text: The moon was a flood of silver in the night, making it brighter than it had been inside the temple, at least before Valgerd's fire had bloomed in the darkness. Valgerd and Floki looked to Sigurd who gripped Gungnir as if he would fight the whole world with it if needs be. But they could hear Jarl Guthrum's men shouting on the other side of the hall, gathering their weapons and looking for those who had turned this night on its head. The village folk were running off into the night, terrified of men and gods and fire.
  
  'You!' someone shouted. They turned to the voice and saw a man sitting on his pony beneath the eaves at the southern end of the hall.
  
  'That horse trader,' Floki said, as the man trotted up to them followed by his thrall, who hurried behind on foot, leading the other ponies.
  
  'Mount and follow me,' this Storvek said.
  
  Just then two of Guthrum's warriors came round the side of the hall, one of them yelling back to the rest that he had found the prisoners.
  
  'The knife?' Sigurd asked Floki.
  
  'In someone's head,' Floki replied, looking at the two men who were striding towards them, spears levelled.
  
  Storvek pulled a sword from the rolled-up furs behind his saddle, slipped from the pony's back and ran at Guthrum's men. The nearer one lunged and Storvek twisted, beating the spear wide before bringing his sword up in an underarm cut which hacked the man open from his left hip to his right shoulder. Before Guthrum's man had fallen Storvek turned and parried the other man's spear, then plunged his sword into the man's belly, doubling him over before hauling the blade out.
  
  'We should go now,' he said to Sigurd, breathing heavily. Sigurd glanced at the boy-priest who stood there staring at him as if Sigurd had just dug his way out of one of those burial mounds nearby.
  
  'Tell Jarl Guthrum that Sigurd Haraldarson is Óðin-favoured,' he said to the boy, who nodded, unblinking. Then all of them, including the thrall, mounted and rode off along the moon-washed path past the kings' mounds, the shouts and bellows of their enemies following them on the breeze.
  
  Storvek led them east along a track beside which some Svear king, many years ago by the looks, had stuck posts in the ground, each eighteen feet from the next. Huge pine trunks they were, like ships' masts, twenty-five feet high or more so that they towered above the riders, dark against the silvery sky. Foreboding too, like giants keeping watch over the land.
  
  'Have you ever seen anything like this?' Valgerd asked, looking up at each one they passed. They seemed to go on for ever, those posts, and Sigurd had lost count somewhere after one hundred.
  
  'Whoever put them in the ground wanted everyone to know his name,' Sigurd said.
  
  'And yet we do not know his name,' Floki pointed out, 'which just goes to show that you can make a better-lasting reputation with the blade than by digging holes and putting tree trunks in them.' No one could argue with that and when eventually they came to the last post they turned off the track towards a pine wood.
  
  There was no sign that they were being followed, which did not come as a surprise because Guthrum's men had not been prepared, their horses being back in the camp, and the five rode on amongst the trees, talking little so that they could listen out.
  
  'Why are you helping us?' Sigurd asked Storvek after a while. It was a good time to ask the question as they had slowed to let their mounts pick their way across a shallow stream. The three spare ponies had followed dutifully, so at least the young man would not get into trouble with his father for losing their stock. If the man really was a horse trader. From the way he had handled himself against Guthrum's men, Sigurd suspected there was more to this Storvek than he had let on to the jarl.
  
  'You looked like you needed a friend,' Storvek said, 'since it seems even the gods do not want you. What happened in there?'
  
  Sigurd had no answer to that. Not yet, not until he had given it some thought and unravelled the chaos of it. For Óðin's hand must have been in it, meaning Sigurd had not lost the god's favour after all. And now here I am carrying your spear, Allfather, he thought, a sudden shiver running up the back of his neck. He had killed men with that sacred spear which he held couched beneath his right arm, the shaft crossing over the pony's back, so that the animal could see the long blade out of its left eye.
  
  'Besides,' Storvek went on, seeing that he wasn't going to get an answer to his last question, 'if I help you then perhaps it will help me.' He tugged the reins, turning his mount on to what looked to be nothing more than an animal track through the drifts of old bark and pine needles. There were many dead pines scattered amongst the green trees; barkless and pale they gleamed in the silvered dark, like the ghosts of ancestors watching over the living. Something made Sigurd look over his shoulder and from the deeper shadows of the pines a pair of animal eyes glowed orange and green. A bear perhaps, watching these intruders to make sure they did not linger in his part of the forest.
  
  'So where are we going?' Valgerd asked their guide just as Sigurd opened his mouth to ask the same thing.
  
  'I know of a place where we can rest,' Storvek said, 'then …' he shrugged, 'then we will see what tomorrow brings.'
  
  Valgerd glanced at Sigurd and he saw suspicion in her eyes. She wore breeks and a long green tunic belted at her waist and her hair was mostly loose but for two golden braids which fell either side of her face. It was no wonder that Jarl Guthrum hoped she would swear his oath and join his war band, that he had wanted to keep her close to him. Not that you would have known she was a warrior at first glance now, and Sigurd knew her well enough to imagine how vulnerable she felt without her war gear: her brynja and helmet, her bow, scramasax, shield and sword. Floki must have felt all but naked too, without the tools of his trade. Without the blades with which he was a master, god-touched himself perhaps and if so by Týr, Lord of Battle, or even some darker, more vicious god.
  
  'Did you see Jarl Guthrum's cloak catch fire?' Floki asked, his face full of awe. 'Must have been newly greased for it went up like the flames from Völund's forge. Now there is a man whose luck has gone. I would not like to be one of his hearthmen now.'
  
  'The ones with ambition will desert him,' Sigurd said. 'He is cursed if you ask me.'
  
  'Unlike you, hey?' Valgerd said. 'Sigurd Haraldarson! The man over whom the Allfather holds his own shield! Ha!' She was teasing him and he did not like it much.
  
  'Say what you like but you do not see me hanging from that old tree the Svear love so much,' he said.
  
  Valgerd snorted. 'The reason you and Floki are not bloodless corpses swinging from that tree has nothing to do with the gods and everything to do with me,' she said. 'Who was it that set Jarl Guthrum on fire?'
  
  'You could have set him on fire sooner,' Sigurd said, 'instead of leaving it until I could feel the cold edge of that priest's knife on my skin.'
  
  'Perhaps I was waiting to see if the Spear-God would come down from his hall and kill that old priest for you,' Valgerd said through a curl of lips. She was still teasing him but it got Sigurd thinking. He had certainly killed the old godi and most probably the thin one too, and he wondered at the wisdom of that, for men did not kill priests if it could be avoided.
  
  'Or perhaps it was Óðin who put the idea into your head to knock over that lamp,' Sigurd replied with a smile of his own.
  
  'Ah, so that is what happened,' Storvek said. 'I wish I had been inside that temple to see it. I'd wager Jarl Guthrum did not look so haughty with his cloak on fire.'
  
  'It is a shame in a way for I was looking forward to killing him,' Floki said.
  
  Sigurd knew that if he said they should turn and go back to kill Guthrum and fight his men, Floki would pull his horse round with a grin on his face.
  
  'Not far now,' Storvek said.
  
  Neither was it. Sigurd smelt the smoke before he saw the steading. It stood in a clearing on the edge of the forest with a steep meadow behind leading up to rocks and more trees. The longhouse itself was modest but well kept, the sort of place where you would find a clever karl who knows his husbandry, and his hard-working family along with four or five thralls. There were outbuildings too, all pine-log-built like the house itself and thatched with turf, including a byre for the animals, a grain store and a smokehouse whose hanging treasures had Sigurd's mouth watering from a spear-throw away. With the place smelling as sweetly as that it was no surprise there was a bear living nearby, he remarked to Floki as they rode up to the farmstead, and Storvek told them to wait while he went to speak with the farmer.
  
  'It is only fair to warn the man and his wife that they will be playing the hosts,' the young man said.
  
  'You expect him to be less than happy about it, then?' Floki said, for having dismounted Storvek had taken the sword from its sheath of rolled blankets.
  
  Storvek looked at the sword and smiled. 'Habit,' he said, walking off.
  
  'Still, they will not be happy being woken in the middle of the night and faced with three Norse strangers,' Valgerd said. Sigurd could not disagree, but there would be some way he could repay these folk for the comfort of a bed of furs and a plate of whatever smoked meat he could get his teeth into.
  
  Storvek had barely knocked when someone opened the door, which Floki said was strange given that the husband and wife should have been snoring in their blankets.
  
  'Could have heard us coming,' Sigurd suggested as the door closed behind the young Svearman, for one of the ponies had nickered and snorted softly as they had approached, which had in turn raised a few snorts from the pigs in the byre.
  
  They waited long enough for Valgerd to say she did not have a good feeling about this and that maybe they should ride off now even if it meant stealing Storvek's ponies and repaying him so badly.
  
  Sigurd twisted in his saddle to look at Storvek's thrall. The man's face was white as the moon and he was shaking too by the look of it. Just a slight tremble in his thigh which, along with his white knuckles as he clutched his reins, did not bode well so far as Sigurd was concerned.
  
  'What's wrong with you, then?' he asked the thrall.
  
  The man shook his head.
  
  'Answer him before I rip your tongue out and make it flap without you,' Floki said.
  
  'It … it is a trap,' the thrall said, his voice barely more than a whisper. Just then a horn sounded and the door of the house opened and warriors were spilling out.
  
  'Fuck,' Floki gnarred, and Sigurd looked round to see that men were coming out of the cattle byre too, clutching spears or axes but otherwise in their under clothes, the horn blast having woken them.
  
  And in Valhöll the gods laughed.
  
  Spear and axe blades held the moonlight as men closed in on them like a knot being drawn tight, and in a matter of heartbeats they were surrounded by thirty or forty warriors.
  
  'Hold,' Sigurd said, for unarmed as Valgerd and Floki were there was no point in trying to fight or even run, yet he gripped Gungnir as though he would sooner be cut down than let go of the thing.
  
  'Thought he'd be bigger,' one of the warriors said, eyeballing Sigurd.
  
  'Don't need to be big when you've got the gods on your side,' another said in a mocking voice, and it was not what they said but the way they said it which made Sigurd growl the foulest of curses. These warriors had been watered by the same rain as he, had grown strong on fish pulled from the same fjords and boar hunted in the same forests.
  
  They were Norsemen.
  
  A big man came forward, parting the others like a dragon ship's bow through the sea, and the silver-panelled helmet he wore told Sigurd everything he needed to know. A boy came with him, all fair hair and a face full of spite as he stared at Sigurd, who would have wagered a helmet of hacksilver on the boy being the man's son.
  
  'Hrani Randversson,' Sigurd said, the name itself tasting like poison in his mouth.
  
  'Sigurd Haraldarson,' Hrani said, removing his helmet so that Sigurd could get a proper look at his moon-washed face. It was Hrani who had brought death to Skudeneshavn, Sigurd's home on the southern tip of Karmøy. And it was on that raid that one of Hrani's men had killed Sigurd's mother. And yet anyone who knew Sigurd or Hrani knew that the hatred between them was mutual. Every man in that clearing could feel it hanging in the air like a cold fog. For Sigurd had killed Hrani's father in a ship fight in the shadow of Jarl Randver's own hall which men called Örn-garð, the Eagle's Dwelling-Place.
  
  'I always knew we would come face to face again,' Hrani said. He was a big man, solid as an oak and every inch a warrior. But men said of Hrani that he had a cruel streak as wide as a fjord is deep, which was something they never said of his father Jarl Randver.
  
  'So you are jarl now,' Sigurd said. Hrani nodded. 'Then you should thank me for cutting your father's throat. The crabs in your fjord should thank me too for giving them a feast.'
  
  Hrani's teeth flashed in his beard but he kept a hold of his temper. 'When we heard that you were to be slaughtered like a goat at the Svear temple I was disappointed.'
  
  Sigurd's eyes flicked to the man standing at Hrani's left shoulder and recognized Kjartan Auðunarson, who had flown from the borg to take news of Sigurd's whereabouts to Hrani. He had done well by it too, judging from the two silver rings glinting at the ends of his moustache ropes.
  
  'I was disappointed and I was angry because I had always thought I would have my revenge,' Hrani said. 'I drank to it and dreamt of it many times, but the way things turned out I did not think it would be wise to start a war with this King Eysteinn over it. Let the Svear priests butcher you then, I thought. Let them hang your corpse in their tree for the crows.' He lifted his big sword, pointing it at Sigurd. 'So as you can imagine, I am surprised to see you.' With that he pulled a twisted silver band from his wrist and tossed it to Storvek who caught it and flashed a smile. Since he had failed in persuading Jarl Guthrum to sell Sigurd to him, Storvek must have hung around like a fly around blood, waiting for the priests to do their work so that he could at least take news of Sigurd's death back to his lord. And yet he had been wise enough to keep his horses nearby just in case.
  
  'Well here I am, Hrani,' Sigurd said. 'Let us fight here and now. And when I have killed you as I killed your father, your men will let us go.' It was worth throwing that challenge at the man's feet for it would be hard for a jarl not to pick it up with his men watching, and to Sigurd a fighting chance was better than what he expected from Randver's son.
  
  'Kill him, Father!' the boy said, pointing his own short sword at Sigurd. 'Spill his guts and put out his eyes for what he did to grandfather.'
  
  And if words could drip hatred …
  
  'As much as I am stiff between the legs at the thought of gutting you,' Hrani told Sigurd, 'I am not the kind of man who wolfs down a meal without tasting it. No, Haraldarson, I will take you back to Hinderå so that my people can watch you die.' He grimaced. His son spat a curse. 'Your reputation has grown. I do not mind that,' the jarl said, 'because by killing you my own fame will swell too.'
  
  'Frey, who is the god most of these Svearmen seem to love even above the Allfather himself, could not kill Sigurd this very night,' Floki told Hrani. 'But you think you can?'
  
  Hrani considered this. Then he walked up to Floki and swung his sword, hacking into Floki's pony's neck. The animal screeched and toppled and Floki fell with it, then scrambled clear of the thrashing beast whose blood pumped on to the ground in great hot gouts.
  
  'Tie him,' Hrani said, pointing his gore-stained sword at Floki. 'The shieldmaiden too.'
  
  Some of his men pulled Valgerd from her mount while others took hold of Floki and another warrior ran off to the byre where he said he'd seen some rope. Then Hrani walked back to where Sigurd still sat on his pony, the enormous spear across him.
  
  'Where did you get that?' the jarl asked.
  
  'He came from the temple with it,' Storvek said, filling the silence which Sigurd left. 'The Svear folk say it once belonged to Óðin.'
  
  Hrani's eyes grew wide at that. Of course they would, for there was not a jarl alive who would not want to own a spear which men believed was in some distant time wielded by a god.
  
  'Give it to me,' Hrani said.
  
  Sigurd threw a leg over the pony's back and slid down, and Hrani's men bristled, bringing their own weapons up in readiness for some madness. Sigurd lifted the spear to his shoulder and felt the muscles in his arm bunch and swell in readiness to launch that great weapon. If Hrani wanted it then he would give it to him. He would plant it in the jarl's chest and that would be the end of Hrani Randversson.
  
  'No, Sigurd,' Valgerd said.
  
  His heart was thumping and the sound in his ears was like the roar of the surf against a craggy headland. He turned and hurled the spear with all his strength and it flew as if from the hand of a god and even if Kjartan Auðunarson saw it coming he could do nothing about it. The long blade cut straight through Kjartan's chest, taking the man backwards with its flight so that he fell but did not hit the ground. Instead he hung there with a foot of shaft in him, pinned by the spear, his back a hand-span from the dry earth and his arms flopping uselessly either side.
  
  If Hrani was impressed by the throw he did not show it as he walked over to the pinned man, crouched and sawed the ends of Kjartan's moustache ropes off because he would have those silver rings back. He took back the newly given arm ring too. Then he stood and showed them to Sigurd. 'I never liked that man,' he said. 'He left my hall for Svealand because he did not think I should wear the jarl torc. Whoreson soon came running back when he saw a chance to get rich.' He nodded. 'You have saved me some silver there, Haraldarson.' He kept the arm ring but handed the hair and smaller rings to another man, telling him to work the silver from the braid, then ordered his men to bind Sigurd's hands nice and tight, which they did. Then Hrani sheathed his sword, went back to his pinned hearthman and, taking hold of the spear's shaft, put his foot on Kjartan's chest and shoved the body down to the ground before pulling the blade from earth and flesh.
  
  'I have never seen such a spear as this,' he said, 'not even in my grandfather's day when men liked their spears longer. Thank you for bringing it to me, Haraldarson.'
  
  'I hope you can run with it,' Sigurd said, 'for when this Svear king, Eysteinn, learns that a Norse war band has the thing, you will be haring back to your hall if not lying in a worm-ridden grave pit with your hirðmen.'
  
  'The Ubsola folk will have sent word to their king that the spear is stolen,' Storvek told Hrani. He nodded at the three prisoners. 'And Jarl Guthrum will be looking for them, if he is not burnt to death,' he added, glancing at Valgerd. 'Once the Svearmen see that we have them, they will surely know that we have their spear too.'
  
  A man with a huge belly and a long-hafted axe shook his head at his jarl. 'It would be a bloody thing to fight our way back to the sea, Hrani,' he said. He was old enough to see little glory in being savaged all the way back to the coast and was not afraid to speak his mind. He tilted the axe head towards Sigurd. 'I will do it gladly for the sake of taking that troll's turd back to Örn-garð, for I as much as any man want to see your father avenged. But what need have we for that spear?' No doubt he had been Jarl Randver's man before Hrani's, and it surely chafed the new jarl that these voices from the past still lingered.
  
  'You have grown soft, Bjorgolf,' Hrani said, 'which we can all see for ourselves.' The warrior glowered at that but held his tongue. He knew that Hrani, who was a warrior in his prime as well as his jarl, would have the better of him in a fight. 'But I am not a fool, Bjorgolf, and do not intend to start a blood feud with this Svear king. Nor would it be clever to risk the Allfather's anger, for if this spear belonged to Óðin he is likely to make sure no good comes to the man who steals it from the Svearmen.' He lifted Gungnir high so that all of his warriors could see it well, its blade catching the moon glow. 'I will sell this spear back to them. To King Eysteinn or the temple priests or even to Sigurd's friend Jarl Guthrum. Any man with a brain in his skull will choose to trade rather than fight us for it.'
  
  And that was true, Sigurd thought, because now it seemed all of Hrani's men had gathered in the clearing and there must have been fifty of them. And they were not farmers either but hardened Sword-Norse, men who had stood in the shieldwall and soaked the earth with the slaughter's dew. Such a war band was not to be taken lightly, even by a king.
  
  Hrani's boy grinned. Clearly he was proud of his father's great wisdom.
  
  'Come, Randver, let us drink some ale to celebrate,' Hrani said to the lad. Named in honour of the crab-feast jarl then, Sigurd thought, knowing he had yet another enemy in that boy, albeit one not yet old enough to sprout down upon his cheeks. 'I want a proper watch set until daybreak,' Jarl Hrani announced, then turned and walked back towards the longhouse, the Óðin spear resting on his shoulder and his boy walking behind.
  
  'I am beginning to think Asgot was right when he said that Loki the mischief-monger has joined this game,' Floki said, watching Hrani walk away.
  
  Sigurd tested the rope which bound his wrists. There was no give in it and the knot would have kept a longboat at its mooring in a storm. He cursed the Æsir under his breath, not caring if Thór hurled a spear of lightning down to pierce him as he himself had skewered Kjartan.
  
  Because the gods were playing games and he was a prisoner again.
  
  They stayed at the farmstead another four days and in that time Sigurd never caught sight of the karl who owned it nor his family nor even the dogs you would expect to see around the place, sleeping in the shade or sniffing for deer and boar.
  
  'I'd wager they are all buried together in a hole in the woods,' Valgerd said when Sigurd brought it up, which seemed a reasonable assumption given who was sleeping in the farmer's bed, eating his smoked meats and drinking his ale.
  
  But it was not for these home comforts that Jarl Hrani had decided to stay there a few days more. Rather it was because he wanted to let the Svear folk miss their sacred spear awhile before he gave them the chance to see its return, and it was Storvek whom he tasked with going back to the temple ahead of them. The young man would tread gently to discover who out of some godi or king's man, or even King Eysteinn himself if he were thereabout, would pay the most to get the spear back.
  
  Then at dawn on the fifth day Jarl Hrani's patience snapped like a hemp line and hook snagged on the sea bed. 'Storvek has had enough time to find a buyer,' he announced to anyone in earshot.
  
  They emptied the smokehouse of the last of its tasty treasure and put it into sacks along with the salted meat from the animals they had slaughtered themselves. The ale was long gone and so was the cheese and skyr, but they went about milking the cows, goats and sheep until bucket after bucket was filled before being emptied into the ale skins which bulged by the end of it. All of this was loaded on to the ponies and they set off southward through the forest to Ubsola.
  
  They were fifty men in all their war-gear glory. Twelve owned brynjur and more wore steel helmets than hardened leather skull caps and all carried painted shields or had them slung across their backs. They walked through that Svealand forest with the assured swagger of men who have little to fear. Even little Randver Hranisson carried himself like a champion-killer, so that Sigurd wondered what kind of man he would grow to be, if he survived into manhood. And yet, confident as Hrani was in his hirð's ability to deal with any threat that they might encounter, he was not so arrogant that he neglected to send two men ahead on ponies to make sure he did not walk into some other war band, either Jarl Guthrum's or the king's or that of some hersir with a thirst for plunder and fame. So when those riders came trotting back through the pines with faces as white as marsh-grass flowers and Thór's hammer amulets warm from the clutching of them, Hrani put his beautiful silver helmet on and waited for the bad news.
  
  'Jarl Hrani, there is something on the track less than one rôst from here,' one of them said, glancing over his shoulder like a man who fears his own shadow.
  
  'A trap?' Hrani asked.
  
  The other rider shook his blond braided head. 'I don't know, lord. I saw no one.' He glanced at his companion. 'No one alive, anyway.'
  
  'But someone knows we are coming,' the first man said. 'And knows the course we are taking through this forest.' He was breathing hard, too hard for that little trot, and the hand which was not on the reins was on the little silver Mjöllnir hanging upon his chest.
  
  'So what is it?' the jarl asked, nodding into the forest beyond the mounted men.
  
  'It is better if you see for yourself, Hrani,' the man said, 'but if you ask me there is some seiðr at work. Perhaps we have angered the Allfather,' he dared, though he did not mention the spear in his jarl's hand. He did not have to.
  
  'You two have forgotten your fathers' faces,' Hrani said, 'to be shaking like old hounds about something you do not even have the balls to talk about. I should have sent my son ahead, for he would not be pissing in his breeks like you.'
  
  Some of his men laughed at this but the two riders did not, as Hrani ordered his men to form into a column two abreast and with shields up and spears ready. 'If it is a trap whoever set it will know we have seen it and must surely expect us to take another path through the trees,' Hrani said. 'So it is on that other path that they will be waiting.' He shook his head. 'But I do not think it is a trap. We will keep going this way and we will see what has got Bild and Erlingnar's arses singing like a pair of bukkehorns.' He pointed at Sigurd, Floki and Valgerd, who were near the front of the column. 'Whatever happens keep your eyes on them. Haraldarson will not wriggle off my hook as he did Jarl Guthrum's.'
  
  There was no talking as they moved along the track, their eyes searching the forest and their guts looser than they had been before, as is the way of it when men half expect a fight.
  
  'Guthrum?' Valgerd said under her breath.
  
  'Doubt it,' Sigurd said. 'Not without help anyway. He doesn't have enough spears.'
  
  'Thirty can beat fifty if the fifty are not expecting it,' Floki said, 'but this lot are ready for Ragnarök.'
  
  They knew they had reached the place when they heard a clamour of kowws and a murder of crows clattered off through the trees. It was a sound to chill a man's blood, the song of the slaughter field after a battle.
  
  Jarl Hrani raised the Óðin spear to halt the column, his neck twisting and that beautiful helmet glinting in the shafts of sunlight filtering through the trees as he turned this way and that, looking for the ambush that wasn't there. His men were mumbling curses and invoking the gods' protection. Some were spitting in disgust or shaking their heads and all gripped spear shafts and axe hafts with white hands. Twenty feet away a stake had been stuck in the ground and on it was rammed a man's head, the mouth and eyes open as if in shock. The crows had not yet ruined the eyes but the flies were feasting. They swarmed thickly around the severed neck and fed on the congealing dribbles that had cascaded down the length of the stake. It was Storvek's thrall, or at least it had been. Sigurd had not learnt the man's name, not that it mattered now.
  
  The rest of the thrall was scattered amongst the pines: an arm hanging here, a leg there, and all of that flesh buzzing with flies so that you only had to let your ears follow the hum to find another bit strung up amongst the sweeping green boughs or the brittle brown lower branches.
  
  'Show yourself!' Hrani roared into the forest. 'Where are you, coward?' His voice was swallowed in the shady gloom and the only reply he got was more crowing from the unseen birds who were waiting to resume their meal. The fact that there was no answer from a human mouth did nothing to dispel the men's fears that some god had had a hand in this scene of slaughter.
  
  'We keep moving,' Hrani said, hoisting Gungnir, and with that they set off, giving the thrall's head a wide berth because no one wanted those staring eyes to fix on their own. They walked on, all but peering over the rims of their shields as if they expected a hail of arrows from the forest at any moment, and soon Hrani raised his spear again and the column stopped.
  
  This time it was Storvek himself, though unlike the thrall he was alive. Naked as a newborn bairn he was tied to the base of a tree, ropes round his legs, waist and chest with another round his face and in his mouth to keep him quiet. There was a strip of cloth blinding him, but he could hear all right, for his stomach was pumping like forge bellows because he knew his jarl had come.
  
  'Let me cut him free, Father,' young Randver said, moving forward until his father, who was growling foul things under his breath, grabbed a handful of the sword belt across the boy's shoulder.
  
  'Stay here,' he told the boy, then turned to the two men at his back. 'You two, with me. You see anything move, you so much as smell a fart on the breeze, you shout.' Both warriors nodded grimly as the three of them went forward to help Storvek.
  
  'Cut him loose,' Hrani said, and one of the men thrust his spear into the earth and drew his scramasax and had no sooner bent and put the blade to the rope around Storvek's legs when a man dropped through the lush boughs and put an axe in his back. There was a scream and in the same heartbeat another man fell from the pine and threw an arm round Jarl Hrani's neck while bringing a blade up to his throat.
  
  'Move and I'll bleed you like a pig,' Bjarni told the jarl, who still gripped the massive spear. Bjarni's brother Bjorn stepped in front of him, his axe threatening the third man, who stood there not knowing what to do.
  
  Hrani's champion, a man named Hadd whom men called Hog-Head, though he was only half as ugly as Jarl Guthrum's champion Asgrim, growled and moved forward, spear levelled.
  
  'Not another step!' Bjarni yelled at him and Hog-Head stopped, but little Randver didn't, which meant he was either stupidly brave, just stupid, or Týr, Lord of Battle in disguise.
  
  'No, Randver!' Hrani managed even with Bjarni's arm crushing his windpipe.
  
  'Get back here, lad!' one of Hrani's men growled, but young Randver had a legend to make. He pulled his arm back as if to hurl his spear at Bjorn, then he yelled 'Óðin!' in a screechy voice, but before he could launch the spear a man burst from a tangle of thorns nearby and ran across the path, grabbing the boy the way a sea eagle scoops up a fish. It was Thorbiorn Thorirsson and Sigurd realized that what Thorbiorn lacked in war-craft and experience he made up for in speed, and now he stood off to the side amongst the trees, holding the son the same way Bjarni held the father.
  
  If Hrani Randversson had not looked afraid before, he looked very afraid now with some stranger's knife at his boy's throat. Though he tried to put some steel in his eyes when he saw the big man walking towards him from the forest, because he knew now who he was dealing with.
  
  'Olaf Ollersson,' Hrani spat.
  
  Olaf strode forward looking like a war god in his brynja and helmet, his bright-painted shield and gripping his big boar spear. The others came from the trees too and Sigurd whispered his thanks to the Allfather at the sight of them. Svein, Bram, Aslak, old Solmund, Asgot and Hagal Crow-Song and even Moldof Wolf-Joint. They were all there, had somehow dug their way out of that mess at the hill fort and come north to Ubsola to find him.
  
  'Hrani Randversson,' Olaf said, greeting the jarl with a nod. Hrani's men were silent and watchful, their expressions alone betraying what they thought about having been lured into this trap by their enemy and a Norseman at that. 'You all right then, Sigurd?' Olaf asked. 'I heard a rumour that the Svearmen tried to cut your throat and give you to the gods but the gods didn't want you.' He was grinning, as were Svein and Aslak and the others.
  
  Sigurd grinned back. 'No thanks to you, Uncle. While you have been sitting around scratching your arses we have been dragged from here to there like dogs on the leash.'
  
  'Untie them,' Olaf demanded of Hadd Hog-Head, but the man did not move. He was waiting for Hrani to tell him what to do. Hrani, though, was like a man with one foot on the boat and one on the jetty and he did not know which way to jump, so Thorbiorn Thorirsson made it easier for him.
  
  'I will prise out your boy's eye like a clam from its shell,' he told the jarl, putting the point of his knife to the skin just below Randver's left eye. For his part young Randver did not beg nor say a word, so that Sigurd found he was starting to like the boy, but Jarl Hrani was not about to watch his son earn himself the byname One-Eye.
  
  'Do as he says,' Hrani told Hog-Head, who thrust his spear into the ground, drew his scramasax and cut the rope binding Sigurd's wrists.
  
  'Lucky shit,' the champion muttered, then freed Floki and Valgerd. They went to join Aslak and Hagal who gave them each a spear and scramasax so that they were at least armed. Sigurd walked over to Thorbiorn and the king's son nodded at him, pushing young Randver towards him because he knew what was coming.
  
  'Now then, Hrani,' Sigurd said, taking the scramasax which Thorbiorn offered him. 'It seems I am going to earn myself quite a reputation with your kin, being the man who killed your father and your son.' He wrapped the boy's hair round his fist and pulled his head back to reveal the delicate white throat which did not yet boast a man's throat stone. 'My brothers will pour you a man's measure of mead when you get to Óðin's hall, Randver,' he said, locking eyes with the boy's, which were wet now though still he did not beg for his life.
  
  'No, Sigurd!' Hrani said.
  
  'Shut your mouth before I cut your tongue out,' Bjarni growled at the jarl, tightening the grip round his neck.
  
  'You know I have to do this, Hrani,' Sigurd said, 'but I will make it clean and quick because none of this is the boy's fault. He did not ask for an overreaching snake as a grandfather or a woman-killing nithing for a father.'
  
  'I did not kill your mother,' Hrani managed, choking now thanks to Bjarni.
  
  'You did not stop it,' Sigurd said, then bent to Randver's ear. 'Are you ready, boy?'
  
  'Please!' Hrani gasped. 'Let the boy live.'
  
  'And have him stick a blade between my ribs one day when he is full grown and I am old and slow?' Sigurd shook his head. 'That would not be very clever of me, Jarl Hrani.'
  
  But Sigurd knew that he and his own men were the ones walking a knife's edge there and then in that Svealand forest. If he killed the son and Bjarni killed the father, Hrani's men would go berserk and Sigurd and his crew would be cut down in a frenzy of blood. So he would dangle the hook a little deeper in the hope that Hrani would catch the glint of it. Before the pines around them drank the slaughter's dew.
  
  'What would you do in my position?' he asked the jarl. Hrani's eyes were bulging now, his face pale, so Sigurd gestured at Bjarni to loosen that iron grip of his to let the jarl speak.
  
  The first thing Hrani did then was plunder a lungful of air, the gasp of it loud in those quiet woods. 'We could make an agreement,' he said. 'Your lives in exchange for my boy and me.'
  
  'Try again, Hrani,' Olaf put in and Hrani curled a lip at him.
  
  'You know my men will kill you all if I tell them to. Even if I am dead, they will avenge me,' Hrani said.
  
  Sigurd shrugged. 'You still get to watch your boy die before you do,' he told him. 'Besides which, you must know I cannot let you live after everything that has happened.' He looked at young Randver, then brought the knife's point away from the boy's face and used it to scratch his own neck. 'Unless,' he said, letting that word hang there like hope for Jarl Hrani, 'unless you join me.'
  
  Hrani Randversson was not as handsome as his father had been, yet he still boasted looks that gave a skald something to work with, and his grin then was one which must have had girls wet between the legs when he flashed it back home in his hall. 'You are mad, Haraldarson,' he said. 'We are sworn enemies and everybody knows it.'
  
  'Everybody?' Sigurd said. 'You think we are more important than we are, Hrani, if you believe everyone is talking about us and our feud. These Svear warlords have their own feuds. I know this because I have been tangled in one myself.'
  
  'I'd sooner die than join you,' Hrani said.
  
  'I would hope that is true,' Sigurd said with a nod, 'but would you sooner watch your boy die at the hands of the same man that killed your father? Would you watch that rather than join me, Hrani Randversson?'
  
  Hrani wrestled with that question, though everyone in that forest knew what the answer was going to be even if he did not. It was in his eyes, clear as runes carved in a rock.
  
  'What are you suggesting?' he asked Sigurd.
  
  'Join me,' Sigurd said. 'Swear an oath to fight at my side.' It seemed to Sigurd that someone else was speaking, for how could his own mouth craft the words that would see him become allies with Hrani Randversson? The muttering from some of his own men, including Svein, did not help him to believe he was doing the right thing, but making war against jarls and kings was more like playing a game of tafl than wrestling. Besides which, there was only so much war he could make with just his half crew around him.
  
  'I am a jarl,' Hrani said. 'Why would I swear to be your man? What are you but a wolf on the loose? An outlaw with a handful of followers, fighting for some Svear warlord in return for the food in your bellies and the ale in your cups. You have no hall.' He had to say all that, what with his men's eyes on the whole thing like sailors watching the waves and the ship's vane to know where the wind was blowing. 'You have nothing.'
  
  Sigurd grinned. 'I have your son,' he corrected Hrani, and he could not help but nod at Olaf in thanks for that. 'And while it is true that you have picked up the jarl torc which your father dropped, that is not the same thing as earning it.' Hrani could have been the greatest warrior standing in that forest that day but it would not have made Sigurd's words any less true. And they all knew it. 'Fight with me, Jarl Hrani, and swear an oath, and in return I will help you become much more than you are now.'
  
  Clearly Hrani was confused by this, as were other men judging by the frowns amongst the trees. Some were murmuring amongst themselves. Others loosened shoulders and necks as if readying to fight Sigurd's hirðmen who had planted themselves across the track before them looking magnificent in their war gear.
  
  'How would you like to be King Hrani Randversson?' Sigurd asked. 'You know I am going to kill Gorm oath-breaker and so you already know you cannot both swear to me and remain loyal to him. But when we have killed that goat-swiving whoreson you will be the one to take his high seat and sit there on the hill at Avaldsnes squeezing silver from every ship which sails past.'
  
  Hrani's eyes became slits. 'You don't want to be king?' he asked.
  
  'I don't want to be king,' Sigurd said and it was the truth; he did not want to be king, though he was not sure why not. 'Your son lives, you live, your men live and you become King Hrani. You will live in the oath-breaker's hall and with all that silver sailing into your hands you pay half a dozen skalds to sing about what a great man your father was but how you are even greater.'
  
  'You'll want them to be better skalds than Crow-Song here,' Olaf said, nodding at Hagal, 'which shouldn't be a problem seeing as how you'll be richer than Fafnir.'
  
  For a while then Hrani stood there thinking about it all, as though he had a choice. Then he nodded, at which Sigurd told Bjarni to let go of him, which must have pleased Hrani for he could at last straighten his spine and stand like a man.
  
  'If you swear to help me be king, I will swear to fight with you, though I will not let you throw away my men's lives.'
  
  Now it was Sigurd's turn to consider what he had heard and he made a show of scratching his beard as he weighed it up in his mind.
  
  'Agreed,' he said at last and there was a low hum from Hrani's men because they were relieved that their jarl was going to live, and the only person who looked unhappy with the way it had turned out was Floki, who spat a curse in Hrani's direction and glowered like a boy who is made to go to sleep when he would rather be playing.
  
  'No sword then?' Olaf said to Sigurd, for if Hrani was to swear an oath properly the words should be spoken over Sigurd's sword. But Troll-Tickler was amongst Jarl Guthrum's loot now.
  
  'The spear,' Sigurd said, pointing at the Óðin spear which was still in Jarl Hrani's hand.
  
  'That's what it is!' Olaf lifted his bushy beard. 'I thought it was one of those posts from the side of that track near Ubsola.'
  
  'It's from the Svear temple,' Sigurd said.
  
  Olaf frowned. 'I know,' he said. 'I just hope you know what you are doing by stealing it. Not from the Svearmen, I couldn't give a shit about that, but from the Allfather. If it really was his favourite boar-sticker.'
  
  Bjarni held his blade close to Hrani while his brother Bjorn took the spear from the jarl and carried it to Sigurd, appreciating the weight of the thing in his hands.
  
  'Tell them about this spear, Asgot,' Sigurd said, turning to the godi, who had tied some new bones into his hair and beard since Sigurd had last seen him.
  
  'Gungnir, the Swaying One,' Asgot said. 'Fashioned by dwarfs from Yggdrasil's sacred ash, it never misses its mark.' The godi talked about how the Allfather had pierced his own flesh with Gungnir as he hung on the ash, sacrificed to himself, and of how he would use the spear to fight Fenrir Wolf at the twilight of the gods. And while he talked, men listened and Sigurd ran his fingers over the runes carved into the spear's shaft, and on to the strange shapes etched in the massive blade itself, wondering what they meant. 'Óðin himself carved the runes on it,' Asgot explained, 'just as he carved them into the teeth of his horse Sleipnir.'
  
  'We all like a good story,' Hrani interrupted, 'but if we are going to make some agreement here instead of making a slaughter then let us get on with it.' This earned him a hiss from Asgot, not that he noticed. Even with his life and his son's life in his enemy's hands Hrani was still a jarl and could not help speaking like one.
  
  He had a point too, Sigurd thought, because Asgot had not got to the part Sigurd had been waiting for. 'Hagal, tell Jarl Hrani why the spear has a part to play now,' he said, and Crow-Song smiled because he knew the old stories inside out, upside down and back to front. And as a skald he had spent enough time around jarls and kings to know which bit of the Gungnir story Sigurd wanted, just as a shipwright knows which tool to use for each part of a boat build.
  
  'An oath made on the Allfather's spear can never be broken,' Crow-Song said, simple as that, and that was all he needed to say.
  
  'I don't see how it can be Óðin's spear,' Svein mumbled. 'For a start, even though it is the biggest spear I have seen, I would expect Óðin's to be bigger still. And if this really is Gungnir then what spear is leaning against the Allfather's high seat in Valhöll at this very moment, while we stand around making friends with men who we ought to be killing?'
  
  'Shut your mead hole, Red,' Bram growled, 'you'll ruin the moment.'
  
  Svein shrugged, pushing such questions to the back of his thought chest because he knew they were about to watch a powerful jarl swear an oath of loyalty to Sigurd.
  
  It did not take long, because Sigurd did not make each of Hrani's fifty men swear on the great spear. Every man amongst those pines knew that as the jarl himself was saying the words, and thus binding himself to Sigurd, then so they were bound also for they were already oath-tied to Hrani.
  
  The jarl spat the words more than said them, but that was only to be expected, him hating Sigurd as much as he did, but once it was said it could not be unsaid and from that moment every fighting man there loosened like the weave of a sail after a blustery crossing. Swords were sheathed and shields were slung on backs. Hadd Hog-Head introduced himself to Moldof because being a prow man, but the younger of the two, Hrani's champion had heard stories of Moldof's fights. He had envied and respected the king's champion in equal measure and now took the opportunity to meet him properly and as equals – if not in some ways as Moldof's better, Moldof being nowadays an ex-champion and wolf-jointed.
  
  'This I never thought I'd live to see,' Solmund told Sigurd as they watched the two hirðs come together like the confluence of two streams, admiring each other's war gear, comparing swords and boasting of the craftsmanship that went into pommels and lobes, hilts and the patterns in the iron which men talk of as the breath in the blade. As if a sword is a living thing.
  
  'It is not an easy thing to swallow, my friend,' Sigurd said, knowing how the old helmsman must feel what with him having fought Hrani's men, been half killed by one of them too, when they had attacked Sigurd's village. 'But what we have done here is navigate through the skerries and arrive at the Jól feast.'
  
  Solmund was too old to pretend that he would not rather have seen that Óðin spear in Jarl Hrani's belly than in his hands as he spun the oath to Sigurd, but he nodded anyway. 'You are learning the game of jarls and kings, Sigurd,' he said, 'and I knew your father well enough to be certain that he would be proud.'
  
  The weight of that made itself known on Sigurd and he held the old man's eyes a moment, remembering how he had sewn the wound in Solmund's chest himself when he had found him pale as a corpse amongst the dead of Skudeneshavn.
  
  Then a peal of laughter turned their heads towards a group of Hrani's men gathered in front of Storvek, who was still tied to the tree, even after the whole oath-swearing thing.
  
  'You've had your fun, you rancid shits!' Storvek said. 'Bild! Erlingnar! Untie me, you grinning arses.'
  
  'Looks like we've got ourselves a proper war band,' Olaf said, slapping Sigurd's back as they watched Hrani's men cut Storvek loose while the jarl himself spoke with his most important hirðmen, no doubt dealing with their concerns about being enemies now of King Gorm. For by swearing an oath to Sigurd, Hrani had just pissed on the oath he had sworn to Gorm. But then the oath to the king had not been made on Gungnir.
  
  'It is a start,' Sigurd said. 'But we will need more than this.'
  
  'Aye, I expect we will,' Olaf said.
  
  'And I want my sword back. My brynja too.'
  
  'Guthrum's got them?'
  
  Sigurd nodded. Olaf grinned. Because they were now more than sixty warriors: Sword-Norse who fed the wolf and the raven and whose ears had so often rung with the din of the sword-song.
  
  And they were going to find the Svear jarl who had thought he could buy the gods' favour with men's blood. Because Sigurd wanted his sword back.