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

by Giles Kristian

  Jarl Harald was one of those worthy men, Gorm thought now, watching two thralls tie the boar’s feet together and thread a couple of spears through the legs to carry it off back to his hall and people as if it were some fabled, man-eating beast slaughtered at last by the warrior king. Yes, Harald had been a proper jarl. My equal perhaps. And perhaps that had been the problem, why in the end Gorm had to kill him. Perhaps? Ha! Of course it was.

  Didn’t see elk like that in this forest any more. Didn’t see jarls like Harald at his shoulder either.

  ‘We will have the light a little longer yet, lord,’ Hreidar said, pulling some bristles from the dead boar’s haunch as it hung there between the thralls, blood dripping rhythmically from the spear wound which had gone deep enough to kill it, tearing its heart, Hreidar had said. The champion lifted his fist and dropped the bristles and they fell more or less straight to the forest floor. ‘No wind,’ he said. ‘Shall we cut west and see what else we can find?’

  Gorm looked at Twigbelly, who tried his best not to look unenthusiastic about the prospect of walking further and into deeper, thicker forest instead of returning to the king’s hall for mead, meat and women.

  ‘Aye, on we go. We’ll find some full-grown beast,’ the king said, ‘and we’ll not go back until we do.’ This got some murmurs of approval from his hirðmen, who knew their king well enough to prefer his company when they had speared something decent. And fuck Jarl Arnstein Arngrimsson, Gorm thought. Let him drown in his own sweat. The fat swine had only come up to Avaldsnes because he wanted to ask the king’s permission to raid in the south as far as Mandal. Everyone knew the man was losing the respect of his people and hoped a good bit of booty-taking and blood-letting would keep the Bokn folk contented. So Gorm would let him raid, but he’d want a third of the loot. And the soft-bellied, red-faced toad would have to keep up with him now for another three or four rôsts at least, until they found some prey worthy of the king’s spear.

  ‘Someone’s coming, lord king,’ Otkel said, pointing his own spear north in the direction of Avaldsnes. Three riders. Coming noisily through the trees, kit and fittings thumping and jangling, breaking twigs as they came.

  Twigbelly will be pleased if this is the end of the hunt, Gorm thought.

  ‘Fools will scare off every creature between here and Snørteland,’ he growled. ‘Whoever it is I will flay them alive.’ His hirðmen nevertheless drew together, hands falling to sword grips until they knew who this was who cared nothing that they risked ruining the king’s hunting and his mood too.

  ‘It’s Alfgeir,’ Otkel said and men’s hands fell away from their swords at that, though it was only the younger, greener ones who relaxed. The others knew that Alfgeir, being an experienced man who had fought at King Gorm’s side for more than twenty summers, would not have ridden six rôsts and risked his lord’s anger for no good reason.

  Not Kadlin! Gorm asked the gods, pleaded really, struck with the sudden fear that something might have happened to his wife.

  ‘The queen?’ he asked even before Alfgeir had dismounted the snorting pony, whose nostrils were smoking in the chill pre-dusk air.

  ‘Queen Kadlin is well, lord king,’ Alfgeir said, and the king looked at the other two riders throwing their legs over their mounts’ backs. He prided himself on his ability to read men’s faces the way clever men could decipher rune stones, and these men were not fearful or nervous. They were excited. Eager to relay whatever news they had for him. Same with Alfgeir albeit he was better at hiding it.

  Alfgeir locked eyes with him, then glanced at Jarl Twigbelly.

  ‘Whatever it is, you can say it in front of Jarl Arnstein,’ Gorm told him. Twigbelly nodded in thanks for the courtesy. No doubt he was simply enjoying the rest.

  ‘We are betrayed, lord,’ Alfgeir said. ‘Sigurd Haraldarson has returned from Svealand at the head of a war band. He—’

  ‘A war band?’ Gorm put in, unable to stop himself. ‘But who would follow that whelp? How many men does he have? Two dozen?’

  ‘Reports vary. Three hundred. Maybe four.’ Alfgeir shook his head. ‘We do not know, but Sigurd is calling men to his banner. Offering them silver if they will fight with him against you.’

  ‘So he has a banner now, hey?’ Gorm looked at Hreidar. The champion spat on to the forest floor, violence simmering in him already.

  ‘More of a charm, lord. Of sorts,’ Alfgeir said. ‘A spear.’

  ‘A spear?’ Gorm looked at Twigbelly now, who was drinking ale from a skin which one of his men had handed him.

  ‘So your former champion did not manage to gut young Sigurd, then?’ the jarl said, licking his lips. ‘Moldof was his name if I recall. We heard he rowed off to gain the fame and position he lost along with his arm.’

  ‘Ha!’ Hreidar blurted, the king’s new champion and prow man making it clear what he thought about that.

  Gorm ignored jarl and champion both, turning his gaze back on Alfgeir who clearly had more to say.

  ‘Not just a spear, lord, but Gungnir. Óðin’s spear. It turns out that Sigurd had made another enemy, some Svear jarl, and this jarl captured him and took him to Ubsola. Meant to sacrifice Haraldarson to the gods.’ Alfgeir shrugged. ‘He wouldn’t know what a lucky shit Sigurd is.’

  Lucky? Gorm thought. Why don’t you say Óðin-kissed, for that is what everybody thinks. And rich now, too, if he has managed to draw three or four hundred men to him.

  ‘Sigurd escaped, the gods know how. And he pilfered the spear from the temple. It’s a big ’un, this spear,’ Alfgeir went on, holding the imaginary weapon in his hands.

  ‘I’ve seen it,’ Gorm said.

  ‘Of course,’ Alfgeir said, and well he might seeing as he had travelled with the king to Ubsola for the last Dísablót. Five years ago? Or six? When the blood had flowed like ale at the Jól feast and the sacred trees had groaned under their corpse-burdens. And the crows had fed till they near burst from so much flesh.

  ‘Well, the crows will feed again soon, when Haraldarson and his pack are put down,’ Gorm said, getting odd looks from those around him, for they had not been inside his head to see those memories of the blood rites. ‘So he has come back to settle this feud then. Good.’ Gorm nodded, looking at his hearth warriors, beginning to feel the same tremble in the blood that had got into these three messengers, making them ride hard through the forest to find their king. ‘He has enough ships to face me in the Strait?’ he asked Alfgeir. He would be surprised if so. Men were relatively easy to come by. Ships were not.

  ‘No, lord,’ Alfgeir said. ‘It seems he wants a land fight.’

  ‘Does he?’ Gorm said. He means to end this thing one way or the other then, he thought. No beating of oars to fly if things were going badly. Just the clash of shieldwalls. The spear din until the issue was decided.

  The red war.

  ‘Who would be mad enough to join him against you, lord?’ Twigbelly asked, pushing the stopper back into the ale skin and swiping the drops from his moustache bristles. ‘Even with a magic spear he cannot hope to beat you. Beat us,’ he added just in time. ‘No one of worth would join him.’

  ‘Betrayal, Alfgeir,’ Gorm said, remembering how this conversation had started. ‘You said betrayal.’ He could not have been talking about Sigurd, for they were already enemies, since long before Haraldarson had refused the jarl torc which Gorm had offered him. Since his own betrayal of Sigurd’s father if they were getting to the nub of it. Even so, who would have thought that Harald’s last living son, the pup of the litter at that, would survive so long and grow such fangs?

  ‘Yes, lord, betrayal,’ Alfgeir said, frowning, and his next words seemed stuck in his throat.

  ‘Well?’ Gorm snapped.

  Alfgeir cleared his throat. ‘There is another banner alongside this Óðin spear. The white axe on black.’

  Gorm almost laughed. ‘No, Alfgeir. Some mistake.’

  ‘No mistake, my king. It is Jarl Hrani Randversson’s banner. He is with Sigurd.’
Alfgeir took a step towards him. ‘There are whispers,’ he said, his own voice barely above a whisper, ‘that Jarl Hrani has even oath-sworn himself to Sigurd.’

  If that boar hanging beneath the spears had been an adult male, all bristling fury, and had it charged him at full speed the blow could not have struck Gorm like those words did.

  Gorm shook his head, trying to dispel the very idea of it. ‘Jarl Hrani hates Sigurd as much as I do,’ he said. ‘Haraldarson killed his father. No, Randversson would never swear to him. Nor would he turn against me after all I have given him. He would not wear his father’s torc if I had not put it round his neck. As I put it round Randver’s neck before him.’

  Alfgeir thumbed back in the direction of Avaldsnes. ‘The men who brought the news have no reason to lie from what I can see,’ he said. ‘But I have told them that they cannot leave until you have heard with your own ears what they have to say.’ He shrugged. ‘And yet even if they are mistaken about Jarl Hrani Randversson, what they say about Sigurd is likely to be true. The strutting shit is coming and he wants a fight.’

  And by the gods I will give him one, Gorm thought. ‘Jarl Arnstein, how many spears can you bring?’

  The fat jarl considered the question. ‘Thirty hearthmen. As for the levy,’ he chewed his lip, ‘sixty or seventy and all spear and shield-armed.’ Gorm grinned. That was at least ninety just from this one jarl who was sworn to him. There were eleven other jarls whom he could call on to bring their hirðmen and bonders to his banner. Gods but he could raise five hundred spears from his own lands!

  ‘Ride back, Alfgeir,’ he said. ‘Send word to Jarls Leiknir, Baugr, Vragi and Tósti. The others too. Tell them I have raised my banner. Tell them to muster their fighting men. All of them. If any refuses, he shall be my enemy.’

  Alfgeir grinned and nodded and walked back to his pony and the two others, who were also grinning. For war was coming, a war which they could not lose. And in war men make their reputations. They make themselves silver-rich too.

  Gorm turned back to Hreidar. ‘So we will go that way,’ he said, pointing his bloodied spear first westward and then at the hanging boar around which the flies swarmed. ‘This piglet must have a father or some big brothers hereabouts.’

  Hreidar grinned and nodded and the thralls and his hearthmen prepared to set off again, buzzing themselves with the talk of war.

  ‘But … lord king …’ Twigbelly began, again swiping sweat from his forehead. There were plenty of flies around the jarl too, Gorm saw. ‘Surely we should be getting back. You will have much to prepare. I myself will need to get word to the outlying farms.’

  ‘Not at all, Jarl Arnstein,’ Gorm said, batting the man’s concerns away with a big hand. ‘We did not come all this way for one little boar. Besides, if you are like me you do your best planning with a full belly.’

  The jarl forced a smile and nodded. ‘Of course, my king,’ he said, lifting his spear purposefully.

  Maybe we will drown you in your own sweat, you hog, Gorm thought, spreading his lips with a smile as he walked off into the trees with Hreidar beside him.

  Some decent prey for their spears and then back to the hall to talk of the coming steel-storm. For Sigurd was back and this time he would not slip through the net. Perhaps I can catch him alive, Gorm thought, the very idea of that flooding him like the first waves of drunkenness. I could chain him to the rock and invite everyone to come and watch him drown. Make a feast of it.

  But first to spear something for the table. And remind this fat jarl what kings are made of.

  CHAPTER TEN

  ‘STRANGE BEING BACK here like this,’ Olaf said.

  And it was strange. Sigurd looked over at Jarl Hrani’s high seat, the seat in which Sigurd himself had sat when it had belonged to Jarl Randver and Sigurd had come to Örn-garð to kill him. Now Hrani was the power in Hinderå and he and Sigurd were allies, which was the Norns spinning men’s wyrds after too much mead in Solmund’s opinion. And he wasn’t the only one.

  ‘This man killed your father, Hrani,’ one of the hall’s white-beards reminded everyone, as if they needed reminding. He had forgone the jarl or lord or any other term of respect in order to press the point that until very recently it had been a better man’s backside polishing that beechwood seat which sat halfway along the east side where the wall bowed outwards. ‘And now you would have us feast him? Share our meat and mead … with him? This … shit from Skudeneshavn who sent our lord to the crabs and denied him a jarl’s pyre.’

  There were plenty of low mumbles at that from those who thought the old warrior had spoken boldly and well, albeit the sound was deadened by the pelts and skins that covered the wall’s dark timbers.

  But Hrani was their jarl now and it seemed to Sigurd he knew how to be one too, for he held his anger out of sight like a blade in a sheath, his eyes doing all the steel-work instead.

  ‘If you are going on a long sea journey, Athulf, do you eat all the food in the first day or two just because it feels good having a full belly? Or do you ration it so that it will last until you reach your destination or else can raid for more?’

  This did not of course need an answer and Athulf swallowed whatever it was he had been about to say then.

  ‘I am thinking about more than just the sweet pleasure there is to be had from revenge,’ Hrani added, turning to all his people who had gathered in that old hall which was as chokingly smoky as Sigurd remembered it. ‘I am thinking about the whole journey, not just the first crossing from shore to shore, because that is what a jarl must do. A jarl owes his people more than blood. More than a few arm rings and slaves. For those can be snatched away by some other raiding band and we can all be left grinding acorns for bread and watching our children go hungry. We can be called away from our crops to fight for a king who will not risk his own hearthmen because he has others to do the dying for him.’ Hrani had steered that so that every man and woman there was thinking of King Gorm without their jarl having spoken the king’s name aloud. ‘I have put aside my right to vengeance, my blood-duty to my father, in order to raise us all,’ Hrani said. ‘Would you rather wheel like gulls behind a fishing boat, waiting for fish heads and guts, or soar like eagles, choosing your prey?’

  ‘Speaks well when he needs to, I’ll give him that,’ Olaf muttered beside Sigurd as a hum rose from the people of Hinderå. Still, it was on a knife-edge this thing, and Sigurd doubted even the Norns knew which way it was going to go. As for King Thorir, he looked bored already, standing there waiting for someone to refill his cup, clearly underwhelmed by the hall which, compared with his golden, Freyja-lit hall, was like a smoky cave. ‘Black as Hel’s arsehole,’ he had growled when they had first been led inside.

  ‘How? How will wading into a hard fight against our king raise us?’ a knörr-breasted woman called out, hands on hips, her elbows creating space around her even in that crowded place, ‘because I never feel like some soaring eagle when I am burning one of my sons or stitching their flesh back together.’ Her large silver brooches and the keys hanging from her belt marked her as a rich karl’s wife and Hrani paid her the respect she was owed by nodding and holding up a hand to hush the crowd so that he might answer.

  ‘In return for helping Sigurd Haraldarson have his revenge on King Gorm,’ the jarl said, cleverly hinting that Sigurd was, unlike him, a short-sighted man, ‘I will become king.’ There was a gasp at that, followed by the beating of cups on tables by those of Hrani’s warriors who were already invested in their jarl’s ambition. ‘Together, Sigurd Haraldarson, King Thorir of Skíringssalr and I will roll King Gorm down his hill at Avaldsnes. I will be king and we will live there and grow rich on the taxes from all the ships going up the Karmsund Strait.’

  ‘And the hall we are building at Skudeneshavn?’ a man asked. A carpenter probably, who had downed his adze and his augers to return to Örn-garð to hear for himself the news of this strange new alliance between his jarl and his enemy. ‘We are at head height with the walls alr
eady and the turf for the roof is due to be cut by the next moon.’

  ‘We will finish the hall at Skudeneshavn but I will not live there,’ Jarl Hrani said. ‘It will belong to Sigurd Haraldarson and his people, as did Eik-hjálmr before it.’ Some did not like that by the sound of it, but Hrani took no notice. ‘Those of our people who wish to stay here may do so, but those who wish to come with me to Avaldsnes will be given farmland so that they might start again. We will all be rich after this fight, and that is before all the ship taxes that will come to us,’ he held out his cupped hands, ‘pouring in like rain.’

  ‘And the gods are with us!’ Hadd Hog-Head said, lifting his cup high towards his jarl. The champion then waved his ale in Sigurd’s direction so that Sigurd, who had been quiet until now, knew that it would soon be up to him to tip the scales in their favour. ‘We have Gungnir, Óðin’s own spear, to poke those Avaldsnes men with,’ Hog-Head called, grinning from ear to ear. ‘How can we lose?’

  All eyes turned to Sigurd, not that there hadn’t been plenty of eyes on him from the very beginning because of his fame amongst these folk. Hrani’s younger brother Amleth was staring at him from behind the jarl’s right shoulder and Sigurd wondered what was in that young man’s mind, for Amleth had once been set to marry Runa and celebrate in this very hall. But Sigurd was never going to let that marriage take place and rather than bringing his sister’s dowry to the wedding he had brought mayhem and slaughter. Instead of moaning with the pleasure of the rut on what should have been his wedding night, Amleth had moaned with pain because Floki’s axe had cut into his shoulder deeply enough that bone had gleamed in the wound.

  But now the wind had changed and Sigurd must set the sail accordingly. Now an alliance, not war, was what was needed with Hrani’s people, and it was up to Sigurd to convince them of it.