Free God of Vengeance by Giles Kristian Page B

the day before because he had some disease that had turned his right hand into a claw, and though he could fight well enough using his left he could not grip a shield, which made him no good for the shieldwall. ‘I say we slit their throats and throw them into the sea.’
    King Gorm’s two men glanced at each other, their hands falling to their sword hilts, for though they were armed there were still men enough in Skudeneshavn to see the thing done without any trouble at all. And yet gone were the best men, those who had earned their jarl’s silver with their death-work. Men such as Slagfid and Styrbiorn, Thorald and Haki were corpses now and the weight of this hung round Harald’s neck like a quern stone.
    ‘Kill them, Harald,’ Asbjorn said.
    ‘Hold your tongue, Asbjorn,’ Jarl Harald barked, also shooting Sorli a look that warned him to behave himself. For what choice did the jarl have but to accept the king’s summons, for that was what it truly was.
    ‘We will come for our dead,’ Harald said. ‘Tomorrow so that we might get them in the ground or the flame before they begin to stink. As for the horn used to measure each man’s weregeld, I will bring my own drinking horn so your king had better have enough silver.’ The man did not mention the
your king
in that and was wise not to. Instead he paid his respects again, turned and walked off, his silent companion wafting alongside like a bad smell.
    When the men had mounted their ponies and were making their way through the gates in the low palisade Olaf looked at Harald and the jarl raised one brow.
    ‘So we’re going to walk up into Avaldsnes and jump into whatever pot of piss Randver has bubbling over his hearth?’ Olaf said.
    ‘What choice do we have?’ Harald asked him. ‘Come, Uncle, I am all ears if you can see another way out of this.’
    Beneath the bush of his beard Olaf’s face had the look of a skipper who sees grey rocks, a slack tide and a green crew. ‘The dog’s bollock was happy to watch us slaughtered while he sat on his arse out of harm’s way. Likely as not he sent those two ships to help finish us off. And now we’re to pull down our breeks and bend over for him?’
    ‘Better to go there armed and half expecting a fight than to sleep with one eye open for the next five years half expecting to be burnt alive with Eik-hjálmr’s beams crushing our wives and daughters. King Gorm or Randver, or both together, could bring their ships and enough spears to make short work of it even if we knew they were coming.’ This got some
ayes
, for no man wants a bad death, the one that sneaks up from behind.
    ‘I’ll not get my throat cut in my own bed,’ Asbjorn said.
    ‘And no man is going to murder my wife and children and swive my bed slaves while I draw breath,’ a man named Frothi said, his hand going to the Thór’s hammer at his neck.
    ‘Let us walk up to the king and look in his eyes, our backs straight and our sword arms ready,’ Jarl Harald said. ‘And we’ll soon enough know where the thread of this thing ends.’
    ‘In a pool of blood is where it ends, lord,’ Asgot sneered from where he sat atop a nearby mound pawing through the innards of a cat. He was completely naked, his knotty body a mass of scars and strange shapes that were stained into his skin, and his hands were bright with the creature’s blood.
    Harald turned and looked up at the man, shielding his eyes against the sun’s glare. ‘Is this pool of blood in Avaldsnes?’ he asked. Sigurd knew his father did not always like what his godi had to say but he always listened. Everyone else listened too, faces turned up to the small hill, the women’s swollen, anguished eyes slitted now against a dawn that saw them widows.
    Asgot held something purple and glistening between finger and thumb and put it to his lips then glared down at his jarl.
    ‘No, lord. I see fire at Avaldsnes but no blood.’
    ‘Funeral pyres for the dead perhaps,’ Sorli suggested. ‘We