text: When the wind god rides across the sky
  
  With his host of hounds and the ghosts of men
  
  And the spirits of these long dead fly
  
  In the wild hunt over wood and fen
  
  And in their wake the widows cry,
  
  Beware old One-Eye and Sleipnir then
  
  As spirits are from their bodies torn
  
  By the gusting winds on the wings of the storm.
  
  [ Sigurd Haraldarson's Saga ]
  
  [ AD775, AVALDSNES, NORWAY ]
  
  The boy had not been invited to cast his spear when at last the king's hounds' noses led them to the bull elk deep in the pine woods to the west of Gorm's hall.
  
  'We can't take any chances, boy, not after last time,' Harald had muttered to him, though he had already spun the picture in his mind of his spear bringing the great beast down. Of the steel-tipped shaft flying from his hand like a spear of lightning from the sky, and of King Gorm slapping his back and laughing because amongst grown men, a king and a jarl no less, it was he who had laid that mighty elk down in the bracken.
  
  But neither the king nor the boy's father had allowed him to cast the spear which he had gripped in his hand these past four days, since they had last seen the creature and tried to claim it for honour and the king's table. On that day his throw had won him King Gorm's praise and his father's pride, the spear having struck the bull elk in his right hind quarters, though there had not been the muscle in the throw to keep it there. His father's throw had been almost saga-worthy, but the beast had swerved and the jarl's spear only gouged a furrow in its neck, and then it was gone, roaring as it galloped off through the pines.
  
  This time, though, there had been no chance of escape. Having stayed ahead of the pack the mighty elk had at last come to the end of its life's thread. Trapped between the hunting party of hounds and hearthmen, and a rocky prominence down whose grey, moss-festooned face the rain coursed, he had turned to face his pursuers.
  
  'I hope when my day comes I will face death with the same courage, boy,' his father had said, stepping forward at the king's invitation to cast his great spear. But that had meant nothing to the boy. He was still sulking at being denied his moment of fame.
  
  'Take him in his heart,' King Gorm said, gripping his own spear in readiness should Harald's not strike true, or if the elk bolted at the last moment. Behind them, the men had leashed their dogs, which barked and snarled at the beast, clamouring to get at it, though some would surely die before the elk did. For the bull's antlers were massive. They swept up, out and back from its great head, six tines and twelve points in all, spanning some five and a half feet and more than capable of tearing open a hound's belly. Or a man's.
  
  Imagine what they could do to a boy.
  
  'I am sorry I did not kill you last time we met, friend,' Harald told the elk, who lifted those magnificent antlers like a warrior showing his sword to the gods before his last fight. He gave a shrill, air-fogging call which sounded like that from a small horn blown by a big man, and the boy thought the beast would charge. His father thought so too from the way he suddenly put both hands round his spear's shaft and brought it in front of him, at the same time throwing a foot behind him and bracing. But the creature was already finished. He had nothing left, neither fury nor defiance. He just stood there. Waiting.
  
  Harald did not make him wait long. The jarl took two steps and on the third launched the spear and it flew straight and true, plunging into the elk's chest with a sound which had the dogs frenzying and snapping their jaws. The bull skittered backwards a pace or two under the impact, gave a guttural grunt and then emptied its bladder, the stream of it steaming in the rain-chilled day as the king's hearthmen murmured and hoomed in appreciation of the jarl's throw.
  
  For a long moment he stood there, that great beast, with Harald's spear shaft protruding from his chest, but every man in those woods knew that the blade had ripped open his heart.
  
  'A fine animal,' King Gorm rumbled, and even the boy, with only seven summers on his back, got the sense that those words were the king trying – and failing – to sweeten an occasion which had soured.
  
  The elk's forelegs gave way and he fell to his knees, his lifeblood filling his chest like water rising through a hole in a ship's hull. Then his hind legs gave way and he fell on to his side with a derisive snort and the dogs ceased their barking now because even they knew it was over.
  
  The boy followed Harald and the king forward, his nose filling with the bull elk's musky scent, until he was standing over the once-proud animal, whose clouded eyes stared at nothing. The boy's own eyes saw well enough though. They were full of those impressive antlers. They stood before him like an ancient, storm-killed tree, its branches half covered in a mossy skin which would have peeled away completely by the end of summer, and a hirðman muttered that the beast had been rightly proud of those mighty weapons and that other bulls must have feared them.
  
  'Your kill, Harald,' King Gorm acknowledged. 'The boy's too, hey?' he added, pointing his own spear at the prize. That was when the boy saw the wound which he had given the elk four days previously, the gouge between the animal's rump and the muscled flesh of its upper right hind leg. A raw gash. Writhing with maggots, as was the blood and pus-matted furrow which Harald's failed throw had ploughed in the flesh of the beast's neck.
  
  'A bad way to go,' Harald growled into his beard, heavy-browed as he hauled his spear from the elk's chest, noting the dark heart meat clotted where blade met shaft.
  
  The rain came properly then. It seethed through the pine boughs so that the king's hounds slunk into themselves and some of his men cursed because they had come a good way from their lord's hall and it would be a long time before they were dry and comfortable. But the boy barely noticed the rain. He was staring at the maggots in that wound and he knew without a doubt that the reason his elders had not allowed him to throw his spear was not because they feared the elk bolting and escaping, as it had the last time. It was because they did not want to taint him with the killing of this once-mighty but now suffering beast. In the end there had been no glory in it. The bull elk had been doomed. It had been rotting alive and would have fallen down dead in another day or so anyway, for all it had somehow managed to stay ahead of the king's hunting party until now.
  
  Still, it was a rare beast and there were rituals to be observed, pissing rain or no. Harald drew his scramasax and knelt by the elk's head, growling at the boy to do the same. The boy knelt. The jarl plunged a hand into the wound which his spear had made and when he pulled it out it was steaming with the beast's hot blood. 'I claim this kill in honour of Ull, lord of the hunt,' he said and brought his hand up to his face and flicked his fingers, spattering his cheeks and beard with crimson spots. Then he did the same to the boy, who blinked at the splash of warm droplets and breathed in the strange but not unpleasant scent of the blood which had coursed through that magnificent animal.
  
  Then Harald saw what held the boy's eye and grunted. 'Ale,' he called over his shoulder, and Olaf took a bulging skin from a pony's back and came forward, winking at the boy as he handed the skin to his jarl. Harald pulled out the stopper and poured the ale into the pus-slick wound which the boy's spear had made days before. With his hand he scooped out the maggots and then the boy caught a stench in the damp air as he swiped the rain from his forehead and saw that the back of his hand was smeared with the blood of the kill.
  
  'There will come a day when you can throw a spear like your father, lad,' King Gorm said, scrubbing the boy's head with a big hand.
  
  'Ha! Do not forget that Grimhild is the boy's mother,' Harald told the king, standing and rinsing the gore from his hand with more ale. 'With her blood inside him the boy will out-throw me by the time he is into his first beard.'
  
  'I look forward to seeing that, my friend,' Gorm said, grinning at his men, who grinned back at him in spite of the rain. A grizzled old warrior named Gerik said that the boy had the look of a jarl about him even now and that Harald ought to watch out in case he came back to his hall one day to find the boy sitting in his high seat gripping Harald's own mead horn. This raised a peal of laughter and his father smiled at him, enjoying the attention his boy had earned.
  
  Then the king gestured at two of his men to come forward with their butchering knives and set to work on the elk so that they could all get back to the dry warmth of their king's hall.
  
  No one could say King Gorm was a bad host, or that he did not know how to throw a feast which had men crawling back to their beds after or sleeping in the floor rushes with the hounds and the mice. Nor did he neglect to honour the gods before men's beards ran with mead and ale and juices from the meat which was piled halfway to the rafters.
  
  'The king means to impress your father,' Olaf said under his breath as the folk of Avaldsnes gathered outside the great hall on the hillside overlooking the Karmsund Strait, that narrow channel which might as well have flowed with molten silver, such were the riches King Gorm wrung out of the skippers and crews who passed through it on their way north. 'Wants us to see how generous he is to those who are pledged to him. He wants your father's oath, boy.'
  
  'Will my father give it?' he asked.
  
  Olaf cocked an eyebrow and lifted his horn, downing a great wash of mead, which was hardly an answer. So the boy looked at the other guests, many of whom wore the finest cloaks and brooches and dripped with silver and amber. At least half the men wore swords at their hips and boasted arm rings of twisted silver and finger rings, and several had even brought their own drinking horns, some of which were silver-mounted and all of which were decorated with etchings of wolves or eagles or serpentine beasts gripping their own tails.
  
  Tunic sleeves and hems were embroidered with yellow, red or blue thread. Brightly coloured beads and beard rings and shiny Thór's hammers defied the grey day. Belt buckles, strap ends and sword hilts glinted like fish scales whenever the cloud parted and shafts of dusk sunlight hit the crowd gathered on that hill.
  
  None of it, though, shone as brightly as Aesa, King Gorm's young wife. She giggled and flitted through the chattering throng the way a butterfly floats aimlessly through a summer field, and, young as he was, the boy knew the effect she had on the men.
  
  'Don't look at her, boy, she's trouble that one,' Olaf murmured, bending down to his ear though his own eyes followed Aesa like gulls after the plough. 'Trouble like a split hull strake.'
  
  A slap on the back released Olaf from Aesa's spell. 'Some bull hey!' Harald said, squeezing the boy's shoulder and nodding at the snorting beast which the thralls were pulling across the hill for all to see. Ruddy-cheeked and mead-full, Harald had been speaking with a handsome man named Randver who rumour had it would soon be wearing a jarl torc at his own neck. The boy had heard that the jarl over at Hinderå was withering from some gut ailment and would likely be dead come winter.
  
  'I've just told the boy she's trouble,' Olaf said, because Harald's eyes were no longer on the bull. They were on Aesa too.
  
  'Aye, listen to Olaf, boy. They're all trouble,' his father said, as Aesa giggled and shone like a brook in the sunlight.
  
  'The king wants your oath, Harald,' Olaf said, turning to his lord. 'More than wanting. I am thinking he needs it. To ensure he gets others.'
  
  Harald made a hoom in his throat because he knew as well as everyone on that hill that he was the king's honoured guest. And as such, Harald was the real reason why six of Gorm's thralls were hauling on those ropes and halters, wrestling with that horned fury which was the most impressive bull that the boy or his father had ever seen.
  
  The bull fought the thralls because it knew it was to be sacrificed and was not altogether happy about it. It snorted and kicked and shook its horned head this way and that, eyes bulging, the hair standing bristle-stiff along its back.
  
  'This should be good,' Olaf said as the thralls at last got control of the terrified bull and the king himself took the long-hafted axe which one of his hearthmen offered him. One of a matching pair, its blade was inlaid with silver and its twin was carried by another hirðman who, at the king's invitation, stepped forward and gave it to Randver of Hinderå.
  
  Randver gripped the haft, tested the weapon's weight and grinned, dipping his head at Gorm in acknowledgement of the honour, for with that gesture the king had all but put a dying man's jarl torc round Randver's neck. That moment with the axes was not lost on anyone and the boy heard Olaf mumble that Jarl Engli's gut rot would never get the chance to kill him after all. Engli would find himself dead shortly after Randver had tied his boat to the jetty in Hinderå.
  
  'This will be something to see, lad,' Harald said. 'Something to remember when your beard bristles are white and your knees creak.'
  
  'Aye, but we should probably move back a step or two,' Olaf said, at which they and the other guests around them shuffled backwards as Randver came to stand in front of the snorting bull, his back to the boy as he gripped that beautiful axe, one hand at the end of the haft, the other clutching the heel just below that silver-chased head. Having removed his blue cloak and given it to his young queen, the king stood off to the side, his hair loose and well combed but for the braids hanging either side of his face. Even though for the last four days they had spent more time under pine boughs than under the king's rafters, roaming the woods in search of the wounded elk, Gorm's beard was neat and lustrous and to the boy he was the very image of a great king, a man closer to the gods than other men. In the boy's eyes only his father could match their host in stature and impressiveness, and yet he was certain that for all the king's silver and all his ships, his warriors and his golden mead which Olaf said was the best he had ever tasted, he could never throw a spear as far as his father. Nor row as far, nor wrestle an angry ram or soothe a nervous cow better than Harald. The boy knew all that without a sliver of doubt as he watched the king roll his great shoulders and nod at Randver to be ready with his axe, as the bull lowed and tugged against the ropes which the thralls clung to, pulling against each other to keep the beast as still as they could.
  
  'Óðin! I slaughter this beast in your honour that it will give you strength, and that you will know that I, Gorm son of Grimar, am a worthy king. That I am a ring-giver who feeds his people with meat and mead in return for their loyalty.'
  
  Gorm's hearthmen were chanting 'Óðin, Óðin, Óðin' in low voices and other folk took it up too, some looking to the cloud-swathed sky, others watching their king who they must have believed was as Óðin-loved as a man could be, judging by the feast they would soon be wolfing down at the benches in their lord's hall.
  
  Then those silver-etched axe heads flew. Randver brought his up and over, twisting the haft as he swung so that the poll came down and not the blade, striking the bull between its bulging eyes with the unmistakable crack of a skull being staved in. A heartbeat later the king's blade bit and the crowd gasped at the enormous strength behind that axe which cleaved through the thick flesh, gristle and bone of the bull's neck, parting head from body before sheathing itself in the earth. Blood sprayed from the raw stump like red rain. It flew twelve feet or more, spattering Sigurd's shoes, pumping from the severed flesh in rhythmic gouts as the bull's legs gave way, just as the elk's had, and the great beast collapsed to the ground.
  
  Randver turned to the crowd, his face blood-slathered and his teeth white amongst the gore of it, and men, women and children alike cheered.
  
  But no cheer came from the boy.
  
  Then King Gorm handed his axe to a retainer and came over to Harald, throwing an arm over his shoulder. 'And now we drink!' he said, and Harald grinned as the two of them, the king and the jarl, led the way back up the slope towards the open door of the great hall: the hall which loomed above the Karmsund Strait and because of that was more like a giant's sea chest, filled with hacksilver from every ship which sailed past. That hall was a hoard-chest upon which King Gorm sat, and around which other rich and powerful men gathered in the hope that its silver-lustre would shine on them too.
  
  'You have some tales to take back to Skudeneshavn now, hey, boy,' Olaf said. He and the boy had both been seated at the king's own table, around which only his closest and longest-serving hirðmen sat. Harald himself was shoulder to shoulder with the king. 'Tell me why the king just beheaded his finest beast, lad,' Olaf said, holding out his horn to a serving girl who filled it from a jug which was so heavy she could barely lift it.
  
  'He wants everyone to see how generous he is,' the boy answered. He knew he should be wide-eyed and open-mouthed at all the food on the table in front of him, the trenchers of boar, goat, horse, goose and hare. The loaves of hot bread and the boiled gulls' eggs, the piles of ripe red berries and plums and the cheeses and the bowls of skyr and honeycomb. But something about how that proud bull had died had soured his stomach.
  
  'That's part of it,' Olaf said with a nod, drinking and dragging a hand across his moustaches. 'But why did he do it himself?' Olaf nodded at the kingsmen across the table from them. 'He could have had any one of these men cut the bull's throat and be done with it. Nice and neat.' A big man across the way caught Olaf's eye and the two warriors raised their drinking horns to each other and nodded before rinsing their insides with mead.
  
  The boy shrugged. Olaf leant in close enough that the boy could smell the mead's honey's sweetness on his breath. 'The blood was part of it, of course,' Olaf said. 'The way it flew like that and soaked our shoes. That was for the gods. But it takes skill and great strength to take off a bull's head like that, even with such a sharp and pretty axe.' Olaf smiled. 'Had to get the swing just right too, or the beast might have dropped from Randver's dint on his thought box and the king would have buried that shiny blade in nothing but mud. Not the same kind of reputation to be earned cutting worms in half.' The boy could not help but grin at the idea of that while Olaf drank again. 'King Gorm wanted us all to see how he can handle an axe, for it takes more than silver, more than a feast or three to show men such as your father that you deserve their loyalty. Wants Harald to kiss his sword, he does. Wants everyone here to see it too, for he knows your father is a warrior.' He swept his drinking horn through the smoky air. 'Everyone in this hall knows it. So now and then the king needs to remind us all that he is a warrior too. Understand, lad?'
  
  The boy nodded, thinking. 'Could you do it, Olaf? Take off the bull's head with one swing?'
  
  Olaf considered that for a moment, dragging an arm across his glistening bristles. 'Even with the haft end, lad,' he said, grinning, 'and with only half a swing.' He laughed and the boy laughed too and then the king leant forward and called down the board to Olaf, asking him to share what had him and Harald's boy giggling like a pair of young bed thralls under the furs.
  
  'At this end of the table we are talking about ship taxes and what to do about the island karls who are late bringing in the cows, pigs and grain which they owe me,' Gorm said, smiling. 'We will enjoy a funny tale if you have one.'
  
  All eyes turned their way and the boy felt them like heat on his skin.
  
  'Lord king,' Olaf said with a respectful nod, 'I was just telling the boy of the time his father and I were put on our arses more than once by a ram. Now, that bull of yours was a giant, no one can say otherwise. But that ram was another Grendel, hey Harald?'
  
  'I still shudder to think of it,' Harald said, 'but there is a story with a good ending,' he added, raising his drinking horn at Olaf, though King Gorm did not seem to like being left out of that. Or else perhaps he knew full well that Olaf and the boy had not been talking about a ram and did not like being lied to. Either way he was a king and had enough wile in him to pick up the thread and spin it his way.
  
  'It is a good lesson to teach the boy, Olaf,' he said, pointing a thick, silver-ringed finger. 'Harald's boy would do well to remember that size and strength alone are not always a warrior's greatest weapons.' The hall had fallen silent now, but for the flap and crackle of the hearth flames and the sound of one of the king's hounds gnawing a fleshy knuckle of bone beneath the table. 'Brawn will get a man only so far,' King Gorm said, then tapped his skull and the boy heard it from where he sat. 'The wits in his head are his greatest possession.' If the feast that was spread across that table had been for Harald's eyes, this now was for the jarl's ears and everyone knew it. 'I did not become king by raging round the place making enemies. A man must have patience if he hopes to rise.'
  
  Everyone knew how Gorm had become king, how he had raided in the south and the east along the Svealand coast, filling his sea chests with plunder but sitting on most of it, biding his time until he had enough silver to persuade the jarls and warlords and the wealthy karls within a week's sailing of Karmøy to support his bid for Jarl Grubbi's high seat. And then once he had it, having put a spear in Grubbi's belly himself, how he had gone about narrowing the channel in the strait below with boats lashed securely to the rocks. No crew could hope to slip through without either paying Gorm for the privilege or making a fight of it which they would almost certainly lose.
  
  He made himself king not long after that, and none of the jarls had disputed it. They might as well tell the rain it could not fall on their roofs.
  
  'Patience is what separates the great hunter from the hungry one, lad,' Gorm said, 'as you yourself know, for did we give up on the great elk when he vanished into the woods four days ago?' The king's eyes bored into him until he could no longer hold on to his silence.
  
  'No, lord king,' he said.
  
  'No, we did not,' Gorm said. 'You cast your spear like a little god, like a young Thór, and you bled that mighty bull elk. Then you bided your time, never doubting the outcome, until in the end we caught up with him and your father finished the job.' With that he banged his mead horn against Harald's. 'Your boy knows how to bide his time, Jarl Harald,' Gorm said. 'But so do I. Which is why we have been friends for a long time now and I have never once asked you to swear an oath to me. Not once. I have never asked you to kiss my sword, even though other jarls have kissed it and so has every man at my table.'
  
  Harald nodded, acknowledging that this was true. He knew that his time at Avaldsnes drinking the king's mead had all been about this moment, and that while his friend had indeed bided his time, showing himself to be a patient and skilled hunter, that time had drawn to an end.
  
  The boy tried to grasp all this, but it was too much to fit in a young boy's head, even with Olaf beside him steering him through it all. Besides which, he had a boy's drifting mind and was already thinking of other things, like the maggots in the elk's flesh. Like the way the soon-to-be-jarl Randver and the king had slaughtered the bull and how the blood had flown, painting the day with a crimson arc, like a gory, shimmering Bifröst linking the worlds of gods and men. His shoes were stained with it. It had been a day of blood, but now it was a night of feasting and drinking, of skald-song and friendship.
  
  And later, when the oil lamps were starting to gutter and the hearthflames were low, and some men and women were falling asleep at their benches still clutching their horns, Jarl Harald gave the king his oath.