igurd gallops his fingers on the gunwale as the city drifts into view around the riverbend. It’s a clean city, built on a wide green plain, surrounded by farms and clusters of trees ablaze with the colours of fall. Ships are moored all along the east bank of the river—fishing boats full of nets and line, merchant vessels and sleek Swedish warships. There are many idols along the quay—enormous blood-stained gods carved of wood, standing guard over the river. As they prepare to dock, a man shouts to them and directs the skipper to an empty mooring in the shadow of Tyr’s likeness.
It's been nearly three days since they were attacked by the Hålogalanders in the night. In that time, they’ve sailed around the southern coast of Sweden, stopping briefly in the major port-city of Agnafit to hire a Swedish pilot who could guide them through the complex fjords of Lake Mälaren, and rowed north up the Fyris River to the place of the King of Sweden’s hall: the city of Uppsala.
Sigurd takes a deep breath, going over what he’s going to say when he goes before the king’s high table. The relationship between Sweden and Burgundy is one of friction, with Gunther sending too many pushy envoys to recruit Sweden to help them against the Romans. The last envoy had retuned to Worms with his head in a basket.
The Swedes like the Franks a little better than their Burgundian allies—or at least they like to trade with them. Frankish steel is considered to be among the highest quality on earth, eagerly sought after by any war-like kingdom. Sigurd, however, is widely known for his friendship with Gunther, and is somewhat concerned with the message his arrival will send. He does not expect a warm welcome.
As the crew moor the ship and the pilot introduces them to the Swedes on the quay, Sigurd glances aft-ward at the new slave-girl lashed to the stringer. She glares back at him with her fierce blue eyes. That hateful gaze has been burning a hole in the back of his head since the moment he took her into captivity. She’s hardly spoken a word aside from, “I need to piss,” or, “I need to shit”; she refused to eat or even drink until the morning of the second day, when at last she accepted a piece of bread from one of the men and hungrily tore into it, and demanded a drink of water from his skin. She might have chosen slavery over death, but he can see this Hervor woman is far too proud and stubborn to ever make a good thrall. He’ll never live in peace again if he takes her back to his castle to be his serving girl.
She would be more valuable as a bed-slave.
Even after cutting off her braid and putting an iron cuff around her neck, her beauty outshines that of the late Queen Rowena, and even rivals that of Brünhilda—who is generally considered by everyone to be the most gorgeous woman in Europe. The girl must be from a noble—if not royal—lineage. Not that it matters now. She’ll spend the rest of her life between some lucky fellow’s bedsheets.
He’s thought about giving her to Gunther, but with the way she’s glaring at him now, perhaps that isn’t such a good idea. He doesn’t need another woman trying to murder his friend the second he turns his back. It seems like a tremendous waste, but the smartest thing is to give her to King Gizur—though he wonders if it wouldn’t be more merciful to snap her neck.
Sigurd steps out of the longship. He clasps hands with the Swedes on the quay, then orders that Hervor be cut loose and brought up from the ship.
“This is Uppsala,” he says as his men shove her up onto the dock beside him, “the capital of Sweden.”
“I know it is,” she snarls. It’s the first response he’s gotten from her yet.
“I’m giving you to King Gizur after all. You’ll be his bed-slave, or whatever pleases him.”
She glares up at him, but behind the smouldering defiance, her blue eyes are full of fear.
“You said you’re not too fond of cruelty.”
“I—”
“Prince Sigurd,” says the Swedish pilot, “here comes the king.”
Word of their arrival has reached the hall and King Gizur is making his way down toward the dock with an entourage of blond-bearded huskarls. He cocks his head as he peers curiously at Sigurd and the Frankish crew. He is a clean, slender man of particular hygiene; his blond hair and beard are neatly trimmed; his fine garb, newly washed and without even the smallest rip or stain. There is a refreshing scent about him—perhaps mint or pine.
Next to Sigurd, Hervor breathes an oath as he comes nearer and hangs her head, suddenly casting off her stubborn arrogance and assuming the timid compliance of a humble thrall-maiden, evidently not wishing to draw the attention of the Swedish King.
Gizur smiles and reaches for Sigurd’s hands. “Welcome to Uppsala,” he says with his musical Nordic accent. “You must be Prince Sigurd. When I heard—Gods, you’re big! Isn’t he big? He’s enormous!”
“He is very large indeed,” answers one of the huskarls.
“Those poor Roman legionaries,” says Gizur, “you Germans must be pulverizing them.”
Sigurd is about to explain that the only pulverizing that’s taken place recently has been in the form of intense negotiations following the sudden surge of pro-Germanic military forces due to the marriage of Gunther and Brünhilda and the subsequent alliance of their kingdoms—but he decides not to get into it. “We do alright,” he says with a shrug.
“Well, you must be hungry,” says the king, “and I know you’ve travelled far. Come, the least I can do is offer you food and drink before I send you back to Gunther.” He turns back toward the hall, then pauses, peering inquisitively at Sigurd over his shoulder. “I am correct in assuming that Gunther sent you?”
“Yes—I mean, no—Well, sort of.”
Sigurd clears his throat as he and the crew follow the king and his huskarls toward the hall. “What I mean to say is, I am here because of Gunther, but I can assure you it’s got nothing to do with helping us against Stilicho and the Romans. I’m actually just—”
“Oh, that is a relief,” says Gizur, his face brightening, “I’m afraid I was quite annoyed when I heard you’d come to Uppsala. I thought to myself, Loki’s children, how many heads do I have to chop off before these idiots realize we’re not interested? Gods! We’ll be running out of baskets pretty soon here in Uppsala!”
He laughs, patting Sigurd on the chest, “I’m just joking, Sigurd! Just joking! You know I can’t wait to find out what you’re really doing here. Tell me, did Gunther like my wedding gift?”
“Wedding gift? Er—remind me what it was again?”
“Perfume from the far east made from the yellow flower of the Cananga tree, a sensual fragrance which incites the body to eroticism.”
To his shame, Sigurd thinks of the sweet scent of Brünhilda’s hair and body that had so intoxicated him, exciting him to deeper passions as he plunged into the throes of adultery. He quickly shoos the thought out of his mind. “I didn’t watch him open the presents,” he says.
“Well, there was a man who dwelt in Sweden for a time,” says Gizur, “a friend of my father’s, and a great champion. He had giant’s blood like you. Arrow-Odd the Wide-Wandered we called him. Perhaps you’ve heard of him.”
“I have, yes.”
“There is no place on earth he hasn’t walked or sailed. He was the most interesting person to ever come to Uppsala. He brought that perfume from a perilous land of volcanos and poisonous snakes, where the brown-skinned men who live there consider the choicest meat to be human flesh. The princess of the village where he and his crew were staying was captured by a rival tribe and carried off into the mountains. Her people believed she had been taken to her doom and had already begun to mourn her loss. But Arrow-Odd, compassionate hero that he was, snatched up his club and bow and dashed after her into the jungle. At dawn the next morning, he brought the girl back. The chieftain offered him the girl’s hand in marriage; but not wanting to take her so far from her family and native land, he declined—even though she was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. Instead, he accepted the girl’s dowry—twelve jars of sacred perfume—a gift he could not refuse for risk of severely offending the girl’s people.”
Barely listening, Sigurd is busy taking note of the frequent temples, and the wooden idols lining every street and perched by every doorstep. He’d heard they were serious about the gods in Uppsala, but …
“I—erm—I’ll have to tell Gunther that story when I see him next,” he says quickly, “I’m sure he’ll be very flattered.”
“I tell you, Sigurd,” says Gizur as they near the hall, “I do not care much for its smell. When our champion, Hjalmar the Great-Hearted, fell on Samsø Island, Arrow-Odd, who loved Hjalmar more than his own son, used a jar of that perfume to prepare his body for the grave. And when my sister could not bear her grief and chose to die with Hjalmar, Arrow-Odd gave my father and I another jar for her. And again, a few years later, when my father was killed over a woman’s stupidity, I smelt the yellow flower of the Cananga tree. Its scent to me is the scent of death.”
At the hall, a twelve-foot Thor and Baldur guard either side of the way in. There’s a bowl of blood on a stand between them and Gizur flicks a little blood onto the beards of the idols as he leads them inside. Sigurd reluctantly imitates this action and nods for the others to do the same.
There is a roaring fire in the hall and a row of tables in front of it. Gizur gestures for them to sit and stands by the hearth as male servants bring out a meal for Sigurd and his crew. He shivers in the crisp fall air and holds his hands over the glowing heat. “It’s starting to get colder,” he says. “It won’t be long until it’s snowing.”
Sigurd tears the flesh off a turkey leg with his teeth and washes it down with a horn-full of mead, then holds out the horn for Hervor to fill again.
She glares at him, but reaches for the flagon in the middle of the table. She pours too much and Sigurd swears as mead spills over the rim.
“Sorry, Lord,” she whispers.
Gizur shakes his head. “New thrall?”
“Very new.”
“She’s quite beautiful. I’m surprised you haven’t made her a bed-slave.”
“It’s been tempting, but I was thinking of giving her to you. What do you think? Do you like her?”
Gizur watches her without interest as she fills another man’s horn, hissing an apology as she splashes mead all over his hand, causing him to shout. He stares back into the crackling fireplace. “Ultimately, Sigurd, that depends on why you’re here.”
Sigurd’s heart jumps into his throat. His mind scrambles for the words he’s been rehearsing over and over. He puts down the turkey leg and wipes his face on his sleeve.
“There is—a—um—a very delicate matter that involves—” He clears his throat. “As the king of Sweden—” He pauses, pressing his fingertips together. “You see, Gunther has come up with a plan that will win us much fame and potentially bring many new allies to our cause.”
Gizur rolls his eyes.
“I’ll be needing your permission to travel through Sweden.”
“You don’t need my permission for that. But if I find out you’ve been bothering my jarls with talk about the Romans, I’m afraid I’ll have to ship you back to Xanten with your head in a basket,” he says pleasantly.
“No—No, I assure you I’m not here to do that.”
Gizur whirls around. “So why are you here, Sigurd?” He comes toward him, the silver rings on his fingers grinding against the wood as he leans in over the table with his fist. “What are you going to do in my lands? What is so important that you need to come ask my permission first? Hmm?”
Sigurd leans away, startled by this sudden aggression. “I, uh, need to go to Lake Storsjön.”
Gizur’s face darkens. “Lake Storsjön? Gunther is sending you to Lake Storsjön? He’s out of his mind. You are out of your mind. This friend of yours is going to get you killed.”
“So, I have your permission then?”
“Absolutely not! It is out of the question! That creature—you have no idea the kind of trouble you would cause for the people of the lake. You cannot even imagine the terror in which they live!”
“Then let me free them from their oppression!”
“No! It is impossible! The creature cannot be killed!”
“It can be killed! With Balmung!”
Gizur’s face contorts with anger as he looks to the immense weapon leaned against the table. “Sigurd, you’ve asked for my permission and I’ve given you my answer. I forbid you to go Lake Storsjön. You and your crew will spend the night in my hall, and in the morning you will return to Xanten.”
Sigurd’s heart thumps. It’s the moment he’s been anticipating. He rises suddenly from the table, causing Gizur to step back and his huskarls to reach for their blades.
“You should be ashamed of yourself. What sort of weakling king are you that you can sit here in your nice warm hall, doing nothing, while your people have lived in fear for generation upon generation! Gunther and I have fought our entire lives to throw off the tyranny of the Roman Empire! Together, we’ve waded through the tide of countless battles; we’ve faced death in every form; our lives have been an endless struggle of treachery and war! What have you done, Gizur? Where are your brave deeds? I say you’re not a man!”
Gizur’s eyes flash with anger; but he draws in his breath and grins deviously. “Did you write that little speech on the way here?”
Heat rises in Sigurd’s cheeks. “N—no,” he lies, “that was all, um, off the cuff.”
Gizur chuckles. “Is that so? And what? You think you can force me into a duel by offending my honour? My family was destroyed by that kind of stupidity—berserkers coming into this hall, demanding whatever they wanted from my father, using all kinds of foul language and insults while addressing the king; going so far as to ask for my sister, Ingeborg. Gods—Sigurd, can you actually imagine handing your seventeen-year-old daughter over to twelve mindless criminals just because one of them used the ‘A’ word?”
“Um, not really?”
“I tell you what. I thought I was angry. I thought I had courage in my heart. Then I saw Hjalmar get up and walk right up to Angantyr Arngrimsson, the filthiest, most blood-thirsty savage ever to drool on the floor of my father’s hall—I mean he got right in his face. I tell you, any other man would have shuddered and shrunk away from the heavy aura of that man’s presence, but Hjalmar the Great-Hearted dared to look that beast in the eye and called him and all his brothers to the hjolm.
“We had a champion, then, who would have answered your insult with steel—and I do not doubt he would have killed you, even with Balmung and your giant’s strength.”
Gizur holds his hands out helplessly. “But we have no heroes left like that. Sigurd, there is no man in Sweden who can withstand you. Of course, I cannot allow this stain upon my honour, so unless you take back what you said, I will take you to the hjolm. You’ll chop me in half, I’m certain, and you’ll continue on to Lake Storsjön. You’ll die horrifically trying to carry out Gunther’s foolish errand—either in the serpent’s acid breath, or at the hands of the people of Frey’s Island, who, when they discover that a foreign prince has come to incite the wrath of their god—for in their terror they worship the creature as a deity who to them is far more imminent and powerful than Frey or Baldur—will descend upon you in a zealous mob and skin you alive out in the wild.
“In the meantime, a new king will be chosen in my place from among my jarls. By then word will have spread that you murdered me by forcing me into a duel no man could win. There are some who will rejoice; but many—I’m thinking particularly of King Roar of the Danes and Queen Sifka of the Rus, who I am to understand just lost two of her sons to a violent altercation with a foreigner—will see the truth of the affair: that Gunther was so eager to recruit more allies to his cause, that he sent you, his bulldog, to try and strongarm me into joining you, and when I refused, you killed me in a hjolmgang. I don’t think I need to tell you that the consequences of this would be disastrous. On the one hand, it would make you look desperate, like your campaign isn’t going well; on the other, it would offend the other northern rulers who aren’t interested in being pushed around by you and Gunther. Your economy would suffer; allies would be less likely to join you, or worse, would be more likely to betray you when you’re counting on them most. You’d be lucky if you didn’t have another war on your hands.”
“But,” says Gizur, “I know you’re not some dumb brute like Angantyr and his brothers who used go around extorting kings. You’re just very passionate about your cause and got carried away. I know you didn’t really mean what you said.”
Sigurd looks glumly down at his plate. “You’re right,” he says, “I take it back.
Gizur yawns and stretches his arms over his head. “Well if that’s settled, I think it’s time for an afternoon nap.”
Sigurd clenches his fist, wondering if he shouldn’t just set a course for Lake Storsjön without Gizur’s permission. But he’s sure he’d find out and there’d be more trouble with the Swedes. Besides, he needs the king’s blessing to sway the lake-folk to his cause. It’d be better if he came along. Gagh! If only Gunther were here. If there was one man who could talk anybody into doing the last thing they wanted, it was Gunther. But how would he do it? What words would he say?
But, as he strains to set the wheels of his mind in motion, Sigurd looks up at the wooden likeness of Odin looming grimly over the hall from behind the high table. An image flashes suddenly before his eyes—Gunther, instead of him, standing at the prow as the Valkyrie drifts into the Uppsala harbour, arching his brow at the sight of the enormous gods along the quay; Gunther following Gizur to his hall, twisting his moustache as he observes the many idols perched along every street and outside every doorstep; Gunther grinning deviously as Gizur flicks the wand of blood into the beards of Thor and Baldur. There’s still a card he hasn’t played.
“What if I told you,” he says as Gizur turns to leave, “that Princess Gertrund witnessed my triumph in a dream.”
“Oh now what are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about a vision from the gods.”
Something—perhaps fear—flashes in Gizur’s eyes and the huskarls standing along the wall whisper to each other in superstitious reverence.
“I’ll have you know,” Gizur says darkly, “that we take that kind of proclamation very seriously in Uppsala. It’s one thing to recant an insult that was spoken too hastily, but to speak presumptuously about a vision from the gods—that is another matter entirely.”
“I’m sure you’ve heard of Gertrund’s reputation for seeing the future.”
“Yes, and I’ve also heard that she worships her mother’s strange gods.”
“Well, I’ve heard that this Arrow-Odd you speak of prays to Jesus Christ, and yet you praise him as one of the greatest heroes to ever grace your hall.”
Gizur pauses, his eyes shifting over the flames. “Fair enough,” he says. “What did Gertrund see?”
“Me, crouching in a trench, thrusting Balmung through the creature’s heart as it slithered overhead. She said she saw me drenched in the serpent’s blood. She also said I dare not attempt the feat alone. There will be another with me who will lure Fafnir into the trap.”
Gizur laughs. “Lure Fafnir? And which one of these unlucky fools will have that job?”
“Actually,” says Sigurd, “such a task is best left to the bravery of kings.”
At this, Gizur turns pale and taps his fingers against his thigh. “Why should it be me who helps you?”
“Why would you trust the deed to another when our victory has been ordained? Gizur, when we strike the creature to its doom, they will sing of our triumph for a thousand years. A thousand years! We would be the most famous men on earth.”
Gizur swallows, glancing at his huskarls, all of whom are staring at him with grim pride. “And what of the serpent’s treasure?”
And there it is. He has him now.
“It is Swedish gold,” he says, “You can have it all. Gunther asked only that I return with Fafnir’s head and his magic ring. Although, I’d like to take one ship-full of treasure for myself.”
“One ship-full of treasure won’t be missed, but Fafnir’s ring is worth more than all the treasure combined! It should be an heirloom passed from one Swedish king to the next!”
“If it’s worth so much then why have you left it sitting in Fafnir’s lair for the last one thousand years?”
Gizur grinds his teeth.
“You’re being greedy,” says Sigurd, “You wouldn’t care about it at all if I wasn’t proposing we go and get it. You’ll still be wealthier than the Roman Emperor.”
Gizur looks back into the fire with a hiss. “Fine.”
“Fine—You’ll do it? Really?”
“Yes. I’ll take you to Lake Storsjön and help you kill the serpent.”
Sigurd’s men cry out in joy as they raise their horns and the Swedish huskarls nod proudly in approval of their king. Smiling, Sigurd pours a horn of mead for Gizur and puts it in his hand. “Then let us drink! Let us drink to our triumph and to the friendship that our quest will inevitably forge.”
“Skål,” says Gizur, clinking his horn against Sigurd’s. The two men drink, and Gizur looks to where Hervor the thrall-maiden is filling up men’s horns again.
“You know,” he says, “I think I would like to take the girl. I’ll bring her along to Frey’s Island and bless our mission with a sacrifice to the gods.”