God of Vengeance Read Online Free PDF

those fighting nearer their home that most often had the victory. ‘He has a lot of ships for a piss-in-the-wind upstart jarl. Maybe there is more to the man.’
    ‘Aye, he has the ships but does he know how to use them?’ Svein asked, though not even he would deny that six ships, four of them easily as big as if not bigger than
Reinen
, was more than anyone expected to see turn out against the king.
    ‘The sheep turd has more money and men than your father,’ Aslak said, giving voice to what they were all thinking as he fingered the iron Thór’s hammer at his neck. ‘Last year’s raiding has filled his sea chests with silver and his head with ambition.’
    ‘Still, six ships will not be enough,’ Sigurd said, fixing on his sister’s eyes because she was beginning to look afraid. ‘Shield-Shaker has fought many ship battles. He would not be a king if he had not won most, if not all of them. And my father has sea-luck and the Allfather’s own talent for war.’
    The others mumbled their agreement at that and the white knot of Runa’s hand relaxed a little around the silver pendant of Freyja which Sigurd knew was inside it, hot and clammy against her palm.
    Outnumbered as he was, Jarl Randver was expected to lash his ships together side by side to form a great raft and wait to be attacked. Sigurd knew this tactic allowed a greater concentration of fighting power within a small space and enabled men to move from one boat to another as and when the advantage might be gained. And yet Jarl Randver’s ships, sails down and oars shipped now, were barely shouting distance from each other and it was Jarl Harald who had drawn his three vessels close, like a man reining in his hounds. It was
his
crews that were busy with hooks and ropes.
    ‘Your father is making a raft then,’ Svein said, and from his frown and Aslak’s face it was clear they thought this a strange scheme from Harald given how things stood.
    ‘Why is he doing that, Sigurd?’ Runa asked, unnerved by her friends’ dark expressions.
    For a while Sigurd watched his father’s ship but eventually he grinned. ‘Because he has done all this before and knows the ebb and flow of it,’ he said. Only by putting himself in Harald’s place had the answer come into Sigurd’s mind, bright as a hooked mackerel glittering to the surface. ‘With the king’s ships holding off over there,
Sea-Eagle
and
Little-Elk
are vulnerable,’ he said. ‘If they remained separate Randver’s ships would isolate them like wolves stalking a small deer, and take them. Lashing them together with
Reinen
gives my father a floating stronghold he can easily defend. He will draw the rebels in like crows on a fleshy bone and then the king will come.’ His blood ran hot with the thought of it. ‘Together they will smash that arse welt and be ship-rich for the trouble of it.’
    Svein and Aslak nodded at this, grinning at their jarl’s sea-craft. And yet Sigurd felt an unease gnawing at his guts like a rat on a coiled rope. Because once his father’s three craft were lashed together and surrounded, if things went badly it would be no easy thing in the fray to separate them and let them fly.
    Still, Shield-Shaker had seven other ships and by rights those ships should beat Randver’s six even if Jarl Harald had stayed in his hall that morning. Sigurd clung to this thought, watching the two fleets which had set themselves up like pieces on a tafl board.
    ‘Jarls are good at tafl,’ he said under his breath, ‘but kings are better.’ The day would go well and the rebels would either yield or they would die.
    King Gorm’s men were cheering now, rousing themselves to the coming butchery, the sound of it drifting up to those gathered on the bluff. Sigurd and the others were right at the edge overlooking the rocky shoreline and the skerries out there in the Karmsund Strait, their arms anchored round birch trees that had themselves made a precarious stand on the sloping edge. Below