Wings of the Storm: (The Rise of Sigurd 3)

by Giles Kristian

  ‘The arrogant bloody fool,’ he muttered now, looking south from the borg’s ramparts over the tents of Guthrum’s camp towards the trees beyond.

  ‘What’s done is done,’ Bram beside him said, and Olaf realized he’d spoken aloud.

  ‘It’s Asgot’s bloody fault,’ Olaf went on. He might as well now. ‘He’s filled the lad’s head with all this stuff about being Óðin-favoured. Sigurd thinks the Allfather walks next to him with a bloody great shield.’

  ‘Maybe he does,’ Bram suggested with a shrug. ‘The lad’s still alive, or at least he was last time you saw him. Which he had no right being, seeing as Jarl Guthrum found him in his own tent ready to cut his throat like a prize bull.’

  Olaf gripped the hilt of the sword at his hip. ‘This is what keeps Sigurd alive. What keeps any of us alive. The moment you start thinking you’re some god’s golden boy is the moment you trip over your own damned gut rope because some growling fuck has opened your belly with an axe.’

  ‘I say we put our shields together and walk out of here,’ Svein said. He was looking south too, one arm resting on the head of his long-hafted axe. ‘If those turds out there have the stomachs for a fight, so be it. But I am thinking that without their jarl here they are more likely to let us go on our way.’

  ‘And suffer Guthrum’s wrath when he returns and finds out one hundred men let a half crew of Sword-Norse escape like a fart on the wind?’ Olaf said. ‘I don’t think so, Red. And anyway, where would we go?’

  ‘Maybe the gods will tell Asgot where Guthrum has gone. Maybe they will speak to him through the runes,’ Hagal said, getting in on it like a dog wanting a gnaw of the bone.

  Olaf grunted. ‘If the gods are playing with us then they cannot be trusted and are as likely to tell Asgot that Guthrum is halfway across Bifröst when in reality the whoreson is taking a shit in the woods not five rôsts away.’

  ‘I have an idea,’ Moldof said, which at least got Olaf’s attention, because Moldof did not waste words and if he said he had an idea then chances were it was worth listening to. ‘One or two of us go out there and grab one of Guthrum’s men. One of those little sods who’ve been sneaking up at dusk to take pot shots.’ He nodded towards a bowman who was sitting in the grass on the edge of the enemy camp fletching an arrow. ‘We persuade the little prick to tell us where his jarl has gone.’ He turned to Olaf. ‘At least that part will no longer be a mystery.’

  But before Olaf could say that at least there was an idea worth a try, one of the borg men called to Knut that men were coming up the hill.

  They spilled from the tree line to the south and came under a banner which no one in the borg seemed to recognize: a black boar’s head on a yellow cloth. Nor did Guthrum’s men know these newcomers by the looks of it, for their camp burst into frenzied life as men shrugged into mail coats if they had them, and grabbed shields and weapons and tried to look like warriors.

  ‘Not friends of yours then?’ Olaf said to Alrik who had come with Knut to see what was happening.

  ‘Wish they were,’ Alrik said, a little too earnestly for Olaf’s taste.

  There were some fifty warriors under that boar’s head banner and they looked serious enough, though there was clearly a bit of cock swinging going on, as Bram put it, what with them trying to make an impression on those already gathered on and around that hill. Whoever was giving the orders made them stop just over a spear-throw short of the borg’s gate, and Guthrum’s men, who had done nothing to stop them, just stood there scratching their arses waiting for someone to tell them what to do.

  ‘It’s us this new lot are interested in, then,’ Knut said, as they watched one of Jarl Guthrum’s warriors walk across and up the slope alone, his hands raised to the newcomers to show that he meant them no harm. Though what harm he thought he could do to those fifty men, even if he’d had a sword in each hand and a flaming firebrand sticking out of his arse, was a mystery.

  A big man in a helmet and mail greeted him, then pointed at the borg with his spear. They did not talk for long and after the time it takes a hungry man to empty a bowl of pottage the newcomer and one of his companions strode up to the wall, Jarl Guthrum’s man following some ten paces behind.

  ‘Lord Alrik! I mean you no harm.’ This was a good start at least, Olaf thought, as Alrik stepped up to the stakes and straightened his back.

  ‘I’m Alrik. Who are you?’

  ‘I am someone who wants no part in this dispute you have with Jarl Guthrum,’ the mailed man said, and Svein murmured that here was another Norseman far from home. ‘From what I have heard, this feud of yours is a ravenous bitch, eating men the way the ocean swallows them in a storm.’

  Alrik seemed to consider this, as if looking for the insult in it. But in the end he must have found only the truth. ‘Then what do you want?’ he asked. ‘And why is my man standing at your shoulder when he is supposed to be here with the rest of us?’

  All eyes on the borg’s ramparts flicked across to the second man.

  ‘Thór’s hairy sack,’ Svein growled.

  ‘Knew that dog would come back to bite us,’ Aslak said.

  ‘Who is it?’ Solmund hissed because his eyes were not what they had been.

  ‘Trouble, that’s who,’ Olaf said, for there was Kjartan Auðunarson who had slipped away before they’d had a chance to put a knife in him. He stood there looking quietly smug, with a face that just begged to be smacked and those two long beard ropes hanging from his chin.

  Kjartan nodded at Alrik. ‘If I had stayed I’d be feeding the worms now, lord, and not because of Jarl Guthrum’s men.’

  Alrik waved a hand as though wafting away a bad smell. He would not do that nithing Kjartan the honour of asking any more about it. Instead he looked back to the other man. ‘So who are you? Or if you won’t tell me that, what do you want?’ He spread his arms wide. ‘As you can see, I am busy not letting those goat-fuckers steal my iron and silver.’

  Olaf looked at the war band waiting in their skjaldborg across the hill. They were well armed, many of them wearing helmets and mail. At the centre of their line, standing beneath that boar’s head banner, were five men who were adorned with war gear easily as fine as anything Sigurd’s crew owned. There was a boy too, no more than twelve years old and even he was ring-coated, which was some expense to go to for a boy who would be grown out of that brynja in a summer or two.

  Olaf nodded towards those men. ‘See the one with the pretty helmet?’ he asked Bram, Svein and the others standing with him. ‘That’s a jarl’s torc at his neck.’

  No one disagreed. Some growled curses.

  ‘There is a man fighting for you, Lord Alrik,’ the mailed man – who Olaf now realized was merely this new jarl’s voice – said. ‘A young Norseman who thinks he is Óðin-favoured. I am not interested in the outlaws and dregs he has with him, but that strutting, golden-haired son of a flea-bitten whore will make himself known to me now.’ He conferred with Kjartan and nodded. ‘Wears the name Byrnjolf these days.’

  ‘An enemy of yours then by the sound of it,’ Alrik said, to his credit not even glancing at Olaf or the other Norsemen. ‘I cannot see why I would hand over one of my men just because you want him. Particularly a man whose courage and war-craft helped me take back this borg from Jarl Guthrum.’

  The Norseman looked across the hill at Jarl Guthrum’s men who were still waiting patiently, spear blades pointing at the blue sky, probably sweating by now in their wool which was layered thick because most of them lacked for a brynja. ‘You look like a man who does not need any more enemies,’ the Norseman told Alrik.

  ‘And you sound like a man who is far from home,’ Alrik said, which was true enough because he was a Norseman in a land of Spear-Svear. Then Alrik raised a hand. ‘But let us not make trouble where there does not need to be any. The man you seek is not here.’

  ‘I have silver for you, Lord Alrik. A sackful of it.’ The Norseman pointed back to the trees, meaning that as well as those in the shieldw
all behind him, he most likely had friends waiting out of sight with the horses and silver and whatever else they had brought with them. ‘Just give me this Byrnjolf and the silver is yours.’

  ‘I am not lying, Norseman. The man you want is not here.’

  ‘Then where is he?’ the Norseman asked.

  ‘Jarl Guthrum has him. He’s Guthrum’s prisoner along with a shieldmaiden and another young man who is one of the best fighters I have ever seen.’

  Alrik shrugged. ‘You tell me. The arse-welt disappeared days ago. Perhaps he has heard that his wife is swiving every stinking thrall in his hall. Or maybe he is just homesick.’

  ‘Do you have any of that silver for the man who tells you where Jarl Guthrum is?’ This was from Guthrum’s man who had followed the Norsemen like a dog waiting for scraps.

  The Norseman nodded. ‘That information would be worth something, yes,’ he said.

  Guthrum’s man looked nervous then. Suddenly he was not sure he should be saying anything about it. ‘And you will pay my jarl the silver you offered Alrik … if he agrees to sell you his prisoner, this Byrnjolf?’

  The Norseman nodded. ‘Jarl Guthrum will have plenty to go around,’ he said, which was the best way of putting it to an oath-sworn man such as this, who relied on his ring-giver.

  ‘Here we go,’ Solmund gnarred.

  ‘My lord Guthrum has gone north to Uppland. To the temple at Ubsola.’

  A hiss escaped from Asgot at that, but Olaf was watching the Norseman, who cursed under his breath and glanced at Kjartan before turning back to Guthrum’s man. ‘Why?’ he asked.

  ‘That is my jarl’s business,’ Guthrum’s man said.

  ‘I’ll tell you one thing, that doesn’t bode well for Sigurd and the others,’ young Thorbiorn said and Olaf looked at him because being the son of King Thorir at Skíringssalr the lad likely knew more about the Svear and the goings-on at Ubsola than Olaf or any of his westerners. But for Asgot perhaps. ‘Men go there to appease the gods. Blood offerings and such,’ Thorbiorn said. He looked almost amused but had the sense not to smile.

  The Norseman opened the purse on his belt and pulled out some hacksilver; half an arm ring, or just under half. He tossed it to Guthrum’s man, who caught it, his face beneath the beard flushing red because he felt like a traitor, though not enough to turn the reward down.

  ‘Whose banner is that?’ Knut asked, which was as well because Olaf had been about to ask the same question even if it meant drawing attention to himself. Not because he didn’t know, but because he wanted to hear it said aloud.

  ‘Do not concern yourself with it, friend,’ the Norseman said. ‘As Lord Alrik pointed out, you are busy keeping hold of your silver and iron. Besides, we will be on our way and you will not likely see us again.’

  ‘I know whose banner it is,’ Olaf said under his breath. ‘It’s bloody Hrani Randversson’s.’

  ‘I told you I had seen that Kjartan Auðunarson at Örn-garð!’ Crow-Song said, recalling one of his visits to Jarl Randver’s hall when he had been a skald. Nowadays he was just a fighter like the rest of them.

  ‘What do you want, Crow-Song? An arm ring?’ Olaf said. ‘For knowing you had seen him before but not knowing where until it was too late to do anything about it?’

  ‘I told you the day before he sloped off,’ Hagal protested, scowling.

  ‘Aye, you did,’ Olaf admitted. ‘Well, I would have saved us a lot of trouble if I’d cut Kjartan’s throat that first day I smelt something off about him.’

  ‘Which is why you can’t blame the man for slithering off the way he did,’ Moldof rumbled. ‘Knew he was dead if he stayed.’

  He had a point. But Kjartan had done more than vanish to save his own skin. Who knew why the man had left Hinderå in the first place and come east as far as the Baltic Sea? As one of Jarl Randver’s hearthmen perhaps he was no friend of Randver’s son Hrani, who now wore Randver’s torc at his neck, and left of his own accord. Or perhaps he had offended Jarl Hrani in some way and got himself outlawed. Whatever the reason, rather than wake up dead with Sigurd or Olaf’s knife in him, Kjartan had seen an opportunity. He had packed his sea chest and taken the news of Sigurd’s whereabouts back to Örn-garð and what better way was there to fix things with the new young jarl than that?

  ‘We will be on our way then,’ the Norseman said, but before he turned away he asked Alrik if there was any message he wanted delivered to Jarl Guthrum. He was barely able to keep the curl of a smile from his lips as he asked it.

  Alrik was twisting one strand of his drooping moustaches between his finger and thumb. ‘Tell Jarl Guthrum that there is no point begging the gods for help, for they do not like to see jarls throw their men’s lives away like he does. Tell him that the gods have already turned their backs on him.’

  The Norseman nodded and he and Kjartan turned and walked back towards where, if Olaf was right, Jarl Hrani Randversson waited in his pretty helmet under his new boar’s head banner. Guthrum’s man was already halfway back to his own camp, no doubt hoping his fellows had not seen the Norseman give him that piece of hacksilver.

  ‘Kjartan!’ Olaf called, unable to stop himself, and both men turned back, their eyes on Olaf.

  ‘Tell your jarl that if he goes after Sigurd I swear by all the gods I will kill him.’ The way Olaf saw it there was no reason to hide Sigurd’s identity now. And there was every chance that Hrani had heard that threat with his own ears from where he stood with his warriors.

  ‘From here it does not look like you are in a good position to swear such things, Olaf of Skudeneshavn,’ Kjartan called back.

  ‘Jarl Randver thought the same thing before Sigurd’s scramasax opened his throat and we dumped him over the side,’ Olaf shouted. ‘I think he changed his mind about it as he sank to the sea bed and the fishes came to peck at him.’ Perhaps it did not mean much, yelling threats and insults from behind a wall, but it felt good. ‘If young Hrani wants to wear that torc for a few more years yet, he would be wise to piss off back to Norway.’

  The other Norseman growled something to Kjartan and turned away. And Kjartan went with him.

  ‘So I am not the only one with enemies,’ Alrik said, grinning at Olaf.

  ‘That’s the trouble,’ Olaf said, watching that yellow war banner flap in the breeze. ‘You kill one and another pops up like a damned toadstool. Take my advice, lads,’ he said for the benefit of anyone within earshot. ‘When choosing your enemies try to pick men who have no sons. It’ll save you no end of misery.’

  Svein came up to Olaf, his forehead furrowed. ‘So, Uncle, what do we do now?’

  Olaf was still watching the war band and their leader with the helmet that looked more gold than grey. Someone gave a command and the whole lot of them, some fifty very well-armed warriors, slung shields on their backs, turned and headed for the woods.

  ‘You know very well what we’re going to do, Red,’ Olaf said.

  They went over the wall on the borg’s north side, one after another down the same rope until they all waited on the slope beneath the palisade, hearts hammering, ears straining for any sound which would warn them that they had been spotted by one of Jarl Guthrum’s men.

  They had let three nights pass since Jarl Hrani had come, hoping for a night on which the moon was cloud-veiled because Olaf decided the risk of waiting was worth it for a better chance of slipping away unseen. At this time of year they could not hope for a pitch-black night, nor anything like proper darkness, but it was as dark as it was going to get and they had been ready. Now all they had to do was make it to the tree line, which would have been far easier had there not been a group of warriors camped round a fire halfway down the hill.

  Aside from the main camp there were such knots of men positioned all around the fort, each within shouting distance of another, so it was not as if Olaf really expected that they would be able to pass through the ring unnoticed, like ghosts leaving their burial mounds to walk amongst the living. Which was why he was not surpr
ised when the first shout went up.

  ‘Suppose we’d better run then,’ Solmund said with the sort of disgust you would expect. For no Norseman worth his sword enjoyed running from his enemies, but an old Norseman, whose knees ached with the rain and whose neck creaked like a rusty hinge, liked it even less.

  Olaf did not answer. He was already running.

  They didn’t care about the noise of shields scraping on brynjur or thumping against helmets, or buckles jingling or even their own breathing, which sounded like a load of forge bellows all feeding the fire. They just ran, because that was hard enough given the war gear, furs, cloaks, ale skins and nestbaggins full of food weighing them down. They had also divided the silver hoard which Alrik had given to Sigurd between them and Olaf thought that these pieces of silver clinking together made the loudest sound of everything.

  ‘They’re coming,’ Thorbiorn called, risking a backwards glance which could easily see him trip on the uneven ground. Moths flew out of the long grass before them and now and then a ground-nesting bird clattered up hooting or squawking into the night.

  ‘Course they’re bloody coming,’ Bram said. ‘Arseholes can hear our silver singing to them.’

  ‘Let’s … put … a few down,’ Svein managed, thinking that two or three dead Svearmen would discourage the rest. Or perhaps he just wanted to catch his breath.

  ‘And give the rest of them time to catch up?’ Olaf said. Which was all the answer Svein was going to get because Olaf didn’t have the breath to waste. No man did who tried running in mail.

  The shouts from behind them were getting louder. Guthrum’s men were gaining, unencumbered as they were. An arrow streaked through the grey above Olaf’s head. He thought he saw another from the corner of his eye but realized it was a bat, as the darker mass of the pine woods loomed before them, its sweet scent hanging on the air.

  Then they were amongst the trees, where it actually felt like night time, the strange half-light shafting through the woods only so far before it could penetrate no further. And at least there was a good enough reason to stop running, because running face first into a tree trunk was something no one wanted to have to live down.