‘Here, Father,’ someone said. All eyes turned to the far side of the hearth and a group of young bloods with mead in one hand and women in the other parted to give their king a line of sight to his son. Bare-chested, his fire-bright hair loose over his shoulders, Thorbiorn clambered out of a deep, fur-piled bench and the two naked bed thralls he had been sharing it with.
‘Gods, boy, we have guests!’ King Thorir roared, standing and hurling his horn across the hall at his son so that several men and women were spattered with mead.
Thorbiorn, who could not have been more than seventeen summers, stood on the rush-strewn floor as if he was on a ship in an angry sea.
‘Maybe it was not such a good idea of yours, Olaf,’ Solmund said under his breath.
‘Shit of the gods,’ Olaf rumbled into his beard.
‘Do I have to come over and drag you up here by your balls?’ King Thorir bellowed at the lad. This got a laugh from many but not from Thorbiorn, who grimaced and staggered across the hall, pulling on his tunic as he came. Then he stopped, bent double and spewed the contents of his stomach on to the floor, raising curses from the king’s hirðmen and a stink that spread through the hall like a sea fog.
‘Lad looks like you,’ Olaf mumbled to Sigurd.
‘Thorbiorn is my youngest son,’ King Thorir told them. ‘The gods know the boy has a lot to learn. When I was his age I had three or four good raids under my belt. I had stood in the shieldwall and weathered the storm of swords.’ He shook his head. ‘But Thorbiorn would rather swive himself half to death with any thrall who will open her legs for him than make a name for himself like his brothers.’
Whereas his brothers were wide and thick-necked, Thorbiorn was lean and knotty, though he did not look weak. His cheekbones were high and his eyebrows were darker than his hair, so Sigurd could see why Olaf had said that the young man looked like him. Even swaying on his legs like that, looking as if he might spew another steaming load.
‘You want me to go with this . . . crew, Father?’ Thorbiorn asked, gesturing at Sigurd and his companions. ‘We do not know them. I will not be the hostage of some band of outlaws.’
‘You will do what I tell you to do, boy!’ the king said, flushing. But then he got a hold of his anger and looked to Sigurd. ‘Still, Sigurd, my son has a point. We do not know what kind of man you are, other than a jarl-killer who worries about his sister.’ He frowned. ‘I want Thorbiorn to learn the ways of the warrior. We are at peace here and do not involve ourselves in petty fighting over sheep or cattle, so there is rarely an opportunity for him to taste the blood-fray.’ He pointed a stubby finger at Sigurd and Olaf. ‘How do I know that you are the right sort of men to teach him? And if you take him into a fight or two, how do I know that you can keep him alive?’ He looked at Thorbiorn. ‘He may be as much use as tits on a fish but he is my son.’
‘Were you not listening to Sigurd’s account of our blood feud with the oath-breaker and Jarl Randver of Hinderå?’ Olaf asked him.
‘A good story,’ the king shrugged, which could not have been easy with those shoulders, ‘but perhaps just a story,’ he said.
‘Wait for it,’ Solmund mumbled.
The king looked at the queen. Halla gave a slight shake of her head but Thorir was already grinning.
‘Wait for it,’ Solmund said again.
‘I have an idea, Sigurd Haraldarson,’ King Thorir announced, loud enough to startle the mice in Skíringssalr’s thatch.
‘Here we go,’ Solmund said through a grimace.
‘I am listening,’ Sigurd said.
‘A fight, Sigurd. You against me.’ His teeth looked good in that smile, Sigurd thought, which meant no one had ever managed to knock them out. ‘A friendly little fight.’
The king’s men were moving. Svein and Floki and the others began to rise but Sigurd stayed them with a hand.
‘No blades of course,’ King Thorir went on. ‘Just a friendly grapple until one of us has had enough. What do you say?’
But before Sigurd could say anything at all, the king was out from his bench and on to the table, knocking platters and candles flying as he scrambled across the boards and jumped down on to the floor. Then he came at Sigurd like a rolling barrel and Sigurd had just got to his feet himself when the king grabbed hold of his belt and brynja and threw him into the middle of the hall. Even as he rolled across the floor he could hear Olaf bawling at the others to stay on their benches, but then the king was on him, bending low to wrap his brawny arms round Sigurd’s thighs, his shoulder in Sigurd’s crotch. Then the king drove upwards, lifting Sigurd off the floor, before slamming him down again, knocking the air from his lungs so that he could not have shouted Stop even if he’d wanted to. A fist hammered into his temple and another buried itself in his eye socket and white heat filled Sigurd’s head.
He threw up his left hand, grabbing the king’s beard rope, and savagely yanked on it, and the king’s head had no choice but to follow so that Sigurd’s right fist drove into it, hard enough to loosen Thorir’s back teeth. Then Sigurd scrambled free and the two men got to their feet, circling each other like crabs at low tide, and Sigurd knew how Thorir had got the byname Gapthrosnir, one gaping in frenzy. The king’s mouth was open and his eyes were round as arm rings. Then he came like a charging boar, wrapping his arms round Sigurd’s waist and lifting him again. But this time Sigurd scrambled up and over the ledge of his shoulder and twisted, locking an arm round the king’s neck and letting his own weight haul Thorir backwards until the king lost his footing and they hit the floor in a squall of flying fists and grappling arms.
The king was not a young man but he was wildly strong, and because he was so short all his strength was stuffed into those tree-trunk legs and thick, bulging arms, and it made him as good at wrestling as a mackerel is at swimming. There was blood in Sigurd’s mouth and blood blurring the vision in his right eye but these things were the least of his problems, as the king wrapped a leg round his torso and an arm round his neck, binding him like Gleipnir, the fetter which held Fenrir Wolf.
Skíringssalr thundered as men hammered their heels against their benches, pounded their palms against sea chests and tables, and everyone in that shining hall clamoured either for the king or for Sigurd.
‘Had enough?’ Thorir growled in Sigurd’s ear, his breath hot and meady.
Sigurd gasped for his own breath. ‘No.’ With sudden fury he straightened his legs and bucked, slamming his head back into the king’s face. But Thorir’s grip tightened again and his mouth was again by Sigurd’s ear.
‘Yield?’
This time Sigurd smelt metal on the king’s breath. Blood. But darkness was flooding Sigurd now. He could not breathe. He could not see.
‘Give it up, jarl-killer,’ King Thorir growled, slackening his arm just enough to allow Sigurd’s lungs to draw a whisper of air into them.
And Sigurd used that breath for one word.
‘No.’
Sigurd bent his left arm round himself and felt the cold iron rings of King Thorir’s brynja. Then his hand was under the brynja’s hem and into the king’s other, dearer treasures. He grabbed a handful of cock and balls and squeezed, and King Thorir bellowed like a gelded bull. Sigurd broke the fetters of bone and muscle and scrambled away on all fours, gasping like a man escaping a burning hall, but just as he tried to stand a hand clutched his left ankle and hauled him back and he fell again, kicking madly at the frothing beast who was clambering up his legs, that gaping mouth like a prow beast’s.
They wrestled and grappled, punched and kicked, rolling round in the rushes and the dirt beneath those shimmering silks, as if for the amusement of the gods themselves, men and women cheering and banging cups against the boards. Just when it seemed King Thorir must choke the submission out of him Sigurd would somehow break free, only to be fettered again.
Twice more the king asked Sigurd if he would yield and twice more Sigurd said he would not. And if Sigurd was thinking at all, he was thinking that at his
age the king must surely tire first, for wrestling in mail was a young man’s game. Not that even young men keep that up long.
Then they were up and Thorir Gapthrosnir took three huge blows to the head as he came in low again, gripping Sigurd’s belt in both hands and lifting to slam him down on his back, his solid weight driving the air from Sigurd. Crushing him. They stayed like this for a little while, Sigurd’s strength countered by the weight pressing down on him, both men planning what to do next.
‘You done?’ Thorir rasped. He was blowing like a gale and his face was as grey as his beard rope.
‘Are you?’ Sigurd asked, fearing that some of his bones had snapped inside him.
And with that King Thorir laughed, his teeth bloody but all still planted firmly in his jaws. ‘We’re done, Sigurd,’ he said, rolling off Sigurd’s chest and springing up on to his feet with a nimbleness which must have been his last flourish for surely he was exhausted. ‘Up you get, Sigurd jarl-killer,’ he said, offering his hand for Sigurd to grasp. So Sigurd grasped it and the king pulled him on to unsteady legs and Sigurd spat blood into the rushes. ‘That’s one way to work up a thirst, hey?’ The king loosened his massive shoulders and grinned at his people and then at Queen Halla. ‘You see, wife! Still no one can beat me.’
Queen Halla shook her head and all but rolled her eyes and yet there was pride on her face too. And well there might be for her husband had just shown them all that experience was the master of youth.
‘Olaf, give me a drink,’ Sigurd called, staggering back to his bench, knuckling blood from his eye. ‘Svein, fetch me some snow.’
‘Well, jarl-killer, that was fun. Apart from when you crushed my bollocks.’ King Thorir pointed at Sigurd accusingly. ‘I am beginning to wonder if you kill your jarls when they are looking the other way, for that was cheating. Still, as my people will tell you, I have never been beaten and yet you did not give up. I think we could be rolling around in the cat shit until Ragnarök and still you would say you did not yield.’ He winced, a hand going down to his groin. ‘Only two other men before you have held out without saying they’d had enough. One of them had too much pride and so he is dead.’ He wafted the honey-smelling air with a hand. ‘We were not friends like you and I.’ He grimaced again. ‘The other my wife says was trying to yield. He was growling, I thought insulting me for my height, but Halla swears he was begging me to stop.’ The king’s sweat-glossed head wrinkled as his brow lifted. ‘He is dead too.’
‘Then it seems I was lucky,’ Sigurd said and meant it.
‘You see!’ King Thorir said to his youngest son, who stood there looking as bored as if he had been forced to watch someone lay a new thatch. ‘This is the sort of man who will show you what it means to be a warrior.’
Svein came up to Sigurd’s bench, his upturned helmet full of snow. Sigurd clenched his fists and shoved his raw knuckles into the snow, relishing the icy chill that would soothe the pain and prevent the joints from swelling.
Svein leant in close to Sigurd. ‘You made hard work of that, Sigurd,’ he said. ‘Gods but he’s an old man!’
Sigurd grimaced.
‘You think Sigurd should have put a king on his arse in his own hall?’ Olaf asked Svein. ‘You brainless ox. That would be a sure way to not get what we want.’
Svein frowned and Olaf glanced at Sigurd with a raised eyebrow, but Sigurd ignored them both. His body hurt in too many places to count but his pride was still in one piece. Truth was King Thorir was a formidable fighter, however old he was, and Sigurd was lucky that all his bones that were meant to be straight still were straight and that his skull was not cracked. Besides which Olaf was right in that it seemed his performance had done enough to impress the king.
‘You will see my sister safely delivered to the Freyja Maidens, King Thorir?’ he asked. He could see the king and queen only through his left eye now, his right having swollen shut.
‘I will,’ the king said, then pointed at Thorbiorn, ‘and you will take Thorbiorn into your little fellowship. I hope that some of your grit rubs into him. We will be disappointed if, when you bring him back to Skíringssalr, he is still more familiar with tits and arse than with sword and shield.’
‘Then we have an agreement, King Thorir,’ Sigurd said, getting up again and limping over to take the king’s hand which he proffered across the table.
‘Let us drink to it, Sigurd Haraldarson.’
And they did, both of them to numb their pains as much as to approve the arrangement, and everyone in that shining hall took it as an excuse to celebrate: the Danes because their king had still never been out-wrestled, the king’s hearthmen because they were getting rid of Thorir’s useless son, and Sigurd’s crew because Runa would be safe while they sailed east.
‘Seems to me there are only two people not enjoying themselves in this hall,’ Olaf said a little while later, throwing an arm round Sigurd’s shoulder that made Sigurd curse with pain. Olaf was talking about him and Runa.
‘She wants to stay with us,’ Sigurd said. ‘And I would rather she did,’ he admitted, looking over at Runa who was with Valgerd, both of them on stools by the hearth. He had asked the shieldmaiden to tell Runa stories of her mother’s mother, who had been a Freyja Maiden, in the hope that these stories might warm Runa to the idea of living amongst these warrior women for a time. After all, Runa had always loved the goddess. Even now she wore a silver pendant of Freyja the Giver and Sigurd knew she had invoked the goddess many times, had asked her to ride into battle beside him whenever Sigurd stood in the storm of swords.
‘You know she can’t come with us, Sigurd,’ Olaf said. ‘There’ll be fighting and there’ll be killing where we’re going.’ He shook his head. ‘Wouldn’t be fair on Runa and wouldn’t be fair on the others.’ He looked at their companions who were deep in their cups and horns and in good spirits enjoying the warmth of a hall after weeks at sea. ‘It’d be only a matter of time before one of the idiots caught a spear in the ear while checking to see that the girl was all right.’
Sigurd nodded but he could not help feeling that he was failing. The oath-breaker King Gorm, the man who had betrayed his father, still lived. Hrani Randversson, who had brought death to Jarl Harald’s people at Skudeneshavn, still lived. And now Sigurd had to admit that he could not keep his own sister, the last of his family, safe. He was an outlaw with less than a crew of warriors to call upon, for all that they were the finest Sword-Norse he could ever hope to fight beside. What were his father and brothers thinking, watching him from their mead benches in Valhöll?
‘And yet it seems to me that Runa would be more useful to us than that streak of piss Thorbiorn,’ Olaf said, nodding at the king’s son who had returned to his bed thralls amongst the furs, no doubt keen to tup them while he could. He was yelling for mead as he slapped a naked arse, which evidently the thrall took as the command to get on all fours.
‘If he becomes a pain in my arse I will hang him over Reinen’s side until his balls freeze off,’ Svein put in, spilling mead as he leant across to have his say. ‘And if his father does not like it then I will wrestle him myself and show you all how it is done.’
‘Instead of boasting about winning a fight you’ll never have, why don’t you go and get me some more snow?’ Sigurd said, wanting to press some against his eye around which the flesh was as juicy as an overripe plum.
‘And find some more mead on your way back,’ Olaf said, at which Svein grinned, picked up his helmet and drank the water in it, then set off through the crowd.
Sigurd looked at the king, who seemed no longer the worse for the fight, laughing with his hirðmen and drinking like Thór himself. ‘Do you think Thorvard would’ve beaten him?’ he asked. Sigurd’s eldest brother had been an awe-inspiring warrior; strong as an ox and fast as an adder, though he had fallen to a spear and an axe in the ship battle which had begun this whole thing. Seemed a lifetime ago now, though it had not been two years.
‘I think Thorvard would have strangled him wi
th his own damn beard rope,’ Olaf said, and far from feeling ashamed that he hadn’t beaten the king himself, Sigurd felt hot pride swell in his chest so that he hardly noticed his injuries at all.
And so they would stay at Skíringssalr until King Thorir’s messenger had been to the island of the Freyja Maidens and returned with their word that they would take Runa. Which of course they would, Sigurd knew, looking up at the silks which shimmered in the golden light. Because the short-arsed king who had just given him a rare pummelling was Freyja-favoured. No one in that shining place would deny that. And Runa was Freyja-favoured too, wasn’t she? Or else that arrow might have gone into her eye and killed her. Perhaps the goddess had blown to divert the shaft’s flight, letting it graze Runa’s face to bring them all to this very place. For this very purpose. Was it not possible?
Anything was possible when the gods were involved, Sigurd thought, taking the mead horn which Svein offered him now and, with his other hand, scooping snow from the red-haired giant’s helmet and holding it to his swollen eye.
Yes, anything was possible with the gods. But one thing was certain, and that was that there would be chaos and death.
Then he drank.
CHAPTER TEN
OF ALL THE crew, only two of them seemed happy to be out on the fjord at this time of year. Ibor the blacksmith and his son and apprentice Ingel sat snugged up in the thwarts, talking or sleeping and grinning more often than not while the rest of King Thorir’s men bent their backs to the oars or worked the sail of his ship, a broad-bellied, seaworthy looking knörr called Storm-Elk, moaning that they had been ordered to sea while their companions enjoyed their lord’s hearth and hospitality.
Runa had caught Ingel’s eyes on her at least a dozen times since they had left Skíringssalr, and his father Ibor’s two or three times. Both men were respectful and handsome enough, yet she made sure not to cast even a fleeting glance in their direction when she felt their gaze upon her. Not that there wasn’t a part of her which was buoyed, if only a little, by their attentions. She had thought no man would look at her again with that ugly scar carved across her face from her left eye to her ear. It seemed she was wrong about that. Unless it was pity or morbid curiosity which had got the better of the blacksmiths. At that thought she pulled her fur-lined hood down a little further so that it half covered the scar, at which Ingel looked across and smiled with his eyes before looking back to the game of tafl he was playing with father.
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