text: The hill fort at Fornsigtuna belonged to Alrik now, and Sigurd was Alrik's man. At least, he had won the place for the Svear warlord, tricking his way through the gates to sow death amongst the defenders, who were sworn to Alrik's enemy, a Svear jarl named Guthrum. Sigurd and his half crew, along with some of Alrik's men, had come to the borg under Guthrum's own banner of the white axe, and Guthrum's men, seeing that banner and thinking their lord had returned, had opened the gates. Only, that banner was not Guthrum's own. Nor could the jarl have ever laid eyes on it, seeing as it had been nothing but a scrap of sail cloth and a boar spear before Sigurd had Solmund get to work with his needle and thread.
  
  With Loki-cunning and war-craft and in a welter of blood, Sigurd and his wolves had won Alrik the borg. But Sigurd would not swear an oath to the warlord, and if Alrik was sour about that he did a good job of hiding it. Mostly.
  
  'He's had enough out of us without needing our oaths on top of it,' Olaf had told Knut, Alrik's most trusted man, when Knut had suggested that Sigurd and his men could do worse than pledging their swords to the warlord and helping him defeat Jarl Guthrum himself, who was bound to turn up at the fort sooner or later.
  
  Knut had looked from Olaf to Sigurd, wanting to hear the refusal from Sigurd's own mouth.
  
  'We've made Alrik a rich man, Knut,' Sigurd said, which was understating it, as Knut well knew. Calling Alrik rich was like calling the sea damp, and Knut had nodded and raised a hand as if to say he would not press the matter further for now.
  
  For the borg was full of silver and iron: sea chests crammed with hacksilver and stacks of iron already smelted and beaten into bars, enough to make the rivets for twenty ships, which was more iron than most people saw in their whole lives. And it had all been Guthrum's. The jarl had sat on this hoard while he built a war host large enough to take on King Erik, who was the real power in that part of Svealand, controlling the trading port of Birka and lands as far south as Götaland.
  
  But Alrik, whilst he was not even a jarl, was an ambitious man and a hardened fighter, and he had grown powerful enough to challenge Guthrum, for all that he and his war host had then been stuck outside the borg as their beards grew long with the grass. Alrik had craved the place like a man who lusts after another man's woman, until Sigurd and his Sword-Norse had come and Sigurd had delivered the borg and its treasures to him. And so the warlord could make do without Sigurd's oath.
  
  Not that Alrik was ungenerous. In the aftermath of the bloodletting he had given Sigurd a sea chest carved with ravens and eagles, and heavy it was too because it was stuffed with silver and iron: finger rings, sword and scabbard fittings, Thór's hammers, brooches, lengths of fine wire and solid ingots, iron bars, axe heads and even some gold, and in that one chest was a hoard as big as Sigurd's father Jarl Harald had ever owned. There would be more of the same, too, Alrik promised, if the Norsemen stayed and fought for him until Guthrum was carrion for the crows and his war host was scattered to the winds.
  
  With such riches Sigurd could buy spearmen and maybe even ships. He could build his own war host and return to Norway to take on the oath-breaker King Gorm, and maybe he could have his revenge and so balance the scales which had been tipped against him and his kin since this whole thing began. That was the dream. And it was the gleam of all that plunder which blinded Sigurd and his crew to the presence of a man in Alrik's war band by the name of Kjartan Auðunarson, whom the skald Hagal Crow-Song – not that Crow-Song did much skalding these days – had recognized. Though it had taken him a while to pull that memory out of his thought box.
  
  'He was Jarl Randver's man before he was Alrik's,' Crow-Song had said, turning all their thoughts back to that bloody fight in the fjord by Hinderå. Sigurd himself had killed Jarl Randver but now Hrani Randversson wore the torc and he wanted his revenge on Sigurd.
  
  'What is to stop this Kjartan going home and making himself rich by telling Hrani Randversson where we are?' Olaf asked Sigurd when they had been thinking what to do about Kjartan.
  
  'We kill him,' Svein had said with a shrug of his great shoulders, combing the fiery red beard of which he was so proud.
  
  'He has to go,' Solmund agreed. The old skipper who had bound his wyrd to Sigurd's would rather hold a tiller than a sword, but even so he knew when someone needed killing.
  
  'Of course he has to go,' Bram said. 'But the how of it. That's the question. We can't just go up to the man's bench and spear him when he's asleep.'
  
  Sigurd and Olaf agreed it would take some thinking about, but then Alrik's men had brought that heavy sea chest in and all of them forgot about Kjartan Auðunarson.
  
  Next morning, when they spread throughout the borg looking for the Hinderå man, there was no sign of him.
  
  'What now then?' Olaf said when it was clear that Kjartan had gone, vanished 'like a fart in the breeze', as Bjarni put it.
  
  'You are rich now, Sigurd,' Olaf went on. 'You've enough silver to put a proper crew together.'
  
  'Not rich enough to take on the oath-breaker,' Solmund pointed out, which was true enough. Not that anyone liked hearing it.
  
  'Seems to me we can stay here on this hill and earn more silver fighting for Alrik,' Bjarni said, lifting an eyebrow. 'There are worse places to live.'
  
  'Even if Kjartan has slithered off back west to sell word of us to Hrani Randversson, it will be a long time before we have to concern ourselves about it,' Aslak said.
  
  'True,' Olaf agreed, 'and weaving more reputation around here won't do us any harm.' For their war gear and the way they had won Alrik the borg had made the other men inside that ring of timber treat Sigurd's little crew warily and with the same respect as they did Alrik and Knut.
  
  'Why get bogged down in a blood feud between two Svearmen when we have our own feud, which has a king in it?' Moldof put in, sweeping his one arm through the smoke-hung air. And this got some murmurs of agreement. They had avenged themselves on Jarl Randver by sending him to the sea bed and many of his men to the afterlife sooner than they had thought to go. But Randver had only been a sword wielded by King Gorm. Gorm was the poison which tainted the very air for Sigurd. A nithing king who had shared mead and the feast table with Sigurd's father Harald. Who had laughed and hunted with the jarl and called him friend, but had in the end betrayed him, first in the ship battle in the Karmsund Strait, by not coming to Harald's aid when Harald was fighting Jarl Randver's ships, and then in the woods near Avaldsnes, by greeting Harald with swords and spears instead of with the mead he had promised.
  
  'Moldof has a point there,' Bram admitted. 'Much as I am enjoying killing these Svearmen, we could end up stuck here. Going down with Alrik like the ballast stones in a sinking ship. And the oath-breaker king will be free to keep being the rancid goat's turd that he is for many years yet.'
  
  That was not a happy picture in anyone's mind and so Sigurd told them he would think about it over the next days and decide what he would do.
  
  But three days later the choice was taken away from him because Jarl Guthrum came. He brought with him the rest of his war host and it made for an impressive sight, spilling out of the tree line to the west of the borg, men's spear blades, axe heads and shield bosses glinting in the pink dawn light. Some of them owned helmets, fewer had mail, but it was the size of Guthrum's army which had Alrik's men cursing, fingering the Thór's hammers hanging at their necks and looking to their war gear. They checked that blades were sharp and shields were strong. They piled more spears and rocks against the palisade up on the earthen ramparts. They carried more pails of rainwater up the bank, setting them down around the perimeter twenty paces apart, ready to be flung at any fires should Guthrum try to burn the fence stakes.
  
  'Silver or no, I am beginning to think we should have joined Guthrum instead of Alrik,' Solmund said, as still more warriors came out of the trees. Alrik had ordered Sigurd to man the rampart above the gates as this was the most vulnerable part of the fort, where he wanted his best warriors.
  
  'You won't be saying that when Guthrum strolls through those gates and gets a gut full of spear,' Olaf said as a horn sounded, formally announcing Guthrum's arrival.
  
  Sigurd looked at the axe banner hanging on its long boar spear above the palisade, the wind stirring the cloth so that the white axe flickered, and in truth he did not think it would be as easy as Olaf said. The trick had worked once. Seeing that banner, which was the same as their jarl's, Guthrum's men in the borg had assumed their lord had come and they had opened the gates, inviting death into the borg. And now it was possible that Guthrum, having come at last, would see that banner and think that his men still held the fort. There was a chance, a hope at least, that Jarl Guthrum would walk into their trap and die easily.
  
  But something told Sigurd that they would not be so lucky a second time.
  
  Alrik had one of his men sound a horn in reply and those of his warriors not manning the ramparts thronged either side of the gates, shield and spear ready, waiting to spring their ambush.
  
  It was worth trying, this ruse, but it was not without risk, as Bram pointed out. 'If enough of them get inside before we can shut the gates on the rest, their numbers will end up getting the better of us.'
  
  'Not if we kill Guthrum,' Sigurd said. 'I have seen a hen run around after its head has been pulled off, but it does not know where it is going and soon falls down.' He shrugged. 'With Guthrum and his best men dead, the others will not know what to do.'
  
  'I would like to see them all running around like your hen,' Bjarni said, grinning.
  
  And perhaps they might have done, had Guthrum been fooled by that axe banner and walked into the borg to his death. But that did not happen and there was no steel-edged death for the jarl that day. He skirted the hill fort and came within an arrow-shot of the gate, close enough for Sigurd to see that he was a very big man, long-legged and broad in his brynja that reached almost to his knees. His silver jarl's torc glinted at his neck. His helmet had eye guards like Sigurd's own, so that they could not make out much of his face but for the big fair beard, and yet there was something about the man which told Sigurd that here was no fool. And sure enough Guthrum raised a hand and ordered his men to come no nearer to the borg. They waited, some two hundred Svearmen with their shields before them because they smelt the fox in the coop.
  
  'Whoreson knows,' Olaf said.
  
  'He does,' Sigurd agreed. 'But look how he controls his temper.'
  
  Olaf nodded. 'Ice in his veins this one,' he said. 'He knows that if Alrik is cosy up in his borg it means the rest of his men are most likely dead. Also knows he'll lose more men trying to kick us out.' Olaf pulled at his beard. 'That's a hard thing to swallow.'
  
  It was, and yet Jarl Guthrum simply stood staring up at the borg. No cursing. No red-hot fury. No threats.
  
  'Here we go,' Svein said as Guthrum took a spear from the man beside him who was even bigger than he was, and strode up the hill towards the gates.
  
  'Guthrum is coming,' Sigurd called down to Alrik.
  
  'I see him,' Alrik replied. He was standing on a barrel peering through a crack between the gate timbers.
  
  'He's close enough,' Valgerd said, an arrow nocked on her bow string, the stave bent and straining. The shieldmaiden was the only woman in that borg, but there was no one in Alrik's war band or in Sigurd's crew who was better with a bow. Few better with a blade either. 'Want me to put this between his teeth?' she asked.
  
  'No,' Sigurd said. 'If Alrik wanted to he could take three or four men out and pull Guthrum in here before the rest of his men got halfway up the hill. Let us hear what this jarl has to say.'
  
  But Jarl Guthrum did not say anything. He ran a few steps and hurled the spear high and it soared over the palisade and Sigurd looked up at it before it plunged into the borg behind Alrik. It was the kind of throw that skalds sing about. More importantly, it meant that Guthrum was claiming the borg and every man in it.
  
  'It'll be war then,' Olaf said.
  
  'Did you think he would offer Alrik a horn of good mead and discuss a truce?' Solmund asked.
  
  'I would have been disappointed in the man if he had,' Olaf said.
  
  Jarl Guthrum turned his back on his enemies and walked back down the hill to rejoin his men. Then, protected by a shieldwall of fifty warriors, the remainder of his army made camp on the ground where Alrik's men had camped previously.
  
  It was a grey, rain-filled day the first time Jarl Guthrum sent his warriors against the borg. Fifty attacked the eastern section of the palisade, fifty the west, and one hundred came at the southern perimeter, the bulk of them massing before the gate. Only, it wasn't really an attack. They brought ladders and ropes but never intended to climb. Instead they came close enough that Alrik's men had no choice but to throw spears and drop rocks, most of which did little more than split a few shields or send Guthrum's men away with cuts and bruises.
  
  'Don't waste your spears,' Olaf said to those on the rampart above the gate, he being the first man in the fort to guess what Guthrum was up to. 'He's testing us, that's all,' he told Sigurd, 'and will be pleased with himself when we end up with nothing left to throw but clever insults and buckets of piss.'
  
  The second time Guthrum attacked, his men did the same thing, and again the borg men tried to kill some of them, though they did not try as hard as before and did not throw many spears or shoot many arrows. The third time was different because this time some of Guthrum's men threw their ladders against the palisade and began to climb, their shields held over their heads, while archers on the ground loosed shafts at those on the ramparts. All the while Guthrum kept an impressive-looking skjaldborg facing the gate as a deterrent to Alrik leading a sortie out of the place. Some of the climbers made it over the top and on to the ramparts and fought ferociously too, but these brave men were soon sent on their way to Valhöll.
  
  The fourth time the jarl attacked, the defenders did not know what he intended. They hurled their spears and dropped their rocks, killing seven of Guthrum's warriors and wounding a dozen more, which had Alrik's men cheering as though they expected Guthrum to turn round and lead his beaten army back into the forest.
  
  'Why doesn't he come for the gate?' Thorbiorn asked, seeming disappointed. A prince amongst the Danes, Thorbiorn was more used to bed slaves and mead-soaked nights in his father's hall than days manning ramparts and dropping rocks on other men's heads, but King Thorir hoped his son would learn sword-craft and the warrior's way as part of Sigurd's crew, and in truth Thorbiorn seemed to be enjoying this new life. 'Why doesn't he just come?' he asked again.
  
  'Because he's not a fool like you, that's why, boy,' Olaf gnarred.
  
  'He knows we're here,' Sigurd explained to Thorbiorn, watching the fighting at the other walls. 'And he knows we are killers.'
  
  'Well it's not right,' Svein said, gripping his big axe but having nothing to hit with it. 'It's like watching other men eating and drinking when you are hungry yourself.'
  
  'He'll attack the gate tomorrow, Red,' Bram said, hopefully. 'Aye, he'll come at us tomorrow, if the gods want to watch the blood flying.'
  
  What no one expected was another attack that very night when Guthrum should have been dealing with his own dead and, as Olaf put it, scheming about his next move. They came just before the dawn, men with ropes and grappling hooks, and they came from the north.
  
  The first Sigurd and his crew knew about it was the shouting, followed by a moaning of horns from those sentries manning the northern ramparts.
  
  'That Guthrum is a cunning shit,' Olaf grumbled, sitting up in his nest of furs and scrubbing the sleep from his face while the others groaned and cursed around him.
  
  'I was beginning to like the man but he's ruined it now,' Bram said, downing a cupful of ale which someone had left on a stool by the hearth. 'Waking me up when I am dreaming about a beautiful woman is not the way to get on my good side.'
  
  'Whoever the woman was, she owes Guthrum for sparing her your stinking clutches, Bear,' Valgerd told him, shrugging into her brynja and sweeping her golden hair back to tie it. A simple enough thing for a woman to do, and yet the watching of it hurt Sigurd like a blade in his flesh. In some ways … in one way … Valgerd was closer to him than any of them. They had been lovers, if only for a night. But he had less command over her than any in his crew. Valgerd was no more his than had the cascading water of the falls where he had found the shieldmaiden living been hers. She and the völva of the sacred spring had shared a life and perhaps Valgerd had belonged to the völva, but the seeress had withered and died, for which Valgerd blamed the gods. No, Sigurd thought now, watching Valgerd prepare for battle. He could no more claim that she was his than he could claim ownership of the hearth smoke which rose to leak out through the thatch above them.
  
  'Ready?' Olaf said, giving Sigurd a newly sharpened spear and a look which was sharper still. Sigurd nodded.
  
  They did not rush, as the other men sharing the longhouse did, tumbling out of the place half asleep, their bladders still full of ale and their blades as much a danger to themselves as the enemy. But when Sigurd's crew were fully into their war gear, some of them having relieved themselves in the ditch outside, Sigurd led them through the borg towards the fighting.
  
  Guthrum's men had not got far into the borg, but there must have been thirty still alive out of those who had made it over the palisade and more were still clambering over, spilling into the place while their companions fought Alrik's men, half in the moonlight, half in the shadow of the north wall. They had won a good part of the ramparts in that spot, allowing the next in line to get over the wall with relative ease. The borg men manning the rest of the perimeter could do nothing to prevent it, since to leave their own stations would invite the enemy to flood over the wall from all sides.
  
  'Wait!' Sigurd said, stopping Black Floki and Bram who would have walked right into the fight without breaking stride. The rest halted at Sigurd's shoulder while he stood there, eyes sifting the chaos ahead.
  
  Alrik himself was in the thick of it, bellowing encouragement to his men and hammering shields with his sword. There were no shieldwalls as such, just two opposing tides which mingled here and there. Small knots of warriors making their own steel-storms.
  
  'We take back the wall and let Alrik deal with these,' Sigurd said, gesturing with his spear at those enemy fighters already inside the place, and Olaf nodded because it was what he would have done. They split into two groups, six going with Sigurd, six with Olaf, and skirted round the mass of fighting men, resisting the urge to join the slaughter. Then they clambered up the bank either side of the point where most of Guthrum's men were coming over the wall, Valgerd stopping halfway up to draw her bow and put an arrow into the thigh of a warrior straddling the stakes. Pinned to the wall, the man screeched like a vixen and Sigurd knew that Valgerd had meant the shot, knowing the man's plight would put fear in the bellies of those on the other side who had yet to climb.
  
  'Shieldwall!' Sigurd yelled, and those with him moved with the fluid ease of long practice, drawing level and overlapping their shields to form a rampart to which each of them entrusted their lives.
  
  'Now kill the goat turds!' Svein roared as a spear clattered off his shield and Floki bent to put his axe into the skull of a man who sat with his back against the palisade having somehow snapped his leg coming over it.
  
  They drove into Guthrum's men, hacking and stabbing, as Olaf's skjaldborg swept towards them along the rampart, two killing waves swamping all before them, trampling the dead, while Valgerd loosed arrow after arrow, the dull thud of shaft striking flesh announcing men's doom.
  
  Sigurd speared a warrior in the shoulder then slammed his shield boss into the man's face, dropping him. Hagal cleaved a head in two and Bram spilled a man's guts. Holding his long axe halfway along the haft, Svein hooked the crescent head round his opponent's neck and hauled him on to Asgot's sword, which was quite a thing to see. And then there were no more living men between Sigurd's skjaldborg and Olaf's.
  
  'Come then!' Bram yelled up at two of Guthrum's men who were half over the wall, but when they saw what was waiting for them they scrambled back down and were gone.
  
  'You wait here in case any of those turds change their minds and want to die,' Olaf told Sigurd, pointing his gore-slick spear at the palisade. 'We'll help Alrik with this lot.'
  
  Sigurd nodded and Olaf took Moldof, Bjarni, Bjorn, Floki and Svein back down the mound to hit Guthrum's men in their rear. But those men, knowing that they could expect no more reinforcements to come over the wall, did not fight on for long. One by one they threw down their swords and axes, clamouring to be spared, and some of them died on their knees, hacked to death before Alrik threw the leash over his own men and put an end to the butchery.
  
  Men stood panting for breath, spitting, coughing, grimacing with pain or grinning at friends who had also survived. Some were already looting the dead, while others growled insults at Guthrum's men, the dead and the living. A handful of survivors stood around boasting that they had known their wyrds would not be severed that day, which Solmund muttered was a bold thing to claim.
  
  The wounded were helped back to the dwellings where those most skilled in treating injuries waited with bone needles and horsehair thread, strong ale and herbs to numb the pain, and red-hot irons to seal cut flesh.
  
  Sigurd looked out into the night and saw the backs of Guthrum's men as they retreated across the moon-silvered meadow and melted into the forest. Then he ordered some of Alrik's men to resume a watch from that place so that he and his crew would not have to, and no one questioned the order or refused it, even as weary as they were.
  
  'Guthrum would be a fool to try that again,' Alrik told Sigurd, which was as much acknowledgement of Sigurd's part in that fight as he would give. The warlord was blood-spattered. There were beads of it on his long moustaches, glistening by flame and moonlight or dark against the pale skin of his neck where his Thór's hammer sat. His hair was cropped to the scalp at the sides but long enough on top to be braided into a rope which was pulled back over his head and tied between his shoulder blades.
  
  'I would not put anything past Guthrum,' Sigurd said, and Alrik answered that by striking a kneeling prisoner across the temple with his sword hilt, dropping him. Then he turned and barked at his men to get on with the binding of the fourteen prisoners who, unlike the earlier boasters, must have sensed that they had come to the end of their wyrds now. The Norns, those spinners of men's futures, were poised with their shears.
  
  'This feud you two have between you is a thirsty bitch, Alrik,' Olaf told him, looking at the carnage around them. 'She drinks blood like we drink ale.'
  
  Alrik could not argue with that, though he did not like hearing it as he crouched to pull the silver rings from a dead man's fingers.
  
  'It is a shame Guthrum did not have the courage to lead his men over the wall,' he said, running his sword through a scrap of wool torn from a tunic. 'He would be a corpse now and a good number of his men would pledge themselves to me.' With that he called to one of his men who looked up just in time to catch the two silver rings which Alrik threw. 'They would join my army because I am a more generous lord than Guthrum,' Alrik said, locking eyes with Sigurd. 'As you have seen for yourself, Byrnjolf,' he added, using the name by which Sigurd went amongst these Svearmen.
  
  'Silver is of little use to dead men,' Sigurd said, which was not quite insulting Alrik's leadership but not far off. It was not that Sigurd disliked the man particularly, just that Alrik did not seem gods-favoured in any way, and that was disconcerting. Besides which, the strain of this feud was carved in Alrik's face like runes on a standing stone, which did not fill anyone with confidence.
  
  'Byrnjolf has the right of that,' Olaf said. 'More nights like this and you won't have a war host to speak of,' he said, which was true. Sixteen of Alrik's men would never fight for him again, because they were dead or halfway dead: which was slightly better than Guthrum's losses, but still. Guthrum could afford to lose more men because he had more to begin with.
  
  'Earn your keep, Norsemen, and we shall all come out of this silver-rich,' Alrik said, turning his back on them to greet Knut, his second in command, who had come to report how things stood across the other side of the borg. It seemed this at the north wall had been the only real assault, though Guthrum had made another feint at the gates to lure some of Alrik's men away from the proper fight.
  
  'Earn our keep? Is that what he said?' Svein growled, clutching a fistful of arrows which he had gathered and now gave to Valgerd like a bunch of spring flowers. The shieldmaiden smiled and thanked him and Svein spat on his axe head and rubbed it with a handful of hay to get the blood off. 'If not for us Guthrum would be drinking mead from Alrik's skull by now.'
  
  'At least he's a fighter, unlike my last lord,' Bram said with a shrug, which got some nods from the others who were milling around wondering what to do now. They had heard the story from Bram's own mouth, of how he had insulted his lord, a jarl named Otrygg, in his own hall because Otrygg had become a soft-bellied, hearth-loving jarl who had forgotten how to raid and live like a man should. And how Brak, Jarl Otrygg's champion, had had no choice but to defend his lord's honour and die for it too. Because Bram, whom men called Bear, was as skilled as he was strong and would fight Thór himself for the fame of it.
  
  'Even so, this is not fighting,' Bram added, curling a lip at the sight of the prisoners who were being herded together by Alrik's men. 'You can all stay and watch this, but I am going back to sleep to see if that beauty in my dream is waiting for me.' He walked off, his shield slung across his back and his helmet under his arm.
  
  'Wait for me,' Hagal called after. 'I do not want to watch these men get their throats cut.' Neither did any of the others, it seemed, and so they made their way back to the longhouse, leaving Alrik to do what he would with the prisoners. Not that anyone expected him to spare a single one.
  
  The truth was that this attack had nearly succeeded, and almost certainly would have, had Sigurd's crew not retaken the rampart and turned the tide against Guthrum.
  
  'Not that Alrik will admit it,' Olaf said as he and Sigurd wriggled out of their brynjur and laid them over a sea chest by their beds.
  
  'Wager he expects this to buy him more dead enemies yet,' Sigurd said, touching the chest, which was carved with ravens and eagles, and leaning his shield against it. He drew his scramasax to check the blade. Wouldn't hurt to take a whetstone to it. His blood still thrummed with the battle thrill so it wasn't as if sleep would come to him any time soon.
  
  'Aye, I think you're right with that,' Olaf admitted, yawning and taking the ale mug which Svein passed him. Nearby, Bram was already snoring, the sound of it like a rockfall.
  
  Right he might be, but Sigurd suspected there was another reason for Alrik's having bitten his tongue rather than admit that Sigurd and his half crew of Norse had stopped Jarl Guthrum becoming king of that hill in Fornsigtuna. Alrik was beginning to feel the worm of jealousy squirming in his gut. As much as the warlord needed Sigurd's crew, he was a proud man, and whilst his own men were dying, it must have been a hard thing to recognize that here was a young warrior whose reputation was beginning to shine like a moon-washed blade.
  
  Or a flame-licked blade, Sigurd thought, as by the flickering light of the hearth he ran the whetstone along the knife's edge.
  
  Still, Alrik had more important things to worry about than reputation, either his own or Sigurd's. With Guthrum for an enemy they all did.
  
  It was a golden day on Fugløy. A breeze rattled the birch leaves so that the rocks and long grass were dappled with dancing light. Bees threaded the air, going from flower to flower, the hum of them almost drowning out the distant clack of wooden swords as a group of Freyja Maidens practised in the clearing. The sky was endless and blue but for a few wisps of white, like a god's waking breath still lingering on the cool dawn air. The gulls soared and floated high above the island, at the edge of sight, seeming more inclined to revel in the day than dive for fish or scavenge snails and worms or leftovers from the midden.
  
  But the sea was the richest treasure in the hoard of that day. It shone like a dented old helmet after a good polishing and was almost too bright to look at. A sleeping sea this morning, after the wind-tossed rollers of the previous day. Good for rowing, fishing, or taking a skiff to the shallow places to snatch up crabs or tempt them with meat on the end of a string. Good for washing in too, Runa thought now, squinting against the silver glare of it.
  
  'I'm going to bathe,' she said. 'After that I must get back to milk the goats. A wash wouldn't hurt you, you know,' she told Ingel, raising an eyebrow at the man who lay back on his elbows in the grass beside her. The young smith was soot-stained and sweat-grimed, and yet from the way he grinned at Runa now anyone would think he was proud of his own stink. Not that Runa had minded it as she had straddled him in their nest of dewy grass, the two of them having sneaked away while the other women were beginning their daily tasks and Ingel's father Ibor was bringing the forge up to heat with the bellows.
  
  But that was then. Now there was work to be done and, with the thrill of their coupling fading in Runa, receding like the tide, she was aware of the dirt on him, matted in his long hair and beard and ingrained in his skin so that the creases at the edges of his smiling eyes were as white as milk on the rare occasions he wore his serious face. Which he did now, though it took every effort by the looks.
  
  'I'll bathe for you, Runa Haraldsdóttir,' he said, 'even though I do not see much point, for I will be covered in soot and grease again before midday.' He raised a callused finger. 'But only if we do it together. I swim like an anvil and will need to hang on to you so that I do not drown.' Now the smile came to his lips and Runa struck his thigh with the back of her hand and tutted at his nonsense, for she had seen him swim like an otter more than once, the last time being when he and his father were off shore with the nets. She had watched Ingel jump over the side to cool down after rowing halfway round Fugløy and hauling in a bilge-load of mackerel.
  
  'You are a hopeless liar, blacksmith,' she said now, pursing her own lips on a smile she did not want to give him. She almost resented Ingel for his arrogance. For his knowing that he could have her, even looking like a black elf from one of the stories Runa's father Jarl Harald used to tell her when he wanted to frighten her.
  
  No, when I wanted him to frighten me, she thought, remembering. 'Come then,' she said, climbing to her feet and looking back towards the tree line to make sure none of the other women had come looking for her, however unlikely that was. With the High Mother Skuld Snorradóttir off seeking guidance from the gods, there was a slackness to island life, the Freyja Maidens working with only half the usual purpose and endeavour. Skuld's absence was not the only reason for this. It was more than the mice playing while the cat was out of the way. Runa knew that the Prophetess's words about the future of their fellowship, her questioning of their way of life in uncertain times, had been like the serpent Nídhögg gnawing at the roots of the World Tree, so that the Freyja Maidens of Fugløy truly believed their way of life might come tumbling down.
  
  And yet a good many of them were more than a little excited by the prospect of leaving the island and returning to the world. The idea of that had turned their heads and their thoughts from the everyday patterns which they had lived by up to now.
  
  Runa's friend Drífa had been born on Fugløy and knew nothing else, no other life, but that only made her more eager to leave and she for one desperately hoped that the High Mother would return with the pronouncement that the Maidens were to leave this place and venture forth.
  
  'It is hard to worry about next winter's hay when we may be living in King Thorir's hall by then,' Drífa had said when their friend Vebiorg announced that they should be cutting and drying what little grass grew on Fugløy while this good weather lasted.
  
  'What makes you think the king will have us under his roof and share his meat with us?' Vebiorg had asked. 'He is happy to send us his smoked mutton, his weak ale and his blacksmiths, because he thinks it will buy him a place in Freyja the Giver's hall when he keels over, but he does not want a hall full of blade-wearing women.'
  
  Drífa had frowned at her, but knowing nothing of the world beyond Fugløy's shores she could not put up an argument.
  
  Still, with Skuld away there was more sword, spear and shield work going on than mundane tasks such as spinning shorn wool into thread or searching for gulls' eggs or scything grass to feed the animals next winter.
  
  'Wait for me!' Ingel called after Runa, finally dragging himself to his feet now that Runa was up to her ankles in a rock pool a crab's scuttle from the lapping tide.
  
  She shivered at the water's touch and looked out across the sea which shone like the silver of a jarl torc. Later in the day the air would be warm enough to bathe and not shiver half to death after, but she was up to her knees now and would not let Ingel see that she was cold. He already knew too much about her. Knew her body as well as a man could, which was itself such a shock to Runa; she wondered what her brother Sigurd would make of it were he to find out.
  
  At least her thoughts and feelings were still her own. Ingel could not have that part of her. Not yet. Perhaps when they were married.
  
  'It's cold,' he said, coming to stand beside her, bending to bring handfuls of water up and on to his skin to prepare his body for the plunge. Runa laughed and took his hand, leading him deeper, her feet gripping the weed-slick rocks as Ingel cursed the chill water and huffed and puffed.
  
  Was she really thinking of marrying him? They had never brought it up, but neither had Ingel been with any of the other Freyja Maidens since he had lain with her. That must mean something. Certainly he did not seem to mind the scar which some nithing raider's arrow had carved in her face from just below her left eye to her ear. A disfigurement which Runa had been ashamed of but which Skuld the High Mother had told her to be proud of. 'Such battle runes speak for us, Runa,' Skuld had said. 'They tell our tales as well as any skald.'
  
  Runa felt the sea breeze on the scar now, as gently as Ingel's lips had brushed against it earlier. A shiver ran through her and she tried not to think of what her brother would say if he could see her now, arse-naked and hand in hand with a filthy blacksmith who was cursing as the cold water shrivelled the snake between his legs.
  
  You should not have left me behind, Sigurd, she thought, setting her jaw as the water shocked the skin between her hips and waist. Wondering where her brother was now and resenting him for abandoning her. Wishing he could see how good she had become with sword and spear, as much as she dreaded him knowing about Ingel.
  
  'There,' the smith said, 'see there.' He was pointing with his free hand to the north beyond the pine-covered sliver of the island which jutted out into the sea. 'You see it? There! An arrow-shot off shore.'
  
  'Too small for Storm-Elk,' Runa said, having been struck with the sudden fear that it was King Thorir's ship come to take Ingel and his father back to Skíringssalr. The blacksmiths were the only men permitted to set foot on the island, tasked with repairing the Freyja Maidens' weapons and forging what needed forging. But even they must return to Thorir's hall when the king sent for them.
  
  No. Runa could see now that the boat being rowed towards the bay beyond that knife blade of land was just a færing. She sharpened her eyes upon it, which was no easy thing because of the glittering glare coming off the sea. Two pairs of oars, no more.
  
  'Sibbe and Guthrun?' Ingel suggested, for those two had gone off fishing before sunrise. But Runa shook her head.
  
  'They will be on the west side,' she said. She had lived on Fugløy long enough by now to know that if you wanted to make your arm ache from pulling in mackerel and, now and then, something bigger like a codfish, you took the boat out to a place which the women called Flea Rock because the water there was as thick with fish as fleas on a dog.
  
  'News from the king then,' Ingel said, his gaze lingering a moment on the distant craft before he turned to make his way back to dry land and his clothes and shoes which lay piled in the grass.
  
  But Runa was already splashing through the rock pools then throwing her own tunic over her wet skin and thrusting her legs into her breeks. Because perhaps whoever was in that færing had word of Sigurd. What if he were dead? What if King Gorm or Jarl Hrani had caught up with him? No. She would not believe that. He had left her on this island because he would not make her endure the outcast's life he had chosen for himself after King Gorm betrayed their father and Jarl Randver had brought slaughter to their village. But he would not leave her alone in this world, would not make the journey to the afterlife without her.
  
  Runa thought all this as she ran across the rocks and long grass, scattering butterflies and bees before her and looking up to the bluff where one of the other women was on watch. That woman was standing on the rock at the edge of the bluff to get a better look at the boat and its crew, and Runa saw that it was her friend Vebiorg. She waved at Runa now to acknowledge that she had seen the craft, then turned and was gone, back to warn the others that they should expect visitors.
  
  So Runa ran, leaping a fallen tree and ducking a spider's web which shimmered between two hazels. Then through the birch and thickets and up to the higher ground that would take her over the ridge and down into the bay where those in the rowboat meant to come ashore.
  
  And Ingel, despite not yet owning the brawn that his father had earned from a lifetime in the forge, could not keep up with her.
  
  Runa watched as the man pulled the little boat up the beach, the small stones crunching beneath its hull as he dragged it beyond the high-tide line with the woman still in it. Her brown hair had spilled from a white linen head-dress and her teeth worried her bottom lip as she sat on the bench, clinging on to the sides as the little færing jerked and bucked to a stop.
  
  And then Runa realized why the woman had not leapt out of the boat into the shallows and either helped the man pull the boat up or else at least lightened the load for him. She was enormous with child and grimacing as she stood in the thwarts, holding out her hand so that the man could help her out of the boat, which almost tipped with her weight as she hoisted a leg over and set a foot on the strand. Runa was reminded of a whale she had once seen on the east coast of Karmøy. The beast had washed up on the shore and her father had sent a score of men and women to butcher it on the beach and bring the meat and fat and even strips of its skin back to Eik-hjálmr. She stifled a grin and felt mean for thinking of it now.
  
  'You cannot come ashore here,' she told the man, still breathing heavily after the run. 'It is forbidden.'
  
  The man raised a hand to her to show he had heard, but did not say anything as he helped the woman walk across the loose stones up the beach towards her.
  
  'You must get back into your boat and row away from here. You cannot stay,' she said, and again the man raised a hand but kept walking towards her and Runa felt a stab of irritation. Was he deaf? Or just arrogant?
  
  'She looks ready to drop it on the beach,' Ingel said, coming to stand beside Runa, breathing hard, eyes wide at the sight of the man half pulling, half pushing the woman up the slope.
  
  'She can't,' Runa said. 'They should not even be here.'
  
  Ingel shrugged. 'Then you'd better put her back in the boat and hope the seep water in the bilge isn't deep, for she will drop the bairn in there,' he said and Runa frowned because he had a point.
  
  'Who are you?' she asked the couple, thinking that if the man raised his hand again she would draw her scramasax and cut it off, expectant wife or no.
  
  'My wife is fit to burst,' the man said, letting go the woman's hand to come closer to Runa. She could smell the boat tar and sweat on him. 'She began the pains,' he said, 'the ones that come again and again like waves on the shore.' He frowned. 'But something is wrong. Or else the child is being stubborn, for it will not come.' Fair-haired, his face pitted with little scars, he was a man in his middle years and not rich by the looks of his clothes and his lack of a sword or any war gear to speak of, though he might have left his belongings in the færing. He had no beard to speak of, either, but for a few mossy patches and the dark bristles on his neck.
  
  'I know little of such things,' Runa said, thinking that she should perhaps start to learn more given what she got up to with Ingel.
  
  'My name is Varin and this is my wife Gudny,' the man said, looking from Runa to Ingel, arming sweat from his forehead and pressing hands into the small of his back. 'We have come far. Rowed through the night to get here.'
  
  'Why here?' Ingel asked before Runa had the chance to.
  
  'You can see that she is in pain,' Varin said, thumbing back towards his wife who stood there looking about as uncomfortable as a person could who was not suffering from either the runs or painful arse berries or serious over-eating. 'My wife needs help or the child will die inside her and kill Gudny with it.'
  
  'But why come here? Surely there are women near your steading who can help her,' Runa said.
  
  'I have heard about the old woman who lives here. The witch,' he said in a softer voice. He touched the little iron Mjöllnir which hung at his throat and knew from Runa's expression that she needed more explanation than that. 'My brother is a shipwright. He worked on Storm-Elk, King Thorir's ship, and he is a friend of her skipper, a man named Harthbren.' He raised that hand of his again but this time it was lifted like a shield against Runa's next question. 'This Harthbren did not tell my brother where this island was … before you have King Thorir flay the skin from his flesh. But Biarbi was able to stitch the where of it together from what he learnt by talking to the man.' He forced a smile. 'My brother knows this sea better than he knows his own wife.'
  
  He turned and beckoned to his woman to come closer. Her face was tear-stained and miserable-looking as she waddled forward, hands cradling her huge belly. There was blood near the hem of her kyrtill, Runa saw, which did not bode well for either her or the life inside her. Runa knew that much.
  
  She looked at Ingel who shrugged as if to say he was just a blacksmith and who came and went was no business of his. She looked back at Varin and decided there was no point in telling him that men were not allowed on the island, not with Ingel standing there still flushed from their coupling in the grass.
  
  'They will likely send you away,' she warned instead, this to Gudny, who was giving her such pathetic eyes that it was uncomfortable to look at her. 'Certainly they will not allow you to be here,' she said, turning back to Varin.
  
  He set his face, the little muscles tensing beneath the pockmarked skin. 'I will not leave my wife,' he said. 'The bairn needs to come out of her. We need the old woman to weave her seiðr. She can help us. I know it. She will save Gudny and the child too, if the gods will it.' Gudny groaned then and swayed as if she might fall, and it was Ingel who stepped forward to steady her, earning the woman's mumbled thanks and a scowl from Varin, who took hold of his wife again though he did not refuse Ingel's help.
  
  'Will you take us to her, girl?' Varin asked. 'Or will you stand there and watch my wife and bairn die?'
  
  There was an edge of threat in the man's voice now, an air of violence about him, though it was not worth making a thing out of it, Runa thought, confident that she could handle him if she needed to; wondering why she had even thought about how she would take him down, this desperate and frightened man.
  
  And so she nodded, turned her back on the sea and the couple who had come across it, and walked over the rocks towards the long grass and the birch and scrub beyond which lay the grazing meadows and, beyond them, the settlement where the Freyja Maidens lived their lives undisturbed.
  
  'Come then,' she called over her shoulder.
  
  Guthrum came three more times over the next six days. The last of those attacks brought terror to the borg, for as Sigurd knew only too well, few things frightened men more than fire in the night: ship-burning, hall-burning, man-burning fire.
  
  Guthrum had bided his time, letting one rainless day follow another until the palisade, as well as the fuel he had gathered, was as dry as they were likely to get. Then, in the gloom of night, his men ran forward with arms full of sticks and dried moss tinder which they piled against the wall in four places, setting light to it. Alrik's men doused two of the four fires before they caught properly, but the other two, being fanned by a breeze coming out of the south-east, licked the stakes and then bit deep. It did not help that Guthrum, seeing the flames beginning to do their work, arranged all his archers before those two fires, so that they kept up a steady rain of arrows which, if they did not kill many, nevertheless kept Alrik's men's heads down when they should have been busy flinging water.
  
  'What are we going to do about this, then?' Moldof asked Sigurd and Olaf, waving the stump of his right arm – all that was left of it since Sigurd's father had cut it off in a fight which the skalds sang of. A more grievous wound still because it had lost Moldof his position as King Gorm's champion and prow man, and this the warrior could not abide. Thinking he could reclaim his honour by killing his king's enemy Sigurd Haraldarson, Moldof had journeyed north alone, intent on finding Sigurd in his lair up in Osøyro. But in the event it was Sigurd who had offered Moldof a chance to rekindle his fame. Fame and the sword-song, or a bad death, cut into a stump and rolled into the fjord: that was the choice Sigurd had given him that white, frozen day on the fjord's edge. Moldof had chosen the first option and now the former champion fought for Sigurd, though Sigurd and the other Skudeneshavn men still felt the strange prickle of that like nettles on the skin, Moldof having been their enemy not so long ago.
  
  Men were coughing now, choking on the smoke which billowed over the palisade into the borg, enveloping the huge mass of Moldof who scowled at it as if that would turn it back. And it might, given how ugly Moldof was.
  
  Flame-glow showed like copper against the night sky.
  
  'Now would be a good time to take your snake out of your breeks, hang it over the side and piss out that fire,' Svein told Bjarni, who was not above boasting about the size of the thing given any opportunity.
  
  'I won't risk burning it. Not for the sake of this lot,' Bjarni said, gesturing at thirty of Alrik's men who stood with them on the ramparts, peering round their shields at Guthrum's war host massing on the slope.
  
  It was one thing to make light of it all, Hagal said, but no one would be laughing when those burning stakes gave way and Guthrum's men poured into the place.
  
  Alrik's men were bringing pails of water from all across the borg and tipping them over the wall, while their comrades shielded them from arrows and spears, and when a cheer went up fifty paces further along the rampart, Sigurd knew that the fire there had been put out. But the one eating the palisade where he stood was growing, tongues of flames now and then stretching above the pointed stakes to singe men's beards.
  
  'Well, Byrnjolf?' Alrik said. 'What do we do?' The warlord was looking at the enemy rather than at Sigurd, and the question had leaked from the corner of his mouth like pus from a wound.
  
  Sigurd had been asking himself the same question and had not liked the answer. But he shared it with Alrik anyway. 'A few of us slip over the wall and loot Guthrum's camp,' he said. Arrows streaked over their heads and thudded into men's shields around them. 'We burn his tents if we get the chance and we make a lot of noise about it.' He nodded towards the horde on the hillside, fully revealed in its war-glory now by the glow of the fire. He fancied he could make out Guthrum himself standing in the heart of that body of warriors, taller than those around him. 'If they think we are into their sea chests and slashing their ale skins they will hare back to the camp.' He shrugged. 'It may give your men a chance to deal with this fire at least.'
  
  Alrik scowled, considering the idea. 'Anyone who makes it as far as those trees without being carved up will be tempted to keep going and not look back.'
  
  'You think I would run?' Sigurd asked.
  
  'You have sworn no oath to me,' Alrik said.
  
  Here it was again. 'And neither will I,' Sigurd said. 'But tell me, Alrik, is my oath worth more to you than this borg?'
  
  To his right Olaf cursed as an arrow tonked off his shield boss. He picked out the archer who had just tried to kill him and bellowed at him, calling the man a nithing son of a flea-ridden bitch. Then he turned back to Alrik.
  
  'You won't have to worry about anyone leaving you here in the shit, Alrik,' he said. 'No one is going out there. Not us, not your oath-sworn.'
  
  'What do you have in mind, Uncle?' Sigurd asked.
  
  'We'll let the arse-leaves come to us instead. Only thing is, we need to lose this part of the wall to save the rest of it. If the fire spreads we're dead men.'
  
  Sigurd knew what Olaf was thinking then.
  
  Alrik knew too. 'But if there is just a small hole we will be able to plug it,' he said.
  
  Olaf nodded, then called to Svein and Bram to bring their axes. Alrik ordered some others to help and they set to work, going at those flaming stakes like woodsmen while others went off into the borg to find the timbers they would need as replacements.
  
  The first of the stakes fell with a shower of embers and the rest soon followed, and were kicked away down the slope from the palisade by Alrik's men, their shields raised against the heat as much as the arrows. Then Alrik himself stepped into the breach and his skjaldborg built itself around him. He was lucky in one way because the burning timbers lying on the bank checked Guthrum's advance. Yet he was unlucky in that those burning fence posts lit up his shieldwall so that Guthrum's archers could hardly miss.
  
  'He can smell blood now,' Bram said. He meant Guthrum, who was pacing up and down in front of his men, yelling at them, inciting them to the coming slaughter, rousing them with promises of plunder and arm rings and fame. Men were flooding in from the surrounding darkness, swelling his numbers because they knew that this breach was their best chance of retaking the borg.
  
  'All we have to do is hold!' Alrik called. 'We will kill them. We will bleed them and they will lose heart. Jarl Guthrum will show himself for the pale-livered, pus-filled prick he is.' His men cheered this, thumping swords and axes against their shields, showing their defiance. One of them loosed an arrow at Guthrum which hit him square on the helmet between the eye guards. But Guthrum did not flinch. He pointed his sword at Alrik, roared something to Óðin Hrafnaguð, Ravengod, then led his army forward. They came up the slope as though they never doubted that they would win, as though they would punch through that gap in the fort's palisade like a rivet through a ship's strake.
  
  But Alrik had not become a warlord by being an easy man to kill. Nor was he afraid to lead from the sharp end, and he held like a rock, striking men down, hammering them with his sword, splitting skulls and lopping limbs. Knut was there too and he was a deadly fighter, cunning and quick, his spear striking like a snake and laying men low.
  
  'They're doing well,' Svein admitted grudgingly.
  
  'Aye, they need to,' Solmund said. For now they stood back from the fighting because Alrik already had two lines of men filling the breach and there was no room for more.
  
  'Hold your crew in reserve,' Alrik had told Sigurd. 'My men will fight harder knowing that you are at our backs. But if we break, you must hold the breach.'
  
  'You won't break,' Sigurd had said, and so far he was right. And now those men they had sent off to find timbers were returning with their heavy loads, so that whilst Alrik and Guthrum's skjaldborgar clashed, their blades biting, Olaf took charge of the new defences. He had Sigurd's crew digging holes and setting the new posts in them, but not so that they made a new palisade, for being rushed it would be weak. Instead they set the timbers at a slant and supported them so that they pointed towards the breach. Old roof timbers, posts from the animal pens, even split planks from long tables were set in place, clustered thick as sea urchin spines, and then Olaf had them take axes and sharpen the ends of the timbers. And as they dug and hacked and sweated, they kept one eye on the battle in the breach, hoping that Alrik's shieldwall stood firm. Because if not, his men would be driven back on to those spikes and the enemy would surge in.
  
  The sword-song rang out into the night, accompanied by the shrieks of the wounded and the gruff shouts of encouragement from men who knew only too well that they each depended on the other, that the shieldwall was only as strong as its weakest man. And it was a hard fight between those two warlords that night, with men falling on both sides, their bodies hauled back so that others could step up and take their place.
  
  Still, try as he might, Guthrum could not break Alrik's shieldwall and force his way into the borg. And in the end, exhausted and bone-weary, Guthrum's men pulled back from the carnage in the breach, and Alrik's men up on the ramparts could not even sting them with arrows as they retreated down the hill, for they had long run out of shafts.
  
  The mangled and the dismembered lay there like a grim burial mound, a testament to the savagery of that fight and to the stubbornness of both sides. But Alrik still held the hill, for all that he had paid a heavy price for it.
  
  'I don't think we can take another night like that,' Svein said to Sigurd. Dawn was breaking and he had come with Sigurd to look at the hole in the palisade and see what Alrik was doing about it. 'I am thinking we should take our silver and iron and leave while we still can.' Svein had braided his thick red beard into one rope, which he pulled now as they watched three dogs licking the blood-smeared grass of the slope where the corpses had lain. Now Sigurd realized why Svein had got out of his bed to come with him while the rest were still half asleep in the longhouse. This was not the sort of thing his friend would say in front of anyone else. 'You know I would stay here and fight beside you until Ragnarök, Sigurd,' he said, tugging at that red rope, 'but how will that help us avenge our kin? This is a good fight but it is not our fight.'
  
  They stood beside the sharp teeth of the makeshift defence, looking out across the rock-strewn meadow which was thick now with yellow flowers that showed even in the weak light, reminding Sigurd of home and Runa.
  
  Now and then the breeze brought the low hum of men's voices from Guthrum's camp, but there was no sign that the jarl was going to attack the breach again. Which was why Knut was making the best of it and had his men digging out the last stumps of the ruined timbers, like rotting teeth from raw gums, so that they could be replaced properly.
  
  'You think Guthrum would let us walk out of here and back to Reinen?' Sigurd asked.
  
  'I think he would be glad to see us go,' Svein said, then held his tongue while two of Knut's men walked past hefting a long timber between them. 'Guthrum has lost too many warriors already,' Svein went on when the men were out of earshot. 'He wants this borg and the iron in it. He won't sacrifice more of his men fighting us if he doesn't have to. Not if we show him our backs.'
  
  'It wouldn't be much of a fight. Not out there in the open,' Sigurd said, which was true enough. Even armed like Týr, Lord of Battle, they were just fourteen, whilst Guthrum still commanded as many as one hundred and fifty warriors. Even so, he suspected Svein was right and that Guthrum would just be glad to see Sigurd's crew fly the coop, leaving Alrik in the mire of it.
  
  'We will never kill the oath-breaker if we die here,' Svein said, his mention of King Gorm like the stab of a cold blade in Sigurd's guts. There was no argument Sigurd could make against that and so he said nothing, which allowed a silence to spread between them like a bloodstain.
  
  It had taken a lot for Svein to suggest that they turn their backs on Alrik and leave his men to Guthrum's army. And yet Svein was right, this was not their fight.
  
  'Alrik will think we are cowards,' Sigurd said after a while.
  
  'Alrik will not be alive for long after we leave so what does it matter what he thinks?'
  
  But Óðin will know, Sigurd thought, and I have not come this far, having got old One-Eye's attention, just to prove unworthy of it now.
  
  Sigurd looked along the rampart and saw Alrik doing his rounds, walking the perimeter and talking to the clusters of men manning the palisade. Down in the borg his other warriors were spilling out of their dwellings now, stretching aching muscles and preparing for whatever the day might bring. They were good men. Loyal men.
  
  'We just have to beat Guthrum,' Sigurd said. Svein raised one thick red eyebrow but Sigurd pressed on. 'We beat Guthrum and we leave here as rich men.'
  
  Svein nodded, which was his way of saying that whatever Sigurd decided, that was fine by him.
  
  Sigurd nodded too. All he had to do was come up with a way of killing Jarl Guthrum and he would earn silver, fame and the Spear-God's respect. He was still wondering how this might be done when Svein tramped back down the bank into the borg to find something to eat.
  
  It was not until four days later that the answer came to him. And it was Guthrum himself who came up with it, laying it before Sigurd like a gift.
  
  'The horse prick is trying to put the worm of fear in our bellies, breathing down our necks like this,' Knut said. After three days of rain it had dawned bright and golden. The breeze itself was warm and what little cloud there was drifted through the blue sky like unspun wool.
  
  Alrik, Knut, Sigurd and Olaf had gathered on the ramparts above the gates because the sentries there had called down into the borg that Guthrum was coming.
  
  But the jarl was not attacking. Rather he was moving his whole camp up the hill towards the borg so that it was more than a spear-throw but less than an arrow-shot from the walls. Not that he need fear Alrik's archers taking long-range shots, because they were saving what few arrows they had scavenged or made for Guthrum's next attack.
  
  'He thinks that if he puts his war host in full view, my men will lose heart at the sight,' Alrik said.
  
  Olaf nodded in agreement. 'He wants this thing over with,' he said, 'and is coming at us like a hand round a throat. And his own men are going to want to finish it sooner rather than later for they will be fed up with living on a hillside and rolling out of their beds.'
  
  It took most of the day, but by the time the sun fell behind the mountains in the west the enemy had set up their tents again and were sitting round fires, or rather lying because of the slope, drinking and talking, laughing and singing, and all of them ready in their war gear, shields and spears within reach. It was a sight which had Alrik's one hundred and ten fit men gripping sword pommels, spear shafts, axe hafts and Thór's hammer amulets with sweaty palms. But of all of it, one thing had Alrik spitting curses and telling anyone who would listen that he was going to pull Guthrum's head out of his arse, stick it on a pole and leave it for the birds. That was the sight of the jarl's own tent sitting nearer the borg than any of the others, as if Guthrum were announcing to gods and men that he was a man without fear of death. That he could snore the night away almost within spitting distance of his enemies and have no concern that he might wake with a blade in his belly.
  
  Guthrum's tent was of red sail cloth and the upper ends of its cross-timber supports were carved to resemble snarling wolves; the whole thing now being where it was made for a decent insult. It was Jarl Guthrum saying that Alrik was too afraid to come out and fight him amongst the spring flowers, man against man, skjaldborg against skjaldborg.
  
  And it was a sight which had Sigurd's heart pounding against the anvil of his breastbone. When he looked at Guthrum's red tent he saw opportunity, a chance to win this fight for Alrik and cut out the despair which was spreading through the borg like rot in damp wood.
  
  'What is on your mind then?' Olaf asked him. They were sharing bread and some cheese and a skin of ale that was only a little sour. 'When you are quiet like this it usually means you are waist-deep in some scheming.'
  
  'Not this time, Uncle,' Sigurd said.
  
  But that was a lie.