Black Monastery (12 page)

No!

He moved instinctively, pushing up off the ground and into his advancing brother. Somehow, his knife was now in his hand. He hadn’t even realized he had drawn it. Bjorn’s eyes opened wide as Asgrim’s knife slipped beneath the bottom of his chain mail, ripping into his flesh. Blood drenched the hand holding his knife, and he let go of it, as if it burned him, but he knew it was already too late.

Bjorn dropped his ax, and his fingers reached for Asgrim’s throat, then closed around it. Lights popped in Asgrim’s vision as his brother choked him. He was vaguely aware of his brother’s hoarse breathing in his face and the stupefied expression on his features. Asgrim brought his arms up and down, dropping his weight and twisting to the side as he smashed his elbows into his brother’s arms at the elbow. Releasing Asgrim’s throat, Bjorn fell to the ground in one direction as Asgrim collapsed in the other.

Asgrim coughed and hacked as air flowed back into his pain-filled throat. As his vision cleared, he saw his brother lying on the ground, a foot of glistening intestine hanging from beneath the hem of his chain mail coat. He crawled to his brother over ground already soaked with blood. Bjorn stared at him stupidly, with black eyes still filled with hatred.

Blood bubbled from his lips, and he mumbled something incomprehensible, something in a language other than Danish.

Asgrim grasped for the handle of Bjorn’s ax, then thrust it into his brother’s fingers. At first, Bjorn couldn’t hold the weapon, but Asgrim wrapped his brother’s fingers around the shaft and held them in place with his own.

“I’m sorry, brother,” Asgrim croaked, finding it hard to talk. “I’m sorry.”

Bjorn didn’t answer. In death, his eyes had returned to their deep blue, but they stared accusingly at Asgrim.

He pulled his brother’s head to his chest, hugged him hard. “Wait for me in Valhalla, little brother.”

Despite his pain, Asgrim lifted his head and cried out. His scream echoed through the woods, startling birds.

* * *

It felt the destruction of its servant and paused where it stood in the woods. Somehow, his
ghul
had been sent back to its own realm. Unfortunate perhaps, but failure wasn’t unexpected with lesser servants such as
ghuls
.

This man, though, the leader of the raiders, this Asgrim Wood-Nose,
he
was interesting.

So was his ship.

Six

The Island of Noirmoutier,

August 3, 799,

Morning

The men loitered nearby, talking quietly among themselves, casting nervous glances at Asgrim. Bjorn lay on his back, holding his ax on his massive chest. Asgrim knelt beside him, stuffing his intestines back under his armor.

Gorm crouched beside him and handed him a wineskin. The other man’s face reflected his sorrow. “Captain, we can’t stay here.”

Asgrim shook his head and tried to drink a mouthful of wine, but ended up coughing it back up and rubbing his throat.

Kinslayer. He was a kinslayer. First his wife, now his brother. He had killed his own brother—over a Frankish woman he would never see again. Freya, Frodi, now Bjorn. Had there ever been a man more cursed by the gods? He laughed, really wanting to cry. Gorm stared at him with concern in his eyes. Asgrim drank again, this time getting some of the wine down his throat.

“Your weapons, Captain.” Gorm handed
Heart-Ripper,
Asgrim’s hand ax
,
and his long-knife to him.

Woodenly, Asgrim took them, then sheathed them. He stared down at his brother’s dead face, which was now unnaturally white.

“Wasn’t your fault. You had no choice, him or you. No one could blame—”

“We’re not burying him here,” said Asgrim. “Not here.”

“What… what, then, Captain?” asked Gorm.

“I won’t have Franks digging him up, stealing his armor and weapons, desecrating his body. Have the men build a fire. We’ll burn him.”

“Captain… if we light a fire, we’ll draw more attention to ourselves. There may be Frankish soldiers. They would know where—”

Asgrim glared over his shoulder at the other man. “We’ve just burned their monastery. Look at the smoke in the air. One more bonfire now won’t make a difference. Besides, I don’t care. We’re going to send my brother to Valhalla—and right now!”

“Aye, Captain.” Gorm walked away.

Asgrim searched his brother’s corpse, rooting through his belongings. First, he discarded the small coins and pieces of silver he found in his brother’s coin pouch, letting them plop from his palm onto the wet ground. Then he upended the pouch, letting the rest of the contents spill out, looking for something to keep as a memento of his brother. Instead, his breath caught in his throat when he saw a yellowed fragment among the coins and other spilled knickknacks.

It was the fragment of bone from the monastery’s crypt.

His brother had taken it with him. Why?

Asgrim drew his hand ax and picked up the bone with its blade. He carried it to a nearby moss-covered boulder and set it atop it. This cursed thing had driven his brother mad. He was certain of it. It still carried the taint of the monk’s damned Saint Philibert. The rot of his evil was so strong that it had stayed in his bones, infecting his brother. That had to be what had happened.

Feeling nauseated, Asgrim glared at the sliver of bone. He hefted his hand ax and then smashed it down on the bone, shattering it. The shock of the impact ran up his arm, but he struck the bone again and again, crushing the pieces into powder, not caring that he would dull his ax blade. When he was done, the bone was nothing more than yellow crumbs cascading down the side of the boulder.

Feeling empty inside, he stepped back and let the ax hang next to his leg.

* * *

The flames of Bjorn’s pyre roared and cracked, their heat washing over Asgrim’s face. It was midday, but the men had taken that long to gather the wood for Bjorn’s pyre. They had built a four-poster timber platform for his brother’s corpse that was high enough to pile three feet of wood beneath it. The flames were intense, and Bjorn’s body blazed along with them.

Gorm joined him. “We should get moving, Captain. Bjorn’s gone now, well on his way to Valhalla—if he isn’t there already.”

The fire popped, and sparks flew out as some pieces of wood shifted and fell.

Asgrim nodded. If ever a man deserved to drink among the heroes in Odin’s mead hall, it was his brother. What a pathetic end for such a man. Gods damn the crones and their destiny. For the first time ever, he was happy his parents were both dead and couldn’t see what he had become. But Bjorn had a family, a large family. Who would take care of them now? He had an obligation—even though they would hate him for what he had done—but he couldn’t return home yet, not until he raised the wergild for Frodi’s death.

Asgrim closed his eyes and fought to maintain control over his emotions. He was a captain; he still had a crew he was responsible for, and he had made a promise of plunder to them. Despite what had happened on the island, he needed to keep his word, his ship, and his men.

It was all he had left.

Most of the men stood some distance away, watching him with dark expressions. Asgrim sighed. There would be trouble over this. They would curse his foul luck, curse this damned raid, and curse him. Harald Skull-Splitter stood among a knot of men and glared at him. Asgrim stared back until the other man hawked, spit on the ground, and turned away.

Definitely trouble.

He grabbed the reins of his horse and climbed into the saddle. Once they were away from this place, the men would regain their cheer. He would find another settlement to raid, someplace that actually had something to steal. He told himself everything would be fine, all the while knowing it wouldn’t.

What kind of a man kills his own brother? The three crones had to be giggling with glee.

Asgrim led his men away from his brother’s pyre. The happy chatter among the men had disappeared. Asgrim could feel their stares on his back. He looked up at the red dragon, now almost completely gone from the sky. Bjorn had been so wrong about it. Odin and Thor weren’t here and had never been watching over them. He prayed Bjorn was in Valhalla, that the Valkyries had somehow managed to find him, even in the land of the Franks and their bizarre one god and black monks.

His thoughts swirled in his head as they marched to the sea. The sea—escape from this cursed island. Soon, he heard waves crashing against the beach and knew they were almost back at the longship and freedom. The men picked up the pace, anxious to be gone, but when he heard the pounding of horses’ hooves to their front and saw the two scouts with grim faces riding out of the trees, he knew something else had gone very wrong. His hands clenched into fists, and he forced himself to take deep breaths.

What had the crones woven for him now?

The scouts pulled up on their reins; their horses danced in place, eyes wild with terror. The two riders looked much the same.

“They’re dead,” said one of the men.

Asgrim exhaled, feeling his world crash in upon him. “The longship?”

The other scout shook his head and opened his mouth, but then closed it again.

The men began to yell out questions and push forward. With a sharp yell, Asgrim lashed his horse into a run, darting between the two scouts.

He broke through the screen of trees, coming out on the beach, and stared in disbelief at
Sea Eel
. The vessel had been dragged up all the way onto the sand and sat there, leaning over on its side. Its mast had been broken off at the base and was now impaled through the hull.

How was that possible?

Asgrim almost fell while climbing down from his mount. His legs trembled as he approached his prized vessel, noticing for the first time the low droning of the flies and the stench of rot. Lying before him on the sand, mocking him, were the corpses of the five men he had left behind.

Someone had carefully laid them out together, one beside the other, their arms linked around the neck of the man on either side, as if they were the greatest of friends and had reposed for a nap together. The horror on their dead faces, however, betrayed that lie. And this charade was only the beginning of the abuse heaped upon the dead. Someone had skinned the men, leaving their heads still intact but their bodies nothing more than empty husks of skin, deflated and obscene. Asgrim remembered the skinned monk Gorm had found within the monastery and trembled in rage, barely believing what he was seeing. It seemed impossible, a cruel joke. From where Asgrim stood, the empty husks of these men looked intact, like deflated wineskins. But when he turned them over and looked beneath, he found the gaping hole in their backs where everything had been scraped out. The discarded remains lay only paces away in a stinking, glistening pile of bones, guts, muscle, and internal organs, crawling with a skin of flies. A cold sweat drenched Asgrim’s skin.

Who could do such a thing? Why?

He heard the sudden pounding of hooves, then turned to watch his horse galloping away down the beach. Even Hopp whined, hiding behind his legs.

Gorm and the rest of the men followed him out onto the beach. At first, not a man said a word. Each just stared in horror at the sight before him. Then several vomited, and not just the young ones. Others called upon the mercy of the gods. Still more bellowed in outrage, stomping up and down the beach, trying to vent their fury.

Far too many glared at Asgrim.

Several moments passed before he noticed Gorm standing beside him. The two men considered the mast shoved through the hull of
Sea Eel
.

“What do we do?” Gorm asked.

“What choice do we have?” Asgrim said. “We fix her, then sail away.”

Gorm reached out and ran his fingers over the broken edge of one of the planks. “It will take days, maybe weeks.”

“Maybe,” said Asgrim.

“The Franks. They’ll come in force.”

Asgrim nodded. “Aye. So first, we build a log wall around her. Once we have a wall to fight behind, we hold fast and fix her. If the Franks come against us, we kill them until they stop coming. Once
Sea Eel’s
seaworthy again, we go.”

Gorm snorted. “That seems simple enough.”

Ignoring the sarcasm, Asgrim replied, “No, it won’t be, but it’s our only option.”

Asgrim heard a commotion behind him. He turned to find the men gathering nearby, arguing with one another, their voices getting louder. There seemed to be two groups of men forming, one far larger than the other. The larger group had Harald at its core, with all of the younger men. The second, much smaller group, comprised the steadiest of the old hands, men like Steiner and Snorri. Asgrim approached the men just in time to hear Harald speaking.

“Can’t let ’em get away with this, with killing our friends.” Harald looked about himself as he spoke, clearly talking for the benefit of the forming mob.

“We follow the captain’s orders, not yours, Skull-Splitter. No one swore an oath to you,” Steiner answered, his voice much lower and calmer, his eyes thin slits.

There’s going to be blood, Asgrim thought.

Steiner’s posture was that of a man ready to fight. His hands edged near his knife, and his feet were set for balance and action. Harald, on the other hand, seemed too preoccupied with the attention that the others were paying him to react to what was about to happen.

Steiner was a thin man, nowhere near the size of Harald, but anyone who underestimated him was taking his life in his own hands. The warrior was one of the hardest men Asgrim had ever sailed with. Not only could he track a mouse for days across fresh snow, but he could also put an arrow into the creature’s anus from two hundred paces away. As well, he was a particularly nasty hand with a knife. If Harald was too poor a judge of men to see that Steiner was moments away from violence, then the young blowhard would never command his own men, at least not for long. A good captain understood men.

Asgrim pushed himself between the two men, interrupting their argument. “What’s this nonsense, then?” He looked about himself at the gathering men, willing steel into his face.