Authors: Giles Kristian
‘Which ship is your father on, lad?’ the greybeard asked, rheumy eyes all squint and water as he willed them to be young and far-seeing again.
‘He’s the prow man on
Sea-Eagle
, that longship off
Reinen
’s steerboard,’ Svein announced.
‘Aah, then he must be a big ’un like you,’ the greybeard said. ‘I was a prow man once.’
Svein and Aslak shared a look that the old man’s old eyes did not miss and he batted the air with a hand as if to say what did young men know anyway? And Sigurd was glad that the greybeard had not asked on which ship Aslak’s father was. Olvir Quick-Spear had been killed in the last fight Jarl Harald had been obliged into because of his oath to King Gorm, and no one likes being reminded that their father rots in an earth mound outside the village. Not even if they live again in the next world, drinking and feasting in the Allfather’s hall, as Olvir Quick-Spear surely did.
Sigurd’s muscles had begun to thrum now, the blood in his veins seeming to bubble, the fame-thirst in his heart demanding to be slaked. The ash shaft of the spear in his right hand whispered to him, pleaded to be taken down into the fray where it could rip and rend and fulfil its purpose. But Sigurd must deny the spear as he himself had been denied, the pain of that still smouldering somewhere in him.
A hand clapped him on the back. ‘There they go,’ Svein said, as down in the strait the arrows streaked from ship to ship now that Jarl Randver’s fleet had come within range of Jarl Harald’s. These arrows would cause little harm to either side, though, for men had their shields up and those limewood planks now began to sprout feathered shafts.
Harald’s men were still lashing his vessels together as Jarl Randver’s ship came within range for the strongest men on either side to hurl their spears, which often had some good effect because a good spear with good muscle behind it could crack a shield and leave a man defenceless, at least until a new one could be taken up.
Randver’s other ships were backing oars now, giving their jarl room to manoeuvre, to bring his prow, which bristled with his best warriors, up to
Reinen
’s prow where Slagfid stood with a spear in one hand, his great long-axe in the other and his helmet glinting in the sun. It was no easy thing, not even on a sleeping sea, to get those prows kissing, but Randver’s oarsmen knew their work and Sigurd’s hand clutched the spear tighter still as the thump of the bows carried up to them on the bluff and a great roar from both crews filled the still day.
Randver’s prow man was too eager to make his fame and as he lowered his shield, pulling back his arm to hurl a hand axe, Slagfid cast his spear with the speed and fury of Thór’s lightning and it ripped through the prow man’s throat in a spray of gore, embedding in the shield of the man behind.
‘Slagfid!’ Svein roared as those on the bluff cheered and Jarl Harald’s men beat their swords, spears and axes against their shields with pride for their champion. The dead man was hauled away and the warrior who took his place was wise to keep his shield high, but Slagfid had killed more men than were on Randver’s ship and this would be simply one more. Gripping the huge axe in two hands he reared up like a bear, bringing the axe over his head in a great, death-promising arc, and the blade sliced into the warrior’s shield, the lower horn cleaving the shield in two, the upper horn cutting through the man’s collar bone and tearing down into his breast and trunk, splitting him like oak.
They cheered again, and then again when Slagfid hooked the next man’s shield and leant back, hauling him over the top strake into the sea where he flailed, crushed between the ships’ bellies. But Sigurd held his tongue and looked to
Fjord-Wolf
’s stern because he knew what would happen then if Jarl Randver was any type of leader at all. Sure enough the jarl was striding forward now, flanked by retainers with shields raised before him as he sought to let the sight of him raise his men to greater deeds.
The other men at the prows were jabbing with spears and probing with long-axes and some archers were climbing up onto the sheer strakes to loose their arrows from deadly range, but it was Slagfid who was doing the real killing. And yet Randver’s other ships were like hounds desperate to get their teeth into the prey and one of them came alongside
Little-Elk
, hauling in their port-side oars quickly before the hulls banged together and Randver’s men shot arrows and hurled spears as others threw grappling hooks into
Little-Elk
’s thwarts. These men put the rope around their backs and pulled with all their strength, bringing the ships together in the hope that their weight of numbers would see them clear
Little-Elk
’s decks.
But
Little-Elk
’s crew had other ideas and they presented a wall of shields the length of the karvi, a second row thrusting spears over heads and through the gaps. Asgot the godi was aboard her and he was as good with a spear as he was with the runes. Her skipper, a man named Solveig, was probably as old as the greybeard up there on the bluff but he was a solid fighting man who had earned Harald’s trust. The chances were Solveig would need help from
Reinen
at some point, but he would not ask for it before it was absolutely needed and Harald knew it. If Harald could kill Randver before that happened he might win the battle before King Gorm even had to draw his sword.
Back in the pine wood behind them a raven was croaking and Sigurd felt Svein’s eyes on him because Svein knew Sigurd attached meaning to such things. But Sigurd kept his eyes riveted on the battle below them and Svein let the thing go before giving it voice. Yet the raven kept up its protest, a gurgling croak rising in pitch that had Sigurd thumbing the runes he had etched into his spear’s shaft. Not that the spell, a charm to make the spear fly straight and true, would do much to ward off the ill-omen that Sigurd heard in the bird’s call, tangled like a sharp fish hook in a ball of twine. Not unless he could spear the bird itself, which Asgot would tell him was the same thing as spitting in Óðin’s one eye.
And yet the gods favoured Harald and King Gorm still, for Slagfid had cracked another skull and the dead were piling up at
Fjord-Wolf
’s prow. Olaf was beside the champion now, thrusting his spear at enemy shields, knocking men back into their companions whilst further back men on both sides yelled encouragement and waited their turn to enter the fray.
On
Reinen
’s port side
Little-Elk
was holding its own, the shieldwalls evenly matched, but on the steerboard side the men of
Sea-Eagle
were enduring a steel-storm from the crews of two more of Randver’s longships which had rowed into position, one prow on to
Sea-Eagle
, the other coming alongside and grappling the vessels together even as Harald’s men took axes to the ropes or tried to fend the ship off with oars.
Wielding his own hafted axe, Svein’s father Styrbiorn was a giant at
Sea-Eagle
’s prow, looming there like Thór himself, roaring his challenge at the enemy stuffed in the thwarts of the prow coming at him head on.
Svein reached out again, clamping a great hand on Sigurd’s shoulder, and Sigurd winced at the strength in it but he did not pull away as his friend growled encouragement at his father in the strait below.
‘Your father is as good as Slagfid,’ Sigurd said, which might have been true had Styrbiorn not too often been too drunk to stand so that no one really knew how useful he was in a fight any more. Not that anyone, Slagfid included, would have the balls to tell Styrbiorn that. Since Svein’s mother Sibbe had died the only thing that could pull a smile out of Styrbiorn was mead or murder.
He killed the first man cleanly enough, with an overhead swing similar to Slagfid’s but using the heel of the axe rather than the blade to crush the helmeted head of the man opposite. Now, though, it seemed he could hear his son cheering him on from the cliff above, or perhaps it was Loki who was whispering in his ear the promise of great saga tales, for Styrbiorn pissed all caution into the wind and clambered up onto the sheer strake, his left arm wrapped round
Sea-Eagle
’s prow beast, his right hand gripping the long-axe low on the shaft. With incredible strength – and no little balance for a drunkard, Sigurd thought – he stepped along the sheer strake and, roaring, scythed the axe round in a great horizontal arc, the blunt side hammering into a man’s shield and knocking him and others down in a heap of chaos. Then he brought the axe up and over for another swing, this time deftly spinning the haft in his hand so that the blade flew first, slicing a man’s head from his neck and seeing others cower down behind their shields.
Those on the cliff roared their approval, none louder than Svein himself, and those aboard
Sea-Eagle
hammered their shields to let
Reinen
’s crew know that they were not alone in this fight.
‘I have never seen such a thing!’ the greybeard exclaimed.
Neither had Sigurd ever heard of such. It was the stuff of fireside tales, but so was the next part of it, for all worthwhile tales have their sour parts. Styrbiorn should have climbed down then and got behind a shield for a breath or two and been happy with the fame he had woven for himself. Instead the blood-lust was on him and maybe too much mead was in him for he brought the axe round in another big loop but this time the shaft hit
Sea-Eagle
’s prow beast, snagged on the creature’s pointed ear perhaps, and before Styrbiorn could correct the swing a man at the other prow reached out and thrust a spear into his belly.
Styrbiorn doubled over and his comrades managed to pull him back into the thwarts and Svein’s hands clawed into his flaming red hair.
‘Damned whoresons,’ the greybeard muttered, shaking his head, and Sigurd wanted to tell Svein that perhaps it was not a serious wound and he looked at Aslak who shook his head. For there had been enough muscle and fear in that spear thrust to stop a charging boar. That had been clear even from the top of the bluff and from the giant’s grunt that had carried across the water even above the battle din. Besides which, Styrbiorn did not wear a brynja because he could not afford to have one made that would fit his massive frame.
Perhaps that was the raven’s omen, Sigurd thought, for the bird had stopped its croaking now. Styrbiorn had woven his last piece of fame as he came to the end which the Norns had spun for him. Either way it was a savage blow for
Sea-Eagle
whose men were stunned at losing their prow man so early in the fight. Wielding Styrbiorn’s big axe, a fearsome fighter named Erlend muscled up to the prow and looked good for it, cleaving an arm off at the shoulder and doing Styrbiorn proud until an arrow took him in the face and he tipped over the side before the others could grab hold of him.
Randver’s men were like hounds with the blood scent in their noses now and they surged forward and Sigurd knew that trouble was coming because the men of the other enemy ship, lashed to
Sea-Eagle
’s steerboard side, had seen their fellows doing well at the prow and success begets success.
‘Jarl Harald must send men to help
Sea-Eagle
,’ Aslak said.
Sigurd shook his head. ‘Not yet,’ he muttered.
‘Why not? And why don’t the king’s ships help?’ Runa asked, teeth worrying at her bottom lip, fingers of one hand peeling the white bark from the birch she clung to, and it was a good question, so good that Sigurd did not know the answer. Yet the fear in his sister’s eyes compelled him to say something.
‘Those two ships are waiting either until all Randver’s men are committed to the fight with
Sea-Eagle
or until the first of them spill onto
Sea-Eagle
’s deck, for that will leave the enemy’s ship spear-light and Biflindi’s men will take it easily.’ Runa nodded and Aslak pursed his lips because it was almost a good answer. But Sigurd knew it was an answer as thin as mist and would dissipate at any moment when one of them asked why King Gorm’s five other ships further off had not fully engaged with Randver’s remaining two. Those held their formations in the strait off the port side of
Little-Elk
and Harald’s raft of boats, raining arrows on each other but holding their distance. Sigurd could think of no reason why Biflindi’s five had not overrun those two ships by now, or why he had not sent one of his dragons to savage the longship alongside
Little-Elk
.
Harald sent a knot of men over to
Little-Elk
perhaps at Solveig’s request, perhaps not. Then the jarl gestured at a man beside him who Sigurd knew to be Yngvar because of his black-painted shield and Yngvar went over to
Reinen
’s side, took up his horn and blew a long note north up the strait towards Avaldsnes.
‘The king must come now,’ Svein said, those jaw-tight words his first since seeing his father fall.
Sigurd nodded, though in his mind he still heard the rising croak of the raven in the pine wood, the sound like a mockery of the horn which Yngvar was blowing repeatedly.
And King Gorm did not come.
‘Look!’ one of the youths from Kopervik exclaimed, pointing down to the two longships Shield-Shaker had sent round Jarl Harald’s stern to protect
Sea-Eagle
’s steerboard side.
‘Not before time,’ the greybeard said, turning his sunken eyes on Sigurd. ‘He’s left your father in the fire too long already.’
‘Ha! I’ll wager you wouldn’t say that to King Gorm’s face, old man,’ another youth said.
‘And why not, youngen?’ the old man asked. ‘As you can see I’d be long dead before Shield-Shaker got around to sending someone to kill me.’
This might have got a few laughs had things been going better down in the strait. A warrior named Haki had stepped into Slagfid’s place at the prow now to give Harald’s champion a chance to catch his breath, for axe work will have muscles screaming and a man puffing like nothing else. But though Haki, Olaf, Thorvard and the others were holding Randver’s crew at bay, the rebel jarl’s other crews were pressing their advantage. In making his floating bulwark Harald had drawn the enemy in so that now four of Randver’s six ships were committed. All King Gorm had to do was either deal with Randver’s remaining two or at least keep them out of it while he took Randver’s ship at the stern, cleared its deck and thus put an end to it.