God of Vengeance (39 page)

They were of course talking about King Gorm, whose silver-wealth from controlling the north way put other jarls in the shade and allowed him to raise more spears and go raiding when the mood took him, which made him richer still. But Gorm had recognized Jarl Randver’s own fire and rather than snuffing it out he had fanned it, helping Randver seize Jarl Harald’s land and ships in return for fighting the king’s battles now that he was no longer a young man.

But despite Jarl Hakon Burner’s fire fading, the man staying up in Osøyro and keeping out of the king’s way after he’d unwillingly given Shield-Shaker his oath, his hirðmen, hard thegns all, stayed with him, raiding to the north and east as far as Ulfvík.

‘They’ll be old-swords now,’ Sigurd had said to Olaf when they had considered the chances of roping Hakon in to their blood feud.

‘Old but still sharp, I’d wager,’ Olaf said. ‘Maybe they thirst for one last good raid, one sword song to fill their ears in the winter of their lives.’ His eyes had held a faraway look then. ‘And they’ll have sons of course,’ he said, doubtless thinking of his own sons, Harek and the infant Eric, both of them back in Skudeneshavn with Ragnhild.

And so they were going north.

It was a good day to be out on the water. As soon as they came round Karmøy, passing the village of Sandve on its south-west, they had as much wind as they could have wanted running across
Sea-Sow
’s woollen sail. That same wind was whipping foam off the waves rolling north-east towards Haugesund, and Sigurd recalled the first time his father had called those waves the white-haired daughters of Rán, goddess of the sea. The knörr’s swan-breasted hull ploughed these rollers effortlessly, creating hardly a bow wave, and it was clear that old Solveig was in love with the ship, despite him having in his time stood at the helms of dragons and fighting ships that would draw admiring glances from the gods themselves.

‘I would trust her to take us out there if you wanted to go,’ he said, nodding west, and Sigurd smiled because perhaps one day he
would
go west.

‘Well you can let me off before you do,’ Loker Wolf-Joint said, ‘for it is hard to hang on to the edge of the world with only one hand.’

This got some laughter but Loker had a point because they were not in the sheltered waters of some fjord now. Off their port side there was nothing but the foam-whipped ocean as far as the eye could see. Taking the safer passage up Karmsundet past King Gorm’s stronghold at Avaldsnes was not an option and so now they risked the open sea. And yet not a man or woman had objected to taking the sea road and Sigurd felt proud of them for it.

‘If they’re stupid enough to follow us into this blood feud then I am thinking they will do just about anything,’ Olaf had growled in Sigurd’s ear when the decision had been made to visit Jarl Hakon at Osøyro.

Still, you did not take such fair wind and waves for granted, and any of them who had any sea-craft in them at all kept one eye on the currents and the colour of the water, and on the flights of birds, the clouds in the sky, the movement of fish beneath the surface and the runes which Asgot every now and then cast on the deck.

Occasionally they saw other craft, fishing boats mainly, hugging the shore in sheltered bays, but only the very brave or very hungry were out today, with the waves rolling as fast as a bird can fly. This thought had barely woven itself when the bird in the old pail by Asgot’s sea chest gave a long gurgling croak.

‘Does she still want to dig out your eyes, godi?’ Sigurd called.

Asgot stopped and carefully lifted a corner of the cloak which he had put over the pail to calm the bird for they had feared it might break a wing flapping madly in that pail that was too small for it to spread them.

‘We are getting to know each other now,’ Asgot said, then took the cover off and picked up the raven, which pecked at his hands but with less ferocity than earlier. He brought the bird to the stern and Sigurd, who put out his hand to let the creature smell him, stared at the glossed, jet black eye that regarded him with suspicion.

‘I won’t hurt you,’ Sigurd said, lifting his tunic’s sleeve and unwinding the fine horsehair string from his arm that he had put there earlier. The string was tied at intervals with four of this bird’s own wing feathers which, whilst black as night, were also somehow purple, blue and green, constantly changing as if they had some seiðr in them. Sigurd was reminded of the swirling breath in a good blade, that worm-looped pattern woven into it in the forging which seems to writhe and transform before your eyes.

‘Here, do not be afraid, Fjölnir,’ he soothed, judging that ‘wise one’ was a good name for such a creature, as he tied the string around the raven’s right leg below the tufted hock. The bird fluffed up its shaggy throat feathers and made a series of deep, loud knocking sounds, and Sigurd half expected that thick beak, the bird’s own scramasax, to tear into the flesh of his arm. But perhaps the raven understood that he would not hurt her, for she let him tie the other end of the fine string around his wrist and when he was done she flapped her huge wings and hopped from Asgot’s hand onto Sigurd’s arm, so that Sigurd winced as her feet constricted and the hook-like talons dug through the tunic’s wool into his skin.

‘Prruk-prruk-prruk,’ the bird croaked and Sigurd held her up so that she could see the ocean and know she was one of them now, her wyrd woven into theirs. She made that strange knocking sound again then snapped her hooked beak and it was almost as though she were telling him that this boat and her crew, and the vast empty sea road off the knörr’s port side, was nothing as compared with the things she had seen on her own journeys.

‘This is the strangest crew I’ve ever sailed with,’ Solveig said, shaking his head, his old eyes never leaving the shifting, spume-streaked path along which he guided
Sea-Sow
.

But one of Óðin’s bynames is Hrafnaguð, raven god, Sigurd thought, watching the bird on his arm.

‘That is a nice touch,’ Karsten Ríkr said, reaching out to stroke the bird but then thinking better of it, ‘turning up to this jarl’s hall with your own Hugin or Munin.’

‘We will see,’ Sigurd said, staring into Fjölnir’s right eye which had gone from black to the colour of a well-polished helmet. The wind ruffled the raven’s sharp throat feathers and smoothed those smaller feathers on her back that resembled a fish’s scales, or perhaps the rings of a brynja, and Sigurd grinned at Olaf who had said that they would never lay their hands on a raven and if they did it would not be tame enough to do what Sigurd asked of it.

‘I do not need it to be tame, Uncle,’ Sigurd had said, when Asgot had proved Olaf wrong on the first point by catching the bird in a snare on the shore of the Lysefjord. The godi had set the trap by a dead hare which Agnar Hunter had shot with his bow and whose belly Asgot had cut open to spill its guts. Then they had waited, scaring off an enormous sea-eagle – which would have torn Sigurd’s arm from its socket rather than sit on it happily as Fjölnir now did – before the raven had swooped down near by and sidled up to the kill.

It had taken time but eventually the bird caught its foot in Asgot’s noose. Knowing it was trapped, it struggled madly, barking as loudly as Var and Vogg, Sigurd’s father’s old hunting dogs, wings thrashing, beak stabbing at the twine binding it. But Asgot had a way with creatures, a trick to calming them, which was strange given that most of them found his knife at their throats and their ears full of his dark invocations.

Now the bird was calm for the most part, if wary, and Sigurd let her sit on his arm a while longer, getting to know his movements, fixing his face in her eyes, for ravens were well known for being able to pick a familiar face out from a crowd. Then he untied the string from the creature’s foot and put her back in Asgot’s bucket, which she did not like at all, but that was partly the point.

‘She is not happy about that and I do not blame her,’ Loker said, ‘for only two days ago I used that bucket to crap in.’ Hanging your arse over the side of the ship was no easy thing when you only had one hand, as Loker never tired of reminding them.

‘Good,’ Sigurd said as Asgot draped the cloak back over the bird, drowning out its gurgling clamour that sounded like a man with his throat cut but not deeply enough. ‘I want her to prefer being on my arm to being in there.’

‘Well, you are lucky because you have a choice of two full arms to put her on,’ Loker growled, waving his stump over which he had tied the tunic sleeve’s end with a leather thong. ‘Meanwhile that vicious cunny sits there sharpening her blades, probably deciding which man aboard she will maim next.’

‘I have told you, Loker, she thought we had come to plunder the spring of its silver and other offerings,’ Sigurd said. ‘If you remember, you had your axe in your hand and I had my sword out of its scabbard.’

‘If I were you I would keep my sword in its scabbard with her around,’ Hendil put in, clutching his crotch and grinning.

But Loker grimaced. ‘You will not find it funny when she comes shrieking at you,’ he told Hendil. ‘And do not ask me to pick up whatever part of you she lops off.’ Hendil’s smirk faded at the thought of that and Loker looked at Sigurd, the wind that played across
Sea-Sow
’s sail blowing his loose hair off his face which was gaunt and wound-haggard. ‘If she were a man I would have spilled her guts by now. It is not like she has any family to take up some fifty-year blood feud by the sound of it. We’d be done with the thing.’

‘She is a rare fighter from what Sigurd said and from what your own wolf-joint has told me,’ Hendil warned his friend.

Loker could not disagree with that. He shrugged. ‘I could open her belly while she slept. Asgot could give her to Njörd or Rán or the fish for all I care. But the scales need to be balanced for this,’ he spat, waving his shortened arm again.

Sigurd glared at him now, angry to be going over this again, like a knife over skin that has already been shaved and is getting raw. ‘You will not touch her,’ he said. ‘We came armed and unannounced to her stead and she had the right to defend herself.’

‘And I have the right to my honour!’ Loker snarled.

‘Then come and take it, one-hand,’ Valgerd challenged him. She stood in the thwarts the other side of the open hold, skinned in iron rings though she was not wearing her helmet.

‘I’ll gut you, whore!’ Loker bellowed, hauling his sword from its scabbard, and now everyone else shared looks and mumbled curses for they knew this thing had been coming, like a cauldron of water simmering up to the boil.

‘It will be interesting to see how you wipe your arse with no hands at all,’ Valgerd said, pulling her scramasax from its sheath, knowing that a sword was a clumsy weapon on a boat.

‘Put it away, Loker!’ Olaf barked. ‘You too, Valgerd. There’ll be no fighting on this ship. Not today.’

Loker turned his head and spat, showing what he thought of that. ‘This is not your business, Uncle.’

‘It is
my
business, Loker,’ Sigurd said, not needing to shout for them to hear the steel edge in his voice.

Now Loker turned to face Sigurd and his eyes were like hot embers. ‘You are not my jarl,’ he said. With his good arm he raised his sword so that it accused Sigurd. ‘You would cross Bifröst for your vengeance. I would cross you for mine.’

Already striding forward, Sigurd pulled his sword with his right hand and his scramasax with his left, and Loker must have been unsure of himself for a heartbeat, or perhaps he was off-balanced, going to fight one-handed for the first time. His swing was clumsy, the weapon cutting into the wind wide of Sigurd’s right cheek as Sigurd twisted out of its path. Before Loker could bring his sword scything back, Sigurd swung Troll-Tickler. It hacked into the stump of Loker’s ruined left arm and stuck there like an axe in a wood block. Men yelled and the raven in Asgot’s bucket croaked madly as Loker staggered, his eyes bulging like a red fish’s, then screamed. Sigurd stepped in close and plunged the scramasax into Loker’s belly, ramming and sawing the blade up under his ribs into the heart.

The screaming stopped.

Blood that felt scalding hot flooded over Sigurd’s hand but he pushed the long knife deeper, grunting with the effort, Loker’s beard bristles against his own face, the man’s spittle-flecked breath filling his left ear. Loker’s body was trembling but Sigurd took its weight and could feel blood spattering his shoes, hear it spotting the deck.

‘Is this what you wanted, Loker?’ he growled in his friend’s ear, but Loker was beyond being able to answer. A stench told Sigurd that the dying man had fouled himself. Then the legs gave way and Sigurd pulled his hand and the long knife from the gory cauldron of his friend’s guts, at the same time yanking Troll-Tickler free from the meat of Loker’s stump.

Loker crumpled to the deck, blood already pooling beneath him.

‘Throw him over,’ Sigurd said to Svein who was at his shoulder. The big man nodded, stooped and gathered Loker in his brawny arms. Without a word he carried him to the side and dropped him into the sea.

Just like that.

‘For the sake of her?’ Hendil said, pointing at Valgerd. He was ashen-faced and round-eyed. Beside him Aslak stood there blinking fast, his fingers laced behind his head. Others of the crew stood slack-jawed, stunned by what had just happened. Even Valgerd had paled.

‘You threaten me with steel and you had better be sure to kill me,’ Sigurd said.

‘He was our brother!’ Hendil bawled, his hand on his own sword’s hilt.

‘You want to follow him, Hendil?’ Black Floki asked through a wolf’s grin.

‘What is it to you, thrall?’ Hendil spat.

Sigurd raised the bloody scramasax, which told Floki to keep out of it. He was still in the fury’s maw and if anyone else wanted to fight him then so be it. But it was Olaf then who sought to throw a damp blanket over the fire of it, stepping into the space between Sigurd and Hendil.

‘This thing unfurled as our sword-brother Loker wanted it to. Or near enough,’ he said, looking at Hendil. Without drawing a blade he put himself there like a rock over which either of them would have to climb to get to the other. He turned then to Bjarni and Bjorn, a grimace nestled in his beard. ‘Tell me I am not the only one who smelt that the wound rot had taken hold in Loker’s stump. Do you think a warrior like him would have let himself die a fevered straw death, stinking like a cesspit and moaning like the wind under some old door?’