky as the giant had, and who could blame him after what he had just seen?

But then Fastvi sent a boy running over to her husband and after listening to what he had to say Guthorm raised a hand for silence. ‘This will not do.’ He shook his head. ‘No one is putting their silver on Ofeig Grettir’s man.’

‘Grettir is,’ Solveig murmured, ‘and he’ll be jarl-rich if his man wins.’

But Guthorm would not let it continue this way. ‘In order to balance the scales I will allow all four of Grettir’s men to fight him,’ he said, pointing at his thrall who still sat at the base of the Weeping Stone, his back to the carved rune serpent. This got the crowd humming and Fastvi’s weights clanking in the scales as folk parted with their ingots, bars and ring silver.

‘Guthorm is a greedy fool,’ Olaf said, thinking the farmer had gone too far now just to make sure enough people bet against his man. ‘One man can’t fight four. Not when he is chained to a damn rock and without mail or helmet or even a bloody beard on his chin.’

Sigurd cursed under his breath because he agreed with that, but it was too late to fetch Aslak back now without losing face and so he touched the iron pommel of the sword at his hip and invoked Óðin Hrafnáss, the raven god, because only his intervention now could save the young thrall from an end soaked in slaughter’s dew, and save Sigurd from being silver-light.

The young man with the crow-black hair was interested now. He had climbed to his feet and stood studying the four men arrayed before him, three in mail, one in tough leather armour, all with spears.

‘This could be one for your tales, skald,’ Solveig said to Hagal.

‘It’ll be too short for one of Crow-Song’s tales,’ Olaf said, to which Hagal replied that folk did not mind short tales as long as they were even more bloody than the long ones. This was well said and no one disagreed with him.

‘I’ll wager he won’t throw the axe this time,’ Svein said.

But Eid did not give the thrall an axe. This time he would fight with a spear, though Sigurd did not see how it could be much of a fight against four, whatever weapon they gave him. To sink his spear point into one of them would be to invite three more blades to gore him. And yet clearly some people had wagered their silver on the strange young man, which suggested they had seen more in him than the skill of throwing an axe well enough to sink it in another’s head.

Ofeig Scowler’s men had seen more too, for they did not simply stride in and gut him and neither would any of them risk losing their weapon by throwing it. Instead they spread out in an arc and came slowly, like men closing in on a boar.

Or a wolf.

The young man gripped his spear with two hands, the shaft under his left arm just below chest height, its blade favouring each of his opponents in turn as they edged closer.

‘What are you waiting for? Frigg’s tits, there are four of you!’ Loker barked.

‘Keep your oggles peeled, lad,’ Olaf growled. ‘One of those whoresons will scratch his itch soon enough, won’t be able to help himself. He’ll want the glory of it, even against a chained thrall.’

And then it happened: one of the spearmen to the young man’s right came in fast with a double-handed mid-level thrust, but the thrall had known it was coming and brought his stave across to block, then he thrust with his left hand, slamming his spear’s butt into the man’s temple. The man staggered but the thrall stepped with him, keeping close, and scythed the spear blade up to rip open the man’s groin in a spray of the bright red blood that signals a man’s doom.

Another spearman roared and thrust high and the thrall snapped his head out of the way and brought the butt end up to parry, so knocking the other’s blade skyward. Then almost too fast to see he twirled the spear a half circle and thrust the blade overarm into his enemy’s mouth, hauling it out again before the steel could catch on the jaw bones.

‘Their mail is not doing them much good,’ Hendil observed, as another of Scowler’s men slashed his spear at the thrall’s legs and the thrall jumped the blade neatly, spun the spear and thrust it back under his right arm to impale the man through his neck. But the man clutched at the blood-soaked shaft and with impressive strength pulled himself further onto the spear so that his dead weight ripped the weapon from the thrall’s backwards grip. And this was the chance his companion needed as he struck with a slash and cut that would have ripped the thrall’s chest open had the young man not stepped towards him and caught the stave on his forearm. The young man stepped further in and rammed his forehead into the spearman’s face, bursting his nose with a crack, then he turned his back on the stunned man and slowly walked back to the Weeping Stone.

Only one of the other three was still breathing but he was corpse-pale, as the last of his blood welled up through the hands he had pressed to his groin.

‘We should use your silver to buy this thrall,’ Olaf said to Sigurd.

‘Would you sell him if you were Guthorm?’ Sigurd said.

Olaf did not need to answer that, as the last of Scowler’s men roared his defiance through a mouth full of blood, levelled his spear and charged.

The thrall stood still as the standing stone. Then at the last moment he twisted like smoke, grabbed the chain that hung behind him and brought it up and round the man’s neck. He hauled on the chain, teeth clenched with the strain of it, and Scowler’s man’s face filled with blood, his eyes bulging so they looked as though they would burst. Desperate hands clawed at the chain but the thrall held on and the folk gathered there watched as the doomed man’s tongue swelled and poked from blue lips and a dark piss stain bloomed in his breeks.

‘Never seen the like of it,’ Solveig murmured, which was saying something when you’d lived as long as he.

‘How did a wet behind the ears lad learn to fight like that?’ Loker said.

‘A wolf knows it is a wolf,’ Asgot said.

‘You don’t learn spear-craft like that.’ Olaf had his spear across his shoulders and his brawny arms draped over it. ‘You’re born with it.’

‘Well I would like to know how Guthorm got his hands on the lad in the first place,’ Hendil said, which was a good question given that Guthorm was no longer a raiding man, if he had ever been much of one.

‘Well seeing as Guthorm is not missing an arm or a head I would say that he likely won the lad from some axe-swinger,’ Olaf said.

Which was probably why Guthorm stayed in his longhouse these days rather than taking a crew out on the hunt for plunder. He likely made more silver at the Weeping Stone than he did from his fields and his pigs and sheep.

But the other karls who had brought fighters to the Weeping Stone backed out of the thing now, any confidence they had come with as broken as the bodies which lay in the grass drawing flies. Folk were muttering that Guthorm’s man was Óðin-favoured and that no one could be expected to fight against a god as well as a man. As for Guthorm, his fleshy face was sweat-sheened now and the smile on it had all the substance of steam from a cauldron. He was worried and so he might be, for the way things were going no one would bring their fighters and their silver here again just to see the former slaughtered and the latter go into Guthorm’s purse. And if they did not come, Guthorm would have to get up off his arse and do some proper work.