God of Vengeance (53 page)

‘Valgerd!’ he yelled, and the shieldmaiden, who was behind him, knew what he intended for she snugged up to him and jabbed a spear over his shield at the man he was shoving against. Sigurd heard her blade point scrape off the man’s helmet and then Randver’s man brought his shield a little higher, which was all Sigurd needed him to do. Keeping the pressure on his opponent’s shield he suddenly dropped to his left knee and brought the scramasax up and across with all the muscle his right arm and shoulder could give it, and the blade’s point burst through iron rings and leather, skin and fat.

‘Óðin!’ he yelled, tearing the scramasax through the man’s belly until he felt the hot gush of gore spill over his hand. Then he stood, putting his shoulder back into the shield, and tried to step forward but his foot was slipping on the man’s slithering gut rope and it was all he could do to stay on his own feet.

‘Kill them!’ Olaf bellowed. ‘Gut the pig-stinking, whore-born nithings!’

The din was deafening. Blood and spittle and curses flew. Men shrieked in pain and bled and died, cloying the air with the stench of their opening bowels, and Sigurd looked up just in time to see Torving go down, his neck opened by a spear. The Osøyro men around him clamoured, rousing each other to avenge their fallen sword-brother. But they were tiring.

Skarth was screaming at Olaf to come and fight him and Sigurd knew there was nothing in the world Olaf would rather do than face Randver’s champion, man to man, but he would not break up the shieldwall to do it.

‘Fight me, Olaf!’ Skarth roared, hammering his sword against Hendil’s shield, sending slivers of wood flying. ‘Fight me, you pale-livered cunny. You raven-starver!’ Then his next blow cleaved Hendil’s shield in two and Sigurd’s man bellowed defiantly, raising the remaining half, but it was not enough and Skarth struck his arm off at the elbow, the stump spraying blood across his teeth and lips. Hendil stood his ground and swung his own sword at Skarth but Randver’s champion sheathed his great blade in Hendil’s face, a full foot of it erupting from the back of Hendil’s skull.

‘Close up!’ Sigurd roared, a sword scraping off his mail-sheathed shoulder and a spear blade clanging off his helmet. Beside him Bjorn grunted as a blade found its way past his shield, but he stood firm, teeth gritted, trading blow for blow. But they were being pushed slowly backwards and Sigurd hauled his sword from its soil scabbard lest he lose it as their shieldwall gave ground.

Hauk fell back, his cheek opened by an arrow shot by the lurkers at the back, and Sigurd felt his shoulder come up against the wall that was Olaf.

‘We can stay here and do this,’ Olaf growled without turning to him, ‘and die for it, or we can make a break for the ships and finish this another day.’

Half blinded by other men’s blood, his ears ringing with the hammer and anvil din of it, Sigurd did not know what to do. His thoughts writhed like snakes in a fire. ‘We can beat them,’ he spat, his mouth full of the iron taste of blood and his arms burning with the strain of sword and shield work.

‘No, lad, we can’t,’ Olaf said, ramming his sword over his shield and pulling its gore-slick length back as quick as lightning.

Sigurd could hear Jarl Randver screaming at his men to keep surging forward, to keep their blades plunging. He heard the jarl reassure his hirðmen that his son Hrani would soon come to join the fray and with him would come another four crews. When they came Sigurd knew his own crew would die in a terrible red slaughter.

And so he knew they had to make a break for it. If they could get down to the jetty maybe they could take the nearest ship and escape the murder.

Or maybe they would be cut down one by one before they even reached the sea.

‘Wheel right!’ Olaf yelled, and the left side of the skjaldborg began to give ground. Keeping their shields up and their sword arms working, they shuffled back together, shields overlapping as tight as a ship’s strakes, whilst Sigurd and those to his right refused to give ground, yet turned slowly but surely left. Round came the line, inexorably but as yet unbroken, Randver’s thegns pushing on where they could, thinking they were doing their jobs. And Sigurd knew he had Olaf to thank for getting this skill into them all before they ever set foot in Hinderå, for they now had their backs to the sea.

‘Move over, lad,’ Hauk said, and Sigurd and Bjorn turned their bodies sidewards to let the Osøyro man wedge himself back into the line between them.

‘I’ll wager this takes you back, hey, white-beard?’ Bjorn said. Not that the man’s beard was white now, with the arrow-gouged flesh of his cheek hanging there spilling dark blood into it. His beard braid was wicking the gore and was now dyed almost completely.

‘Aye, lad, we did have one or two brawls like this,’ Hauk said. ‘When we were not busy having proper fights.’

Bjorn and a couple of the others laughed at this, which was a good thing to hear given the deepening mire they were in. Sigurd risked a glance over his shoulder and was relieved to see Runa still there, gripping a spear she had found, her eyes round, glutted with the carnage of that day.

‘Keep it steady, Sigurd’s men!’ Olaf barked, but they did not need Olaf or Sigurd to tell them what the plan was now, and as one they began to move backwards across the rain-slick muddy ground, muscles full of searing pain, mouths too dry to talk and eyes full of stinging sweat. Back towards the bluff. Towards the sea.

‘Runa, you are my eyes!’ Sigurd yelled, and as much as he wanted her to stay close to him, he needed even more to know if they were going to walk backwards into another of Randver’s crews. Knowing what she must do, Runa ran off along the path, disappearing beyond the escarpment, and for what seemed like too long she was gone, so that Sigurd’s battle-lust was ice-tempered by the fear of losing her again.

‘Hold here!’ someone in Randver’s skjaldborg bellowed, and the weight against Sigurd’s shield was suddenly gone and there was ground between the two shieldwalls again. Men were hauling damp air into their lungs and spitting thick saliva. They armed sweat from their eyes, checked their shields for damage and invoked their gods.

‘We’re doing well,’ Olaf said, rolling his shoulders and working a crick out of his neck. ‘But we can’t stay.’

Sigurd knew his friend was right. They had killed many of Randver’s men and had even come close to killing the jarl himself, but they had failed and now the tide of this fight had turned. Even with the advantage of their brynjur and their blade-craft, they could not now hope to turn it back, and Sigurd knew he owed his newly forged Fellowship a chance to live beyond that bloody day.

‘Whoresons know their business,’ Hauk said, his beard rope dripping blood now, for Jarl Randver was using this respite to rebuild his shieldwall, putting the best-armoured men, those with brynjur or helmets or good leather armour, in the front line and those without behind them. He had more than forty men there now and he was also ordering some of them into another skjaldborg, an eight-man wall of shields and spears which Sigurd guessed he would send round the next clash to come at his seventeen from behind.

Then Runa was back at his shoulder and he thanked the gods for that as she caught her breath and fixed him with her blue eyes which looked like their mother’s more than ever in that moment.

‘There is no one between us and the jetty, brother,’ she said, which was to Sigurd’s ears like ale to a parched throat.

He nodded, the plan weaving in his mind even as he spoke his next words.

‘Uncle, can you give these Hinderå men a good reason to piss in their breeks?’ he asked.

Olaf frowned but soon enough caught the thread of what Sigurd had in mind. He nodded. ‘I can keep the sons of swines thinking of other things, Sigurd,’ he said, ‘but it’ll unravel soon enough and then it’ll be every man for himself. Bloody chaos.’

Sigurd grinned. ‘The gods love chaos, Uncle,’ he said, then called for Valgerd and Karsten Ríkr who slipped from the shieldwall and came over, blinking sweat from his eyes. When Sigurd told these two and Runa what he wanted from them they nodded and shared a determined look amongst themselves.

‘Ready, Uncle,’ Sigurd said and Olaf nodded again, spat on the ground and thumped his sword against his shield.

‘
Svinfylkja!
’ Olaf yelled in a voice that the freezing dead themselves must have heard down there in Niflheim. Olaf did not move but everyone else did, the shieldwall breaking up, war gear jangling as they arrayed themselves behind Olaf in the wedge-shaped formation that resembled a swine’s head. And while they did this, Randver roared at his men to brace themselves for what was coming, and those men beat spears and swords against their own shields for courage and to rouse themselves to the imminent clash.

And they were too concerned with the bristling, ringmailed swine-wedge facing them to care about the three who had made a run for it towards the sea.

‘Move, Uncle,’ Sigurd said.

‘Not a chance, lad,’ Olaf said over his shoulder.

‘Step aside, Olaf,’ Sigurd said. ‘They have held good to their oath and I will hold good to mine.’ Olaf glowered and shook his head. But then he growled a curse into his bird’s nest beard and moved aside, letting Sigurd take his place at the point of the wedge, for Sigurd had sworn to fight before his men and he would have them see him do so now.

Olaf was off his left shoulder and Svein muscled Bjorn out of the way to stand off his right, his crescent-shaped axe blade slick with gore and his red beard split with a grimace. Behind stood Floki, Bram and Bjorn and behind them the rest made up the formation, and knowing the men that stood with him then, Sigurd almost pitied those in the shieldwall before them.

He wished his father and brothers could see him now, that they would know how he faced their enemy with courage and in the sight of Óðin One-Eye and Vidar God of Vengeance. Not that Sigurd did not feel the worm of fear gnawing at his guts. It was not a fear of pain or even death, for in death he would surely drink mead in the Æsir’s hall with his brothers, though he did not wish to leave Runa alone in the world. But rather that writhing worm was the fear of failing to quench the fire inside him in the blood of this reckoning. He had done everything he could to get the Allfather’s attention. Now he would honour the Spear-God by living up to Óðin’s name, which means frenzy.

‘Now,’ he said, lifting his battle-scarred shield and dipping his head just in time, as an arrow glanced off his helmet and flew wide. They strode with him, staying close to one another, keeping the wedge tight and strong, and they roared as they covered the ground. And on Sigurd’s first swing Troll-Tickler bit deep into a man’s shield and Sigurd forced the shield down so that Bram could bury his sword’s tip into the man’s eye and pull it free, spattering Sigurd’s face with hot blood. Sigurd hauled his blade free of the splintered wood and drove on. Svein rammed the head of his long-axe into a bearded face, staving in the skull, then turned and hooked the crescent blade behind another warrior’s neck and pulled the man towards him and Floki knocked his shield aside and sheathed his hand axe in the man’s forehead.

On they drove, right through Randver’s skjaldborg like a rivet driven through green spruce, and men died beneath their blades. But the Svinfylkja formation could not hold with the enemy all around them now and spears coming from every side, and in ten thumping heartbeats there was no more wedge, only a knot of men fighting for their lives against more than twice their number.

Sigurd found himself at the heart of the knot then, as though his hirðmen had gathered around him, putting their own bloodied, battered bodies between him and their enemies, and for a moment he stood there as the deafening chaos whirled all about.

He saw Ubba smash a face with his shield boss then hack the dazed man down. He watched Bjarni duck a scything sword and thrust his own blade up into a man’s inner thigh and he heard that man’s scream above the battle din. Sigurd spun and saw Agnar Hunter and Kætil Kartr fighting back to back, Agnar catching a sword swing in the cross of his two long knives and turning the blade aside then slashing a knife across a face. Kætil was bleeding from three wounds, the worst a deep bloody cleft in his shoulder that looked like the work of an axe, yet he fought like a hero from some old tale, roaring challenges at his enemies.

Those old warriors who had once fought for Jarl Hakon Burner fought side by side once more and it was only their long experience of doing so that was keeping them alive, Hauk standing there grim-faced between Bodvar and Grundar, the last of their old hirð, men from a bygone age.

‘We must fly, Sigurd!’ Olaf said and Sigurd turned, instinctively looking for Randver, trying to lay his eyes on the jarl amidst that maelstrom. ‘He’s safely out of it,’ Olaf said, knowing what was on Sigurd’s mind. ‘His boy took a wound and Randver hauled him off. We can’t get to him now, Sigurd, and we’ll never get to that whoreson king if we die here.’

‘To the sea!’ Sigurd roared, and his Wolves replied with a last great effort, trying to put their opponents down to give themselves a chance. With Randver out of the snarl of it the rest did not know what to do and Sigurd’s hirðmen were able to draw together again, presenting a loose wall of shields to a badly mauled enemy that seemed relieved to catch their breath.

Their eyes on the jarl’s men, Sigurd’s crew shuffled backwards towards the ground they had previously occupied near the edge of the bluff, but for Hauk and his two companions who stopped and planted their feet, their blood-spattered, ragged shields overlapped. They looked exhausted, yet held their heads high and tried to straighten their backs.

‘Here, Hauk!’ Sigurd barked.

‘No, lad!’ Hauk called over his shoulder. ‘We’ve never run. Not from any fight. And we will not run today.’

‘We can make it, Hauk!’ Sigurd said.

‘You had better, lad,’ the old man said. ‘I expect you to come back here and finish what we started.’ He hammered his sword hilt against what was left of his shield. ‘Osøyro men!’ he bellowed, his voice dry and cracked as old leather. ‘Tonight we drink with our sword-brothers in Valhöll.’ Grundar and Bodvar thumped their own shields and spat challenges at those coming to kill them. One last proud show of defiance in the face of death that had Sigurd’s crew thumping their own shields, more than a few of them looking like they would rather stay to finish it one way or another. ‘Now go!’ Hauk yelled over his shoulder. ‘We will wait for you in the shining hall, Sigurd Haraldarson!’