Banners of the Northmen (26 page)

Ulfrik watched as Sigfrid and his men hacked up the bodies and flung bloody hunks into the river. On the walls of Paris, Franks melted away in silence until a small group remained. The holy man lingered, his white hair clear even at this distance. Another white-haired man stood with him, and Ulfrik's gut burned.

Is that you, Humbert? By Odin's one eye, I will have justice from you
. Yet Hrolf had commanded him to leave Paris and go deeper into Frankia, spoiling the chance fulfill his oath.

Worse still, he doubted a return home by summer, and Thorod and Skard, enemies of Nye Grenner both, would swoop down on his family during raiding season. All he had achieved in Frankia would have to be abandoned to reach them in time, and breaking with Hrolf would make him an outlaw.

He sighed and met Hrolf's inquiring gaze. "Yes, action would be good."

CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN

Runa sat in the hall, enjoying the warm hearth fire and the companionable silence of Elin and three other girls busy with knitting wool socks. The repetition calmed her, focusing her mind on the work and not on thoughts of winter or of her husband. Daylight grew ever longer and everyone used the time to check on herds or make repairs. For the women, they enjoyed a cold blue light to illuminate their work rather than lamps or the hearth.

She looked up at the smoke curling along the ceiling and feeling for the bright hole in the roof. The sky beyond was already tinted purple and the winter night would resume. Konal had gone to repair a storage shed damaged in a storm, taking several of his boy followers to assist. Gunnar had been sent with another to collect heather branches for the firewood. Hakon was taking his afternoon nap. It was a rare moment for her to enjoy being herself.

Placing her knitting to the side, she stood. Her short sword, the sax, had been set against the hearth where she sat and now slid to the floor as she rose.

"Sun is almost down and the men must return soon. We should start a meal."

"No sword practice today?" Elin laughed and the girls giggled. Runa had long accepted their teasing.

"Likely not. The storage shed needed repairs more than I need sword practice. Though I think the boys won't let Konal miss it, even if it means practice in the dark."

"Do you think Konal's brother is really coming?" one of the girls asked, her eyes wide. "He is so handsome, and he claims his brother looks just like him."

Elin clucked her tongue. "Your father has a man picked for you already."

"If both my father and the man return." Her voice trailed off, and suddenly everyone found a task to occupy them. Runa collected the wool into a basket and placed it by the loom.

She turned to console the girl, trying to summon a positive thought to buoy her faith.

But she froze, words stuck in her throat.

Standing in the open hall doors was a strange man. He was clad in heavy furs and a wool cap, greasy yellow hair hanging lank on the sides of his narrow head. In front of him stood Gunnar, and the man held a long, gray knife to his throat. Tears beaded at Gunnar's eyes but his mouth was bent in a defiant scowl.

The girls screamed, finally comprehending what they saw. The man walked Gunnar into the hall, and four others flowed in behind them with drawn swords. Their predatory smiles left shadow-filled lines on their faces, turning them into masks of evil.

"Shut up, woman!" the leader snapped.

The leader, who held Gunnar, was hardly a man. His beard was scraggly and his jaw still soft with youth. None of the strangers appeared older than sixteen or seventeen years. With her training, she noted the awkward way they held their drawn swords and the careless guard they assumed entering the hall. They believed no one would oppose them.

With every pounding beat of her racing heart, she resolved to make all five of these boys pay for their arrogance.

"Do as he says," Runa announced as evenly as her trembling voice allowed. "Remain silent."

The five strangers spread in from the doorway. The leader lifted Gunnar to his tiptoes by driving the knife at his throat. He started laughing. "What did I say to you? The men are gone and this place is all for us."

The group cackled and the women whimpered in terror. Elin sat where Runa had just been. Slowly, though no one paid much attention, she reached down to draw the sax upright. Runa reacted. "Elin, stand up when we have guests."

The command made little sense, but she had feared Elin planned to use the weapon. Instead, she left if upright and shot Runa a frustrated look.

"Guests! Yeah, guests all right!" The leader leaned back in laughter, his knife tightening on Gunnar's neck so that a trickle of blood sprouted. Gunnar grimaced but did not cry out.

She had to delay. Konal and the other boys would return soon. They might be able to aid her, but Gunnar had to be separated first.

"You're holding my son hostage. Let him go and you can have whatever you want."

"I'll have whatever I want, that is certain. But your whelp bit me, and he should be punished." The leader stepped closer with the knife cutting deeper into Gunnar's soft flesh. A tear rolled down his eye and he trembled. Runa tried not to look at him, instead searching for a gap to exploit.

One of the young men upturned a table with a roar. The women screamed anew, but Runa used the distraction to move closer to the hearth. The sax leaned on the opposite side, but an iron poker remained in the low fire closer at hand.

"You promised riches and women," said the one who had flipped the table. "But we've got two old bitches and three little girls. Where's the fucking gold?"

"Nye Grenner is famous for gold, isn't it?" The leader winked at Runa. "You're Ulfrik's wife; you've got gold on your neck."

She touched Konal's torc in surprise, having forgotten she wore it. Then a shadow flitted at the doorway, and when no one followed on it she knew Konal and his boys had returned. She had to free Gunnar before he acted.

"You're local boys?" She edged closer to the poker, trying not to look at it. "Which one sent you, Skard or Thorod?"

"Loki sent us," answered another and all laughed again.

"Did you just call me a boy?" The leader's face pulled into a frown and Gunnar squealed as the knife bit deeper. Runa closed her eyes. "Before you give us everything your husband has been hiding in this hall, I'm going to show you how much of a man I am."

"Wouldn't you like to try?" Runa's lip curled. "You wouldn't even know where to point your little prick."

The insult inflamed the leader's rage, snorting and shoving Gunnar toward one of his cohort as he stalked toward her.

"Konal!"

He charged through door, his sword held low in two hands. The invaders whirled toward him, the one closest to the door crumpling into a bleeding pile before turning.

The girls screamed and Runa snatched the poker from the hearth. Konal's blade was already hacking into the leg of another attacker as another figure entered the hall. Runa had no time to see more.

Knife already in hand, the leader sprang away from Runa's strike with only a moment to spare. The poker was heavier than her sax but lighter than the sword she used for practice. Her fury carried her, reversing the poker's strike so the heated metal slammed into the leader's arm. The cloth sleeve burned away and the man screamed.

She rammed him with her shoulder, folding up his sword arm as Ulfrik had done to her in practice many times before, then slipped her foot behind his heel. He crashed to the ground with a screech and Runa took the poker in both hands and hammered it across his face. She roared all her frustration and anger, all her hatred for the man who had threatened her son, and a blindness overcame her. She only stopped when Konal's voice pierced through her madness.

"Stop! Gunnar is still hostage!"

The pulpy mass at her feet made no sense, then she realized it was the shell of the leader's head with the face beaten out of it. She had seen many gory sights in her life, but this was the worst. Bloody flesh chunks clung to her skirt and the poker's heat cause the blood on it to bubble and hiss.

"I'll kill him!" The desperate voice drew her around. Elin stood white and wide-eyed before the girls. Konal and his follower stood amid three corpses, brilliant red splatters over their faces. Then she found the source of the voice: the surviving invader had Gunnar held just the same as the leader had. He struggled against the knife, blood smearing his neck and shirt, and both cheeks shined with tears.

Seeing her son again cooled the fury. The blade rested over the throbbing vein in Gunnar's neck, and even an accidental reflex from the invader could kill her son. So she willed the intense urge to strike to drain from her limbs, no small task. The entire hall stood in frozen silence, though Runa heard voices outside drawing closer.

"I'll kill him if you don't let me go!" The man was as young as the others, not yet a full grown man but just as dangerous as one. His hands trembled, and the knife edge wobbled at Gunnar's throat.

"Don't be afraid, Gunnar. He will release you unharmed." Forcing her voice to be calm and confident took as much strength as wielding the poker.

"I'm not letting him go until I get to my ship."

"You're backed against the wall." Runa threw the poker at the man's feet. The thud made him jump and she winced as his startled reaction cut the blade into Gunnar's skin, causing him to whimper. She turned away from the man, glancing at Konal who remained still and fixed on the invader. Finding the sax by the hearth, she drew the blade from its sheath.

"What are you doing? Do you want me to kill him?"

"You are dead either way," Runa said, pointing the sax at him. "Your only choice now is to die a clean death or to suffer. Kill my son and I will make death linger for weeks. Release him, and I promise you a swift death. You will go to Valhalla where you can feast and fight eternally."

The man searched for an escape, but found none. Konal and his follower blocked the exit and Runa's blade remained two hand lengths away. Tears began to form at his eyes and his mouth trembled. "I don't want to die."

"Then you should've stayed home. It is fine for me to die, my son to die, but not you?" Runa spit at his feet. "Even with a clean death Odin would not take a crying baby into his hall! Release my son. Do it!"

Konal slipped closer and the man tightened his blade as Gunnar struggled anew. "We came for the treasure you keep. We heard all the men were gone. In summer, Jarls Thorod and Skard will come and take it, but we planned to get it ourselves. With no men around, we thought it'd be a simple thing and no one had to die."

"So you sailed in the winter darkness and risked Thor's storms? Then discovered Nye Grenner is not for men to pick over like a corpse. I should let you return with a warning to your jarls."

"I will tell them to stay away, that there's nothing here worth taking." The man nodded eagerly, and Runa smiled.

"Release my son and I will consider it."

"You promise to allow me to leave?"

"I swear it."

A tense moment passed as the man considered the offer, then he lowered his knife. Gunnar slipped free, but rather than run for his mother he turned and punched the man in his crotch. He doubled over and Runa struck.

Her blade pierced the meat of his sword arm, causing him to drop the knife. She shoved the sax to the bone and drove the man against the wall. The women screamed again but all her fury flooded back into her head. Her vision thrummed with rage. Grabbing his knife, she held it before the man's face.

"You threatened to kill my son, planned to rape me and my women, then steal my gold. You expect to walk away?"

She rammed the knife into the soft flesh of the man's crotch, nailing the dagger to the hilt. He lifted up with a scream that threatened to shatter his throat.

"You may leave now, and if you survive then you can give Thorod my message. No one threatens me in my own hall." She ripped the sax out of the man's arm, and more blood pooled at his crotch than she thought a body could contain.

"You ... promised." The man slouched to his side, his uninjured arm clawing at the dirt as if to drag himself away. Runa crouched beside him, lowering her face to his.

"Men live by their oaths. But I am a woman, and I live for revenge. Take that with you to Nifleheim."

She stood, no more thought for the dying man, and faced Gunnar. The fear she saw as she opened her arms to receive him gave her pause. Glancing around, the others stared at her with horror and shock. Looking at the blood-slicked sax, she tossed it to the floor where it clanged atop the poker. The pooling blood ebbed to her feet, and as it touched her Runa realized her life was never going to be the same.

CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT

March 18, 886 CE

Runa and Konal dueled in the fields as they did every day, but now they had relocated to the slope that overlooked the sea. One month had passed since the invaders had been defeated, and their five severed heads now overlooked the collapsed docks where they had left their small boat. Sea birds had picked them clean, leaving the skulls on their pole and with bits of hair streaming in the breeze. The grass waved as Runa wiped sweat from her brow and lowered her sword, her shoulder burning from the morning of practice.

"Enough," Konal said, sliding his sword into its sheath. "You're even tiring me now. I don't know that I can teach you anymore."

Runa smiled at the compliment. His respect for her had risen since the attack, while others handled her with more caution. Even Elin could not meet her gaze for long. Konal, Gunnar, and his band of boy warriors seemed to be the only ones to understand what she had done.