God of Vengeance (35 page)

‘My knees did not touch the shingle,’ Svein grumbled, suddenly grabbing the sheer strake and leaning out to spew another steaming load.

‘It is getting rough out there,’ Solveig said. He was standing on the mast fish looking out to sea through the gap between the great cliffs either side of them. ‘I won’t be happy taking her out of here until it smooths over a bit. Not when I’m still getting to know her ways,’ he added, running a hand up the knörr’s pinewood mast as though it were a lover’s thigh.

Sigurd nodded. From the shelter of that cove it was hard to tell which way the wind was blowing out there in the fjord, for the white-haired waves seemed to be racing one way and the grey clouds another. Not that it mattered anyway, for he was not leaving this place. Not yet.

‘Who is coming with me up there?’ he asked as they broke their fast on Guthorm’s salted pork, smoked mutton and cheese, washed down with the fresh water they had collected from the rocks.

‘Did you get hit on the head too?’ Olaf asked him, waving a flap of meat in Svein’s direction before pushing it into his mouth.

‘I did not come here to sit on my arse, Uncle,’ Sigurd said. ‘Bad enough that we showed them our backs yesterday and skulked off.’

‘You mean bad enough because the gods might have been watching,’ Olaf said.

Sigurd did not deny it. ‘Did you enjoy running away from them then?’ he asked, turning his eyes on the others too. ‘From brigands and goat-fuckers who hide here like fleas in a giant’s arse crack.’

‘Running is for rats and dogs,’ Svein grumbled.

‘And rivers,’ Hagal said cleverly.

‘Well then,’ Sigurd said, flaying them with his glare.

‘The gods love courage,’ Asgot said.

‘Are you volunteering then?’ Olaf asked the godi.

Asgot grimaced and flicked a bony hand towards the cliffs. ‘Do I look like a mountain goat, Uncle?’

‘You smell like one,’ Solveig said and Asgot hissed at him.

‘Listen to me,’ Sigurd said. ‘We came to Lysefjorden to find these brothers who think nothing of making an enemy of Jarl Randver.’

‘Aye and maybe they’re lying on the shingle out there being picked at by the crabs because they thought nothing of making an enemy of us either,’ Solveig said through a mouth full of cheese.

‘It is possible,’ Sigurd admitted. ‘But from what I have seen of the corpses none of them look like they could be brothers.’ He had seen nothing much at all of the dead outlaws lying bloodless on the beach, but the others did not need to know this. ‘I am going up there to see if I can find these men.’ He scratched his beard, noting that it felt thicker now. The salty sea air perhaps. ‘Now that they have seen us fight they will be less likely to attack us.’

‘Or more likely,’ Olaf muttered.

Sigurd ignored this. ‘Furthermore, they will be more likely to want to join us, because they have seen that we are men who know our spear-craft and who fear nothing.’

‘Nothing except falling rocks,’ Solveig said.

‘I will go,’ Loker said.

‘And me,’ Aslak put in.

‘Well I am going of course,’ Svein said, still sitting against one of
Sea-Sow
’s ribs, eyes closed and ashen-faced.

‘You are hardly made for climbing,’ Black Floki told him.

‘And what do you know of it, little man?’ Svein said, turning groggy eyes on Black Floki.

‘No, Svein. You stay here and rest,’ Sigurd said. ‘Floki is right. You are more likely to pull the mountain down on top of us.’ This put the curl of a smile amongst the red bristles.

‘Don’t worry, Svein, if I find a piece of your brain out there I’ll make sure to bring it back for you,’ Aslak said with a grin, which got him a stinging insult in return.

‘I could climb to the top of Yggdrasil itself,’ Black Floki said, ‘and you have already seen that no man can kill me.’

This got some grim looks from the others, for in truth no one quite knew what to make of the young man who had yet to grow a beard but could make a slaughter to turn Týr the Battle God green with envy.

‘We cannot all go. We must guard the ship or risk being stranded in this gloomy hole until Ragnarök,’ Hagal said, which was true enough even if it was just his way of wriggling out of it.

‘Well I’m not going, if that helps,’ Solveig put in.

‘Whatever I think of the scheme, you’re not going without me, lad,’ Olaf said.

And so it was decided.

THE CLIMB WAS
treacherous, not least because a fine rain filled the air and made the rock slippery as snail snot, as Loker put it, cursing as his shoe slid from a foothold and his knee crunched against the stone. It would have been easier without having shields strapped to their backs, but they knew the outlaws had bows.

‘I’ll not get myself killed by an arrow shot by some cave-dwelling, dwarf-swiving nithing,’ Olaf had said, and now he had the hardest job of them all, with his brynja and his years. Not that he would have admitted to being less able to climb that rock than any other man.

‘This way,’ Sigurd said, pointing at a boulder- and scrub-strewn crevice leading up the cliff face. He led, followed by Olaf, Aslak, Loker and then Black Floki last, the young man seeming as undaunted by a perilous climb as he was by sharp steel aimed at his flesh.

Sigurd nodded at a pile of glistening dung pebbles. ‘If goats come this way it must be possible,’ he said.

‘And see that gull there,’ Olaf said, pointing at the shrieking bird wheeling above the cove and the knörr beached on it. ‘He is flying, so how hard can it be?’ Sigurd’s reply to this was to climb.

Rather than take the more direct route up to the cave’s mouth they had waded across the shallows back in the direction of the open fjord and there found another way up. After what had happened to Svein no one thought it a good idea to climb up to the cave from the beach below it.

‘These brothers had better be worth it,’ Olaf said, grunting as he took hold of the tufted grass and hauled himself over an outcrop. They had left their spears behind, bringing swords, scramasaxes and axes tucked in their belts because they had known they would need two hands to climb.

‘Ofeig Scowler told me that they were two of the best fighters he had ever seen,’ Sigurd said. ‘They killed six of Jarl Randver’s thegns who turned up at their farm.’

‘Pah! I have killed six men with a fart,’ Olaf said.

‘And it was only six because four others had left the hall,’ Aslak behind him put in, slipping on the scree and falling to his hands and knees.

‘Need some help there, youngen?’ Olaf asked him, enjoying seeing the younger man struggle.

Sigurd watched from a ledge two or three spear-lengths higher up. ‘That is like a snake offering a fish advice on walking,’ he said.

‘Watch your tongue, lad,’ Olaf growled up at him. ‘I was climbing rocks like this when you were still sitting on a hill of your own shit.’

Sigurd looked down at
Sea-Sow
and Solveig waved to show that all was quiet down there. Then they scrambled left and edged along a rain-slick lip until Sigurd found another route leading up towards the tree line, which was itself higher than the cave entrance. But he would rather come to its mouth from above than below and so it was worth the time it would take, even if his heart was forging a nightmare on the anvil of his chest. For to slip or miss a footing now was to fall one hundred feet to the rock or the black water, neither of which likely ends would make it into the kind of tale they hoped Hagal was weaving.

When they got to the trees they sat for a while, getting their breath back and replenishing their nerve, then they made their way back round into the cove and down towards the black yawn of the cave’s mouth. But when they crept into that dark, dank place, shields raised before them, swords or axes in their hands, they found it empty.

Black Floki toed a pile of charred sticks and ash. Here and there were animal bones and crab claws, some gourds and a pail of water.

‘Well would you sit here waiting for us?’ Sigurd said.

‘I would probably go that way,’ Aslak said, pointing to a well-trodden path that led back out of the cave and round to the left of it and up into the trees.

Sigurd looked at Olaf, who nodded, so they took the path, which the spindly pine and wind-bent birch hid from sight of anyone on the beach or in the bay below, and followed it up to the cliff top.

Where armed men were waiting.

‘They don’t look like much.’ Olaf loosened off his neck and shoulders and hefted his shield and sword.

Black Floki’s grin was like a wolf’s as he took the short axe from his belt and swept it once through the rain-hazed air.

‘We’re not here to fight them,’ Sigurd said.

‘Try telling them that,’ Olaf said.

There were eleven men and seven women and all armed with spears but for three of the women who had bows, arrows nocked and pointing their way. Sigurd spotted movement amongst the trees off to the side and for a moment thought the outlaws planned to ambush them.

‘Just children,’ Olaf murmured, nodding towards the trees. Children who were meant to be long gone but were staying to watch how things unfurled.

‘We do not want to fight you,’ Sigurd called to the armed folk, who were formed up in a shieldwall, albeit only ten of them had shields.

In their centre was a bald-headed, broad-shouldered man whose black beard stuck from his chin in three stiff braids, and he said something at which the three bow women stepped forward, drew back their strings and loosed. But the distance was too great to do any damage and Sigurd stepped forward and swept his shield through the air, knocking one of the arrows out of its flight. Of the other shafts one fell short and the last flew wide.

‘The folk around here really don’t care much for visitors, do they?’ Olaf said.

‘We are looking for two brothers,’ Sigurd called, ‘but we mean them no harm.’

‘No harm?’ Three Braids yelled. ‘You come here in your fat-bellied ship, looking like trading men, then ambush and slaughter our brothers. You deceived us!’

‘You attacked us,’ Sigurd countered. ‘What would you have done in our place?’

‘I would have stayed away from here,’ Three Braids said. ‘Now our friends are killing those you left on the beach. You will all die.’

‘He’s bluffing,’ Olaf growled. Sigurd nodded. If Solveig and the others were in a fight now Hagal would have blown his horn, but there was no horn nor any battle din that they could hear coming from the cove.

‘You are lying,’ Sigurd accused. ‘Do you know the brothers Bjarni and Bjorn? I have an offer for them.’

Now another man, ruddy-cheeked and fair-bearded, raised his spear and pointed it at Sigurd. ‘The last men that said the same thing ended up eaten by dogs and crows,’ he called.

‘So he is one of them,’ Loker said under his breath.

‘And that one with the curls and the spear is his brother,’ Sigurd said, glancing at the man who had just growled at the other for all but introducing himself as one of the sought-after pair.

‘At least we did not kill them last night,’ Loker said.

‘There is still time for that,’ Olaf put in, as the bow women nocked arrows and strode forward, aiming higher this time. ‘Shields,’ Olaf said matter-of-factly.

This time Black Floki stepped forward and to the side, scything his sword at an arrow and cutting it in two, which was quite a thing to see, as Olaf admitted, after letting another shaft embed itself in his shield. ‘Ha. I was young and stupid once,’ he said to Floki.

‘We are enemies of Jarl Randver of Hinderå,’ Sigurd shouted along the stony path. He heard the rain hitting the leaves and branches around them and a moment later it was striking his own head and shoulders. ‘I have an offer for Bjarni and Bjorn.’

‘And here’s my offer to you,’ the man with the ruddy cheeks yelled, then ran towards them and hurled his spear, which streaked in a blur of bladed death and struck Sigurd’s shield like a hammer blow. Sigurd staggered back under the impact and now looked down at the blade which had punched right through the wood and might have planted itself in his ribs had he not held the shield away from his body.

‘Thór’s arse, that does it!’ Olaf gnarred.

The spear had not cut Sigurd and yet it might as well have, for the fury flowed out of him like hot blood from a gash. He hurled the useless, spear-pierced shield aside, pulled the scramasax from its sheath and, this in his left hand, Troll-Tickler in his right, charged.

‘Hit them hard!’ Olaf coming after him roared, and Sigurd knew that he was pissing away all that they had come for but he did not care. He was in the beast’s maw now and the beast wanted blood.

The outlaws did not. Like leaves before the wind they scattered, vanishing into the pines either side of the track. But for two of them, who stood there for a moment, one with a shield and an axe and the other with just a scramasax now. Then these two, who looked too similar not to be brothers, glanced at each other, turned and ran.

And Sigurd ran after them.

The outlaws ran uphill, which was clever of them seeing as they were not cumbered by war gear like their pursuers, then they left the path and tore off through the trees like a pair of boars. An arrow streaked past Sigurd’s right shoulder, whipping through leaves and branches, but he was not interested in the others now. He jumped deadfall and splashed through puddles, slipped on greasy roots and squelched through blankets of thick damp moss. He could hear his companions behind him, the snap and crack of the brittle branches they broke, the bellows hiss of their hard breathing as they wove between the rough pine trunks.