Authors: Giles Kristian
The two allied ships had rowed round
Reinen
’s stern, but instead of coming alongside those two dragons that were attacking
Sea-Eagle
they manoeuvred up to that ship, whose crew were yelling at King Gorm’s men to get into the fight.
‘Óðin’s bollocks,’ Svein said, as the first arrows streaked from Shield-Shaker’s ships into
Reinen
and
Sea-Eagle
’s thwarts.
‘Treachery!’ the greybeard yelled. ‘You can never trust a king.’ He looked over at Sigurd but Sigurd could not take his eyes from the scene below. ‘Your father is a dead man now, youngen. Best get back to your kin quick as you can.’
‘It’s not over yet, you old goat,’ Aslak said. ‘Not while Slagfid still fights.’
Sigurd spat a curse and hoped the Allfather heard it, for such treachery was lower than a worm’s belly and Óðin should not see it played out. And yet Óðin loved chaos. Had Asgot not told Sigurd that a thousand times?
Little-Elk
was on its own now and holding its own too, and that was largely down to being so much smaller than the ship lashed against it, for its warriors were concentrated over a smaller area which enabled them to present a shieldwall three men deep. But exposed out there on the steerboard side of Jarl Harald’s raft
Sea-Eagle
was doomed and everyone knew it. For the most important thing now was to preserve Jarl Harald, which meant his best warriors must stay with him aboard
Reinen
lest they be overrun by Jarl Randver’s hearthmen from
Fjord-Wolf
.
Sea-Eagle
’s skipper Gudrod was at the centre of the shieldwall bristling his longship’s side, jabbing a spear at those who sought to climb aboard his ship. But men were falling in that rampart now and the gaps could not be plugged. Sigurd and his friends were watching men they had known all their lives die, hacked and stabbed, falling into the thwarts, and Sigurd growled at Runa to look no more but she refused.
Then Gudrod went down from a spear thrust and one of Randver’s brave warriors saw his chance. His shield before him, he threw himself over the top strakes into
Sea-Eagle
, forcing the breach, and though he undoubtedly died a heartbeat later those behind plunged after him. Once a shieldwall is broken like that it nearly always spells disaster, so Sigurd had been told by Olaf who, in the maw of it at his prow, must have known what was happening aboard
Reinen
’s sister ship, though he could do nothing about it. Thorvard was still in the thick of it too, fighting like a champion, but now Harald came to the prow himself bringing Sigmund and Sorli, so that Sigurd felt pride bloom in his chest at the sight of his brothers wading into the steel-storm, refusing to accept that they were beaten.
Seeing his jarl striding into the carnage, Slagfid stormed back to his place at the prow and, leaving his axe with Haki, worked with an enormous boar spear, thrusting and cutting, his skill matched only by his strength. When Randver’s men saw Harald’s champion back amidst the blood-fray they raised their shields and pulled heads back into shoulders and a youth near Sigurd exclaimed that Jarl Randver looked like a berserker as he frothed and fumed at his warriors to show more steel and less limewood.
‘We can still win this,’ Aslak said. ‘If the king sides with Harald and brings his ships across.’
‘Fool, boy! The king wants the fishes feasting on Jarl Harald tonight!’ the greybeard said, pointing at the king’s two ships that were raining their arrow storm on Harald’s floating fort. ‘They’ve carved that ambition clear as runes on a standing stone.’
‘Those ships have sided with Randver, that is plain, old man,’ Sigurd said, ‘but that is not to say that Biflindi himself is with the rancid pig’s bladder. The king fights on. See.’
‘You call that fighting, lad?’ the greybeard said. ‘Pah! My wife puts more into it when she scolds me for being drunk or looking too long at some pretty young thing.’
Sigurd felt the grimace on his face but did not bite back, because he knew the old goat saw the truth of it even with those withered eyes. The arrow fight going on between those seven ships was perhaps more dangerous than a hailstorm but not by much. It was a show, like a leashed dog growling at another passing by.
‘See how far they’ve drifted,’ Aslak observed and Sigurd nodded.
‘There’s more current in that sea than you would know to look at it,’ he said, for Harald’s raft of ships and Randver’s lashed to it, having sat in the middle of the strait when the battle started, had now been brought much nearer the shore. ‘They will have to cut themselves free soon. All of them,’ Sigurd said, ‘or risk being smashed on the rocks.’
‘Then Father can escape?’ Runa suggested, ‘if they cut the ropes?’ There was a spear-blade’s glint of hope in her blue eyes.
‘Aye, that’ll be the only thing that saves your men now, girl,’ the greybeard said, ‘but old Njörd has already forsaken them, I am sure of it. He gives thin hope but not the wind or waves that Jarl Harald needs.’
‘Any more talk from you, old man, and we will see how your warped bones fare against the rocks,’ Sigurd growled. Aslak flapped his arms at the old man who must have seen enough steel in Sigurd’s eyes to believe it was no empty threat for he shuddered, hitched lips back from rotting teeth and held his tongue.
‘Bollocks,’ Svein said as a cheer went up from Randver’s men, for the shieldwall on
Sea-Eagle
had suddenly shattered like a clay pot dropped on a rock and the rebel jarl’s warriors were winning, clearing the deck and washing it in the blood of Harald’s hirðmen. Some of those fought on, trying to link up with their sword-brothers in twos and threes, but more of the enemy were spilling into the thwarts and it was clear that
Sea-Eagle
was lost. Men were hacked apart and speared in the back as they tried to scramble over the sheer strake onto
Reinen
, whose men thrust spears or hefted shields to try to protect those seeking refuge.
Over on the port side
Little-Elk
was a scene of butchery too. The enemy had somehow come aboard at the stern and, with her shieldwall thinned to face this new threat, gaps were not being filled and Randver’s weight of numbers was telling. The scales had tipped and there was no bringing it back now.
Sigurd tasted bile in his mouth, could feel it rising from his stomach and burning as it came. The men from Skudeneshavn were being slaughtered and he could do nothing.
‘Get back to your people, boy,’ the greybeard said, risking Sigurd’s wrath. ‘You need to tell them what is coming. Give them a chance to scarper. For you can mark my words this foul thing won’t end here.’
Sigurd thrust his spear down amongst the birch roots and strode towards the old man whose eyes bulged like boiled eggs. ‘I told you to hold your tongue,’ he growled, grabbing fistfuls of the man’s tunic and hauling him through the long grass to the edge of the bluff so that they could both see the white water churning against the rocks below.
Then Sigurd saw the fishermen and their boat up on the shingle.
‘I meant no harm!’ the old man whined.
‘Sigurd! Let him go!’ Runa screamed. And the others watched, wide-eyed but closed-mouthed but for Svein who had seen his father killed already and so had no care for an old prattler who should have kept his lips together.
Still gripping the man, Sigurd had already forgotten him. In the strait the battle raged, the ring of steel on steel, the thump of blades against shields, the shrieks of the wounded and the roars of warriors, but in his mind Sigurd heard the rising croak of the raven that had watched from the pine wood.
He threw the old man to the ground. ‘What is the quickest way down from here?’ he asked him.
‘There’s a path beyond that rock,’ the old man said, pointing a trembling hand. ‘Leads right down to the water’s edge.’
Sigurd nodded and turned to Svein and Aslak. ‘Are you coming?’ he asked. They looked at each other and nodded, and before the old man had even climbed back to his feet the three of them were tearing across the bluff, then scrambling down the worn narrow track towards the sea.
When they reached the shore the four fishermen turned and stood, two of them pulling knives from their belts, their nerves honed to an edge by what they had seen in the strait.
‘Give me your boat,’ Sigurd said, striding up to them, Svein at his right shoulder, Aslak at his left.
One of the men laughed though there was no mirth in it.
‘Fuck off, boy,’ another growled, waving his knife through the air.
Sigurd spun the spear in his hands and thrust, striking the man square on his forehead with the butt end and dropping him. The other three stepped backwards leaving their senseless companion lying on the wet shingle.
‘That’s Jarl Harald’s son,’ a man said and brows arched above round eyes.
‘Take it,’ a leathery-skinned fisherman said, nodding towards their small boat.
Sigurd nodded and turned his back on them, going over to the boat from which seagulls took off screeching, their feast of fish guts disturbed. They pulled it down into the still water of the sheltered cove and when the boat was in two feet of sea they climbed in, Aslak giving it a shove for good measure before he sprang aboard.
‘I’ll do it,’ Svein said, placing himself in the middle, taking up both oars and setting them in their locks, his back to the open fjord. Sigurd looked up at the bluff and saw Runa, her hair bright as gold in the afternoon sun, and he waved at her but she kept both fists and the silver Freyja pendant against her breast. Then Sigurd turned and knelt at the bow, watching the battle rage beyond the skerry-guarded cove as Svein hauled back on the oars, his great strength pulling the boat away from the shore.
‘What are you scheming, Sigurd?’ Aslak asked as Svein’s long strokes took them past the rocks out into the strait. ‘We cannot do much with one spear.’
‘Just be ready,’ Sigurd said, standing up on the step, using his spear to balance as the battle din grew louder. Somewhere amongst the chaos a man screamed. Yngvar was still blowing his horn now and then, when he wasn’t fighting for his life. Sigurd heard splashes as warriors fell into the sea, their ringed brynjas taking them down to the sea bed before they realized they were dead.
Sea-Eagle
was lost, its thwarts full of Jarl Randver’s men, some of whom Sigurd could see stooped, stripping Harald’s dead perhaps whilst others joined those who were now clearing
Reinen
’s deck. But even standing, Sigurd struggled to see over the ships’ sides and it was only when he caught sight of his father’s helmet, its panels of polished silver plate glinting in the sun, that he knew
Reinen
was lost too. For Harald had been driven back to the raised platform at
Reinen
’s stern and now stood a little forward of the tiller, his sons Sorli and Sigmund beside him, shields raised. Slagfid was there too, the champion’s shoulders sagging with exhaustion now, though his shield was high and his great, worm-looped blade yet promised death to all who faced him.
‘Faster, Svein,’ Sigurd growled and Svein obeyed, shoulder muscles billowing with each stroke, the veins in his neck corded like walrus-skin ropes as he took them ever closer to
Reinen
’s stern, making sure to keep a good distance from the two ships attacking her and also from
Sea-Eagle
, which now thronged with Jarl Randver’s warriors.
Then Sigurd saw a small shieldwall stepping backwards along the port side and caught sight of Olaf barking commands at this last knot of Harald’s household warriors. Thorvard was amongst them too, blood-spattered and grimacing as he defended their meagre shield rampart against the weight of the attack bearing down on them.
‘
Little-Elk
has broken off!’ Aslak called, which was something at least, and Sigurd saw the frenzied panic in that ship, heard the clump of oars as men took them up from the deck and pushed the staves out through the ports and began to row her away from the slaughter whilst Randver’s men showered her with arrows. Sigurd could almost hear Asgot spitting curses and invoking the gods to come down from Valhöll and piss on the worm Jarl Randver.
Yngvar lay dead over
Reinen
’s sheer strake, still clutching the horn as though even now they hoped King Gorm would come to fight at their shoulder, but there was no sign of Biflindi and it was too late now anyway.
‘Father! Sorli!’ Sigurd called but the battle din was so loud that they could not hear him, or if they could they were too embroiled in the fray to take notice. With
Little-Elk
pulling away from the slaughter and
Sea-Eagle
already taken, Jarl Randver was able to set all of his warriors against those few of Jarl Harald’s hearthmen still holding their ground at
Reinen
’s stern. More hooks thunked against ships’ ribs and thwarts, more ropes were passed to Randver’s men already brimming Harald’s deck so that this floating platform now belonged to the rebel . . . but for some two spear-lengths of oak deck upon which the great warrior in the glittering, raven-beaked helmet held dominion with his best warriors and those of his own blood. Sigmund, who was a great fighter, ran two steps and jumped, thrusting his sword down behind an enemy’s shield and into his neck, then he slammed his shield into the dying man’s own and leapt back into his own shieldwall, a wolf’s grin on his face. Sigurd’s chest filled with pride at his brother’s skill and daring even as he knew all hope was lost.
Now another horn blew, this one Jarl Randver’s, and Sigurd saw that the rebel meant to offer terms to his defeated enemy. But Harald roared that Randver was a rancid goat’s turd and the treacherous cunny snot of a slobbering whore and his men thumped their swords and spears against their shields to echo the insult and acclaim their defiance.
For a moment Randver’s men seemed unsure what their jarl wanted of them but Harald made their minds up for them by taking a spear from Sorli and hurling it with such strength that it pierced a warrior’s shield and pinned his arm to his chest, raising a cheer from those aboard
Reinen
who knew they would soon sit with their ancestors in Óðin’s hall and drink to this moment.