God of Vengeance

by Giles Kristian

  Troll-Tickler was scabbarded at his hip and though there were far more beautiful blades a sword was a sword and some folk might wonder how such a young man had come to own it. But that blade had killed men, made corpses of his enemies, and Sigurd would not be without it now.

  ‘You had better not get yourselves killed,’ Solveig warned as they turned their backs on him and Otter to make their way up through the trees. ‘You hear me! I can’t take this boat back by myself.’

  ‘I can see why your father did not want him at Reinen’s helm,’ Loker said, and though meant in humour that mention of his father’s best ship, taken by that dung heap Jarl Randver, was another spark to the kindling of Sigurd’s fury which smouldered and flickered deep in his chest. The only thing that could put out that fire was blood.

  But first he must find Runa.

  Once through the trees they scrambled up the cliff and across lichen-covered rocks until they reached the heights around which gulls screeched, tumbling through draughts scented with pine and the sea. Someone had built a cairn up there overlooking the fjord and Sigurd wondered after the person who had carried all those stones to this place and carefully set one upon the other up to the height of his shoulder. Perhaps it had been a woman who had raised it to remember a husband who had sailed west and never returned.

  ‘I think I can see Ragnhild standing there with a face like thunder because you would not let her ride to Avaldsnes to cut off King Gorm’s bollocks,’ Svein said, arming sweat from his forehead and smiling. They stood in the tall grass looking out across the Boknafjord as thick grey cloud billowed westward across the sky towards Skudeneshavn. They could not see their own bay but knew well enough where it sat at the southern tip of the land mass beyond the island of Bokn.

  ‘You may joke, lad, but you’re close to the marrow with that one,’ Olaf said through a wall of teeth. ‘I’d sooner face Fenrir Wolf with an eating knife than Ragnhild when she’s angry.’ He shook his head. ‘If she hadn’t been seeing to the bairn she would have stayed to give Randver’s lot the hospitality they deserved.’ He looked at Sigurd then. ‘They telling you anything we should know about?’ he asked, nodding towards the gulls whose shrieks carried west with the breeze, and there was just enough weight in the question to show that Olaf cared about the answer.

  Sigurd shook his head and Hendil said that was probably just as well for everyone knew that birds are famous liars anyway.

  They saw a man and boy herding sheep and another farmer driving five pigs to the market, but most of the Rennisøy folk were along the coast and lived on fish, the interior being hard land to work on account of having having more ups and downs than a young man’s arse, as Olaf put it a little later when they at last came, sweating, within sight of the Vik. At any other time it was nothing much to look at, just an inlet sheltered by an arm of pine-bristled rock reaching north and round to the east. But even a reindeer herder from the frozen northlands would see that this was a good sheltered place for men to bring their boats, and now on the second day after the full moon the Vik brimmed with craft. For Rennisøy’s famous market had been making some men rich and others slaves since Valhöll’s roof posts were still green and leaking sap, and it did not take long for Sigurd’s eyes to pick out Reinen from those ships moored to the jetties criss-crossing the calm water.

  ‘He’s here then,’ Olaf said, hackles rising at the sight of his jarl’s ship in his enemy’s hands. Men with shields and spears milled by the ship and others lazed aboard her and the sight burnt Sigurd too because he knew there was nothing he could do about it. But they had come for Runa, not Reinen.

  They made their way down off the high ground and Sigurd looked up at the iron-grey clouds hoping it would rain, for men are less vigilant in the rain, more concerned with moaning about it and trying to keep dry. But the cloud kept rolling west, keeping its cargo to itself, and Sigurd touched the little carving inside his tunic, invoking Óðin who was known to be able to change his skin and his appearance into any fashion he chose.

  ‘It seems there are more folk here this time than I have seen before,’ Loker said as they passed the camp with its fires and tents and children running wild, and joined the throng amongst the traders’ stalls hung with pelts and leather or laden with horn combs, glass beads, weavings, pottery, sword hilts, jewellery and food. The air thrummed with the din of vendors crying their wares, men and women greeting each other excitedly, merchants forging trades with the skill of swordsmiths making blades, dogs barking, ponies neighing and warriors laughing over cups of ale and horns of mead. Fish sizzled over braziers and fragrant steam rose from cauldrons hung over fires and Sigurd’s mouth went slick with it all and he realized he hadn’t eaten a meal for days.

  They had split up now to better weave into the crowds, though Sigurd had little trouble tracking Svein’s progress through the market, his friend’s flaming red hair like a moving beacon above others’ heads. But Svein had never stood in the shieldwall and nor had he been to Rennisøy before and so it was unlikely that anyone here would note him for any other reason than that he could have been related to the Thunder God himself. Sigurd, though, had fought in his father’s war band and he had visited the slave market before and he was the son of a jarl, which all conspired to make it far from impossible that he would be recognized. So he kept his head down and avoided folk’s eyes and was careful not to shoulder into any of the spear-armed growlers in the crowd because the last thing he needed was a fight over spilled drink.

  He threaded his way north towards the harbour they had seen from the higher ground, the crowd becoming better armed and worse tempered the closer he got. For the slave trade was a serious business and few men who could afford to deal in it did not think it worth spending a proportion of their wealth on thugs and brawlers to watch their backs.

  ‘Every arse wipe there thinks he’s a jarl in the making,’ Olaf had said earlier as they pulled Otter from the breakers up the shingle. ‘And none of them minds spilling a little blood to prove it.’

  Sigurd did not need to push all the way through the press of bodies near the blocks, for if Runa or Aslak or any of them were among the chained then he or one of his companions would catch a glimpse before long. Instead he held back, hoping he was all but invisible amongst all the merchants in their finely woven tunics whose necklines, cuffs and skirt hems were decorated with brightly coloured braid. At their waists hung fat purses bulging with silver and the belts they hung from dived through burnished buckles that were testament to their trading wits as much as an arm ring was proof of a warrior’s bravery. Sigurd recognized some of them, too, those who had been guests in Jarl Harald’s hall having come to Skudeneshavn to sell skins or ivory, whale oil or eiderdown. He hoped these men would not recognize him.

  He caught Olaf’s eye and Olaf nodded to a knot of grizzled, scarred spearmen near by who were clearly more interested in the crowd than in the lines of young men and women waiting their turn to be hauled up to the blocks. Sigurd nodded back, and even though there was a good chance that those warriors were Jarl Randver’s, meaning the jarl had been expecting Sigurd to come to Rennisøy, he now shouldered through the throng to fix his eyes properly on the plunder that brought silver-rich men to the island like crows to carrion. For if Randver was here then so was Runa. Sigurd could feel that as surely as he could feel the weight of Troll-Tickler at his left hip.

  ‘Piss off with those elbows, boy!’ a fat man growled at Sigurd, licking sweat beads off his top lip though there was no sun to speak of. But then the man’s pig eyes drank Sigurd in and he dropped his gaze and shuffled aside to let Sigurd through.

  A merchant was tipping hacksilver out of his scales as a big, arm-ringed warrior led a flaxen-haired, tear-soaked girl from the block. The silver was barely in the man’s purse before the warrior’s hand was up the girl’s skirts, but the girl was not Runa and Sigurd’s eyes roved along the unfortunates as his heart hammered the anvil of his chest.

  Then he saw Aslak. At first his eye h
ad slid right over his friend because even Aslak’s mother, were she alive, would have had trouble recognizing him. His face was a swollen, lumpy, green and yellow mess. His right eye was a black half moon and his bottom lip was split and his hair was a knotted snarl of dried blood and no one would buy him. Not because there were mountain trolls who would run shrieking from that face, but because a slave whose owner was prepared to beat him to a pulp before showing him at the block was clearly more trouble than he was worth. But Sigurd would buy him.

  Sigurd noticed Hendil slowly working his way towards him, instinct perhaps impelling him to group at the sight of one of their own in such a poor state, and Sigurd gestured for him to come closer still. When Hendil was beside him Sigurd breathed his plan into his ear and when he had finished Hendil counted ten heartbeats then threaded his way back through the crowd. Sigurd turned to the fat man beside him who had his eyes on a small dark-haired girl standing naked on the block. She had a smile etched on her face in the hope it would give her a better chance of being bought, which did not say much for the man holding the other end of the rope around her neck.

  ‘You see that slave who looks like he’s had a face full of Mjöllnir?’ Sigurd asked the fat man, who narrowed his eyes at Sigurd and nodded. ‘I want you to buy him,’ Sigurd said.

  The fat man palmed sweat from his face. ‘I would not buy that ugly runt even for two farts. Not even to dig my turf and empty my cesspit,’ he said.

  ‘You will buy him,’ Sigurd said, ‘but it will not even cost you one fart. I will give you his price and twice as much again for your trouble.’

  ‘You?’ the fat man scoffed, then straightened his slick face. ‘Why?’

  ‘Because I want him,’ Sigurd said. ‘And because if you do this you will have the silver to buy the black-haired girl off that man who just got her for next to nothing.’ The fat man’s pig eyes bulged then and his tongue licked his lips again. ‘She will be in your bed tonight and I will have the ugly slave to empty my cesspit.’ Sigurd forced a smile onto his own lips and the fat man turned his gaze back to the black-haired girl.

  ‘Show me the silver,’ he said.

  When it was Aslak’s turn to be pushed up onto the block Sigurd lowered his own head because he did not want his friend to see him. Jarl Randver’s thegns would be watching like hawks and as Sigurd had predicted, Aslak did not have many men reaching for their purses, which meant that the few who did were more conspicuous for it. Randver himself was there somewhere. Watching. He had come to Rennisøy in Jarl Harald’s ship and he was dangling the bait in the hope that Sigurd would bite. How disappointed he must have been then to see a fat man from Mekjarvik come forward and put his silver in the scales. Jarl Randver’s man at the block took the iron collar off Aslak’s neck and replaced it with a rope that was thrown in to the trade at no extra cost, placing the other end in Aslak’s new owner’s greasy palm. Even as he led Aslak off away from the block the fat man’s eyes were glued to the little black-haired girl, which Sigurd thought was unwise. For Aslak was likely to cut the man’s throat at the first sniff of a chance, though hopefully not before Sigurd had met up with them after the auction.

  Sigurd watched Aslak being hauled off back through the crowds towards the camp where Sigurd had arranged for his friend’s new owner to deliver him to Hendil. Then the fat man will be rooting after that girl like a boar after acorns, Sigurd thought, as a murmur like that of the sea rose around him, turning his head back to the heckle and barter of it all. It was no mystery what had got the crowd excited, what had got men hooming in the back of their throat and wondering what they had with them that they might sell. One or two might have even wished they could put their wives in that pot, for the girl who had stepped onto the block now was a beauty. Her face was clear and smooth as cream and her eyes were bright blue beads the colour of the fjord on a warm summer’s afternoon. Her hair was pale gold and hung straight as an anchor rope in a sleeping sea, and her back was straight, so that even a fool would know she had not been a slave long.

  Nor would she be, Sigurd’s mind growled as he fought every instinct in his body that clamoured to rush to his sister and strike the iron collar from her neck. Runa. Standing proud as a goddess even after all that had befallen her, for she was a jarl’s daughter and that iron ring around her neck might as well have been a silver torc for the way she wore it.

  Sigurd felt Olaf’s eyes on him and looked up to see him shake his head, warning him against any action. Sigurd’s limbs were trembling now, as though the blood in his veins were coming to the boil. Troll-Tickler was whispering to him, begging Sigurd to haul it out into the day and let it feed on the blood of their enemies. Not yet, Sigurd’s mind warned. Not yet. Still, perhaps he could let Runa see him at least, let her know that she was not alone in the world and that she yet had a brother and so hope. Olaf shook his head again, reading the warp and weft of Sigurd’s thoughts, but Sigurd looked back at Runa, willing her to see him amongst the crowd as Jarl Randver’s man opened the bidding and the first offers flew in like starlings.

  Randver’s man spun some tall story about the girl having been taken in a raid on the Swedes to the east.

  ‘She was a princess among her people,’ the man spouted. ‘Look at her. She is as beautiful as Freyja herself and will give some lucky man many strong sons. The man who . . . found her . . . swears she was not touched. No man in his crew so much as breathed on this pretty neck,’ he said, almost touching Runa. ‘Of course, the man who buys her today will be able to verify the truth of this for himself.’

  This got some laughs and no few bawdy remarks. One man offered to test the goods in advance of anyone handing over their silver. Another said it was a wise man who bought the girl now for he could sell her on for even more once her tits had finished sprouting. Runa stood there as though the whole noise was nothing but the chatter of rooks in a tree and Sigurd filled with pride. And yet his jaw ached with the clench of his teeth and the muscles knotted around his bones. What would Thorvard or Sigmund or Sorli do? He could not picture his brothers standing there like a rock as he did now while their sister was brandished and bartered over like some karl’s best cow. Gods, what would Harald do! That picture was clear as fjord water in Sigurd’s mind. There would be blades and blood and chaos.

  Men were offering good silver for Runa now but they might as well have been pissing into the wind. The merchant steering the trade was on the end of Jarl Randver’s chain no less than Runa was, and made a show of shaking his head and wafting men’s offers away and sometimes not even letting them put their ingots in the dish of his scales, as though by eye alone he knew the balance would not be met. And yet Sigurd saw that other merchants, men he knew to be rich because they had boasted as much before in his father’s hall, did not go forward or let their hands fall to their purses. They could taste the taint in this, he thought. Perhaps they recognize Runa, or perhaps they have heard about Jarl Randver’s raid on Skudeneshavn and they would rather keep clear of the mire of it all. For it was not the normal way of it for prisoners of a raid to be sold in the shadow of their former homes. Normally a trader would take them to a market far away to lessen the risk of runaways and reprisals.

  Not that Randver was going to actually sell Runa it seemed, for the jarl’s man put up his hands now appealing for hush.

  ‘Enough of this! Do you take me for a fool? I would not sell a pig even for the best offer I have received for this girl! No more insults, please.’ He gestured for Runa to step down off the block and she did it without looking at him. ‘If anyone wants to be serious about this then you can find me when we have finished here, but I will not waste any more time. I know the man who owns this girl and he will not even give an ear to any offers of less than fifteen aurar.’ There was a hum from the crowd at that because a good male slave would cost around twelve aurar of silver and would be arguably more useful around the farm. But the hum died away soon enough. Because Runa was golden and straight and young and beautiful.

  ‘
Now then, here is another young honey pot to wrap your ogles around,’ he said, pulling a girl up to the block. But the girl wriggled out of his grasp and a warrior showing a beard full of teeth took her roughly by the arm and hauled her back to the block, handing her neck rope back to the slave dealer. He yanked on it and the girl lurched awkwardly then spat in his face and Sigurd cursed under his breath as the dealer backhanded her across the face.

  Movement caught Sigurd’s eye and he looked across to see Gerth shoulder through the crowd, sword in hand. The trader looked up, eyes bulging like boiled eggs as Gerth scythed his blade at him, opening him up from left shoulder to his right hip. The crowd roared and Sigurd, already moving, hauled Troll-Tickler from its scabbard.

  ‘No, lad. Hold fast. Hold fast!’ It was Olaf, his arms clamped round Sigurd like roots on a rock, and Sigurd could not move. ‘We can do nothing,’ Olaf growled, his beard bristles filling Sigurd’s ear as Sigurd watched a man plunge a spear into Gerth’s back and Gerth’s cousin Svanild screamed. Suddenly warriors schooled like fish, blades glinting everywhere like scales, and two more spears were sunk into Gerth who was on his knees now, staring helplessly at his shrieking cousin. ‘Put the blade away, Sigurd,’ Olaf said. ‘We can’t help Runa if we’re dead.’ The crowd was thinning like smoke, though there were enough there still who had been persuaded by the sight of blood to stay and watch how it played out. Sigurd saw Loker turn his back on Gerth and move off with the rest. He glimpsed Hendil then, walking off laughing with another man, as Olaf with the tide’s persuasion turned him away from the slaughter. ‘We’re leaving, lad, which is easier without a foot of spear in you.’

  Sigurd sheathed Troll-Tickler and walked away, risking a glance over his shoulder as they moved off with the crowd back up to the market. Warriors had made a shieldwall before the slaving block so that he could not see Runa now, nor the bloody ruin of the dealer or Gerth who had shown no fear as they killed him. But he saw Randver clearly enough, the jarl craning his silver-torced neck, his eyes hopping across the crowd like fleas over a fur, looking for those he had known would come. And as Sigurd walked away he let his own mind weave the tapestry of Jarl Randver standing there, so that it would hang in his memory as a reminder of a face he would see dead. If his own wyrd was not poisoned by the same blight that had struck his kin’s.