I’m on the blog tour for The Sacred Storm by Theodore Brun today and I have an exciting extract to share with you.
The Sacred Storm is available now in ebook and hardback, you can purchase a copy of both here.
Before I share my extract with you here is a little bit about the book.
Book Synopsis:
Forged in fire. Bound by honour. Haunted by loss.
8th Century Sweden: Erlan Aurvandil, a Viking outlander, has pledged his sword to Sviggar Ivarsson, King of the Sveärs, and sworn enemy of the Danish king Harald Wartooth. But Wartooth, hungry for power, is stirring violence in the borderlands. As the fires of this ancient feud are reignited Erlan is bound by honour and oath to stand with King Sviggar.
But, unbeknownst to the old King his daughter, Princess Lilla, has fallen under Erlan’s spell. As the armies gather Erlan and Lilla must choose between their duty to Sviggar and their love for each other.
Blooded young, betrayed often, Erlan is no stranger to battle. And hidden in the shadows, there are always those determined to bring about the maelstrom of war…
Chapter One Extract:
The apple was gone in a blink.
The horse nuzzled his other hand, expecting another.
‘You’re not an easy girl to please, you know that,’ said Erlan Aurvandil, tickling her hoary chin. But Idun loved apples, just like the goddess she was named after.
Gods, but she’s a grumpy-looking beast, he thought. Still, she looked a sight healthier than the bag of bones he’d ridden in on when he first arrived at the halls of the Sveär king. Good eating and rest had seen to that. And the odd apple.
Erlan produced another from his pouch. Idun gobbled it down.
‘Off you go, you old mule,’ he said, thwacking her rump. The horse plodded off to a clump of grass nearby. Erlan, meanwhile, began limping back towards the halls and smaller dwellings, inhaling the sweet, green air. It was one of those evenings that seemed swollen with life, a foretaste of summer, when even the pain in his ankle felt not quite so sharp. As if, one day, it might heal.
Of course, it never would.
The limp was his father’s mistake. He hadn’t known the rock lay under the sand waiting to change his son’s destiny. ‘Jump. I’ll catch you,’ he had laughed. A test of trust: at least that was what Erlan thought it was. He had jumped. His father stepped aside. The rock did the rest. No test then, just a lesson: that you can’t trust anyone in this world, least of all the ones you love. Aye, he had learned that lesson well. That was why his father, his home, his inheritance – his very name – were all buried under an oath. Buried with her.
Because of his father’s lie, she had had to die. Inga – his first love. Inga – the ghost in his soul. She had cut her own throat and with the same stroke cut him loose from all that he knew and loved. So he was here, and she was there, lying under some barrow in the land of his birth. A land he had sworn never to see again.
He spat into the dust, as if that could expel the bitterness that rankled in his blood. Here, he was an exile. An outlander. Yet this was where he had found a new home and a new life after that other life had ended.
A cuckoo’s call floated down out of the treetops of the Kingswood.
He sighed, shaking off worn, old thoughts. Surely even a cripple couldn’t feel bitter on an evening like this? After the long winter the beech trees were in full garb, bulging in on the Uppland halls while the last of the sun splintered through their branches. His nostrils filled with the scent of the woods and meadows. Laughter and shrill voices tinkled on the twilit air as mothers called their children home. And with the dusk-dew, a kind of peace settled over the shingled roofs around Uppsala.
Maybe this was enough. Maybe this was his reward after enduring that dark and savage winter. He had arrived no better than a beggar, but King Sviggar had accepted his oath in return for salt and hearth. And afterwards came those mysterious deaths. Sviggar’s daughter, Lilla, had disappeared. Erlan had stepped forward. He had followed the trail into a vast, cold wilderness until it led him down into the dark depths under the earth. He entered seeking death. Instead he found life, and her. And he was a different man when he restored her to her father. The grateful king had honoured him, given him gold and a place on his council, even given him a new name: Aurvandil. It meant
‘shining wanderer’. But for now he had no need to wander.
Now? Why not for ever?
He crossed the expansive yard of the Great Hall. All was quiet. Most folk would be settling down to supper around one of the many hearth-fires. His belly grumbled in anticipation, hoping Kai had cooked something good.
Kai Askarsson was his servant, at least in name. Erlan had rescued Kai from a whipping post in a lonely corner of Gotarland, many leagues to the south. At the time it had been against his better judgement to let Kai tag along, but since then the Norns – those ancient spinners of fate – had woven together their paths tighter than the great wolf Fenrir’s leash.
Kai was fearless, reckless, irreverent, irrepressible, mischievous, garrulous, sneaky and downright mad at times. In short, about as different from Erlan as a man could be. But Erlan liked him better than any other, too.
He set off down the slope towards the scattered halls and houses that lay to the east of the Great Hall, eager to discover what Kai would conjure from their pot tonight.
That was when he heard a strange noise.
It stopped him at once.
He turned and shaded his eyes against the sunset, judging the sound to have come from back towards the Sacred Grove. Seeing nothing, he was about to shrug it away, when out of the haze emerged the silhouette of a horse and its rider. Even from there, he could see the rider was slumped over the horse’s withers.
There was another sound, halfway between a strangled salutation and a wail.
‘You all right there, friend?’ he called as the horseman drew closer.
No answer. And the horse kept on, so that Erlan was forced to lurch aside. Before he had time to object, the rider had collapsed on top of him.
They hit the ground hard, Erlan winded under the man’s full weight. The rider was groaning like a stuck boar. He was wounded, clearly, but only when Erlan slithered out from under him and saw his own tunic soaked with blood did he realize how badly.
He rolled him onto his back. ‘We need help here, now!’ he yelled. A stable-thrall appeared from under a byre and came running. Then a woman in a head-cloth emerged from a smithy. When she saw the blood-soaked rider she screamed. That brought others.
The man’s breath was grating like a saw. Erlan smelled the stink of punctured bowels and peered at his wound. It was an ugly gash caked black around its edges. Blood still welled from inside. His cheeks were deathly pale. Still, his face was familiar. Another of the king’s house-karls, Erlan thought, named Uttgar or Ottar, maybe? There were so many of the buggers it was impossible to remember all their names. ‘He
needs water.’
The stable-hand rose and pushed through the gathering crowd. Meanwhile the rider was gulping at the air, bleeding.
Dying.
More folk were arriving, crowding round. ‘Give him some room, damn you!’ Erlan shifted, trying to cradle the karl’s head in his lap.
‘That’s Ormarr,’ said a thrall-girl.
‘Poor bastard,’ said a smith. ‘Look, he’s trying to say something.’
Certainly his lips were moving. Erlan put his ear to the tremulous breath.
‘The… Kolmark.’ Hardly a whisper.
‘The forest?’
‘Slain… all of us, slain.’
‘What’s he saying?’ the thrall-girl demanded, plucking at Erlan’s elbow.
‘If you shut up, I could tell you… Go on.’
‘War— tooth… War— tooth…’
‘Wartooth, he says. He must mean King Harald!’ declared the smith, who was leaning over Erlan’s shoulder. The name buzzed around the gathering. None was more hated or feared in all of Sveäland than Harald Wartooth, King of the Danes.
‘What’s the old bastard done now?’ growled someone further back.
Ormarr groaned.
‘He’s dying,’ the smith said, prodding a bony finger in Erlan’s ribs. ‘Ask him again.’
‘Look at me.’ He tried to brush Ormarr’s sweat-slicked hair out of his eyes. ‘What about the Wartooth? Who is slain? Speak, man.’ But the karl only rolled his eyes. ‘Where’s that bloody water?’ Erlan yelled, looking round for the errant stable-thrall. The nearest water butt was not thirty yards away but there was no sign of the fool. Not that a gulp of water would do much good now.
With a sudden surge of strength, Ormarr seized Erlan’s tunic and pulled him close. His eyes were burning with fever. He put his lips to Erlan’s ear and uttered his last words, so faint Erlan could barely hear them. Then his grip slackened, his eyelids drooped, his head fell back. Dead.
Erlan slumped back on his heels.
‘What ’e say?’ asked the smith.
But Erlan was staring at Ormarr’s lifeless lips.
‘He whispered something. Was it about the Wartooth?’
‘What did he say, damn it?’ demanded another.
Erlan rose to his feet, glaring right through the wall of eager faces, deaf to their questions, his mind fixed on one object and one alone. He had to see the king.
Because war was coming.
About The Author:
Theodore Brun studied Dark Age archaeology at Cambridge. In 2010, he quit his job as an arbitration lawyer in Hong Kong and cycled 10,000 miles across Asia and Europe to his home in Norfolk. A Sacred Storm is his second novel.
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