God of Vengeance Read Online Free Page B

raven, would stand him beside his brothers Thorvard, Sorli and Sigmund.
    ‘Did you hear me, brother? I’m coming to watch it,’ Runa said.
    Sigurd nodded to her then turned to Svein. ‘We will have to hurry or it might be over before we get there.’
    Svein shook his head. ‘I told Thorvard not to kill any of the toad’s arseholes until we found a nice spot with a good view.’
    Someone whistled and they turned to see Aslak waiting up in the long grass of the bluff overlooking the harbour. He had brought the ponies, as Sigurd had asked. One extra by the looks.
    ‘I told him I was coming, too,’ Runa said before Sigurd could ask the question.
    ‘I knew you would,’ Svein said, smiling.
    Sigurd might have guessed it too, though he was not sure that his younger sister should watch the battle with them, being only fourteen and too young for such things. He was about to say as much when their mother, who was amongst the other women leaving the jetty, called for Runa to walk back up to the village with her.
    Even after five children, and four of them boys, Grimhild still owned a beauty that turned men’s heads, but now her face was drawn tight as a ship’s knot with the worry of seeing her husband and sons go off to fight for their king.
    ‘Runa!’ she called again. ‘Come, girl! We have much to prepare for the men’s return.’
    ‘I want to go with Sigurd,’ Runa called back. Her golden hair hung in two long braids and Sigurd knew that his sister was enjoying being able to show it off while she still could. In another year she would be of marriageable age and would have to cover her silken tresses. Yet her being too young for marriage did not stop men looking at Runa the way they looked at silver.
    ‘You are coming home with me, daughter!’ Grimhild said, her face flushing now at her daughter’s defiance.
    ‘Let her come, Mother,’ Sigurd said, suddenly determined that Runa should go with them. He had had his fill of being told how things would be. ‘She’ll be fine with us.’
    Grimhild frowned and Sigurd turned to Runa. ‘Just keep walking,’ he hissed. ‘She won’t want to make a big thing of it in front of her friends.’
    ‘There’s work to be done,’ their mother protested, but Sigurd, who blamed his mother for his not being aboard
Reinen
, saw a chance to challenge her now and took Runa’s hand in his own. And he did not need to look behind them to know the thunder that was on their mother’s face, though no peal rolled after them. It was a pathetic piece of impudence, the kind that would have earned him a backhander from his father had Harald been there, and he felt the shame of it as they climbed the shingle-strewn track up to Aslak and the waiting ponies.
    ‘Thank you,’ Runa said, but Sigurd said nothing. He had other things to think about now as he nodded to Aslak and the four of them turned their mounts north to take the coastal track up towards Kopervik and beyond that Avaldsnes. For somewhere in between the two settlements they would look out and see the fleets of King Gorm Shield-Shaker and the rebel Jarl Randver come together in the appointed place. The two fleets would bind themselves together with ropes and grappling hooks, men and shields crammed in the thwarts.
    So that the killing could begin.

CHAPTER TWO

    BY THE TIME they came to the place they were sweat-sheened and the ponies were lathered. The sun had passed overhead and now sat high in the western sky like a golden shield hung below the gabled roof of Valhöll, Óðin’s hall of the slain, and Aslak said it was a good day for a fight.
    ‘Not when there are arrows in the sky,’ Sigurd replied, grimacing at the thought of a shaft streaking out of the sun’s glare to bury itself in a man’s eye socket.
    ‘Then a man just keeps his shield up and his head down,’ Svein suggested helpfully, at which Runa asked, a wry smile on her lips, if Svein had learnt all this from the many battles he had fought in.
    But it was