by Connie Mason
“Didn’t he know you carried his babe?”
She shook her head. “Linnea isn’t his. She’s mine. Only mine.”
A hard knot formed in Katla’s throat. The woman had been held in these deplorable conditions for many months, and she clearly had no idea which of her captors fathered her child.
The woman was silent for such a long time, Katla assumed she’d fallen into exhausted slumber. Then her soft whisper came again.
“Can…can your man kill Tryggr?”
Katla nodded. Brandr would have to.
“If he does, I will work for you till my fingers bleed.” The woman sat up and turned haunted eyes on her. “I see kindness in you. Please, I beg you. Take us with you when you go.”
***
Tracking in the dark was no mean feat, but Brandr pressed on, going slowly lest he overrun a turn in the trail left by Katla and her abductors. Bent grass and broken twigs told their story. The indentations in soft earth showed there were three men, one of goodly size. After the initial scuffle at the top of the rise, he saw no more trace of Katla except in the deepening of the tracks left by the others.
They were carrying her.
Brandr hoped that meant she was only bound, not injured. Fury made his eyes burn, but he shoved the feeling down. Katla would not be helped by the out-of-control rage of a berserkr. He had to keep his head.
As he knelt to examine the snapped-off tips of a gorse bush, Brandr wished for his friend Orlin. Of all the men who’d gone with him to Byzantium, Orlin was the best tracker. Quiet but lethal, the hunter had been free with his knowledge of signs in the earth. Brandr had learned all the wood lore he could from his taciturn companion.
Then Brandr came across a long, indented ridge in the dirt between the tracks left by the men. There. Another.
She was struggling. She’d managed to drag her toe along the ground.
A grim smile lifted his lips.
Trust my Katla not to make things easy for them.
The sky was lighter over the next rise. A fire meant habitation.
He sank down and scrambled up the hill on all fours. Pressing himself flat on his belly, he peered over the crest, lest he present a void in the starry sky behind him and so warn a watcher of his presence.
A slovenly croft spread below him. Movement drew his eye. A watchman.
The man walked from one outbuilding to the next, stopping from time to time to scan the surrounding hills. Finally, he stopped to relieve himself against a sagging cattle byre.
Brandr had run his quarry to ground. But as he crept closer, Orlin’s advice rang in his head.
“No animal is more dangerous than the one you hunt in its own den.”
Chapter 26
“Katla.”
Even though she was still sitting up, she’d been feigning sleep, hoping it would lull her captors into forgetting about her for a while. When she heard her name, her chin jerked up, and her gaze swept the common room.
The other women were still asleep. Tryggr and one of his companions were tossing knucklebones against the low bench. When his underling threw well, Tryggr scowled so fiercely Katla suspected his pinch-faced friend began to hope for ill luck.
She bit back her disappointment. She must have skimmed the surface of sleep and only dreamed she’d heard Brandr call her name.
“Courage, love.”
There. She hadn’t imagined it. She was wide awake, and his voice sounded as clearly as if he’d spoken directly into her ear.
Except he wasn’t anywhere near. She glanced up at the smoke hole, half expecting to see Brandr peering down at her. Only sluggish fumes escaped into the black night.
“I’m coming.”
The voice was so close she flinched. The woman beside her on the wolf pelt didn’t stir. Tryggr didn’t stop the dice game mid-toss to leap up and grab his sword.
No one else heard Brandr speak.
Either Katla teetered on lunacy or…
Old Gerte’s words about her grandparents and the special bonding of inn matki munr resurfaced in her mind.
“It mattered not how distant they were from each other,” Gerte had said. “She could hear him, and he her.”
Was it possible? It was worth a try.
I heard you, Brandr. Now hear me. She scrunched her eyes shut and thought, clasping her hands so tightly her knuckles went numb. Everything in her wanted to shoot a plea for him to hurry and come for her, but if the arrow of thought was limited, she tried to concentrate on something more practical. There are three of them, one outside, two in. Have a care.
She swallowed hard, straining her ears for a reply.
There was only the click of dice, the occasional crackle of the smoky central fire, and a rustle of skin and fabric as the women on the other bench shifted in their sleep.
No reply came to her from the dark.
***
Brandr smacked the man’s cheeks, trying to bring him around. He’d held him in a choke hold only long enough to render him insensible for a short while. Now the fellow’s eyes were rolling around, and his head lolled back, but he was aware enough to respond to questions.
“Blink once for yes, twice for no,” Brandr said to the man who was trussed up and gagged before him.
It had been a simple thing to sneak up on him, since the man had lowered his trousers and started to mount one of the sheep. Brandr could have killed him with a quick jab of his dagger under the man’s ribs, but he might have raised an alarm with his dying breath, and Brandr judged the information he might glean from the sheep molester was more valuable than a corpse.
Besides, Brandr wanted to be sure he deserved killing for more than buggering livestock.
“Did you and your scurvy friends take a woman captive this night?”
The man’s lips pulled back from the leather gag, revealing teeth that had been filed down till there were vertical ridges on each of his upper choppers. The indentations were stained with permanent blue dye in an attempt to give him a fierce appearance. The gag rendered the effect more comic than terrifying.
The man blinked once.
“How many men in the house? Blink the number.” When he didn’t respond immediately, Brandr laid the flat of his blade across the man’s windpipe to encourage honesty. “Two, eh? You’re sure.”
The man blinked once emphatically.
“Is there anyone else in the house?”
Another blink.
“The woman you took?”
He blinked once then twice more.
“More women?”
The man started to nod but thought better of it with Brandr’s dagger at his throat. He settled for blinking once more.
“How many?”
The man’s eyelids fluttered several times.
“Lots of women. Maybe children too,” Brandr surmised. He brought the butt of his dagger down hard on the man’s temple, sending him either to dark oblivion and a three-day headache or a more merciful death than he deserved.
Brandr didn’t much care which.
He couldn’t break into the sethus and engage Katla’s captors in that tight space with so many innocents within range of a sword stroke.
He needed to draw the other men out.
In case the man at his feet was only unconscious, Brandr picked up his feet and dragged him a few paces away from the byre. Then he opened the gate and quietly drove out all the mangy-looking stock.
He needed a diversion, and a burning outbuilding would do admirably.
Controlling an existing flame wasn’t so hard a trick, so long as Brandr was able to concentrate on it. He could usually make a blaze burn hot and fiery or subside to smoldering ash with a mere thought.
But calling up fire from nothing…that was another matter entire
ly. It required a clear head and an untroubled heart, neither of which Brandr possessed at the moment. He was so worried for Katla he wondered if the flames would appear when he conjured them.
“The fire of creation is all around us, bound in the air, hidden between one breath and the next,” the sorcerer who trained him in Byzantium had told him. “If the flames hear your summons, they will come to you, and you can bend them to do your bidding. If they hear you not…”
The old master had shrugged with his palms turned up, a purely Eastern gesture, and cast his gaze skyward. Fire was too volatile an element ever to be wholly under a mage’s control, especially if the mage wasn’t of calm mind.
Brandr extended a splay-fingered hand to the night sky then held it before his chest, sheltering his hand against the breeze. He closed his eyes and drew a deep breath, trying to empty his mind of everything but the dance of all-consuming light. Then he blew softly on his palm, letting the god who’d made him a fire mage work, if He willed.
When Brandr opened his eyes, a small blue flame flickered in the center of his palm, hovering a breath above his skin. There was no heat, but the fire cast a circle of yellow light around him, shooting beams as if Brandr held a tiny sun in his grasp.
With the speed of thought, the flame arced from his hand to the rotting thatch on the cattle byre. It caught in a heartbeat and sprinted along the sagging ridgeline, standing at attention like a row of fiery warriors waiting the command to charge. He ordered it to work.
He’d give the blaze a few moments to take firm hold, and then he’d sound the warning.
***
“Fire!”
Brandr was in her mind again.
“Fire,” Katla repeated softly then louder. “Fire.”
Tryggr turned to glare toward her corner. “What did you say, wench?”
“Fire!” A voice bellowed from outside the sethus. It was Brandr again, and this time everyone heard him. The whoosh of flames outside made the smoke hole in the roof stop drawing correctly, and a fug of black hovered along the dwelling’s ridgeline.
Tryggr and his companion drew their swords and headed for the door. Before he ducked into the night, he turned and glared at the women, all of whom were awake now and cowering. Then he glowered at Katla while he surreptitiously made the sign against evil with one hand.
“I don’t know how you knew there was a fire, but don’t try any more seid-craft tricks. If any of you tries to leave this sethus, when I catch you, I’ll cut you up and feed you to the pigs. And two of the others with you.”
After he slammed the door behind him, Katla heard the dull thud of a beam being dropped into brackets, locking them in from the outside.
***
Brandr waited in the shadows, sizing up his adversaries while they spilled out of the sethus. One was considerably smaller than he, but he’d learned never to discount a wiry, quick fighter, and this man moved with the slippery grace of a ferret. Such a one might have more tricks up his sleeve than a man who relied on brute strength alone.
The other fellow was easily Brandr’s match for weight and height, but he moved swiftly to the flaming cattle byre, swearing the air blue at his loss. He found his unconscious friend, still tied up, but instead of coming to his aid, he gave him a vicious kick.
Fighting two at once was always a dicey bargain. If one of them was a madman, all bets were off.
“Where are you, son of Ulf?” the big fellow shouted, doing a slow turn. “Show yourself, traveler, and we’ll kill you quickly.”
Brandr narrowed his eyes, trying to strategize the best approach.
“Come for your woman, have you? Too late. She won’t want you after I’ve had her,” the man taunted, grasping his crotch.
Brandr’s eyes burned. That one he’d kill last. Slowly.
“There’s nothing for you here in Hardanger. Son of the jarl, you call yourself. Not for long,” the man said, his eyes flashing feral in the dark. “There’s change on the wind, and death to your kind is riding with it.”
“Ja, once the Bloodaxe comes, he’ll—” the little one began.
“Shut up, fool,” he snarled at his friend. “What are you waiting for, coward?” the big one shouted to Brandr. “Ah, I know. You need a little more encouragement. Bet you thought this is my sethus. No, we’re just borrowing it from the farmer who used to live here. He was nice enough to let us use it when he and his family died…sudden-like.”
The little one laughed at his friend’s wit.
“Who’d want to live his whole life in a hovel like this?” He snatched a burning brand from the cattle byre and tossed it onto the roof of the sethus. “Come and fight us, or watch your woman burn, Ulfson.”
Brandr tried to squelch the blaze on the sethus roof with his mind, but the blood in his veins was the blood of warriors, and its battle song was too loud for him to think over. He couldn’t find the calm center he needed to use his gift.
Fire spread over the dry thatch running along the ridgeline like lemmings headed for a cliff.
Brandr’s lineage was filled with men who’d lived and died by their swords. The urge to brutish violence went clear to his bones. Now the berserkr lust he usually kept under tight control burst into full passion.
A feral cry burst from his lips and head down, he charged.
***
“Katla, get out of there!”
Brandr’s voice sounded in her head again. She leaped to her feet and ran to the barred door.
The other girls clawed at her, pulling her back.
“No,” they shouted. The tallest one continued: “You heard him. If you escape, Tryggr will kill two of us with you.”
“But I’ll take you with me,” Katla said. “We can’t give up. We have to try.”
“Look at Aldis there.” The tall one pointed to the woman with the babe. She sat rocking herself in the corner with her knees tucked under her chin. “There’s no try left in her. If we leave her, she’ll die.”
“Then we must take her too,” Katla said, struggling to shake free of the others’ grasps. “Or we’ll all die.”
A contemptuous snarl lifted one corner of the girl’s mouth. “You shouldn’t cross Tryggr. I’m his favorite. He’ll listen to me. I’ll tell him you tried to run, but we stopped you, and then it’ll be only you who’ll die.”
Then there was a loud, whooshing sound, and when Katla looked up, flames licked at the thatch over their heads.
That settled the argument. The girls turned as one, shrieking and pounding on the barred door.
Katla stripped off her outer tunic and plunged it into the bucket of scummy water by the smoldering central fire pit. Then she ran back to Aldis and her child and covered them with the wet fabric.
“Come,” Katla urged, holding a hand over her nose and mouth against the billowing smoke. “We must find a way out. Is there a bolt hole? A root cellar?”
“There is only the one door, and he’s barred it.” Aldis clutched her babe to her chest, and the child wailed, sensing its mother’s anguish. “One way in. One way out.”
Burning ash began to fall around them.
“Katla, hold on.” Brandr’s voice had a serrated edge of panic.
Aldis was wrong, Katla realized, her whole being dead calm as her fate scrolled before her. There was another way out. Once the burning thatch collapsed on them, their souls would fly to the stars through the open roof.
Good-bye, Brandr, she thought with fervor, hoping he could hear her. At least I’ll leave this world knowing a good man loved me with a mighty passion.
She wished she’d returned it with more grace.
Chapter 27
In a melee, a man dare not look further than the tip of his own blade. Brandr’s attention was divided between three adversaries, the little wiry fellow, the big man, and th
e fire quickly engulfing the sethus.
Any one of them, he was sure he could best.
All together, he had his doubts. The other men took turns fighting, snatching bits of rest Brandr was denied. His sword arm grew heavier with each pass.
The women’s screams from the burning house pierced his chest sharper than a blade. He pivoted, slashing with his broadsword, trying to get close enough to lift the bar on the door and free Katla.
The little man sneaked in under his guard while he whacked away at the big fellow. Pain screamed up his leg. He twirled and caught the wiry man across the throat. Blood spurted like a red fountain as he sank to his knees in the dirt.
“Guess he won’t be here when the Bloodaxe comes,” Brandr said as he sliced the other fellow across the chest. The man’s hardened leather breastplate took the brunt of the blow and left him unscathed. “What’s your friend going to miss?”
A wicked smile stretched unpleasantly across the big man’s face. “The return of the Old Ones and the Old Ways. And death to those who think to stop us.”
The man shrieked a battle cry and launched a flurry of blows.
Brandr could think only as far as the next parry. The coppery scent of blood filled the air, mingling with the reek of smoke and his unwashed enemy. Sticky warmth streamed down Brandr’s thigh, but he couldn’t let it slow him down. His wound was a small matter now.
Keep moving. Only the dead deserve rest.
Part of the sethus roof collapsed near the back wall. A fresh chorus of wails pierced the night. The women’s screams were joined by a baby’s cry. Brandr tried to send an order to still the flames, but he was too distracted by his remaining combatant to focus his thoughts adequately. The big man began circling again, thrusting and jabbing.
The fire roared in triumph.
“Don’t be thinking you’ve done anything praiseworthy, Ulfson. You’ve killed only a pus-filled worm,” the big man said, kicking his friend’s body out of the way. He crouched into a defensive posture and beckoned with one upraised hand. “Come now and try to kill a man.”
