Her eyes popped open and she stood frozen to the spot as she watched the Vikings go down one after another, never even reaching the inner bailey of the monastery. Then she saw a mounted warrior looking in her direction, and it took all her strength and courage to reach for the seax that Brandr had given her to protect herself.
“Odin, Thor, and Freyja, if you can really hear me, then save me and my beloved from death at this time.” She gripped the knife tightly and raised the weapon in the air, awaiting her doomed fate.
Brandr fought like a bear against the mounted warriors, using all the skills he’d been taught. The Vikings were now at a disadvantage, outnumbered by the soldiers that appeared, coming to the monks’ rescue. He managed to take down several of the attackers, but these men were on horseback, and the Vikings were only on foot. They had the advantage from so high up, not to mention the protection of armor.
“King Eardwulf sends his greetings,” snarled a soldier. “Where is your leader?”
Brandr’s eyes darted over to his father, though he didn’t say a word. Too late. The man noticed and headed in Gunnar’s direction.
Shouts went out from the other Vikings as they lunged forward, plunging their axes and swords into the attackers’ armor, but doing little damage. Bodies fell to the ground and the sound of metal hitting flesh and the cracks of the splintering wood of their shields echoed in his ears. It was obvious now that they should have listened to Kadlin.
The field around him became slippery with blood and the dead bodies from both sides, but mostly the men of his village. He looked up to see his father being attacked by three men at once. He raised his sword and shield and ran toward him with a shout that echoed through the darkening sky. But he never made it to his father. The sound of a female scream from the beach in the opposite direction had him stopping in his tracks.
He quickly scanned the shore and saw Kadlin – outside the longboat. Then to his horror, a soldier swiped at her with his sword and she fell to the ground in a heap at his feet.
“Nei!” he cried out, running fast over the hard ground, making his way to his beloved. He fought mercilessly, throwing down his shield and using both his sword and axe simultaneously to take the lives of two men before he even got to the man who’d hurt Kadlin.
“Brandr, nei.” Kadlin looked up from the ground with haunting eyes and all Brandr could see was the blood covering her entire body.
“I’m coming, Kadlin. Please, don’t die.” He flung his axe through the air, managing to take down the soldier who had hurt Kadlin. But then he was unarmed of his sword and had to dive for his shield to defend himself. He knew the attacker was already upon him and he wouldn’t be able to pick up his shield in time.
Then his father stepped in between them and killed the man, hence saving Brandr’s life. Before he could even thank his father, a barrage of arrows shot through the air and embedded into the jarl’s chest. The man’s eyes bugged out and blood dripped from his mouth. He reached out toward Brandr, but fell dead to the ground at Brandr’s feet.
Brandr stood frozen as he watched his father die, cursing the fact they didn’t have the protective armor of King Eardwulf’s men. It was all he could do to look back at Kadlin as well. He had to help her. He took one step forward, but was yanked back by his uncle.
“Get to the boat, now.” The man dragged him toward the longboat, but he tried to pull away. He had to get back to Kadlin.
“I won’t leave Kadlin,” he told Skuti.
“Your father is dead and you are jarl now, you fool,” his uncle reminded him. “I’m not going to let all our blood be spilled here today. You need to get back to Skathwaite and lead the people.” He shouted for the rest of the men, and the Vikings retreated to the longboats. Brandr didn’t think he’d ever see a Viking retreat. This was an unfortunate, horrific event.
His uncle gripped him tightly, and when he fought once again, he received a blow to the head with the hilt of the man’s sword. It was so hard it made his eyes spin. He was grabbed on the other side by another of the Vikings, and found himself being dragged back to the ship.
He looked over his shoulder to see his father lying there with a half dozen arrows in his chest, his mouth and eyes opened wide. Then, further down the hill, was Kadlin covered in blood, reaching out her hand and crying out for him. The flower was still in her hair reminding him of his promise. Brandr knew he had to do something to help her, or die trying.
“Nei!” He pulled away from the men, standing his ground. “Kadlin is injured. I’ll not leave her behind.”
“She’s worthless,” said his uncle. “This is all her fault. She was supposed to talk to the gods and help protect us. Leave her be.”
“She warned us not to step onto the shore, but no one would listen.” Brandr wished now he had heeded Kadlin’s warning and tried to change his father’s mind. If so, his father would still be alive right now. No one had listened to her. He, out of everyone, should have known she was telling the truth about the vision she’d had. But he’d been so excited to go on his first raid, that he’d only wanted Kadlin to see him as a mighty warrior. So he didn’t listen. Now he knew his pride had only gotten in the way.
He was about to go back for Kadlin when an arrow whizzed through the air and embedded into his leg. He grimaced, and bent over to remove it, when another arrow embedded into his shoulder and then one more into his back.
“Where’s your shield, you fool?” called out his uncle. “Never mind, let’s go!”
“Nei!” he said once more. “I gave my promise to protect Kadlin and that is what I need to do.”
“The spakona is dead,” he ground out. “So now you’re released of your promise.”
“She can’t be dead,” he protested, looking back, but not able to see her as his vision was now blurred.
“I saw her attacker’s killing blow,” said Skuti.
“Nei! I killed her attacker with my battle axe and she might still be alive.”
“Not without her head, she won’t. I assure you, she’s dead. Now come!” Skuti yanked him harder and pulled him back to the longboat. Brandr went numb from his uncle’s words and he didn’t want to believe that Kadlin had been beheaded. He stumbled over the ground trying to decide what to do. With searing pain coursing through his body and three arrows embedded into his flesh, he could barely walk let alone think straight, he was losing so much blood. He went with his uncle as he didn’t have the strength to object.
Once in the boat, he was shoved onto the bench and his uncle stuck an oar in his hand and told him to row. He gave the men the word to disembark, and Skuti himself unfurled the single square sail atop the high mast. Pain burned through Brandr and his head spun, blood pooling out around him on the wooden seat, and arrows still embedded in his flesh. His vision blurred and he felt as if he were going to retch.
The ships set out to sea and it was all he could do to look back to the shore, trying to see Kadlin’s dead body. He hadn’t liked leaving her body behind, but he’d had no choice. He couldn’t see her anymore since there were so many dead bodies and so much blood spilled on the shores. Nightfall had closed in and, with it, came a blanket of sadness to have lost so many of their clan that day.
Why hadn’t he convinced his father to heed her warning and turn around and not continue on this raid? Why hadn’t he listened? He’d made a promise to her and now it, as well as his heart, was broken.
He’d lost his father today, most of their men, and now his love. He was so wounded he wasn’t sure he was even going to be alive by the time they got back to Skathwaite. And what bothered him most was the haunting look in Kadlin’s eyes from the ground as his uncle had pulled him away. He’d made the girl a promise and now he hadn’t kept it. He hadn’t been able to protect her nor bring her back alive with him to marry. Now because of him, she had perished, his word was broken, and he was disgraced. There was nothing worse in a Viking’s life. “Take me!” he cried out loud to the gods in anger, looking up to the sky with
his eyes afire and his jaw clenched. He no longer cared about raids or fate. All he wanted right now was to die.
*
Kadlin watched through tear-filled eyes as Brandr and the Viking boats left the shores of Northumbria without her. All around her were the dead, and she was soon to join the numbers. The ground was covered with blood that matched her own blood-soaked clothes. Pain shot through her from the stab she’d taken to the side from the enemy’s sword. Thankfully, her instincts had served her right and she’d swerved at the last minute or the blade would have gone right through her heart. She’d fallen to the ground and pretended to be dead. That was probably what saved her life. The attacker hadn’t bothered to stab her again since he thought his first blow had killed her. She was only too glad that Brandr’s axe had killed him in return.
But Brandr knew she wasn’t dead! He’d looked right at her. And he’d promised to protect her. If only he had. If only she hadn’t been so foolish as to leave the longboat, things might be different right now.
She dragged her body along the ground, managing to make her way to where she’d seen the jarl hit the ground. His eyes were open wide. A half dozen arrows were embedded in his chest. She reached out to feel his neck for a pulse anyway. One of her skills, besides having visions, was that she was a proficient healer. In the past, she’d tended to the wounded and provided ministrations to the warriors every time they came back from a raid. She had been very successful in saving many of their lives, including that of her own father. However, today she would not be so lucky.
She looked at the jarl and just shook her head. He had no pulse and had already left this world to go to Valhalla.
“He’s dead,” she said aloud, gritting her teeth, holding back her own pain. She reached out and used her hand to close the man’s eyes. “Rest in peace, Jarl Gunnar. I guess it was your day to die.”
“Kadlin,” came a small voice and she turned her head and cocked an ear upward to try to decipher from where the voice came. She wasn’t sure if it were the gods talking to her, or just her own voice in her head. The soldiers had left now and she saw monks from the monastery hurrying down the hill to look for survivors. The sky overhead was dark and the wind picked up, blowing with it the stench of death all around her. She was about to think she’d imagined the voice when she heard it once again. “Kadlin.”
She pushed up off the ground and used all her might to stumble across the bloodied field. A trail of her own blood dripped on the ground behind her. Then she saw him. Her father lay on the ground, missing several fingers off his sword hand. She ran to him and threw herself down at his feet.
“Father!” She ripped a piece of her own garment from her body and used it to try to wrap up his hand. He reached out with his other hand, and lay it atop her arm to still her. That’s when she noticed the gaping wound at the back of his head. “Oh!” she gasped and held her hand to her mouth at the horrific sight.
“You shouldn’t . . . have come,” he told her.
“Hush,” she said, trying to stay strong, holding her finger to his lips.
“Are you . . . hurt, daughter?”
“I am wounded, but I’ll live. I guess it was not my day to die, but I wish Brandr had died for leaving me here.”
“Don’t . . . say that, Kadlin. Brandr will be a mighty warrior someday, just like his father.”
“No mighty warrior would make a promise and then break it.” She felt for the Forget-me-not in her hair, knowing she was probably already forgotten by Brandr as he selfishly saw to his own safety.
Thunder boomed in the sky above them and the rain started to fall. Blood ran down to the sea, much the same way the Viking warriors had run back to their boats with their tails between their legs, in her opinion.
“Brandr is a good man, Kadlin.” Her father used all his strength to speak. “When a Viking makes a promise – nothing but death can make him break it.”
“Nei.” She shook her head. “He’s left me here and he wasn’t dead. We were supposed to be married, and now he’s seen to his own safety and left me here to die.”
Her father’s eyes started to close and his grip on her arm slackened. Thunder boomed overhead and lightning slashed through the sky. “Thor is saying . . . he’ll be . . . back.” Her father faded from this lifetime then, his hand going limp and sliding off her arm to the ground.
“Father, nei! Don’t leave me!” Tears fell from her eyes and panic filled her being. She felt so alone and frightened. She was in a foreign land by herself . . . and wounded. She wasn’t even sure she was going to live, nor sure that she wanted to either.
She heard words she couldn’t decipher and turned her head to see a monk standing there in a long, brown robe with the symbol of their god – a cross on a chain around his neck. She reached for her knife, ready to defend herself until she realized the man was smiling and unarmed. Instead, his hands were folded as if in prayer. He said something again and she just shook her head, confused.
“I cannot understand your language,” she said in the Norse tongue, but he shook his head in return and held out his hand instead.
This was her enemy, yet the man wanted to help her. Her people had infiltrated their land and tried to steal from them and even killed many of them in the process, but yet this man seemed to hold no remorse. She looked down at her father and reached out and closed his eyes like she did to the jarl, then struggled to stand.
The monk held out his hand to help her and she hesitated only for a second before she decided to take it. She leaned against him as he motioned with his other hand, telling her he would take her up the hill to his dwellings. She looked up toward the threatening sky as the storm intensified and rain pelted down around them. She felt as if Thor were warning her not to go into the Christian temple, but she had no choice. She was seriously injured, abandoned, and all alone now. She looked back to the North Sea, but the Viking sails had already disappeared on the horizon.
“Ja,” she said with a sigh, reaching out and pulling the flower from her hair. “I’ll go with you.” Then she held the flower out in front of her, turned her palm downward and dropped the Forget-me-not onto the blood-soaked ground. She felt nothing at all as she stepped forward and crushed it under her foot.
Never again would she believe in men who made promises and sealed them with flowers, telling her they’d never forget her. She was forgotten by the man of her dreams and now she would push the memory of Brandr from her mind until she forgot him, too. She held tightly to the arm of the monk as she painfully made her way up the hill in the pouring rain, heading toward a new life that held no promises at all.
Chapter One
Five years later
“Jarl Brandr, the men are restless and want to go raiding.” Brandr’s uncle, Skuti, sat next to Brandr in front of the fire that warmed the longhouse. The fire was used to cook as well as warm, and the coals were spread half the length of the longhouse, with rocks making a small wall around them to contain the fire. Everyone from the village met here to eat their meals.
As reigning jarl, he held the power over the village of Skathwaite, and everyone looked to him for their directions since the death of Brandr’s father in battle.
“Ja, I feel it’s time,” he agreed. He took some roasted squirrel from a serving wench, ripping at the hot meat with his teeth. Squirrels were one of the main foods they hunted, and no part was wasted, as the furs were made into cloaks and vests.
His mother watched over his sisters and brothers at the other side of the room, looking over her shoulder, trying to hear their conversation.
Brandr stood up and walked with a limp over to her, and his uncle followed. The arrow he’d taken to the leg the day he’d lost Kadlin was nothing to the arrow he’d taken to the back or the one in his shoulder. Those had almost killed him. Without Kadlin’s skills to heal, it took a very long time for his body to mend. Every day since then, he only wished he would have died along with Kadlin on that raid.
“Brandr, I want to g
o raiding with the men this time,” said his mother, Isgerd.
“Nei.” He shook his head, picking up his youngest brother, Svan, in his arms. The boy was the youngest of the siblings and only seven years of age. It was sad that he’d been too young to remember their father. “You’re not a warrior. You’ll stay here and take care of the family. It’s what father would have wanted you to do.”
“I’ve been learning how to fight from Kadlin’s mother, Signy.”
“Signy is a shieldmaiden, but you’re not. You will not go with us.”
“But you barely have enough men to go raiding. We lost so many that horrible day.”
This was true, he realized. They’d not only lost a good amount of men that day, but they’d had to leave behind two of their longboats since there hadn’t been enough men alive to commandeer them.
“The boys of the village have grown in the last five years, Mother. I’ve been sure to train them well. We’ll be fine.”
“We’ll go back to Northumbria,” suggested his uncle.
“Nei.” He put down his brother and ran a weary hand through his long hair. “I won’t go back to the place where I lost Kadlin, not to mention my own father.”
“There’s treasure to be had there,” his uncle persisted. “We have let them go for too long. We need to finish the raid we started.”
“I said nei!”
“We’ll go further south along the shores of Northumbria then. Surely we can find new places to raid there.”
Just thinking of that awful day and the image of Kadlin crying out for his help made his gut twist into a knot. He never should have left with his uncle. He should have stayed and died at Kadlin’s side to fulfill the promise he’d made to her.
“You’re just sulking over that wench!” spat Skuti.
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