Winter's Fire: (The Rise of Sigurd 2)

by Giles Kristian

  Those piercing eyes opened, fixing on him again. ‘You need silver and you need an army,’ she said. ‘But most of all, you need to believe that you can do it.’ She leant over and picked up the flask. Sigurd had not realized her cup was empty again. He drained his own. ‘Do you believe?’ she asked.

  He thought about it.

  ‘Mostly,’ he said.

  She shook her head. ‘Mostly is not enough,’ she said. ‘Any doubts you have are like loose caulking between the strakes. Water will get in and we shall all sink.’

  He understood that, for those who had sworn an oath to follow him had done so because they saw something in him, a fire which burnt bright as a lightning flash. Perhaps he was Óðin-favoured as men said. As he told people himself. Or perhaps he was blinded by his own hatred for the man who had taken everything from him. Perhaps his crew mistook arrogance and audacity for something else. Something greater. Maybe they saw a destiny in him which was no more god-touched than any man’s.

  He took the flask himself now and emptied it into their cups.

  ‘We kill his enemies and earn his silver,’ Valgerd said. ‘Then, when we are rich and Reinen’s ballast is all treasure instead of rocks, we put together our own war host and we sail north again to make war on the oath-breaker. We will kill him.’ She smiled. ‘And balance the scales.’

  Sigurd nodded, grinning at her. ‘So I am not a fool?’ he said.

  She drank until the cup was empty. ‘Yes, you are. But not for that,’ she said.

  He finished his own cup, willing himself to do something but finding he was unable to move. He might as well have been a nail stuck in the floor boards.

  Valgerd had been facing him but now she moved in the half-darkness, coming to sit beside him so that he felt the warmth of her body. He smelt the wet wool of her tunic and breeks mixed with the sweet scent of her sweat, a concoction unique to her amongst the crew and one which had his loins stirring now. And still he sat frozen, as petrified as a new beard on the eve of his first ship fight.

  ‘So do you want to go back to the camp?’ she asked him.

  ‘No,’ he said, swallowing.

  ‘Do you want me?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. There was no going back now.

  She moved and he was suddenly more terrified than ever because he thought she was getting up to leave, but then she knelt and threw one leg over both of his so that she straddled him. Then her hands were in his hair, her fingers on the flesh of his neck and her thumbs in the short bristles of his beard. She pulled his face towards hers and their mouths came together and as he breathed her in he saw her eyes close.

  They were stripped of it all now, the two of them. Unburdened of past and future, of duty and vengeance and all that it was to be the shieldmaiden and the would-be-jarl. No more bailing. Let me sink now and worry after, he thought, tasting her tongue and the ale on her breath, his body thrumming like a bow string.

  Following Haraldarson and the shieldmaiden in the dusk and rain without them noticing him had been as easy as breathing. On such foul nights as this, folk did not tend to notice anything much, other than where to tread so as not to end up on their arses in the mud.

  There had been no question in Fionn’s mind that he should follow them, even if it meant leaving the fire around which he and a group of Birka men had been sitting getting soaked to the skin. For it was the first time that Haraldarson had strayed more than twenty paces from the others since they had all sailed across Løgrinn, Sigurd in Reinen and Fionn in Crow, Knut’s own ship. They were close as arrows in a sheath, that crew. Tight as a fish’s arse, and Fionn had sat under oiled skins with seven strangers for company, had even managed to regale them with tales from Alba as the rain scourged sea and shore, though all the while he had an eye on the young golden-haired, gods-favoured man not a stone’s throw away.

  And when Haraldarson had announced to his companions that he was heading off into the gloaming to fetch them more ale, Fionn had expected the giant with the red beard to go with him, or perhaps the broad, even more dangerous-looking one whom they called Bear. It had been a surprise when the shieldmaiden stood to go with him, but then, even through the rain-flayed gloom, Fionn had seen the flash of fire in Haraldarson’s eyes and he understood completely. Haraldarson loved the woman. Or at the least he wanted her. And who could blame him, for she was something to behold in her brynja of polished rings, with her scramasax, sword and spear. She was beautiful, which was doubtless why she was rarely without her mail and never without her blades. He would be a fool who tried to force himself on her. He would also be a fool who thought that Haraldarson was as good as dead because a woman was all that stood between him and a knife in the heart.

  But Fionn was no fool. So he had followed them across the camp to the red tent in which Trygir sold his ale. He had stood in the deluge outside Trygir’s place, an ear close to the stinking sailcloth, sifting the words spoken within from the rain seething without. He had moved a little distance off and lingered in the shadows by the grain store, watching as Haraldarson and the shieldmaiden talked their way into the log house, and when the door closed behind them he had waited a while longer, about the time it takes to put an edge on a blunt sax. Or the time it takes to get soaked to the bone marrow.

  Then Fionn had walked through the mud, following in his prey’s tracks and pulling from his finger a silver ring which had once been worn by a Pictish king. He used the ring to buy his way into the log house, telling the fat man who had opened the door that it bought him entry as well as the man’s silence, at which the man had grinned the way only a drunk man can, more than happy with the trade.

  Now, he moved in the dark and the smoke, his blood pulsing in his ears and his chest tight with the thrill of what he was about to do. Of all the lives he had snuffed out, this one promised to stand out above the rest. And not because Haraldarson was rich or powerful, because he wasn’t. Nor because Fionn stood to be paid a hoard’s worth of silver for it – he had been paid more for others. There was just something about this one, about killing a man whom these Northmen believed to be gods-favoured.

  He drew his scían, his hand relishing the feel of the stag-antler handle. It fitted his palm the way some men fitted some women. As if the two were always destined for each other.

  Where were the gods when the knife went in? Where were they when the blade drank?

  She was riding him, the hungry bitch, her arse grinding on his lap like a pestle in a mortar, her golden, sweat-drenched hair loose over her back and shoulders. Fionn drew a long, even breath, clenched his stomach muscles, breathed out and struck. Fast. Clamping his right hand over her mouth and pulling her head back, thrusting the long knife into her throat and forcing the blade out so there could be no scream. He shoved her aside and dropped his knees on to the naked groin and withering prick and his eyes locked with those of the man beneath him.

  Fionn growled under his breath and plunged the scían down, again and again into the flesh, his left hand muffling his victim’s cries which, if they were heard at all, would be taken as the normal sounds of a good swiving. Five, six, seven times Fionn thrust the blade deep and pulled it free and already the blood was pooling in the creases and folds of the furs beneath them both.

  Then he ran the blade through a fistful of blanket and sheathed it, listening to the snoring and swiving and hushed, mumbled voices to ensure that no one was coming for him. He had to get out quickly, because the woman’s bowels had disgorged their contents in death and the reek was filling the place, stinging his eyes with its sharpness. Others would smell it too, and if not that then the iron tang of fresh blood, and so Fionn had to go now before it was too late.

  He looked once more at the mess he had made, then he slipped away, making for the same door through which he had entered, trying not to rush or draw attention to himself, drifting off unnoticed, like smoke through the roof hole.

  Outside, he hauled the sweet, wet air into his lungs and plunged on through the mud,
his mind reeling and his heartbeat thundering in his ears now. He had made a butcher’s table in the dark. He had slaughtered the woman like a beast and he had let his long knife drink deep of her lover.

  Now he cursed in the night, growled the foulest of insults at the rain and the cloud-veiled sky. Because the throat-cut woman was not the shieldmaiden Valgerd. And the dead man lying in a lake of his own blood was not Sigurd Haraldarson.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  ‘THIS IS THE furthest we have walked for as long as I can remember, and it does not help that I have to step over piles of horse shit reminding me that Knut and his friends are riding while we sprout blisters like toadstools,’ Svein complained.

  ‘Aye,’ Solmund agreed, ‘if you ask me, by the time we get wherever we are going we will have already earned the silver which Knut gave that arse-crack Asvith, and that is before we even get our swords wet.’

  They had been walking for two days and it had been hard going because the pine forest was thick and in places still boggy from the meltwater running down from the hills. It would have been easier had they not been in all their war gear, the weight of their brynjur and helmets dragging them down with each plodding step, their shields and food-stuffed nestbaggins slung over their backs and each of them carrying two spears or a spear and a long-hafted axe.

  ‘Much more of this and we’ll be too tired to do anything else after,’ Bjarni said. ‘“Well then?” this Alrik’s enemies will say, “are we not going to fight after all? When you have come all this way?” “No,” we’ll say, “for we’ve just walked our arses off and now we are here we don’t have it in us to fight you.”’

  Moldof muttered something foul, but whether it was aimed at Bjarni for his complaining, or whether the big man was expressing his own resentment at having to walk was impossible to say.

  ‘I don’t see why we couldn’t have horses,’ Thorbiorn said. ‘It is not right that we should be walking with the rest of these nobodies.’

  ‘Says the famous Thorbiorn at whose name men shake in their shoes,’ Bram said.

  ‘My father is a king,’ Thorbiorn said, ‘which is more than I can say for any of you.’

  ‘A king he may be, but even a good fruit-rich tree can sprout a sour apple now and then,’ Solmund said.

  ‘Still, the lad is right about the horses,’ Hagal Crow-Song said. ‘Sigurd is Óðin-kissed, and we all have a reputation.’ There were forty-four men in this war band which Knut was leading north through the forest, and many of them were striplings and untested men whom he had rounded up in Birka. Yet most of them seemed cheerful enough, even now brimming with a combination of the thrill and fear which squirms in a man’s belly when he knows he will soon be fighting. ‘Furthermore, it is going to rain. I can feel it in the air.’

  ‘Knut said we will be there before midday tomorrow,’ Olaf said, ‘so in the meantime if you could stop whining like little girls I would be happier.’ There were a few low grumbles but they soon died away and Olaf sighed with relief. ‘That’s better,’ he said, lifting his helmet so that he could scratch his sweat-matted hair. ‘Besides which, it is not going to rain, Crow-Song.’

  No sooner had he said it than a low peal of thunder rolled across a sky which, seen through the gaps in the spruce and birch canopy, was the colour of old hearth ash. A dozen heartbeats later the rain lashed down, as though a god had tipped over his fresh-water barrel. It found its way through the trees and bounced off helmets and the shields on their backs, and it filled the world with seething noise which drowned out Olaf’s cursing.

  The men grumbled, the rain rushed down, and Sigurd immersed himself in the memory of that night with Valgerd, when they had given themselves to each other. But they had both taken, too, and afterwards Valgerd had shrugged her brynja back on, buckled her sword belt and braided her hair, barely looking at him in the dark of the log house loft. Like the water’s surface closing over a dropped anchor stone, it was in some ways as if nothing at all had happened.

  ‘We should get back to the others before they smash some other crew’s heads and steal their ale,’ Valgerd had said.

  Sigurd had nodded, dazed, caught up in the seiðr which her scent on his skin wove around him.

  She had not cried out in joy at the end, like some women did. But she had arched her back, driving her hips forward to bring him deeper inside her and she had trembled and bitten her bottom lip hard enough to draw blood. When they were finished, Sigurd had rolled on to his back feeling utterly spent, more tired than after most shieldwall fights he had been in.

  ‘Are you coming? It will be dawn soon,’ she had said, and he had opened his eyes to see that she was already clothed again. She had her boots on and he was in his breeks and tunic when the shouting and screaming began and they peered over the ledge of the loft to see that men had drawn blades. A knot of them, armed with steel and oil lamps, had gathered where one of the hanging partitions had been pulled back.

  ‘Someone’s been murdered,’ Valgerd said, slinging a pair of ale skins over her shoulder and climbing on to the ladder.

  Sigurd caught the stench of it then, had been amongst the crows after enough fights to know that smell, of blood and shit. Of death. They climbed down and pushed their way through the throng to see Brodd-Helgi standing over the bodies of a man and a woman, both slaughtered whilst they were at it, by the looks, her throat cut out and him stabbed half a dozen times in the stomach, under the breastbone and into the heart. If the knife had been long enough.

  ‘What a fucking mess,’ a man beside Sigurd growled.

  ‘Did no one see anything?’ Brodd-Helgi was asking them all, his eyes wide with the shock of what had happened. The dead woman’s hair was long and golden and braided like Valgerd’s.

  ‘I’ll wager Stækar’s wife found out what he was up to,’ one of Brodd-Helgi’s henchmen said, at which Sigurd and Valgerd looked at each other, both recognizing the man who had been hauled out of the loft so that they might have it. ‘She came in and caught them at it,’ the man went on. ‘That’s what I reckon.’

  ‘And did this?’ Brodd-Helgi asked him, gesturing at the gore-slathered lovers. ‘You think Hildigunn came in here and carved Stækar up like this? Don’t be an idiot.’

  ‘Aye, because if she did, then she’s better with a blade than Stækar ever was,’ another man put in, and this got a chuckle even in a blood- and shit-stinking moment like that.

  The henchman shrugged. ‘Who else would want him dead?’ he asked, not ready to abandon his suspicions yet. There was a rumbling from the gathering at that. Still, no one came out with a name. Brodd-Helgi growled at a couple of big men to help him wrap the bodies in skins and carry them outside.

  ‘Let’s go,’ Valgerd said to Sigurd, so they had, walking back through the rain, which was lighter now, neither of them talking about the murder or what had happened before it. When they came back to the camp most of the others were snoring in their tents. Most but not all.

  ‘Where did you go for that? Asgard?’ Olaf asked, opening one eye and catching Sigurd by surprise as he put the ale skins down inside the canvas shelter and took off his wet cloak for the second time that night. Olaf was wrapped in furs and leaning against his sea chest. Clearly he had been waiting up for Sigurd, who felt like a beardless, wayward boy then, rather than the leader of a war band, albeit one as small as this.

  ‘There was a murder,’ he said, making sure not to look at Valgerd as he spoke. But she was already heading off to her own tent. ‘A man called Stækar and the woman he was tupping. Someone killed them in the log house.’

  ‘The woman’s husband, I’ll wager,’ Olaf said, arching an eyebrow as he pulled the furs up to his neck and shifted his great frame to get more comfortable. Sigurd thought he had gone back to sleep when he said, ‘What were you two doing in the log house?’

  Sigurd glanced at the massive pile of furs that was Svein, then across at Floki who lay along the other side of the tent, his two hand axes beside his head. They were both sleeping
and yet Sigurd could not have felt more guilty if he’d been the one who had murdered Stækar and his pretty friend. ‘We were drinking Alrik’s ale,’ he said, avoiding Olaf’s eyes, wrapping the leather belt around Troll-Tickler which was sleeping in its scabbard. It was no lie, was it?

  ‘Must be good stuff. Been gone half the night,’ Olaf mumbled, closing his eyes again.

  Better than you can imagine, Sigurd thought, though he said nothing as he sat on his own sea chest to pull off his mud-sheathed boots and get into his furs. Some sleep before the next day’s journey would be no bad thing.

  But he had lain there looking up at the canvas, listening to the rain drumming against it until dawn.

  Now he was walking through the sopping woods on his way to meet Alrik. In body at least. In mind he was back in that loft. He would cloak himself in the memory of it, wrap it around him for as long as he could, for he had a feeling that it would never happen again.

  And the next day they came soaked, cold and squelching in their shoes to the hill fort at Fornsigtuna.

  Not that it was on much of a hill, as Bram observed when they came out of the forest on to the rolling, rock-strewn ground south of the palisade. All the way round the borg the trees had been felled to prevent enemies coming upon it unseen and to provide livestock with grazing. Now, the meadow before Knut’s war band was a camp, with tents and men sitting round fires or perching on tree stumps. Horses cropped the new spring grass and sheep crowded in a pen, telling Sigurd that Alrik’s enemies had not been expecting him for they had not taken the animals inside the borg.

  ‘At least we’ll be eating well,’ Olaf said, and as soon as the words were out Sigurd caught the smell of mutton stew on the breeze.

  ‘We’ll have eaten those sheep and the horses too before we get in there,’ Moldof said, taking in the borg. And there was probably some truth in that for the place looked formidable, even on that nothing hill.

  ‘Aye, I begin to see why this Alrik sent Knut off looking for more men,’ Solmund said. ‘It would be easier for an old sod like me to get inside a pretty young wench than it will be to get inside that.’ While there were undoubtedly bigger hills thereabouts, the palisade topped a steep earthen bank made higher and steeper still by the deep ditch before it.