Free God of Vengeance by Giles Kristian

busy counting Slagfid’s arm rings and each of the swines claiming to be the one who gave him his death wound. As for men thinking you are a fish, you are the first one I have seen that breathes so well out of the water. You should be thanking your little brother for hooking you,’ he said, nodding towards Sigurd. ‘Between Sigurd and Thorvard they have given you something you could never buy.’
    Sorli was drunk and tired and he dragged a hand across his mouth leaving a snarl of teeth in its wake. ‘What are you talking about? Do not give me riddles, Uncle.’
    ‘Thór’s bollocks, boy, you got two portions of prettiness but they left plenty of room in your skull.’ Sorli batted the insult away and mumbled some curse into his golden beard but Olaf waded on. ‘You would have died in that red slaughter, as would I and Jarl Harald. We would have been hacked to bloody pieces and that maggot Randver would have pissed on our corpses and had his godi work some foul spells to keep us from ever seeing the Allfather’s hall. At best you would have been given half a line in Slagfid’s saga tale. Maybe a whole line in your father’s if the skald was thirsty and your kin was within earshot.’ Sorli did not like this but neither did he deny it, instead turning his gaze back to the dying fire and the secrets within it. ‘This golden thing your brothers gave you is revenge, Sorli. Or the chance at it.’ Olaf said this loud enough for other ears in the hall to hear and Sigurd sensed folk look up, never so wrecked by grief that they could not see the warming flicker of vengeance somewhere up ahead. Svein sat a little way off smouldering like a pyre. Beside him was one of his father’s old shields, Styrbiorn’s first helmet and a long-axe and no one thought it strange to see the young giant with his father’s war gear.
    ‘Who would get the blood price from Randver for all our dead brothers if not us? Even Harald knows this is the clot of honey in the sour drink of this thing, though he’s still too pride-stung to admit it and give Sigurd here the arm ring he deserves.’
    ‘Thorvard and Sigmund would want us to spill Randver’s guts, brother,’ Sigurd said. ‘King Gorm’s too for his treachery.’
    Sorli looked up, his blue eyes boring into Sigurd’s. ‘Then there will be no more watching from the shore for you, brother. You will stand in the wall of shields and together we will feed the ravens.’
    Sigurd nodded, feeling the weight of eyes on him and not just eyes but expectations too, for he had seen two of his brothers killed the day before and they demanded retribution.
    ‘Good,’ Olaf said, chewing his bread and nodding to himself. ‘The fucking mist clears.’
    But before any of them could say more a figure appeared at the hall’s threshold, the light behind him painting his features black though Sigurd knew it was Solveig by his bronze cloak brooch, the ends of the broken ring representing a ship’s prow and stern.
    ‘Olaf! You in here, Olaf?’ There was an edge to
Little-Elk
’s skipper’s voice that had Sigurd’s hand on his spear.
    ‘I’m here, man. What is it?’ Olaf growled, then put the mug to his mouth and emptied it.
    ‘You had better come and see for yourself,’ Solveig replied and with that turned and disappeared back the way he had come.
    Sigurd and the others followed Olaf out into the day and stood blinking in the golden morning light that flooded across the hill and the dwellings around it and made a glittering hoard of the sea to the south and east.
    ‘Biflindi’s men,’ Svein spat and Sigurd felt his own hackles rise with the thought of violence.
    ‘Come to calm the waters, I’d wager,’ Olaf said as they walked towards the strangers who were already in conversation with Jarl Harald and Asgot. It was telling that Harald had not invited the men into his hall and this would have been taken as an insult to King Gorm. Though they were past such insults now.
    ‘These men come