text: That was not the end for Jarl Guthrum's head as it turned out. Of the remaining one hundred and fifteen warriors of the jarl's host, only twelve did not swear the oath to Sigurd. Six were in ill health and said they did not have it in them to follow Sigurd back to Norway. Four were so disgusted by Asgrim's murder of the jarl that they wanted nothing to do with him and said they would rather fight for any king, even a king of a cave, than for a treacherous prow man and a Norseman they had never heard of. Asgrim wanted to kill these rather than let them go out into the world pouring scorn on his name, but Sigurd overruled him, saying their honesty had taken courage. 'Besides, Asgrim, they will spread our names, which can only be a good thing for there are always fighters looking for men to fight for.' Asgrim still did not like it but was clear-thinking enough to see that killing men he had campaigned beside would not go down well with the others.
  
  As for the last two who refused to take the oath, they were grey-bearded, life-weary warriors for whom thoughts of dying with the spear din ringing in their ears were no longer as warming as thoughts of a hearth and hounds and a comfortable bed, and no one begrudged them gathering their things and tramping off east.
  
  But when the rest had spoken the words over Sigurd's sword Troll-Tickler, and had then broken camp and made ready to turn their backs on the hill fort, Sigurd took up Guthrum's head once more and carried it up the slope in full view of Alrik and all his men, who were wide-eyed at this turn of events.
  
  'Jarl Guthrum has given up his claim to this borg,' Sigurd called up to Alrik, lifting the rotting, half-burnt, honey-slathered head. 'His men are now my men, and I have no quarrel with you, Lord Alrik.' He gestured back to his war band of one hundred and ninety-three warriors, an army now by even a king's reckoning. 'As you can see, I have fulfilled my side of our bargain.' Three of Guthrum's former warriors were driving six pigs up the hill and at Sigurd's words the suspicions filling the heads of those warriors on the ramparts flew off like starlings from a thatch fire and cheering rose from the borg.
  
  'You have done all that you said you would, Sigurd Haraldarson,' Alrik said, unable to keep a grin off his face at the sight of his enemy's severed head. Guthrum's face had haunted Alrik's dreams long enough that the warlord knew it even with the scorched skin and the green pallor. 'I will have half my silver and iron brought out to you. And no one can say you have not earned it.'
  
  Jarl Hrani had suggested that they try to persuade Alrik to join them and swear to Sigurd. 'Better men than he have done,' Hrani pointed out, but Olaf said Alrik would never do it, and Sigurd knew that was true. At last the borg was truly Alrik's. He and his men had suffered for it and now there was no way he would abandon it to go off fighting somewhere else. Thór's balls but he would not even come out of that gate – for all that he must have wanted to spit on Guthrum's rotting head – just in case this was some scheme of Sigurd's to take the borg and the whole of its silver and iron hoard for himself.
  
  'I will want carts and the horses to pull them,' Sigurd said.
  
  'We've eaten the horses,' Alrik said, 'but you can have the carts.'
  
  That would have to do. He had enough men to take turns pulling the carts. It was not all fame, silver and skald-song this being a warrior.
  
  'We're going to need a bigger boat,' Solmund grumbled, looking at the mass of them all as they got the measure of each other, these Norsemen and Svearmen, and Guthrum's men who had been left behind asking the others what had befallen their jarl at Ubsola. 'Even with Jarl Hrani's War-Rider, which is a good spear-length longer than Reinen.'
  
  'Probably,' Sigurd said, 'but there are good problems to have and there are bad problems. Even you must agree this is one of the good ones.'
  
  Solmund muttered an aye and Sigurd turned to Asgrim who had come up to him, his face, which would surely frighten his own mother, clenched like a fist.
  
  'I will have Jarl Guthrum's head now, lord,' he said and there was not much of a request about the way he said it.
  
  'You know that if you put his head back together with the rest of him there is a chance he will make it to Valhöll, so my godi tells me,' Sigurd said, tossing him the head which he caught without so much as a grimace that wasn't already there. 'Like a man coming to the feast through the back door, but even so. I think he was a good and brave enough warrior in former times to be useful to Óðin come Ragnarök.'
  
  'If we meet again in the hereafter we will be friends as we once were,' Asgrim said, though he did not look convinced. 'If not,' he went on, looking into those dead, shrivelled eyes, 'then so be it.' With that he turned and that was the last time Sigurd saw or smelt that stinking head, other than when the smoke of the jarl's pyre reached his nose that dusk when the rooks and crows clamoured off to their roosts.
  
  'If you ever burn me, do it when I'm still warm, not reeking like a rancid turd,' Olaf told Sigurd as they set off at the head of the war host.
  
  'A hero's pyre? For you, Uncle?' Sigurd said, an eyebrow arched like Bifröst. 'I think we will save the wood for our meal fire, hey, Svein!'
  
  The red-bearded giant grinned. 'Aye, or even for a new ship,' he said, lifting his chin to Solmund. 'What do you think, old man?'
  
  The old helmsman smiled. 'At last some sense from the bairns,' he said, and the rooks' craawing was drowned by a war host's laughter.
  
  They knew they had come to Alrik's camp on the shore of Løgrinn before they could see it, because of the woodsmoke in the air and the constant rhythmic thwock of axes cutting trees as the timber men encroached ever deeper into the forest. But even without these signs, the midges dancing in brown swarms amongst the trees, making men slap exposed skin, scratch heads and beards and curse, told them they had come to the lake. Not that it was really a lake, of course, seeing as men said there was a channel in the east which led out into the Baltic Sea. But Birka sat on an island in Løgrinn and it was that famous trading centre which drew ships and crews into the great bay like crows to a newly sown field. It was from Birka that Alrik recruited most of his warriors, enticing young men and old growlers with promises of riches in exchange for their spear and sword arms. That was where Alrik's man Knut had recruited Sigurd and his crew, and now they were returning to the camp at which they had stayed before marching to the borg. The camp where, one rain-flayed night, Sigurd and Valgerd had given themselves each to the other, so that he felt the weight of that on him now and wondered if she did too.
  
  They came up to the palisade with their shields above their heads to show that they came in peace, for the men of the camp would be more than wary of such a large sword-host, more so if they recognized any of Jarl Guthrum's men. Bram had thrown Guthrum's axe banner into a fire, which was less subtle than quietly burying it as Olaf had suggested, and those who had served the jarl watched it blacken and burn, their faces grim and betraying what a heavy thing it was to see that. Not that Bram cared.
  
  'What?' he said, answering glares with a shrug. 'You watched your jarl's luck go up in smoke. Now you can watch his banner do the same.'
  
  But some of Guthrum's men still had the axe painted on their shields and there was a good chance someone in the settlement would spy them and raise the alarm, believing that Alrik was beaten and Guthrum had come to finish them or hurl them back to the sea.
  
  'That head would have come in useful again now, even stinking as it did,' Olaf said, but as it turned out the men watching from behind those sharp stakes recognized Sigurd and his crew, not least Valgerd who Sigurd made sure was standing with him, with her golden braids lying over the swell of her mail-clad chest. They recognized Jarl Hrani too and his boar's head banner, for the jarl had paid a man acting as harbour master to moor War-Rider there and keep her safe while he tramped inland on Sigurd's trail.
  
  Sigurd had allowed Hrani to keep that banner not out of respect for the jarl or as a first act of generosity to a man who was now oath-tied to him, but because it would not hurt for other jarls and lords back in Norway to hear that Hrani Randversson was now allied with Sigurd Haraldarson. Let the oath-breaker hear it too, Sigurd thought, so that he might feel the icy worm of betrayal looping over itself in his guts.
  
  If they had turned heads the first time they had walked through that camp on the shore, it was nothing compared with this time. It seemed that the whole place went still. Women came out of the houses and stood planted there, hands on hips as they eyed the war host in all its grim glory. Men could not help but put their hands on spears and sword grips; much good it would do them if Sigurd meant the place harm. Only the hens and the beasts in the byres and the pigs in the pens seemed unimpressed, clucking and snorting as normal, and of the craftsmen who had been about their daily tasks only the blacksmith did not stop, his hammer ringing like a bell because he was in the middle of a forging and to stop now was to ruin the blade.
  
  Neither did the folk there need to see beneath the skins covering the carts which the sweating men were pulling to know what lay beneath, and they must have wondered how Sigurd had got his hands on the hoard which their own lord had set out to pillage from Jarl Guthrum – though none had the balls to come up and ask him, and the only man who saw opportunity rather than danger was Trygir, who had given Sigurd's crew their allotted two skins of ale each day when they had stayed there before.
  
  Sigurd was drinking in the sight of Reinen when Trygir came up to him, getting his attention by hawking and spitting a gobbet into the mud. He nodded at Reinen sitting still and graceful and full of quiet promise on the water, which was as flat as the whalebone plaques which women used with smoothers to get the creases out of linen.
  
  'You'll be wanting supplies if you're off,' he said. 'I can get you plenty of ale, some mead too. Meat, bread, cheese. Fish of course. Got some eggs and plenty of bilberries. Crowberries too if you want them.'
  
  Sigurd nodded. One hundred and ninety-three warriors needed a lot of food. That was one thing to consider now that he was responsible for them all. You could not expect them to row, fight, or fuck for that matter, with empty bellies, and he would have to be careful – even as rich as he now was – not to see that pile of silver and iron shrink. Which was why he decided he would not pay for the supplies which Trygir had gone off grinning to find. No point telling Trygir that though. Neither would he hand over any silver for Kráka, Alrik's ship, which he was going to fill with those men who could not fit aboard Reinen or War-Rider.
  
  'She's a pretty thing,' Olaf said, looking at the sleek karvi and knowing exactly what Sigurd was thinking. 'It's not as if Alrik will miss her either, what with him clinging to that borg like a shipwrecked man to a rock.'
  
  'We'll make an enemy of him,' Sigurd said.
  
  Olaf said nothing. Later, when the checks to the ships were done, the provisions stowed and the crews were climbing aboard to take their places, the men of the settlement gathered together. They had come in small groups, twos and threes, spear and axe-armed, and now there were some sixty men arranged in a half-decent skjaldborg though they kept a safe distance from the wharf.
  
  'You think they've got it in them?' one of the men asked Asgrim who with thirty bristling Svearmen had made a defensive line with their backs to the ships, their blades threatening death to the settlement men. Asgrim muttered something into his beard but Jarl Hrani, who had come to get the measure of Alrik's men, said he did not think they would be wetting their blades that day, even though Trygir was hurling insults at them, yelling at Sigurd and Olaf that they were men without honour, for all their shining war gear, nothing more than whore-born thieves and pale-livered, dog-tupping Norse scum.
  
  'They are not going to die for the sake of one karvi and the food we've stowed,' Jarl Hrani said and that was Sigurd's take on it too, for they were leaving Alrik with his other boats: three broad-beamed knörrs, that other karvi and, most importantly, his big snekke, a warlord's ship with high curving prow and stern, a sturdy but shallow keel and room for twenty-two oarsmen on each side. Solmund had wanted them to take that ship instead of the karvi. The old sea-wolf could not help himself. He was weak at the knees for a beautiful ship the way even warriors of reputation weaken in the presence of a pretty girl.
  
  'She will sit well ploughing a furrow beside Reinen and War-Rider,' he had said, his mouth close to Sigurd's ear, trying to convince him. But Sigurd shook his head.
  
  'We'll take Crow,' he said, 'for she will serve us well enough and it is a theft which Alrik can choose to ignore if he wants to. We take his best ship and his honour will leave him no choice but to bring his little fleet west to repay us in blood.'
  
  'Burn his little fleet then,' Solmund suggested, 'apart from her of course,' nodding at the snekke.
  
  'We take Crow,' Sigurd said, ending the discussion before his mind was changed, and Solmund had accepted that and gone aboard the karvi to make sure she was still as seaworthy as she had looked when they had followed in her wake from Birka into this bay.
  
  'We are ready,' Sigurd called to Asgrim now and the big man nodded and growled at the warriors in his shieldwall to walk slowly backwards, keeping their shields up in case one of the settlement men chose to make a point by lobbing a spear or loosing an arrow. As it was, those men came forward bit by bit, the way nervous dogs will edge closer to the boar they have trapped, but it was little more than a gesture because they knew that if they attacked they would die and Alrik would lose much more than some supplies and a pretty boat with room for sixteen pairs of oars.
  
  Sigurd went aboard Reinen, and his crew, which now included twenty-five Svearmen, pushed off with their oars to turn her bows into the west and the other crews did the same so that all three ships glided out into the bay. And being on the water again, albeit more a glorified lake than a real sea, was a joy which had men singing bawdy songs as the oars bit and pulled, bit and pulled, and the three ships slid across the flat water like a small skein of geese crossing the sky.
  
  'Ah but this feels good,' Olaf announced, standing at the prow upon which Svein had mounted the great reindeer antlers. 'How do you like this life, lad?' he asked Thorbiorn Thorirsson who was grinning as he pulled his oar. 'Better than wasting your days in your father's hall, rutting the hours away with the women's burbling in your ears all the while.'
  
  'I miss the rutting part,' the young man said, 'but I will get even more of that done when I return a hero.'
  
  'Is that so?' Olaf said, winking at Sigurd.
  
  'Well we will find out soon enough,' Sigurd said, for after Birka they would go back to Skíringssalr in Viksfjord, because Sigurd was a warlord now and a rich one too. And he had a proposition for King Thorir and his Spear-Danes.
  
  The sun hung in the west in a purple sky and their prows followed it, the oarbanks beating steadily like eagles' wings. Then, as though the Æsir themselves thirsted for the blood and the crop of warriors that this feud was bound to reap, a gust gathered from the east to agitate the water. At first it ruffled the lake but soon it furrowed it, even whipping spray from the small waves and giving the crews enough reason to stow the oars and haul the sails up.
  
  'This will do us,' Solmund said, standing at the tiller and keeping their course as straight as an arrow's flight. 'Aye, this will do us just fine.'
  
  And Sigurd felt as light as a leaf dancing in the wind. He wanted to shout with joy, to call out the names of his brothers who awaited him in Valhöll. He was out for vengeance and there was nothing in this world that could stop him.
  
  He was going to war.
  
  They did not stay long in Birka. Nevertheless, two days was enough time to pick up a handful of landless, lordless men who might have ended up serving Alrik or some other Svear warlord had they not been drawn to the harbour like dogs to meat as word of the three new ships spread through the town. Three were grizzled, growling, big-bearded men who, to look at them at least, any jarl or king would be pleased to have in their skjaldborg. They had assumed Olaf or Jarl Hrani would be the man receiving their oath but to their credit they made no fuss when Asgrim pointed out that it was Sigurd to whom they would bind themselves.
  
  'He's young, I'll grant you,' one of them, an Irishman named Niall, said in a fair mix of Norse and Svear, 'but if he already has the oath of all these then who are we to question it?' He nodded at Asgrim. 'I would rather fight for a young man on the rise than an old man on the fall.' He did not have any disagreement from Asgrim about that.
  
  The other five were young men out for adventure as much as silver, and they spoke the words with trembling voices and such grave solemnity that it was obvious this was their first oath-taking. Still, all the rest had long enough memories of their own beginnings along the warrior's road and did not tease these nervous new beards too sorely about it.
  
  'You know that we are off to fight a king?' Sigurd asked them as the first young man put his lips to Troll-Tickler's pommel. 'And not just some little king of some unknown valley but a powerful king, the lord of Avaldsnes and master of the North Way.'
  
  The young men looked at each other, grinning. 'We will fight anyone you want us to fight, lord,' one of them said as if it were all the same to him.
  
  Olaf scowled and nodded at Sigurd as if to say They are willing, man! So by Thór's arse get on with it before they grow brains! So Sigurd got on with it.
  
  The kaupang at Skíringssalr seemed a different place than the one Sigurd remembered from when they had come to it in the deep of winter. It had been a silent land sleeping under a blanket of white. A place pressed upon by the low, dark sky and choked with the smoke from the hearthfires around which folk gathered and spent their days.
  
  Now the bay was full of fishing boats, the sky was filled with the shriek and whirl of gulls and the marketplace was buzzing with trade. Beyond the market the nearest slopes bristled with barley and rye and the far-off hills were dotted with cows and sheep between the many burial mounds, and Sigurd knew what Olaf was thinking as they dropped the sail and took the oars out to row up to the jetty.
  
  'We will make him a generous offer, Uncle,' Sigurd said.
  
  'We'll have to,' Olaf said, for he was thinking that this trading place and all this good farming land rich in beasts and milk and crops would be earning King Thorir plenty of silver. Tempting such a rich man away from a comfortable life would not be easy. But Sigurd wanted Thorir. Wanted the king's Spear-Danes to join his raging host against King Gorm's army.
  
  'A prosperous place then,' Jarl Hrani said, viewing it through a raider's eye. The store houses and workshops which had been boarded up in winter were all open to the world and busy as women's mouths round a loom, as Moldof put it. 'Maybe we will come back here one day, boy,' he said to little Randver who gave his wolf grin, and Sigurd could not help but think what a fine thing it must be to have a son.
  
  'Well let me give you some advice if you do come back here,' Sigurd said, even now thinking how strange it was to be talking to Jarl Hrani whom he still hated, oath or no. 'If King Thorir challenges you to a wrestling bout, say you have a crick in your back or the shits or a splitting skull from too much ale, but do not accept.'
  
  'Jarls and kings do not roll around in the rushes, Haraldarson,' Hrani said through a twist of lips.
  
  'Jarls are not supposed to break their oaths to kings and swear to outlaws either,' Sigurd said, 'and yet you have done both these things, Hrani Randversson.'
  
  There was nothing Hrani could say to that and so he turned his gaze back to the shining hall for which Skíringssalr was named. He, his son Randver Hranisson, Sigurd and Olaf were standing on the wharf admiring the place and enjoying the sun's warmth on their faces. They were waiting for Thorbiorn who had gone up the hill to his father's hall along with several Danes who had been watching the ships turn into the bay, scattering the færings. Some had already run off up to the hall at the first sighting, their warning calls echoing out across the bay, and one man was still hammering a piece of iron which hung on a gibbet and made a clamour like the smith god Völund working in his forge. But the Danes who had stayed by the jetty had recognized Thorbiorn standing up on Reinen's sheer strake, hanging on to the stem post now that the prow beast had been stowed to show they came in peace, and they had waved to him as if he were a long-lost hero returned from doing heroic things. Which was of course how young Thorbiorn thought of himself anyway.
  
  Now the young man strode back down to the wharf and invited the others up to speak with his father the king. For all his hatred of Hrani, Sigurd wanted to watch the jarl's face to see what he made of King Thorir's blazing, golden hall as they were ushered into the place. They left their weapons with the king's steward outside, but for the Óðin spear, which Sigurd had not offered up and which the steward had not tried to take from him.
  
  'Skíringssalr,' Jarl Hrani muttered, looking up. The shining hall.
  
  The hearth was lit but it was only a small fire now, not the great flapping flame that had greeted them last time when they had stepped out of a white world into a golden one. But the thralls had been busy lighting lamps and candles again by the looks and there seemed as many small flames flickering as there were stars in the night sky. These little flames did not so much light the darkness as banish it so that the golden cloths hanging from the roof beams, fine as a goddess's breath and shimmering in the draughts, were wondrous to behold.
  
  'They are silks, Jarl Hrani Randversson of Hinderå,' King Thorir boomed from his high seat, as proud as ever of his possessions and as thrilled as ever to see their effect on new guests. Beside him sat his wife the queen and behind them stood four burly, spear-armed, mail-clad Danes. 'From lands you can only dream about,' the king said.
  
  There were some two dozen of the king's hirðmen in the hall, half watching, half playing dice or tafl, most drinking. A cat curled round Sigurd's leg and many more sat or lay here and there, preening or sleeping. One lay in Queen Halla's lap, being fussed to death and purring.
  
  King Thorir swept an arm across his hall and his men. 'We are friends with the Goddess here, Jarl Hrani,' he said, as if that explained everything, including all the cats. 'Well then, Sigurd, we meet again.' The king stood from his seat and held out his hand and Sigurd stepped forward to grip him arm in arm, the warrior's way.
  
  'It is good to see you again, lord king,' Sigurd said, the smile on his face as genuine as his words. There was something about this Danish king that he liked. 'And you also, Queen Halla,' he added, dipping his head at her, and the queen smiled with her eyes because she liked Sigurd. If she could she would have Sigurd in her lap instead of that cat, he knew.
  
  'Sigurd jarl-killer,' she said, those dark eyes of hers shining like the fist-sized gold brooches which boasted of their position on the swell of her bosom. 'I thank you for bringing our son safe home with all his limbs still attached.'
  
  'Aye, we thank you for that,' added King Thorir, appraising the young man beside him, 'but it seems to me you might have made a man of him too.' He grabbed Thorbiorn by the shoulder and shook him. 'I swear you've put on a bit of muscle, lad. See here, wife! The boy might be on his way to growing a set of shoulders to have the women dewy.'
  
  'Father!' Thorbiorn said, no more embarrassed than he should have been.
  
  'He's fought then?' the king asked, looking from Sigurd to Olaf. 'And I mean properly. In the shieldwall or out of it.'
  
  Sigurd nodded. 'In the blood-fray, lord,' he said.
  
  'Some of the men have started calling him Thorbiorn Fleet-Foot,' Olaf said, recalling the lad's grabbing of little Randver Hranisson.
  
  The king frowned at that because it could easily be the byname of a man who runs from a fight. 'Fast-Blade is better,' he said.
  
  Olaf's lips pursed and he nodded.
  
  'He has fought well and bravely, lord king,' Sigurd said and Thorir's grin was almost as wide as the one which had earned him his own byname of Gapthrosnir, which meant one gaping in fury.
  
  He punched his son's shoulder this time and there was enough muscle behind it to knock Thorbiorn back a step. 'So you've been wetting your sword instead of your cock for a change. Good lad!'
  
  'I've killed six men, Father.'
  
  'Six! You hear that, wife? Six!' The king winked at Olaf. 'And I'd wager at least one of them was a full-grown man too.'
  
  Thorbiorn scowled at that but said nothing.
  
  'And my sister?' Sigurd said, unable to hold the question back any longer. Gods but he missed Runa now. He thought of her often, it was true, but this shining hall, this beautiful place, put her in his mind like a stone in a plum.
  
  'Young Runa is thriving with the Freyja Maidens,' King Thorir said, 'so I am told. I can tell you no more because as you know we have little to do with the warrior women and they have even less to do with us.'
  
  Relieved, Sigurd nodded, taking what he could even from that threadbare news.
  
  'But what I want to know is how come you are friends with Jarl Hrani here? For if my memory serves, the jarl you killed was this man's father.' He looked at Hrani suspiciously, clearly wondering how a man could seem to be contentedly standing beside someone he ought to have killed if he were any sort of son at all.
  
  'All that is behind us now, like bubbles in a ship's wake,' Sigurd said, making less of it than how it really felt in his chest. 'Jarl Hrani is going to help me kill the oath-breaker. In return I will support his claim to King Gorm's high seat at his estate in Avaldsnes.'
  
  'And what claim is that?' King Thorir asked, knowing full well that it was ambition and not kinship that was the fuel in the flames. Sigurd did not see any reason to go into how the agreement had come about. King Thorir might not like that he had threatened to kill the handsome boy who stood there now in his golden hall as though he had seen it all before. As though he were born to be the ring-giver of just such a place.
  
  'I will make a good king,' Jarl Hrani said, knowing that was hardly justification for turning on an oath but not really caring either.
  
  King Thorir raised an eyebrow at him. Sigurd dreaded to think what Runa would say when she learnt of this alliance with Hrani. She had been in Skudeneshavn when Hrani, no jarl then, had brought death to the village. But she would have to understand how things were. How they had to be.
  
  'Let's have a proper look at it then,' Thorir said with a flap of his hand, and Sigurd knew Thorbiorn must have already told his father about Gungnir. He stepped forward and handed the great spear to the king, who gripped it in both hands as though he would run them all through.
  
  'Suits me, don't you think?' the king said, admiring its weight in his hands and its rune-carved blade, and for a terrible moment Sigurd thought Thorir meant to take the spear for himself. But then the king laughed and handed it back to him and Sigurd's fingers curled round that smooth ash shaft as though they would never let it go again. 'The Goddess would only be jealous were I to make too much of a fuss about the Allfather's spear,' Thorir said. 'Now give me a horn full of Freyja's golden tears or a feather from her cloak and I will light a fire such as your people or mine have never seen and pay a hundred skalds to sing the tale of it.' His brow furrowed then. 'But tell me, Sigurd jarl-killer …'
  
  Better if he does not call me that in this company, Sigurd thought, seeing the frown on little Randver's face.
  
  '… tell me why you are back here again so soon. For I will not believe you have made a hero of Thorbiorn already. Even a good meal takes time to prepare, as any woman will tell you.' He pointed through the beeswax-scented air towards the hall's door. 'Last time you came with barely half a crew, puffed up and arrogant standing there on my jetty, but half a crew all the same. Now you come with three ships and two hundred spears. It seems to me that even an eagle cannot rise so high so fast.'
  
  'I want you to join me in this fight,' Sigurd said. 'Many others have, as you can see from looking down into the bay.'
  
  But the king waved a hand and shook his head. 'I have already told you that I am comfortable here and do not need a slice of the glory you have your heart set on.'
  
  'Sigurd is rich, Father,' Thorbiorn said, grinning. 'Very rich.'
  
  'Is he now?' the king said, that long beard rope of his polishing his brynja's rings.
  
  Queen Halla's lips curled like the cat in her lap. 'Just think, husband, we would no longer have to feast those wretched men who come trying to win us for their king Karl and his white god.' She would have spat were she a man. 'I am sick of playing their games.'
  
  'You could buy candles to light the night sky,' Olaf said, 'and tell this king Karl and his god to sail off over the world's edge together.'
  
  'You could have a statue made of the Goddess,' Sigurd said, 'but not like the ones in Ubsola which are of wood,' or were of wood, he thought, imagining them burning, 'but of silver, which would be the envy of jarls and kings and would earn you Freyja's favour for long enough to see your sons and their sons become great men.'
  
  'I do not know you, King Thorir,' Hrani said while the king pulled his silver beard rope through his fist, 'but you do not strike me as a man who is over the hill of his own greatness yet. Or a man who means to die a straw death with no good songs about his own war glory filling his ears.'
  
  The king was thinking and thinking hard. It was all over his flame-washed face and in his small grey eyes.
  
  'We do have many untested young men here,' he said. 'Lads who have yet to wet their spears or know what it is to stand in the skjaldborg against other men who are trying to spill their guts in the grass.' He looked at Olaf. 'We have had peace in these parts for years now,' he said, as if he felt guilty about it. He thumbed behind him, then pointed out several of the hirðmen around the hall, who were all listening now that there was talk of war. 'Many of these men have sons who, like my own, have much to learn,' he said. There were some ayes and grunts of agreement at that. 'But I do not want to tie myself to a sinking ship. I will only fight if we cannot lose.'
  
  Sigurd smiled and lifted Gungnir. 'The Allfather has given me his own spear. We have the Lord of War on our side, King Thorir. How can we lose?'
  
  The king went over to a knot of men who from their arm rings and general bearing looked like they had done their fair share of fighting over the years, though perhaps not for a while judging by their paunches and lack of fresh scars. For a while these men talked with their lord but there were enough nods for Sigurd to be hopeful when Thorir walked back up to his high seat and sat down facing his guests. 'My men and I still have some talking to do, Sigurd Haraldarson,' he said, 'and of course we would have to agree exactly how much silver my help is worth to you. Good Spear-Danes come at a price,' he added, nodding at his men, who grunted their approval at that. 'But if you stay here tonight and drink my mead I will have my answer for you in the morning. I will have food and drink taken to your men at the wharf. You understand I cannot feast them all here.'
  
  'Of course,' Sigurd said. 'We would be honoured to share your mead and your hall.' He flashed a smile at Queen Halla because it could not hurt. And she smiled again, wise enough to know his game but vain enough to let him play it.
  
  'And I'll tell you what, Jarl Hrani Randversson,' the square-shouldered king added, thumping the arm of his chair. 'If you can beat me in a wrestling bout I will fight beside you even if the rest of my men do not.'
  
  Jarl Hrani looked at Sigurd. Sigurd shrugged.
  
  'I have a bad leg, lord king,' the jarl said, touching his right thigh. 'I fell. From my horse.'
  
  The king's grin vanished like mist and a frown took its place. 'That is a shame,' he said, clearly unimpressed. Then he looked at Sigurd. 'It seems as though we will just have to drink, Norseman,' he said, and even in that there was a challenge.
  
  And so they drank.
  
  The boar was not even fully grown. A juvenile, its stripes still clear enough to see by the dimming light.
  
  'And that is how we know that the gods love you, my king,' Hreidar said as they strode up to the skewered beast, around which the flies were buzzing. 'You still have a throw that Thór himself would raise a horn to.' The champion was grinning. 'Just as well, too, for he was about to come at you like a lightning bolt.'
  
  King Gorm said nothing. He took hold of the shaft and pulled it from the creature's chest just inside the left foreleg. It took some pulling too. Just a youngen though, he thought. A squeaker no more than three moons ago. That he had brought the creature down with a good throw was nothing to boast about, for he knew, just as Hreidar knew, that the boar had been about to run, not towards him but away. It had been a heartbeat from turning and tearing off into the forest, screeching in terror at being caught by a hunting party that had managed to get down wind of him. But that did not make for a good story to tell when they got back to the king's hearth and Hreidar knew it.
  
  'Ah, well done! A fine boar! But I am sorry I missed the kill.' Jarl Arnstein Arngrimsson of Bokn, whom men called Twigbelly on account of his massive stomach, came puffing out of the pines behind them, his own spear blade as clean as it had been when they had set out that morning. Truth be told Gorm had been trying to shake the jarl off all day, but Twigbelly was surprisingly – and annoyingly – determined and seemed to have the vigour of a man half his size.
  
  'I should have let him go,' Gorm rumbled. 'He is barely worth the effort of carrying and skinning.' Not that he had done either of those things himself for many years.
  
  'You get them while you can, lord king,' Twigbelly said, dragging an arm across his sweaty face. 'Let them grow too big and you risk things not going so well when you next meet.'
  
  Gorm turned to the man, searching his face for a sign that Twigbelly was mocking him, bringing up this whole Sigurd business when he should know better. But the jarl just looked hot and out of breath, bent over now, fat hands on his shapeless legs as some of the hunting party caught up. At least I can still out-hunt the rest of them, Gorm thought, proud of himself, or ashamed of the others, or both. To be king you had to have iron in your bones and Óðin's mead for blood. Start letting other jarls and ambitious hersirs beat you to the prey and you might as well give up the high seat and drink yourself to death. A king must not show any weakness, for other men are like wolves sniffing for blood or disease amongst a herd of deer and they will be upon you before you know it.
  
  Deer. Those were the days. When in these very woods you could sometimes bring down a monstrously big bull elk, a creature so magnificent that it made your breath catch in your chest just to behold it. The sort that skalds put in their tales to make their heroes sound even bigger. You could hunt such creatures with worthy men, too, not just catch-fart jarls and hersirs who only accepted the king's invitation because they feared offending him. Feared the flat rocks in the strait below the royal manor at Avaldsnes upon which Gorm chained his enemies and watched them slowly swallowed by the rising tide. Upon which he had chained his beautiful young wife Aesa years ago because she had made a fool of him. So he had made a crab-picked corpse of her.
  
  Jarl Harald was one of those worthy men, Gorm thought now, watching two thralls tie the boar's feet together and thread a couple of spears through the legs to carry it off back to his hall and people as if it were some fabled, man-eating beast slaughtered at last by the warrior king. Yes, Harald had been a proper jarl. My equal perhaps. And perhaps that had been the problem, why in the end Gorm had to kill him. Perhaps? Ha! Of course it was.
  
  Didn't see elk like that in this forest any more. Didn't see jarls like Harald at his shoulder either.
  
  'We will have the light a little longer yet, lord,' Hreidar said, pulling some bristles from the dead boar's haunch as it hung there between the thralls, blood dripping rhythmically from the spear wound which had gone deep enough to kill it, tearing its heart, Hreidar had said. The champion lifted his fist and dropped the bristles and they fell more or less straight to the forest floor. 'No wind,' he said. 'Shall we cut west and see what else we can find?'
  
  Gorm looked at Twigbelly, who tried his best not to look unenthusiastic about the prospect of walking further and into deeper, thicker forest instead of returning to the king's hall for mead, meat and women.
  
  'Aye, on we go. We'll find some full-grown beast,' the king said, 'and we'll not go back until we do.' This got some murmurs of approval from his hirðmen, who knew their king well enough to prefer his company when they had speared something decent. And fuck Jarl Arnstein Arngrimsson, Gorm thought. Let him drown in his own sweat. The fat swine had only come up to Avaldsnes because he wanted to ask the king's permission to raid in the south as far as Mandal. Everyone knew the man was losing the respect of his people and hoped a good bit of booty-taking and blood-letting would keep the Bokn folk contented. So Gorm would let him raid, but he'd want a third of the loot. And the soft-bellied, red-faced toad would have to keep up with him now for another three or four rôsts at least, until they found some prey worthy of the king's spear.
  
  'Someone's coming, lord king,' Otkel said, pointing his own spear north in the direction of Avaldsnes. Three riders. Coming noisily through the trees, kit and fittings thumping and jangling, breaking twigs as they came.
  
  Twigbelly will be pleased if this is the end of the hunt, Gorm thought.
  
  'Fools will scare off every creature between here and Snørteland,' he growled. 'Whoever it is I will flay them alive.' His hirðmen nevertheless drew together, hands falling to sword grips until they knew who this was who cared nothing that they risked ruining the king's hunting and his mood too.
  
  'It's Alfgeir,' Otkel said and men's hands fell away from their swords at that, though it was only the younger, greener ones who relaxed. The others knew that Alfgeir, being an experienced man who had fought at King Gorm's side for more than twenty summers, would not have ridden six rôsts and risked his lord's anger for no good reason.
  
  Not Kadlin! Gorm asked the gods, pleaded really, struck with the sudden fear that something might have happened to his wife.
  
  'The queen?' he asked even before Alfgeir had dismounted the snorting pony, whose nostrils were smoking in the chill pre-dusk air.
  
  'Queen Kadlin is well, lord king,' Alfgeir said, and the king looked at the other two riders throwing their legs over their mounts' backs. He prided himself on his ability to read men's faces the way clever men could decipher rune stones, and these men were not fearful or nervous. They were excited. Eager to relay whatever news they had for him. Same with Alfgeir albeit he was better at hiding it.
  
  Alfgeir locked eyes with him, then glanced at Jarl Twigbelly.
  
  'Whatever it is, you can say it in front of Jarl Arnstein,' Gorm told him. Twigbelly nodded in thanks for the courtesy. No doubt he was simply enjoying the rest.
  
  'We are betrayed, lord,' Alfgeir said. 'Sigurd Haraldarson has returned from Svealand at the head of a war band. He—'
  
  'A war band?' Gorm put in, unable to stop himself. 'But who would follow that whelp? How many men does he have? Two dozen?'
  
  'Reports vary. Three hundred. Maybe four.' Alfgeir shook his head. 'We do not know, but Sigurd is calling men to his banner. Offering them silver if they will fight with him against you.'
  
  'So he has a banner now, hey?' Gorm looked at Hreidar. The champion spat on to the forest floor, violence simmering in him already.
  
  'More of a charm, lord. Of sorts,' Alfgeir said. 'A spear.'
  
  'A spear?' Gorm looked at Twigbelly now, who was drinking ale from a skin which one of his men had handed him.
  
  'So your former champion did not manage to gut young Sigurd, then?' the jarl said, licking his lips. 'Moldof was his name if I recall. We heard he rowed off to gain the fame and position he lost along with his arm.'
  
  'Ha!' Hreidar blurted, the king's new champion and prow man making it clear what he thought about that.
  
  Gorm ignored jarl and champion both, turning his gaze back on Alfgeir who clearly had more to say.
  
  'Not just a spear, lord, but Gungnir. Óðin's spear. It turns out that Sigurd had made another enemy, some Svear jarl, and this jarl captured him and took him to Ubsola. Meant to sacrifice Haraldarson to the gods.' Alfgeir shrugged. 'He wouldn't know what a lucky shit Sigurd is.'
  
  Lucky? Gorm thought. Why don't you say Óðin-kissed, for that is what everybody thinks. And rich now, too, if he has managed to draw three or four hundred men to him.
  
  'Sigurd escaped, the gods know how. And he pilfered the spear from the temple. It's a big 'un, this spear,' Alfgeir went on, holding the imaginary weapon in his hands.
  
  'I've seen it,' Gorm said.
  
  'Of course,' Alfgeir said, and well he might seeing as he had travelled with the king to Ubsola for the last Dísablót. Five years ago? Or six? When the blood had flowed like ale at the Jól feast and the sacred trees had groaned under their corpse-burdens. And the crows had fed till they near burst from so much flesh.
  
  'Well, the crows will feed again soon, when Haraldarson and his pack are put down,' Gorm said, getting odd looks from those around him, for they had not been inside his head to see those memories of the blood rites. 'So he has come back to settle this feud then. Good.' Gorm nodded, looking at his hearth warriors, beginning to feel the same tremble in the blood that had got into these three messengers, making them ride hard through the forest to find their king. 'He has enough ships to face me in the Strait?' he asked Alfgeir. He would be surprised if so. Men were relatively easy to come by. Ships were not.
  
  'No, lord,' Alfgeir said. 'It seems he wants a land fight.'
  
  'Does he?' Gorm said. He means to end this thing one way or the other then, he thought. No beating of oars to fly if things were going badly. Just the clash of shieldwalls. The spear din until the issue was decided.
  
  The red war.
  
  'Who would be mad enough to join him against you, lord?' Twigbelly asked, pushing the stopper back into the ale skin and swiping the drops from his moustache bristles. 'Even with a magic spear he cannot hope to beat you. Beat us,' he added just in time. 'No one of worth would join him.'
  
  'Betrayal, Alfgeir,' Gorm said, remembering how this conversation had started. 'You said betrayal.' He could not have been talking about Sigurd, for they were already enemies, since long before Haraldarson had refused the jarl torc which Gorm had offered him. Since his own betrayal of Sigurd's father if they were getting to the nub of it. Even so, who would have thought that Harald's last living son, the pup of the litter at that, would survive so long and grow such fangs?
  
  'Yes, lord, betrayal,' Alfgeir said, frowning, and his next words seemed stuck in his throat.
  
  'Well?' Gorm snapped.
  
  Alfgeir cleared his throat. 'There is another banner alongside this Óðin spear. The white axe on black.'
  
  Gorm almost laughed. 'No, Alfgeir. Some mistake.'
  
  'No mistake, my king. It is Jarl Hrani Randversson's banner. He is with Sigurd.' Alfgeir took a step towards him. 'There are whispers,' he said, his own voice barely above a whisper, 'that Jarl Hrani has even oath-sworn himself to Sigurd.'
  
  If that boar hanging beneath the spears had been an adult male, all bristling fury, and had it charged him at full speed the blow could not have struck Gorm like those words did.
  
  Gorm shook his head, trying to dispel the very idea of it. 'Jarl Hrani hates Sigurd as much as I do,' he said. 'Haraldarson killed his father. No, Randversson would never swear to him. Nor would he turn against me after all I have given him. He would not wear his father's torc if I had not put it round his neck. As I put it round Randver's neck before him.'
  
  Alfgeir thumbed back in the direction of Avaldsnes. 'The men who brought the news have no reason to lie from what I can see,' he said. 'But I have told them that they cannot leave until you have heard with your own ears what they have to say.' He shrugged. 'And yet even if they are mistaken about Jarl Hrani Randversson, what they say about Sigurd is likely to be true. The strutting shit is coming and he wants a fight.'
  
  And by the gods I will give him one, Gorm thought. 'Jarl Arnstein, how many spears can you bring?'
  
  The fat jarl considered the question. 'Thirty hearthmen. As for the levy,' he chewed his lip, 'sixty or seventy and all spear and shield-armed.' Gorm grinned. That was at least ninety just from this one jarl who was sworn to him. There were eleven other jarls whom he could call on to bring their hirðmen and bonders to his banner. Gods but he could raise five hundred spears from his own lands!
  
  'Ride back, Alfgeir,' he said. 'Send word to Jarls Leiknir, Baugr, Vragi and Tósti. The others too. Tell them I have raised my banner. Tell them to muster their fighting men. All of them. If any refuses, he shall be my enemy.'
  
  Alfgeir grinned and nodded and walked back to his pony and the two others, who were also grinning. For war was coming, a war which they could not lose. And in war men make their reputations. They make themselves silver-rich too.
  
  Gorm turned back to Hreidar. 'So we will go that way,' he said, pointing his bloodied spear first westward and then at the hanging boar around which the flies swarmed. 'This piglet must have a father or some big brothers hereabouts.'
  
  Hreidar grinned and nodded and the thralls and his hearthmen prepared to set off again, buzzing themselves with the talk of war.
  
  'But … lord king …' Twigbelly began, again swiping sweat from his forehead. There were plenty of flies around the jarl too, Gorm saw. 'Surely we should be getting back. You will have much to prepare. I myself will need to get word to the outlying farms.'
  
  'Not at all, Jarl Arnstein,' Gorm said, batting the man's concerns away with a big hand. 'We did not come all this way for one little boar. Besides, if you are like me you do your best planning with a full belly.'
  
  The jarl forced a smile and nodded. 'Of course, my king,' he said, lifting his spear purposefully.
  
  Maybe we will drown you in your own sweat, you hog, Gorm thought, spreading his lips with a smile as he walked off into the trees with Hreidar beside him.
  
  Some decent prey for their spears and then back to the hall to talk of the coming steel-storm. For Sigurd was back and this time he would not slip through the net. Perhaps I can catch him alive, Gorm thought, the very idea of that flooding him like the first waves of drunkenness. I could chain him to the rock and invite everyone to come and watch him drown. Make a feast of it.
  
  But first to spear something for the table. And remind this fat jarl what kings are made of.