by Connie Mason
Twenty-five ships with more on the way. All the air whooshed out of Katla’s lungs. “What happened to the people of Tysnes?”
“Those who resisted were killed. Those who didn’t were enthralled,” Finn said with bitterness. He turned to Katla. “Einar is dead.”
She covered her mouth to stifle a sob. She and Einar had never gotten on well. He never listened to a thing she said, and she never gave him credit for things he tried to accomplish, but now any chance of reconciliation was gone forever.
“If everyone was killed or enthralled, how is it I see you before me this day?” Arn asked. “And where is the woman who came with you?”
“She was exhausted from her travels, my lord,” Katla said. “I sent her to bed.”
“My question stands, Tysnesman,” Arn said.
“I had spent the night in the forest. With the woman. We were not in the longhouse when it was attacked.”
Katla raised a brow. She’d never suspected Finn harbored tender feelings for Inga. Now that she thought about it, she remembered he’d always sat at rapt attention whenever she played her flute. In better days, she’d be happy for them both.
“I wanted to join in the defense,” Finn said, “but the woman with me convinced me we could do more for the people by staying clear of the fight and learning what we could before going for help.”
“A wise course,” Dalla said with an approving nod.
“Why didn’t you light the signal fire?” Katla asked. “Our allies would have come.”
“I’m not so sure of that, but that’s the first place I went. The signal fire was already heavily guarded by Bloodaxe’s men,” Finn said.
“You wouldn’t have needed to get close,” the jarl of Jondal said. “A well-placed fire arrow would have done the job. Or is the arm of Tysnes too weak to draw a bow?”
“I would have done,” Finn said, his voice breaking with emotion, “but Bloodaxe had strapped my only living brother to the top of the woodpile, to discourage just such a thing.”
“Haukon,” Katla whimpered.
“Then Inga and I stole a faering, and we’ve been rowing and sailing to your threshold ever since,” Finn said. “Will you help us, my lord?”
In the silence that followed, Katla heard her heart pounding in her ears.
“We are not unmoved by your plea,” Arn said. “But we must look to our own. If Bloodaxe is preparing to invade the fjord, we cannot spare men or time to mount an assault on the force that holds faraway Tysnes.” He lifted a hand to his guard. “Summon my council in chambers. We must plan for the defense of Jondal and—”
He stopped and looked around the great hall. “Where is Brandr? And the rest of his band of travelers?”
“They set sail a few days ago,” Hilde said quietly.
Arn made a disgusted snort. “Just when they might have been useful. Still, we must build earthworks. Barricades. Set the smiths and fletchers to work immediately. Every man must have a sword and a full quiver of arrows.” Then he turned his masked face back to Finn. “You and your woman may stay and aid in the defense of Jondal. We welcome your sword arm, Tysnesman.”
Finn didn’t answer, but Katla saw the muscles in his shoulders bunch beneath his ragged tunic. Arn raised himself to stand and shuffle out without waiting for Finn’s reply. The jarl leaned heavily on his guard’s arm.
“I can’t stay here while Haukon is tied to a stake,” Finn said wearily.
“You won’t go alone,” Katla said.
“I will if I have to.”
“You can’t make the trip back to Tysnes in a faering without another rower. Even if you somehow caught fair winds and won home, you’d be too exhausted to be of any use once you got there.” Katla grasped his arm.
Finn shook her off. “Just once, woman, would you stop being so blasted practical?”
“Please, Finn. I can’t lose another brother.”
That stopped him in his tracks, and he turned back to face her. “Then help me. This is something I’m bound to do. And we haven’t lost Haukon yet. I want Inga to stay here. She’ll bide safe with you, but I’ll leave with the morning tide.” He rubbed his brow. “Katla, will you do me a favor and provision the faering so I can get some rest?”
She nodded mutely and showed him to the room where Inga was already resting. “I assume you mean to marry her, Finn.”
“Of course. I always did,” he said softly. “I just hope I haven’t left it too late.”
Once Finn slipped into the small chamber, Katla’s spine seemed to collapse. She slid down the wall and sat in the corridor, knees to her chest, and wept.
She mourned for her brother Einar. She keened softly for the people of Tysnes and cursed herself for showing Albrikt Gormson everything he needed to know to overcome their defenses.
“What is it, love?” Brandr’s thought curled around her mind.
Katla drew a shuddering breath and swiped her cheeks. “Nothing. Finn has come, and I’m happy to see him.”
“You don’t seem happy.”
“How little you know of women.” She forced herself to Send the thought to him brightly. “We often laugh when we’re sad and weep when we’re happy.”
She heard the echo of his chuckle.
“I have everything we need now. We can’t try the weapon till we’re home. I’ll see your lovely face in two days.”
“Safe travels, beloved.” Then she closed the door to her mind, oh, so softly.
It wouldn’t do for Brandr to know what she planned. He’d only try to talk her out of it.
Chapter 34
Jondal was a beehive of industry when Brandr’s small craft sidled up to the wharf. Earthworks and barricades, the very defensive measures he’d suggested and Arn had dismissed when he first returned home, were now being realized. He wasn’t surprised Katla wasn’t on the wharf to greet him, since he’d heard nothing from her for a couple days, and so hadn’t been able to warn her of his arrival. She was no doubt in the hub of all this busyness.
There was a prickle between his shoulder blades as he climbed the hill to the jarlhof. It usually boded no good tidings, but he’d learned to trust that prickle.
The prickle became a serrated edge between his teeth when Brandr stopped by the smith’s shed and realized the man had halted work on his design for the Greek fire machine.
“What was I to do, my lord?” the smith asked. “The jarl ordered me to turn out swords.”
“Arn will be worm food before the season turns,” Brandr said coldly. The truth of it made his gut churn, but he needed to startle the smith to attention. “Your future jarl orders you to return to the commission he gave you and have it ready and loaded onto Arn’s dragonship before the next tide.”
“You will sail the jarl’s vessel?”
Brandr silenced the man with a glare. Arn’s ship was swift, shallow on the draft, and answered to the steering oar more faithfully than a blooded hound obeying her master’s commands. Arn was in no shape to sail her. It was folly to let her sway idle at the wharf.
“Finish my design,” he ordered. “Then you may make all the swords you wish, much good may they do you.”
His foul mood didn’t improve when Hilde greeted him at the jarlhof door with the news that Katla was gone.
“What do you mean she’s not here?” Brandr demanded. When Katla refused to answer his Sendings over the last two days, he’d been worried. Now he was livid.
“She left with her brother Finn for Tysnes the day before yesterday,” Hilde said.
He listened with growing agitation as Hilde recounted Finn’s tale of the invasion of Tysnes Island and Katla’s determined response to it. No wonder she’d closed her mind to him. If she lived through this ill-conceived venture, he was of half a mind to take her over his knee and paddle her arse soundly f
or it.
“What of the child? Did she take Linnea?”
“No, though it pained her sore to leave her,” Hilde said. “She knew the babe would be safer here in the care of her nurse.”
“If Bloodaxe is coming, there is no safety anywhere in Hardanger,” Brandr said bluntly.
Hilde’s pale eyes told him she already knew that, but for the sake of the people busily scurrying around her, she was keeping up a brave face. “Will you see the jarl before you go?”
“I haven’t time,” Brandr said, turning on his heel and starting back down the hill. “We need to provision the ships and—”
“If you don’t see him now, you won’t see him again.”
That stopped him. He couldn’t sail till the next tide, in any case. “I’ll see my brother.”
He followed Hilde to the jarl’s private chamber. Though Hilde was the finest of housekeepers, the miasma of a sickroom assaulted his nostrils when he entered. His brother rotted while he was yet alive. Brandr wouldn’t wish such a death on anyone—not even the heir of Bloodaxe. He sent up a silent prayer for a quick, clean battle death.
At least that’s a prayer likely to be answered soon, he thought with grimness.
“Brother.” Arn’s whisper was wraithlike.
“I’m here, Arn.”
“Lead the defense of Jondal for me,” he said, every word expelled with effort. He lifted his nubbed hands. “I cannot hold a sword.”
“Arn, the time for burrowing in holes is past,” Brandr said. “If we wait for Bloodaxe and his horde to come to us, we’ll be overrun. We must sail out to meet the foe. Give me your blessing before I go.”
“No. Bloodaxe sails with twenty-five ships. We cannot meet him by sea. We must make our stand here.”
“We can defeat him on the water if we use the weapon I’ve brought from the South—Greek fire.”
Arn’s breath hissed over his teeth. “Seid-craft,” he said with disgust. “I always suspected you of it.”
“’Tis no magick.” Brandr had never confided in Arn about his gift of controlling the flame. Now didn’t seem an opportune time to reveal his unusual ability. “We must use what we’ve been given and fight them before they reach our land.”
“Then you’ll sail alone. Hear me. On pain of banishment, none of the men of Jondal will go with you.”
One ship against twenty-five. “I must still go.”
Beneath his face mask, Arn growled like a wounded bear. “Even now, you cannot honor your pledge to obey me. Even now.”
Hilde sobbed softly in the corner.
“Shut up, woman. I’m not dead yet,” Arn said, gasping between each word. “At least I die with honor, while my brother lives an oath-breaker.”
“Arn, I respect you as my jarl and brother of my blood, but if I do what you ask, I embrace defeat,” Brandr said softly. “If that means the lives of the people of this fjord are worth more than my honor, so be it.”
Arn turned his face to the wall. “Take none of my men with you. At least obey me in that. Now leave me.”
“Good-bye, Arn,” Brandr said, fully expecting to see his brother in Hel when next they met. Their whole life together had been one long argument. Why wouldn’t they expect to continue this one in that cold hall?
“Brandr.” As his hand lifted the door latch, Arn’s ghostly voice stopped him. “Luck in battle, little brother.”
Emotion choked Brandr’s throat. He slipped out of his brother’s death chamber without speaking again. Finally, he was giving Arn the last word.
***
Malvar Bloodaxe stood on the highest point of Tysnes Isle and surveyed the mouth of Hardanger Fjord spread wide before him. The moon scattered a line of silver coins across the dark water, marking the path to glory, to riches, to power.
Weeks ago, he’d sent his minions into the fjord to seek out and dismantle the signal fires at strategic points along the waterway. He hoped they’d completed their task, since he was already firmly secure in his base here on Tysnes. He also expected some of them would act on his advice and use a human shield to keep the fires from being lit, as he had here at his staging camp.
The horror of having to burn someone they knew to summon aid would only add to the fear and hopelessness he and his forces counted on.
Malvar had always been cat-eyed in the dark. He turned now to look at the lad they’d strapped to the top of Tysnes’s pile of dry wood. The boy sagged against his bonds, but Malvar knew from the shallow movement of his chest he still lived. They gave the youth water but no food. Even so, Malvar judged he’d last as long as he was needed.
He cast a sideways glance at the man standing beside him, Ulf Skallagrimsson, the onetime Jarl of Jondal. He was the first of Malvar’s converts, the first in a long string of expected capitulations from among the nobility of the fjord. He’d broken the jarl, purified him with pain. Ulf was a shadow of the man he’d been when Malvar fished him from the sea.
After Ulf divulged the secret of the signal fires and the complicated arrangements for mutual defense among the farmsteads and jarldoms in Hardanger, it was a natural next step for him to renounce the Court of Asgard and embrace worship of the Old Ones.
“I wish I could take you with me when we sail on the morrow,” Malvar said, laying a heavy hand on Ulf’s shoulder. His mouth twitched in a smile when the muscles under the man’s coarse tunic trembled with remembered pain. “You might have convinced your people to give up without bloodshed. In the new order, we will need large numbers of thralls to serve the elite. But the Old Ones demand blood.”
Malvar squeezed Ulf’s tortured shoulder till he nearly buckled. “So we must give it to them.”
“Ja, my lord Bloodaxe,” Ulf said, slurring his words through broken teeth.
“Stand the watch here with the others while I prepare to place my foot on the neck of my enemies,” Malvar ordered. “The fools of Hardanger intended these fires as a means of safety, lit to warn of intruders. Instead, the flames will celebrate my triumph. Once I have subjugated this fjord, I will light the inmost signal fire. It will begin the chain of flame from the inside out instead of the outside in. The fjord will blaze like a shower of stars from the deepest cove to this base on Tysnes, and all will know a new power has arisen in Hardanger.”
“Ja, my lord,” the former jarl said woodenly.
“Make that Your Highness,” Malvar said. “Even a fool like King Olav will have no choice but to meet me with his own forces, which we will handily defeat. When I am king, I will make a soup bowl of the old fool’s skull. And make no mistake. I will be king. You may as well acknowledge it now.”
Ulf bent in a stiff bow. “Majesty.”
Malvar patted his shoulder again for the pleasure of seeing the man wince. It had been dislocated so badly and so often it would never be right again.
“Carry on, Ulf Skallagrimsson. Guard my victory light well. It will be the last to burn, so it must be the most glorious.”
Malvar headed down the path toward the longhouse he’d appropriated for his use. He’d already decided he’d make Ulf his first sacrifice to the Old Ones once the ancient spirits gave him this victory. But he’d miss the jarl.
He’d grown to enjoy his screams.
***
“Ulf Skallagrimsson,” Katla repeated in a whisper from their place of concealment, downwind from the group of four guards surrounding the signal fire.
She and Finn had tied up the faering on the far side of the island and spent the better part of the day spying on the doings of the men occupying Katla’s farmstead. Once night fell, they hiked up to see if they could free Haukon. So far, he was too well guarded, but men had to sleep sometime, and Bloodaxe’s men had a well-fed look that leads to nodding heads during the dark watches.
All but the one Bloodaxe called Skallagrimsson. It
was difficult to make out the man’s features, but when he turned his head, his profile was so similar to Brandr’s, Katla’s breath caught in her throat. “Do you suppose that really could be—”
“Brandr’s father,” Finn finished for her. “Ja, it must be. And he’s betrayed us all by the sounds of it.”
Katla’s chest constricted. This would wound Brandr more than thinking his father was dead. She felt her husband’s mind on the fringes of hers, questioning, angry, but she kept the mental wall between them firmly in place. Whatever Brandr was doing, he didn’t need the added burden of knowing the details of the dangers she ran for the sake of her youngest brother.
She and Finn crept closer to the edge of the forest and settled to watch the watchers. Once, Skallagrimsson climbed the woodpile with a dipper of water from the bucket at its base and gave Haukon a drink. The others merely stood or hunkered at their respective corners of the man-high pile.
When Brandr’s father clambered back down, he took his place on the fourth corner, on guard despite his bowed back and uneven shoulders.
The next time the breeze set the pines around them whispering, Finn nocked an arrow on the string and drew the fletching back to his ear. But before he could loose the first silent shaft, Ulf Skallagrimsson was on the move again, ambling over to the guard on his right. The jarl drew close to the man, grasped the fellow’s own dagger, and made a quick, upward stabbing motion. The guard’s knees crumpled, but Ulf caught him and let him sink silently to the ground, unseen by the other watchmen, owing to the height of the woodpile and its sharp corners.
Katla put a hand to Finn’s bow arm, and he lowered the arrow tip. They watched in stunned silence as Ulf did the job of dispatching the other guards for them, one by one. Then dagger still drawn, Brandr’s father started to climb up woodpile toward Haukon.
“Stay your hand, Skallagrimsson,” Finn ordered as he stepped into the clearing with bow drawn. “Else I’ll split your gizzard.”
Chapter 35
“Let me spell you at the steering oar,” Harald said to Brandr, deep into the second watch of the night.
