The Valhalla Saga 01 - Swords of Good Men Read Free

oafish lugs with the grooming skills of a blind cow, so he’d learned to feel confident about his chances. Besides, he was a man of the world by now.
    He stretched on his pallet, yawned and sighed. This constant travelling was such a chore. ‘I suppose it’s time to go find the chieftain of this pig town,’ he said to no one in particular, and got to his feet.
    *
    Audun sneered and spat. He did not like the market traders one bit. Idiots selling useless crap to fools. Changing things. Getting in the way. He’d been so close to letting go on one of them last night in the longhouse. So close.
    ‘Move!’
    The stocky blond blacksmith grabbed a small, nervous cloth merchant and pushed him out of the way. The autumn market seemed to bring an endless supply of them from all over the world, shouting and yelling, pitching tents around the old town, hawking their wares in the streets, in the square and anywhere else they could find room. Drinking too much and trying to get him to fight. That ugly bastard last night had almost succeeded, too.
    And now they were blocking the gate.
    Of course the broken cart didn’t help.
    He’d seen it happen, seen the driver, who was obviously another idiot, lead the cart too close to the side of the road in an effort to squeeze past another wagon and slip through the south gate, towards the harbour. He’d seen the rock and the hole, he’d seen the wheel bounce off one and into the other, and he’d heard the sharp crack when the axle gave. As the cart lurched, the man had tumbled off and banged his head. Served him right, Audun thought. Shouldn’t have let them in to begin with. But the road was blocked and this would not do. It would slow people down, keep them from the smithy and cost him business. And that he couldn’t afford.
    He shouldered through the crowd in the market without thinking. Shouts and curses followed, but he didn’t care. Never had, never would, he muttered to himself. Talk is air.
    When he first came to Stenvik, he’d been awed by the sheer size of the walls. At a towering twenty-five feet, covered with turfand sloping upwards at a steep angle, they had seemed impossibly wide at the base. Audun had admired the construction as he rode through the north gateway with his travelling companions. A stone-walled corridor wide enough to take two carts and high enough with room to spare for a man to walk upright, it had still taken their caravan a decent time to get through. He’d thought highly of the stonework, although some of the logs in the ceiling near the inside had struck him as oddly placed. On both ends of the gateway massive wooden gates were suspended over the openings, secured by thick ropes used for raising and lowering. What they lacked in the craft shown in the stonework they more than made up for in reliability. The gates were essentially sturdy, iron-bound pine logs stacked horizontally and set to be lowered into grooves in the walls. A short tour of the town had confirmed that the other three gates followed the same model.
    At the time he’d been pleased with the craft of it.
    Standing in the shadow of the same walls nearly two years later, looking at the suspended south gate, it seemed more like a cage door. And now the gateway was partially blocked by the cart. The space around the cart was crammed with the usual group of useless onlookers that seemed to gather on every such scene to lay blame, give pointless advice and avoid taking any action whatsoever. Audun gritted his teeth. Three of them were standing around the rear of the cart looking particularly miserable and staring alternately at the wheel, the broken shaft and the placid draft horse still tied to the trace.
    He grabbed the nearest shoulder and yanked, forcing the man to face him.
    ‘You. Lead that half-dead nag on my signal.’
    The man blinked and stared blankly back at him.
    ‘Now! Move!’ Audun half shoved the man towards the horse and turned his attention to the broken axle. Huge bags