Norseman Raider (The Norseman Chronicles Book 4) (29 page)

I had grown up in the normal, coarse, harshness of life.  Norway, Iceland, and Greenland had all required diligence for the mere act of survival.  To make it through one single winter in any of those locations meant that a man and his family were tough and wily. 
My first and second families in those places had retained their sense of wonder and joy in the world despite the difficult lifestyles prescribed to them by fate.   I had been a professional raider now for several months.  I had seen battle, blood, and downright war.  Things had gone poorly and situations had gone well.  The Welshmen and Englishmen against whom I had struggled were tenacious, unbending.  The men with whom I had fought were rough, but had joviality that could shine through in the bleakest of circumstances.  This new batch of men was unlike any I had ever met.  They were brutish. They were cruel for cruelty’s sake.  Though they pledged their fealty in public ceremonies to King Godfrey, they remained mercenaries.  And mercenaries, everyone should know, had loyalties that shifted like riverbed silt.

“H
alf of these men could be instruments of Maredubb,” protested Killian.  “They could be agents of the Ui Neill, Dal Riata, or Horse Ketil himself!  They are sent here to usurp your authority, to kill you.”  Killian walked next to an oxen-drawn cart that was heavy laden with a newly carved stone. A cross relief was etched on its front side.  Inside the boundaries of the Christian symbol were Norse runes, chopped in by one of Godfrey’s masons.

Godfrey looked down from the charger he rode.  His fine new blade rested in its scabbard against the horse’s flank.  “I assume they all work for someone else. 
That’s why I’ll keep them close.  When I kept Ketil at my side it worked out in the end.  At best and most likely these newcomers operate for themselves well before they give any consideration to their holy oaths to me.”  The king gave me a compliment by looking my way.  “They can’t all be bound to their king by blood like Halldorr.”

“So what will you do?” asked Leif.  He rode a sloppy-looking bay next to my equally questionable borrowed horse.  Each of the animals’ backs swayed low.

“He’ll die.  His queen will die.  His kingdom will go to another.  I’ll serve a new king within the year.  That’s what he’ll do!  That’s what I’ll do,” said Killian, whipping the nearest ox to add an exclamation.  “King Godfrey is getting ahead of himself in doing this thing we do.”

“Don’t be so dramatic,” Godfrey s
aid with a roll of his eyes.  “You liked the idea yesterday.”  Our procession stopped just outside Kirk Braddan.  Edana’s incessant babbling, which had been drowned out by the clatter of hooves, feet, and wheels, invaded our ears.  “Would someone please gag the woman,” said the king.

Loki hopped up to the cart on which she rode and stuffed a rag into her trap.  The woman fought with vigor, nipping his fingers with her bared teeth.  Soon all we could hear was a low, guttural series of moans emanating from the beast of a woman.
  But just as she’d given up on the struggle against the cords that bound her wrists and ankles, in a short while Edana gave up fighting the cloth.

Workers came to the cart that carried the stone cross and retrieved shovels. 
Godfrey absentmindedly pointed to the earth with his eyes and they quickly set to work at the side of the road digging a hole to receive the monument.

King Godfrey rested his hands on his saddle’s pommel, patiently waiting.  “I trust none of our new men, Leif.  Hell, I barely trust you
and you helped bring me Aberffraw
and
Watchet!  Distrust is what will save me.  I’ll have Randulfr, Loki, and Halldorr, and a dozen others around me when we go to war.”  The king put me into the list of men he trusted.  It was true, for he had allowed me to see where he stashed his hoards of riches.  We had killed, no murdered, our faithful soldiers over the last pit.  Their blood truly shackled me to the king.  Why he trusted me and not his other new men, like Leif or Tyrkr or the other Greenlanders, I do not know.  Looking back, I suppose it was because I was simple.  I was not simple like the village dolt, drooling down my chest.  I was simple to read.  I wanted a fat woman and land that produced fat crops, even though I temporarily thought otherwise.  Since I had never been fortunate enough to get a wife or land, I would serve whoever was closest.  Godfrey and, likely, anyone else could see that.  King Godfrey meant to pull me close to himself.  “No assassin will get through that mess of muscle.  Besides, these newcomers want strength.  Even if they came with treacherous intent, once they see their share of hacksilver and gold, their loyalties will settle where they ought.”  The king scratched at a flea in his beard.

“May it be as you say,” whispered Killian, still not convinced.

The hole was finished.  Killian skillfully guided the oxen backward toward it.  When the tail of the cart hung just over the lip, he stopped.  I jumped into the cart and along with ten other men shoved or pulled the slab back.  Inch by inch, ell by ell, the heavy marker scraped against the worn wood.  At last gravity took over and the base of the carved cross fell into the hole.  Brandr was struck in the chin by the top of the cross as it flew up.  He fell back into the cart, fighting instinctive tears.  When Brandr moved his hand away from his chin, it was already badly swollen and red.  He’d bit his tongue.  When he gritted his teeth, they were outlined in blood.  We laughed at him.  He kicked my shin like a child.  We laughed harder.  King Godfrey joined in.

“Even your closest men are incapable of serious thought,” scolded Killian.
  “Neither are you.”

Godfrey shrugged.  “I’d have it no other way.”
  The king studied his closest advisor and, dare I say, friend.  “I am lucky to have a good woman with a head on her shoulders.  I am more fortunate to have a priest who cares about his adopted people and king.”

The priest huffed, moved the oxen and their cart
out of the way, and stepped to face the stone cross.  “Turn it south,” he said, leaving Godfrey’s compliment hanging.  The men obeyed.  “Good,” Killian said.  “Now hold it upright in the hole.”  He took a plumb bob made of a rock and string from his pocket while the workers did as he asked.  “Left,” the priest commanded.  “My left, not yours,” he barked.  “There.  Hold it there,” Killian said, tapping the smooth stone.  His fingers lingered for a heartbeat on the sharp chisel marks of the runes.  Then he stepped back again to admire his work and with a nod from Killian, the men began refilling the small pit.

Meanwhile, others had moved Edana’s cart under the boughs of a tre
e across the hard-packed road.  The single, speckled palfrey that had struggled to lug the large woman along the path now rested one of its rear legs in a cocked manner.  The horse rested its eyes while Randulfr gave the men who jumped into the cart orders.

“Over that branch there,” he said, pointing.

“Won’t do,” said Tyrkr.  “She’s a fat one.  Not that I’d mind her resting in my lap, mind you.  But she’ll break that branch as sure as her husband is a drunk.  Then you’ll just have to cinch her up again.”

“That’s fair,” admitted Randulfr
, taking the criticism from a slave better than he had ever taken advice from young Leif.  “Over there?  What about that limb?”

Tyrkr was shaking his head.  “Even if that one holds, look at the rope.  Do you think it will hold?”

“Oh, lad, you are a foreign one, aren’t you,” said Godfrey as he squeezed his heels into the belly of his horse.  The creature stepped across the road toward Edana.  “Everyone from these parts knows that the women on Man make the finest sailor’s rope in the world.  Men come from all over to buy from our rope walks.”

“That’s because the pagans all believe the women here are witches!” called Killian.  “They think the witches give the ropes magical powers.”

“That rope will need magic if it is supposed to support Edana,” observed Tyrkr.  “It’ll take most of its length to wrap around her neck just once.”  Edana began struggling again.  I suppose she had known what her fate was to be once we tied her up and loaded her in the cart.  Hearing her captors talk about it so, reinvigorated her labor.

“We’ll find out, won’t we?  It’s the rope we have
and so it must do.  I want her to hang in front of the stone cross.  I want her to know just what will be read by every man who passes this marker for all eternity.  I want her to read it while she dangles.  It will be the last thing Edana sees before she dies.  Mostly, I want her to know it says nothing about her, for to scratch her name in runes would give her credit with the gods.  Now Randulfr quit dallying.  Get her strung up,” said Godfrey.  “I’ve got an expedition to plan.”

Tyrkr threw the rope over the second bough they had seen.  Randulfr caught the end and tied it off on the tree’s trunk.  Tyrkr laced the loop over Edana’s head and tightened the noose against the back of her neck.  Edana tried to flee.  The men let her.

Edana’s step rocked the cart.  The horse awakened and skittered forward.  The men in the cart rode along.  So did Edana.  She did, at least, until the rope smacked taut.  Her cheeks bulged as the last gasp of air was caught in them.  Likewise, Edana’s eyes flared in horror and wonder.  Women are no different than men in that regard.  I’ve told you that all men, especially the good ones, are utterly shocked that they meet their end.  Edana was too.  She flung back.  The branch sagged, creaking under her great weight.  It sunk so low that one of her toes briefly brushed the ground.  It was a shame that such a thing happened, for it gave her momentary hope.  Still bound, Edana fought to stick the toes of both her feet downward.  She gurgled.  Edana grunted.

Godfrey rode over to the stone cross and rested his hand on it.  He patted it twice.  “Lady Edana, I think you see that I am king.  Outright.  I am King of the Isles.  No threats from you or your husband or your
in-law relations will change that.  I want you to read this and know that the dishonor your husband has brought to you will haunt your spirits forever.  He will go to neither Valhalla nor the Christian heaven.  You will certainly go to only the one place that will have you.”

“I hope it has a banquet table,” said Loki.  The men laughed.

“Hush fools,” chided Killian.  “This is an execution.  We’re not street criminals murdering for fun.”  Killian had been all for getting Edana out of the way.  But the complicated man was decidedly angry when it came to actually performing the act.

“The priest is right,” said Godfrey.  “I
’ve made my point.  Let’s go back and finalize our plans.  It’s time for our final revenge on Dal Riata.”

Edana’s face was red.  Her entire head appeared bigger.  Godfrey pushed off from the monument and rode back the way he’d come.  Others, on foot, followed, carrying shovels on their shoulders.  Killian whipped his oxen.  Those beasts of burden sprang to action, no doubt pleased to have dropped off the great load they’d carried out.

Leif, Tyrkr, Magnus, all of them left to scheme with the monarchs.  I stayed behind.  I’d never seen someone hanged.

Edana spat.  Dribble came down her chin.  A series of veins on her broad forehead swelled to the size of fingers.  They pulsed. 
Thin, blue veins under the skin of her cheeks burst.  Snot came from her nose.  Her teeth chattered.  Piss ran down her legs and dropped the hair’s distance to the ground from her twitching toes.  Edana’s eyes stared across the road to the cross we’d just erected.

I looked at it, too.  I couldn’t read then, not even my native Norse runes.
  The only way I knew what it said is because Killian had told me.  Running along the horizontal member of the cross were the words, “Horse Ketil betrayed in a truce his own oath fellow.”  Yes, Ketil had betrayed Godfrey, the man with whom he’d helped build a peace with the Manx natives.  At the end of a man’s life all he could hope for was to have retained his honor.  Ketil would forever be known as a man with none.

I smelled shit.

Turning, I could see that Edana had expired.  Her bowels had released.

It was an awful death.  I suppose that when you threaten a king, you had best expect such an ending
, cousin or not.  I climbed into the saddle on my sway-backed horse and trotted after Godfrey.

He had his army.  He
had his wealth.  He had his longships.  It was finally time to run to Dal Riata, the entire reason I’d agreed to follow the sometimes-king in the first place.

CH
APTER 10

There was still stinking flesh left on the bloated form of Edana when we set out from Man on our great and glorious raid.  So many ravens had settled onto the limbs of her tree and so many perched on her shoulders to get just one more nibble at her eyes or her neck fat that the front and back of her gown were littered with their white droppings.  I know this because I intentionally ventured out to view the macabre scene when I had no reason to go that direction.  It seemed wrong to kill her that way, but was I on Godfrey’s throne, I would have done the same.  Cut the head off of little problems before they become immense.

The scene at the docks and on the shingle was similar to when we left for our first adventure, only busier.  Hundreds of men in a dozen ships gathered sails and ropes.
They packed supplies, laying hens, and weapons.  Their shields rested on the gunwales.  If they could afford mail, it was stowed with the baggage.  If they could afford only hard leather vests for armor, they wore them.

Peddlers,
all of them clever if they’d survived in that brutal business for any length of time, came down to the quay.  They sold produce from the backs of wagons.  Some sold trinkets so the men with families could give their women a small token or amulet before they left.  The peddlers and the few men who were honest with themselves understood that even if we were successful, this might be their last trip.  The merchants meant to get the last of the coins of those future dead men.  The men meant to give their women something to sell in order to live.

I carried my hudfat
to
Charging Boar
.  It was packed with my humble belongings.  I had my rich ring-pin from Godfrey and wore my arm ring from my second father, Erik.  My purse jingled with extra coins given to me by the king.  I appeared wealthy when compared to most men.  I suppose I was, for the king was generous and gave me a healthy portion of the hacksilver for my part in his raids on Watchet and Anglesey as well as my silence as to his treasure’s whereabouts.  Because I looked young, foolish, and flush with coin, the peddlers targeted me with their calls.

“Hey
, beast,” called a brothel owner who’d come down to stand on the stones.  “I’ve got a woman who can tame you.  She’ll have you purring in her lap in moments.”  He pointed up the hill where one of his workers plied her trade on a Welshman in a narrow alley.

That was an easy ditch to pass by.  “No, friend,” I answered.  Of course, I craved a woman as much as any
young man, perhaps more.  Yet, I’d been torched by Freydis.  Even a heartless encounter did not appeal to me.

The
brothel man mumbled something under his breath.  I turned to have him repeat the slur, when I noticed a merchant I’d seen before, on Greenland.  Instead of pummeling the first, I moved to the small table the second peddler had set up on the shingle.  He bent down to stack a series of rocks under one of the legs in order to steady the makeshift counter.  When my large shadow fell across the side of his face, he jumped up.  “Welcome!” he said as he swept his hand over his small amount of goods.  His tooth-filled smile was the same one I remembered from Greenland the previous year.  “You are obviously a man who appreciates fine metal work.  I am an artisan.  My works are famous.”  Then, he paused, squinting.  “Do I know you from somewhere?”

“Greenland,” I said.

He snapped his fingers.  “The brooches!” he remembered.  “Oh, now those were fine.  That was a great purchase you made for your woman.  And she was an equally fine specimen.  Fiery red hair, I recall.  The kind who makes you want to come back alive.”  He nodded toward our boats.  “Care to give her something to remember you by?”  The metal-worker picked up a silver neck ring then dropped it carelessly on his table.  “That won’t do for a man with your taste or for a woman like yours.  You spent good money on those gold brooches.  The Midgard Serpent, I put on them, and the norns!”  The man bent down to dig through his pack, singing an incomprehensible tune.

“I don’t need anything from you today,” I said.

The peddler held up a hand to shut me up.  “I won’t hear of it.  Your purchase in Eystribyggo enabled me to pay my way home.  I’ll give you this for a song.”  The merchant held out a set of brooches.  These weren’t as regal as my first purchase from him.  They weren’t gold.  They were bronze with raised etchings of the frozen Niflheim filled with gnashing dragons.  I thought about how fitting they would have been for Freydis.  Like Hel’s dwelling place, Leif’s sister had grown blue cold to me.  Instead, I had spent a fortune on gold for her.  Fate, I thought.

The metal work
on the bronze brooches was less than enticing.  “You look disappointed,” the trader said.  He stroked his impeccably kept beard.  “I’ll grant you that they are not what you bought before.”  He swept an arm under the dangling chains that held the twin brooches together.  “They are not what you bought before because I didn’t make them.  I took them as part of a trade from a Finn.  He didn’t make them either.  He said that he too took them in trade.  I do know that they are fetching, for bronze.  Someday they will tarnish, but today they’ll look good on the,” he hesitated, “bountiful chest of your woman.”

“I have no woman,” I said stepping away.

“Oh, no!” the merchant said.  He walked around his table to chase me.  “Nonetheless, take these as a gift.  I owe you that.  Show them to your fellow sailors and tell them I sold the brooches to you for a few silver pennies.”  The man wanted me to drum him some business.

“Fine,”
I answered, clasping the bronze chains and slinging the large brooches over my shoulder.  I thought that one day I’d give them to Aoife so that she could look like a little lady, even though she was a slave.  Today though, if Aoife tried to wear them, they would topple her slight frame over.  Maybe I’d buy the girl from the king and set her free.  She could become a skjoldmo like she dreamed.  I could act as her father and negotiate with her suitor one day over the bride-price.

The metal smith still chattered after me as I moved toward the ships.  He only stopped when
the king and queen began descending the hill far behind me.  The artisan ran back to reorganize his wares to make them as tempting to the king as possible.

I chuckled at the peddler.  All of us chase and battle.  For warriors
in pursuit of the enemy, it is easy to see the hunt, the killing.  But I assure you we all fight.  The farmer hacks at the sod, creeping his plot farther into the wilderness so that he may produce just a bushel more of barley.  With more grain, perhaps more of his children will survive yet another dreaded Norwegian winter.  The peddler ordered his little metal soldiers so that they could stab Gudruna’s heart, thereby getting to the king and his purse.  As I said, we all fight.

I bumped into something in my path.  Looking down, I saw a hunched over woman in a tattered brown cloak.  She leaned on a crooked cane that seemed too short.  The woman peered up at me with one eye wide, the other squinting.  I could not tell if the second eye was still there or had been plucked out.  “It’s not good.  It’s not a good omen,” the old woman grunted.

Stepping to one side, I attempted to pass her and walk onto the dock.  She took that little cane and cracked my shin.  “Damn you, old fool,” I said.  “I didn’t see you.  I meant you no harm.”

“And you’re the one with two eyes!”

“And your one eye spends its time staring down at the horse dung on the road, you hump-backed crow,” I said.

“Odin’s birds know the world.  I’d say it’s not a bad thing to be a bird on the wing,” she countered.  “Sisters!” she called.  “We’ve got a young warrior who needs our merchandise.”  The woman continued on the path on which she had been before we bumped into one another.
  To the side of the main path to the ships and among large tufts of grass were two more old hags.  One of them had a cane like the sister in front of me.  The third old woman leaned on the second sister with a shriveled hand sticking out from under a ragged coat.  They looked like triplets.

I had tired of them.  “No, I do not need whatever it is you peddle.”

All three cackled in time, almost singing a familiar musical tune while they laughed.  “Doesn’t need, he says!” said the first.

“What we sell,” said the second.

“Only, of course he does,” finished the third.

“How can
any Norseman not need the spirits of the norns on his side?” asked the first woman as she sidled next to her sisters.

“Especially when he goes to battle,” said the second.

“With a man like Godfrey,” finished the third.

Their unconventional
selling tactics had me.  “What kind of man is Godfrey?  Are you the ones to sell me the spirits of the norns?”

They laughed again.  I smiled, but did not know if they cackled at me or with me.

“It’s clear he’s young,” the first woman said, shaking her head.

“For he asks the wrong questions,” said the second sea hag, nodding.

The third woman rested her other hand on the first sister so that she was balanced between the two.  “So we will give him the answers to the proper questions while awaiting his silly mind to catch up.”

I turned to walk away.

“You are a lost man, sent away from three homes.”

I froze.

“Now you cling to a king as you look for a third father.”

“He is not the one to fill that role.  Another will.”

“Son of Olef, you chase and fight for things you don’t understand.”

“You say you want a hearth and a plump wife.”

“But do you?”

“We ask it,” they said in unison.

“Yes,” I said with certainty.  “Well, no.  I seek glory and profit now.”

Frowns formed on their wrinkled faces.  “He is so young that he thinks he knows something, anything,” said the first woman
.  She sounded sad.

The woman in the center waved me over.  I thought she would fall into the grass and roll onto the stones because she teetered so much.  I obeyed her command.

“Like the scene on the brooches,” began the first woman while pointing to my shoulder, “your life shows nothing of worth.  You will end up serving the cold bitch Hel in her underworld.  Stay on your path and that is what you will do.”

I scoffed then.  I looked over to the metal smith, wondering if he and the old women had hatched an elaborate plan to make coin from superstitious Norsemen.  “You want my silver and gold.  You want my English pennies and Kufic coins and what you sell is fear,” I accused.

One by one the old women reached their mangled hands into their coats.  Each pulled out a short length of rope that had a single knot in the center.  One at a time, they dropped them onto the stones of the shingle.  The first woman said, “Take them.  Take the ropes.  When the wind is needed, it will be had.  It will be all that saves you from your path.”

“And the cost for your magic rope?”

“The brooches,” the third one answered plainly.  “The brooches give you an image in your mind’s eye of your destination.  Change your destination.”

I snatched the ugly bronze brooches from my shoulder and dropped them to the ground. 
What did I really care for them, they were a gift to me for a woman I did not have.  Even little Aoife couldn’t use them for years.  Back then I thought I would never be anyone’s father, certainly not an Irish thrall’s.  I bent down and gathered all three of the short, knotted ropes and set them where the brooches had just rested.

“Ah,
Halldorr shows wisdom!” giggled the second woman.  All three again laughed.

“How do you know my name when I don’t know yours?” I asked.

Their tiny bodies vibrated from laughter.  Had their faces not been so etched from weather and their bodies so stooped, I would have said they were almost like adorable grandmothers.  “You know us.”

“You curse us b
ecause you believe we curse you,” explained the second.

“I am U
rdr, she is Verdandi, and she is Skuld.”  They sniggered again.

“Crazy witches.  You claim to be the norns?
” I huffed as I left them and walked to the ship without looking back.

Killian stood on the
dock looking up at a tall, thin priest who was as young as me.  I’d not seen the man before.  “You’ll need to be aggressive here while I’m gone,” Killian was saying.  “Many of the Manx are already Christians.  They understand what it is you do.  Remember, there are many inhabitants here who would just as soon cut you and hang you upside down from a tree as a sacrifice to their pagan gods.”  The young priest blanched.

“Oh, don’t let your imagination run wild,” cautioned Killian, seeing what his word
s had done to the young man.  The older priest jabbed me in my ribs with a rigid finger.  “Most of the worst, like this one here, will be away while you run the masses.  Look at him, he’s even found some of the magic, knotted ropes from our local witch population.  I didn’t think they were skulking about today.”  He scanned around at all the sailors and merchants.  I turned to point to where I had gotten my ropes, but the place was now vacant, the sea hags gone.

“
Halldorr and his ilk will be my concern,” said Killian resuming his instruction before he moved to follow me.  He called over his shoulder to the young man.  “It’s the queen you need to worry about.  She’ll tempt you young man.  She practices some of the old gods’ arts with her gifts.  A skald might come by the hall.  He’ll tell tales of battle and love.  The heart of the queen will swell.  Don’t forget that you’ve taken vows.”