olesya_fedechkin: переводы

→Then Sigurd saw the fishermen and their boat up on the shingle.

→CHAPTER TWO

→So that the killing could begin.

→‘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.

→‘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.

→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.’

→‘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.’

→‘You are coming home with me, daughter!’ Grimhild said, her face flushing now at her daughter’s defiance.

→‘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.

→‘That’s why Biflindi is fighting Randver at sea!’ Slagfid roared from Reinen’s prow, ‘because the goat-fucking bóndi can’t run away if they’re on a ship.’

→‘With the king’s own men and those bondsmen he will have rounded up we will have the advantage of numbers.’ Harald hawked and spat a wad of phlegm onto the slick decking of the jetty. ‘But do not underestimate Jarl Randver for he is the kind that will wait until you are looking the other way and then bite your arse. Besides which, you know as well as I that bóndi more often than not run off back to their farms as soon as the first spears are thrown.’

→The men cheered at that and those who carried spears banged the shafts against their shields and it was like an echo of King Gorm’s byname Biflindi, meaning ‘shield-shaker’. Even Hagal the skald seemed to be lifted like an eagle on a warm wind, despite how the jarl had teased him the night before.

→‘Men of Skudeneshavn!’ Men could no more ignore Harald’s voice than they could ignore a long-axe in a killer’s hands, and it boomed out across the still water of the harbour and surged across the rocks like surf. ‘We have been called out to fight for King Gorm, to whom we have pledged fealty and whose high seat we are oath-sworn to protect. Biflindi’s lands to the east have been threatened by Jarl Randver. And our king is not happy about it.’ There was a flash of teeth then in Harald’s fair beard. ‘That dog Randver has slipped his leash and his appetite has outgrown him. Today we whip the hound!’

→The clamour rolled on as a stout man named Alfdis helped Olaf up and Jarl Harald’s champion Slagfid swaggered into the circle, rumbling a challenge to anyone drunk enough to take him on. And beyond that smoke-seasoned haven of pine and oak the Valkyries were riding the night, their presence felt by all those grizzled, drunken boasters though mentioned by none. Tomorrow, then, the storm of swords. Dragon against dragon out in the Karmsund Strait.

→The red war.

→‘I know how to win,’ he said, ‘and that is enough for Óðin.’ The man shook his head again and went back to his food, and Svein, Aslak and Sigurd shared the sort of look that comes so easily to young men who hear what their elders say as rocks hear the river gushing over them.

→Svein and Aslak knew better than to nettle the older man further and so held their tongues, but Sigurd held Vigdis’s eye.

→‘There was no honour in that, Sigurd,’ a man named Vigdis said, his greying brows knitted above disapproving eyes. ‘You striplings mock the gods with your disrespect.’ He shook his head at Sigurd. ‘As the jarl’s son you should know better.’

→‘But his wife will thank you for a good sound sleep,’ a lad named Aslak said through a mouthful of bread. ‘If Olaf doesn’t spend all night scratching in the reeds looking for his balls.’

→‘You’ve ruined his night then,’ Svein said. ‘No notch for old Olaf.’