Read God of Vengeance for Free Online Page A

happened he might win the battle before King Gorm even had to draw his sword.
    Back in the pine wood behind them a raven was croaking and Sigurd felt Svein’s eyes on him because Svein knew Sigurd attached meaning to such things. But Sigurd kept his eyes riveted on the battle below them and Svein let the thing go before giving it voice. Yet the raven kept up its protest, a gurgling croak rising in pitch that had Sigurd thumbing the runes he had etched into his spear’s shaft. Not that the spell, a charm to make the spear fly straight and true, would do much to ward off the ill-omen that Sigurd heard in the bird’s call, tangled like a sharp fish hook in a ball of twine. Not unless he could spear the bird itself, which Asgot would tell him was the same thing as spitting in Óðin’s one eye.
    And yet the gods favoured Harald and King Gorm still, for Slagfid had cracked another skull and the dead were piling up at
Fjord-Wolf
’s prow. Olaf was beside the champion now, thrusting his spear at enemy shields, knocking men back into their companions whilst further back men on both sides yelled encouragement and waited their turn to enter the fray.
    On
Reinen
’s port side
Little-Elk
was holding its own, the shieldwalls evenly matched, but on the steerboard side the men of
Sea-Eagle
were enduring a steel-storm from the crews of two more of Randver’s longships which had rowed into position, one prow on to
Sea-Eagle
, the other coming alongside and grappling the vessels together even as Harald’s men took axes to the ropes or tried to fend the ship off with oars.
    Wielding his own hafted axe, Svein’s father Styrbiorn was a giant at
Sea-Eagle
’s prow, looming there like Thór himself, roaring his challenge at the enemy stuffed in the thwarts of the prow coming at him head on.
    Svein reached out again, clamping a great hand on Sigurd’s shoulder, and Sigurd winced at the strength in it but he did not pull away as his friend growled encouragement at his father in the strait below.
    ‘Your father is as good as Slagfid,’ Sigurd said, which might have been true had Styrbiorn not too often been too drunk to stand so that no one really knew how useful he was in a fight any more. Not that anyone, Slagfid included, would have the balls to tell Styrbiorn that. Since Svein’s mother Sibbe had died the only thing that could pull a smile out of Styrbiorn was mead or murder.
    He killed the first man cleanly enough, with an overhead swing similar to Slagfid’s but using the heel of the axe rather than the blade to crush the helmeted head of the man opposite. Now, though, it seemed he could hear his son cheering him on from the cliff above, or perhaps it was Loki who was whispering in his ear the promise of great saga tales, for Styrbiorn pissed all caution into the wind and clambered up onto the sheer strake, his left arm wrapped round
Sea-Eagle
’s prow beast, his right hand gripping the long-axe low on the shaft. With incredible strength – and no little balance for a drunkard, Sigurd thought – he stepped along the sheer strake and, roaring, scythed the axe round in a great horizontal arc, the blunt side hammering into a man’s shield and knocking him and others down in a heap of chaos. Then he brought the axe up and over for another swing, this time deftly spinning the haft in his hand so that the blade flew first, slicing a man’s head from his neck and seeing others cower down behind their shields.
    Those on the cliff roared their approval, none louder than Svein himself, and those aboard
Sea-Eagle
hammered their shields to let
Reinen
’s crew know that they were not alone in this fight.
    ‘I have never seen such a thing!’ the greybeard exclaimed.
    Neither had Sigurd ever heard of such. It was the stuff of fireside tales, but so was the next part of it, for all worthwhile tales have their sour parts. Styrbiorn should have climbed down then and got behind a shield for a breath or two and been happy with the fame he had