The Red Oath

by Jerry Autieri

  Yngvar gently turned her head. For such a deadly woman, laid out like this she seemed more like a dreaming maiden of some ancient poem. A heavy lump formed at the top right of her forehead. He imagined a spear butt driven into it. She probably collapsed right off, but not before killing her foe.

  “Her pulse is strong,” Alasdair said.

  “Auntie,” Ewald said. “Don’t sleep.”

  “She’ll come around,” Yngvar said. He stood up from her.

  The Arabs moved with caution. Their handsome leader spoke through the box formed by the giant guards, addressing Kalim who shook his head violently. At last, he stamped his foot and began screaming. His dark face turned purple. He pointed and screamed at the Arab leader. Spit flew from his mouth. He shook his fist at the heavy clouds above.

  The Arabs struck.

  Yngvar had never seen the like. Bjorn was the closest relative to these monstrous Arabs. But even he was more of a bear cub compared to these inhuman monsters.

  Their gargantuan swords cut as if reaping grass. Spear shafts shattered. Arms with their bucklers attached flew into the air. Heads rolled from shoulders. Guts spilled from opened bellies. The giants grunted and growled with their efforts. Blood sprayed them from every direction. But they were devoid of emotion. None of the red-faced rage that engulfed Bjorn reached into their cheeks. Only their efforts to attack and defend raised sweat and color to their dark faces.

  The Arabs that survived their initial attack gave back the same pain. A spear drove and snapped into the prodigious guts of one of the giants. He took a second and then a third. But he continued to stand and fight. Another nearly ate a spear blade. It punched into his mouth and out of his cheek. But he too continued to spin his massive slab of sharp iron.

  Kalim crouched among them, covering his head with both hands. It was as if a cloud rained blood and entrails upon him. His scream was continuous and shrill. It seemed his breath might never end.

  “My head,” Gyna moaned, suddenly sitting up. Ewald and Alasdair both pressed her back down. “What happened?”

  “The better question is what is happening now.”

  Yngvar watched the four guards tear apart fifteen men. This was an impossibility that could never be repeated. Who would believe it? Yet each of the giants had solemnly ripped into their foes, facing three or four men at a time with only their swords for defense.

  Black-robed corpses spread out between the trees. Some Arabs still lived, whimpering over a severed arm or holding their guts to their bellies. Most had only endured a single blow before being nearly chopped in half.

  One of the giants at last collapsed to his knees. He had five broken spear shafts stuck in his massive torso. He held one and tried to pull it free. But he simply groaned with the effort then slackened. He remained on his knees as if in supplication to a king. But the giant was dead.

  A second one stumbled to his prince. His eyeball hung from its socket and his face had been sliced open through the mouth. He was blinded it seemed, for he pawed around trying to find his lord. Kalim shrieked and pulled away.

  One of the giant’s brothers gently guided his blinded companion to his hand and knees. The other surviving giant hefted his massive sword. He struck his brother’s ruined head from his shoulders. A mercy killing.

  Kalim stood shaking and whimpering. He was thick with blood and gore. The whites of his eyes showed absolute terror.

  “Well, he won’t smell of flowers now,” Yngvar said. “Let’s collect our prize.’’

  “Lord?” Alasdair’s voice was small and shocked behind him. “You can’t be serious.”

  But he was.

  The prince was a sword’s breadth away. He cowered behind his two giants. Each one bled from a dozen cuts. One had a nasty flap of skin hanging open on his thigh. Blood seeped down his ruined trousers. Yngvar raised his sword in salute, then gripped it in two hands.

  “Kalim is my prisoner,” he said.

  The two giants stared down with soulless eyes. Kalim began to shout hysterical commands, hopping as if hot embers lay underfoot.

  At last, one of the giants showed he still owned emotion. A faint smile bent his fat lips. Along with his companion, he hefted his massive sword.

  Yngvar crashed to the ground. His knees fell out and he was at the giants’ feet.

  Above his head the giant swords swished through the air. Both were lazy strikes, but the size and strength of the weapons would have felled Yngvar like a long-dead tree.

  Alasdair tackled him by his legs.

  “Lord, this is madness.”

  “Get off me or we’re both dead!”

  Yet the smiling giant simply looked down on him. It might be the expression a cockroach sees before it is crushed underfoot. But as fast as a fleeing a cockroach, Alasdair hauled Yngvar aside as the giant stomped down with his sandaled foot. The thud of the impact rumbled through the earth. Yngvar felt its force blow across his face.

  The other giant laughed. It was a dull, stupid laugh. But it was full of cruel mirth. Neither one spoke. They turned away from Yngvar.

  Kalim put his hands to his head and screamed. But one of the giants scooped him underarm again and carried him off toward the camp. The other giant with the injured leg simply stared at Yngvar. His smile vanished. All signs of anything beyond animal intelligence vanished. He wicked the blood from his sword and turned to follow his companion.

  Kalim kicked and shrieked but neither giant heeded him.

  “Lord, that was foolish,” Alasdair said, still clutching Yngvar as if another attack was offered. Yngvar pushed free, his cheeks heated.

  “The prince was right there. I had to try.”

  “Well, be less reckless,” Alasdair said. “Lord, I cannot always be there to save you. One day you might have to fight alone. Don’t choose a poor battle. You are smarter than that.”

  “What do you mean you cannot always be with me?”

  Alasdair sat on the grass, his coppery hair sticking with sweat to the side of his head. He turned his moon-bright face aside.

  “Hey, the battle is fucking over,” Gyna screamed. “And the little shit got away. Do we follow?”

  He and Alasdair struggled to their feet to join Gyna. Ewald was steadying her, whispering careful, foreign words close to her ear. She just pushed his face aside with a bloody hand while she locked eyes with Yngvar.

  He could see they were unfocused.

  “Your battle is done,” he said. “Your wits have been scrambled.”

  “And not yours? You got hit in the head by one of those brutes.”

  Yngvar put his hand to the back of his head. A soft lump screamed pain at his touch. But he was strong on his feet and his vision was steady.

  “Well, as Alasdair will tell you, my head is filled with rocks. I am in fine condition.”

  “Yeah, only because Alasdair kept you from losing your head and probably your neck and shoulders in the bargain. You really were going to fight them without me to back you up?”

  Yngvar snorted a laugh. Gyna struggled with Ewald to stand. She got up, leaning on her nephew’s shoulder.

  “Don’t laugh at me. I’d have done better than you trying to go sword to sword with them. Those idiots wouldn’t know what to do with me crawling over their faces and stabbing their necks. Only problem seems to be they don’t know when they’re dead.”

  They all looked to the impaled giant sitting on his knees, head slumped to his chest with a long line of bloody drool reaching to his lap.

  “There will be another chance to show us what you can do,” Yngvar said. Kalim’s protests grew more distant, but the sounds of battle from the fortress were steady. “We need to see to our brothers now. Kalim might have been serious about his offer. He might still attack if we can offer him a chance.”

  “You really think this was anything other than a trick to catch you?” Gyna asked.

  “Prince is bad,” Ewald said, shaking his head. “Not real king, like me. Coward.”

  “Yes, a
coward, but also a canny foe. He and his brother hate each other. I can think of no better thing than the two of them fighting each other. Remember, Kalim has a hundred men at the ready and now he was been attacked by his brother’s soldiers. He’s ready for an attack. We just need to encourage him.”

  “Lord, how are we going to get back into the fortress if it is under siege?”

  Alasdair wrung his hands together, a gesture he had not observed before in his young friend. It seemed a habit he had picked up from Valgerd. He saw the worry in Alasdair’s face.

  “Valgerd will survive, no matter what happens,” Yngvar said. “Do not worry for her. Bjorn and Thorfast will watch out for her.”

  “Do you think those two fools tried to attack the Arabs outside the walls?” Gyna pushed off of Ewald to balance on her own. She stood unnaturally straight, as if she were afraid the ground would shift and she might topple.

  “Not with ten men,” Yngvar said. “Bjorn might become so thoughtless when the bear god grabs hold of him. But Thorfast and the others would never do that. They would’ve retreated.”

  “If they were able to,” Alasdair said. Yngvar wished he had not said as much, but everyone knew the possibilities.

  “I have a plan,” Yngvar said. “It’s not much, but we have to do something before the Arabs expect their spearmen to return with the prince.”

  “One of your plans,” Gyna said. “The kind that only succeed because the gods love you so much, or so you say?”

  “No, the kind that work because they are clever and daring and strike where the enemy is weakest.” Yngvar took Gyna’s face by the chin and looked into her eyes. The pupils were not the same size. “But you’re not going to be of any help. So, I’ve got to think of what to do with you.”

  “What to do with me?” Gyna shoved him and to his surprise she managed to remain standing. “You’ll tell me this clever plan and I’ll make sure you to get it done. What is that look? Did you think I’d just sit at a loom while all the men go out to fight? Maybe cook a meal and milk the fucking goats? A knock on the head isn’t the worst I’ve had. You know it. So, let’s hear your plan.”

  Yngvar shook his head.

  “What should I expect from a woman who wears pants?” He looked to Ewald and Alasdair, who both shrugged. “Very well, I might have a role for you yet. But let’s start by collecting Arab clothing and their spears. We’re going right to the heart of the enemy. And of course, we might die there. But it will be glorious.”

  19

  Yngvar and Gyna crouched behind shrubs closer to the rear of the Arabs’ newly established camp. The trees here were denser and palms mixed with other strange trees to create a natural shelter for a small group. The camp was set far enough to avoid any war machines that the Byzantines might have had. Yet except for their ballistae they had no other long-range weapons. This Arab prince remained wary still, which meant he might not understand Pozzallo’s true situation.

  Hastily pitched tents spread out on the field of brown grass. The camp followers busied themselves with finishing off the details of the camp. They ported sacks from one tent to another, unloaded wagons, or fed and watered horses. These were mostly women, but also slaves and boys too young to fight.

  “Looks like he’s planning to stay,” Gyna said. Like Yngvar, she was now wrapped in the black robes of the Arabs that had ambushed them. Blood stains were invisible except in bright light, which the cloudy sky did not offer. The tears and rips received in battle revealed patches of Gyna’s clothes or her mail shirt beneath.

  “If they don’t take Pozzallo today, my guess is they’ll settle in until it falls along with all the other forts under siege.” Yngvar looked past the camp to the stout walls of Pozzallo in the distance. Arabs sheltered under shields as others leaned ladders against the walls and scaled. The Byzantines shot arrows into the rows of attackers.

  “Where’s my stupid nephew?” Gyna craned her neck from behind the shrubs, but ducked down when two boys passed them carrying bundles of unlit torches.

  Once the boys passed, Yngvar drew his captured Arab spear closer. Ewald’s and Alasdair’s had been left with him. He brushed his fingers along the smooth wood of all three.

  “They’ll be back soon enough. We just need to know a few things before we move.”

  Gyna let out a long breath. “You really are going to get us killed today. Look at the size of this camp. They can’t all be at the walls.”

  “They’re all at the walls,” Yngvar said. “Or else they won’t take Pozzallo. Even Kalim’s brother will be there.”

  “Ahmad? That’s his name? That’s what Ragnar said, anyway. They all sound funny to me.” Gyna adjusted her head cover again. The band was too loose.

  “I suppose that’s his name. If all goes well, Prince Ahmad and Prince Kalim will kill each other today.”

  “That’ll be a better end than that rat deserves,” Gyna said. Her eyes flashed with hatred. Her head cover fell across her cheeks, casting her face into weak shadow.

  They remained crouching. Gyna occasionally flexed her leg and rubbed her knee. It was hidden beneath the long robes, but Yngvar guessed it had started to swell again.

  “When we get to sea again, you need to lie on the deck and let that heal.”

  She sniffed. “If I can. No doubt you’ll probably sail us into a hundred enemy warships on the journey home. I’ll have to save you once again.”

  “Yes, well, I appreciate your valor, Gyna Broken-Knee. But I plan to steer away from enemies on the sea roads home. This has been enough fighting for a lifetime. I am done with it.”

  Gyna shifted to stare at him. “You’re going to set down your sword?”

  Yngvar nodded. He watched a ladder being levered off the wall with a half-dozen Arabs clinging to it. It fell backward onto the enemies below.

  “Really? So the Wolves will become hearthside hounds and you’ll become a farmer. What will you plant? Barley? Yes, plant barley. Get a wife with wide hips and big tits and fill your hall with squealing babies. Sounds wonderful. But please, if I don’t die before that day comes, kill me first.”

  “I may kill you now if you can’t be silent. Gods, what is keeping them? They just had to find out where Kalim’s troops were headed.”

  Gyna rubbed her shoulders as if cold, then looked behind. She turned back and started picking at the dead grass.

  Yngvar surveyed the camp. His original idea seemed less feasible now. The longer they delayed the more likely the situation at Pozzallo would change. If the Arabs gained the walls, whatever he did here would be useless. If the Arabs retreated, he could not succeed with his plans. There would be too many warriors present. He had to act now or not at all.

  He heard their approach, which alarmed him. Alasdair at least could be as silent as a hunting owl. But the tramping of feet over the ground announced their arrival. He turned to hush them.

  Bjorn and Thorfast emerged from between the trees. A half-dozen Franks lumbered behind, faces red and slick with sweat. They were dressed for war and bent at the waist to keep their heads low.

  “Lord, I found them looking for us,” Alasdair said, somehow materializing from their midst. Ewald too seemed to suddenly be crouching beside his aunt Gyna. Just as she had promised, he seemed to shift from a plant into a person.

  Yngvar shook his head and pulled Bjorn down beside him with a laugh.

  “You make a better mountain than a tree, cousin. Get down so we can discuss the plan.”

  Bjorn knelt as directed, his bulk still leaving his head clear above the bushes. He slapped a huge hand to Gyna’s shoulder. She smiled meekly and her dusky skin flushed darker.

  “Lovers reunited,” Thorfast said. “I’m going to fucking cry. Now, keep your head down or we’re all going to lose ours.”

  Thorfast shoved Bjorn lower until he leaned on his elbows. The other Franks crashed in together. None of them looked injured. All looked exhausted, and sweat soaked their collars and wilted their beards.

  “Ther
e must be a story,” Yngvar asked. “Is it interesting?”

  “Not really,” Bjorn said. “We followed you like the plan. The Arabs sprang their charge at the same time. Fucking Byzantines wouldn’t open the gate again. So we ran and hid by the bay. Couldn’t get through to you. We were hoping you hadn’t been killed.”

  “We know about Kalim,” Thorfast said. “What we don’t know is your plan. You want him to help us?”

  Alasdair made his report, telling of how he and Ewald spied on the prince’s camp. It seemed they ranked up and moved out toward Pozzallo.

  “Well, it’s simple enough,” Yngvar said. “Now that you’re all here it might even succeed. We’re dressed as Arabs, as you see.”

  “You look good in a dress,” Thorfast said, plucking at the hem of Yngvar’s black robe.

  “Thanks. It’s a disguise, you fool. Do your sharp eyes not only see my robe but also the campfires those slaves are kindling? We’re going to fetch torches that they’re setting out around the edges of the camp. We’ll light them and we’ll start burning everything that can burn.”

  “That’s the plan? Burn the camp?” Thorfast sat back on his knees, looking critically at the campfire.

  “And create whatever chaos we can.” Yngvar swept his hand across the wide camp. “We need to get this camp in an uproar. Smoke needs to climb into the air. Slaves need to scream and women need to streak away for safety with torn blouses. The Arabs need to look back and wonder if they have been flanked. They need to waver. They will send a force back, or else call off the assault altogether. And as Kalim is approaching with his small army, he will find his brother’s forces unfocused and stretched out. That will be his opportunity to strike.”

  No one spoke. The Franks looked bewildered. Ewald sat patiently through the Frankish. Thorfast and Bjorn shrugged.

  “The prince was quite mad with his brother,” Yngvar said. “And his brother is not only stealing his glory but also killed two of his pet trolls. He’s also after our heads, if the bargain wasn’t sweet enough. He’ll come and he’ll take the bait.”