Blood Eye(32)

'Tell him we want to fight the king, not his dog!' Olaf shouted.





'Ealdred says that your fame grows like a storm, my jarl, and that you have stirred fear in men's hearts and forced prayers to the trembling lips of God's children.'





Sigurd smiled at this. 'Does the man want to fight me or fuck me?' he called.





'He wants to drink with you, lord,' I said. 'Ealdred wants you to go to his hall and share his mead and discuss terms of trade.'





Sigurd leant back and laughed from deep in his belly. 'The king's cousin wants to drink with me, hey? Freyja's tits, these English are a strange people! Drink?' He turned to his men and then back to me, fixing me with an icy stare. 'Tell Ealdred to go and play with his king's cock and leave me alone. He comes here and threatens my ships with fire, then expects me to go to his hall and drink his mead? I am no whore!' he yelled. 'Ha! I'd sooner sail into the sun!'





'Lord, he has many warriors,' I said quietly. 'And they'll burn the ships. How can we stop them? This Ealdred will send his men to die against you. I can see it in his face.' Sigurd glanced at his men once more, lingering awhile on Bram who gripped his axe tightly, his bloodied face swollen and snarling. With one word from Sigurd they would all fight to the death. But would that be enough to earn them their fame? How would they be remembered if none lived to speak of their courage by the hearths in the halls of the north? For their enemies would weave a different story once they lay dead and their souls feasted in Óðin's Corpse Hall.





Sigurd frowned. 'What does he want from me, Raven? My amber? My whetstones?' He shook his head suspiciously.





I shrugged. 'He would not tell me, though he gave me his word that if you agree to go to his hall, he will have his men throw their firebrands into the sea.'





'He gave his word to you, not to me.' Sigurd shook his head and pulled at his beard. 'These are strange days, Raven, when you ask me to believe the word of a Christ-follower. And stranger still that I listen.'





'What choice do we have?' I asked. 'Ealdred has maybe two hundred spears.'





Sigurd scoffed. 'Only some will be warriors. Most would rather be sharpening their ploughshares or sitting by their hearths.' But even so, two hundred was too many and Sigurd knew we could not fight and hope to win. 'Very well,' he said with a nod towards the English, 'tell this Ealdred I will drink his mead. But I swear this by Óðin – if I smell English treachery, I will cut off his head.'





When I approached Ealdred with Sigurd beside me, the ealdorman did as he had promised and the flames in the fishing boats were extinguished. Darkness enveloped the longships once more and I touched my bone-handled knife, relieved that they were safe again.





'I am Sigurd son of Harald. The Lucky, some call me.' Sigurd stood tall before the English lord and his grizzled bodyguards.





'It is a fitting name,' Ealdred acknowledged with a wry smile, 'and your men must be grateful that their lord is not the kind of man to throw their lives away. Not when there is nothing to be gained from it.' He raised a hand into the air and I turned to see the fishing skiffs full of men and fire being rowed away from Sigurd's longships.





Sigurd glanced at the warriors around Ealdred and seemed unimpressed. 'We will come to your hall, Ealdred, but if I see a slave of the White Christ, I will fill his belly with steel.'





'A priest tried to poison Jarl Sigurd,' I said to Ealdred.





The ealdorman seemed surprised, then frowned and tugged on his long moustache. 'A whisper of the Holy Spirit on the breeze can tempt a man to desperate acts, Jarl Sigurd,' he said, making the sign of the cross, 'but I can assure you I keep my priests on a very short leash.' He smiled. 'So, shall we go?'





Sigurd laughed loudly, causing Ealdred and his men to look to each other in bewilderment. 'I will come when I am ready, Englishman,' he said and with that turned his back on Ealdred and walked to his men. And I followed him.





The Norsemen took up what Olaf told me was called the swine array, a wedge-shaped arrow formation with their backs to the sea. And battle ready they waited, shields and spears raised in the sickly light which bounced off the water below the eastern sky. I was not given a place in the swine array but was made to stand behind with Ealhstan, for I was not a warrior, and each man in the wall must trust the man beside him to keep his shield raised, overlapping his neighbour's, and his sword arm strong.





'I don't know what Sigurd is waiting for,' I said to Ealhstan. He turned to look out across the breaking surf, which threw up a chill that made me shiver. The skiffs that had threatened Sigurd's seasoned timbers had been rowed out of sight, whilst Ealdred's men on the beach had retreated so that they were once again dark, shifting shapes against the pale rock of the rise before us. 'Why doesn't he go to the ealdorman's hall?' I watched the jarl talk with Olaf, the two warriors' iron helmets dull above white skin and unseen eyes. 'This will be stinging Ealdred's pride.'