The Valhalla Saga 01 - Swords of Good Men (20 page)

Angry voices erupted here and there in the crowd. Some of the soldiers were visibly furious. King Olav ignored them. Proud and defiant, he stood above his army. Like the captain of a ship in a sea of angry faces, Finn thought.

‘I have travelled the world, Northmen. And if we do not change – if we are content to huddle in a cabin like the old gods that grow grey and frail and weak – we will starve and die in misery.’

One angry soldier shouted: ‘So what will your White Christ do? How will he protect us? There’s only one of him!’ A smattering of affirmative shouts followed.

Olav spread his hands and waited until the crowd had gone silent. He looked straight back at the soldier. ‘Let us examine this, my good friend,’ Olav said almost amicably. ‘We are brought up to believe that Odin, Thor and Freya live above us in the sky, are we not? In Valhalla?’ He gestured skywards and waited. There was no immediate reply. ‘Are we not?’ Olav repeated.

‘Yes,’ the soldier replied eventually.

‘Well,’ said the king. ‘Let us compare my god …’ he unhooked the coil from over his shoulder, ‘and the old gods.’ He braced himself and started pulling on the rope. The carved statues of Odin, Thor and Freya fell over, scraped on the stone and then started rising slowly. They must have weighed the same as three grown men, and the ease with which the king pulled them up was not lost on the men.

When he had pulled the figures up onto the roof, he untied the statue of Freya. He held it in front of his chest and spoke to the men.

‘My god … will protect me.’

He threw the statue off the roof. It hit the stone altar and split
with a loud crack. The shock resonated through the ranks. Stunned looks spread on the soldiers’ faces.

King Olav’s voice rang out again.

‘My god … will support me.’

The semicircle around the longhouse widened as the men pulled back instinctively. The statue of Thor was already airborne. It hit the altar’s edge and broke cleanly in two.

This time all eyes were back on Olav.

He had already hoisted the carved statue of Odin above his head. He did not seem to notice the weight. Clear, strong and chilling, his voice rang out again.

‘
My
god will guide me! For
my
god I will unite us all, a mighty army of Northmen!
My
god will shatter the old gods, strike them down and send their believers to Hell!’

He threw the statue of Odin down hard onto the stone. It hit and shattered. Five thousand stunned faces stared up at Olav. He continued.

‘
My
god …’

He calmly undid the strings on his trousers.

‘… would never have allowed this …’

With his trousers lowered he let forth a stream of piss onto the ground, splashing the splintered, ruined statues.

‘… to happen.’ Completely unhurried, he did up his trousers and turned to the soldier.

‘Now, my friend. Has Thor struck me with his mighty hammer?’ He waited for an answer. None was forthcoming. ‘Do you see wolves? Do you see ravens?’ The men looked up, entranced. ‘Has
anything
happened?’ Silence enveloped the village.

Olav looked at the gathered men. He drew a deep breath and shouted: ‘So I say to you, Northmen – the old gods are weak! As I have destroyed their images, march with me to destroy their
followers! March with me and I shall lead you into battle, to honour … to victory!’

Finn realized he’d been holding his breath for a very long time. He let it out and shouted: ‘Long live King Olav!’

Almost at once, five thousand voices echoed his cry. The ground shook with stamping feet. Men banged their shields. Horses whinnied nervously.

From a nearby field two large, black birds took to the sky.

STENVIK

‘Where’s the healer? My head hurts.’ The pig farmer’s speech was slurred and he squinted in the faint light of the hut.

‘I don’t know,’ Audun replied from his spot in the corner.

The big man in the corner moaned. ‘I can’t get up. I need help. You – help me!’

Audun ignored him.

‘I’m talking to you! Where’s the bloody healer? I’m dying!’

Audun rolled his eyes and took a deep breath. ‘You’re not dying. You’ve been badly hurt. Valgard will be around to look at you soon enough. Just lie down and try not to move.’

The pig farmer snorted and clambered to his feet. ‘Pah! You don’t know how I feel. You don’t know anything. I demand compensation and honour restored! I’m going to find the healer that patched me up and tell him …’ Halfway to the door, he squinted into the corner and recognized the blacksmith. His voice trailed off and he hurried out of the hut.

Audun watched him go then looked at Geiri’s prone form. ‘You know,’ he said to the unconscious man, ‘I think maybe we’d have less trouble if more people were like you.’

*

Patches of black and blue skin made the pig farmer’s left eye seem like it had sunk deep into his skull. Both his lips were split and a large, oozing sore covered most of his jaw. Thinning blonde hair hung in greasy hanks. He hid his left hand under his arm and nursed a broken rib on the right-hand side as he staggered towards the square, but he was damned if he was going to let anything stop him.

He saw the two old men, the one who fitted the description of the chieftain and his friend the white-beard, walk purposefully towards the steps to the south wall. He tried to ignore the aches, to keep his mind on what he meant to do. March up to them, state his claim, say he wanted a tribunal, restitution.

As he set off across the market square someone grabbed his shoulder, spun him around and dragged him out of sight, in between two huts.

‘I don’t think you should disturb Sigurd right now, pig man,’ Harald said calmly. The big farmer tried to shake himself free but the raider’s heavy hand was firmly on his shoulder, fingers clawing into muscle, digging in under the shoulder blade. ‘He’s busy, we’re under siege and he has no time for anyone, really.’ Pain lanced through his side and the farmer grimaced. ‘Oh, sorry. Am I hurting you?’ Harald said, sounding full of concern. The grip on the shoulder tightened and twisted. The sea captain stepped towards him. Face now inches from the other’s, Harald spoke in a completely level voice.

‘You may think you have been treated unfairly. You may think you’re owed something. Some kind of restoration of honour. Mmm?’ He squeezed and pulled, and the pig farmer’s knees buckled. ‘You may also wonder where your cousins went. I’ll tell you.’ Struggling to stand, the farmer’s eyes welled up and he lost control of his bladder. Harald wrinkled his nose but continued,
his voice sweet and soothing. ‘They made claims on your behalf, you see. Then they got drunk, punched each other out, tied themselves up and went and sat in a boat without oars that floated out to sea.’ The pig farmer’s lip trembled and a slow smile formed on Harald’s face. ‘Somehow … somehow one of them got a hold of a knife … and scratched a hole in the boat. Between the timbers, you know? Not a big hole, not at all. Just big enough for some water to trickle through and wake them up when they were far enough out to sea. So they could watch the water pool in the bottom, rise slowly and sink the boat, while they were tied up safely and watching the coast from a distance.’ Harald smiled at the crouching pig farmer. ‘Now I don’t know how close they were to you, pig man, but you know they say madness runs in families. I think the only way you can be safe from’ – he twisted savagely and the farmer felt something break; he sank to his knees – ‘finding yourself drowning slowly … is to tell Sigurd you’ve decided your honour has not been tarnished. How does that sound?’

The pig farmer fought for breath. The walls of the huts felt like they were closing in. The pain was intense now, his knees ached and his ribs felt like they were squeezing his lungs. He looked up at Harald and nodded, tears streaming from his eyes. The big raider looked down on him and smiled.

‘Good. I’m glad we’ve put our little misunderstanding behind us.’ With that, he turned and walked away, leaving the big pig farmer on his knees, sobbing quietly.

BETWEEN WYRMSEY AND STENVIK

Skargrim stared down at the sea foaming around the prow of his ship, the
Njordur’s Mercy
. The glow inside, the strong sense of
belonging, had faded as the morning passed slowly into afternoon and been replaced with a hollow, empty feeling. He frowned and spat.

‘What the hell is wrong with you then?’

Thora stood by his side, looking out at the sea.

‘Nothing,’ he snapped harder than he’d intended. Still – it was none of her business.

‘Right,’ she said amicably. ‘And I regularly shit a pot of gold. A large one, too. You don’t need to play chief with me, you old fart. What’s wrong?’

Skargrim grinned despite himself. ‘I should probably behead you for that.’

‘You’d have to catch me first, and we both know that’s not happening. So spill your guts. Might stop you walking around like a bear with a boil on its arse.’

He sighed. ‘I really should have drowned you when I had the chance.’ He shrugged. ‘I always know what needs doing.’

‘But now you’re not sure.’ He nodded. ‘I’ve never known you to doubt, Skargrim. And you’d have their heads if any of the men doubted you, I reckon.’

‘I … I am just not good at following, that’s all.’

She snorted. ‘Hah. That’s dipping your oar lightly in the water, I’d say.’

‘I just wonder what the gods really want with us,’ he blurted out. Thora remained silent. He turned to her, but she looked resolutely away. ‘Best not talk about it, I suppose,’ he added. ‘Best not think about it at all, in fact.’ They stood together silently. For a while the only sound was the wind in the sails and the waves lapping at the side of the ship.

Then Skargrim spoke. ‘However, as raids go, this is a legendary one. We are sailing with Hrafn. And young Thrainn. And Egill.
We’re seeing Egill Jotunn and living to tell the tale. He is a huge bastard, though.’

‘He certainly is.’

Something in the tone of her voice made Skargrim turn his head and glance at Thora. She looked back at him, raised an eyebrow and smiled sweetly. ‘… What?’ The twinkle in her eye told a different tale.

Skargrim grinned. ‘You must be Loki’s stepdaughter.’

‘Good.’ She gave him an appraising look. ‘Now that you’re yourself again, stay like that. It makes it a little more likely we’ll come through this mess.’ She punched him hard in the shoulder, turned and started picking her way back to her post at the rudder, relieving her cover with a stream of expletives and a slap on the back.

He turned towards the prow and looked ahead. A day’s sailing lay ahead of them.

Then, Stenvik.

Without thinking, he adjusted the axe at his belt.

Sixty-five ships drove ahead, the wind at their back. Behind them, the sun started its slow descent into night.

STENVIK

The furnace glowed red-hot. Audun’s forehead wore a sheen of sweat.

It had been a bloody affair, quick and brutal. Three men of Stenvik had died along with five farmers, and four were injured, but twenty-two of the men from the forest lay dead outside the eastern gates. Outnumbered and outfought, the enemy had turned and ebbed back into the forest, followed by the jeers of the men on the walls. Then Sigurd’s fighters had returned to him with the killing tools that needed fixing.

Audun twisted the blade deftly, watching the colour shift. He hadn’t wasted time cleaning the blood off, but even knowing it had been there still made him uneasy.

When he judged the heat in the blade to be right, he brought it over to the anvil and picked a small hammer from a rack on the wall. A couple of well-placed blows straightened out the dents where the sword had been used to block an attacker’s strikes. With swift and assured movements, Audun plunged the glowing blade into a tub, setting off a plume of steam as the water boiled around the sword. As he waited for the metal to cool down, he looked over at the pile of assorted weapons they’d dropped on him after the clash.

Death was never as glorious in real life as in the songs, he mused. There was nothing heroic about it, really. You were just alive, and then you died. You were alive, and then you were blood and meat and bones in a slightly different order. His scalp tingled as old memories surfaced somewhere in the back of his mind. Audun pushed them away, put the sword in a bucket by the whetstone, and busied himself with heating and fuelling the furnace. He had a lot of work to do.

In the noise and heat of the smithy, he didn’t notice Ulfar entering until he heard the grind of metal on stone. He turned around, white-hot blade in hand, only to see the tall, young man standing over the whetstone, sharpening a sword with easy, confident strokes.

Audun watched for a while. Catching Ulfar’s eye, he nodded once and turned back to the forge. There, he set to hammering swords into shape, fixing broken axes and reattaching spear tips. They worked together without words.

As the light faded, the last sword clattered onto the pile of straightened, mended and sharpened weapons. Audun brought
forward two stools and a sack with dried meat and a flask of mead.

‘Thank you,’ he said as he handed Ulfar the food. ‘I would have been working into the night if it weren’t for your help.’

‘I just needed to get out of that hut. I was losing my mind,’ Ulfar answered, looking unusually nervous. ‘Look, there’s one thing I want to ask you.’ Gone was the confident young man, in his place an embarrassed, gangly boy. ‘Do you know anything about a woman named Lilia? Here, in Stenvik?’

Audun’s heart sank. ‘Why do you want to know?’

Ulfar fidgeted, but did not answer.

‘You need to learn to pick your battles, boy,’ Audun said gently. ‘And you need to not pick that battle.’

‘So you do know who she is?’ Ulfar replied eagerly.

He sighed and nodded. ‘How is Geiri?’

‘Nothing’s changed. Being so near Geiri when he’s not really there is very hard. But tell me of Lilia. Please.’

Audun took a deep breath and scolded himself silently. No good could come of this. No good at all. But he’d seen that expression before on a young man’s face, and Ulfar didn’t look like one to give up. Maybe he could explain the state of things to him. Make him see some sense.