text: They found jarl guthrum and his men still camped at the foot of the hill to the east of the kings' mounds, his axe banner fluttering in the warm breeze. Storvek had assured Sigurd and Hrani both that King Eysteinn was still nowhere to be seen, having yet to return from whatever fighting he was up to his neck in, which was good news as it meant there would be no other war band getting mixed up in things.
  
  It turned out that having arrived at Ubsola Olaf and the others had recognized Guthrum's banner and kept watch from a safe distance while Asgot had gone to the temple to speak with its priests. Two of them being dead, it had been the boy-godi who explained what had happened and how the two would-be sacrificial offerings and a fierce woman warrior had escaped, stealing the sacred spear as they went.
  
  'When Storvek rode into the place telling anyone who would listen that they could see the spear returned for the right price, we knew all we had to do was put a blade to the lad's throat to find out what he knew, then use him as the bait on the hook,' Olaf explained.
  
  Now Jarl Hrani's boar head banner was revelling in the wind as his Norsemen climbed the ting mound and formed a great shieldwall upon it to deny Guthrum the high ground. They had come round from the north of Ubsola and come at speed too so that Jarl Guthrum was caught completely by surprise, his own men not expecting to be faced with a fight of any kind, much less with a force outnumbering them two to one.
  
  'I can see you've made yourself known around here, lad,' Bram said to Sigurd, grinning at the sight of the temple, or King Eysteinn's hall if that was what the Svearmen called it, for it was still standing but half of it was black and charred and you could smell the burnt timbers on the same breeze that made Guthrum's and Hrani's banners dance.
  
  'Not my doing, Bram,' Sigurd said, looking at Valgerd. 'She is the bravest of us all for she thinks nothing of burning down a temple even if it belongs to a king or the gods themselves.'
  
  Bram grinned at Valgerd who denied none of it. They were standing in the pre-dawn gloom at the top of the hill, waiting for Guthrum's men to notice them, which they just had by the look and sound of it. Down in the camp amongst the shelters and the cook fires men were shouting and pointing and others were running towards Guthrum's own tent in which he was still sleeping.
  
  'I wonder if the statues burnt,' Floki said.
  
  'They didn't,' Valgerd answered.
  
  'How do you know?' Floki asked.
  
  The shieldmaiden smiled. 'Because if that Frey statue had caught fire it would be burning still, what with the size of his cock.'
  
  That raised a few laughs as Sigurd watched Jarl Guthrum emerge from his tent, shrugging himself into his brynja as he looked up to see the army gathered in a wall of flesh, iron and wood upon the crest of the ting mound.
  
  'So what is he like, this Guthrum?' Jarl Hrani asked. Sigurd had to admit that Hrani looked formidable in his war gear. If he was anything like his father Randver he possessed war-craft and courage and a combination of those two was something you would sooner have in an ally than an enemy.
  
  'He is brave enough,' Sigurd said, 'and he hates to lose men, though he has been doing a lot of that recently.'
  
  'His weakness?' Hrani asked, which was a good question because one weakness in an otherwise impressive warlord could be enough to sink him, like one sprung strake in a ship which lets the water gush in.
  
  'He is certain that the gods have abandoned him,' Sigurd said. 'He feared it before but after what happened at the temple he must be sure of it.'
  
  Hrani nodded because he heard the sweet music in those words. 'Then he is as good as dead,' he said.
  
  Which was not quite true, Sigurd knew, for a healthy man did not die until someone put a cold blade in his flesh and tore his heart or lungs or caused him to bleed out like a slaughtered beast. There was also the question of Jarl Guthrum's men. They were his best warriors, his hearthmen, and Sigurd did not want to see his new war band whittled away in a fight which had nothing to do with him having his revenge on the oath-breaker king.
  
  Below, Jarl Guthrum's champion Asgrim was bellowing orders, setting up his own skjaldborg and calling for someone to bring him his jarl's axe banner from where it stood near Guthrum's tent.
  
  'Want me to claim them?' Svein asked Sigurd, lifting his spear. He meant he would walk down that hill and hurl the spear over Guthrum's shieldwall and by doing so claim those warriors for the Allfather. Guthrum himself had done that at the borg and his spear-throw had been good enough to have men talking about it for days after. Which was no doubt why Svein wanted to throw his spear now. To prove he could throw further.
  
  Sigurd shook his head. 'I don't want them dead if I can help it.'
  
  'So you've some other Loki trick to make Jarl Guthrum swear the oath to you as I have done,' Jarl Hrani said through a grimace. Standing side by side with Sigurd still felt like an ill-fitting brynja to him, as it did to Sigurd.
  
  'No tricks,' Sigurd said. 'I'm just going to kill Guthrum and see what happens then.' Floki stepped forward but Sigurd shook his head before Floki had the chance to ask. 'I'll do it myself, Floki,' he said, 'but you can come. You too, Valgerd.' The shieldmaiden nodded and grinned and together they walked down the hill, none of them in mail or helmets but each armed with sword, shield and spear, Sigurd's being Gungnir which he turned so that the rune-marked blade caught the first pink light of the rising sun.
  
  Floki also had a hand axe tucked into his belt and Valgerd had a long scramasax sheathed against the small of her back, and Sigurd hoped that seeing the three of them again would anger Guthrum enough that he would accept Sigurd's challenge to single combat.
  
  They all carried their shields above their heads to show the Svearmen that Sigurd wanted to talk, and Jarl Guthrum and Asgrim came forward to meet them at the foot of the hill.
  
  Sigurd had wondered why Guthrum was not wearing a helmet. Now he knew. The jarl's face was a mass of raw, weeping flesh, glistening with pus and red as a wound. His golden beard was gone and in its place was a shiny wet-looking scar upon which no bristles would ever grow again. Much of his fair hair had been burnt away too so that his scalp was one horrible sore, and it would have been further agony to wear that helmet of his with the eye guards. Nor was he wearing his silver torc, for the skin on his neck was oozing yellowy liquid.
  
  Sigurd lowered his shield and the others did the same. 'I am Sigurd Haraldarson whom men call Óðin-Favoured,' he announced loud enough for Guthrum's warriors to hear as they stood there looking grim as granite cliffs.
  
  'You know who I am,' Guthrum said, 'albeit I have lost some of my good looks.'
  
  If Guthrum was in pain, which he must have been with that fire-eaten face, he did not show it.
  
  'I know you, Guthrum the cursed,' Sigurd said, and the jarl could not hide the pain at hearing that. He nodded up towards the top of the hill.
  
  'They are your men?'
  
  'They are,' Sigurd said. 'But there does not have to be a fight here today. Your men do not have to die.'
  
  'You want to fight me yourself?' Guthrum asked.
  
  'You would have watched some Freysgodi cut my throat,' Sigurd said. 'Then you would have hung my corpse in that tree over there.'
  
  'That is true,' Guthrum admitted.
  
  Sigurd nodded. 'I want to fight you,' he said, taking in the pitiful sight before him. 'Can you fight?' He looked at the jarl's right hand which he noticed was also red raw, and should still have been bound in clean cloth, but perhaps Guthrum had not wanted to appear hurt in front of his men.
  
  'I can fight,' the jarl said, putting all of his considerable height into his legs and spine then. Beside him Asgrim's ugly face twitched. What a sight those two made together. The troll and the burnt jarl. It would make a good children's story.
  
  'I can fight well enough to kill you, Sigurd Haraldarson,' Guthrum said, and there was a spark in the eyes of that flame-ravaged face. 'And when you are dead I will kill him,' he said, glaring at Floki, 'and you too,' he added to Valgerd and there was real hate there then because she had tipped the burning oil on to him which had stripped him of those Baldr good looks.
  
  Sigurd nodded. 'So we will fight and either your death or mine will settle things between us. There will be no more blood spilled after.'
  
  Jarl Guthrum thought about this, as well he might knowing as he did that not only were the gods against him but they favoured Sigurd. Still, he was a brave man for all that because he knew that if he did not accept Sigurd's challenge it would come to a fight between the two skjaldborgar which his own men would certainly lose.
  
  'I will fight you, Sigurd Haraldarson,' Guthrum announced, 'but only on equal terms. Halvdan, fetch this man's brynja. His sword too. When he is dead and I meet him again in Óðin's hall I do not want him saying that I only won because he was not using his own familiar war gear.'
  
  That was well said and got growls of approval from those grim-faced men at his back, and even Floki, who would as soon bury that hand axe of his in Guthrum's head as listen to him any more, nodded because the man was acting like a proper jarl. And the battle thrill was beginning to announce itself in Sigurd's marrow and muscle. For now it was the flutter of moths' wings in his blood. Soon it would become a trembling in his thighs and in his hands, and the saliva in his mouth would sour.
  
  Then Asgrim pulled his scramasax from its sheath, took a step and ripped out his jarl's throat with it, spraying blood into the rings of Guthrum's brynja and across the grass at Sigurd's feet, some of it spattering Sigurd's boots.
  
  For his last few heartbeats Jarl Guthrum stood there staring at Sigurd as his lifeblood gushed away, then his great body toppled like a felled tree and his hand flapped like a fish then went still on the grass and he never moved again.
  
  Asgrim bent and wiped the blade of his scramasax on the hem of the dead jarl's tunic, then straightened and pushed the blade back into the sheath at his waist.
  
  'That's that then,' he said to Sigurd, who was still staring at Jarl Guthrum, unbalanced by what he had just seen, like a boat heeling in a sudden gust.
  
  'Why?' he asked Asgrim.
  
  The champion, who was in fact no one's champion now, shrugged his shoulders, put a thumb to one nostril of that nose which was spread across his face and shot a wad of snot on to the grass. 'What was the point in you two fighting?' he asked. 'The fire ruined his hand so he could not grip a sword properly. Not well enough anyway,' he said. 'None of us who have fought with him a long time needed to see him humiliated today.'
  
  'He might have won,' Sigurd said.
  
  'And if he had, then what?' Asgrim said. 'We would still be following a man whom the gods have forsaken.' That warped mouth of his twisted though it could not be called a smile. 'Whereas you, Sigurd Haraldarson, have the look of a man who is weaving his own saga.' He swept a big arm back towards his Svear brothers who stood behind their shields waiting for other men to decide their futures. 'If you will treat us with the respect due to those who have stood up to our knees in the wound-sea and never run from our lord's enemies—'
  
  'We saw you run from us when you fucked up that attack on Alrik's walls,' Floki interrupted him.
  
  Sigurd expected Asgrim to be furious at that, but the big warrior simply shrugged again. 'Sigurd was atop that wall,' he said, eyes boring into Sigurd's own, 'so we were fighting the gods too. A man needn't feel ashamed for running from the gods' fury once in a while.' He pointed at the great sacred spear in Sigurd's hand, whose butt rested on the ground so that its massive blade accused the crimson sky. 'You have the Allfather's favour and now you have his spear. So as I was saying, if you treat us as you would your own hirðmen we will follow you and swear an oath.'
  
  'I am no jarl,' Sigurd said.
  
  Asgrim's thick lips spread to reveal the cave where his front teeth should have been. 'Not yet,' he said.
  
  'Then it will be as you say, Asgrim,' Sigurd said, laying his shield down on the grass then striding forward to grip the warrior's outstretched arm. 'I will be honoured to fight with you and your Svearmen.' He glanced down at the dead jarl and wondered what Guthrum had done to earn himself the gods' displeasure. But then Asgot always said that the gods are fickle.
  
  'An ale horn in one hand and a scramasax in the other, lad, that's what you can expect from the Lords of Asgard,' the godi had told Sigurd after King Gorm's betrayal of Jarl Harald.
  
  'So what are we going to do with him?' Valgerd said, gesturing at the jarl's corpse.
  
  'We will honour him with a hero's pyre,' Asgrim said.
  
  'That will have to wait,' Sigurd said, pulling his sword from its scabbard. 'I want his head.'
  
  Asgrim pulled his own head back as if he'd been hit with an oar blade. 'Why?'
  
  Sigurd bent and moved one of Guthrum's arms, placing it under his neck so that the dead man's head was off the ground. Then he lifted the sword and brought it down with enough muscle behind it to all but sever Guthrum's head from his neck. 'We are going back to the borg and I want Alrik to see that the jarl is dead,' Sigurd told Asgrim, using the blade to saw through the last bit of gristle and skin until the head came away. 'I want Guthrum's men to see it too.'
  
  'If they recognize that burnt face,' Floki pointed out.
  
  'You could have just shown them his jarl torc,' Asgrim said unhappily. 'It is in his tent with his other things.' He did not like seeing his jarl's head separated from its body, which was understandable. A man should go to Valhöll in one piece if he can. Not that the Allfather would want Guthrum drinking in his hall all the days till Ragnarök, Sigurd thought, or he would not have let the jarl's luck piss away like that.
  
  'I could have shown them his torc,' Sigurd agreed, grabbing what was left of Guthrum's hair to lift the head. The eyes were open, which was probably a good thing for the sake of folk recognizing whose head it was. Sigurd looked into those eyes and could not help but think it was a bad end even for a man who would have sacrificed him in the Svearfolk's temple. Yes he could have just taken the torc and let Asgrim burn the jarl as was befitting for such a man. But nothing convinced people that a man was dead quite so much as his head being somewhere other than on the end of his neck.
  
  'Have your men ready to leave by midday, Asgrim,' Sigurd said. 'I will have their oaths on the way but we should be gone before King Eysteinn returns to Ubsola.'
  
  'We'll be ready,' Asgrim said, then turned to walk back to those warriors who had just watched him murder their jarl yet seemed not to have a word to say about it.
  
  And Sigurd, Floki and Valgerd climbed back up the hill to Jarl Hrani and the men waiting up there.
  
  'If you go on like this, Sigurd, we will die of old age without ever having to fight at all,' Olaf said when Sigurd had told him and Hrani and the rest what had happened and that the Svearmen were joining them. Olaf was grinning and Hrani was getting a good look at Guthrum's head because jarls are always interested in other jarls, even dead ones.
  
  'Let us see if we can give you one more good fight then, Uncle,' Sigurd said as Solmund came forward with a sack for Guthrum's head, 'before you hang your sword in some hall and spend the rest of your days watching your boys grow and telling stories to anyone who will listen.' The head went in and Solmund tied the sack and Sigurd was glad not to have to look at that burnt face any more.
  
  'Whose hall will that be then?' Olaf asked, smiling, 'for you have already given away King Gorm's to Jarl Hrani, which is generous of you and a little bold seeing as that oath-breaking weasel shit is still living in it.'
  
  Sigurd thought about this for a moment, not that Olaf, a warrior in his prime, would be sheathing his sword for the last time any day soon. But still it was a good question.
  
  'Well I will need my own hall,' Sigurd said, 'and you can live there wherever it happens to be.' Sigurd did not know where he would live when this feud was over, but he did not think it would be Skudeneshavn where his father's hall had stood. There would be too many ghosts there. Too many ghosts and too many memories to drown in.
  
  Then again, perhaps this blood feud with King Gorm would never be over and Sigurd would never have the chance to lay roots into the earth and raise his own hall. Or maybe he would be killed in the blood-fray, sword-hacked, spear-gutted or arrow-shot. A whitening corpse amongst a pile of corpses, dead and never to be avenged.
  
  'We will follow the threads of our wyrds and see where they lead, then, Sigurd,' Olaf said and Sigurd nodded, slinging the sack with its heavy contents over his shoulder, the Óðin spear in his other hand.
  
  For they were going south back to Fornsigtuna and Alrik's hill fort, then back across Løgrinn and west to Norway and to the reckoning that would decide it all.
  
  On the third day, when they had put plenty of thick forest between themselves and Ubsola, Guthrum's men swore the oath in front of the rest. Asgrim was the first to do it and the others followed and even Halvdan, who had made a nuisance of himself when Sigurd, Floki and Valgerd had been Guthrum's prisoners, spoke the words as though he meant them and was proud to do it. Though this clearly nettled Floki who had been looking for even half a reason to kill the Svearman.
  
  'Sword and shield, flesh and bone, I am your man, Sigurd Haraldarson. As long as the sun shines and the world endures, henceforth and forevermore,' he said as the others had done.
  
  'Gjöf sér æ til gjalda,' Sigurd said to each of them. A gift always looks for a return. 'I will be a ring-giver and a raven-feeder. As long as the sun shines and the world endures, henceforth and forevermore.'
  
  When it was done, Sigurd shared a look with those who had been with him since the beginning. Olaf, Svein, Solmund, Asgot, Aslak and even Hagal Crow-Song stared back at him, each with the same look in his eyes. It was enough to unnerve Sigurd because he knew what they were thinking, even though none would say it aloud. He was thinking the same. They had come a long way in a short time, grown from a half crew to a very powerful war band of ninety men, and not farmers who do a little raiding here and there either, but hearthmen, warriors who live to feed the wolf and the raven. Men with good blades and mail or tough leather armour. Men with pride in their war prowess and who lust after reputation.
  
  Sigurd recalled the words the witch had spoken to him the previous winter before they had left Jarl Burner's hall at Osøyro.
  
  'Who are the two who ride to the ting?' the witch had asked him. 'Three eyes have they together, ten feet, and one tail: and thus they travel through the lands.'
  
  'Óðin and Sleipnir his eight-legged steed,' Sigurd had answered.
  
  'His passing raises such a rush and roar of the wind as will waft away the souls of the dead. And with it Haraldarson,' the witch had said, pointing at him, aiming her warning like an arrow nocked to a bowstring. She had said he could not escape the wings of the storm and yet he did not want to, whatever the risk. He had a war band of oath-tied men and their expectations lay heavy on him, yet he thrilled to the burden like the palm to the touch of the hilt. He was soaring despite it. He was the eagle which sails on the draughts high above the world tree Yggdrasil, and his talons were now sharp enough to rip flesh.
  
  'The lad is not sworn,' Svein reminded Sigurd, nodding at Thorbiorn Thorirsson who was sitting on the other side of the fire. There were three fires in that camp by a moss-fringed stream above which clouds of gnats swarmed. One for Hrani's men, one for Guthrum's, and one for Sigurd's original crew. It was to be expected that they would keep to themselves for a while at least, for men who have fought together are bonded by blood. Besides which, for all that they could understand each other well enough, the Norse tongue sounded strange to the Svearmen's ears and it was the same the other way round. 'We should make him swear it,' Svein said, teasing a comb through his red beard which he had freed from its braids so that he could hunt for lice.
  
  'He is the son of a king and cannot swear loyalty to another man,' Sigurd said.
  
  'Not even you?' Svein said, grinning.
  
  'Not even me,' Sigurd said.
  
  'Well, King Thorir owes us for making a man out of his son. That I do know,' Svein said.
  
  Looking at Thorbiorn now Sigurd agreed with Svein about that. There was little sign of the preening, cunny-chasing young Dane they had met in the king's hall at Skíringssalr. In his place was a warrior who had earned himself one or two boasts. It was Thorbiorn's fleetness of foot when grabbing Jarl Hrani's son Randver which had delivered the jarl and his men into Sigurd's hands.
  
  'He might be pretty enough to be your sister but he deserves his place in the skjaldborg, I'll give him that,' Olaf put in, turning his face away from Thorbiorn so that his beard all but swallowed the words, 'but don't be telling him that yet. Praise can go to a young man's head faster than ripe mead, and we all know that fighting with a skin full of mead can get a man killed.'
  
  'Aye, but you die happy,' Bram put in, drinking ale from Guthrum's men's stash. The warriors around those cook fires might be mixing like fish oil and water but at least they were sharing what food and ale they had.
  
  And that is a start, Sigurd thought. Soon enough they would make the spear din together. They would soak their shoes with the slaughter's dew. For Óðin was the Wild Huntsman tearing through the sky on his fearsome steed. And the raging winds from his passing were the wings of the storm.
  
  They came to Fornsigtuna on a grey day with their banners hoisted above their heads: Guthrum's white battle axe in a sea of black, and Jarl Hrani's black boar's head on a yellow cloth, trembling in the gusts which brought spits of rain from the west.
  
  'I want a banner, Uncle,' Sigurd said. They were moving not abreast like a loose shieldwall or in a spear-like column, but rather in one great mass, sweeping amongst the trees like the shadow of a wind-blown cloud, war gear clumping and fittings jingling and men's voices merged in a low continuous hum.
  
  'You can have Guthrum's after today,' Olaf said and meant it. 'He has no use for it now, for the worms or the flames won't care who he is.'
  
  But Sigurd shook his head. 'I want my own banner.'
  
  'I would have an axe,' Svein said.
  
  'And have the same banner as Jarl Guthrum?' Solmund asked him.
  
  Svein shrugged though he must have known that was not one of his better ideas.
  
  'A ship,' Solmund said, puffing as they trudged up a slope whose long grass shared its dampness with their breeks, 'for it shows you are a raiding man and someone who gets off his arse to go and see the world.'
  
  Sigurd liked the sound of that and said so, moving the Óðin spear on to his other shoulder as he did now and then to share the weight of it. His shield was slung over his back and it felt good being in his brynja again, Troll-Tickler at his hip. He had his helmet back too.
  
  'A ship?' Moldof said, unimpressed. 'Well that will make your enemies shiver with fear and shit in their breeks, won't it?' He shook his head.
  
  'Well then maybe we should put your head on a pole instead of a banner,' Valgerd told Moldof, 'for that would scare the birds out of the sky and have grown men crying for their mothers.' For what King Gorm's former prow man lacked in his right arm he made up for in his monstrous size and troll's face.
  
  Olaf ordered tongues to be still now. The wood was thinning. Soon they would emerge from the trees on to the meadow upon whose hill Jarl Guthrum had built his borg, and they did not want to announce their arrival just yet.
  
  'A wolf,' Floki said, breaking the new silence. 'Just the head but make sure the teeth can be seen.' He did not say more because he did not have to. A wolf's head banner needed no explanation.
  
  'A wolf,' Sigurd said with a nod, seeing the banner in the eye of his mind. It was perfect, and even Svein, who would still have preferred an axe, could not disagree.
  
  And soon they came to the edge of the woods, where their noses filled with the tang of a war host's encampment, with woodsmoke, thyme and onions, the sweet scent of butchered meat, the stink of burning iron from the forge, the melted beeswax with which the smith coated the finished blades, and the reek of shit from the pits and from the pigs and sheep pens. Sigurd halted the war band there, telling Asgrim to be ready just in case, then went closer with Olaf and Hrani, the three of them keeping to cover as best they could.
  
  Beyond the animal pens and the men's tents, looming over the camp on a hill not much bigger than the largest of the kings' mounds at Ubsola, stood the borg. Alrik's borg these days, anyone would have to admit, and it looked as unobtainable as an aerie, its timbers scorched black in places, repaired here and there, but solid enough and as defiant as when Sigurd had last seen the place.
  
  Olaf pointed out Knut who was standing on the ramparts above the main gate, watchful as ever even though Sigurd doubted Guthrum's men would have risked their lives in another assault without their jarl. Warriors such as those whom Guthrum had left behind were more inclined towards brave or reckless acts when their lord was watching because he might reward their efforts.
  
  'Like pigs in a bloody sty,' Jarl Hrani said, taking it all in.
  
  'Aye, but rich pigs,' Olaf reminded him and Hrani nodded, because for all that he was unimpressed with Alrik for allowing himself to be trapped, his eyes had lit at the talk of all that silver and iron stashed inside the borg.
  
  'Not so rich soon,' Sigurd said.
  
  'So we're going to take this place?' Jarl Hrani said, not seeming against the idea even though he knew Guthrum himself had tried and failed.
  
  'No,' Sigurd said.
  
  'We'd break too many teeth trying to get the marrow out of that bone,' Olaf said. 'Seen it happen.'
  
  'There is an easier way to relieve Alrik of some of his hoard,' Sigurd told them, looking to the west to see how long it would be before the sun boiled the distant sea. He smiled because it would be night soon. 'A much easier way,' he said.
  
  And there was.
  
  The nights now were more like proper nights. It was as dark as it was going to get, and still, barely a breeze to stir an old man's beard, so that the smoke from the fires inside and outside the borg hung in the sky like low cloud. And again Sigurd could not help but wonder if the Allfather's hand was in the game, because he had made it to the walls unnoticed. He had walked between the fires of Guthrum's men and climbed the hill and no shouts of alarm had punctured the still night. He was invisible. He was a ghost, passing through the night as a draugr can pass even through solid rock or the timbers of the hall in which it once drank and feasted with the living.
  
  He waited a while at the foot of the wall, cloaked and crouching, the scent of charred timbers in his nose as he hissed like a cat until one of Alrik's men above peered over the edge and saw him. For a heartbeat the man's eyes bulged and his mouth opened as if to yell that the borg was under attack, but his mind was quicker than his mouth and he realized that Sigurd was alone and one man did not an attack make.
  
  'It's the Norseman, the one Jarl Guthrum took off to Ubsola,' another man said, leaning out over the palisade beside his companion.
  
  'What are you doing back here?' the first man hissed down at Sigurd.
  
  'Throw me a rope,' Sigurd said, looking over his shoulder to make sure none of Guthrum's men were coming up that hill to kill him. For some reason Alrik's men seemed reluctant to haul him over the wall. No doubt they were surprised to see him again, for they would have expected him to be a rotting corpse by now. But still. 'Do it now,' he growled up at them, 'unless you want to spend the rest of your days trapped here like rats in the rain barrel.'
  
  The two men looked at each other and shrugged, then one of them disappeared and Sigurd decided that if Alrik's man had not gone off to fetch a rope he would burn the place down himself.
  
  'Up you come then,' the Svearman said as a rope thumped against the timbers and more faces, one of them Knut's, appeared in the gloom above. Sigurd climbed.
  
  'I never thought to see your face again, Byrnjolf,' Knut said, scratching the nub of gristle which was all that remained of his left ear. 'Or should I call you Sigurd these days?' He had been wolf-lean before but now he was sunken-cheeked and looked ten years older than when Sigurd had seen him last, and looking at the others too it was clear that Alrik's men were starving. 'Better go and see Alrik then,' Knut said. So they did.
  
  'My name is Sigurd Haraldarson. I killed Jarl Randver of Hinderå. I vow to kill King Gorm of Avaldsnes whom men call oath-breaker.' They stood by the gates, Sigurd, Knut and Alrik himself, along with some forty of his men who had come from their beds to see Sigurd for themselves and hear what news he had of Jarl Guthrum.
  
  'Even when you were Byrnjolf Hálfdanarson it was clear to me that you were an ambitious man,' Alrik said, 'and indeed you must be to have made enemies of jarls and kings.' You could say one thing for Alrik, and that was that he had not pecked away at some secret store by the looks but had hungered with the rest of his men. The skin of his face was taut and the veins beneath his eyes showed like mould in cheese. 'But it is also clear that you are a difficult man to kill, Sigurd Haraldarson, so whoever this Norse king is I would advise him to make friends with you even if it costs him a sea chest of silver or a pretty daughter.' Still, there was suspicion in the warlord's sunken eyes for all that he was trying to be patient and let Sigurd unfurl this story in his own time.
  
  'So are you going to tell us how you escaped from that turd Guthrum?' Knut asked so that his lord would not have to appear too eager. 'And why if you were a free man and could go anywhere in the world, you would climb back into this trap again, for it is not as though you are oath-sworn to my lord.'
  
  Sigurd nodded. 'I will come to all of that later, Knut,' he said. 'First I want to agree a price with Lord Alrik.'
  
  'A price for what?' Alrik asked, his eyes all but disappearing in a suspicious squint.
  
  Sigurd let a smile come to his lips, not that he could have stopped it. 'What will you pay me to make those men out there vanish?' he asked, then turned to Knut and fluttered fingers at him. 'Vanish like smoke in a strong wind.'
  
  Alrik laughed but there was no mirth in it. 'And how would you do that, Norseman?' he asked, a hint of scorn in Norseman.
  
  'What would you pay me?' Sigurd said again, ignoring the man's question. 'How much of your silver and iron hoard?'
  
  'Who does this Norseman think he is?' one of Alrik's men rumbled, stirring a few insults and complaints, which Sigurd did not mind for he knew he was coming close to treading on their pride with his talk of saving them, like Beowulf saying he would save Hroðgar and his Danes from the monster which was preying on them.
  
  'I don't know what has happened to you since we saw you last, but we in this borg are not so fond of riddles these days,' Knut said, and there was an edge of threat in it, but Alrik nodded, having decided to play Sigurd's game if only to see how it ended.
  
  He gestured to the unseen enemy beyond the walls. 'If you took this noose from my neck I would give you half of it,' he told Sigurd.
  
  Sigurd looked at the lean faces of those gathered there in the firebrands' copper glow. 'You will give me half of your silver and iron hoard if I make Jarl Guthrum's men disappear so that you may fill your bellies again and come and go as you please.' He said it loud enough for all of them to hear, for he needed witnesses, for all that Alrik looked angry now because he suspected Sigurd was somehow making a fool of him.
  
  The warlord nodded. 'You did not tell me you were a famous godi, Sigurd Haraldarson, for this will have to be some powerful seiðr,' he said, forcing a smile.
  
  'Powerful and fast-working too,' Sigurd said, 'as you will see tomorrow at dusk when you look out from the ramparts and see only smoking ashes and sheep droppings where there was a war host before.'
  
  Knut and Alrik looked at each other, two hungry men, tired from this feud with Jarl Guthrum, spirit-weary from keeping their constant vigil from the walls lest their enemies come to steal their silver and iron. They did not like this game Sigurd was playing but if there was any chance at all that he could do what he promised, then these Svearmen would raise their hopes to the wind and see where they blew.
  
  'So your friends found you then? In Ubsola?' Alrik said, seeking to draw more from Sigurd with this other approach.
  
  Sigurd looked at the night beyond the flickering bloom of the flamelight. The sooner he got back the better. He turned to the two men who had helped haul him over the palisade.
  
  'Come with me. You are going to lower me back over the wall.' They did not even look to their lord, but nodded without a word. Sigurd turned to Alrik. 'Tomorrow then, Lord Alrik,' he said. 'And as well as ridding you of Guthrum's men I will have six pigs brought to the gate. You look hungry.'
  
  Now it was Alrik's turn to nod, the warlord not knowing what to say to this young Norseman who promised to do the impossible. Then Sigurd left them standing there and climbed the bank up to the ramparts, and the two men followed with the rope.
  
  Guthrum's war host surrounding the borg barely had the chance to shrug themselves into brynjur, tie helmet thongs and pick up their shields before it became clear to them that there would be no clash of shieldwalls to greet the dawn. They recognized their jarl's champion Asgrim and Halvdan and their other sword-brothers coming across the meadow under their lord's axe banner. Doubtless they were surprised to see those men walking beside the Norsemen who had shown up at the borg those few weeks previously, their own boar's head banner rippling in the wind which had begun to stir when Sigurd had returned from his talk with Alrik.
  
  'I cannot say I will miss the stink,' Svein said through a grimace as Sigurd walked out ahead of his war host with the sack containing Guthrum's head. Asgot had covered the dead face with honey, smearing it across the eyes and the gory, gristly mess of the severed neck, saying that it would slow the rot, but Sigurd had not set eyes on the head for a few days now and he hoped it did not look as bad as it smelt. Asgrim went with him and Sigurd could tell from his silence and the set of his jaw that the champion was at the least uneasy and perhaps even afraid. Sigurd liked him all the more for it, too, because it was no small thing for a man to murder his own jarl and it was good that Asgrim knew that. But the big man did not know how Guthrum's war host would take the news. A man's reputation could rot quicker than a severed head if his sword-brothers turned against him.
  
  Asgrim might not know what was going to happen, but Sigurd did. He had spun the whole thing of it in his mind and he approached these Svearmen as if he had already spoken the words and they the reply.
  
  But it was Asgrim who would speak first.
  
  'Brothers!' he called, as the Svearmen came to gather round. They were surprised to see Sigurd, but more interested to know where their jarl was. 'You all know that Jarl Guthrum lost the favour of the Æsir,' Asgrim said. 'It had run from him like water down a rock face.' He was no skald, Asgrim, which was just as well. Who would want to watch that face as a good story and pretty word pictures poured out of it?
  
  'He was lucky once,' one of the older warriors said; 'he could be lucky again. Men lose the gods' favour and then earn it back.'
  
  Asgrim shook his head. 'Not Guthrum,' he said.
  
  'So where is he?' another warrior asked, lifting his spear in agitation. 'He has left us here like we are shepherds watching the sheep.'
  
  'He did not have much choice,' Sigurd said, thrusting the Óðin spear's shaft into the earth and opening the sack, trying not to screw up his face at the stench that hit him. He plunged his hand in and took hold of the hair that was sticky with honey, then hoisted it up so that all could see. A murmur rose from the warriors, punctuated by curses and mutterings and the hum of men spreading the news to those at the back who could not crane their necks quite enough to see the head for themselves. 'When one of your own men cuts your head off, well then you know that your luck is never coming back,' Sigurd said and Asgrim glared at him because that was not how the champion had planned on putting it.
  
  'I killed Jarl Guthrum because if I had not, we would all have followed him to a bad death. He would have led us to it because he was cursed and you all knew it.' Asgrim stood tall and strong. Little things like the way a man stood mattered at such times and Asgrim knew it.
  
  'So what has the Norseman to do with it?' a voice called from somewhere amongst the throng. Men were staring at the head in Sigurd's hand and though his arm was beginning to shake with the weight of it, for a man's head is a heavy thing, Sigurd kept it up there because he needed them all to know, to be sure that it was in fact their jarl's for all that it was green now and somewhat shrivelled and of course half burnt.
  
  'This is Sigurd Haraldarson, the son of a famous Norse jarl,' Asgrim announced, 'and he will lead us towards fame and reputations which will shine long after we have met our deaths in the sword-song and the red war.'
  
  'You'd have us follow a Norseman?' a warrior asked, turning to spit but finding there was no room to do it.
  
  Sigurd pulled the spear from the ground; the spear upon which men would swear loyalty to him. 'I will be your ring-giver in exchange for your oath,' he said, keeping it simple because he did not think he needed to oversell it, for what else were these warriors going to do? Go back to their homes with nothing to show for their time with Jarl Guthrum? Sell their swords and their helmets and become farmers to be ruled by the soil and the seasons?
  
  'The Allfather's favour shines in him brighter than the lustre of this helmet of his,' Asgrim said, gesturing at Sigurd in all his war glory, his mail and helmet, the Óðin spear in his left hand. 'And that spear he is holding is Gungnir, which once belonged to the Allfather whom we call Spear-God. Here is a lord of war favoured by the god of war. Do not tell me you cannot see it.'
  
  And they could see it, too.
  
  'When we have gone to Valhöll what will we leave behind for our children and their children if not a shining reputation?' Asgrim asked them. And now they were murmuring again but this time it was because they were agreeing with their champion and so Sigurd dropped Guthrum's rotting head because it had served its purpose.
  
  And Sigurd thought that maybe Asgrim was a half-decent skald after all.