The Valhalla Saga Page 16

  He had already hoisted the carved statue of Odin above his head. He did not seem to notice the weight. Clear, strong and chilling, his voice rang out again.

  ‘My god will guide me! For my god I will unite us all, a mighty army of Northmen! My god will shatter the old gods, strike them down and send their believers to Hell!’

  He threw the statue of Odin down hard onto the stone. It hit and shattered. Five thousand stunned faces stared up at Olav. He continued.

  ‘My god …’

  He calmly undid the strings on his trousers.

  ‘… would never have allowed this …’

  With his trousers lowered he let forth a stream of piss onto the ground, splashing the splintered, ruined statues.

  ‘… to happen.’ Completely unhurried, he did up his trousers and turned to the soldier.

  ‘Now, my friend. Has Thor struck me with his mighty hammer?’ He waited for an answer. None was forthcoming. ‘Do you see wolves? Do you see ravens?’ The men looked up, entranced. ‘Has anything happened?’ Silence enveloped the village.

  Olav looked at the gathered men. He drew a deep breath and shouted: ‘So I say to you, Northmen – the old gods are weak! As I have destroyed their images, march with me to destroy their followers! March with me and I shall lead you into battle, to honour … to victory!’

  Finn realized he’d been holding his breath for a very long time. He let it out and shouted: ‘Long live King Olav!’

  Almost at once, five thousand voices echoed his cry. The ground shook with stamping feet. Men banged their shields. Horses whinnied nervously.

  From a nearby field two large, black birds took to the sky.

  STENVIK

  ‘Where’s the healer? My head hurts.’ The pig farmer’s speech was slurred and he squinted in the faint light of the hut.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Audun replied from his spot in the corner.

  The big man in the corner moaned. ‘I can’t get up. I need help. You – help me!’

  Audun ignored him.

  ‘I’m talking to you! Where’s the bloody healer? I’m dying!’

  Audun rolled his eyes and took a deep breath. ‘You’re not dying. You’ve been badly hurt. Valgard will be around to look at you soon enough. Just lie down and try not to move.’

  The pig farmer snorted and clambered to his feet. ‘Pah! You don’t know how I feel. You don’t know anything. I demand compensation and honour restored! I’m going to find the healer that patched me up and tell him …’ Halfway to the door, he squinted into the corner and recognized the blacksmith. His voice trailed off and he hurried out of the hut.

  Audun watched him go then looked at Geiri’s prone form. ‘You know,’ he said to the unconscious man, ‘I think maybe we’d have less trouble if more people were like you.’

  *

  Patches of black and blue skin made the pig farmer’s left eye seem like it had sunk deep into his skull. Both his lips were split and a large, oozing sore covered most of his jaw. Thinning blonde hair hung in greasy hanks. He hid his left hand under his arm and nursed a broken rib on the right-hand side as he staggered towards the square, but he was damned if he was going to let anything stop him.

  He saw the two old men, the one who fitted the description of the chieftain and his friend the white-beard, walk purposefully towards the steps to the south wall. He tried to ignore the aches, to keep his mind on what he meant to do. March up to them, state his claim, say he wanted a tribunal, restitution.

  As he set off across the market square someone grabbed his shoulder, spun him around and dragged him out of sight, in between two huts.

  ‘I don’t think you should disturb Sigurd right now, pig man,’ Harald said calmly. The big farmer tried to shake himself free but the raider’s heavy hand was firmly on his shoulder, fingers clawing into muscle, digging in under the shoulder blade. ‘He’s busy, we’re under siege and he has no time for anyone, really.’ Pain lanced through his side and the farmer grimaced. ‘Oh, sorry. Am I hurting you?’ Harald said, sounding full of concern. The grip on the shoulder tightened and twisted. The sea captain stepped towards him. Face now inches from the other’s, Harald spoke in a completely level voice.

  ‘You may think you have been treated unfairly. You may think you’re owed something. Some kind of restoration of honour. Mmm?’ He squeezed and pulled, and the pig farmer’s knees buckled. ‘You may also wonder where your cousins went. I’ll tell you.’ Struggling to stand, the farmer’s eyes welled up and he lost control of his bladder. Harald wrinkled his nose but continued, his voice sweet and soothing. ‘They made claims on your behalf, you see. Then they got drunk, punched each other out, tied themselves up and went and sat in a boat without oars that floated out to sea.’ The pig farmer’s lip trembled and a slow smile formed on Harald’s face. ‘Somehow … somehow one of them got a hold of a knife … and scratched a hole in the boat. Between the timbers, you know? Not a big hole, not at all. Just big enough for some water to trickle through and wake them up when they were far enough out to sea. So they could watch the water pool in the bottom, rise slowly and sink the boat, while they were tied up safely and watching the coast from a distance.’ Harald smiled at the crouching pig farmer. ‘Now I don’t know how close they were to you, pig man, but you know they say madness runs in families. I think the only way you can be safe from’ – he twisted savagely and the farmer felt something break; he sank to his knees – ‘finding yourself drowning slowly … is to tell Sigurd you’ve decided your honour has not been tarnished. How does that sound?’

  The pig farmer fought for breath. The walls of the huts felt like they were closing in. The pain was intense now, his knees ached and his ribs felt like they were squeezing his lungs. He looked up at Harald and nodded, tears streaming from his eyes. The big raider looked down on him and smiled.

  ‘Good. I’m glad we’ve put our little misunderstanding behind us.’ With that, he turned and walked away, leaving the big pig farmer on his knees, sobbing quietly.

  BETWEEN WYRMSEY AND STENVIK

  Skargrim stared down at the sea foaming around the prow of his ship, the Njordur’s Mercy. The glow inside, the strong sense of belonging, had faded as the morning passed slowly into afternoon and been replaced with a hollow, empty feeling. He frowned and spat.

  ‘What the hell is wrong with you then?’

  Thora stood by his side, looking out at the sea.

  ‘Nothing,’ he snapped harder than he’d intended. Still – it was none of her business.

  ‘Right,’ she said amicably. ‘And I regularly shit a pot of gold. A large one, too. You don’t need to play chief with me, you old fart. What’s wrong?’

  Skargrim grinned despite himself. ‘I should probably behead you for that.’

  ‘You’d have to catch me first, and we both know that’s not happening. So spill your guts. Might stop you walking around like a bear with a boil on its arse.’

  He sighed. ‘I really should have drowned you when I had the chance.’ He shrugged. ‘I always know what needs doing.’

  ‘But now you’re not sure.’ He nodded. ‘I’ve never known you to doubt, Skargrim. And you’d have their heads if any of the men doubted you, I reckon.’

  ‘I … I am just not good at following, that’s all.’

  She snorted. ‘Hah. That’s dipping your oar lightly in the water, I’d say.’

  ‘I just wonder what the gods really want with us,’ he blurted out. Thora remained silent. He turned to her, but she looked resolutely away. ‘Best not talk about it, I suppose,’ he added. ‘Best not think about it at all, in fact.’ They stood together silently. For a while the only sound was the wind in the sails and the waves lapping at the side of the ship.

  Then Skargrim spoke. ‘However, as raids go, this is a legendary one. We are sailing with Hrafn. And young Thrainn. And Egill. We’re seeing Egill Jotunn and living to tell the tale. He is a huge bastard, though.’

  ‘He certainly is.’

  Something in the tone of he
r voice made Skargrim turn his head and glance at Thora. She looked back at him, raised an eyebrow and smiled sweetly. ‘… What?’ The twinkle in her eye told a different tale.

  Skargrim grinned. ‘You must be Loki’s stepdaughter.’

  ‘Good.’ She gave him an appraising look. ‘Now that you’re yourself again, stay like that. It makes it a little more likely we’ll come through this mess.’ She punched him hard in the shoulder, turned and started picking her way back to her post at the rudder, relieving her cover with a stream of expletives and a slap on the back.

  He turned towards the prow and looked ahead. A day’s sailing lay ahead of them.

  Then, Stenvik.

  Without thinking, he adjusted the axe at his belt.

  Sixty-five ships drove ahead, the wind at their back. Behind them, the sun started its slow descent into night.

  STENVIK

  The furnace glowed red-hot. Audun’s forehead wore a sheen of sweat.

  It had been a bloody affair, quick and brutal. Three men of Stenvik had died along with five farmers, and four were injured, but twenty-two of the men from the forest lay dead outside the eastern gates. Outnumbered and outfought, the enemy had turned and ebbed back into the forest, followed by the jeers of the men on the walls. Then Sigurd’s fighters had returned to him with the killing tools that needed fixing.

  Audun twisted the blade deftly, watching the colour shift. He hadn’t wasted time cleaning the blood off, but even knowing it had been there still made him uneasy.

  When he judged the heat in the blade to be right, he brought it over to the anvil and picked a small hammer from a rack on the wall. A couple of well-placed blows straightened out the dents where the sword had been used to block an attacker’s strikes. With swift and assured movements, Audun plunged the glowing blade into a tub, setting off a plume of steam as the water boiled around the sword. As he waited for the metal to cool down, he looked over at the pile of assorted weapons they’d dropped on him after the clash.

  Death was never as glorious in real life as in the songs, he mused. There was nothing heroic about it, really. You were just alive, and then you died. You were alive, and then you were blood and meat and bones in a slightly different order. His scalp tingled as old memories surfaced somewhere in the back of his mind. Audun pushed them away, put the sword in a bucket by the whetstone, and busied himself with heating and fuelling the furnace. He had a lot of work to do.

  In the noise and heat of the smithy, he didn’t notice Ulfar entering until he heard the grind of metal on stone. He turned around, white-hot blade in hand, only to see the tall, young man standing over the whetstone, sharpening a sword with easy, confident strokes.

  Audun watched for a while. Catching Ulfar’s eye, he nodded once and turned back to the forge. There, he set to hammering swords into shape, fixing broken axes and reattaching spear tips. They worked together without words.

  As the light faded, the last sword clattered onto the pile of straightened, mended and sharpened weapons. Audun brought forward two stools and a sack with dried meat and a flask of mead.

  ‘Thank you,’ he said as he handed Ulfar the food. ‘I would have been working into the night if it weren’t for your help.’

  ‘I just needed to get out of that hut. I was losing my mind,’ Ulfar answered, looking unusually nervous. ‘Look, there’s one thing I want to ask you.’ Gone was the confident young man, in his place an embarrassed, gangly boy. ‘Do you know anything about a woman named Lilia? Here, in Stenvik?’

  Audun’s heart sank. ‘Why do you want to know?’

  Ulfar fidgeted, but did not answer.

  ‘You need to learn to pick your battles, boy,’ Audun said gently. ‘And you need to not pick that battle.’

  ‘So you do know who she is?’ Ulfar replied eagerly.

  He sighed and nodded. ‘How is Geiri?’

  ‘Nothing’s changed. Being so near Geiri when he’s not really there is very hard. But tell me of Lilia. Please.’

  Audun took a deep breath and scolded himself silently. No good could come of this. No good at all. But he’d seen that expression before on a young man’s face, and Ulfar didn’t look like one to give up. Maybe he could explain the state of things to him. Make him see some sense.

  ‘You’ve seen Harald? The guy who beat the daylights out of that pig farmer? Lilia is his wife.’ He glanced over at the young man, who hung on his every word. Audun went on. ‘He brought her over after a raid. She’s his second. He had one before, but she died. No children. Some said she had an … accident … because she was barren.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘He’s not a forgiving man, Harald. If he finds out you’ve even been asking about his wife he will challenge you to a duel of honour, and he’ll take great pleasure in gutting you.’

  ‘Does she love him?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Does she love him?’ Ulfar persisted.

  ‘How should I know?’ Audun shot back, stung. ‘What does that mean? Does she want him? I doubt it. She’s less of a wife and more of a slave, and she has no family here, so no one can do anything for her. Does he treat her right? No. There’s talk, people hear things. They say he beats her, but nobody does anything. Lucky for her he’s away most of the time. But she waits for him on the pier when he’s gone.’ The silence from the other end of the smithy was intense. He felt Ulfar’s stare more than he saw it. ‘Look. I don’t want to tell you what to do. Just make sure you know what you’re up against when you go in. Harald is a vicious bastard by all accounts, and he eats boys like you for breakfast. Judging by your work you’ve seen a sword before. You might even know what to do with it. But you’re, what? Twenty-two?’

  ‘Twenty-three summers after this one.’

  ‘Harald has been raiding for twenty-five years and he’s still alive. Think on that.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Ulfar said as he rose. ‘For the information, and for the warning.’

  ‘What are you going to do?’

  ‘Me?’ Ulfar thought for a while, then replied: ‘I don’t know. But thank you again, my friend. Your words have put me at ease. And don’t worry. I won’t do anything stupid’ – Audun was about to protest that he hadn’t worried at all when Ulfar interrupted him – ‘tonight. We’ll see about tomorrow.’

  With a hint of a smile, he ducked out of the smithy.

  Audun shook his head and frowned. ‘Let’s hope you hold true to that,’ he muttered to himself. Looking around, his eye caught on his most recent sword. Excellent raw material, but in dire need of sharpening.

  He picked up a pail of water and brought the blade towards the whetstone.

  *

  Valgard did a brief inventory in his mind as he walked. Splints, bandages, salves as far as they went. It was all ready, decked out by the station he had created by the longhouse. Sven had suggested it, said an equal distance to all the steps wouldn’t be a bad thing. It was hard to fault the logic in that. It wouldn’t be delicate work, though. And there would be blood. Lots and lots of it.

  ‘Hey! Valgard!’

  He turned and saw Harald bound towards him looking positively cheerful. ‘Come on. Let’s go to your place, you can make me some mixture and I’ll tell you what I’ve done.’ The gleam in the big sea captain’s eye sent chills up and down Valgard’s spine. ‘What are you doing over here? You’re almost at my house.’

  ‘Am I? I guess I am. I was just … walking. Setting up. Clearing my head.’

  ‘’s a good idea, clearing your head,’ Harald nodded. ‘Now how about you make some mixture so I can clear mine? Come on, you scrawny fucker!’ He grinned broadly and slapped Valgard hard on the shoulder. The sheer weight of the blow sent him staggering, but he regained his balance and managed to turn the stumble into two steps towards his own home.

  ‘If you insist,’ he replied, forcing joviality into his voice. ‘You’ve got me all curious now.’

  Beaming, Harald led the way towards the healer’s hut. Valgard had to raise his pace to
keep up. Something seemed to be spurring the big sea captain on. He even hummed a melody as they approached his house.

  When they got in, Harald went to his customary corner, leaned back and smiled. ‘Now. Do you have anything ready?’

  ‘Yes I do,’ Valgard replied. ‘Give me a moment.’ Shuffling towards the supplies, he found a portion he’d mixed earlier. It had turned out slightly stronger than he’d intended so he’d kept it in reserve.

  Turning, he handed the leather bottle to Harald. The big man grasped it eagerly and took a swig. His eyes turned vacant as he savoured the taste, the sensation that spread from the mouth to the brain and the body, the warm fuzziness.

  ‘No honour debt, no restitution, no nothing.’ He licked his lips, tasting the last drops of the mixture.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I told the pig man what had happened to his cousins and explained that the same sort of thing might happen to him unless he stayed in his pen. Problem solved,’ Harald said, slurring the last words slightly. ‘I’m off the hook and the gods will be happy …’ As the herbs took hold he relaxed into a happy sleep, eyes closing slowly.

  Valgard looked at the big captain snoring softly in the hut. The mixture was serving its purpose very well now, giving him rest when he needed so he could stay up longer than an ordinary man would. He still remembered the first time he’d made it. Harald had been bent double with muscle ache and needed something to help him sleep. It had worked better than he’d expected. He’d slowly been growing less receptive, so Valgard had had to change the recipe. Sven had once cautioned against using too much of dried hemp flower in anything – said it turned a man’s brain to mush – but what use did an oaf like Harald have for a brain, anyway? Valgard needed him to do what he was told, not to think for himself like this.

  This was very inconvenient.

  Now there would be no trial, Harald would not be forced to pay what he would consider an unfair amount, and there would be little chance of him taking on Sigurd in a leadership battle. Valgard was losing pieces and getting nothing in return. Suddenly nervous, he checked the box underneath the table. It contained all it was supposed to contain. The game was not finished yet.