The Valhalla Saga

by Snorri Kristjansson

  ‘I will, my Lord.’

  After the jarl had said his goodbyes and scurried away, Hjalti hawked and spat. ‘Lord of sheep and ruler of mud,’ the gaunt man said with a sneer. ‘He’ll get a few extra bags of grain for being sneaky enough to arrive before the others, but give him a sword and he’ll try to plough with it.’

  ‘Maybe so,’ the king said, ‘but have you ever had your foot run over by a plough?’

  Hjalti checked for signs of a joke, found none and swallowed. ‘No,’ he muttered. ‘No, I haven’t.’

  ‘We shall keep it that way. You are from around here, Hjalti, are you not?’

  ‘I left young, to go raiding, but my father’s farm is about six days further south in a small valley by the coast.’

  ‘I see. All right, so who’s next?’

  ‘Hakon Jarl wants to talk to you.’

  King Olav didn’t even try to hide his displeasure. ‘Send him in,’ he said. ‘I’ll receive him in his hall.’

  Hjalti disappeared and the king made his way out into the big hall. The men were singing louder now – another group, Southern boys by the look of them, had taken up the challenge; they were braying out a horrible old rhyme about Loki and the goat.

  Olav was the only one to see Hakon enter. Since he’d landed his fleet on Hakon’s doorstep and taken over his house, the former Jarl of Trondheim had almost faded. Now, framed by the doorway he must once have filled, he looked less like an iron-fisted ruler and more like a tired old man. He shuffled in and sat down at the long table, opposite the king. Hjalti appeared beside him and made his way to his seat at King Olav’s right side.

  ‘Your Majesty,’ Hakon began, slow and heavy, and Olav had to resist the urge to leap down and slap the words out of him. ‘You haven’t – I mean, your men haven’t— I need more food. And peat for my fire. My bones are cold.’

  ‘Your bones are cold because it’s winter and you’re old. Tell me about Gunnthor,’ Olav said. Colour flashed in Hakon’s cheeks, and his hands balled into fists at his sides.

  Good, he thought. That’ll keep him warm for a spell.

  ‘Gunnthor is a good man,’ the old man said. ‘He looks after his people.’

  ‘Can he be trusted?’ Hjalti said.

  Hakon flashed a look at Olav. The king smirked, and the old chieftain smirked back and for a moment the two men shared an understanding.

  ‘Oh, yes,’ Hakon said, ‘good man. That’s what I said. Trust him. Definitely.’

  Hjalti leaned back, satisfied.

  He had a lot to learn, Olav thought. You don’t ask the enemy who you should trust. ‘Stew for the Jarl,’ he shouted and within moments one of the local boys had arrived with a generously filled bowl.

  As he watched Hakon tuck into his food, Olav leaned over to Hjalti. ‘Go out and check on the weather, will you. I have a feeling in my bones.’

  Hjalti rose without question and moved towards the flaps of skin. King Olav watched him go, then waved Einar over. The tall boy had been put in charge of the hunters, despite his tender age – the men said he could shoot the beak off a blackbird at a hundred paces; he’d been personally responsible for a good half the contents of the stew. He was quiet, effective and loyal, and not for the first time, King Olav prayed silently that the Lord would send him a few more such men.

  ‘Any word from the travellers?’ he asked.

  Einar thought this over before he answered, ‘No, your Majesty, still no word. My boys saw Storrek Jarl’s party at a distance a couple of days ago, but they didn’t see us.’ He paused, then added, ‘Cold out there.’

  ‘No sign of Valgard?’

  ‘No sign,’ the hunter said.

  The king waved Einar off as Hjalti returned and reported, ‘The wind is dying down, my Lord.’

  ‘Hakon!’ King Olav said just as the old Jarl finished his last spoonful of stew. ‘Tell me more about the guests we are about to receive.’

  *

  The sky was the crisp colour of bluebells in spring and the sun’s rays bounced off the pristine snow, frozen in a hard, sparkling shell. The column, men and horses both, inched forward.

  At the front, a broad-shouldered youth leading a dappled horse dug his walking stick into the snow and picked his way huffily through the crusty edges of the white carpet. ‘I hate him. I hate him, I hate him, I hate him,’ he muttered.

  ‘Shut up, Heimir,’ the rider growled. Udal Jarl was a block of a man, with a bushy red beard to go with a thick, red braid of hair that had only a few streaks of white in it. ‘Shut up and watch your mouth.’

  ‘But Father, why are we going? You said yourself that he was—’

  ‘I know what I said,’ Udal rumbled, ‘and if you repeat it I’ll break your nose again. Do you remember your uncle’s dog?’

  ‘The one that started biting?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Of course I do. Why?’

  Up ahead the bright blue winter sky was now smeared with heavy grey clouds. Udal Jarl cleared his throat and spat, a long arc into the snow.

  ‘You can’t go straight at a dog like that. You have to feed it first: feed it, and maybe scratch it behind the ear, until it’s close and it trusts you. And then—?’

  Heimir Udalsson turned around to look at his father, who rewarded him with a smile full of jagged, yellowing teeth.

  ‘—then you take care of the problem. Understood?’

  The boy smiled back. ‘Understood,’ he said, and he turned around and waded through the snow with renewed vigour. ‘Here, doggie! Here, boy!’ he shouted, thrashing at the snow with his stick.

  Behind him, Udal Jarl grinned. This was going to be a good trip.

  *

  Two valleys over, Storrek Jarl scratched himself and farted loudly. ‘I’m tired of this!’ he shouted. ‘Fucking Southern twig king-child, summoning us like – like what? Like we’re his fucking sheepdogs?’

  The five men in his convoy knew better than to answer; they just kept trudging along in the footsteps of their fat chieftain.

  ‘He comes up here, pushes poor old Hakon around – and for what? Does he think we’ll bend the knee? Fenrir can piss in his eye,’ he mumbled into his bushy beard.

  Behind him, one of his men shouted and pointed up at a huge flock of gannets flying overhead, heading south.

  ‘The birds are coming his way too,’ Storrek Jarl muttered. ‘Hope they shit on him. Let’s move!’ Still grumbling to no one in particular, he waddled on through the snow.

  *

  The night was cold and crisp and starless, with oppressive grey clouds covering the village. Astride his white horse, King Olav Tryggvason, rightful ruler of Norway and champion of the White Christ, leaned back and waited, savouring the smell of burning pitch on the torches that circled the small settlement.

  Finn’s voice rang out in the night. ‘Who is your chieftain?’

  The man had a good voice on him, the king mused. Finn Trueheart: good old dependable Finn. Sharp as an old hammer, but equally useful.

  Voices carried on the wind and a patch of darkness moved beneath him.

  ‘They’re ready, my Lord,’ a disembodied voice said by his knee.

  Olav didn’t reply but adjusted the metal band he wore in place of a crown – the damn thing was still not quite comfortable – and touched the reins lightly. The horse started walking towards the fires. He’d taken pains to train this one properly himself; the men needed to see that he was the master of his surroundings. You could hardly expect to rule a kingdom if you couldn’t control your own horse.

  The men parted before him like the sea before Moses and light spilled out from behind the massed bodies.

  The place was much as he had come to expect. He rode towards the centre, towards the shrine, where Finn had lined up their elders all in a row. He reined in and dismounted swiftly. Aware of the eyes on hi
m, he walked around the shrine. The cross at his breast felt heavy, and he was glad that he could still feel the burn of conviction. He would judge them according to their behaviour.

  Turning to the farmers, he fixed the leader of the council with the coldest stare he could muster. ‘Who is your god?’

  The man looked at him and smirked. ‘Now that . . . that is a tricky question,’ he said.

  Olav felt a pang of jealousy. He was not a vain man, but he had to admit that he wished he had the council leader’s height, almost a head taller than his future king. The man was handsome, with long black hair flowing to his shoulders, sparkling, green eyes and a fox-like smirk that was fast becoming a full-blown smile. ‘A tricky question indeed.’

  Finn punched him in the mouth. ‘You will respect the king,’ he growled.

  The man didn’t flinch. A thick blue liquid seeped out of his burst lip, drying up almost immediately.

  Finn was stunned. ‘You little—’ He swung at the man again, then froze in mid-movement and coughed. The farmer’s hand returned to his side, a wooden sliver dripping with black blood in his hand. Finn collapsed, sputtering and clutching his throat.

  Olav grabbed for his sword, but it wasn’t there any more. ‘Attack!’ he screamed, but no one in the circle moved.

  The council leader wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. ‘It is very rude, wouldn’t you say, to march into someone’s home and presume to order them around, to tell them what they should do. How they should stand, and walk, and believe. Don’t you think?’

  Olav screamed at his body to move, but it didn’t – couldn’t. ‘I – I – bring the word—’

  ‘—of the White Christ. Yes, yes. I know. We’ve seen you before, you know. Different name, different face, but we’ve all seen you before.’ The tall man’s appearance was somehow . . . changing. His clothes were no longer a simple farmer’s garb. In the firelight, he was slowly turning more colourful: a rich purple was seeping into his cape, and his shirt had turned a most sumptuous green. ‘And we need to have a word about that.’

  The man kicked Finn’s dead body, looked down at him and smiled. ‘Poor Finn. He really tried, didn’t he?’ Then he looked back at King Olav. ‘There is nothing here for you,’ he said, and his face was suddenly hard. He took a step closer.

  Olav sensed the presence behind him, but too late. Huge hands clasped his shoulders and pulled his arms painfully upwards, exposing his chest. He kicked out and hit something, but it felt thick; unresponsive. Pain lashed through him as he was pulled roughly upwards. His heart thumped in his chest and he could hear a heavy, scraping sound behind him. He tried to look, but hands were on his head, several strong, heavy hands, holding him steady, suspended a good four feet above the ground.

  A shadow crept up from behind him and fell over his shoulder. The familiar shape of the wooden cross did not give him any relief.

  He looked back at the leader of the village, who now held a wooden mallet in his hand.

  ‘You know what they say, though,’ he said, smiling. ‘When all you have is a hammer, every problem becomes a nail.’

  The stench of death overwhelmed Olav then, the cold of blue-frozen bodies, and he saw the soldiers in the circle. They were all big, all quiet, and blue, like the mountains.

  He fought them as they dragged him to the cross, and he screamed when the tall man touched the sharp point of a wooden sliver to his palm and lifted the hammer—

  *

  King Olav woke with a start, drenched in sweat under his furs. The room was stuffy, and stank of sweat and fear. Half-mad, the king fumbled for the cross on his necklace, grasped it and started muttering, ‘Pater noster, qui es in caelis . . .’

  Outside his window, the northern winds picked up again. All over Trondheim animals cowered in corners, huddling together for warmth and safety.

  *

  Forty miles further north, the sun rose on a farmer clambering awkwardly through a snowdrift half his height to get to a barn. The animals bleated at him the moment he opened the door and the stocky, coarse-featured, red-haired man waved them off. ‘Calm down,’ he said, walking over the boards to the fenced-off hay enclosure. ‘Easy now. You’ll be fed, soon enough. Just like yesterday, and the day before.’

  The sheep bleated in response, nudging their heads through the wooden fence to get closer. The farmer wrapped his coat tighter around him. ‘I should shear a couple more of you,’ he said to the nearest ones as he grabbed his pitchfork. ‘Make me another shift. It’s sharp out there, all right.’ The temperature had been dropping steadily for a week; even for the season, it was unusually cold. He stabbed the hay with a vengeance and shovelled the first load in the trough. ‘There you go,’ he said.

  The barn had gone dead quiet.

  The sheep were all standing stock-still and staring in the same direction: towards the north corner of the room. The farmer banged his pitchfork on the feeder, but none of them responded; they just stood there, eyes trained on the corner of the barn, nostrils flaring.

  Then the first one started to bleat and move backwards, away from the corner.

  The second one followed.

  The farmer felt time slow down around him as he thought back over a lifetime of working the land. He had seen and cared for more sheep than he ever could count, and he remembered a couple of times when wolves had got in among his herd, but the animals had never sounded like this; they’d never taken on this bad.

  Half the flock was now bleating wildly, with more joining in with every breath, and the barn was bursting with the noise. The sheep were pushing at each other to get away from the north corner, but none of them seemed to dare look anywhere else. Out of the corner of his eye he saw a fat ewe bite half an ear off another just because it was in the way, and the blood shocked the farmer out of his stupor. The wooden fence that kept the sheep penned in their square enclosures was creaking now, and all the animals were bleating, all of them, constantly.

  A stench of shit, piss and hot air flooded the barn as bowels started voiding and the bleating grew louder still. On his left, one animal charged head-first into the south wall, as if trying to smash its way out, and the smell of blood started to drive the animals further into madness.

  Something in the back of the farmer’s brain told him move get out now now now and he sprinted towards the door, and behind him he heard the sound of snapping wood and the panicked scrabbling of hooves on planks as a hundred and ten animals all clamoured to get out after him, into the arms of cold and certain death. He punched the doors open, launched himself out and slammed them shut again, dragging the bar in place just as the first sheep thudded into the door. Pushing himself away, the farmer looked on in horror as the bleating grew louder, accompanied by thuds as the walls shook with the impact of animals smashing into the walls, over and over again, pushing to get out.

  On the other side of the barn, a mile away, six men crested the hill and walked south.

  Chapter 3

  SOUTH SWEDEN

  DECEMBER, AD 996

  The sun set early, but the army marched on for as long as they thought they could. When the last dim light started to fade, Alfgeir looked at Jolawer and shouted, ‘Stop!’ The command travelled down through the lines and slowly a thousand men came to a halt.

  ‘Camp!’ the big man cried, and the men split into small groups and started erecting lean-tos and tents. Ulfar watched Sigurd and Sven set to rounding up their troops and setting up a tight camp off to the side with a perimeter, paths and a space for a fire in the middle.

  ‘The bear’s gone soft, hasn’t he?’ Sven muttered.

  ‘He was never one for this kind of discipline,’ Sigurd replied.

  ‘True,’ Sven said. ‘Still, one would think he’d try to teach the young king good habits.’

  ‘Habits grow where they will,’ Sigurd said slowly. ‘Maybe Alfgeir Bjorne is training the king
just right.’

  Ulfar followed his eye to where King Jolawer Scot was standing, observing their little side camp from afar with a watchful eye.

  Sven grinned and turned to salute. ‘My king! Come on over, why won’t you?’

  The king moved closer, head swivelling to take it all in. When he was fully within their camp, he spoke, surprising Ulfar again with his steady voice. ‘This is very impressive,’ he said.

  ‘We’ve done it a couple of times,’ Sven said, with enough false modesty to force Ulfar to suppress a laugh.

  ‘We wish you to come sit with us at our fire. We could use all the knowledge you have on King Olav,’ Jolawer said.

  ‘Lead the way,’ Sven said.

  As Jolawer turned and walked off Sigurd followed, while Sven darted off in the other direction. He reappeared moments later and found Ulfar. ‘Oskarl is in charge. Son, you’re not coming to this one. Understood?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Sven looked him up and down, frowning. ‘And don’t go doing anything stupid while I’m not looking after your bony arse, either.’

  ‘I will follow your shining example in all things,’ Ulfar said.

  ‘That’s what I’m worried about,’ Sven said, shooting him one last dirty look before turning to catch up with Sigurd.

  He doesn’t have to worry, Ulfar thought. There were other and more important things to do. He found Audun sitting close to the fire with a bucket of snow and a metal rod, sharpening knives. ‘So they found out, then?’

  ‘Yep,’ Audun said. ‘One of the Stenvik boys said the blades went to shit after I left, then one of Jolawer’s asked if I’d been a smith and now I’m stuck with this.’ He gestured to his feet. A cloth held two blades that glistened wetly in the firelight. Next to it, fourteen knives were laid out, waiting to be sharpened.

  ‘We need to talk,’ Ulfar said.

  ‘We do,’ Audun said.