Authors: Giles Kristian
That skin over the cage of her ribs was tight as a spirit drum and now Valgerd could see it beating. Not shallow, as she had felt it before in Sygrutha’s thigh, but vigorously, like a sword pommel against the inside of a shield. But Valgerd would not let herself dare to hope that Sygrutha was somehow fighting back the dark tide that was coming for her. Valgerd had seen enough of death to know better than that.
She stood and undressed herself now, taking the belt with its scabbarded sword and her bone-handled scramasax and laying them on the rock beside the dying woman. Normally she would never be unarmed in the völva’s presence, just in case, for it was up to her to protect Sygrutha. But what did it matter now?
She bent and shrugged off her brynja and then removed her boots, breeks and tunic, placing them neatly as she always did. Then she bent and took Sygrutha into her arms again and walked barefoot across the damp rock and for once the cold water did not steal her breath. She went deeper, feeling the familiar smoothness beneath her feet, taking Sygrutha into the water so that its darkness cradled her, though Valgerd would not let her go. Would never let her go, and a smile, faint as a whisper, touched the lips upon which Valgerd put her own with the softness of a snowflake touching the sea.
‘Don’t leave me,’ Valgerd said, but then wished she could take back the words because it was not an honourable thing, to ask for that which can never be given. She did not want Sygrutha to fight. Not for her. Not now.
Together they turned slow circles in the water, Sygrutha’s black hair floating out like sea wrack, and it seemed to Valgerd that she was giving the völva back to the earth.
Sygrutha’s lips were turning blue though she was not shivering yet and if anything there was a stillness in her face that Valgerd had not seen for a long time. And so she began to wash the fragile body, cleansing it of the sweat and the soot and the pain that had ingrained itself over the last weeks. And because she did not know what else to say she began to sing. She sang the Varðlokur, which she had never done before because the chant belonged to völvur like Sygrutha and not to warriors like her. But surely the gods would not begrudge her doing it, and if they did then damn them for she would sing it anyway.
When Sygrutha had sung the Varðlokur it had wrapped Valgerd like a warm cloak. It had soothed her and lifted her spirit from her body like smoke from a hearth and though she had never received the visions that some talked of, she knew a part of her had travelled far away. Valgerd never sang and now the sound of it was like a stranger to her ears and if her tongue around the words had been the warp and weft of wool on a loom, the dress would be a poorly made thing of rough cloth and loose threads. But it was all she had. She poured the melody into Sygrutha’s ears as their bodies sought each other in the cold water.
Skin against skin.
It was dusk now. Iron-grey clouds were rolling into Lysefjorden and Valgerd did not wish to carry Sygrutha back in the dark across rocks that were slick with rain. So she lifted her out of the pool, laid her on the flat rock and dried her with her own cloak. And when she had dressed the völva again she cradled her in her arms and carried her home.
Despite Svein’s offer to carry him, they had waited another two days until Sigurd was strong enough to walk, albeit he still felt weak on his legs and his skin was stretched like the Alder Man’s over his cheekbones and ribs. Roldar and Sigyn had been glad to see them go. That had been clear as mountain water and who could blame them? For Sigurd’s self-sacrifice in the name of the Frenzy God was a business they wanted nothing to do with and they had looked at him with suspicious, fear-filled eyes since the day Olaf had carried him back from the fen. But they had made good silver and Svein and Aslak had helped around the farm and so they had nothing to complain about. Alvi had asked Sigurd if he could go with them and Sigurd would have said yes if there had been the room in
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‘I will have a ship soon enough,’ he told the young man, ‘and I will come and fetch you. Your brother too if he wants to join us.’ And Sigurd had meant it too, for a man who chases off a walking corpse with his axe is likely to be a good man in the shieldwall.
First, though, they needed to build bridges with powerful men, any minor chieftains or jarls who had an axe to grind against Jarl Randver. If there were any such men.
‘I want to know everything that you know,’ Sigurd had told Hagal the day after he had woken up in Roldar’s barn, for Hagal’s skald-craft took him to every rich man’s hall from Rogaland to Haugalandet, and further north beyond Hardangerfjorden, and Crow-Song’s ears held gabble and rumour like a horn holds mead.
‘I want to know who is scheming and who is moaning about paying the king’s tribute,’ Sigurd said. ‘I want to know which karls have ambition and I want the names of any bóndi who would rather go raiding than break their back working another man’s land.’
‘But Sigurd, I am a skald not some peddler of other men’s secrets,’ Hagal said without conviction.
Sigurd had given him a steel-edged look then. ‘Where were you the day my father took his ships into Karmsundet to fight Jarl Randver?’ Hagal paled at that like a man with his throat cut. ‘We went to watch from the shore and I was surprised I did not see you there,’ Sigurd went on. ‘Surely such a sight was worthy of one of your blood-drenched tales?’ Sigurd tilted his head then like a hawk inspecting its prey. ‘Or perhaps you were too busy drinking the king’s mead at Avaldsnes?’
‘No, lord!’ Hagal blurted, glancing round to see if there was a blade coming for his back. But Sigurd had not told the others of his suspicions where the skald was concerned. Such things were better stored to be used as currency at times like this. ‘You knew Jarl Randver and King Gorm would betray my father, didn’t you, Crow-Song?’ He all but spat the skald’s byname.
‘I knew nothing of it, lord,’ he said, finger and thumb working in his beard, twisting strands into a thin rope. Then under Sigurd’s glare he raised that hand. ‘There had been a rumour when I was last in Hinderå under Jarl Randver’s roof. But there are always rumours. Randver’s cousin was to marry and he wanted me to come up with a new tale for the wedding night and I—’
‘Shut up, Hagal,’ Sigurd said. ‘You are mine now, skald. You will share with me the worms you dig up and in return I will not cut open your back and pull out your lungs and nail them to the side of Roldar’s barn.’
No one ever said that Hagal was a coward. He wore a sword and had been known to use it, but he was all sweating terror then, unblinking eyes round as finger rings, one thumb burrowing deep in the palm of his other hand. Perhaps he was afraid because he had known of the scheme to cast Jarl Harald out of his high seat and knew Sigurd had the right to kill him for holding his tongue on the matter. Or perhaps he was afraid because he had watched Sigurd survive being lashed to a tree, sacrificed to the Allfather himself. And a man who will do that would not blink at ripping out the lungs of a skald he believed had betrayed him.
Crow-Song hoisted one eyebrow. ‘Sometimes I hear things,’ he admitted. ‘When the ale flows and tongues flap like fish in a net. I keep to myself and I earn my silver but sometimes I wish I had stuffed my ears with wool rather than have them filled with men’s schemes and secrets.’ He almost smiled then. ‘Women’s secrets too,’ he said. ‘Gods, but you would be amazed at what they tell me about their husbands.’ He frowned under the weight of Sigurd’s glare. ‘Not that you care about any of that of course.’
‘Svein!’ Sigurd called. ‘Bring an axe. And nails!’
Crow-Song raised his hands. ‘Wait, Haraldarson! There is no need for that. I am just coming to it. Like all stories there is always a little smoke before the flame, hey.’ He forced a smile then and it was that very smile, Sigurd thought, that had women filling Hagal’s ears with their mead-sweet breath. ‘I did hear something up near Hjelmeland that might interest you. There is a rich man up there called Guthorm . . .’
And so they had rowed
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north up the ragged coast past Finnøy, Årdal and Randøy and that evening they had seen one of Jarl Randver’s longships belly-sailed out there in the Boknafjord. But Randver’s crew had not seen them, or more likely they had but knew that there was little point turning their prow eastward to investigate the little boat because she was in the shallows and her crew could make landfall and vanish long before Randver’s crew had trimmed and tightened their sail again.
So they had come safely to a village near a place which Hagal called Moldfall and there Olaf had offered two boys they had found fishing from the rocks a small bone-handled knife if they looked after
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.
‘If I find a mark on her that wasn’t there before I’ll use this to skin you both,’ Olaf threatened, giving them a good look at the blade.
The boys seemed happy enough with that arrangement even though Olaf could not tell them how many days they would be gone, and despite there being only one knife between two. But that was their issue and Sigurd had all but forgotten about
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now as they sat in Guthorm’s small smoky longhouse drinking sour ale but eating a pig which their host had had slaughtered on their arrival – which would have been a generous thing for a jarl to do, but said much about a karl like Guthorm, even if the meat was tough because it had not been hung.
The farmer sat at the end of the table with his wife Fastvi beside him wearing a glass bead and amber necklace and a smile that could do nothing for her looks. As for her husband, the brooch at his shoulder was a modest thing of bronze though handsome enough, but more interesting were the two warrior rings on his right arm, one silver the other brass by the looks. The man was keen for folk to see he had earned some honour in the storm of swords. His house could have fitted into Eik-hjálmr four times over but it looked well made and the hangings along the wall were thick enough to keep out the worst of the winter, so that to Sigurd’s eyes Guthorm was a man who had done well for himself.
‘It is not often that anyone comes to visit us here,’ Guthorm said, raising his horn to the newcomers sitting across the long table from him. His own men sat opposite their guests, backs against the wall, smiles in their beards but eyes itchy with suspicion. ‘Apart from King Gorm’s fart-catchers who come now and again in the spring to take our young men off to some pointless fight.’ His brows knitted together then as he eyed Olaf, who was wearing his brynja and with his hair and beard braided looked as though he was ready for a battle. ‘But you assure me you are not king’s men, Olaf . . .’
‘Just Olaf will do,’ Olaf said, not being drawn into saying who his father was or giving away anything more about them than they had already offered. For Sigurd had done up his cloak with his father’s great silver brooch and so Guthorm knew his guests had some story behind them, even if he did not know yet what that story was.
‘Well if you have not come to take my young men away to fight the king’s wars then you are welcome here, friends.’ Guthorm was perhaps ten years older than Olaf and whatever muscle he had was kept warm under a generous layer of fat. ‘Let us drink to new friends and perhaps some future trade, yes?’ He swept his horn towards those on the other side of the table, his eyes lingering a moment on Asgot who, with the bones tied in his grey hair and the menace coming off him like a stink, often had men touching anything iron within reach, even if they did not know he was rune-caster and priest.
Men and women sat drinking on the benches around the walls, talking amongst themselves, though with an eye or ear turned towards Guthorm’s table and the strangers around it.
‘We have the best bear skins you will find in all Rogaland,’ Guthorm went on. ‘Wolf pelts too and some fine reindeer antler for which I recently paid good silver.’ He smiled. ‘But you will see that it was worth much more.’ He thought he was a cunning trader, this one.
‘And slaves?’ Solveig said, pointing towards the dark corner of the house over their left shoulders.
Sigurd looked round and saw something on the floor that he had not noticed before, something dark-haired and brooding like a kicked hound, and he was surprised that Solveig’s old salt-crusted eyes had beaten him to it. It was a young man, his wolf-like, beardless face obscured by twists of grimy black hair hanging to his chest.
‘Slaves, eh?’ Guthorm repeated, eyes narrowed, chewing his fleshy lip in thought. ‘None that are for sale,’ he said after a long moment, picking a meaty bone from his plate and gnawing at the gristle around the joint. Sigurd saw the whites of the slave’s eyes flash in the dark and heard the rattle of the chains which bound him there. Guthorm tossed the bone into the dark corner and there was a flurry of movement as the offering was snatched up.
‘Must be a spirited dog that you need to keep it on a short leash,’ Olaf observed lightly, though there was a barb on that line and everyone knew it. He might as well have asked Guthorm if he were afraid of the half-starved slave.
Guthorm’s brows arched and he was about to reply when his wife raised a hand to silence him.
‘Only a fool lets his silver out of his sight, yes?’ Fastvi said, running her own plump fingers across the beads at her neck. ‘We keep our precious things close, Olaf son of no one. That way they remain ours.’
Olaf made a deep
hoom
in the back of his throat, for none of them could see why the young thrall was so precious that he needed chaining. ‘If a man takes something of mine then he needs to have either the speed of a hare or the power of a king,’ he said, ‘and even then he’s a good chance of ending up dead.’
Fastvi picked the warning out of that. ‘Your weapons will be safe. No one around here would dare lay a hand on them,’ she said, for as custom had demanded they had left their own precious things – their swords and their axes – outside Guthorm’s longhouse and none of them was happy about it.
Sigurd nodded, appreciating her assurances, then looked at her husband. ‘This is a fine house, Guthorm,’ he said, which was not quite a lie but generous all the same.