Authors: Giles Kristian
Thengil’s fleshy lips pulled back from his teeth and in that moment and that moment alone you could tell from whose loins he had sprung.
‘My father was a friend to no man,’ he said. ‘Though he was generous to his hirðmen. They fought like wolves for him and never found themselves silver-light in return.’ He swept an arm across the vast flame-dotted space. A mouse skittered past Sigurd’s foot and disappeared under a bench. ‘Look around you, Sigurd Haraldarson. You will see there are no young men here now. They have all gone.’ He flickered his fat fingers up into the air. ‘They flew away seeking fighting jarls and plunder. For I had to stay here and tend to my father and could promise them no plunder, only a wealth of quiet years and a straw death at the end of them.’ He glared at Hauk as though the man was something foul brought in on the bottom of his shoe. ‘They are my war band. They stayed for my father and now it hangs over them like a curse, as you can no doubt see with your young eyes. Are you not disgusted by them?’
‘I would not want to fight them,’ Sigurd said, which he knew was generous of him, but which was also true. For men who kept their brynjur and war gear as well as these men did were proud men. And pride makes men strong regardless of the years on their backs.
‘They are sour as old beer, Sigurd.’ He waved his horn towards the low table and the sea chests. Land chests these days, Sigurd thought. ‘I hear them,’ Hakon’s son went on, ‘sitting there talking about their friends who sit in the Spear-God’s hall. Going over old battles again and again, like sheep ambling along the same path day after day. I think that sometimes they do it to get at me.’ Another mouse ran across the floor and Thengil cursed and hurled his mead horn at it but the creature was long gone. The women at their work did not even look up. ‘They gnaw away at me, Sigurd. They think I am a weak man who has not lived even half the life that they have lived.’ He looked at Hauk and at the men at Sigurd’s shoulder but none of them bit at this hook. ‘But their talk is so much bleating in my ears. I have this hall and all they have is a bench and an oath forced on them by a living corpse.’
‘Join me, Thengil Hakonarson,’ Sigurd said. ‘Bring some silver-lustre to this dark old place. Weave your own saga tale so folk will not always look for you in your father’s shadow.’
Thengil scratched his soft beard then and stared at Fjölnir perched on Sigurd’s arm. ‘Are you mad, Sigurd?’ he asked, his eyes sliding back to Sigurd’s. ‘Is that why you have a raven on your arm?’ He squeezed his finger and thumb together. ‘Jarl Randver will squash you like a louse. As for King Gorm, I’d wager he does not even know you are alive, much less care.’
‘He knows,’ Sigurd said.
‘Aah, I see it now,’ Thengil said. ‘You hunger for a warrior’s death because you miss your brothers and your father. You want to sit and drink with them in the Hanged God’s hall.’
How had Jarl Hakon had a son like this, Sigurd wondered, then supposed that it was perhaps the jarl’s disappointment in Thengil that had reduced him to that withered skull-grinning stick by the fire.
Thengil clapped his hands and the milk-spilling thrall brought him another full horn. He had yet to offer Sigurd any, which was insult enough in itself but also just another reason why Sigurd felt tempted to put the man’s teeth through the back of his soft head.
‘My lord,’ Hauk interrupted, ‘I said I would send some drink out to Sigurd’s men.’ He frowned. ‘And the woman.’
The heavy lids of Thengil’s eyes hauled themselves up at that. ‘You leave your woman standing outside my hall?’
‘She is not my woman,’ Sigurd replied. ‘She is a warrior. And a ferocious one.’
Thengil half turned his face away as if expecting Sigurd to admit the jest, but Sigurd’s eyes were chips of ice and the fat man gave a great belch which rolled into a laugh as thin as piss. ‘So you have roped in some women to fight for you then? And we mustn’t forget that fierce bird you’ve got there. Such a beast will have your enemies trembling.’ He fluttered a hand at Hauk to get some mead sent outside. ‘A war band to weave a saga tale about, hey!’
‘A hirð of white-beards and crooked-backs will hardly get you in a skald’s tale,’ Sigurd said, unable to stop himself biting back. ‘Nor will sitting in the dark on your arse when other men are out there weaving their fame.’
Thengil winced at this and Sigurd knew his words had stung the man. They really were loyal thegns then, these ancient retainers of Hakon’s, that none of them said such things to Thengil’s face much less put a spear in his belly. For men such as Hauk knew only too well that their reputations, or what was left of them, were now eroded by their binding to this pale-livered, soft-living lord, like a trusted sword that is left in the rain to be eaten by the iron rot.
Thengil turned to one of the warriors at his shoulder, a man whose beard was still more brown than white and whose face gave away nothing of what he was thinking. ‘This outlawed son of a dead jarl, a young man barely into his first beard, comes here to insult me in my own hall. And will I do nothing about it?’ He turned back to Sigurd. ‘Do I not hold my honour to be my most valued possession?’ The fat lip hitched and the teeth were back again. ‘Bad enough that I did not receive an invitation to the wedding of Jarl Randver’s son at their Haust Blót feast.’
This was cast Sigurd’s way like a challenge, like the first spear hurled from one shieldwall to another before a battle, and it crossed Sigurd’s mind to pull the scramasax from its sheath strapped to his right arm beneath his tunic’s sleeve. Why not open Thengil’s belly? Watch his guts slither free and spill onto the floor and see what the corpse-jarl’s old hearth warriors had to say about it. For did not Óðin’s very name mean frenzy? Did the Lord of Death not love chaos?
‘There will be no wedding,’ Sigurd said. ‘If the maggot Randver finds himself at the feast table that night it will be with my father and my brothers and his own ancestors.’
‘You are an ambitious young man,’ Thengil said, coming closer to get a better look at him. The warriors tightened the knot around them, and yet still it was the first bit of backbone Sigurd had seen in the man. Now they stood eye to eye, close enough that Sigurd could smell on him what he had been doing with the bed slaves before their arrival. It was sweet and musky and Sigurd knew here was a man with an appetite for food, mead and women, but not for war or fame.
Though as it would turn out, Sigurd was wrong about the last one.
‘My father would have liked you, I think,’ the man said. ‘He would have torched Jarl Randver’s hall for the savage joy of watching it burn. As for King Gorm, old Hakon would have enjoyed putting him back in his place. My father would never admit it but he lost some of his edge when he had to swear on Gorm’s sword.’ He looked back to the figure in the bed. ‘I think he regretted not leading his men against Gorm when the man set himself up as a king perched up there at Avaldsnes.’ He shrugged. ‘But I am a different man.’
‘I can see that, Thengil,’ Sigurd said. ‘So you will not help me against Jarl Randver and make yourself rich in the doing of it?’ He was suddenly aware of Fjölnir’s claws digging into the flesh of his arm. Thengil turned away, beckoning Hauk to walk with him back into the shadows beyond the head end of his father’s bed. Sigurd could not hear what he was saying to the old warrior but he resisted the urge to glance over his shoulder. He knew well enough how far away the door was at the other end of the hall.
‘The truth is, Sigurd Haraldarson,’ Thengil called back to him as Hauk strode past Sigurd without meeting his eye and continued down the hall’s flame-flickered central aisle, ‘your coming here has presented me the opportunity to regain my honour.’
What honour? Sigurd thought but held his tongue.
‘And I thank you for it,’ Thengil went on, reaching out a hand to Jarl Hakon but holding it a finger’s length from the sparse grey hair as though he dared not touch the man. He pulled the hand back and wrapped it around the other one holding the mead horn, then stepped behind one of his men, just as a shout went up from outside.
Sigurd’s blood froze in his veins.
‘Seize him!’ Thengil yelled at his men, his eyes suddenly round, his hands trembling enough to spill mead onto the floor.
The knot of warriors around Sigurd levelled their spears and surrounded him, and he spat a curse aimed more at himself for not having somehow got Thengil outside or at least closer to the hall’s door. The women on the benches stopped what they were doing now, eyes wide in the hearthlight.
‘Do not kill him!’ Thengil shouted. There was more shouting outside but Sigurd’s ears could not untangle it and he hoped Olaf and the others were not risking a fight against eight mailed men, even as old as they were. ‘You can kill that bird though, Bodvar,’ Jarl Hakon’s son said, and the long-bearded spearman frowned as though unsure how to go about it, as Sigurd fumbled at the string wound round his left arm, pulling it out from his tunic’s sleeve so that the string and the feathers tied to it dangled from Fjölnir’s foot. Yet her talons dug into his arm still, the raven eyeing those around her.
‘Off with you, bird!’ Sigurd growled, throwing his arm up, and Fjölnir flapped her great black wings and took off into the hearth smoke, croaking angrily. She swept up to the roof like a living shadow and for a sickening moment Sigurd thought she was going to land on a beam and perch there watching with her black-glossed eyes. But she jilted left at the last and, seeing her only escape route, pulled her wings against her body and burst out of the smoke hole into the grey beyond, the feathered string trailing after her.
‘You should have speared it, Bodvar,’ one of the other men said. Perhaps he had seen Sigurd’s scheme in letting the bird go. Perhaps not.
‘You are a nithing fool, Hakonarson,’ Sigurd said. ‘At the least you should draw your sword, you soft, sow-bellied shit. You troll’s fart.’ He spat on the man’s calf-skin shoes. ‘Not that Óðin’s War-Riders will take you when I cut your throat, Thengil Wolf-Starver. The only thing waiting for you is a knot of worms to feed on your flesh.’
These insults slid off Thengil like pork grease off a smooth chin. He was grinning like a man who has been looking out to sea, waiting for weeks for the wind to change, and now feels it on the back of his head.
‘I think I will make a journey to Hinderå to pay my respects to Jarl Randver,’ he said. ‘For when he sees the wedding gift I have brought he will no doubt sit me beside him at the feast table.’ He fluttered fingers towards the far door. ‘Take him outside,’ he told his men. ‘I would like to meet the fools who have crewed up with this wyrd-doomed boy.’
A man with a spear blade pointing at Sigurd’s chest jutted his chin towards the door and Sigurd turned, getting a spear butt between his shoulder blades. He walked back down the central aisle, past the looms and the women with busy hands, through the biggest hall he had ever seen, which was these days a stain on the memory of the jarl who once sat in the high seat but now lay in old furs more dead than alive.
Bodvar opened the scorch-marked door and there were Olaf, Svein and Valgerd in an iron and steel knot, back to back in the middle of a bristling ring of spears.
‘That did not go well then, Sigurd,’ Olaf rumbled, watching Thengil’s men over the rim of his shield. ‘I am beginning to think you are not so good at making friends.’
Two men kept their spears levelled at Sigurd and now Thengil drew his own sword and stood behind him. The other four hirðmen from the hall joined their companions so that twelve men surrounded Olaf, Svein and Valgerd, and all of them wore ringmail. This Jarl Hakon had been as rich as Fáfnir once, Sigurd thought.
‘Just give the word,’ Svein told Sigurd, violence coming off him like heat from a forge.
Sigurd shook his head. ‘Just stand, Svein.’ He knew that the numbers meant nothing to Svein. One nod and his friend would throw himself and his great axe at Thengil’s warriors and carnage would reign. But a spear or two would surely find the big man’s flesh.
‘Put down your blades, you growling fools, there is no reason to get yourselves butchered,’ Thengil said, then gestured at Hauk and his other hearthmen. ‘Even old dogs can bite. These men were killing my father’s enemies before I was born.’ He pointed at Svein’s long-hafted axe. ‘On the ground with that, red-beard.’
‘Keep hold of it, lad,’ Olaf growled into his beard, but it was clear Svein had no intention of doing otherwise.
‘If you don’t give up your weapons I will sheathe this sword in young Sigurd’s back,’ Thengil threatened, and though Sigurd knew the man’s weight alone was enough to drive that blade into him, he knew too that Thengil would do no such thing.
‘He needs me alive, Uncle,’ he said. ‘The white-livered nithing means to take me to Hinderå and buy himself a name there.’
‘Gods but if someone gave me you as a wedding gift I’d put my foot up their arse,’ Olaf said.
‘I will ask you one more time,’ Thengil said, the tremor in his voice betraying a rising anger now. Being Jarl Hakon’s son amongst women and old men, it was likely that Thengil was not used to being defied. ‘Put your blades down or my men will spear you where you stand.’ The white-beards were stony-faced and ready to fight. They gripped their spears and shields with long-practised ease, as comfortably as they might hold a cup of ale, and Sigurd knew they would carry out Thengil’s orders without flinching.
‘Sigurd is my prize. He is the silver that will see a jarl’s torc at my neck.’
‘A jarl of ghosts,’ Olaf said, feet planted, shield up. Ready.
Valgerd jerked her chin at Sigurd, her eyes knife points in the shadow of her fine helmet. ‘What happened to the bird?’ she asked.
‘She flew,’ Sigurd said, glancing towards the woods. A smile touched the warrior woman’s lips. ‘Men of Osøyro!’ Sigurd said. ‘Lower your spears. You are men of honour. You are far above this shit bucket Thengil Hakonarson.’
Something smashed into the back of his head and he staggered, falling to the dirt. The pommel of Thengil’s sword, he supposed, feeling the blood run warm across his scalp and down the side of his neck, but he did not turn around to face the man and climbed to his feet as though it were nothing.