“He’s probably sorry I didn’t club him to death,” Skeggi muttered, shaking the Dane’s blood off his hand.
“Wouldja just fight!” Ostryg cried, and Skeggi swung his sword up to block the next attacker as his owl flew into his face as well. Down went the attacker, with a well-aimed strike of his sword.
“I am fighting! What are you doing?” Skeggi shouted.
Ostryg was singing a song about the glories of battle, but his words were infused with song-magic, and he was pushing back attacks from all sides. Skeggi joined in, because he knew this particular singing magic. And now his sword, too, cut at his attackers more skillfully, and the little owl, apparently inspired by the song, swooped in and cut at the attackers with her razor-sharp talons, throwing off their attacks and allowing Skeggi and Ostryg to cut them down.
The remaining Danes ran back toward the ships, and Skeggi and Ostryg gave chase, as Smoke flew along on the wind next to Skeggi. They were still singing, though now Skeggi was improvising words about the glory of the chase and how the attackers could not stand before them, but fell and fled in terror. One of the Danes was singing back at him, trying to use song-magic against him, but Skeggi sang discord against the Dane’s note and shattered his power. Now mute, the Dane fled.
Other Skalans were joining the fight, and those who had been fighting were finally seeing success. Other Skalans were helping to drive back the attackers, and the defenders of Skala were returning from having routed the Danes, and they began to help the wounded to the queen’s castle.
Cheering rose all around when the Danes fled back to their ships. One man left the battle to fit his door back into its doorway, while a woman was tying an unconscious Dane securely to a fencepost.
But far, far ahead, the other group of Danes, hardly noticeable in the distance, were still escaping with Skeggi’s brothers and other children.
“My little brothers are being taken as thralls!” Skeggi cried, pointing with his sword as he ran after the Danes.
“We need fighters to come with us and get his brothers back,” Ostryg called to the crowd. “Come with us before it’s too late.”
“They took your brothers?” somebody roared.
“I’ll help you,” a woman said, drawing two swords.
“Come, let us save these children!” a soldier from the queen’s army called. “Follow the owl man!”
Smoke landed on Skeggi’s shoulder, stood up on her tiptoes, and beat her wings in triumph, just in case there was any question who the warrior was talking about.
The Skalans rushed forward, following Skeggi and Ostryg, who ran after the children, shouting. In moments the whole crowd of Skalans were upon the Danes. They clashed with swords against their foes. Some of the Skalans who didn’t have swords simply flew at the Danes with their fists, or went laying around themselves with fence posts, knocking down the enemy through brute force.
Skeggi pushed to the front of the crowd to where the Danes had a big group of children rounded up and crying. The Skalans roared in and laid about them with great fury. Skeggi, busily swinging his sword, looked around him with elation at their good work.
“Hey, brothers,” Skeggi shouted at the group of children. “Fight those bad Danes. Go for the nuts, brothers!”
A battle shriek rose from one of his brothers.
An answering howl of pain rose from two of the Danes.
“Yeah, get them!” Skeggi shouted, fighting back the Dane attacking him.
Now the other children saw what was happening and joined in. Skeggi glimpsed a little girl deliver a kick that brought a grown man in armor to his knees, and then he fell over sideways.
Guess he forgot to put armor on one crucial spot, Skeggi thought as he kept fighting.
And soon that group of Danes were running, or limping, for their lives.
A lot of the children cheered when the Skalans ran to them, fresh from battle and covered with blood.
“It’s okay, it’s okay,” Skeggi said, and his owl on his shoulder swiveled her head at them, eyes big, then turned her head sideways. Then she turned it even farther sideways.
The children came to him to see the funny owl. Then parents started gathering their children to them.
Skeggi shouted, “Agi! Juti! Tuni! Where are you barbarians at?”
And here came his three brothers, all running to him. They crashed into Skeggi, and he gathered them all up into his arms and squeezed them tight, and kissed them all on top of their sweaty heads. It was the best thing in the world.
“You are all my warriors,” Skeggi said.
“Did you see those Danes fall down when we kicked them? Did you?”
“I did, and I’m very proud of you. You have brought honor to our home,” Skeggi said, squeezing them again.
Now the boys were wriggling out of Skeggi’s arms. “Watch how we did it,” they said, demonstrating on invisible Danes how they’d brought them to their knees.
“So can we still pay ‘Go for the nuts’ in the house?” Tuni said.
“No,” Skeggi said.
“Some of these aren’t our children,” somebody said. The children were apparently from different cities the Danes had raided.
“We’ll have to find their parents,” somebody said. “We’ll take them all back home.”
Skeggi, who had all three of his little brothers hanging off him, looked around. One blonde-haired Viking had a Moorish child sitting on each broad shoulder, carrying them up the hill to their parents. The woman with two swords had put them away and was now hugging several little crying kids. “There, there. You’re safe,” she said.
“Here’s a little Persian girl,” somebody called.
“Her mama and papa are here in town,” somebody said. “They moved up here recently and don’t quite know the language yet. I’ll take her to her parents.”
“They must have moved up here from Persia to get cool.”
“I’d like to move to Persia to get warm. Come on, little bird. I take you to Mama and Papa,” she added in broken Persian, and the girl smiled and took her hand.
Skeggi squished his brothers. “I’m bringing you to the queen’s keep where you can be safe. Come on.”
The brothers ran ahead of Skeggi.
Ostryg said, “I’ll be damned. You survived an actual fight with swords,” but then he gave Skeggi a one-armed hug, which was unusual for him, but nice.
It was quite a parade to the queen’s keep with all the rescued children. Their parents kept running out of the wreckage to the children, happily scooping them up.
Skeggi brought his brothers back to the queen’s keep.
Vikarr, the guard who had recognized him earlier, whooped with delight when Skeggi came in with all his brothers. “Yes! The lights of my eyes and the joys of my heart. And you rescued them all.”
Ostryg said, “He sure did.”
“No, he didn’t,” said Agi. “We did. You want to see how we did it?”
“That’s okay!” Skeggi said fake-cheerfully, herding all his brothers away. “Nobody wants to hear it. Really.”
His brothers told the guard anyway, in very loud voices, and then started demonstrating again. Skeggi dragged them away as Vikarr all but collapsed, wheezing in laughter.
“Vikarr teaches a class in battle tactics, doesn’t he?” Ostryg asked. “I tell you, I can’t wait to see his next class.”
“Look! Look! It’s Finna!” the boys cried as Dyrfinna came striding up, her face brightening when she saw Skeggi’s brothers. “We want piggyback rides!”
“The littlest guy first,” she said, kneeling down so Agi could clamber up on her back. “If the rest of you want to follow us,” she said to Skeggi, not meeting his eyes, “we have a place next to the walls where your brothers can watch the battle safely while the rest of us suit up to fight.”
“Okay,” said Skeggi.
Dyrfinna got up with Agi clinging to her back, his dirty bare feet sticking out on each side. “Hold on, little guy,” she said, then mad
e a horsey noise and galloped away, Agi laughing the whole way.
They settled the brothers in. Their vantage point was well within the walls of the keep, out of range of arrows or dragon fire, but they had a good view of the battle taking place on the shoreline near Skala, some distance outside the walls.
One of the neighbors who lived up the hill a little ways from Skeggi’s house gave the boys a big chunk of bread from the loaf he carried. “This fight will be over soon,” she said. “Good thing Skeggi was riding his dragon this morning and found the Danes. Otherwise it would have gone very badly for us.”
Skeggi blushed at the praise, but said, “Here’s hoping nothing goes wrong.”
“Skeggi saved us from the bad men,” Agi said. “D’you know how we stopped them?”
The boy started demonstrating again, and Skeggi got out of the way.
“At least they’re not thinking about how the bad men nearly got away with them,” he said to Gefjun, who was watching the fighting.
“I’m glad you saved them,” she said. “Are you blushing again?”
“No,” he said, blushing. “I just … I mean, don’t praise me, I hate that.”
Gefjun smiled. “I think it’s cute. But really, you did a good job. Take a little credit for that.”
Just then, one of the queen’s pages came running up.
“You came back just in time,” she said to Gefjun and Skeggi. “Are all of your sword-friends here?”
“Yeah,” Skeggi said, gesturing for Ostryg and Dyrfinna to come over from where they were playing with his brothers. “What’s going on?”
“I’m bringing you a message from the queen,” the page said in a low voice.
7
The Queen’s Daughter
“You’re bringing us a what from the what what?” Skeggi said.
“She said we’re getting a message from the queen,” Gefjun said, busily squeezing herself under Ostryg’s arm.
“That was a rhetorical question.”
The page was all business. “We have a problem. Early this morning, Thora, the queen’s daughter, went for a walk out to the old mead-hall by the sea. She left for her stroll a little while before you discovered the Danes.”
Skeggi groaned. “She did?” Thora loved her strolls. The sword-friends sometimes accompanied her to the mead hall, where they would all would fight in epic mock-battles with her guards. And after all the fighting was done, there would be cake.
“Thora always disguises herself, obviously, as a limping woodsman to avoid discovery,” the page continued. “We’ve seen no sign of trouble from the Danes in that direction, but all the dragons have headed out, and our armies are tied up. The queen needs a small force to run out and accompany her back, and she is asking your group to do it.”
“The sword-friends? Us?” Ostryg asked.
Skeggi went even colder. “With Danes roaming the land.”
“We can go,” Dyrfinna said in her resonant voice, standing near Skeggi – not too close, since he broke her heart only a week ago.
“Danes might be invading, and they’re asking us to leave the city, find Thora, and bring her back?” Gefjun said with disbelief.
“I’m afraid we only discovered this unfortunate fact a moment ago,” the page said. “We don’t have anybody to send who is free. All of the queen’s forces are being used for defense and for attack. They will have all the Danes tied down on the opposite side of Skala. There haven’t been any Danes spotted to the west, where the mead hall is, and I hope the Danes don’t bother to go in that direction, so that should give you a clear path there and back. The trails there are thick and overgrown, and the old mead hall, as you know, is on a cliff that’s nearly inaccessible from the sea. Which should keep you out of sight of the Danes, even if they do make it to that side of Skala.”
Skeggi remembered those steep cliffs that the old mead hall stood upon. Dyrfinna, always the daredevil, had tried to scale those cliffs once and had fallen and badly sprained her ankle. They were sheer, with barely a foothold on them, and very high. The nearest approach to the sea was nearly a mile away, but even that cliff-path was perilous. The mead hall, long ago, had served as a lookout, but after the Queen’s grandfather had built the great keep with a lookout of its own, the old mead hall had fallen into disuse and was mostly forgotten. Thora had recently claimed it as a little getaway.
“The main forces of the Queen are mostly watching the city and castle and going out on missions of their own,” Dyrfinna said. “But really, I think we should be able to get through okay, if we have your owl be our eyes, and if we use our song magic and our wits.”
“I guess that will work,” Skeggi said, though he didn’t feel that confident himself. Especially with Danes.
“Do all of you have your armor and weapons? Do you need some of the extra arms or armor?” the page asked.
“Well, yes,” Skeggi said.
“Come on, then,” Dyrfinna said, taking charge as usual. “There’s no time to waste.”
They followed her down to the armory, where she was friends with the armorer. “We’re being sent out to retrieve somebody,” Dyrfinna said as she loped in to the armory.
The armorer looked up with a frown from the red-hot sword he was mending. “Did Thora go a-wandering again?”
Skeggi leaned on the shelf near the armorer, trying to look cool. “She sure did,” he said. “I could use a spear, please.”
The armorer raised an eyebrow. “Skeggi, I’ll get you a spear, but it’s going to be a big spear … something to stop the Danes from attacking you with a training dummy.”
“Stop!” Skeggi cried. “It only happened that one time.” He backed up, laughing, but then he tripped over his own feet and crashed into a wooden form with chain mail on it and fell down with the wooden form on top of him and got stuck underneath it.
“Spoke too soon,” Ostryg observed.
“Do you think somebody hexed him?” Gefjun asked.
“Would you get this damn thing off me!” Skeggi yelled, so they did.
The armorer brought some light armor for Gefjun, who was not caparisoned, gave Ostryg a spear, and a bow and arrows for Gefjun, who had only her sword and dagger. Dyrfinna loaded herself up with a nice leather shirt with rings sewn on them and an extra dagger. Skeggi put on some leather armor, and the armorer sharpened his sword and daggers, which had grown dull.
“There’s no time to waste,” Dyrfinna said urgently. “All of you remember where the old mead hall is, correct?”
“Straight on through the side gates and east to the foothills of Mount Pyrr,” said Skeggi, brushing soot off his arms.
Ostryg sighed. “Of course we know. We used to walk with Thora out there all the time,” he said. “She’d invite us over for mock battles with her guards.”
Skeggi had always enjoyed those battles, even though he was usually one of the first to get trounced. But he’d redeem himself by composing an epic verse about the battle when they were all relaxing and eating supper. “But where are Thora’s guards?” he asked. “Doesn’t she have a set of guards out there to take care of her?”
“She sneaked out there by herself,” Dyrfinna said.
Ostryg made kissing noises.
“Grow up,” Dyrfinna said. “Some people also like their alone time.”
“She should know,” Ostryg muttered into Skeggi’s ear. But Skeggi didn’t laugh.
“That is our objective,” Dyrfinna added. “The dragon corps said that if they could spare a dragon at some point today, they’d send one out after us later in the afternoon.”
“I hope they do,” the armorer said, placing a sturdy leather helmet on Skeggi’s head. “Here, I think you could use this for your poor noggin. May the Eternals bless your work.”
“The Eternals have their work cut out for them,” Ostryg said, winking at Skeggi.
Skeggi shook his fist at him.
Then Skeggi said, “Don’t leave until I make arrangements for my brothers. I can’t leave them
alone, here at the queen’s keep.”
“Go quickly,” Dyrfinna said. “We’ll wait for you – but we can’t wait for too long.”
Skeggi hurried back up to where his brothers were sitting, all tired out now, watching the battle. Their neighbor was there – and so was Ragnarr.
“Oh! So now you just show up,” Skeggi said. “Thanks.”
“I told him about how the Danes had them,” their neighbor said, raising her eyebrows.
“I’m really, really sorry,” Ragnarr said.
“I don’t have time. As usual,” Skeggi replied, his jaw tight. “I’m being called away on a mission for the queen. But I don’t know if I can trust you with our own brothers,” he said, gripping Ragnarr’s arm. “I have to leave right away. But I’m asking myself if I can trust you to watch over these guys. Like maybe you can act like they mean something to you.”
Ragnarr shook off Skeggi’s hand. “Yeah, they do!” he yelled. “But every time you have to act like some big jerk and you keep coming after me, telling me what to do!”
“I do it because I need you to step up and be a parent!” Skeggi said. “Seeing as these guys almost got killed because you thought it was more important to go wink at the girls than to defend your own brothers against invaders!”
“Don’t yell,” said Agi, who didn’t like yelling.
Their neighbor touched Skeggi on his arm. “If you don’t mind, I’ll talk to him,” she said. “Go ahead and do your work. The queen needs your service.”
Skeggi left, shaking his head as he walked away from his brothers.
And just like that, the four sword-friends, with Skeggi’s owl, headed out into the forest to fetch the Queen’s daughter Thora back to safety.
8
The Stranger
“So did Thora seriously have to go all alone today, of all days?” Skeggi asked as they walked through the side gate onto the road that led through the forest.
“That’s just like her,” Gefjun said, tickling the owl under her chin as she sat on Skeggi’s shoulder. “She just likes to walk in nature, and read those new-fangled book things, and contemplate the mysteries of life or whatever.”
A Whisper of Smoke Page 4
