Chapter Eighteen: Varg

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

VARG

Varg walked through the streets of Liga, Svik and Røkia guiding him. In a short time and with their help he had acquired two linen under-tunics, wool breeches, a grey-wool tunic woven in a fine herringbone, winnigas leg-wraps with bronze hooks, goatskin turn-shoes, a nålbinding knitted cap and socks, leather gloves lined with sheepskin, a belt with bronze fittings, a seax in a plain leather scabbard with an elk-antler hilt, and a fine sealskin cloak. And a hemp sack to put it all in. He felt like a rich jarl, traders fawning over him. He knew it meant nothing, that they were doing it because of his coin and the two Bloodsworn warriors accompanying him, but part of him felt… good. That was a strange sensation, one that he had not felt for a long time.

He saw the trader who had given him the cleaver, and Varg gave him a coin because the man had shown him a kindness when he was a niðing thrall. And he bought Svik and Røkia a bowl of stew and a slice of bread.

“And a round of cheese?” Svik asked the trader.

“You like cheese, don’t you?” Varg observed.

“Who does not?” Svik answered, frowning as he took the cheese.

They walked on, Røkia stopping at a stall with knives and axes laid out across a trestle table.

“You need this,” Røkia said, hefting an axe. She held it out to Varg. He took it, felt the balance. The shaft was short, the axe head curved and unusually weighted. He was no stranger to working with axes, having felled much timber and chopped a mountain of firewood over the years on Kolskegg’s farm, but he had never felt one like this.

“It’s weighted for throwing,” Svik said. “See the curve of the haft and blade.”

“Ah,” Varg said, patting the axe’s poll in his palm.

“You ever fight with an axe?” Røkia asked him.

“No. I told you, only with my fists.”

“Aye, well, you should have an axe, then. You’ll have a spear, and you cannot afford to buy a sword.”

“Or know how to use one,” Svik added. “Most likely you’d end up chopping half your head off. Spear, seax and axe, they are a good place to start.”

“And it is always good to have a few blades on your belt,” Røkia said. “You never know what is around the bend in the road.”

Varg wasn’t sure how he felt about all this talk of warcraft. His driving thought had been revenge for Frøya: to make his sister’s murderer scream. It felt strange, and disloyal, to allow anything else to take up room in his thought-cage.

This is my way to fulfilling my oath. A twisting path, but it is the only way forward.

“I’ll have the axe, then,” he told the trader, and fished out more coin. “How about that?” he asked, pointing to a fine brynja shirt of mail hanging on a rack, riveted rings gleaming with oil.

“You cannot afford it,” Svik said.

“And besides, it is better to take one from the corpse of your enemy,” Røkia said. “Better to win it in a scrap. How else are you going to earn your battle-fame?” She looked at him as if he was moon-touched.

The thought crossed his mind that if he fought a warrior already wearing a coat of mail, then the odds were that the warrior was skilled, certainly more skilled than him, and would have the extra benefit and protection of ring mail, so the likelihood of Varg surviving long enough to take the brynja off his enemy’s dead body was not high. And besides, Varg had never thought about battle-fame in all his life. Even when he was fighting in the pugil-ring it had only ever been for the next meal, and then after that because Kolskegg had given him no choice.

“A coat of mail is a wonder,” Svik said, “and very good at keeping sharp iron out of your body, but more important is this,” he said, tapping a plain helm that sat on the table. Four plates of iron riveted with bands and a nasal guard.

“A stab to your body, you may live. A stab to the head…” he shrugged.

Varg picked it up and looked inside it, saw a sheepskin liner and leather strips to adjust the fit. He tried it on, buckling up the chinstrap.

“Good,” Røkia said, rapping it with her knuckles.

“And it conceals your hair, which is also good,” Svik said. “I suggest you keep it on until your hair is as long and beautiful as mine.”

Røkia snorted.

“Here,” Svik said, pointing at more goods laid out on the table. There were flints and iron for striking sparks, fishhooks and animal gut for the stitching of wounds, rolls of linen bandages, another flat piece of iron fixed to a curved grip of wood and leather.

“What’s that?” Varg asked.

“An iron for the cauterisation of wounds,” Røkia said, with another twist of her eyebrows at his ignorance.

“We have bought everything you need to put holes in other people,” Svik smiled, “but you need to take some precautions in case someone else puts a hole in you.”

“Sensible,” Varg muttered, feeling like he was marching blindly down a track that he would not be able to return from.

“Good. We are done then,” Røkia said, looking at the sun in the sky. “Best be getting back.”

Varg had thrown his old tunic and breeches on a fire that was burning in a space outside near the back of the mead hall, beneath stooping cliffs and pine trees, along with his shoes that were more holes than leather. Then he scrubbed his body in ice-cold water from a barrel, using a brush of stiff horsehair lathered with soap of ash and fat. A trencher of cold mutton and pickle had been put in front of him by Svik as he’d dressed, and he had stuffed in mouthfuls of the smoked meat as he’d wrapped his winnigas tightly around his calves and buckled on his belt. Finally, he hooked the chinstrap of his iron helm through his belt and buckled it, so that it hung alongside his weapons. It felt strange, with the weight of axe, seax, helm and cleaver hanging at his belt alongside his pouch, and unimaginable that he could be dressing like this. But it felt good to be clean, to be wearing such fine clothes that he would never have worn to his dying day if he had stayed on Kolskegg’s farm. He felt a smile twitching at the corners of his mouth and he wished that Frøya could see him. The thought of her cold in the ground withered his smile.

“Better,” Svik said, regarding Varg as he stood straight. “You no longer look like a thrall or a niðing beggar. Oh, and this is yours: a gift from Glornir,” he said, holding up the black-painted shield Varg had used in training the day before. He slung it across his back and picked up his sack with all else that he had purchased in Liga. Then a horn was blowing and Svik was hurrying Varg into the mead hall’s courtyard, where Jarl Logur and his wife Sälla stood in the open doors, a dozen of his oath-guard around him. Glornir stood at the head of the Bloodsworn in a gleaming brynja, an iron helm hanging at his belt, his long-axe in his fists. Behind him a mass of warriors were gathered, with their black-and-red spattered shields slung over their backs, a mixture of brynjas, woollen tunics and boiled, hardened leather, spears and long-axes held in fists, resting on shoulders.

A nod passed between the two lords and then Glornir was leading them out of the courtyard. Glornir saw Varg and Svik standing at the courtyard’s side; he said something and held his hand out, and Vol handed him a grey, ash-hafted spear with a leather cover over the spearhead.

“This is yours now,” Glornir said, and threw the spear to Varg. He managed to catch it without fumbling it.

“It belonged to Aslog, whose seat on the oar-bench you will be filling. He was a fine man, though not fine enough to keep his head,” Glornir said. “He won’t be needing his spear any more, as he has taken the soul road. May it bring you battle-fame.”

Varg nodded, not knowing what to say, and then Glornir was past him, leading the Bloodsworn into the streets of Liga. Varg and Svik joined the end of the marching warriors.

They strode down a wide street, people moving to the sides for the Bloodsworn to pass.

“How’s your head?” a voice said: Torvik, the smith’s apprentice.

“It feels like your smith is inside it, and trying hard to get out with a hammer,” Varg said.

“Ha,” Torvik laughed. “Mead is a double-edged sword, no?” he said, rubbing his own temple. “It makes the world better for a while, and then worse. Much, much worse.”

They marched on, in loose order.

“Jarl Logur is good to the Bloodsworn,” Varg said, thinking about the amount of food and mead the warriors must have consumed over seven or eight days.

“Aye, but the Bloodsworn have been good to him,” Torvik said.

“How so?” Varg asked.

“The god-relic in Logur’s mead hall: the Bloodsworn gave it to him.”

“Relic?” Varg said.

“Aye, a sliver of the Vackna Horn, which summoned the gods to the Battle-Plain on the day of Guðfalla. It is set in the timber beam above Logur’s high seat, and has helped to make him rich.”

“Ah,” Varg nodded, remembering seeing a bone-white sliver set in the beam, and feeling some strange sensation emanating from it. Relics had power: all knew that. Queen Helka had risen to her high seat in so short a time because she had unearthed Orna’s skeleton, the wings of the giant eagle spreading wide over Helka’s fortress at Darl.

“A generous gift that Glornir gave Logur,” Varg said.

“Not Glornir,” Torvik said. “It was Skullsplitter. Our old chief.”

“Skullsplitter?” Varg said, remembering now campfire tales among the thralls of Kolskegg’s farm, talking of a terrible, merciless warrior.

“Skullsplitter is dead, but the Bloodsworn live on,” Svik said, “and the Bloodsworn have done more for Logur than give him a shattered piece of cow-horn.”

“What do the Bloodsworn do, then?” Varg asked, wanting to find out more about this crew he was becoming a part of.

“We protect this port, from pirates and raiders,” Svik said. “We are the wolves that protect the sheep.”

“I thought wolves ate sheep,” Varg said.

Svik smiled at him. “Sometimes we do.” He shrugged. “But not sheep that are paying us.”

The street spilled out on to the docks, and instantly Varg knew there was something wrong.

People were running: dockworkers, traders, merchants. A handful of Jarl Logur’s guards with their blue shields in their fists were running the other way. Varg was one of the last of the Bloodsworn to leave the street and enter the dockside. There were screams, the slap of many feet on stone, and, above that, the sound of hooves.

Glornir led the Bloodsworn on, towards their ship the Sea-Wolf, people running and yelling, the sound of hooves growing louder. Varg strained, bouncing on his heels to see over the heads of warriors. And then a space cleared before the Bloodsworn, the stone docks empty as they approached the pier where the Sea-Wolf was moored.

A row of horses barred their way, wide and deep, warriors in iron helms with horsehair plumes and long coats of lamellar armour. Jaromir sat at their head, Ilia at his side. He held a curved bow in his fist, an arrow nocked.

Glornir walked on a few paces, then stopped and held up a hand. The Bloodsworn rippled to a halt behind him, spreading wide across the road. Shields were shrugged from backs, gripped in fists, helms buckled on to heads. Edel’s wolfhounds growled.

Jaromir touched his heels to his mount and the horse walked forwards ahead of the massed druzhina behind them, their lances glittering in the spring sun.

“I was going to visit your Jarl Logur with my petition, and my evidence,” he said, “but then I am told that your drakkar was preparing to sail.” He sniffed. “Only the guilty flee.”

Glornir said nothing, just regarded him with flat, emotionless eyes.

“Give me Sulich,” Jaromir said. “Be a man of wisdom. Save your warriors, and your ship.” He looked over his shoulder, at a pair of riders at the pier’s entrance, both waiting, holding burning torches. Varg saw shapes moving on the Sea-Wolf.

“You have been out too long in the sun if you think I would hand over one of my own,” Glornir growled, shaking his head. “No.” He hefted his long-axe in two hands, holding it loose across his body, his blood-spattered shield slung across his back.

A twist of Jaromir’s lips and then his bow was rising, drawing and loosing faster than Varg could follow. There was a hiss of iron through air, a crack, and the arrow fell splintered at Glornir’s feet, his long-axe swinging in his hands.

A frozen moment as Jaromir and his druzhina stared, open-mouthed, then Jaromir was reaching for a fist full of arrows.

“LOOSE!” he cried, and forty or fifty arrows left their bows.

Bloodsworn warriors leaped forwards, shields closing around Glornir. Varg saw Einar and Røkia there, and many more, hunched behind their shields, protecting Glornir. Arrows fell like hail, rattling on to the linden-wood, then there was a scream. Einar stood tall and hurled a spear, which flew through the air and slammed into the chest of a druzhina warrior, sending them hurtling from their saddle in a spray of blood.

Jaromir slipped his bow back into its case at his hip and drew his sabre. He let out a wordless scream and spurred his horse on, the warriors behind him leaping forwards, lances lowering.

“SHIELD WALL!” Glornir bellowed.

All around Varg warriors moved, shuffling tight, shields rising, crunching together. Varg just stood there, lifting his shield, but he did not know what to do. A concussive crash sounded from the front of the wall, rippling back to where Varg stood, horses and warriors screaming, steel clashing.

The sound of hooves came from behind him, and he turned to see more mounted warriors riding hard at them across the dock, stone sparking under hooves.

“WARE!” Svik cried beside Varg, a row of warriors from the rear of the shield wall turning, re-forming to face this new foe.

“Helm,” Svik yelled at him. Varg realised he was the only one in the Bloodsworn who hadn’t buckled on his helmet.

He fumbled at his belt, couldn’t unbuckle the chinstrap, and gave up. The thunder of hooves was not helping.

He looked up, realised he was standing in the open, riders charging towards him, and without thinking he raised his shield in front of him as Røkia had taught. A rider spurred their mount at him. A mountain of horseflesh hurtled towards him, the warrior on its back gleaming in scaled armour, a sabre rising high.

Varg stared up at his death, dimly aware of Svik yelling his name, calling him back into the shield wall. It was too late. All he could see was the warrior’s snarling face, oiled beard, cold steel glinting. Time seemed to slow, the muscles in the horse’s shoulder and chest contracting, expanding, and Varg slipped to the side, keeping his shield held high. The sabre crunched into it, a hollow smack, the power of the blow rattling through Varg’s bones into his shoulder, numbing muscle. Then the rider was past him and instinctively Varg stabbed with his spear, a hard thrust angled up into the rider’s waist. It should have pierced mail and flesh, stabbed deep under ribs, but instead the spear glanced away, Varg losing his grip and dropping it. He stared at the spear: saw he hadn’t taken the leather cover off the blade.

Around him the other druzhina were crashing into Svik and the shield wall, with more yelling, screaming. A spray of blood flew across grey stone.

Then Varg’s rider was dragging on his reins, turning his mount in a tight circle.

Without thinking, Varg dropped his shield and ran at the warrior. He leaped, grabbed a fistful of horse’s mane and dragged himself up on to the animal’s back, the druzhina warrior twisting, trying to hack at Varg with his sabre. A mail-clad elbow cracked into Varg’s nose, sending blood gushing, but he hung on, one arm wrapped around the warrior, his other hand fumbling for his seax. He found the antler-hilt, dragged it free of its scabbard and stabbed into the small of the warrior’s back, the blade deflected by the plates of his lamellar coat. The seax scraped along iron, grating sparks, finding the smallest of gaps where buckles and strips of leather tied the coat tight. The blade slipped in, sliced through wool and linen and into flesh. Varg thrust harder, the warrior arching in his saddle with a scream rising in pitch as Varg’s blade sank deeper. He could feel the strength leak from the warrior, and with a final twist and shove Varg sent the rider toppling from his saddle, crunching on to the stone, where he lay twitching.

With a ragged breath Varg slipped into the saddle and sat there, not knowing what to do. He had never ridden a horse before. It felt much higher, upon its back, than it looked from the ground, and he could feel the animal’s power beneath him, muscles flexing.

All around him combat was raging, horses rearing, neighing, the Bloodsworn standing solid in their shield wall. Here and there were a few fractured fights: Edel and her hounds bringing down a horse.

“Berser’s hairy arse, what are you doing up there?” Svik called up to him, a savage grin on his blood-spattered face.

Varg just stared down at him.

Horns were blowing, warriors with blue-painted shields pouring on to the dockside. Jarl Logur was there, bellowing orders, but the fighting had already stopped, both Bloodsworn and druzhina standing and staring out into the fjord.

There, three huge, sleek drakkar were gliding across the water, horns blowing from their decks. Their black sails bore the image of an eagle, wings spread, beak and talons striking.

Even Varg knew whose banner that was.

Queen Helka had come to Liga.