‘If you’d been there by my side they would have gone for you too,’ King Olav said pragmatically, then asked, ‘So, what happened to the Old Town?’
‘I burned it,’ Finn said. ‘They . . .’ He stopped and swallowed, and then went on, ‘They just wouldn’t die, the fuckers – Sigurd and Sven, I mean.’
‘I saw them. I saw their bodies,’ the king said.
‘I know – I saw them too. But after Valgard and I buried them and you left, the old guard started disappearing – the raiders of the Westerdrake. And then . . .’ The big man’s face darkened. ‘We chased them through the woods, up the hills and into the Old Town, and my men died, one by one. Some were trapped in the forest by spiked branches. A number of them fell as they climbed, and more than one was stabbed in the shadows of those shitty old huts. So I burned them.’
Too many questions needed answering. ‘How did they—?’ the king began, but a cough ripped through him, followed by a stabbing pain in his ribs. He gripped the edge of the table and gritted his teeth.
‘You’re hurt,’ Finn said. ‘You – fetch the healers,’ he ordered, and the warrior he’d pointed at disappeared into the darkness.
‘Had to defend myself,’ King Olav said. He felt the snowball rolling down the hill, taking him with it. ‘Had to—’ Cold sweat broke out on his forehead and he tried again. ‘—escape . . .’
‘We’ll sort you out,’ Finn said, reaching over and pouring half of his broth into the king’s bowl. ‘Drink.’
‘I don’t—’
‘Drink.’
King Olav looked hazily at the big man’s face, but there was no malice to go with the edge of command, just a wide-open, worried face. The king allowed himself a weak smile. ‘As you say, chieftain,’ he said, enjoying the time it took Finn to understand the joke.
‘I – I didn’t, um – you need your strength,’ the big man said sheepishly.
‘I know,’ the king said. The broth was delicious, meaty and full of nourishing fat. At the far end of the hall the door flew open and two serious-looking men carrying leather pouches entered at speed.
The king looked down at the spot where he’d sat when he first got to Stenvik – was it really just a few months ago? He remembered the shape of the man kneeling before him, the glint in the eye as the bastard had looked up and thanked God for saving him.
‘Valgard . . .’ he muttered.
Concern clouded Finn’s face. ‘Yes – I didn’t see him. Where is he?’ But King Olav was done talking. Reeling, he slumped backwards into the arms of the healers who’d come up behind him.
*
Thunder crashed overhead and far beneath King Olav’s feet white-tipped waves smashed into the base of the cliff. The wind howled all around him, tugging at him, tantalising with the joy of the fall and the darkness to follow. He looked down and the waves were no longer water but armies: roaring, heaving waves of men, shields locked and charging to meet in deadly conflict. The wind carried their screams as he stepped off the cliff and drifted down, borne by an invisible hand to take his place in the vanguard. The clouds disappeared, revealing a red sun burning in the sky – he felt its heat snapping at him, pinching his skin and covering him almost instantly in a slick sheen of sweat as he stood on the battlefield, holding his sword and staring at the faces of hundreds – no, thousands – of blue-skinned monsters. If he squinted, he could just make out Valgard’s slim shape behind them, surrounded by waves of blue-green light.
The sensation when his army faded out of view was like having his stomach pulled out through his feet. His heart ached, but then the cross started thumping at his chest and King Olav could feel himself growing – growing – stretching to the heavens to meet his maker, getting bigger and stronger and heavier.
The first blue-skin looked up at his form and charged, fangs out and frothing at the mouth.
King Olav lopped his head off in one stroke.
As the current of power ran through him, from his fingertips up through his shoulders and into his head, his heart and the very core of him, the king smiled. ‘You shall be weighed and measured before the Lord,’ he said quietly into the face of the roaring army. ‘And you shall be found wanting.’
Laying about him to both sides he strode into battle, twisting in his sleep.
*
The old warrior stood awkwardly by the end of the table in the longhouse, waiting for Finn to look up. Finally, he cleared his throat. ‘We put the king’s men in the stables last night. Roof’s tight, and we made sure there was plenty of wood – they were cold, wet and hungry.’
‘Good,’ Finn said.
‘Young one – named Einar – said he’d be in charge of distributing blankets and furs. He asked for healers. . . . er, Finn?’
The big man was no longer paying any attention to the soldier. Instead, he was looking at the crooked figure striding across the floor of the longhouse. Finn rose slowly from the seat to the right of the throne. ‘Fine,’ he said absentmindedly. ‘Leave us.’
‘What?’ the warrior said.
‘Leave us, I said,’ the big man snapped, and as the warrior hurried away, out of sight, Finn kept staring at the man he had called king.
King Olav was almost bent over double, favouring his left side. His face was drawn, his skin sallow and his hair hung limply, but there was still that spark in the eyes, a mad glint that demanded – commanded – attention.
‘Finn,’ the king said without ceremony as soon as he was close enough.
‘Yes, my lord,’ Finn replied.
‘You have too many men here,’ the king said.
‘Yes, we do. But there’s little we can do about it,’ Finn replied. ‘If we let a handful go home to their farms we’ll lose half of our army. Everyone else will go as well.’
‘But if we make them stay here they’ll either start fighting amongst themselves, rise up against us or grow thin, sick and dead.’
‘Yes,’ Finn said cautiously.
‘I want a report on everyone and everything you have in this town: all the craftsmen and the materials.’ The king made his way gingerly up to the dais and sat down in the high seat.
When he turned, the breath caught in Finn’s throat.
King Olav smiled. ‘You’re going to build me a ship.’
*
The raw wind pushed the snow up into Finn’s face as he left the longhouse. The faint morning light brought no warmth and Finn felt chilled to the bone. Ship? What the king had described . . . The warrior sighed. He’d said yes, of course – but it wasn’t going to happen. There was no way a thing like that could be built.
Finn’s strides lengthened as he got angrier. Why did this happen to him? What was the reason? He clenched his fist and gritted his teeth. It had been bloody hard, keeping Stenvik from collapsing. The enemy had known it inside out and had used every hidden weak spot to their best advantage – it had been like shoring up a leaky boat in a storm. They’d wounded Gunnar badly on his fourth day in charge, so Finn had taken over. And he was absolutely sure that it was Sigurd and Sven, even though he’d buried them with his own hands. How could you fight men who were already dead?
Head down, Finn barrelled straight into a bony old man and sent him crashing to the ground. ‘Watch where you’re going,’ he growled.
‘My sincere apologies,’ the man said, lying on his back. He was short and skinny – knobbly as an old wind-beaten branch – with white hair that hung in thick, salt-crusted tendrils covering almost half of his face. He propped himself up on his elbow, wincing like someone who had just lost a hard fight.
Finn felt a tingle of embarrassment. Was that was he’d been reduced to, knocking over old white-hairs? He extended a hand and pulled the old man to his feet. ‘No, I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I wasn’t looking.’
‘Something on your mind?’ the old man said.
‘You could
say that,’ Finn replied, more bitterly than he wanted to.
‘Hm.’ The old man scratched his head. ‘So what’s going on?’
‘Oh, nothing. I just have to find the materials in the middle of winter to build a . . . a ship.’
The man seemed amused. ‘Plenty of ships down by the harbour,’ he said.
‘Why are you smiling?’ Finn snapped.
‘Oh, no reason,’ the man said. ‘Just find it funny. You must be a fortunate man.’ Finn glared at the man, but didn’t answer, and oblivious to his companion’s rancour, the white-hair continued,. ‘You need a ship built, and you walk into a shipwright.’
Now it was Finn’s turn to laugh incredulously. ‘You’re a shipwright?’
‘Sure am,’ the man said. ‘Just came in on the boat with the king. I should have introduced myself.’
The old man smiled, and Finn felt oddly at ease in his presence. ‘My name is Fjolnir. Why don’t we get started?’
Chapter 11
THE DALES, WEST SWEDEN
LATE DECEMBER, AD 996
The hunting parties returned later that night with even more meat, although none of them could match Audun and Ulfar. With bellies full, the men traded well-worn stories of old victories, applauding new embellishments with raucous laughter. In the shadows, Ulfar’s head dropped to his chest before he started and woke.
‘Right,’ he said. ‘I think it’s time for me to sleep.’
‘Me too, I gather,’ Audun said.
‘Hail the hunters!’ Sven shouted.
‘HAIL!’ the cry went out.
Ulfar smiled a wan smile. The tree, the stag and the walk back had taken it all out of him and he could feel his hips seizing up, along with his lower back. For just a moment he allowed himself to be grateful for the knowledge that the aches would be gone in the morning.
The two hunters, bone-tired, stumbled into their tents and were asleep almost as soon as they hit the ground.
*
The sun was up there somewhere, Ulfar thought, but it did not feel like it wanted to be. The trees were bigger than he remembered, the massive trunks smooth and the colour of a crow’s feather. Must be something to do with the distance they’d travelled. The people of the western valleys always banged on about their big trees, how just one tree would do as a house, a boat and a year’s firewood for a family and so on. Yes, that had to be it: they must have gone past the big lakes and up into the heavy forests of the west that stood on the edges of the land of the Norsemen. It would get worse before it got better, too. If the stories were true there were days and days of woodland to go before they’d hit the valleys: days of travel until they’d be able to see further than their outstretched arm.
So all he needed to do was place one foot in front of the other. Left, right, left, right, left, right . . .
Ulfar looked down at his feet and his stomach twisted. Thin strands of fog were swirling unnaturally around his shins, floating on top of the snow and covering it in a grey sheen. Around him the trees stretched to the skies, impossibly smooth, impossibly round. The snow felt wrong under his feet, too: like someone’s idea of winter in a forest, rather than the thing itself.
‘Show yourself,’ Ulfar said.
The dogs were first to arrive: Geraz, broad-shouldered and pale, followed by Frec, a giant black mastiff with head held low and fangs bared. Above, two ravens settled on nearby branches and quorked conversationally at him. A moment later the man was there, just as if he’d stepped through an invisible doorway. He was tall, grey-haired, propped up by a thick staff and in all other ways exactly like Ulfar remembered from the walk so many days ago.
‘It’s you.’
*
‘Of course it’s me,’ the old farmer replied. ‘Fjolnir. You remember, don’t you?’ Audun remembered all too well. He could see the hut, he could feel the shame as he hid under the bed, and when he left . . .
The old man studied him with a twinkle in his eye. ‘Do you still have it?’
‘Yes,’ Audun said, his voice barely more than a whisper.
‘Good. You’ll need it.’
‘It makes me ill,’ Audun said, ‘if I use it I’ll die.’ He remembered exactly where he’d put the belt; it was coiled up in his bag. But no – though he didn’t remember putting the belt on, now it felt heavy around his waist.
The old man smiled at that, wistfully. ‘We all die,’ he said. ‘That’s how we get in this mess in the first place. But you will need to use it. Keep that in mind. And besides, my gifts are good. I gave you the stag, didn’t I?’
*
‘What do you mean?’ Ulfar snapped. ‘I caught that with Audun!’
‘The stag that stood so still that it could have been frozen?’ the tall man said. ‘The animal that ran away from you, straight at the only other man within miles? Come now, Ulfar. You’re sharper than that, aren’t you?’
Ulfar felt a surge of annoyance. ‘Shut up,’ he said, but the words felt limp coming out of his mouth. ‘You’re—’ He went to speak again, but nothing followed.
‘Call me what you want,’ the grey-haired man said. ‘You’ve already taken one of my gifts.’
‘What?’
‘The Mead of Skalds,’ he replied calmly. ‘And you have drunk it, so you have wisdom and understanding beyond any human. It will take you a while to learn that you do, though.’
Ulfar stared at the old soldier. ‘You—’
‘—are wasting time,’ he said, waving away the words. ‘You need to go straight north without delay.’
‘To Trondheim?’
*
‘No,’ the old farmer said. ‘Trondheim’s gone.’
Audun frowned. ‘Gone?’
‘Dead. Overrun. Beyond our scope. Let the kings of men’ – he laced the word with contempt – ‘deal with that one. No, you’re going to Gallows Peak.’
‘Why?’ Audun said.
*
‘Because that’s where he is going,’ the farmer said.
‘Who’s he?’ Ulfar said.
‘You know.’ A dismissive hand-wave.
‘And what makes you think I’ll do as you say?’ Ulfar snapped.
‘You hate me,’ the grey-haired soldier said, ‘but you hate him more.’ When Ulfar didn’t argue, the man smiled and reached down to scratch Geraz behind his ear. ‘So you will talk to your men and you will march up to the mountains. It is the best thing you can do now.’
‘Or else?’
*
The farmer shrugged. ‘Valgard fights his way to the Rainbow Bridge and baits the gods into fighting him. He knows that the Fates say the gods will fight on mortal soil when the gates of Hel open wide, so he’s figured out that the reverse is also true: he reckons all he needs to do for the end of the world to come about is for him to pick a fight here. Naglfari sails, Fenrir breaks his chain, the Wyrm of Midgard rises and the waves along with him, Jotuns walk the earth and it all ends in pain, death and destruction. Then a handful of humans and gods arise from the ashes, but with a new ruler: him.’
Audun watched as the old man formed the sentence, chewing on it like a piece of rotten meat.
‘In a word,’ he said, ‘Ragnarok.’
*
‘Wake up—!’ Sven’s voice cut through the cold morning air. ‘Get moving! I want to get home so I can scratch myself twice in the same place!’
‘You do that all the time!’ someone shouted from a nearby tent.
‘That’s why we never shake your hand!’ someone else shouted from across the site.
‘No, that’s just because you recognise the smell of your mothers,’ Sven shot back.
Around him men were crawling out of their low tents, shaking snow off hides and hair. Before long, Sigurd’s group of leather-faced greybeards was ready to walk. Audun and Ulfar packed their tents, neither in the
mood to speak.
*
Snow fell on marching men and wind swept it away. The forest swallowed them on the south side and four days later spat them out on the north. The time passed slowly, in silence.
On the morning of the fifth day, Ulfar approached Sven. The old man had cut himself a walking stick that was his own height and then some and he leaned into it as he walked, pulling his feet out of calf-deep footsteps in the snow and pushing on, one step at a time.
‘Where are we?’ Ulfar said.
Sven made a noncommittal noise. ‘Somewhere in the west of Svealand, I think.’
‘How long will it take us to get to Trondheim?’
‘At this pace?’ Sven said, looking back over the row of greybeards marching doggedly through the snow, most clutching walking sticks of their own. ‘We’ll be there tomorrow.’
Ulfar hesitated. The old rogue’s usual good spirits seemed to have vanished. ‘Will it be easier going if we . . . if we turn towards Gallows Peak? There’ll be fewer bloody trees there,’ he added hastily.
Sven shot him a sideways glance. ‘Gallows Peak,’ he said. ‘You want to go into the mountains? Now?’
‘Only to – uh – get easier walking,’ Ulfar said, reddening as the words came out.
‘We’re in the middle of nowhere because of you, the mad bastard with the hammers and the old bear’s gut feeling,’ Sven said, snow crunching underfoot. ‘Unless you want to finish the rest of your journey and face whatever you’re going to be facing on your own you might want to consider telling me everything, always – starting with right now.’
Ulfar swallowed and searched for courage. ‘A few days ago, after we caught the stag, someone came to me in the night,’ he said.
‘Oh fuck a motherless goat. Of course he did,’ Sven said. ‘Thought his hand might be in this. Go on.’
*
Ten days’ walk to the south, Jolawer Scot marched at the head of his army, Alfgeir Bjorne beside him, and Karle skulking close behind. Some distance away, not close enough to hear but close enough to see, Thormund and Mouthpiece trundled along side by side.
The Valhalla Saga Page 74
