Blood Eye(42)

CHAPTER SEVEN




THE CHRISTIAN HEAVEN AND HELL SHOULD HAVE BEEN GLUTTED then, with English souls torn from pain-racked bodies, and Óðin's dark maidens should have been bent low with the weight of brave warriors, ascending to the great hall of the slain. But two high-pitched blasts from an English horn sent a shiver through Ealdred's shieldwall and as one man it stepped back, leaving the broken dead between.





'Cowards!' Olaf yelled, still in fury's grip, his beard soaked with white spittle and his eyes impossibly wide. 'Whore whelps and cowards! Fight me! Fight me!'





Then the English wall cracked in its middle, leaving a dark passage from which a figure emerged. It was Ealdred himself, his sword arm bound in bloodied linen, but otherwise firm and grim-faced.





'Enough!' he shouted, ignoring Olaf, his eyes instead boring into Sigurd's. 'Enough of this madness! We are not animals!' His huge bodyguard was beside him. The man looked ravenous for death, as though he sought to avenge the harm done to his lord and prove his own worth if any who saw Ealdred's blood were in doubt. 'Sigurd, it was not meant to come to this between us. Where is the honour in senseless death?'





'You have no honour, Englishman,' Sigurd countered, spitting on the ground. 'You have no understanding of the word.'





Ealdred's long moustache quivered then, but he gave a slight nod and showed Sigurd his palm. 'The men who attacked you in my hall will be punished,' he said. 'As you know, it is no easy thing to keep a rein on warriors.' He winced in pain. 'Their hearts are burning brands but their wits are slow. They will be punished.'





But Sigurd, who still gripped his gore-slick sword, pointed the blade at an English corpse. 'I have seen to that myself, dog!' he yelled, and again Ealdred seemed to shudder.





'They were gathered merely as a precaution, Sigurd,' he said, 'but hatred of your kind is planted in us at our mother's tit. Our churchmen nurture that hatred and it grows strong.' He looked skyward. 'For my own part I wonder at the inconsistency of a God of peace who commands us to kill other men, even unbelievers.' Then he stroked his fair moustache. 'We might wonder how much is God's will and how much is our own.'





But Sigurd had no patience for the ealdorman's musings. He raised his battered shield and stepped forward, and there was violence in the movement. Ealdred's bodyguard moved forward too, but his lord muttered something to him and reluctantly the man took a step back. The English waited, deaf to the insults Sigurd's men hurled at them, their shadowed faces anxious or fearful.





'Whether you believe it was not my intention to attack you means nothing to me, heathen,' Ealdred spat, abandoning diplomacy now, the shadows sharp on his lean face, 'but for your own sake and for the sake of those who call you lord, don't be a fool. I know the empty ambitions of your black hearts. The thirst for fame consumes your people, Sigurd, twisting their sight and leading them to folly, to death and destruction for the sake of stories.' The ealdorman smiled emptily, but his men remained tight-mouthed, expectant of battle. 'Make no mistake, Sigurd, you will all die here' – he threw out his uninjured arm – 'in this Christian land. And your deaths will have earned you nothing of the renown you crave.'





'We will take our fame to the Far-Wanderer's hall, where our fathers will know our faces and drink with us again,' Sigurd called. 'For Valhöll!' he roared in Norse, bringing a cheer from his men.





But Ealdred shook his head slowly, and in that small gesture there was enormous power, perhaps enough to make even Sigurd doubt his own words. I was afraid of Ealdred in that moment, because I knew he possessed a sharp mind, sharp enough to influence men, for how else had he got so many to break themselves against Sigurd's shieldwall, his skjaldborg?





'Sigurd, your men are loyal, I can see that. They are brave and they have a talent for death.' He grimaced. 'Our widows will attest to that.' He nodded at Olaf and Svein the Red. 'They will follow you to the grave and I commend you for them. But you can give them more than six feet of English soil. Hear what I have to offer you.' He raised both arms then. 'If my words fall short, if my offer stinks like pig shit . . .' he shrugged, 'we will kill each other and join our fathers.'





'Fuck you!' Olaf yelled, and some of the other Norsemen echoed the sentiment.





But Sigurd was a jarl. And a jarl wants more for his men than a hole in the worm-riddled mud of his enemy's land.





'Speak, Englishman,' Sigurd commanded, as though Ealdred were his slave, and Ealdred, because he had the mind of a fox and because he knew the tides of fortune had shifted to his advantage, bowed his head obediently and took another step forward.





'You have come upon a rare opportunity, Sigurd. I expect you have stolen many passable trinkets from Christians who could not defend themselves, but they are nothing compared to what you stand to gain if you do the king's will.'