Authors: Giles Kristian
THE JARL RAN
his fingers through the scraps of gristle and white knuckles of bone on the platter before him. Then, his hand gleaming, he raised it to the rings of twisted silver which sat below the muscle of his left arm and rubbed the grease between metal and skin. A grin spread within his beard, growing broader still when one of the rings began to shift enough for him to wedge a thick thumb between the snarling beast heads that had for a year or more closed the circle.
‘This for the man who puts Olaf on his arse!’ he roared and was answered by the pounding of hands on the pine planks of the mead table as he pulled the ring from his own flesh and held it aloft, its greasy lustre catching the flicker of oil lamps before he slammed it down beside his trencher. ‘We need to give Hagal some new stories, eh! He has been giving us the same tales for years and thinks that simply changing the names is enough to fool us!’
Everyone laughed at that apart from Hagal ‘Crow-Song’ who flushed crimson beneath his neat fair beard and muttered some half-hearted defence.
‘He thinks we don’t know he is serving the same scraps over and over,’ Harald roared, the huge silver brooch that pinned the cloak on his right shoulder glinting in the flamelight, ‘but what
he
doesn’t know is that while he is farting out of his mouth, we are sleeping.’ Folk crowed and hammered palms against the mead bench and the poor skald batted the air with a hand and put his horn to his mouth.
‘Don’t break any necks, Olaf!’ Harald warned with a glistening finger and woven brows.
Without turning to see if there were any challengers – for there always were – Olaf shrugged his broad shoulders and clambered out from the mead bench, brushing crumbs from the tunic stretched over the barrel of his chest. He put his drinking horn to his full lips and downed its contents to a din of cheers and table-thumping that all but shook the timbers of Eik-hjálmr, the jarl’s hall.
‘Take your time, Olaf! You will live many years with the humiliation of what is about to happen,’ Sorli said, grinning at his friends who hoisted their mead horns in appreciation of Sorli’s boasting. Men and women fumbled in the darker corners and dogs growled over scraps.
‘Ha!’ Olaf exclaimed, upending the mead horn on his head to show that it was empty, then flinging it at a dark-haired thrall who caught it with practised ease.
‘You’ll be making friends with the mice and the dogs soon enough, old man,’ Sorli said, stirring the new floor reeds with a foot and almost unbalancing with the doing of it. ‘Remember that one, Crow-Song!’ he called over to the skald, who curled his lip, beyond caring now.
Sigurd raised his own drinking horn to his lips and mumbled a curse into it. Beside him his friend Svein shook his head, the thick braids of red hair swishing like reefing ropes on a sail. ‘Your brother has pissed away his senses,’ he said, then grinned. ‘But we will get a laugh out of it, hey!’
Sigurd nodded half-heartedly. He was in no mood for laughter, as anyone around him would have known. And yet he would stay to watch his elder brother attempt to make good boasts that had often filled Eik-hjálmr the way breath fills the sky.
‘You should look away now, boy,’ Sorli barked at Harek who was conspicuous amongst all those grizzled growling men for his beardless face but more so for his hair which was white as ale froth and smooth as a girl’s. ‘I don’t want you seeing your old father dropped on his arse in front of his friends.’ Sorli frowned, scratching amongst his thick, golden hair which, when hanging loose as it was now, had earned him the byname Baldr because men and women both thought that Sorli resembled that most fair-faced god. But Baldr son of Óðin was also said to be the wisest of the gods and that, Sigurd thought, was where the similarity ended.
Harek did not look away, instead humouring Sorli with a gentle smile and nod. Then he looked at his mother who sat cradling Harek’s infant brother, though all you could see of the bairn was a shock of hair as white as Harek’s sticking from the blanket like cotton grass. His mother rolled her eyes, shook her head and went back to cooing in little Eric’s ear.
‘I’m ready, boy,’ Olaf said, shoving men aside who were gathering in the middle of the hall to watch the match. ‘No tears now. Your father and brothers are watching.’ Olaf winked at Sigurd and Sigurd could not help but grin at the man who was his father’s closest friend and sword-brother. It was strange, Sigurd thought as he climbed up to stand on the mead bench for a better view, how he wanted Olaf to answer Sorli’s crowing with a serving of floor rushes, and yet also wanted his brother to give a good account of himself, perhaps even surprise them all by dumping Olaf on his rear.
‘Don’t embarrass us, brother,’ Thorvard called out, raising his mead horn, his wolf’s grin doing nothing to disguise the sincerity of the command.
As the eldest of the brothers Thorvard took family honour more seriously than any of them but for their father perhaps, and Sigurd suspected that if Sorli were beaten too easily then Thorvard would feel duty-bound to challenge Olaf himself and salvage what he could of the family pride.
‘Hey, Asgot!’ Slagfid bellowed, his voice rolling through the hall like thunder above the din. ‘Who is going to win? What do your runes say?’ But the godi ignored Jarl Harald’s champion, perhaps the only man but for Harald himself in that hall who would dare address him thus, and sat like a cloud threatening rain to the right of the jarl’s high seat.
‘You and Asgot make for shit company tonight,’ Svein told Sigurd, taking the deer-antler comb on its thong around his neck and pulling its teeth through the beginnings of the red beard of which he was so proud. How many times in Sigurd’s seventeen years had he heard his friend claim to be descended from the thunder god Thór himself? ‘Is it the godi’s bag of bones that has you as sour as a woman sailing the red river?’
A great cheer went up as Olaf and Sorli slammed into one another like bull deer during the rut and grappled.
‘You know that isn’t it,’ Sigurd said.
Sorli slipped Olaf’s grasp and swung a fist but missed and the men cheered as Olaf glanced round the hall and asked if anyone had seen where that punch landed.
‘We’ll get our chance,’ Svein said. ‘If there’s one thing you can count on it’s that with old Biflindi as king there will be more fights than there are bristles on Thór’s ball sack.’
Olaf cracked a fist into Sorli’s temple and the younger man staggered backwards but kept his feet.
‘You and I will have years to make our fame,’ Svein went on, gesturing to a thrall to refill his drinking horn. ‘We’ll wear our swords down to stubs,’ he added, then gave a mischievous grin that suggested he had also meant the swords in their breeks.
‘But not tomorrow,’ Sigurd said, the bitterness of it working into him like iron rot into a helmet. He had trained with sword, axe and shield since he had been strong enough to hold them, and yet still he must stay behind while his three brothers and their father went into the steel-storm.
‘Ah, drink up!’ Svein said, thumping his mead horn against Sigurd’s so that liquid spilled over the lip and splashed onto the shoulder of a man who was enjoying the fight too much to notice. Not that he would have picked a quarrel with Svein, Sigurd supposed, for Svein was already built like a troll. Given a handful more years he would be a red-haired, red-bearded giant, perhaps even bigger than his father, Styrbiorn, who sat with a beard full of mead and a lap full of wench across the hall, paying no interest to the fight whatever.
Sigurd drank.
‘That’s better,’ Svein said, dragging the back of his hand across his mouth and giving a great belch that all but brought tears to Sigurd’s eyes. And just then Olaf ducked underneath Sorli’s leading arm, throwing his left shoulder into the younger man’s chest and rolling across him so that he took Sorli’s arm between both of his own and bent the hand back on itself, forcing Sorli to his knees lest his wrist be snapped.
Helpless, Sorli barked a curse and Olaf had the better of him enough to stretch out one arm and give a gaping yawn.
‘Fuck!’ a man named Aud exclaimed in the open doorway, still tightening his belt over his huge belly after a trip to the cesspit. ‘I missed it.’
‘Not much to miss,’ another replied.
‘Anyone else?’ Olaf asked, his gaze raking over the gathering like a smith’s tongs through hot coals. Several men called out or stepped forward but when they saw Thorvard press through the throng they stopped out of respect for him, and not just because he was the jarl’s son, either.
‘I will fight you, Uncle!’ Sigurd heard himself call and this raised some laughter but not much. ‘And if I beat you then I will earn my place aboard
Reinen
tomorrow.’
This threw Olaf off balance more than any man had ever done in Eik-hjálmr and he looked over at his jarl, but Harald was too busy frowning at Sigurd. Hagal the skald wasn’t frowning though. The challenge had hooked him from his gloom like a fish from the dark and he clambered up onto the bench to get a clear view, spilling mead with the flurry of it.
‘Sit down, boy!’ Harald called to Sigurd, wafting fingers that gleamed with silver rings. ‘I have seen one son made a fool of, for all that that is like wetting water. I will not have you on your knees too.’
‘Let him fight!’ a man yelled.
‘Aye, he’s got the makings of a good fighter, I’ve seen him and Svein working with spears. Let him have a swing at it!’ someone else shouted.
Olaf scratched his bird’s-nest beard and looked at Jarl Harald. ‘I won’t hurt him,’ he said. ‘So long as he doesn’t tickle me.’ He turned his broad smile on Sigurd. ‘I can’t abide tickling,’ he said.
‘Let him try, Father,’ Sigurd’s other brother Sigmund put in, standing on a mead bench beside the hearth, a pretty thrall under each arm. White teeth flashed in his golden beard. ‘If he can beat Olaf then he’ll be a useful man in the steel-storm tomorrow.’ Sigurd nodded to him in thanks and Sigmund nodded back.
‘No, Sigurd,’ Thorvard said. Their brother’s handsome face was carved in granite now. ‘Go back to your sulking. This is my fight.’
Do not embarrass us all
is what Sigurd heard.
Sigurd burnt inside. All eyes were on him. Even Var and Vogg his father’s two house hounds had called a truce over a fleshy bone and were looking up at him with red-rimmed eyes. This was not the first time Sigurd had asked his father to allow him to stand in the shieldwall but it was the first time he had asked in front of his friends and every sword- or spear-bearing man in the village. With a feeling like a ship’s anchor plunging to the sea bed he knew his humiliation would be complete were his father to deny him now. Perhaps Harald knew this too, or else perhaps he decided that his youngest son needed to learn a valuable lesson about growing into a man. Whatever it was, Harald nodded then, and to Sigurd that simple gesture was sweeter than any mead he had tasted.
Thorvard swore, shrugged his huge shoulders and shook his head, stepping back to show that he withdrew his challenge.
Svein tapped a finger against his own head. ‘You are mad, Sigurd,’ he said. ‘The only time Olaf’s been beaten was after too much mead when he fell asleep standing up before the fight even started.’
‘That might happen again,’ Sigurd suggested.
‘And Asgot might pull some good portents out of a bull’s arse,’ his friend countered.
Sigurd curled his lip as an admission that neither was likely.
‘All right then, you run along and have fun,’ Svein said, batting the air with a big hand. ‘I’ll be over to scrape you off the floor when it’s done.’
Sigurd drained his mead horn and gave it to his friend who was muttering something under his breath, then he turned and walked into the same space in which his older, stronger, more experienced brother had failed only moments before.
‘Be gentle with Olaf, Sigurd!’ Sigmund called above the clamour. ‘When you’re that old it takes time getting up off the floor and we have a fight tomorrow.’
This got a table-hammering and laughter like the rolling surf upon the shore, though all of them knew Olaf was as strong as an ox and a fighter in his prime. Olaf himself did not dignify it with a response, instead leaning in to Sigurd close enough that Sigurd could smell the mead on his breath and the pork grease in his beard. ‘You sure about this, lad?’ he asked in a low voice through lips still spread wide for the crowd.
Sigurd hoisted one eyebrow. ‘I told her I would make you yowl like a kicked dog,’ he said.
Olaf’s eyes widened. ‘Told who?’ His smile contracted into a cat’s arse in the bush of his beard.
‘Her,’ Sigurd replied, nodding towards Eik-hjálmr’s door, and when Olaf looked round Sigurd kicked him in the bollocks. Olaf’s eyes bulged like a fish’s hauled from the depths and down he went, first onto his knees then falling over onto his side, hands thrust between his legs. For a moment Sigurd stood above the man, staring down at him as the men around them railed in outrage or laughed or acclaimed Sigurd as the new champion of Eik-hjálmr, the thunder of it so loud in that hall that Sigurd could not hear Olaf yowling though he could see the shape of it on his mouth.
And in the midst of this tumult Sigurd recalled the story of the hero Beowulf, so often breathed and bellowed by skalds beside Eik-hjálmr’s hearth. For just as the monster Grendel was drawn by the din of men carousing in King Hrothgar’s hall, so a shadow was coming to Skudeneshavn with the next day’s dawn, for all that those around Sigurd this night drank and feasted and fought as though they would live for ever.
He looked through the throng and caught Thorvard’s eye and his brother gave him an almost imperceptible nod that was the highest praise Sigurd could hope for or expect.
‘Father, the ring?’ Sigmund bellowed through the din. ‘My little brother deserves his spoils.’
‘Aye, give the lad his prize!’ Orn Beak-Nose called. ‘Seeing Uncle on his arse is worth that ring and more.’
Harald shook his head and slammed a big hand onto the arm ring before him. ‘Not for that. The boy needs to learn respect.’
Others agreed with this and Sigmund bawled at them, sweeping his mead horn through the fug. Sigurd ignored them all, offering his hand to help Olaf to his feet. But Olaf growled an obscenity and so Sigurd shrugged and turned to walk back to his bench where Svein was waiting with two brimming horns and a grin as wide as a mead-hall door.