Viking Voices (26 page)

Nothing could be further from the truth now, as his exposure to so many battles and so much suffering and bloodshed seems to have deprived him of any human feelings towards his fellow man. His great power seems to have gone to his head and he has become a moody and bad tempered tyrant, ruling over his people with a rod of iron, executing people for the least misdemeanour or even a misconceived slight. I confess that I was very frightened of him while he was here. I had no confidence that old friendships or even the great service my husband had given him would count for anything if he flew into a rage.

I am terribly sad for his wife and family, he treats them very badly. My husband was more kindly to me, and yet in a way he has also abandoned us. I blame him completely, there was no sensible reason to keep pushing himself forward to fight in the front line of every battle.

I will just live out my life quietly and contentedly, raising my children and developing the farm. If we ever have any problems in the future I can always fall back on the savings that Amleth left me. We had it for our old age which we planned to spend together in comfort in our small farm in the Dyflinnarskiri.

These seven bags of silver are probably more than I will ever need.

The one and only thing I ever left Amleth to do on his own was to bury the silver and return with a proper description of where he buried it. Yet he has completely cocked it up, there is no sign anywhere of my treasure. May he rot forever in Niflheim! No doubt he will too, as he was a terrible excuse for a warrior and can hardly have died a good death.

In everything else he ever did I had to look over his shoulder and look after him! I always guided him and prevented him making mistakes.

Perhaps I was a fool to befriend him in the first place, but he was such a charming youth when I first met him. In those first days after we lost Dyflinn he was in complete awe of me and followed me like a puppy dog. That was very useful at times, and I especially remember how enthusiastically he ran to my red and gold banner after I had killed Ivarr at Dalkey Island, once the warriors were given permission to gather under banner of the Jarl of their choice.

He must have been so impressed by me, as I slew that useless imbecile Ivarr in single combat. At least Ivarr got a warrior's death but I am sure the Valkyrie would have turned their noses up at him after his death and refused to carry him to Valhalla. He was a fat, stupid useless bastard and I beat him so easily. It was a great laugh to cut him up and then carry off his crown, his wife and his treasure! I am sure that everyone, not just Amleth, should have thought I was the king of all kings that night. Some hesitated though.

As others hesitated Amleth ran to serve me and I am sure that he convinced many of those who were unsure to follow me. I owed him something for that action, and after that I had to raise him up in my service, although I wondered how he could ever make a warrior, when he was just that tall, slender, pretty red-headed boy?

In the end he escaped through all those battles with hardly a mark on him, no war wounds that you would notice, he only ever got the odd scratch until the Saxon caved his head in. Either he was amazingly lucky in battle or, more likely, he just kept out of the way when the real fighting started.

After that victory at Dalkey my fame as a fighter was so widespread that bad King Ottar of Vannin shit himself and just ran away when I challenged him to fight. I think he would rather have faced Tyr himself. Then the damn coward hid behind his army. It showed me how fickle Woden can be when it was I who had to leave rather than that coward Ottar.

It was not long though before I was back to get revenge, with my clever ploy to capture Ottar, right under the noses of his army, in his own castle. He underestimated my great cunning and paid the price. That time the gods backed the real winner, the man they knew deserved victory, but it taught me to make more sacrifices to the gods. They are greedy beings, and I have learnt that they love human death above all other sacrifices.

Anyway, enough of my achievements, many others will talk about them over the next few centuries, and back to Amleth. I remember how surprised and delighted he was when I first gave him a bit of responsibility, all that long time ago on the island of Môn. How his little eyes lit up when he got a few little jobs to do. The first thing he ever had to do was guard a few slave women at Maes Ofeilon but even that was beyond him. He got over excited when one of them flashed her tits and smiled at him so that he needed to drink off his anxiety in gallons of mead.

The really dreary thing about Amleth was that he was always telling us what a great and faithful husband he was, and that he never wanted any other woman but his wife Aud. I guess he was surprised at getting married to such a great looking lass and was always afraid that she would run off with someone else. In fact, she just stayed where she was and took up with Brodir, the young slave boy who worked with her. So the slave was forever ploughing her field while the farmer was away. She told Amleth that was just there to help with jobs around the house, and the stupid arsehole believed her. Now none of us are sure who the father of the little boy is.

His constant bleating about being a true and faithful husband didn't ring much truer either. He was forever trying to run off back to Môn to find that tall woman with raven black hair that he had seen on his first raid. I expect he found her and was getting his wicked way with her, not just out of sight of his wife but thinking that, even I would be fooled. I am not that gullible though. I often laughed at his stupid pretence.

I know he has told you a lot about his adventures with me, but do take care how much you believe him. Most of it exaggerates the role he played and he would miss out those parts that he didn't want you to know. I'll bet he never told you about always running off to Môn to shag that Welsc girl did he?

There was nothing funnier than his strange idea that he was a competent iron worker. I know everyone can have a hobby but it takes a real idiot to believe he has become skilled in a trade when he is totally inept. Everyone knew about his poor workmanship and returned all the broken goods to the family puppy, young Brodir, who mended all of the idiot's bad workmanship. Not just in iron working too! He repaired Amleth's bad performance in bed with his wife too.

Amleth was actually useful to me even in this issue though, not as an iron worker but as the leader of iron workers. In those early days we needed all the iron workers we could get. Every army needs weapons and the way Amleth got the few artisans we had to share their knowledge and allow others to learn their craft was hugely important. As the settlement grew and developed as our centre it was immensely beneficial to have all of those iron workers making swords, spears and battle axes. Some of them gained a really high standard of workmanship, including young Brodir.

It was not a surprise to hear that Amleth died when he trusted his own workmanship with his sword. Only a total moron would go into battle with a blade that is not made by a good artisan. It was a severe error, one of false vanity, and he deserved to die for it.

One thing I heard him say that is certainly true, that no one embodies the Viking spirit better than I do. I am sure that the name of Ragnald will be remembered throughout the centuries. My achievements will certainly be discussed in hundreds and even thousands of years time!

Sometimes he advised quite well but he also made some horrendous blunders, which I had to be very quick thinking to overcome. Maybe the worst was sending that fat, flatulent Jarl Ingamund over to the Wirral. Wirral did turn out to be the best place for us to make a settlement, at least in those early days. There was almost a disaster though as some people thought that Ingamund deserved the credit for that, and wanted him to be king. I had to slit quite a few throats of his supporters rather quietly in the middle of the night to ensure that never happened. The gods appreciated those sacrifices and that is why they favoured me.

In the end the fat bastard over reached himself too, going off to attack the Saxons. Naturally I had told him that if he failed I would slit his throat, so it was no surprise that he ran away like a coward after his failure and never came back.

Perhaps Amleth was at his best when he went off to negotiate Ottar's ransom with his wife and son. They were slippery, treacherous people and I have no doubt that they made Amleth's life a misery. I know he was hugely relived to get off that island alive, as I could see the brown stains on his trousers.

Even then he had to overcome their last efforts to cheat us out of the ransom, and he did well to get seven bags of silver out of those primitive Danes. It was a great surprise to me that they had so much silver and certainly far more than the stupid old prick was worth. I had always expected to hear that they were unable or unwilling to ransom him. I had spent quite a few happy hours with Ottar, telling him how he was going to die.

The very best advice Amleth ever gave me was to discard the Danish kings of Jorvik when they slighted me, and to set out to build up our own forces. That was really the start of our greatest successes. First Vannin and then onto Jorvik itself as the Danes threw themselves futilely onto the Saxons. Of course, these strategies were pretty obvious really and I would certainly have done them myself anyway if he had not been there, but it actually was Amleth who first suggested them.

He was really infuriating in the campaign against the Picts. First he went home to bury the silver and took forever in coming back to join us. I'm sure he went off to Môn to chase the raven haired maiden again, not that she could have been a maiden by then. Then he turned up without half of the men I gave him! He came back with some nonsense story about protecting our women from the Saxons. Even after that he spent his time riding around on horses trying to look important rather than getting on with real warrior work. All he was really doing was slowing us down; we would have been there much faster without his interference.

He did fight well in the final battle, alongside me in the middle of the shield wall where all of the real fighting takes place, man to man. Perhaps he was not a complete coward that day.

He was at the most irritating he ever got when we got back after that campaign; he was a complete old woman then! First he tried to belittle my great success in that great victory. Making out that we had lost too many men, and feeling sorry for the poor widows. Doesn't he know that it's normal to lose a few men in a war? I was very generous to the widows, allowing them to share the plunder. Not many kings would have been that generous, and the widows were very happy about it, and several of them found a suitable way to show gratitude.

Next thing, he whinged on about burying the silver hoard somewhere else. He was always shitting himself over upsetting the Angles. What problem was that? We would have just beaten them as well. Didn't he know what an invincible warrior king he was serving?

Just to make it worse Thora joined in on his side. That was when she first started to really annoy me, but it was a bit late to get rid of her then though, when she was already carrying my son, the heir to my dynasty. I had to go ahead with the wedding, as having an heir is important to a king. Especially one who is building an empire.

It was not a great problem though as after that I could spend my time in Prestune, enjoying the attention of my new woman. No need to devote all your attention to just one, when you have my power of attraction! I have to say that I had a lot of fun in Prestune. The bar maids there like to entertain their men well. Of course, I was the greatest attraction for all of them and really got well looked after. Obviously it's not often that they get the attention of such a great warrior king as me.

The one great problem with all of that was that, in the end, Amleth buried the treasure and never explained properly where he had put it. Just some silly babbling about the alignment of two oak trees. What use is that when the place is covered in oak trees?

I think he might well have planned to keep it all for himself. I still wonder if his widow knows more that she is admitting to. I never did get much sense out of her, and still wonder if she is really as stupid as she pretends. I could well see her sneaking back there with her young lover to dig up the treasure.

He certainly had started to get big ideas by then, feeling he was really important. Fancy him wanting to be made a Jarl, what a load of bollocks! He wasn't even high born. People would have laughed at me if I made someone like that into one of my Jarls.

I suppose there were just a few occasions when Amleth was useful in a man's role. He was especially useful when I used him with just a few ships as bait to lure Bardr out of his stronghold on Vannin. That was so funny! Just to make it more entertaining I left it late to attack Bardr and so gave him a fair chance of catching Amleth, and he so nearly did too. The beauty of it was that it wouldn't have mattered on either occasion if he had been caught and chopped up, there were always plenty more like Amleth. Easy to replace.

There's always another Amleth. Since he died I became not only the King of Dyflinn again but also the King of Northumberland. I did that all alone so it's now clear that I am the one who deserves to build this new empire.

The new age of Norse glory is about to begin and my dynasty will last a thousand years.