Blood Will Follow (28 page)

Goran was suddenly there beside him, unnervingly quiet. The old man looked more spirited now. There was a glint in his eye. “So. South, is it? Tell me again what for?”

“We’re going to find a friend of mine—Norse bastard, thick as half an ox and twice as strong. Scary, too. And then he and I are going to go and find another man and take off his head.”

“Up north, then?”

“Yes.”

“And you’re sure that’s the best way to do it?”

Ulfar looked at Goran and frowned. “Why? Got any other ideas?”

There was something different about Goran this morning. He looked oddly sure of himself. “As a matter of fact, I have. I’ve been thinking about this.”

“Oh, go on, then. I’m listening.”

“Have you considered that Jolawer Scot might not be the best man to lead the Svear?” Goran said.

“What? Why not?”

“He’s young. He’s green. He’ll have to rely on men who are old and cautious because they’ve learned to appreciate long life and soft furs. He’ll have neither the drive nor the fearlessness of someone a bit older. Someone proven in battle. A born leader.”

“I don’t know—he’s untested, but he’s his father’s son. There’ll be some steel to him yet.”

“Unless there’s steel in him,” Goran said.

Ulfar remembered moments later that his lower jaw belonged above his chest. “What . . . ?”

Goran turned to Ulfar. “Think about it! You are a man of honor. You have seen battle, unlike that squeaky pip. You are a good man and true. You are just the right man to lead the Svear, proud and powerful, against that bastard King Olav! Turn around and take what you’re owed!”

“Are you drunk? Alfgeir Bjorne would have my head off before I got close. And why should I? No one owes me anything.”

The mist curled around his rock, around his legs. Ulfar glanced down. Then he turned around.

Arnar and Inga were nowhere to be seen. The landscape looked wrong somehow, like someone’s
idea
of a location more than an actual place.

He turned to Goran.

“What’s happening? Who . . . who are you?”

Slowly, uncomfortably, Goran changed before his eyes. The man in the saddle was young, dark-haired, and handsome. A sweep of black hair sat above a thin, sharp nose. Green eyes sparkled with mischief. When he smiled, Ulfar half-expected fangs.

“Me? It is not important. I am a friend.”

“I doubt it. Where’s Goran?”

The stranger’s smile was tinged with sadness that looked almost genuine. “Poor Goran was not as young and fast as he thought he was. He killed the Norseman, but he took a blade in the belly. We met last night and made a deal. Don’t worry about him. I am here to give you a great opportunity to join me and reap rewards you couldn’t dream of.”

Ulfar looked at the man. “Last time I got fed horseshit like that, it was by an old scrawny fucker with one bad eye.”

The stranger’s skin turned a dark shade of blue as he hissed and bared a row of big, sharp teeth. The next moment he was back to
normal. “A misunderstanding. Ulfar Thormodsson, you are destined for great things. Surely you’ve been told this?”

A smile spread over Ulfar’s face. “Yes. Yes I have.”

“And—”

“And if you want your belly opened up so you can see what you look like inside, do tell me again.”

The stranger looked him up and down. “You don’t presume to refuse my offer, do you? I can make you rich beyond your—” The breath stopped in his throat and he looked in astonishment at the hilt of Ulfar’s sword as it inched closer to his breastbone.

“I just told you this would happen.” Ulfar said. “I’ve had enough of being toyed with.”

The stranger looked up at Ulfar—and smiled back at him. A thin line of blood leaked out of the corner of his mouth. Another line formed around the wound in his chest, blossoming out all too quickly. “We’re not done, you and I,” he whispered. “Not done at all.” The stranger’s face . . . withered, like a field in winter. The hair faded and turned gray at the temples, then at the top.

And suddenly it was Goran staring at Ulfar in surprise. He tried to speak, but nothing happened. Only blood, pulsing faster and faster as his life faded away. The sword stuck obscenely out of the old guard’s back, caked in blackening, thickening blood. Ulfar dropped the hilt of the blade as if it was on fire and whirled around.

Arnar stood beside Inga with his sword drawn. “Step closer, boy, and I’ll gut you twice over,” he growled. “I don’t know what’s got into you but you’re not coming near us.” He muttered something to Inga, who shook her head without looking at him.

Ulfar opened his mouth, but nothing came out. All he could think of was that voice.

Not done, you and I.

Behind him, Goran coughed, twice. The sickly, faintly metallic smell of blood drifted past.

Ulfar blinked—and Inga was there, right in front of him, thunder in her eyes.

The slap was fast and hard enough to make him taste blood.

“Remember who you are,” she said, looking him straight in the eye. “And get your head right. When you can be trusted, come find me.”

She turned and walked toward Arnar; she mounted her horse with ease.

Ulfar watched them ride away without a second glance. He heard Goran’s body fall to the ground, but he didn’t turn.

The mist faded. The clouds disappeared. A bird even sang to him from a nearby tree, but Ulfar didn’t note it. Instead he methodically drew the sword from Goran’s body, ignored the smell of the dead man, and set to cleaning the blade with long strokes of a rough rag.

“It’s important to clean your blade, Ulfar. If you just bang it back in the scabbard, the blood will make it stick, and then you’re dead,” he muttered. He wondered whether Uncle Hrothgar had sat like this, on a stone, when he’d taught him about blades for the first time. Whether he’d looked down and seen the spark of heroism in a child’s eye. Ulfar tried to remember how old his big uncle had been, and couldn’t. That was another life, another world.

So what was this life, then?

He looked at the sword he was stroking. It was clean and had been for a while.

Easing the blade into the scabbard and looking down at Goran’s corpse, he said, “I’m sorry, old man. If I find him again, I’ll get him properly.”

The horses had shied away from the blood, but they were old enough not to stray far. Ulfar sent a bundle of silent thanks to Alfgeir Bjorne as he saddled up and headed south. He looked over his shoulder at Goran’s corpse and urged his mare into a run.

“Can you smell it?”

The horse didn’t reply, but Ulfar didn’t mind. Two days on the road, and he was starting to think he was alone in the world. Now, however, there was something in the air: something fresh and cold to replace the smothering smell of dank pine and wet earth. He’d
swapped horses once a day and kept up a good pace, but he still felt as if the forest would never end. Now the trees ahead were thinning out, and there was something up ahead.

The world of wood he’d been living in dropped away from his eyes, and he gripped the reins so hard that the horse whinnied in protest as his vision filled with blue. The path inclined down to the sandy banks of the water, and the fresh breeze made him sit up straight in the saddle. Ulfar shivered.

It was the big lake. He’d heard of it but never seen it before. A full morning’s crossing by boat, it sliced the country near in half, if the stories were true.

But there was something else as well. His stomach detected it before his brain caught up.

Somewhere close, someone was cooking fish.

Under him, the horse tossed its head and snorted, bringing Ulfar back to his senses. “Easy,” he muttered to the mare, “easy. Let’s . . . give you both a break.”

He dismounted and led the horses into the forest, far enough so he couldn’t see the path anymore. He tethered them to trees close enough to patches of brownish grass, and they accepted their fate with resigned calm and set to eating what could be eaten.

Ulfar was stiff and sore, but the walk back toward the path and the lake limbered him up. The smell was stronger now, and in the distance he could see tendrils of smoke rising lazily.

A smart man would pick his way through the forest and observe from cover, he thought. A smart man would get a feel for whoever started that fire.

But there was a familiar tingling sensation somewhere in the back of his head, so disobeying all his instincts, Ulfar strode out onto the lakefront and started walking very slowly toward the source of the smell. Soon enough, he saw shapes huddled around a line of smoke just past the curve of the coastline. He glanced inland and noticed the two scouts he would have run straight into if he’d gone sneaking, and he smiled to himself.

He inched closer, making sure his hands were visible at all times, but when he was within shouting range he wondered whether he needed to be so careful after all. The men huddled around the half-buried fire looked cold and weary. There were twelve of them. A particularly bony man sat by the fire, turning speared fish this way and that, flicking them onto the broken shields that appeared to be serving as plates.

“Greetings to the fire,” Ulfar shouted the moment he thought he could be heard.

A couple of heads turned, but no one rose to greet him.

Taking their silence as consent, Ulfar sidled closer. The smell of the roasting fish was almost too much to bear.

He was within spear-throwing distance when he saw the injuries.

Every man had them: heads wrapped in dirty, blood-caked cloth, broken forearms crudely splinted, a leg hacked off at the knee. The gaunt cook looked up at him. He flashed a quick signal to the scouts behind Ulfar’s back. The reply must have set his mind at ease. “Make way, fuckers,” he growled at his fellow men. “Guest rights.” To Ulfar, he said, “Welcome, traveler, to my court. I am Lord Alfrith. We’re a bit short on the furniture at the moment, but we’ve got fish.”

“I haven’t found a bench that tastes better than a well-roasted trout,” Ulfar replied. “I am honored, Lord Alfrith.” That raised a few smirks. The gaunt man nodded and gestured to a space that had appeared between two hunched and hairy fighters.

“Where are you coming from, then?” Alfrith said as he deftly speared another fish to go on the fire.

“Uppsala,” Ulfar said. On his left, someone hawked and spat into the fire, making a loud hiss.

“Oh? And what did King Cushion say?” Alfrith snarled. “Is he going to meet Forkbeard the day after he learns to wipe his own ass?”

“He’s scared to,” a man with a badly scarred face chimed in. “He might hurt himself. Wiping your own ass is plenty dangerous.”

“You’d know, Uthgar!” Alfrith said.

“Besides, Alfgeir’s teats give mead these days, so he’s fine where he is,” another with a broken arm added. There was laughter around the fire, but it wasn’t the happy kind.

Ulfar chose his words with care. “Jolawer is young,” he said, “and like with the wenches, you don’t necessarily want to let a young man at the fighting. He’d be over and done in three strokes.” There was no laughter, but he saw the twinkle of amusement here and there. “No, just like the fucking, you want to leave the fighting to real men.” Some of the wounded fighters were nodding now. “I think Alfgeir Bjorne will protect the boy, but I don’t believe he’ll hold him back when the time comes. And when it does, they’ll know that Forkbeard was held by Lord Alfrith and his men when they needed it the most. I knew King Erik, and he did not beget a fool.” He had their undivided attention now. All he needed was to time it right. “The old goat could have fucking done it ten years earlier, though.”

The laughter that ripped around the fire was genuine now, a release of anger and pressure. Not for the first time, Ulfar thought of old Sven.
Make them like you
, he’d said. Not bad advice, that.

“And we do not need to establish the fact that Forkbeard was born from a thorny fart and a bad idea. So what is Old Shithead up to?” Ulfar continued.

“He’s raiding the plains, mostly,” Splint-arm said. “But he’s being quite clever about it.”

“He’s split his men up into groups of fifteen to twenty and has them spread out over the largest area possible,” Uthgar added. “They strike, burn farms, kill, rape, and run away. No battlefields, no big fights.”

“All we do is run after war bands,” Alfrith said. “And all of my men are worried that their homes are being hit next.”

“We’ve nailed a couple of them, though,” Splint-arm said. There were nods and smiles of grim satisfaction around the fire. “Nailed a couple of them right proper. And we would have got the last group, too. Except for that one fucker,” he added. “I told you he was bad news.”

“Oh, don’t you fucking start,” Half-face snapped. “All week:
told you, told you, told you
. Well, you tell me about him again, and I’ll set fire to your arm.”

“Oh yeah? And I’ll bang it on your good side,” Splint-arm shot back. “And you’ll thank me for it.”

Half-face made to stand up.

“Shut up, both of you!” Alfrith snapped. He swung the stick with the half-cooked fishes at them, pointing at each in turn. “There’s nothing you can do when you’re up against one of those.”

Ulfar’s chest felt like it was sinking into itself. He had to sit on his hands and bite his lip.

“Fucking fucker,” Half-face muttered. He looked across the fire at Splint-arm and mumbled something. The other warrior nodded back. Argument settled.

“I’ve never seen anything like it,” a man with a stump-leg said. “I mean, who fights with hammers?”

Alfrith turned to Ulfar. “Forgive me, traveler.” He grabbed a piece of shield and slapped a portion of silvery fish onto it. The blackened skin cracked open, revealing the steaming pink flesh. “Here you go.” Ulfar nodded, still biting his tongue. “Will you camp with us?”

“I am afraid not,” Ulfar said, fighting hard not to show his excitement. “I think I’ll need to be on my way very soon.”

SOUTHWEST
COAST
OF
SWEDEN

LATE
NOVEMBER,
AD
996

It was less of a beach and more of a strip of sand spotted with yellowing tufts of dried grass. At Audun’s back, the sea was a dense blue-gray, and thickening clouds signaled a storm.

“Hate ships,” Thormund muttered. “Fuckin’ hate ’em. Ain’t right. I’ve got legs for walking, not fucking gills for swimming.”

“That’s why the smart ones thought to make boats,” Mouthpiece mumbled. His jaw was still a mess, but he could speak more every day, much to everyone’s misery.

“You go, then,” Thormund snapped. “You go and roll around out there, pissing over the side, spewing every day, for some stinking fish guts. I’ll stay on land, fuck your wife, and steal your horse.”

“Make sure you get that the right way round, old man,” Ustain chimed in from up front, and the men chuckled. “Although, saying that, it would explain some of the kids I saw up north.”

More laughter.

Sweyn Forkbeard’s waifs and strays were massing on the beach. Ustain looked back at them and raised his voice. “Right, you sorry lot!” he said. “We’re going east, then north. The king has a plan, and we’re perfectly placed to make it happen.”

As Ustain continued to shout over the men’s heads, Audun saw Mouthpiece check furtively before sidling back toward him. Someone had learned a lesson or two, then.

“Wanna watch your back, big man,” he mumbled. “Some of them new boys have been staring at us since we got aboard.”

“Well, your face is kind of funny,” Audun said.

“They haven’t been looking at me,” Mouthpiece said.

Audun glanced around, but the men all looked the same. Still, he couldn’t quite dismiss Mouthpiece’s words. On the trip across the channel he’d felt . . .
uneasy
. “Thank you,” he said.

Mouthpiece shrugged and drifted away again.

“. . . so find yourself some running mates and go and break things!” Ustain finished, to cheers from the men.

The soldiers wasted no time splitting into two groups. Audun was left with Mouthpiece, Thormund, Boy, and a handful of the more feeble men from the camp. About sixty yards away, the crew from the old boat stood silently, looking at them.

“Come on, then,” Thormund shouted to them. “You’re with us.”

One by one the crewmen moved toward Audun’s group, but none of them spoke up. Mouthpiece muttered something about “wrong” and “suspicious,” but no one was listening to him.

“What’s the matter? Cod got your tongue?” Thormund said.

The sailors exchanged looks. There were nine of them, ranging from a thick-necked bear of a man to two small, weasel-faced boys who could not be a day older than fourteen. In the middle was the man Audun thought looked familiar.

“Olgeir,” said the man in the middle, followed by a murmur of other names.

“Where are you from, Olgeir?” Thormund said.

“Around,” Olgeir answered.

“Hm. You sound like a Swede. Been sailing much?”

“Yes—left Sweden a long time ago.”

“Fine,” Thormund said. “You want to lead?”

Olgeir shook his head.

“Great.” The old man pointed to Mouthpiece. “That one can’t talk but does when he shouldn’t.” He glanced at Audun. “And that one should but won’t, though he can. I guess I’m in charge,” he concluded, scanning the group with hopeful eyes.

When no one protested, he rolled his eyes and spat. “Off we go, then,” he muttered. “East, then north.”

The sailors turned and started making their way up the bank. On either side the other war bands had already started doing the same.

“Tell you again—watch your back,” Mouthpiece mumbled under his breath as he passed Audun. “I don’t know why, but it looks like some of them boys don’t care for you at all.”

Audun watched the sailors moving up ahead.

“I’m used to it,” he said as he started walking.

The sour smoke of wet, burning thatch rolled over Audun, stuck to his clothes, and bound with his sweat. Screams rang out as Olgeir’s men rounded up the last of the workers behind the farm.

Thormund stood in front of the barn, barring the weasel-faced boys’ way. The smaller of them had his hands full trying to hold on to a skinny young girl in a soiled dress. Tears streamed down her face as she kicked and squirmed in his grasp.

Audun was vaguely aware that his knuckles hurt.

Thormund’s voice came to him like in a dream. “No, you little shits: because she has a father and a brother, and if you take her now they will not stop until they find you.”

“Come on, old man! We’ll let you watch and everything,” the bigger boy said. He was of a height with Thormund.

“No,” Thormund said.

The smaller boy inched up alongside what had to be his brother, still clinging on to the girl. “If you don’t step away right now, you scratchy fart, we’ll let the little bitch go and make sure you have an accident instead.”

Thormund gestured to Audun. “Want to go up against him?”

The boys turned and stared. Audun suddenly felt numb and tired. The people in front of him didn’t look real.

He shrugged and walked away from the surprise in Thormund’s eyes. The boys howled in triumph, and the bigger one pushed the old horse thief to the side.

The girl’s shrieks died down soon enough.

Later, when they were on their way again, Thormund caught up with him. “I don’t need you to save anybody,” he hissed, “but where I come from, you do as your chieftain asks you.”

The buzz from the blood-rage, the fistfights, and the four men he’d knocked down had turned into a dull, throbbing ache. It had been an effort to control it, but he’d managed. Now he just wanted to lie down.

He looked at Thormund. “It doesn’t matter,” he said. “It won’t change them, won’t change her.” He saw, or thought he saw, disgust in the old man’s face, but he didn’t care. “Fate is fate,” he said.

“Well, I hope I don’t need your help when I meet mine,” Thormund said.

Audun thought of the wall, of the blonde woman. “Most of us do, sooner or later.”

The old horse thief saw the look on his face and inched away from him, carefully. “Just saying, it’s a shame about the girl.”

Audun turned and looked ahead, at the gritty road, at the setting sun, at the back of the man in front of him. “It always is,” he said quietly.

After a while, Audun struggled to tell the days apart. They blended one into the other, like blood into water.

The farms were big, or they were small. The farmhands could fight, or they couldn’t. Sometimes they met men who’d seen battle before, steady hands holding rusted swords that had rested for too long in an oilcloth somewhere.

They died like the rest.

He could remember one thing, though: the weasel-faced brothers had suffered a bit of bad luck. They’d dragged a girl behind a bush, but she had a knife on her and managed to stab them both. Mouthpiece wanted to ask how they’d both been stabbed in the back, but Audun stopped him.

Thormund had been in a good mood since.

The warband, now down to eighteen men, had sought refuge in the dense oak forest and now trudged along the path leading through the trees. Up ahead, voices rang out.

“. . . just fucking climb, you lard-ass,” Thormund snapped.

“I’ll step to the side, if you don’t mind,” came Olgeir’s terse reply.

“Suit yourself,” Thormund said.

“What’s going on?” Mouthpiece mumbled.

“Trees across the path,” someone said. “Four of them. Weird that they’ve all fallen in the same—”

The forest came alive with war cries and up front, two men leapt out from the cover of the fallen trees, thrusting spears. Thormund disappeared from view. Metal clanged to their left where Olgeir had stepped into the thicket.

Audun whirled on Boy. “Play dead, face down. Now,” he snapped, and Boy fell as if he’d been smacked on the head. He lay on the ground, head buried in his arms.

The moment after the first attacker had burst out from the thicket by the roadside, Audun reached for his hammers and let go of the world.

Somewhere on the edge of his senses, he felt the retreat. There was a difference in the fighters, the shift from killing rage to fighting for your life.

The hammers rose and fell; bones broke, blood gushed. The stench of voided bowels was all around him, but Audun didn’t mind. He liked the feeling of life as he dealt death, the heightened senses, the pulse of the blood coursing through his veins.

Most of all he liked the control. With every fight he felt more in charge of the fire that coursed through his body: he was stronger, quicker, more powerful. He could hit harder and take more punishment than ever before.

He didn’t notice the wound until much later, when the others had all been seen to. Boy came up to him, concern written on his pale face, and pointed at Audun’s left leg. Puzzled, Audun looked
down. A gash the width of his thumb gaped back at him, crusted over with blood, dirt, and ripped cloth.

“Well, shit,” he said.

A pinpoint of pain spread and bloomed from the wound, coursing up and down. His thigh muscle cramped, and he reeled from the blood loss. His knee buckled, and a fresh wave of pain shot through his leg as he pushed off it to steady himself.

“Easy there, big man,” Olgeir said. The soldier was covered in blood and gore from head to toe but appeared unharmed. “You come over here and get that looked at.”

Something about Olgeir’s voice . . . but the pain in his leg was too bad. Audun limped along to where Mouthpiece was making himself useful patching people up. Three of the soldiers from the camp were dead, as were seven of the attackers.

“They were waiting for us,” Olgeir muttered.

“Fuckin’ rat bastard Swedes,” someone shouted from the path, and Thormund’s bony hand emerged from underneath a tree, shortly followed by his head. A big, blood-caked lump was prominent in the forest of stray white hairs. “Pulled me down and knocked me on the head. Couldn’t even finish the job. Farmers,” he grumbled as he clambered upright. “We got ambushed by fucking farmers.”

“And if it hadn’t been for my men they’d have farmed your bony ass,” Olgeir shouted back. “Now keep your voice down, old man.”

“That’s what your mother said,” Thormund shot back, shambling toward Mouthpiece.

Olgeir smirked. “I think you mean my grandmother. And if it was her, your dick will have been snapped clean off.”

“Speak from experience, do you?” Thormund said.

Wounds and war were forgotten for the moment as the back-and-forth drew a couple of chuckles from the men.

“Mouthpiece! Fresh rags for my grandfather here. It’s the least I can do for him after I fucked his wife!”

Thormund’s grin was visible through the winces of pain. “Fun for the whole family,” he said.

“Well, we are in Svealand,” Olgeir said to cheers from the men. “That’s how they do it in the countryside. Go and get yourself patched up. We’ll see if we can fix the big man, too.”

“What’s with him?” Thormund said.

Olgeir answered, but Audun couldn’t make out the words. The colors drained out of the world around him, and he passed out.

Audun blinked. His leg stung and itched, but he was too weak to scratch it.

“. . . can’t have him limping after us,” a voice whispered, five or six yards away.

“If it weren’t for him we’d all be dead,” another voice replied. Older. Thormund.

“How would you know? Thought you were knocked out?” the first man said. Odd accent. Olgeir.

“Been listening to the men,” Thormund shot back.

“Fine. But he’s not coming with us. He can barely move.”

Audun propped himself up on an elbow.

“Audun,” Thormund said. “How’s the leg?”

“Hurts,” Audun said.

“Can you walk?” Olgeir said.

“Don’t know,” Audun said. He gritted his teeth, bent his leg, put weight on it—and hissed as the pain sparked.

Olgeir looked at Thormund and raised an eyebrow. “We’ll have to hide him until he heals and come back for him. They’ll chase us, not him.”

Thormund scowled. “Fine. Audun, we’ll—”

“I know,” Audun said.

Boy emerged out of the half-light and stood by him as he lay there. He stamped and pointed at the injured man.

Olgeir turned to Thormund. “There you go, then. The kid stays with him.”

“The hell he does,” Audun said.

“You don’t have a say,” Thormund said. “You can’t stand, and you won’t be on your feet for any number of days. You’re going to need
someone to bring you water, find you something to chew—maybe even distract search parties if needed.”

Boy nodded enthusiastically.

Audun scowled and spat. “Fucking stupid,” he muttered, but the decision had been made. Olgeir walked into the shadows to find his men. Thormund went over to where Mouthpiece sat, and Audun could hear them muttering about supplies, bandages, and other practical things.

Boy sat down beside him, looked at the leg wound and raised his eyebrows.

“Yeah, I know it’s not good,” Audun said. “I fucking know.” Boy shrugged, rubbed his cheeks with the knuckles of both hands, and pulled an exaggerated sad face.

Audun stared, incredulous, for a couple of moments. Then, despite the pain, the wet and the cold, he laughed. It was a sharp, rough sound. “You’re right,” he said. “I shouldn’t cry about it. I’m still alive.”