Away from the sea they went, the merchants and traders full of the chatter of what had happened, filling the air with jokes about the slave dealer being paid in steel instead of silver, and mutterings that that is what is ever likely to happen when pretty girls are involved.
And Sigurd hoped that neither the gods nor his brothers and father were watching from Valhöll.
CHAPTER SEVEN
‘STILL, IT WAS a good death,’ Aslak said, the words escaping from somewhere in the purple lumpen mess of his face.
‘Ha! You think that was a good death?’ Olaf challenged him. ‘Gods, but it is going to be tiring work burying all of you young fools.’
‘Well I am ashamed for standing there while our brother got himself filled with spears,’ Svein muttered into his beard.
Sigurd said nothing but he did not need to for the others to know what he thought about it. He felt the shame of it hot on his face and did not want to draw more attention to it with words.
‘We are being tested,’ Olaf said, biting into a hunk of smoked boar’s meat that he had bought from the market on their way back to meet Solveig and Otter across the other side of the island. ‘I’ll grant you it is a sore fucking test but they often are.’ His eyes were on Svein and Aslak but Sigurd knew that the words were for him. ‘You saw how many blood-worms rasped up scabbards when Gerth chose his moment to show everybody what a shortwit he was. I stopped counting after twenty.’
They had rowed to a little island off Rennisøy, pulled Otter up onto the shingle and now sat on a large flat rock looking north over the calm water they had crossed.
‘That arsehole Jarl Randver appeared out of nowhere,’ Loker said. ‘Did you see him, Sigurd?’
‘Sigurd saw him,’ Olaf confirmed. ‘The lad’s hackles grew hackles.’ Sigurd looked up at him then, their eyes locking for a moment. ‘Your father was just the same as a young man and would not have lived long enough to become jarl if I had not held on to his tail when he was frothing at the mouth.’
Sigurd would have taken offence at this had he not heard his father say the same thing enough times over his mead horn.
‘It is a test,’ Olaf went on. ‘Old One-Eye is laying this thing out for us like waves before the bow. Any fool can get his sword red only to get himself hacked to pieces a heartbeat later. You think that will buy you a saga tale? Pah! That won’t even get you a skald’s fart. Not a decent skald anyway.’
‘And not a decent fart,’ Solveig put in.
‘It is like tafl then,’ Svein suggested, which might have been the cleverest thing he had ever said for all eyes turned to him and his face flushed as red as his beard.
‘Exactly like tafl,’ Olaf agreed through a mouth full of meat. ‘You move your pieces around the board and you use your wits doing it. And when you are in a stronger position than your opponent you finish him.’ He grimaced, fluttering greasy fingers at them all. ‘In case it has escaped your notice, we are not in this stronger position. We have barely one piece left on the board and must be clever with it.’ He almost smiled then, but Gerth’s death had been a blow even to Olaf who thought the man a fool. ‘But we are still in the game,’ he said. ‘And Óðin still has one eye to watch it with.’
‘You think Jarl Randver knew you were there?’ Aslak asked, turning the mess of his face first to Sigurd then Olaf.
‘He couldn’t know it,’ Olaf replied. ‘I didn’t see Gerth say much while he cut that mouthy trader in half nor when Randver’s men sheathed their spears in him.’
‘He knew, Uncle,’ Sigurd said.
Olaf shrugged as if to say maybe he did, maybe he didn’t.
A silence fell over them then as each man turned over in his mind all that had happened in the last days. They had lost Gerth but gained Aslak, meaning that they were seven again, and only five with any experience of the blood-fray. Seven against not only the most powerful jarl in Rogaland, but against Gorm Biflindi, Shield-Shaker, to whom a dozen other jarls owed fealty. Somewhere the gods were laughing. Sigurd could almost hear it amongst the whisper of the sea and the shriek of gulls. The gods were laughing.
But at least that meant they were watching.
‘Tell me more about Asgot,’ Sigurd said, turning to Aslak.
‘Aye, so they’re too squeamish to cut his throat, are they?’ Olaf asked.
Aslak dabbed at the split in his bottom lip which had opened again with eating. ‘Two days after they took us some of the king’s men came to Jarl Randver’s hall. They wanted to know how the raid had gone, wanted to know how many thegns Randver had lost in it.’ He grinned fresh blood onto his lip. ‘But really they wanted to know how much plunder Randver had got his hands on.’
‘A king must make sure his jarls do not grow richer than him or else he will not sleep well at all,’ Loker said as though it were the wisest counsel a man could hear.
‘So they brought us into the hall along with half of the plunder,’ Aslak said.
‘As much as half?’ Olaf remarked wryly, one eyebrow arching.
‘They did not show Gorm’s men Runa,’ Aslak went on, glancing at Sigurd. Sigurd nodded. That was no surprise, for King Gorm was a famous tickler of women’s ears. He had more bed slaves than hunting hounds and was even said to have three wives. But Jarl Randver wanted to keep hold of Runa.
‘Aye, well there was more chance of Yggdrasil pulling up its roots and walking off than there was of Randver selling your sister at the block,’ Solveig said, which got a murmur of agreement all round.
‘The king’s men looked us over and the one who spoke for them, a dangerous-looking cunny called Bok, told the jarl he was welcome to sell us for whatever profit he could make. Bok also told the jarl he could keep the rest of the plunder he had taken from Skudeneshavn, that of Jarl Harald’s silver which Randver must have forgotten to show him. So long as Jarl Randver gave the king Reinen.’
‘It doesn’t do for a jarl to have better ships than a king,’ Olaf said.
‘Randver was not happy about that,’ Aslak said, ‘but he held the grin in his beard and had his men bring a gift out for Bok to take back to the king.’
‘Asgot,’ Hendil said, untangling the knot of it.
‘Some gift, hey,’ Svein said.
Aslak grinned, licking the blood from his lip. ‘They had hooded him like a damned hawk for fear of his spells. No one was very keen on touching him and even when they hauled him into the hall everyone reached for their mjöllnirar and sword hilts and the air was thick with whispers as men sought the gods’ protection from Jarl Harald’s priest.’
Even now Svein touched the iron Thór’s hammer that hung at his throat because just the thought of earning Asgot’s hate was enough to set men’s teeth on edge. Sigurd nodded for Aslak to go on with the tale.
‘Jarl Randver told Bok that Asgot was his gift to the king, and now it was Bok’s turn to etch a smile onto the granite of his face,’ he said.
‘Doesn’t do to turn down a gift freely given,’ Olaf said.
Aslak grinned. ‘Of course, every man, woman and dog in that hall knew that the real reason Randver was giving the king Asgot was because he didn’t dare to kill him himself.’
‘When I was a boy I heard about a jarl from Hardangervidda who killed his godi,’ Solveig put in. ‘By the next full moon the jarl’s cock had turned black and by the moon after that it had fallen off.’ This put grimaces in beards.
‘They handed Asgot over,’ Aslak said. ‘You could hear him spitting curses inside that sack they’d tied over his head, and to give Bok his due he took hold of Asgot firmly enough, as though to show that curses meant nothing to him. That was when I heard Bok say he’d like to hear Asgot curse the tide.’
‘Curse the tide?’ Svein said, taking the ale skin which Hendil offered him and rinsing his insides with the stuff.
‘Aye, well there’s no mystery in that,’ Olaf said, drawing all eyes to him. ‘King Gorm’s hall sits on the hill overlooking the strait where it’s snarled up with islands and skerrie
s. He has boats moored up in the wider channel and they’re so close you could jump from one to another.’
This was probably Olaf exaggerating but it might as well have been true given the stranglehold King Gorm had over any skippers who wanted to go north. This was after all how he had become a king in the first place, by filling his sea chests with tolls.
‘Nearest Gorm’s shore is a narrower channel threading between Karmøy and Bukkøy island and here the water is too shallow for anything deeper than Little-Elk, unless you know the channel and its rocks like you know your wife’s face,’ he said for Svein, Aslak and Hendil who had never been to Avaldsnes. ‘There is a place of flat rock bigger than this,’ he said, slapping the rock upon which they sat, ‘though when the tide comes in you can see no sign of it at all. But it takes a long time to sink and that is the point of it.’ His full lips twisted in his beard now as though the words he was about to say tasted foul. He looked at Sigurd. ‘Not long after Gorm started calling himself a king and squeezing oaths and silver out of every man with a boat bigger than Otter, he invited your father and me up there for a feast. Though in the event the feast had little to do with it. He wanted us to see what he had planned for his unfaithful wife. The whisper was that she had been flattening the straw with Gorm’s prow man. Not Moldof then, some troll called Gunthiof. Gorm put his own sword in Gunthiof—’ Olaf raised a thick finger ‘—Gorm can fight. For all that he is, the treacherous whoremonger can fight and don’t ever doubt it. But he came up with another scheme for his wife, whose name I do not recall. They chained her to that flat rock at low tide and we sat down to meat and mead in Biflindi’s hall and that night we stumbled down to the shore to see the moon shining on the poor woman’s head.’ Olaf stretched his neck so that you saw his neck below the beard – a rare sight. ‘Her head was the only part of her you could see, mind. Two or three horns later we were blind drunk and she was gone.’ He fluttered a hand at Loker who passed him the ale skin. ‘They might have fished her out next day or they might have left her for the crabs.’ He shrugged. ‘We left at dawn and so did the others who had been invited up to Avaldsnes to see it.’
‘The woman should have kept her legs crossed,’ Solveig muttered, ‘for you have to be tired of living to cheat Shield-Shaker.’
And Sigurd wondered what that said about him.
Because he was going to Avaldsnes.
Hendil went first. Not as far as Avaldsnes because of the risk in it, but near enough, to three villages south of King Gorm’s long hall, dressed like a nobody and pushing a cart full of goose and duck feathers. Using Sigurd’s silver, they had bought most of the down from a merchant on Bokn. The rest they had gathered themselves from nests recently abandoned and in all there were twelve sacks of the stuff piled up on the cart which Hendil had pushed north smiling from ear to ear.
‘This is some low cunning,’ he had said, lifting the handles to begin his journey, proud to have been chosen for the ruse.
‘Hardly,’ Olaf had said. ‘Peddling feathers and duck shit suits you, Hendil. I doubt Loki is brimmed with envy and wishing he had the shrewd in him to have come up with it.’
Hendil had shrugged, steadied the cart and been on his way, and despite what Olaf said, it had been clever enough to choose Hendil for the task, because he was easy to like, which meant people talked to him. In the event, though, he discovered nothing about Asgot in any of the villages. But that had not mattered, for he had met one of the king’s thralls and the woman had told Hendil that the royal arse was crying out for new pillows. Thinking the king would thank her for it, she had invited Hendil up to Shield-Shaker’s farm at Avaldsnes and there Hendil had learnt all he needed to know.
‘It turns out the king is going to drown Asgot,’ Hendil had reported on his return, as pleased to have sold all of his feathers – and at a profit too – as he was to have come back laden with information.
‘I thought we knew that bit,’ Svein had said, to which Solveig had reminded them that nothing is certain where kings are involved. ‘But he has no desire to make a big thing of it,’ Hendil went on. ‘Everyone up there is itching at the very thought of killing a godi, though most agree if you have to do it then this is the best way.’
‘I didn’t kill the man,’ Olaf growled, mimicking Shield-Shaker, ‘my sword slept in its scabbard the whole while and yet he is dead. It must have been Njörd’s doing so don’t look at me.’ He spat. ‘Serpent-tongued son of a flea-ridden goat.’
‘Huglausi shit,’ Loker said, though Sigurd doubted Loker would call King Gorm a coward to his face. Or put his sword in a godi come to that.
‘So when will it be done?’ Sigurd asked.
‘When this moon has waned enough that only the fish and the crabs know that your father’s godi is chained to a rock with the tide coming in,’ Olaf put in before Hendil could reply.
‘Or if there is cloud across the moon,’ Sigurd said, glancing up at the sky, which drew a curse from Olaf because of course this was the truth of it.
And so now they were rowing Otter up the Karmsund Strait as rain dimpled the water and the summer night got as dark as it would at that time of the year. Which was not very dark at all really. Furthermore, what darkness there was would not last long and they knew that if they were still anywhere near Avaldsnes when the sun came up they were dead men.
They were sweat-drenched and puffing and Sigurd’s arms had grown impossibly heavy though he said nothing about it and nor would he even were those aching, rock-heavy limbs to drop through Otter’s hull and sink them all. They had set off early because they had far to go. Too far without a sail to help them, Hendil had griped, but Solveig had reminded them all that it was not so long ago that no ships had sails and all were moved with muscle alone.
‘Give me a sail and I’ll get us there with my arse wind alone,’ Svein had said, taking one hand off his oar to wave at a knörr sailing south. Two of the knörr’s crew waved back which was a good sign for it meant that neither Otter nor her crew had any whiff of violence about them. Nor was Otter big enough to tempt other ships into attacking her for plunder, her thwarts being clearly full of flesh and bone and not silver or ivory or furs. Though this time they came armed, for all that none of it was on show. Olaf had even brought his brynja because he thought the scheme had such a poor chance of working and said that if it came to a fight, which it probably would, then he would fight in his brynja and kill as many men as he could.
Where they could they stayed within a stone’s throw of the shore as this way they were at least some of the time concealed by bluffs and skerries. Often, though, they were right out in the channel and at these times Sigurd’s heart hammered in his chest and his palms grew slick on the oar stave. They barely spoke, for all knew how well a man’s voice will carry across water, and yet only Svein seemed as calm as the fjord, a half grin nestled in his beard like a cat in straw, as though it was all a fine adventure. As for the others, their eyes shone in the gloom and Sigurd supposed he would have heard their hearts pounding too if not for the rhythmic splosh of the oar blades. Solveig worked the tiller and Loker, who claimed his eyesight was so good that he had once seen Rán, mother of the waves, casting her nets in the dark depths, hung over Otter’s bow, peering below the surface for rocks that might be their undoing.
Sigurd had brought sword, axe and shield, but they were safely stowed in the thwarts, as were Svein’s. In the leather nestbaggin at his feet were the things he would need, the items they had managed to lay hands on at such short notice. Lying across the thwarts behind him was just over five feet of new pine trunk and this was perhaps the most important thing they had brought, despite Olaf still having no confidence in the whole idea. Not least since they had passed the vik just south of Kopervik and so now had a foot firmly inside the bear’s cave.
Every now and then a fish jumped somewhere out there in the murk, each plunk yanking on taut nerves and turning heads, though it was not likely that any skipper would be sailing at night, which each of them k
new, if only he stopped to think about it.
‘The last thing Biflindi or any of his arse welts will be expecting is for Harald’s last breathing son to come within sight of Karmsundet let alone within sniffing distance of the royal shit bucket,’ Olaf had said, ‘but it won’t matter who we are if we get up to the skerries where he collects his tolls. They’ll think we’re a crew of halfwits trying to slip through the net without paying and they’ll kill us just the same. Dead is dead, as my father used to say.’
So now Solveig was looking for the skerries that sat in the middle of that stretch of water which was the entrance to the fairway men called the north road, for these rocky islands were as far as Otter would go. Men on the sniff for taxes have noses like hounds, as Hendil had put it, which meant they dared not go beyond that point. And it was Loker’s eyes, as the only other pair looking the way they were going, that saw the skerries first. Which in the event came as a great relief after a day’s rowing, not least to Olaf’s backside which, he moaned, had died somewhere back near Blikshavn.
When they came to the rocks Solveig guided Otter into a sheltered inlet that was as dark as the inside of a sealskin purse and there the others pulled in their oars, rolling tired shoulders and shaking the pain from their arms while Loker tied them up to a tooth of rock jutting from the dark water. Somewhere close by a bird took off squawking from its nest, a flash of white in the murk, and something else plopped off a rock into the water.
Inland, towards the king’s hall up on the hill, a fire burning out of sight hazed the dark sky with burnished bronze, the tang of smoke brought to Sigurd’s nose on the westerly breeze that had wanted to push Otter out into the channel. It was a warm breeze, as sweet as Freyja’s breath, and Sigurd wondered if the goddess had come down from Asgard to watch them cheat the king.
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