text: Two days after the battle, after Guthrum had dealt with his dead and his army were still licking their wounds, Olaf himself came out of the borg to meet with the jarl. Guthrum's men had begun to disassemble their camp within the shadow of the borg's palisade, but if Alrik thought that meant Guthrum had given up, he was mistaken. Guthrum simply moved his camp back down the slope to flatter ground and there set up as before, with smaller bands of warriors stationed at various places along the perimeter to ensure that none of Alrik's men, or Alrik himself, could drop over the wall and make a run for the woods.
  
  It was Beigarth who brought news to Guthrum that one of Alrik's warriors was asking to speak with the jarl, though Guthrum, still wearing his dark mood like a cloak, was in no mind to speak with anyone. That was to say not until Beigarth explained that the man was one of the brynja-clad, helmeted Norsemen who had thwarted his attack on the gate with their unbreakable skjaldborg. One of those who had thinned Guthrum's war host with their spear-craft and sword-work.
  
  'He's part of the same lot as them,' Beigarth had explained, nodding towards Sigurd, Valgerd and Floki, who were tied to stakes on the edge of the camp within sight of those on the borg's ramparts. 'Those boasting bollocks with all the shiny war gear,' Beigarth said.
  
  This was enough to catch Guthrum's attention and he turned to look at his prisoners. 'I will hear what the man has to say,' the jarl told his champion, 'but he must come alone. And he will bring me a gift in return for hearing him out.'
  
  'Something in particular?' Beigarth said.
  
  'Silver. Iron.' Guthrum rolled his left shoulder, a grimace flashing in his big fair beard. Some or other ache, probably from swinging his axe at Alrik's gate like a mad man. 'I will have it all back anyway, but if this man wants to speak to me now he will pay for the privilege.'
  
  Sigurd watched Olaf come down the slope. When he was halfway between the borg and the outer edge of Guthrum's camp Olaf stopped and carefully laid his shield, spear and sword on the ground beside him. He even pulled off his four silver arm rings and placed them on his shield. This was his way of showing that he came under an oath of peace, sworn upon his own weapons and warrior rings, and that were he to break that oath those same weapons would turn against him. This wordless declaration made, he walked no further. Guthrum would have to come to him now. The jarl would have to meet him halfway.
  
  Sigurd could not help but smile to see that.
  
  'Who does this man think he is?' Guthrum asked the knot of warriors standing with him.
  
  'Some strutting Norse fuck,' said one.
  
  'Goat-swiving fjord-spawn,' another rumbled into his beard.
  
  'Still, he has bigger balls than Alrik, for at least he dares set foot outside that wall,' a big warrior pointed out, which got some reluctant ayes from Guthrum's men.
  
  'Maybe he has come to pledge his sword to you instead of Alrik,' the first man suggested, thinking he had hit the rivet true with that. 'Maybe he will open the gates for us one night. That would be helpful given how things have gone so far.'
  
  And perhaps Guthrum had the same thought in his head, which was why he, a Svearman with a torc of twisted silver at his neck and an army at his command, set off up the hill towards some waiting Norseman who was too stubborn to walk all the way down the hill.
  
  'Beigarth, bring young Byrnjolf,' Guthrum called over his shoulder. 'It will not hurt to let the man see that I do not mutilate my prisoners.'
  
  And so Beigarth untied Sigurd and hauled him after his jarl, whose ill mood, it turned out, was not helped by the fact that Olaf had not brought him a gift.
  
  'You will get nothing from me, Jarl Guthrum, while you keep my friends tied to posts like dogs,' Olaf said when Beigarth asked him why he had come empty-handed.
  
  'Your friends came to murder me in my sleep. If I treat them like dogs it is better than they deserve, Norseman,' Guthrum replied, gesturing at Sigurd. Olaf gave a nod as though ceding this point. He was careful not to look at Sigurd and for his part Sigurd avoided his friend's eye too. If Guthrum knew they were as close as the rings of a brynja he would only exploit it to his advantage.
  
  'So who are you?' Guthrum asked.
  
  'Olaf Ollersson.'
  
  'And you are oath-sworn to Alrik?'
  
  Olaf shook his head. 'No.'
  
  'And yet you fight for him. Who leads your crew?'
  
  Olaf shrugged. 'We are a fellowship. We all play our part. Oars, tiller, mast and sail, a ship needs all of these else it is dead in the water. It is the same with us.'
  
  Guthrum frowned at that. Perhaps he wondered why Olaf and his Norsemen were still holed up in that hill fort fighting for their lives if they were not even sworn to Alrik. But it made sense of why Alrik had let Olaf come out of the borg under truce to speak with his enemy. The warlord had no choice in the matter, this Norseman being his own man.
  
  'But you fight for Alrik's silver.' The jarl flashed his teeth then. 'Most of which is mine anyway, as it happens.'
  
  'Who it once belonged to is no concern of ours,' Olaf said.
  
  'I know you have not come to offer me silver for my prisoners, for you already know I will not sell them,' Guthrum said.
  
  'That was before you sent your men to a mauling that will feed the crows until they are too fat to fly,' Olaf said. 'Could be you have changed your mind.'
  
  Guthrum did not like that. 'The answer is the same,' he said.
  
  'So be it,' Olaf said.
  
  'Either you have come to offer me your swords, or else you hope to negotiate safe passage away from here. For you and your Norsemen know that I will have this borg and kill every man within. Alrik has brought this end upon himself and all that are fool enough to follow him.'
  
  Olaf shook his head. 'By the time you take this place, if you ever do, I will be a toothless old man and more than ready to drink with my brothers in Óðin's hall,' he said.
  
  'You can drink the Allfather's mead this very night if you want, Norseman,' Beigarth said, not needing to touch his sword's hilt to edge that threat.
  
  Olaf looked at the jarl's champion, taking stock of him from his boots to his black beard and his black hair which hung loose but for two braids which would keep most of it out of his eyes in a fight. 'You're a brave man and a good fighter, lad,' Olaf told him. 'I've seen you in the blood-fray, watched you shield your jarl in the hail of arrows when shafts were striking you. What is your name?'
  
  The man lifted his chin and that massive beard with it. 'Beigarth,' he said, as if Olaf should have heard of him. 'I am the man who killed Jarl Esbern at Baldr's rock. And Fridlef Ox-Neck at the ship fight off Björkö. And Thuning Thuningsson who men called Snake Arm because he was so fast with a sword. That was before I cut off his sword arm and his head too.'
  
  Olaf shook his head. 'I have never heard of any of them,' he said, 'but I am not from these parts, and if you say they had reputations, who am I to argue?' He raised an eyebrow at the man. 'Well then, Beigarth, you might make a name for yourself one day. But not if you throw threats around the place like a man scattering hen feed.' That said, he looked back to the man's jarl, ignoring the scowl on Beigarth's face which would have made an onion cry.
  
  'Look, Jarl Guthrum, we'll not slope off and leave Alrik now, much as you'd like us to.' Olaf thumbed back up the hill to the borg. 'We are comfortable in there with our hearth and our beds. More comfortable than you sleeping out here night after night.'
  
  There were faces up there above the gates, looking out of the fort, and one of them was Alrik's.
  
  'So you did come thinking you would buy my prisoners.' Guthrum turned to Sigurd. 'It seems your friends are keen that you should all die together when I take this fort,' he said.
  
  'It could be that,' Sigurd admitted. 'Or it could be that they want us to feast and drink with them when one of them takes your head from your shoulders.'
  
  Beigarth yanked Sigurd towards him and backhanded him across the face so that when Sigurd smiled again he tasted the blood on his teeth.
  
  'Again, I say my prisoners are not for sale, Olaf Ollersson,' Guthrum said.
  
  Olaf shrugged at Sigurd as if to say no one could claim he hadn't tried. 'What will you do with them?' he asked Guthrum.
  
  'Do not waste a moment thinking about it, Norseman,' Guthrum said. 'All I will tell you is that Frey, the best of the gods, has spoken and I have heard him. Now go back to Alrik. He is lucky to have a man of your honour fighting for him.' He raised a hand. 'Know this, though, Olaf. If I find your corpse at the end of all this, I will make sure it is treated with respect. You can tell Alrik that I will not afford his corpse the same. I will geld him. I will stuff his cock and balls in his mouth and I will put out his eyes. He will wander the afterlife blind and prickless.'
  
  'Now fuck off while you still can,' Beigarth said, unable to resist one more little poke.
  
  Olaf turned to the bigger man. 'What did I tell you about making threats?' he asked. He was scowling now, and Sigurd knew Olaf well enough to be sure that his hackles were raised. 'Are you slow-witted, Beigarth? Did your mother drop you on your head when you were a mewling, tit-clamped bairn?'
  
  Beigarth grimaced.
  
  'Go, Olaf,' Guthrum said, flicking a hand towards the borg.
  
  But Olaf did not go.
  
  He stood there.
  
  'Do you want to fight me, Beigarth?' Olaf asked.
  
  'It has been a while since I killed a Norseman,' Beigarth said. 'I have missed the way you people squeal when the blade goes in.'
  
  'It is easy to throw threats at an unarmed man who comes under truce, you big sack of horse shit,' Sigurd told Beigarth. The man yanked the rope again but Sigurd was ready for it this time and had set his feet so that he did not get pulled anywhere. Annoyed, Beigarth strode up to him and hammered a fist into the side of his head, sending white-hot light shooting through Sigurd's skull like a lightning strike. He staggered but did not fall, then straightened and squared his shoulders to the man.
  
  'These men you boast of killing, Beigarth,' Olaf said, pointing at Sigurd, 'were they all tied up like him?'
  
  That was quite the insult and Beigarth dropped his end of Sigurd's leash and strode towards Olaf, drawing his sword as he went, and Guthrum said nothing, perhaps because he thought one dead Norseman here was one less to fight in the days to come.
  
  'Pick it up,' Beigarth demanded of Olaf, pointing his own sword at Olaf's which lay in the grass beside his shield.
  
  'If I do that I break my own oath,' Olaf said.
  
  'If you don't you'll die without a blade in your hand,' Beigarth threatened and with that he moved faster than Sigurd would have thought possible for his size, slamming his sword's hilt into Olaf's temple. Olaf reeled, blood spilling from his head on to the grass, and when he pulled his hand from his head it was red.
  
  'Kill him, Uncle,' Sigurd said.
  
  'Pick it up,' Beigarth said again, nodding at the sword on the ground.
  
  Olaf glared at him but did not move. So Beigarth stepped up again and threw his left fist into Olaf's cheek, and there was enough weight behind that punch to make Olaf stagger to his left though he did not fall.
  
  'Enough!' Guthrum told his champion, his own sense of honour threatened now by Beigarth's shameful behaviour.
  
  But Beigarth could smell blood and would not be stopped now, not by words. 'I expected better, Norseman,' he spat, coming again, but this time his fist did not connect with Olaf's face because Olaf blocked with his right forearm then hammered his own fist into Beigarth's nose. Beigarth must have had a thick skull for that punch should have come out the back of his head, yet he was rocked back on his heels, blood flowing from both nostrils down his black beard.
  
  When Guthrum's champion came at Olaf again he did so with his sword, scything it so that Olaf had to twist out of its reach or else get dizzy from his head rolling down the slope.
  
  The men up at the borg were clamouring at Olaf now, telling him to pick up his sword and fight, and Beigarth's next swing saw his sword's point scrape along the rings of Olaf's brynja because the Norseman had jumped back just beyond its killing range. Then there was a flash in the sunlight and Beigarth stood still for a moment.
  
  In Olaf's hand was his scramasax, which he had pulled from its sheath behind his back, and even at that distance Sigurd saw the blood on the blade. Beigarth's sword fell from his hand and a heartbeat later he was on his knees, still facing Olaf. A low hum came from the borg as people began to realize what was happening.
  
  'Get up, man!' Guthrum yelled at his champion.
  
  Beigarth couldn't have answered even if he had wanted to. Not with a gash like that in his throat. Olaf walked up to him, grabbed a handful of Beigarth's thick black beard and ran his scramasax through it to clean the blood off.
  
  Down the hill, some of Guthrum's men wanted to come up and kill Olaf for his humiliation of their champion. But most looked as if they thought Beigarth had brought that bad end upon himself.
  
  'Stay where you are,' Guthrum called down at them all, thinking it would be unwise to heap humiliation on humiliation. Besides which, it was not as though Olaf had broken his own oath. His shield, spear and sword, which would have turned against him if he had used them under truce, still lay in the grass where he had left them. As for the long knife with which he had cut Beigarth's throat, Olaf looked at that now for the last time, then threw it and it turned end over end before landing near Guthrum. It would have been better if it had landed blade down, stuck in the earth so that its bone handle offered itself to the hand, but it landed flat. You cannot have everything, Sigurd thought.
  
  'You wanted iron, Jarl Guthrum? There is your iron,' Olaf called, and the men of the borg must have heard that for they cheered. Beigarth did not hear it though, which was a shame. He was still kneeling in the grass, back straight, arms by his side, but his head was slumped over now and he was as dead as it was possible to be.
  
  Olaf had killed that mouthy fool without raising a single bead of sweat. Now he turned his back on Jarl Guthrum and gathered up his shield and weapons, taking his time as he slid the four silver rings back up his arms and closed them until they were a snug fit again. Then he strode back up the hill and if he was worried about one of Guthrum's men sending an arrow arcing into his back he did not show it.
  
  Only when Olaf had passed back through the gates did Guthrum send his men to collect Beigarth from where he knelt in the grass as if waiting for some god to breathe life back into his body so that he might resume his quest for a reputation. When two big men took Beigarth under his arms and dragged him back down the slope, Sigurd got a good look at the mess. Beigarth's face was white as chalk but his brynja was sheeted in blood, so that you would have thought its rings were made of some red steel. Sigurd grimaced when he caught a whiff of the mess Guthrum's champion had made in his breeks, but a dead man could not help such things. A cruel truth that, that the body gives up and has no care for honour even when the spirit yet lingers.
  
  'He stinks like a rotting cow,' Sigurd told Guthrum anyway, but the jarl ignored him. It seemed Guthrum had other things on his mind as he glared for a long moment at the men, or rather at Alrik, up there in the borg. Then he tossed his cloak over his sword's hilt and walked back to his camp, muttering to the gods as he went.
  
  Jarl Guthrum burnt Beigarth on a hero's pyre, which was a generous thing to do given the way the man had got himself killed. Sigurd had to assume that the way Beigarth had died was not in keeping with the way he had lived, and that he must have been telling the truth about those men of reputation he had killed. He must have earned that pyre long before he had ever laid eyes on Olaf. Or else perhaps Jarl Guthrum honoured him in that way so as to keep up his men's spirits, which were lower than a snake's belly what with this siege business dragging on as long as it had and all their assaults having come to nothing. A hero's pyre told men that reputation was still important. It reminded them that they could win their jarl's favour through courage and sword and spear-work.
  
  Or perhaps Jarl Guthrum simply wanted the smoke from the pyre to hide him from Alrik's sight as he turned his back on the borg and left, heading north even as the hungry flames consumed Beigarth's body and those left behind complained that it was not proper, saying farewell to a brother-in-arms without ale or mead enough to get blind drunk.
  
  The jarl took Sigurd, Black Floki and Valgerd with him. He and ten of his hirðmen were mounted on ponies whilst another twenty spear-armed Svearmen trudged behind, keeping the prisoners at the heart of the column, almost protectively, which Valgerd noted with a grim expression, saying that such a thing did not bode well for them.
  
  'She's right,' Floki said. 'You might even think we were worth something to him.'
  
  Having been stripped of their war gear they walked unburdened while Guthrum's men sweated, but that hardly made them feel better about their situation. Nor could they expect help from Olaf and the others or even from Alrik, for it was likely they were not yet missed. And even if the borg men had seen them go, Jarl Guthrum had left more than enough warriors surrounding the fort to deter Alrik from letting any of his men trade the safety of the borg for a fight out in the open.
  
  They made camp only when it became too dark to see where they were walking, and slept in the open under skins and fleeces. Then they set off dew-damp and shivering, when dawn was little more than a silver glow at night's hem in the east. Guthrum led them at a pace which had the horseless men grumbling and slung shields thumping against backs hard enough to leave bruises. He drew them northward as if his life depended on it, as if the gods themselves were beckoning him.
  
  And perhaps they were.
  
  It was on the third day that they realized where they were bound. And it was Valgerd who laid it in front of them, like a wind which comes out of nowhere, dispersing the sea fog and revealing the rocks poking out of the dark water before the bow. Sigurd had woken to a kick in the ribs from one of Guthrum's men, which was far less painful than the cramping in his shoulders and arms brought about by sleeping with bound ankles and wrists. Though at least their hands were tied in front of them now and not behind their backs as before.
  
  The camp was stirring awake, men pissing and hawking phlegm, drinking water from a nearby brook and pulling combs through hair made damp by a night sleeping on the forest floor.
  
  The first shafts of dawn light were threading into the glade, the red glow sliding slowly up the coarse trunks of the pines and the wool-clad bodies of Guthrum's men who for the most part lacked mail and steel helmets. Valgerd and Floki were already awake, talking in low voices which was good to see. Rolling on to his side, Sigurd dug his elbows into the forest litter and pulled himself over to them, thinking that his near-bursting bladder could wait until he had learnt what had the shieldmaiden and the former slave scheming like a couple of jealous wives.
  
  'If you have come up with an escape plan I would like to hear it,' he said, levering himself upright so that he was between them. Unlike him they had had their ankle bonds removed, though their hands were still tied.
  
  'I know where we are going,' Valgerd said.
  
  Sigurd glanced at Floki. 'Not as good as an escape plan but worth knowing in any case,' he said, looking back to Valgerd.
  
  For long enough to increase Sigurd's discomfort, she said nothing, her gaze riveted to his, and there was something in the shieldmaiden's eyes that Sigurd had never seen before.
  
  'Well?' he said. 'Are you going to make me wait until we get there?'
  
  'Ubsola,' Valgerd said, shivering with the word.
  
  The shieldmaiden had turned her back on the gods when they blighted and withered and eventually took the völva from her. And yet she had spoken that name in awe, and no sooner was it in Sigurd's ear than he knew she had the right of it. Ubsola.
  
  Even in faraway Skudeneshavn, where Sigurd had spent his childhood listening to fireside tales in Eik-hjálmr, his father's hall, they had heard of Ubsola. It had ever been a place where the Svear kings ruled, but it was for three great kings in particular that Ubsola was known: Aun, Egil and Adils of the Yngling line who had claimed kinship with Frey, God of Fertility, whom men also call Yngve-Frey. And these kings were buried at Ubsola, which all men knew to be a sacred place of mysterious rites, blood seiðr and the gods.
  
  Sigurd gestured at Jarl Guthrum now, who was holding a gourd full of water for his pony to drink from. 'When he went to meet Olaf, Guthrum said the gods had told him what he should do.'
  
  Valgerd nodded. 'I have seen him talking to the gods,' she said. The dawn painted her face with crimson and pale yellow and Sigurd could only wonder at her own dealings with the gods when she had lived as the guardian of the seeress and the sacred spring up in the Lysefjord. All gone now, her old life, just as his old life was gone. And yet he still strove to please the gods, while Valgerd despised them.
  
  'Guthrum thinks the gods have turned against him,' she said. But it was not the light across her face which held Sigurd spellbound. It was that look in her eyes. Not fear exactly, but close, and it made Sigurd feel uneasy. He wanted to hold her but knew he could not, even had his hands not been bound.
  
  'He is right,' Floki said. 'The gods have turned against him. How else can you explain how he has failed to kick Alrik out of that place with four times the number of spears to call on? He has made a bad job of the whole thing and now he runs off to the gods like a slapped child running to his secret hiding hole.'
  
  If Guthrum has lost the gods' favour he is not the only one for so have I, Sigurd thought. Still, what Valgerd and Floki said made sense and he told them so. Guthrum had lost his borg, his silver and iron and far too many men in this fight with Alrik. He had even lost his champion in what no one could call a real fight, so it was not as though he lacked reasons to suspect his luck was out.
  
  'At this time of year there is probably a market at Ubsola,' Sigurd said. They had all seen the two nestbaggins stuffed with hacksilver which the jarl had slung over his pony's back when they left the camp below the borg. Perhaps he simply had not dared leave so much silver behind with his men, in case they should steal it, or, unlikely as it might seem, Alrik got his hands on it. Or perhaps he intended to bring supplies back from Ubsola; food and ale enough to keep his men happy.
  
  'Or it could be that he means to hire new men, more meat to put in his shieldwall,' Sigurd said.
  
  'More heroes to burn,' Floki spat through his teeth.
  
  'Legs,' a Svearman said to Sigurd, coming over and dropping to his knees to untie the rope, during which Sigurd and the other two held their tongues. The man yanked the rope out, burning the skin on Sigurd's ankles, then moved away.
  
  'You are missing the point,' Valgerd said, her eyes on Sigurd's. 'Why do you think he is taking us with him? Why do you think we are still alive at all?'
  
  For a moment Sigurd just stared back at her. Then the answer hit him square in the chest, like an anvil stone dropped from a height. His blood ran cold in his veins as he looked into Valgerd's eyes, the shieldmaiden waiting as he wove the picture in his mind. For as well as being the seat of the Svear kings for the past four hundred years, Ubsola was a place of bloodletting, of strange rites and sacrifice, where the gods were ever present and men bought their goodwill with the flesh and blood of the dead.
  
  'When I was twelve or thirteen summers old some men came to pay their respects to my father,' Sigurd said, glancing from Valgerd to Floki. 'They had travelled from the north and were bound for Ubsola and my father hosted them well because they brought him seal skins and walrus ivory. They were going to Ubsola for the great blót.'
  
  'The Dísablót,' Valgerd said, for unlike other sacrifices, which are made so that the gods may grant a good harvest or victory in battle, this one at the beginning of winter was dedicated to the Dísir, those goddesses who guide a man's seed and help life to quicken in the womb.
  
  Sigurd nodded as the childhood memory flooded him. 'They were full of the seiðr of it all, these northerners, and it spread amongst our people. When they left us, my father sent them on their way with a very fine sword and scramasax. His offering to the temple at Ubsola, for he said he would likely never go there himself.' Valgerd raised an eyebrow. 'He had done so much raiding amongst the Danes and the Geats,' Sigurd explained, 'and knew that he would likely never make it to Ubsola in one piece.'
  
  'Well I have never heard of the place,' Floki said. 'What was so special about this Dísablót?'
  
  'On your feet, scum!' one of Jarl Guthrum's men growled, kicking Floki, who looked up at him as though making a thing of remembering his face.
  
  'I need to piss,' Sigurd told the man, who nodded and gestured to the trees.
  
  'Be quick,' the Svearman said. 'We need to get where we're going.'
  
  But Sigurd took his time because he could already feel the gods nearby, which meant they would soon be at Ubsola. Yes, the gods were close.
  
  And they were thirsty for blood.