God of Vengeance (40 page)

No one answered but a few shook their heads. Olaf turned his glare on Aslak and Ubba, Agnar Hunter and Karsten Ríkr. ‘With that rot in his arm spreading like damp in a shoe, neither would he let himself weaken just when we needed him the most. You all know what happens in the red murder of the shieldwall.’ He shook his head, as though his own memories of the shield din were hammering in his skull. ‘With that stinking wolf-joint Loker would not have measured up to the man he was before. Honour would not let him put those beside him at risk.’

Olaf turned to Sigurd then, who still stood there with his gore-stained blades down by his sides and the stink of fresh blood in his nose. ‘Few men would have had the courage to do what you just did, Sigurd,’ he said, ‘and Loker will thank you for it when you meet in the Spear-God’s hall.’

‘Thór’s hairy bollocks!’ Solveig bellowed from
Sea-Sow
’s tiller, the wind whipping what was left of his white hair around his face and into his eyes. ‘If you have all finished fighting like dogs over a bone, maybe you would like to reef the sail before we are tipped into the sea after Loker.’

Olaf’s brows arched like the Rainbow Bridge. ‘You heard the old goat!’ he yelled, and with that they set about releasing the sheet, lowering the yard and taking positions at the reefing points.

Sigurd turned so that the wind was in his face. It was strong enough to billow the sail, so that taking in a reef would not be without its challenges, but in truth he doubted that the reefing was necessary in the first place.
Sea-Sow
was running before the wind as she must have done countless times before for Ofeig Scowler and his crew, and so long as Solveig steered in a direction to keep the wind off the beam there was no real fear of capsizing.

Sigurd leant over the side and put his blades into the sea, his left arm in brine up to the elbow, and watched it sweep Loker’s blood off in vanishing tendrils. When he pulled them out Olaf was there, leaning on the sheer strake looking west.

‘There is no need to take in a reef, Uncle,’ Sigurd said.

Olaf shook his head. ‘No. But it takes their minds off what you just did.’

Sigurd felt the fury and the battle-lust dissipate inside him. The wind carried it away as the sea had borne his friend’s blood off his sword and scramasax. Off his hand and his wrist and his arm. He felt sick for what he had done. And yet perhaps he had had to kill Loker to show the others that he was a man with steel in his spine, a man who would not turn his back on a challenge to his honour.

And yet he thought of Loker out there amongst Rán’s white-haired daughters, denied vengeance against King Gorm and Jarl Randver and the shieldmaiden Valgerd. And now against Sigurd himself. Soon the body would fill with water and Loker would make a long journey, sinking to the sea bed like an anchor broken off its rope, never again to be seen. The fishes and crabs would feed on him and that was no good end for a warrior like him.

‘And there was no wound rot in Loker’s stump, was there?’ Sigurd asked, the wind in his ears and the sour feeling in his belly.

Again Olaf shook his head. ‘As far as I saw the wound was clean,’ he said. ‘Frigg’s tits, lad, but we have a small enough war band already without you spilling men’s guts and dumping them overboard.’

Then Olaf turned and began barking orders at the crew, making sure they were doing a proper job of the reefing.

And Sigurd listened to the wind in his ears and he thought he could hear the gods laughing.

IT WAS A
foul night. A cruel wind was lashing the waves, whipping white spume from them and throwing it onto the slick shingle below the cliffs. Rain scoured the land, hissing into the thatch of Jarl Otrygg’s hall and now and then coming fiercely against the plank walls like handfuls of pebbles hurled by a god. A wind-flayed, wide-eyed boy had come in telling of a whale carcass down on the narrow beach of ragged bedrock and wave-polished boulders, but was met with grunts and growls and not much else. No man was hungry enough to go down there with knives on a night like this, even if they risked some cave-dweller carving it up before the storm passed. Besides, any flames they carried would be pissed out before they’d made ten paces and there was barely enough moon to see by. As a white-haired, leather-skinned man named Gaut had said, filling his cup to show that he intended going absolutely nowhere, any man foolish enough to go down there in the dark with a belly full of ale would more likely as not end up a carcass beside the whale. ‘Only, the crabs aren’t bothered by wind and rain and the fool’ll end up a picked pile of bones aside that beast come first light.’

‘We’ll go down there in the morning then,’ Jarl Otrygg announced, offering his own cup to a thrall with a large jug.

‘Ha!’ one man barked into his ale. ‘He means he’ll send someone else out to get wet as an otter’s arse and the skin peeled off his damned bones.’

‘Careful, Bram,’ the man beside him warned, nodding towards their jarl on his high seat against a tapestry that was rippling and flapping from the wind eking through the cracks in the wall. But the jarl had caught Bram’s words amongst the general hum of the hall. Not that Bram could give a fart about that, though he tried none the less.

‘Do you have something to say to me, Bear?’ the jarl asked, as a silence fell over the drinkers like a thick fur, so that the howl of the wind out there in the night beyond the staves sounded like the moaning of those condemned to Hel.

Bram did not even look up at the man, instead taking a long draught of ale and dragging an arm across his mouth and thick beard. ‘I was just wondering if this wind was coming from your flapping tongue,’ he said, snapping together the fingers and thumb of his left hand, ‘for it keeps on blowing and yet is empty as my cup.’ He turned the cup upside down then held it out to be refilled. The thrall glanced at his jarl but came forward anyway, filling Bram’s cup with trembling hands.

Otrygg’s champion, a man oath-sworn to fight for him, stood up across the bench from Bram, his face dark as a great wedge of granite cliff jutting high above the foam-flecked strand.

‘Sit down, Brak,’ Bram said, with a flutter of hand, ‘I have no quarrel with you.’

Brak, a man with a reputation as a good fighter, though he had run to fat now and was more accustomed to vanquishing plates of boar and elk, stood there stranded like the whale on the beach, not knowing what to do. He glanced over at his lord, whose mottled baggy face suddenly cleared like sun breaking through cloud, and who dipped his head, gesturing at the food in front of his champion.

‘Sit down, Brak,’ Jarl Otrygg said, holding a smile on his face that did not want to be there, ‘Bram means no offence.’ Beside him his wife Hallveig hissed something, her own face like the storm outside, but Otrygg ignored her. ‘We have all let our tongues slide away on the ale many times and woken to regret it in the morning,’ he said.

Clearly relieved, Brak nodded to his jarl and grinned in Bram’s direction then sat back down and went to work on a fleshy bone.

Bram shrugged and the hall thrummed back into life as men and women took up where they had left off and the ale flowed and the grease glistened and the lamp and hearth flames danced as though to defy the raging storm beyond the oak of Otrygg’s hall.

But Bram could no more let it go than could the wind and rain out there in the dark suddenly forget its wrath and sneak away.

‘This is a hall of sheep and goats,’ Bram said, not loudly yet the snarl of his voice was like an iron file against the grain. Tongues went still and eyes fixed on him again. ‘I have seen more backbone in an eel than I see here. When was the last time we went raiding?’ he asked, his eyes raking those around him like fire irons over glowing embers. ‘When was the last time you put a crew together, hey?’ This was to Jarl Otrygg, whose face had drained of all colour now and turned corpse-white. ‘Your ships grow worm-riddled and rot at their moorings. Your warriors grow fat and soft as Frigg’s tits and where once I heard the sword song now my ears crawl with the sort of idle prattle I would expect from old women at the loom.’

At this Brak stood up again, wiping greasy fingers down the front of his tunic, and this time when he glanced at Otrygg the jarl did not look at him but neither did he tell him to sit.

‘Insolent man!’ Hallveig snapped, looking at her husband to do something and fast.

‘You will hold your tongue, Bear, or see it cut from its roots!’ Otrygg spat, his eyes bulging like boiled gulls’ eggs. ‘You would insult me in my own hall? You have drowned your wits in my ale, you heap of pig shit. You drunkard!’

‘Aye well I’d rather be a drunkard than a hrafnasueltir,’ Bram said, which got a rumble filling that hall like thunder across the roof of the world, for it was no small thing to call any man, let alone a jarl, a raven-starver. A coward.

‘You forget your oath, Bram!’ Brak rumbled across the ale-stained bench-boards, one greasy hand on the pommel of the sword at his hip.

‘You forget that I am not oath-tied to Jarl Otrygg,’ Bram said.

‘
I
have not forgotten it,’ the jarl said, and nor would he have, Bram thought, recalling the day, three years ago, when he had come to Steinvik to offer his sword to the jarl.

‘I drink your ale and eat your meat in return for growling at your enemies,’ Bram said, ‘but you have no enemies because the other jarls have forgotten that you are here. To them you are worthy of no more note than the boil on their wife’s arse.’ He knew he had gone too far, knew that in truth Jarl Otrygg did not deserve to be so insulted in front of his people even if he was hardly worthy of a hall and a high seat. But Bram had come to the end of the rope and it was time to haul the anchor from the weeds and slime amongst which it had settled for too long. ‘I drink your ale and eat your food and yet I am still hungry,’ he said, downing the ale in one go and slamming the cup down. ‘I am a warrior and a warrior needs silver and fame. Here, with you, there is just rust and dishonour.’

Around him men and women were climbing out from the benches, scattering as folk will from the fierce heat of a newly stoked fire. Like Bram himself they knew he had gone too far. Knew what must surely come.

An old spear-shaker called Esbern, whose fighting days were far behind him and whose long beard and braids were white as snow, pointed a bony finger at Bram. ‘You insult us all. You dishonour your own name,’ he said.

Bram was too drunk to feel the sting in that. ‘I have long tarnished my own name by staying here, old man,’ he said. ‘Back to your straw death with you, unless you want one last chance at a seat in the Allfather’s hall?’

Esbern showed his teeth, his hand falling to his scramasax, and for a moment it looked as though the old man would indeed end his days blade in hand like a proper Sword-Norse, but a big hand shoved him aside.

‘Out of my way, white-hair,’ Brak snarled, coming round the long bench to get to Bram, who felt the blood run hot in his veins for the first time in too long.

Brak’s sword whispered from its scabbard and in that moment Bram respected Jarl Otrygg’s champion for doing his duty even though he knew the man could not win.

Bram ducked the first wild swing, Brak’s sword slicing the smoky fug above his head and burying itself in a roof post like an axe in an oak’s trunk. Brak cursed and Bram hammered a fist into his stomach, doubling the champion over, then grabbed one of his braids and stepped past him, hauling the man’s head backwards, and Brak was all flailing arms as Bram chopped a hand into the exposed throat. Brak went down choking, legs thrashing as his lungs fought for breath that would not come.

‘Get up, you fat fool!’ Otrygg yelled as other retainers went for Bram, swords drawn. The first of them thought he was Beowulf hacking at Grendel’s arm, the swing so wild that it might have cut Bram in half. Had it been anywhere near him.

‘Sit down, Anlaf,’ Bram said, slamming a fist into the man’s face, bursting his nose in a spray of blood and gristle. Anlaf dropped like a rock and Bram hauled the spear from another man’s grasp, broke the stave across his thigh and pummelled his attacker with the two halves, the man throwing his arms either side of his head and retreating under the onslaught.

‘Sheep and goats!’ Bram bellowed as the man fell into a heap against the wall all curled up like a hedgehog before a snarling hound. A big man launched himself at Bram from behind, wrapping strong arms around him to stop his progress towards the jarl. Bram lashed his head backwards into the man’s face and the arms fell away, then he turned and clutched Gevar’s bloodied face between his hands and squeezed. The big man’s eyes bulged and his legs gave way but Bram did not let go. ‘You will all die in your sleep,’ Bram snarled, ‘and no one will ever know you lived.’ His arms were trembling with the effort and he wondered if he could crush the man’s skull, wondered if the brains would spill through his fingers. But his quarrel was not with Gevar and so he drove his knee into the blood-slick face and Gevar keeled over into the floor reeds.

The jarl was up out of his high seat now, a big boar spear in his hands and at last some steel in his eyes.