Lord of Fire and Ice (7 page)

Finn and Einar tried to help Gormson up, but he waved them away angrily. Brandr hoped he’d stomp off and abandon his pursuit of Katla, but he allowed himself to be persuaded to reenter the longhouse.

Brandr was forced to listen as Katla commended him for his fighting abilities.

“Not many would relish facing a captain of the Varangian Guard, even if he does wear a thrall collar,” she said. “You fought with honor, son of Gorm.”

After a few more horns of mead, Albrikt was his blustering self again.

Brandr was relieved when she made her excuses and retired for the night once the singing and drinking games began. After a few moments, everyone’s attention was riveted on her brother Einar near the central fire. He was trying to drain a horn of mead as long as his arm in one gulp and had failed in his second attempt. He called for the horn to be topped off.

Brandr used the raucous chanting while the horn was being refilled to cover his exit. As silent as a wraith, he slipped into her chamber.

The noise of the crowd faded, but Katla evidently wasn’t aware he’d entered. She was humming the same drinking tune the gathering was singing in the next room. He moved farther into the chamber with stealth, not daring to breathe too deeply lest she hear him.

Katla faced away from him on the far side of her bed. Her starched headdress was propped on one of her trunks, and she’d unbraided her hair. The long tresses glistened in the lamplight, still damp, as if she’d plaited it when it was wet. It cascaded in waves down the length of her spine, the wispy ends teasing her hips.

Her fingers worked the catch on the brooch above each breast. Once the tabs at her shoulders came free, she stepped out of the stiff brocade overdress. The lighter tunic beneath clung to her form. Brandr clearly discerned all her curves under the thin fabric, and the shadow of her legs through the thin cloth teased him.

Marriages were ever made with an eye to increased wealth, Brandr knew, but Gormson should happily give up his Stord property for a woman like this. Even if all she brought to the union was herself.

Then she bent double, grasped the hem, and pulled her tunic off over her head. She moved slowly, as if her mind were otherwise occupied.

That was fine with him. Desire roared in him, and he was hot and ready in only a few heartbeats. He ached to bury himself in her softness, to feel her velvet heat wrapped around him.

Unfortunately, she wasted no time slipping on her thin night shift.

She slid her hands under her heavy hair and gave it a shake, spreading the dark mantle across her shoulders to dry. When she turned to climb into bed, she saw Brandr in the shadows and startled.

“What are you doing in here?” she whispered furiously.

“Watching you undress,” he said honestly.

She narrowed her eyes at him.

“But that wasn’t my main purpose.”

A dark brow arched in suspicion.

“You aren’t going to marry that louse-bitten toad, are you?”

“That is none of your business.” Her frown eased into a sly smile. “Oh, I see. If I wed Albrikt, you’re afraid for your tongue. Don’t worry. If I decide to accept him, I’ll make sure the marriage contract stipulates that you remain my exclusive property.”

“You’re not seriously considering it.” Brandr barely resisted the urge to grasp her shoulders and give her a shake. “If you are, you should know it’s not you he’s interested in here.”

“Oh, really? Well, that’s flattering.”

“You’re too bright a woman to need flattery. Oh,
ja
, I’m not saying he won’t use you.” The thought of Gormson in her bed made Brandr’s eyes burn. “He’ll rut you every time he takes a notion, but that’s not the main reason he’s considering this match. There’s something else he’s after.”

To his surprise, she didn’t argue. She sank down on the bed, tucking one foot under her.

“What do you think that might be?”

So she’d felt it too, the sense of strategic measurement in Gormson’s gaze, not just when he looked at her, but also when he surveyed the long hall. When he silently counted the number of sword arms ringing the fire.

Brandr knew Albrikt did it, because he’d done it himself.

“He’s no farmer,” Brandr said, “else he’d not trade for a smaller steading.”

“Even if I came with it?”

Was she angling for a compliment from him? Wasn’t his cock tenting his tunic every time he looked her way enough?

Or maybe she simply wanted another stick to bash him with. She’d have it if he admitted she was a powerful inducement to an otherwise uneven trade.

“Even if you came with it,” he said firmly. She winced at the slight. “There’s something else that draws him to your property.”

“I sensed the same,” she said thoughtfully. Then she looked up at him sharply. “But how would
you
know that?”

It wasn’t unusual for a woman to have unwarranted knowledge of the hearts of others, but that was because they were naturally endowed with a measure of magic from the cradle. Everyone knew that.

Men typically shied away from dabbling in
seid
craft. There was a saying in the North, old as the rocks and trees:
If
action
is
needed, turn to a man. For understanding, seek a woman.

But Brandr had always had a knack for discerning the hidden thoughts of others. He read it in the set of their shoulders, the twitch of a muscle under the skin. He could smell out a lie like an elkhound on the hunt. If a game of chance required him to sense the other man’s next play, he won every time.

“Just trust me on this,” Brandr said, running a hand over his shorn head. “Gormson isn’t the man for you. Stay away from him.”

“That almost sounds as if you’re trying to give me an order.” She cocked her head at him. “I am your mistress. I seek neither your counsel nor your consent for what I choose to do.”

“But you asked—”

“Enough.” She stood to give more weight to her words. “Go to sleep, thrall.”

“As you will,” he said and prepared to bed down across her threshold again.

“No, not in here. It’s not…seemly. On the other side of the door.”

Shoulders slumped, he put his hand on the latch.

“Brandr.”

His head snapped up. Even though she was sending him away, he liked the sound of his name on her tongue. It was the first time she’d used it.

“I’m glad you weren’t harmed this night.”

“Me too.”

She studied him for a long moment and opened her mouth to say something, but seemed to think better of it. She waved him away. “See to it no one passes by you during the dark watches.”

“You think someone will try?”

She shook her head, her lips curving in a reluctant smile. “No, I suppose you’re right. After that display of swordsmanship, I’m safer with you by my door than if I had a dozen guards.”

He nodded, suppressing a smile. She wouldn’t have to fight Gormson from her bed so long as Brandr served her. He meant to see she didn’t welcome Albrikt there either. “As you will…”

He closed the door softly behind him before he finished his thought. “Katla.”

***

Brandr had no trouble falling asleep across Katla’s threshold in the large common room. The steady breathing, even the rhythmic snoring of others, helped him into a state of relaxation so deep he didn’t miss having a proper bed.

But a stealthy step was all it took to jerk him to alert wakefulness.

Brandr slitted his eyes and peered into the dark. Someone was moving down the center of the long room toward Katla’s chamber.

At first he thought it must be Gormson. He struck Brandr as the sort to drive a dagger between a sleeping guard’s ribs, then resort to rape in order to clinch the marriage. But the dark shape wasn’t broad shouldered or tall enough to be the man from Stord.

Every muscle in Brandr’s body tensed as the form drew nearer. Then when the figure leaned over him, Brandr’s hand shot up and caught him by the throat.

Brandr was on his feet in a heartbeat and smacking the would-be intruder against the wall.

“
Huff
da!
” The fellow’s voice squeaked, and Brandr recognized him.

“What are you doing, Haukon?” he whispered as he released his hold on the boy. “Your sister doesn’t wish to be disturbed.”

“I don’t want to see Katla. I want to see you.”

Brandr sank down with his back to the door he guarded. “Why?”

Haukon hunkered beside him. “I want you to teach me something.”

“What?”

“I’ve heard tales of the Varangians. You’re the fiercest fighters in the world,” Haukon said. “Teach me to handle a sword.”

“Why? As long as you and your cowardly brothers have a pot of poison, you can handle your enemies right enough.”

The boy bristled. “It wasn’t my idea to taint your mead, Ulfson. That was Einar’s doing.”

“So you and Finn just went along with it?”

“Mayhap we shouldn’t have, but what’s done is done,” Haukon said. “Now is all we can claim.”

“
Ja
, and now you’re stealing the only time I’m like to get for sleep.” Brandr lay back down again and closed his eyes. “Thralls don’t set their own pace, you know. I’m sure your sister has a full day planned for me.”

“Come, Ulfson,” Haukon urged. “Teach me, and I’ll see you get extra food.”

Trust a stripling to think of his stomach first.

“No,” Brandr said.

“But I’m very quick. Everyone says so. It won’t take long for you to show me what I need to know.”

“Only five or six years.”

The boy sighed.

“But what if a gang of men like those friends of yours turns up again?” Haukon whispered urgently. “I want to be able to defend what’s mine.”

Haukon’s heart was in the right place, but his request was laughable. “If men like my friends ever make landfall here with mayhem in mind, your best bet is to hide in a hole till they leave.”

“I won’t do that.”

Brandr opened his eyes. It was still too dark to make out the lad’s face, but the determination in Haukon’s tone tugged at him. He remembered his father schooling him and his brother in the way of a blade. Ulf was a hard taskmaster, demanding to the point of viciousness, but he saw to it his sons could defend themselves.

No one had done that for Haukon. Even though the boy would have no hope of success against a blooded warrior, he wouldn’t show an enemy his back. Grudging respect made Brandr sit up.

“Whether it was your idea or no, you helped put the iron collar on my neck,” Brandr said. “Give me one good reason why I should help you.”

“Because…Katla wouldn’t like it.”

Brandr snorted. “Good enough.”

“May I reclaim for all time my rightful inheritance, the Iron Crown of kingship.”

Malvar Bloodaxe leaned a hand on slabbed stonework as he whispered his prayer. The man-made hill rose starkly from the plain, a tribute to the defiant will of its ancient makers and in honor of the gods of the Orkney Islands.

“May Gormson’s arm be strengthened, and may all my ally’s plans succeed.”

Power tingled through Malvar’s palm and up his arm. There were places in the world where the primeval forces still thrived, where gods even older than the pantheon of the North yet walked unseen. This remote mound of earth on the largest island in the Orkney chain was one of them.

“May my prisoner’s tongue be loosened and the path to victory made plain.”

Malvar closed his eyes, letting the spirits of the place speak to him in half-heard sibilance, whispers from the disembodied souls of woad-painted warriors and fallen heroes. They reached out to him from the tall, waving grass, from the red sandstone bones of the island beneath its thin skin of dirt, from the artfully worked slabs that were used to build this sacred place in the deep past.

This
is
our
land
, they cried.
Our
water
and
earth
and
sky. Our blood sacrifices and feasts. Let not the Carpenter God push us from it.

Malvar opened his eyes, anger hazing his vision red. Not a handful of winters ago, the self-styled Norwegian king, Olav Tryggvason, had landed on the islands and forced the inhabitants to convert to Christianity at sword point. The Norse deities of the islands, Odin and Thor and that lot, were too weak to help the people resist then.

But there were Others hovering about the island. Forgotten Ones, whose time was both long past and yet to come. They waited with the patient stillness of a spider for their chance.

Once the Norse king left, Malvar heard their bloodless voices in the night. Hisses of hate woke him from a sound sleep and drenched him in a cold sweat. Then the more he listened, the more he understood.

Might was the only truth, blood the only currency that mattered.

Shoved underground, belief in the Old Ones was growing stronger now. Men who craved violence and bloodshed as much as the ancient gods did were drawn to worship them.

In Orkney, the Hebrides, in deceptively quiet fjords along the Norse coast and barrier islands, Malvar Bloodaxe was amassing allies. He appealed to those who had a score to settle. They were second sons who didn’t stand to inherit their fathers’ lands, men who longed for a return to the way of the warrior. They wanted to resume the Viking raids, when a man might increase his wealth with a sword stroke instead of by trade or tilling.

The Old Ones would see it done. Those ancient spirits delighted in mayhem and murder and atrocities that turned men’s bowels to water. With the army Malvar was gathering, the Old Ways would return.

There’s not a farmer or a merchant in the lot
, Malvar thought with a contented smile.

Satisfied the spirits had heard his prayer and supported his intent, Bloodaxe stooped to enter the cairn. He was forced to crawl along the passageway burrowing into the heart of the man-made hill.

Even
the
most
powerful
leader
must
be
humble
before
the
specters
of
Old
Ones
, he supposed.

For he was born to be a powerful leader. His grandsire had been Eric Bloodaxe, exiled king of Norway, the man who’d earned the chilling name Malvar was proud to bear. Which meant Olav Tryggvason was a pretender, and Malvar Bloodaxe was the rightful Norse king.

With the men whose allegiance he’d claimed and the power of the Old Ones behind him, he’d take back his grandfather’s crown.

But first, he needed the right information, the right fjord to target for his initial incursion. Once he’d subjugated an entire fjord, he’d be able to move on to the next. As terror of his might heralded his approach, the subsequent fjords would fall into his hand like ripe plums.

Dragonships would sail the Northern seas once more, bringing death on the wind.

Malvar reached the end of the tunnel and stood upright in the open chamber where the ceiling vaulted to twice a man’s height. Torches blackened the walls, and the place was ripe with the stench of burning pitch. A thin ribbon of smoke found its way out the shaft at the apex of the vault, but the air was still unwholesome if one had no relief from it for extended periods of time.

Especially when the air currents sent a whiff of human feces and misery wafting along the subterranean corridors to mingle with the smoke.

The guard at the interior opening of the tunnel snapped to attention when he recognized his leader, both spiritual and temporal.

“How is our prisoner this day?” Malvar Bloodaxe asked.

“Not very talkative.”

“Well, that is something we shall have to remedy, isn’t it?” Malvar said as he strolled over to survey the available whips and knives laid out on a table. “Has his back healed?”

“Not yet.”

“Good. We’ll concentrate on the front then,” Bloodaxe said, picking up a cat-o’-nine-tails and cracking it. The sound echoed through the subterranean vaults, and a muffled wail came in response from one of the other tunnels leading off the main chamber. Anticipation of pain was almost as effective as pain itself. “We’ll start with this. Bring him.”

The guard disappeared down one of the short corridors and came back, half-dragging his charge. The prisoner was naked, his beard and hair so matted with filth only shearing him like a sheep would render him human once more. His ribs stood out in stark relief. He stooped as he shuffled along, because he was unable to stretch out to his full height in the tiny cell in which he was kept.

“Greetings, Ulf,
Jarl
of Jondal,” Bloodaxe said courteously as the guard bound the prisoner’s unresisting hands spread eagle between two posts.

It was a stroke of luck the man’s vessel foundered off the Orkney coast and he’d been reported lost with the rest of his crew. As far as anyone else knew, Ulf Skallagrimsson was freezing in
Hel
. No one would ever think to look for him in the bowels of the earth.

“I trust you’re enjoying your stay with us,” Malvar said with a laugh.

The man peered from under his shock of rapidly graying hair, the mad glint in his eyes the only evidence of a living soul in the soon-to-be-broken body. Ulf worked his mouth for a moment and then spat a gob of phlegm on the packed dirt at Bloodaxe’s feet.

Malvar smiled. Naked loathing was such a deliciously powerful emotion. It shimmered in the foul air, and Malvar’s arms strengthened with the force of his captive’s hate. He’d send his own venom right back to the
jarl
.

The cat flicked over Ulf’s chest, leaving an artful cluster of red weals. The man gritted his teeth to keep his agony silent, but Malvar knew that restraint wouldn’t last long.

“Now, then what shall we talk about?” Malvar sent the whip singing again. This time it drew bright beads of blood and a grunt of pain. “How about…the defenses of Hardanger Fjord?”