Viking Fire

by Justin Hill

Genres: Historical Fiction

Synopsis

A Times Book of the Year 'A literary, intelligent read from a masterful storyteller'

In 1035, a young fifteen year old Viking is dragged wounded from the battle. Left for dead, for the next twenty years his adventures lead him over mountains, down the length of Russia and ultimately to Constantinople and the Holy City of Jerusalem.

Drawn into political intrigue he will be the lover of Empresses, the murderer of an emperor; he will hold the balance of power in the Byzantine Empire in his hands, and then give it all up for a Russian princess and the chance to return home and lead his own people, where he must fight the demons of his past, his family and his countrymen in a long and bitter war for revenge and power.

Told in his own voice, this is the astonishing true story of the most famous warrior in all Christendom: Harald Hardrada, the last Viking.

Release date: September 22, 2016

Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group

Print pages: 400

Sample

Epistola ad Ingegerd, from Ealdred, Archbishop 

York, 1069 

To the most excellent Ingegerd, Queen of the Danes, I thank you for your letter and the kind words for my brothers, which meant more to me than polished gold or well-cut jewels. As to your question, the answer is yes. I do know the resting place of your father King Harald’s bones.

We have kept them hidden, here, in our Minster, all these years, since calamity came to our land, in the shape of William, Duke of Normandy, whom God has raised over us to punish us for our sins.

In the week I spent with him, your father kept me close to his side. From a king more famous for his prowess as a warrior, I was expecting a bluff and ill-educated man, but I was surprised. He talked expansively of his life, and he was not the brute that we had feared. He was learned, and wise, and had not wasted his time among the Greeks. He missed, I think, the company of educated men and he sought me out often in the five days we spent together. Sometimes on a journey, but more often in the evening, when the fires were lit, and the darkness thrown back for a while.

He was not a young man, and perhaps suspected that his time was short, and wanted to get everything said.

‘I understand the Northumbrians well enough, but tell me of the Saxons, and the Mercians. What are their laws and customs?’

I answered his questions as honestly as I might, and even in a short time a brotherly feeling sprang up between us. He had travelled more widely than any man I know. Even as far as the Middle Sea, which the Ancients called the Mediterranean. He talked of founding a monastery at the city he had just founded.

‘I want monks and a stone minster, and land to support it all. And a library!’ he said. ‘You must have a library here. How many books?’

‘Twenty-seven,’ I said.

I listed them, and halfway through he sat forward in wonder. ‘You know, in Micklegard there are libraries which have hundreds of books.’

‘I have seen the same,’ I said. ‘In Rome.’

‘You have been to Rome?’ He sat back. ‘I was at Rome. And Micklegard. And Jerusalem.’

I was filled with wonder. ‘You were at the Holy City?’

He nodded.

‘What did you do there?’

He laughed. ‘You would not believe me if I told you.’

We sat, each of us reliving the wonder that a room for books brought. He wanted a library and a scriptorium, and I volunteered the names of a few young monks who I thought would be interested in helping to bring the light of learning and God to the Norse. He asked questions about the amount of land needed, where the monks would come from, and whether they should follow the Eastern Church, or the Church of Rome.

I said that we were educated and honest and followed the Lord in all his ways.

‘The Greek priests said the same,’ he said.

‘But we follow the Rule of St Benedict.’

‘What is this rule?’

‘Quia tunc vere sanctimoniales sunt,’ I quoted. Whosoever lives by the labour of their hands, as our fathers and the apostles did, then are they truly monks.

‘I too follow the Rule of St Benedict,’ he said.

I was surprised, and I think it showed. He held out his hands, crossed with old scars, other men’s blood rimming his nails. ‘I have lived all my life by these.’

‘I do not think St Benedict meant the labour of fighting,’ I said.

‘No?’

‘No. I mean, he wanted men to work and grow and heal.’

He sat forward and shook his head at me. ‘If we were all healers, who would protect the weak? Or punish the heathens? Or uphold the law against wicked men?’

I said nothing, and he sat back.

‘That is what I have done,’ he said. ‘All my life. My first battle was against the Devil.’

‘You mean temptation?’

‘No,’ he said, suddenly serious. ‘Lucifer himself.’

‘Did you win?’ I asked.

He sat back and looked at me as if I was joking. ‘No, of course not. Only God can beat the Devil.’

In drawing up this History (by which I mean a true account) I have been working from three sources: my own memories; the memories of others (which were sometimes in conflict with my own), and the notes that I took at the time when your father and I started work on what we thought would be a hagiography of his brother, St Olaf, and then quickly seemed to point towards a secondary work, which would deal with his life separately.

Over the last three months two of my best scribes have made a complete copy of the original for your library. It was only in the making of the work that I recalled some incidents which needed more explanation or comment. Rather than scrape the vellum clear, and delay the sending of this work for yet another season, I have added these as marginalia, or inserted extra leaves, whichever proved less troublesome. In a few cases, where it was impossible to know what had been thought or imagined at a certain time, I have followed the example of greater chronicallers, such as Herodotus, who furnished tales that seemed to fit.

The places I have invented, I hope these will do the work of history and that you will not find them too distracting.

Your father was a storyteller who commanded men’s attention. I have tried to tell his story in his own words, starting with the moment he found me, lying among the dead on the battlefield of Fulford Gate.

 

Harald Hardrada: Here, man, give me your hand. I will not kill you.

Look men. See what we have found. An archbishop. What a thing to find on a battlefield, and untouched. God is with you, I see.

The Lord is not with your army though. See, your lord, Earl Edwin, has hitched up his skirts and is running for the gate. I do not think he will make it. The one leading the pursuit is Rolf the Bald. Great gangly legs. He never stops, that man. His father was the same. Not a patch of hair once they turned thirty.

Do you want to stay down there in that ditch? Someone will mistake you for a corpse. They will use your head as a stepping stone. That’s it, take my hand. Come, it’s only blood, and it’s neither of ours.

Push old red-cloak off your legs. His hour has come and gone. Do you know him? Last night he probably sat on Earl Edwin’s benches and bragged how he would throw us back into the sea, like fish. This morning he sat in Edwin’s hall and broke his fast, marched along the Scarborough Road, stopped at this ford, and readied himself for battle. An hour ago he drove off his horse, far back from the battle, clenched his shield grip, crossed himself and taught the men next to him, bade them be not frightened.

And then I came.

Poor old red-cloak. He should have stayed abed. All these corpses should. They could have grown old and tiresome and bored their grandchildren with tales of their youth. Even now this man’s wife stands a few leagues away. She stands at the door of her longhouse. The green acres of Northumbria stretch out before her. There is a chill in the wind. The wheat is in, but something troubles her. She does not know if the battle has happened or not. She sniffs, shuffles her worries: has the earl made peace, why are the pigs restless under the beech trees, where is that boy?

Her husband’s seed has quickened in her womb, and she thinks of the last two children that they buried during Lent. This new child will be born with the lambs at Easter. Behind her his daughter is sitting in the light of the smoke hole, learning spindle-work. She cannot concentrate because of the two kittens that are pouncing from under her stool. The white-spotted one climbs up her skirts.

In the yard the slave girl picks a blade of dry summer grass from the milk bucket. It fell from her sleeve as she walked, the bucket slopping against her left leg. Watching her from down the field is this man’s son. He is sitting with his back to a beech tree. He is angry because he thinks himself old enough to fight, and he resents his father for leaving him behind.

‘Look after your mother,’ was the last thing his father told him, and that son fumbles with those words, twists them in his mind, like the ends of a straw rope. He picks long grass stems to chew. The outer sheaths are dry, but the inside is still wet and green. The sap is bitter. He chews the ends flat. He tosses the grass like a javelin into the stabbing forest light about him. The first beech leaf falls. It drops at his foot, bright as a new-struck coin. He does not know it, but if that boy was here, he would be dead as well. Trodden three bodies deep into the mud. And here his father lies, mouth open to take his last breath.

Look! Your earl’s huscarls still want to die for him. Three of them have drawn up a shieldwall to block the pursuit. They are young men. They have lost their spears. Their swords flash silver as they draw them. Two of them have steel helms. The other is dark. He lets his locks fall free. The wind catches them. They do not stand a chance of course. See the giant advancing on them? The one with the Russian shield? That is Grimketel. He was with me in Micklegard. He’s a miserable bastard. I have seen him kill three and look for a fourth. Men think because he is so big he will rage at them, but see, he is as cunning as a fox. Just watch.

There.

It is done. I told you.

Kings are often right.

I hope they made peace with God.

It seems your earl has lived to see the sunset. Even Rolf has come to a halt. Much closer to the fences and the archers will feather him. He turns and sees behind him the others are stooping to pull off the gold armbands and pick silver-hilted swords from the hands of men who should have used them better.

I have been in his place many times. The battle is won and the fury abates and you find yourself standing in a field of treasure and lesser men who lagged behind are bent over like women at harvest time. Look, they’re already at work cutting off rings, unwinding belts, strapping on dead men’s swords. It is messy business. Your hands get much bloodier than this. Here, give me your cloak. It’s wet enough.

There. Now my hands are clean. That is what Pontius Pilate said, did he not?

Do your sins weigh on you?

Mine do not weigh on me. But this mail coat does. Christ’s balls! I used to wear it all day without thinking. I used to sleep in it. But fifty winters take their toll. Mail hangs heavy on old men’s shoulders. See the silver here, I took that from Micklegard. The belt from Rome. This hem was woven by Sicilian nuns for me, because I saved them from the heathen. She is a fine coat of mail, is she not?

I call her Emma.

My brother, Olaf, was king of Norway.

When I was a boy, and the winter nights were long and cold, and the storm would put its mouth to the smoke hole, and blow long mournful notes, then we would all gather close to the fire, shoulder to shoulder, our backs to the darkness, hands spread to the flames, as the tale-spinner spun.

I would sit on my mother’s lap, wrapped inside her cloak, and dream-listen, half in this world, half in the world of gods and giants and matchless men who died rather than submit. Blue and purple flames would lick slowly at the seasoned, shadowed hearth-logs, rising amber into the darkness, and I always imagined myself grown-up to be my brother’s war-hound, his shield in battle, his most loyal warrior.

In my mind’s eye I could see it all. I would share the ale-horn with him, I would stand at his back when battle came; and when all about us were slain, I was the one who would stand back to back with him and take the blows that were meant for him in my own flesh, and I would die defending him, and my name would always be remembered as King Olaf’s brother, Harald.

 

My country is Uppland, on the Northern Way.

Norveyr, we call it. Norway, in your tongue. My father was chief of Uppland. My brother Olaf gathered a great treasure from England and France in the years before my birth. My earliest memory of him was when I was five, or six. My brother Halfdan was carving runes into the church door with his eating knife. I was lookout, but I saw nothing because I was watching Halfdan work.

The note of the household had changed. Even Halfdan paused.

‘What is it?’ he said.

I did not know.

My mother was shouting. She was calling my name. ‘Har-ald!’

I should not have helped Halfdan. I knew I would get a beating. Then she came around the hall by the pigsty and saw me standing as guilty as a sheep-thief.

‘Harald!’ she shouted. ‘What are you doing?’

‘Nothing,’ I said.

She pointed across the fields to where my father was helping out with the farmhands. ‘Olaf is coming!’

I did not understand at first.

‘Quick!’ she shouted. ‘The king! Go fetch your father!’

Her orders rang out as she marched about the homestead. ‘Saddle the horses with the gilded saddle. Scrub the benches. Scour the beakers. Bring the ale, woman!’ She set us all into a fluster, and I ran to find our father, excited as a dog, or a spring lamb.

The dogs were barking by the time I found my father standing by the side of the field, looking at his pale mare. The north wind stirred her plaited mane and tail as she bent to tear the turf.

I called out ‘Father!’ and he turned in the way he had, of almost wondering who you were and why you were disturbing him, and went back to his farmhands.

‘Lame again,’ one my father’s men said as I caught my breath. The man clearly thought she should be cut up and fed to the dogs, but my father was a kind man.

‘Give her a week,’ he said. ‘And then keep her from cart work till the shearing is done.’

He looked up at the clouds, to see if this was a good time to shear. I tugged his sleeve. ‘Father,’ I said. ‘Mother says that Olaf is coming! She says you must come. His ships are in the fjord.’

I tugged again, and when he turned to me I could see he was unhappy with being disturbed.

‘Tell Mother I’m coming.’

 

I ran through the June grass. It was as tall as my waist. I was laughing, and shouting Olaf’s name over and over, though it meant nothing to me then. Children are like puppies, they excite easily. It is all fresh to them, who have seen so little.

When I got back to the hall my mother had rolled up her sleeves and she was shouting at my eldest full-blood brother, Guttorm, to clean his shoes and brush the chaff from his hair.

Halfdan had slunk away, but she saw me and speared me with a shout. ‘There you are!’ She marched across and put both hands on my shoulders to steer me into the milk-yard where the maids were as noisy as hedge birds, as they brushed each other’s hair.

‘Inga!’ she shouted. ‘Dress him!’

Inga was my favourite of my mother’s maids. She had soft, clean hands, green eyes and a small button nose, sprinkled with pale freckles. She spoke with a lisp, which I always thought was the most charming thing. She was light and fragile, like a netted sparrow that a farmyard boy holds in his cupped hands.

Inga led me to my mother’s room, to the open wooden shutter, and stood me in the light and pulled spiked burrs from my kirtle and hair; brushed the moss from my elbows, then wrinkled her freckles and let out a sigh when she found a sheep-tick on my neck. ‘What have you been doing?’

‘Nothing,’ I lied. She let out a breath. A casual pagan curse, that people did then, without thinking, and bent me over her knee to get me in the square of light from the open shutters.

I sniffed as she used her nails to work the tick’s head free. As the sun came out it turned the floor-rushes to gold. A bumble bee’s low hum drifted into the room and then out again. There are no flowers here, I thought, they’re all outside, great banks of them, slipping down the mountainsides like an avalanche of yellow.

At last she was done, and rubbed the bite with beeswax and stood me up before her, pulled something out of my head and held it before my nose to let me see. ‘Been bird nesting?’

‘No,’ I said, though that was not true. I tested myself as every hero did, though my tests were little things, like scaling the garth apple tree’s tallest branch, daring to climb down into the damp dark well-mouth, walking home through the dark forest when the hag of evening was gathering her skirts about her, and you could feel her chill night breath, and all you wanted to do was run.

Inga dropped the twig on the ground. It was hung with green moss, thin and scraggly, like old man’s beard, and there was a knotted clump of my own hairs too, silvery-gold in the wan light.

‘There!’ she said when she was done, and turned me round to see my clean blue kirtle, black trousers, and calfskin boots. She ran her fingers through the hair at my temples, and shook the locks out. We all wore it long, men and women alike. ‘Very handsome!’ she said. She bent down so her head was close to mine.

‘Now! Run along with you. And don’t get into trouble!’

That was my quest that day as I ran out to find my mother.

She flustered like a young maid. Light stabbed down through the smoke-hole like a finger of Jesus. It slanted and hit the side of the hearth. It gilded the freshly swept and dampened hearth stones with sunlight, lit the carved oak benches too, brought them vividly from the shadows.

‘Good,’ she said, and had all the English hangings shaken out and rehung along the hall walls till all the spades and hoes and scythes were hidden and the room was filled with shapes and colour of small embroidered men and women, performing great feats of courage and bravery and resolve.

I tried to keep out of the way as fresh straw was strewn on the hall floor, tables and benches were set with clean linen, drinking jugs and ale, and she saw me suddenly and stopped. ‘Where’s your father?’

I gaped for a moment, thinking I had forgotten to tell him, but then I remembered and I blurted out, ‘He’s coming!’

‘Are you sure you told him?’

I nodded.

‘Where is he?’

I ran to the hall mouth, but could not see him and began to panic.

But then my father came in the back door, where the livestock were kept in winter. He threw his broad-brimmed grey hat onto the high table, and took in the fuss with an air of well-worn tolerance.

‘There you are!’ she said, and looked at him in a way that told me that he was a disappointment to her.

He did not care for war, unless it was needed. He did not care so much for anything, but farming. ‘So. Our king is here, is he?’ he said, to me, as if she wasn’t in the room with us. ‘Well, I should go and dress or your mother will not be happy.’

‘Yes, dress!’ she called. ‘And change your boots.’

 

My father stepped out half an hour later in his scarlet cloak, sword and helmet, but he was still wearing his blue woollen trousers, and his farming boots.

‘They’re covered in muck,’ she said.

‘Earth,’ he said, ‘not mud.’

‘You’re the chief of Uppland,’ she told him, as if he had forgotten such a thing, but I heard the disappointment there too. My father enjoyed nothing more than to be inspecting his oxen, counting his lambs, picking up his girls, and carrying them on one arm, or showing his sons how to hitch an ox.

‘I am,’ he said, ‘and I think I look the part.’

‘From the boots up,’ my mother said.

 

My father’s name was Sigurd. Sigurd Sow men called him, but there was nothing of the pig about him as he took hold of his stallion’s jewelled bridle and swung himself up. He was a fine horseman, and moved his mount about with casual ease as the yard filled with neighbours and their men. They were all dressed in their finery. He greeted them all. They shouted and laughed, and the air was full of drumming hoofs as more distant neighbours heard the news and rode down to join in.

‘Let’s go!’ my father called, and swung his hand about his head, and led them off. The swirling mass of men and women began to follow him down to the shore to greet the longships, and Halfdan and I ran alongside them for a short way, as long as enthusiasm could last.

 

The world I grew up on was that little stretch of level ground between the hulk of the mountains, where the winds tortured the old trees into weird shapes, and the depths of the fjord, where monsters lurked and the middle was so deep that no fathom-weight could find the bottom. It was where the Midgard Serpent slept, men said, and waited till Ragnarok, when it would slither out onto the land, and battle Thor and the Old Gods for this Middle Earth, between the peaks and the shore.

I stood with my feet in mud, watching my father escort Olaf up from the shore.

‘Are you excited?’ Inga asked. Her quest, I guess, was to keep me out of trouble.

‘Yes!’ I shouted.

‘Do you remember your brother?’

‘No,’ I shouted.

‘You must,’ she told me, but I didn’t and so she lifted me up, and raised an arm to point. ‘There he is! That’s your brother! He’s the king.’

 

I’d eaten stories of Olaf since before I could talk, sipped them from my mother’s breasts, sprinkled them on my bread and porridge, supped them down when the skald stood up to chant his tales, and the oft-tilted ale-jug was passed from hand to hand. But he was shorter than I had made him in my mind’s eye, stouter than a hero should be, with sandy hair and broad cheeks, scrubbed red by the sea-salt winds. There was something about him, like a beautiful girl, that drew your attention, and it took me a while before I realised that it was his eyes, which were palest blue with dark rims, as cold and shocking as winter meltwater.

He pulled his horse to a halt, swung one leg over, landed as heavily as a wheat sack before us.

The earth trembled as he landed. I felt it through my calfskin boots.

He spoke as loud as a hero. ‘So, these are my brothers!’ he roared, and we stood and stared. My mother had to prod my eldest brother forward.

He said, ‘We are pleased to see you return safely from your battles, brother.’

‘Thank you. You must be Guttorm.’

Guttorm blushed and bowed.

Olaf came along the line. ‘You must be Halfdan.’

I stood up to Halfdan’s shoulder, and watched my middle brother hang his head and nod slowly and silently, with his fingers at his mouth, like a thrall who fears to betray himself with words.

‘And you must be Harald!’

Olaf bent down so that he was on my level, and pulled what he thought was an ugly scowl. I scowled back so he ruffled my freshly combed hair, that Inga had worked on, and I shoved his hand away – as I did to Halfdan and Guttorm when they bullied me.

From the pinch of her fingers on my shoulders I knew I was in for a beating. ‘Greet the king properly,’ she told me, but I refused. No one pushed me about. Little as I was.

Olaf reached out a hard, kingly hand and I shoved him off again.

‘Harald!’ my mother hissed.

Even my father stepped forward. ‘Harald,’ he said, and made a gesture with his head. ‘Show some respect.’

I felt all their eyes upon me, pushing me forward, as the ox is goaded on with willow switches towards the butcher’s axe. But then someone laughed.

It was one of Olaf’s warriors.

‘He got you there,’ he said.

Olaf laughed as well, and ruffled my hair once more, harder this time, and gave me a shove that was not friendly.

 

My mother beat me. Halfdan and Guttorm shook their heads at me, and even my sisters gave me The Look. Only Inga came to find me as the feast started, and the fires were lit and stacked high with last year’s logs.

‘You alright?’ she asked.

I was standing in the yard outside the hall, where the dogs and goats ran free. My father’s white boar-hound was chewing on a pig’s ear. Her fangs showed as the hard gristle crunched under her hind teeth. I sniffed and nodded, and wiped a snail-trail of snot onto my fresh kirtle.

‘You’d better come in,’ she said.

I folded my arms and put on the biggest pout I could manage. ‘I don’t want to.’

‘Your mother will be angry.’

‘I don’t care.’

Inga put her arm about my shoulders. ‘Come, Harald, sit on my knee.’

‘No,’ I said.

‘If I give you a kiss?’

‘No,’ I said, but she bent to kiss me, and her breath was green mint and I squirmed away and she kept kissing me and at last I laughed.

The white boar-hound had finished by now, and was sniffing under the branch where the pig’s body had been hung, lapping at the blood-drips. One of the dogs sniffed me. I did not fear them and gave them a hand to lick.

‘Come!’ she said and held out a hand. ‘Or I’ll kiss you more. I bet you could sit at the high table, if you promised to be good.’

I would be good, I thought, as she led me inside.

It seemed that I had been forgiven. My mother held a hand out to me, low under the high tables, a secret gesture that she saved for me. ‘Off you go,’ Inga said, and gave me a gentle shove, but my mother’s face dropped when I ran past her.

I had seen a better seat, next to the king, on my father’s broad lap. He was as surprised as she. ‘Up you come!’ he said and landed me on his lap. He and Olaf were talking of things I did not understand. The earls of Lathe. How to terrify a rebellious chieftain. Things I did not know my father cared about.

Olaf caught me looking at him a number of times, and as his cheeks grew redder, he turned to me and took my hand. I do not know what I thought a king’s hands would be like, but his were dirty and engrained as a farmhand’s.

Mine were clean and smooth, and he turned one over with a thumb, and took the other one as well.

‘Do you farm?’ he asked.

I shook my head.

His eyes were cold as winter sunlight. Sometimes they shocked you into silence.

‘Do you fish?’

I shook my head. I was the youngest. I did what I pleased. I did not work in hall or farm or boat.

Olaf scowled. ‘It does not do to spoil a child.’

‘He is not spoilt,’ my father said. There was a hint of tension in the exchange. He and Olaf had not lived happily together, as foster father and stepson.

‘Is he not?’

‘No. He is not spoilt. He’s still young, that is all.’

‘He’s five,’ Olaf said. ‘When I was five you made me work.’

‘I did not.’

‘Yes,’ Olaf said. ‘You did.’

‘Well, it did not harm you.’

‘Nor will it harm him.’

 

As the meal was finished and the servants took away the bowls and plates, Olaf tipped his horn back and drank, and then stood up. ‘This is good fishing weather,’ he said, and took my arm high up, above the elbow, and half-dragged, half-carried me from my father’s lap. ‘Get the boat ready!’

There was a babble of voices and words thrown up to dissuade him – un-kingly, ungainly, dangerous, wet and inclement – but his fingers were tight about my arm.

He dragged me along the freshly strewn reeds, over the high threshold, and through the grass down to the Midgard Serpent, pebble-fjord-shore, as a thief is led to the hanging tree.

‘Rognvald,’ he called out. ‘Otli. Spear-Hedin. Kalv.’

His retainers came forward and took the oars and he set me down and I could not flee, not with everyone’s eyes on me.

The boat rocked and splashed as they climbed aboard and swung the oars overhead and set them into the oarlocks, then two of Olaf’s men shoved the boat out into the water, and the six of us were afloat. Olaf breathed wine and ale on me as he showed me the craft he had learnt when he was a lad and I watched him and stayed silent and unwilling.

‘You do it,’ he said, and I made an effort.

‘Good,’ he told me and I liked him then. ‘Here, take the end of the net. We’ll throw it in when the water is deep. That is where the best shoals swim.’

We were less than a bowshot from the shore when my mother shouted Olaf’s name.

He was bent over me, showing me how to untangle the net. He did not look up. My fingers were small. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Good.’

My mother shouted again. ‘O-laf!’

She waved and pointed but he took no notice until one of his men spoke.

‘Olaf,’ the one named Rognvald said. There was warning in his tone that stopped us both. Rognvald’s face was looking along the fjord, where the mountain-towers stood watch on the restless waves of the shimmering-dark sea.

‘Hunting whales,’ he said.

The keel-less boat wobbled as Olaf turned to look, and I saw through his legs the black snakes of the whale-pack loping towards us through the grey water.

Olaf called for a spear but there was none, so they gave him an oar and he braced himself as if he was Thor waiting for the Midgard Serpent. There were shouts from the shore: advice, warning, caution. The rout came towards us so fast that he barely had time to raise the oar above his head, brace himself and hurl. If he landed a blow I do not know.

A whale rammed us hard and someone shouted in terror. It might have been me, I cannot say. I fell into the nets and clung to them as water slopped into the rocking boat. They were like the goldsmith’s knotwork all about us. Whale breath was wet on my face. It smelt of herring and oyster water. A black fin brushed past. I saw black and white, and then an eye, dark as the well-mouth, which looked at me, and I could see thought there, malevolent, evil, unblinking thought.

The cold fjord water boiled as hundreds of silver herring leapt from the sea as if it were a kitchen cauldron, and the black-backed gulls screamed and dived and took their fill; and Olaf grabbed me from behind and lifted me.

The boat rocked violently, the rowers called out in fear, but I knew he would not drop me. He was my half-brother. We shared a womb. I will be his man, when I am full-grown. He would be a fool to drop me, and Olaf is no fool, everyone knows that.

‘Are you afraid?’ he whispered in my ear.

I shook my head. If I shivered it was because of the cold sea air, and the breeze that cuts through all. ‘This is slaughter, Harald,’ he hissed, and I took it all.

Gulls balanced on the breeze. They plucked stunned fish from the water. I shouted and laughed. There are no words for joy this pure.

‘Never flee,’ he hissed into my ear. ‘Never fear! Do you understand?’

I opened my eyes wide to the roar of water and whale and desperate fish. I saw the slaughter of the herring, and was not afraid. I nodded and he held me up as the whales hemmed the herring into a smaller and smaller circle.

And then it was done. The slaughter was over, the water stilled like slow-settling dust after the army’s horses have passed out of sight, and we were not dead.

Only a few herrings remained, floating prone on their sides. The chopping waves diminished, gulls landed and f. . .