The Valhalla Saga Read online

  ‘It looks to me like the pig farmer had all the luck tonight,’ Geiri replied.

  ‘If that’s what you want to call it,’ the thin man next to Geiri said curtly. ‘Maybe fighting with Audun would have knocked some stupid out of him. Although if you want to pick someone for a drunken bash, maybe not the town blacksmith.’

  ‘No,’ Ulfar said, nodding. ‘No. Maybe not.’

  They looked over to the corner where the pig farmer sat hunched over his mug, looking even more miserable than before. ‘I’m glad he didn’t – I’d have to clean up the mess. My name is Valgard, by the way. I make potions and mend wounds in this lovely town.’

  ‘Glad to meet you,’ Geiri said. ‘I am Geiri and this is Ulfar. We’ve come from Hedeby on business.’

  ‘Really?’ Valgard said. ‘You’re not drunk, you’re not slavering and you don’t smell of sheep. Are you sure?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Geiri. ‘We’re here to meet with Sigurd Aegisson.’

  ‘Ah,’ Valgard said. He finished his ale, stood up and smiled. ‘I wish you the best of luck.’ Then he left.

  Geiri gave Ulfar a puzzled look. ‘What do you think that meant?’

  Ulfar frowned. ‘I don’t know. I somehow doubt that it’s anything good. But on the other hand, with danger averted and the table to ourselves, you may now fetch us that ale.’

  Geiri rolled his eyes. ‘You’re too kind.’

  ‘I know,’ Ulfar replied, grinning.

  THE NORTH SEA

  A few days’ sailing further north, the cold moonlight danced on decks, slid over tarred wood, caught on edges, hilts and the eyes of hard men. Some murmured to themselves. Others touched small tokens on leather thongs underneath their armour. They looked like ghosts gliding across a sea of silver. Moving nimbly, an armed man picked his way to the prow of the foremost ship. ‘We’ll be at Moster soon,’ he whispered into the shadows cast by the big masthead.

  ‘Good,’ a deep voice replied. ‘Good. She will get what she needs.’

  A sharp wind whipped the salt-caked sails and drove the twelve sleek ships forward. Above, grey clouds scudded over the waxing moon. When they passed, the pale light fell on a small island ahead of the ships. A handful of stone buildings clustered in the lee of a hill; trees shied away from the cold sea winds.

  The ships landed like a whisper.

  Sails fell, sixty men leapt overboard and suddenly the beach was alive with moving bodies. A big shape emerged from the shadow of the masthead and made to leave.

  ‘Come to me.’ The voice was a whisper, a breeze on a freezing winter’s night, drifting in from the stern. A woman followed the voice, and walked to the mast. The big man walked to her and suddenly everything was quiet around them. ‘Here,’ she whispered. ‘Take this.’ She handed him a length of wood.

  As he took it, she touched his bearded cheek and smiled.

  ‘Burn them. Burn them as they want to burn us.’

  The spar of wood burst into green and white flames, revealing three vicious scars on the big man’s neck.

  Screams and cries for help pierced the stillness. He jumped over the side of the ship and ran towards the house with the cross.

  STENVIK

  This had to be the mother of all headaches, Ulfar reasoned. Surely nobody had ever suffered like this. His skull seemed to be bursting slowly. Even the morning sun, shining cheekily through crevices in the walls, added to the pain. As did the sound of every laughing child, every hammer blow, every squealing pig. Especially the bloody pigs.

  Maybe he shouldn’t have goaded Geiri into a fight last night. He liked his cousin; he was good company for travelling and had his head on straight most of the time. But they’d drunk too much, he’d been bored and Geiri was an easy target. Besides, the girl had been all right, and worth besting him for. Ulfar frowned, trying to remember. Inga, probably. Damn, his head hurt!

  Ulfar smiled despite the pain. He’d always had it easy with girls. Although to be fair he hadn’t really had that much in the way of competition. He was handsome, clever and quick-witted. Most men he saw were either ignorant boys or oafish lugs with the grooming skills of a blind cow, so he’d learned to feel confident about his chances. Besides, he was a man of the world by now.

  He stretched on his pallet, yawned and sighed. This constant travelling was such a chore. ‘I suppose it’s time to go find the chieftain of this pig town,’ he said to no one in particular, and got to his feet.

  *

  Audun sneered and spat. He did not like the market traders one bit. Idiots selling useless crap to fools. Changing things. Getting in the way. He’d been so close to letting go on one of them last night in the longhouse. So close.

  ‘Move!’

  The stocky blond blacksmith grabbed a small, nervous cloth merchant and pushed him out of the way. The autumn market seemed to bring an endless supply of them from all over the world, shouting and yelling, pitching tents around the old town, hawking their wares in the streets, in the square and anywhere else they could find room. Drinking too much and trying to get him to fight. That ugly bastard last night had almost succeeded, too.

  And now they were blocking the gate.

  Of course the broken cart didn’t help.

  He’d seen it happen, seen the driver, who was obviously another idiot, lead the cart too close to the side of the road in an effort to squeeze past another wagon and slip through the south gate, towards the harbour. He’d seen the rock and the hole, he’d seen the wheel bounce off one and into the other, and he’d heard the sharp crack when the axle gave. As the cart lurched, the man had tumbled off and banged his head. Served him right, Audun thought. Shouldn’t have let them in to begin with. But the road was blocked and this would not do. It would slow people down, keep them from the smithy and cost him business. And that he couldn’t afford.

  He shouldered through the crowd in the market without thinking. Shouts and curses followed, but he didn’t care. Never had, never would, he muttered to himself. Talk is air.

  When he first came to Stenvik, he’d been awed by the sheer size of the walls. At a towering twenty-five feet, covered with turf and sloping upwards at a steep angle, they had seemed impossibly wide at the base. Audun had admired the construction as he rode through the north gateway with his travelling companions. A stone-walled corridor wide enough to take two carts and high enough with room to spare for a man to walk upright, it had still taken their caravan a decent time to get through. He’d thought highly of the stonework, although some of the logs in the ceiling near the inside had struck him as oddly placed. On both ends of the gateway massive wooden gates were suspended over the openings, secured by thick ropes used for raising and lowering. What they lacked in the craft shown in the stonework they more than made up for in reliability. The gates were essentially sturdy, iron-bound pine logs stacked horizontally and set to be lowered into grooves in the walls. A short tour of the town had confirmed that the other three gates followed the same model.

  At the time he’d been pleased with the craft of it.

  Standing in the shadow of the same walls nearly two years later, looking at the suspended south gate, it seemed more like a cage door. And now the gateway was partially blocked by the cart. The space around the cart was crammed with the usual group of useless onlookers that seemed to gather on every such scene to lay blame, give pointless advice and avoid taking any action whatsoever. Audun gritted his teeth. Three of them were standing around the rear of the cart looking particularly miserable and staring alternately at the wheel, the broken shaft and the placid draft horse still tied to the trace.

  He grabbed the nearest shoulder and yanked, forcing the man to face him.

  ‘You. Lead that half-dead nag on my signal.’

  The man blinked and stared blankly back at him.

  ‘Now! Move!’ Audun half shoved the man towards the horse and turned his attention to the broken axle. Huge bags of feed had been piled topsy-turvy on the cart, and the jolt had proved too much. A quick inspection
confirmed his suspicions. The other wheel would stay on, but this one was gone and would not carry weight. The cart would not be mended here, and there was hardly space to unload it.

  Audun took up a position at the rear end, feeling under the collapsed side for a grip. When he’d found it, he spat into the palms of his hands, rubbed them together and grabbed the edge of the cart.

  He bent his knees, straightened his back and growled low. Breathing through his nose, he slowly straightened his legs and lifted the corner of the cart. Moving his leg behind the wheel, he pushed it away from the wagon. The two men at the back stood by and gawped, as did the hapless farmer standing by the horse. ‘You two – help me, or by Thor I’ll drop it on your feet and smack you in the head!’ Audun hissed through clenched teeth. He turned to the front and snapped: ‘And you – get the bloody horse moving!’

  After a brief moment of confusion, the farmers bumbled into action.

  The two men in the back squeezed in on either side of Audun and tried their best to help bear the weight, and the third farmer started leading the horse. Sporadic cheers followed them through the gate and out of Stenvik.

  ‘Off the road!’ Audun commanded as soon as they’d cleared the gateway.

  ‘But …’ one of the farmers protested meekly.

  Audun bit off the words, each a measured threat. ‘Off. The. Road.’

  A couple of moments later the wagon was off the path into Stenvik, jolting among hastily pitched tents and rickety wattle huts outside the walls.

  ‘Down,’ he commanded. ‘Softly. Don’t break anything else.’

  The farmers complied, and slowly the cart was brought to a halt.

  While the two at the rear coughed and tried to catch their breath, the farmer leading the horse approached Audun, dragging his feet and staring at the ground.

  ‘Thank you for helping us. We could have been stuck there all day. Now we can—’

  ‘So this is yours?’ Audun cut in, bent double and breathing heavily.

  ‘What? Yes … yes it is.’

  ‘Seven silvers.’

  The farmer looked at him, stunned.

  ‘… What?’

  ‘Seven silvers.’ Catching his breath, Audun straightened up and looked the farmer in the eyes. ‘I go get the tools and fix your cart. You give me seven silvers.’

  ‘But … I’ve not … It’s been a poor market for us!’

  ‘If you’ve made enough money to buy and pile feed bags on your cart until it breaks, you have no cause to complain.’ Audun walked over to the single wheel on the back end of the cart. He put his foot up on the axle, casually testing how much weight it supported. ‘I could always convert it into a sled for you …’

  The farmer looked at him, dejected.

  ‘… Five?’

  Audun frowned, then nodded. ‘Five silvers it is. Stay here.’

  He turned around and headed back into town.

  *

  ‘Valgard! Come quick!’

  The boy who poked his head in through the doorway could not have been more than eight years old. Golden rays slipped past him, casting their light on dust motes dancing in the air in the tiny wooden hut.

  A slim man with sloping shoulders sat hunched over a workbench in the corner. Jars and bowls of various sizes were ordered all around him on the surface. A small carved wooden figure of a woman holding a bundle of plants looked down on the tabletop.

  ‘Calm down. What’s happened?’ His voice was soothing, but he did not move a single muscle to acknowledge his visitor.

  ‘A cart broke in the south gate and a farmer fell and hit his head. He’s not moving and everybody’s angry.’

  Valgard kept his eyes trained on the workbench. In his hand was a short but very sharp knife, on a small slate of stone in front of him a handful of black berries. He had just pierced the skin of a berry and was pressing it into a bowl, counting the drops. Sensing the boy was still hovering in the doorway, he sighed.

  ‘I’ll be there in a moment.’

  ‘I’ll go tell!’ the boy shouted as he sprinted off.

  Valgard listened to the tread of the boy’s feet fading into the sounds of the town. It had been a good morning so far. He was nearly done with the juice for the mixture. Just two more … His knife hand began to shake. Valgard clenched his teeth and hissed: ‘No. No, you don’t. No.’ He forced himself to breathe as he’d learned. Slow. Slow everything down. He watched as the spasms in the hand died away till at last it was still and steady.

  He cut twice more into the berry, collecting the juices into the bowl with practised ease and stowing the berries in a box. Then he took a satchel near the doorway and made to leave, but paused and reached for another small bag that sat on the far right of the workbench, grabbed it and left the house.

  Behind him, a drop of black juice dripped from the knife point onto the bench.

  It didn’t take Valgard long to find his patient. The cart driver was powerfully built, thick-limbed and out cold. He came to with a shriek and a moan as the cold water hit him in the face.

  ‘You just banged your head. It’s going to hurt for a while. Chew this when it does. Try not to move too much for a couple of days.’ Valgard pulled something that looked like a sliver of wood out of his bag. The driver eyed it and frowned. ‘Don’t be a fool. Take it. It’s just willow bark. Not too much at a time and you’ll be fine in a week,’ Valgard said gently.

  Accepting the bark with reluctance, the driver looked at Valgard, the satchel and the empty water bucket at his feet. He blinked rapidly and his mouth moved, but no words came out.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Valgard assured him. ‘You drive carts; I patch you up when you fall on your head.’ He stood up and headed back to his house, leaving the driver to look in confusion at a single wheel on a broken axle and wonder where the rest of his cart was.

  *

  ‘If I ever have a son, I will send him out with gold enough to afford better lodgings than these.’ Ulfar ducked under the rickety doorframe and stepped into the street outside. The dockhand’s shack looked considerably worse in daylight than it had under the stars last night. ‘In fact, I think we might be sleeping in somebody’s outhouse. Indeed, if I ever have a son, I’ll buy him better lodgings, better—’

  ‘— clothes, prettier wenches, better food, finer wine and a golden chariot to cart your lily arse between silk pillows,’ Geiri finished as he emerged from the doorway behind the tall young noble.

  Ulfar flashed him a winning smile. ‘Are we a little bit prickly today, my brother?’

  Geiri shot him an annoyed glance. ‘Be quiet if you value your teeth, you traitor. And our fathers may share the same mother, but that does not make me your brother.’

  Ulfar threw up his hands in a gesture of mock innocence. ‘Am I not your brother in arms, in travel and in song?’ he said, eyes glinting with poorly hidden amusement.

  ‘Not after last night you’re not. I’ve a mind to dump you back home and have them collect their debt of honour like they’d planned.’

  Ulfar dismissed Geiri with a wave. ‘Forget it. I was bored. It was just one kiss. And you didn’t miss much. She smelled of sheep. Now, do you know your way around this town?’

  ‘Of course I don’t. Have you been to bloody Stenvik much?’ Geiri shot back. ‘Here’s what I know. It’s the only sizeable town this far west. Most defensible outpost on the west coast, apparently. Done. That’s all. Nobody should ever need to come here and the sooner we’re out the better. It’s an outpost and nothing more.’

  ‘Geiri, Geiri, Geiri. We must control ourselves.’ Ulfar subtly changed stance, aping someone much older as he beckoned for his travelling companion to follow him down the street towards the harbour. ‘You have been sent …’ he began, sounding remarkably like a pompous middle-aged chieftain. Geiri could not help but smirk. ‘You have been sent out into the world to see the sights, meet the men of note and let them know who you are. As a young man who will inherit the world’ – Ulfar’s sweeping gesture
took in three wattle huts, a dirty screaming child running after a dog and a man pissing in the street – ‘it is your solemn duty to get to know other and lesser peoples, find out what they eat, what they use, what they need and what they sell. Stenvik has become an important hub for trading and raiding. It may not look like anything, but there is much to be gained by connecting to their chieftain. Sigurd Aegisson. Man of reputation. Trade connections. Think forward, son.’ At the end of his speech, Ulfar nodded sagely, blinked at Geiri and grunted, breathing loudly through his nose.

  ‘I’ve said it before and I say it again – I hope you’ve never imitated my father to his face,’ Geiri said with a smile.

  ‘No. Never,’ Ulfar said gravely. ‘I have, however, done so to your milkmaid Hilda on occasion.’ He winked at Geiri.

  ‘What? And you never told me?’ his cousin exclaimed. Ulfar shrugged and tried his best to look innocent. ‘It doesn’t really matter, though …’ Geiri added. ‘I seem to remember her telling me that your impressions had made’ – Geiri made a suggestive hand gesture – ‘little impression on her.’

  Ulfar considered this then nodded. He’d have to give him this one. ‘Well countered, Geiri. I’ll make a man of you yet.’

  ‘You always have to win, don’t you?’

  ‘Always, Geiri. Always.’

  ‘Well, maybe if you’d not needed to win the fight with Karle you wouldn’t have had to come here.’

  ‘It was an accident, I keep telling you,’ Ulfar snapped. ‘Not my fault he turned out to be the Queen’s cousin.’

  ‘His arm broke just as much,’ Geiri replied, enjoying himself.

  ‘Well he didn’t die. More’s the pity. And his arm has healed now and I’m still out in the middle of nowhere playing nursemaid to clueless royalty,’ Ulfar said.

  ‘Shut up or I’ll treat you like you deserve.’

  ‘Much like a bleating ewe, you simply don’t have the balls.’

  The insults were comfortable and well-worn by now; something to pass the time. Their walk had brought them back down to the harbour. Behind them lay a town of hastily pitched tents, woven huts and frail wooden shacks. The old, run-down longhouse where they’d been drinking last night was visible over the tops of the houses. Ulfar’s head pounded with the memory. This was what their dockhand guide had called the old town.