Norseman Raider (The Norseman Chronicles Book 4) (8 page)

“Halldorr’s right,” said Eyvind.  “It’s a tale.  I believe it to be true.  I told it not to inspire action, but to entertain.  I’m a simple skald, telling yarns for coin.”

Leif and Gudruna were nodding their heads in agreement, with neither Eyvind nor me
, but rather each other.  They had already set their minds on a treasure, free for the taking.  Without looking away from the queen, Leif said, “Halldorr, you were moments ago just as interested as I am now.”

“That was before I found out the grave was cursed,” I protested.

“And I wasn’t interested until I found out it was.  Men with a spear can kill us, but draugr, or specters will . . .”

“Terrify us and then kill us,” I finished his sentence.

“Will embrace us as their own,” corrected Leif.  “We will free them from their eternal burden of vigilance.  We will take the riches of the ancient king and use them for today’s king to build a great land.”  I remember thinking that I had wanted the treasure for myself, not necessarily for Godfrey.  Now we were talking about sharing it, giving it away.  “This Anglesey will be part of a great kingdom, ruled by King Godfrey and Queen Gudruna.”

Leif moved away from Gudruna and took a step toward where the king now slumbered curled up next to his housemaid
and thrall.  The queen halted Leif with a light touch.  “You will propose to capture this treasure with and for my husband so that he may build a stronger kingdom?”

“Of course,” answered Leif as if it was the only possible choice.

Gudruna glanced over to her husband with pride.  She firmly grasped Leif’s arm and drew him close.  “The hour is late and the king is tired.  One morning of delay will not harm the outcome.”  She sat back to the ground and tugged Leif down with her.  “And you have work to finish for your queen.”  Gudruna again pulled Leif’s cloak over them. Their childish giggling resumed.

Eyvind looked back to me.  “It seems like your friend means to use my yarn to lead you to your death.”

It wasn’t the first time and wouldn’t be the last.  I raised my mug to offer a toast.  “I thank you, troublesome skald.”  I brought the mug to my lips and remembered it was empty.  I tipped it over my mouth and shook it until one last drop of the brew fell onto my extended tongue.

My hands slapped down on the table and I pushed myself up.  I left Eyvind
to find a place to sleep and picked my way through the crowd of snoozing bodies on the floor.  I pushed the doors of the hall open and went out into the cool morning.

A slight ray of sun had just begun breaking over the horizon to the east.  Two thralls
, already starting their days, carried buckets of water for their masters.  Killian, who I had not even seen leave the assembly when Eyvind finished his tales, used a wicker broom to brush off the dirt walkway of his church.  Despite staying up as long as me, the priest seemed to have bountiful energy.  “Good morning to you Norseman!” he called.  “It looks to be a beautiful day.”

I grunted something incomprehensible in return and staggered toward the great stone with Odin’s likeness carved on it.  I patted the image with my hand and smiled, thinking of home and my first and second fathers.  The stone felt warm despite the chill from the night air.  I pulled my cloak tightly around me and sat down with my back resting against the marker.

I fell asleep, my dreams turning to nightmares of draugr and warriors, death and failure.

CHAP
TER 2

I awakened sometime after the midday meal and found that my back ached where it had rested at an awkward angle against Odin’s and the One God’s shared stone.  But I was young and in just a matter of moments, the pain was a mere memory.  My fractured fingers still throbbed with every beat of my heart.  I could already begin to see a slit of light through my swollen eye.

Killian had taken pity on me sometime during the
morning and covered my shivering form in a blanket made of the wool from the many sheep inhabiting the island.  It was actually a stray, flapping fiber from the well-worn blanket that awakened me when a breeze caused the errant thread to repeatedly brush against my nostrils.

As I came back to life, I sat up and stretched.  The village was alive with the activities expected in early summer.
  Hungry, thieving gulls raced overhead, heading inland and then back out to the shingle where fishermen were already returning with their catch.  The stench of a tanner’s craft wafted from a nearby street.  A smith’s hammer split the afternoon.  So did his echoing voice as he screamed at his apprentice for working the bellows too hard and blowing his fire too high.

My belly was in the process of eating itself so it was a welcome sight indeed to see the small priest shuffle across the square carrying a platter
of bread and fish.  Killian wore what I had supposed was his typical priestly robe.  It was white.  He or a servant must have taken great care in laundering it because the color was not faded or yellowed.  Instead, the robe was as white as a baby’s first teeth.  At the bottom hem, though, his actions of the day had already splashed the robe with flecks of dirt and mud.  The sleeves of the garment came just to his hand and were wide, shaped like a bell, flaring out.  The cuffs had deep violet piping at the edges.  He wore a simple, but fine, white cord of three strands for a belt.  The rope’s ends bounced down at one of his knees as he scurried.  Killian bent down and offered the food without asking whether or not I was hungry.

Likewise, without asking, I greedily snatched up the bread and tore it in half before stuffing a large hunk into my mouth.  Though my mouth was parched from all my drinking, the dry bread tasted good.  Killian set the plate on my lap and crouched so that he balanced on the balls of his feet.  I could see his footwear for the first time.  They weren’t the sandals that I would later see on monks or the fancier shoes preferred by many priests.  Killian wore boots much like mine.  He wore woolen t
rousers too, also like those I wore.  Beneath his royal-looking garb, Killian was a working, or perhaps, fighting man at heart.

A
second enormous bite of bread slid down my gullet.  I jammed a section of the salted fish in closely behind.  Through my gnawing I asked, “What price is the food, priest?”  I wasn’t sure what to call the man.  I had heard the Christians call him father, but I already pined for my first and second fathers, so I was in no hurry to add another.

Killian allowed a smile to draw upon his small face.  It seemed to nearly swallow his head, it was so broad.  “Young traveler, I was under the impression that you had no money left.
  Your man, Leif, has not been shy in telling your plight.”

I actually ha
d a few copper pennies, English I think they were, and one silver Kufic that had come to me on some circuitous trade route from a land of deserts.  I wasn’t destitute, but it would be only a matter of days before I would have to sell my arm ring from Erik, the brooch I used to fasten my cloak, or even my walrus tusk comb just to eat.  “Then what did you expect in return?”  I began eating faster in order to quickly fill my stomach in case he gave me terms with which I’d not agree.

“There’s no need to gorge yourself,” Killian said
, tut-tut-ting.  “If you need more, we can find you some.”

“What’s the price?” I asked, not believing him.

“The price has been paid,” he answered.

“Leif?” I asked.  “Another of my crew?
  I don’t need any charity from them.”

He shook his head.

“Not King Godfrey?” I asked.

“You are one of his sworn men now and so it would be in his interest to keep you alive so that you may do the same for him when the time comes.  But no, the king did not buy you a meal.”  Killian plopped his rump down in the dirt.  It made me cringe to think of how filthy his clean, white robes would get.  He didn’t seem to care.  “A man who was God and was of God, long ago paid the price for all of us.  I simply do my feeble best to extend his sacrifice to others.  Just now, it happens to be you.”

He spoke in mysteries to me.  I now know all there is to know about the One True God and his only Son, the Christ, Jesus and his sacrifice for all mankind.  I’ve read the God-inspired words of his book.  I’ve served a holy and devout king who himself converted thousands upon thousands of my countrymen to the faith of the One True God.  But that is for a different tale at a different time.  Suffice it to say, I understood nothing of what Killian said that day.

He could tell.  “You come from Iceland and this new land, Greenland?”

“Yes, and I’ve never known a Christian.  My father and all his fathers before him followed our gods.”  I pointed to the image of Odin above my head and behind me.  “He’s one of them.”

Killian studied me.  Looking back on it now, I think the feisty, little priest saw something in me that day.  I think the One God told him that with patient care, I’d be a follower of
His.  “I’ve heard how the fire and frost giants formed the world.  It’s hard not to hear the tales with so many Danes and Norseman plodding about.  I know of your Odin and Thor.  I know of your Midgard Serpent.  I know of the Yggdrasil Tree.”

I was impressed that he could recite some names
from my Norse past.  “But do you know what goes on beneath the tree, in and among the moist, dirty roots?”  Crumbs were scattering down my chest.

The question was too easy for him.  He had served as a Christian priest in a part of the world that had been subject to raids from Norsemen for over a hundred years.  “
Oh, you mean the three norns, Urdr, Verdandi, and Skuld – what was, what is, and what will be – those women who spin the thread of every man’s life?”

He said it, not in a mocking way.  Killian answered me in a matter-of-fact manner.  I was left wondering whether he believed in the norns or not.  I for one did believe.  It was not so much that I believed, I suppose.  I
knew
them to exist, especially the malevolent ones.  The norns spun the fate of everyone, but I knew those three women were active and probably enjoying themselves as they toyed with my life.  My thread, I always thought, was more akin to a coarse piece of unraveling twine, the three cords of the past, present, and future fraying, preparing to snap.  The norns pushed me left just after I became comfortable gliding right.  They killed my mother before I was old enough to know her.  They killed my father just when I was getting old enough to know him.  The norns sent me to Erik, who was a fair, but rough man.  Then after I had followed him to Iceland then Greenland and just when I was convinced I would settle, serving him and raising a brood of children with his daughter, he banished me.  I was an exile by accident, I thought.  So, I believed in and knew the norns intimately.

“We Christians believe in those concepts,” said Killian
, playing with his rope belt with his fingers, “of a fashion.  We call it God’s Providence or just Providence.  I think you’ll be surprised by all that Providence has to offer you in your life.”

The bread was gone.  The fish was gone.  I began to stir and so Killian sprang to his feet and pulled me up.  He was surprisingly strong for such a little man.  My back
creaked like someone twice my age.

“I cannot be surprised any longer,” I began.

The priest scoffed at me.  “You’re too young to have seen it all.  Just wait.”

“I haven’t seen it all.  I mean
t that nothing goes as I plan.  It’s gotten worse since I fell in with Leif.  Nonetheless, where he goes, I will follow since I owe his father everything.  I suppose it will be all the worse now that Leif and I both serve King Godfrey.  The two of them together will work with the norns or your Providence to see the death of me.”

“Then why wait to find out?” asked Killian.

“What?”

“While you sleep out in the street your Leif, Magnus, and Tyrkr make plans with Gudruna and Godfrey and his crew.  I assumed you knew
because as I left with your food, Leif was giving you credit for the plan to invade Anglesey ahead of Dal Riata.”

I gave a heavy sigh. 
So it was true.  The stories swirling in my head about treasures were not drunken dreams.  “Then I might as well go find out the manner of my death.  You know it’s madness to attack a grave with a thousand draugr standing guard.”

Killian extended his hand for the plate and said, “I think not.  Remember, I go with you on this strandhogg of yours.  God has much work for me yet to do
, especially on King Godfrey.  And since I’ll be standing next to you in the shield wall and since I don’t mean to die, you’ll probably survive for a few more years.”

I didn’t believe him at the time.  A shield wall filled with twenty thousand hardened Norse and Dane warriors couldn’t survive a battle with ghosts and spirits.  And we did not have twenty thousand.  We had two ships worth of fighters
, one filled with experienced men, the other filled with green men from Eystribyggo.

But we also had
and an impish Christian priest.

. . .

When Killian and I returned to Godfrey’s hall, the priest dropped my empty plate onto one of the great tables that were still being cleared of the remnants of last night’s festivities.  The dish made a clattering racket so that the king and his advisors abruptly stopped their conversation and peered into the smoky haze that drifted up from the hearth.  The slaves, too, stopped their work at the commotion.  The king saw Killian’s and my approach and quickly returned his attention to their meeting.  The household thralls, one, the snarling, grubby young girl with bare feet, again began picking up the mess scattered about.

We moved easily and briskly across the clear
ed floor.  Just a half day earlier the free men of the village and surrounding areas had littered every ell of space on that ground.  Most of them had now retreated back to their shops and farms.  Actually, all of them save the large Lady Edana’s husband had left.

Horse Ketil
sat upright on a bench at the far end of the mead hall.  His trousers still shone wet from his night of revelry.  One leg was crossed on a knee.  He sat back against a table, relaxing as if he were king.  Ketil held a wide parchment in front of his chest and pointed to something on it with an extended finger.  Two other men, strangers to me, talked in hushed tones with Ketil.

Killian caught my glance.  “
That’s Horse Ketil if you don’t know him.”  He said the name derisively.  “He’s a mischievous Manx.  I don’t trust him.  I think he used contacts in Dal Riata to ambush us there.  I think he’ll do it again.”

“
Why have Godfrey ambushed?  And if he did, why do you not tell the king your concerns?” I asked like a simpleton.  Ketil’s two companions skulked out of the hall through a back exit.  The Manx noble rolled up the parchment and stuffed it into his soft leather jerkin.

The priest shook his head in disgust.
  “Politics of the Irish Sea.  Godfrey lost most of his tiny army over the last twelve months.  Here and there the raids haven’t gone well.  Horse Ketil could have a thousand well-armed farmers at our doors in a day.  That would be enough to end Godfrey’s reign.”

“And so Godfrey placates him.  The king is afraid of what Horse Ketil can do,” I said.

“That sums it up.  He treats Ketil with too much deference until the king has rebuilt his own forces.  At that point I’ll encourage Godfrey to push his fat cousin and Horse Ketil off the banks of this island so their heads can crash against the rocks.”  Killian then seized my arm, looked toward the king to make certain no one saw, and shoved a pair of bone dice into my hands.  The priest stood on his toes and whispered into my ear.  “Put these into your empty purse.  Bring them out at the proper time.”

I was about to ask him what he meant when Killian noticed my scarred and mangled ear.  “What happened to that?” he asked.

I shrugged.  “Skraelings.”  I pointed toward Leif with my nose.  “Without him, the spear would have buried itself in my eye and not merely torn off half of my ear.”  Killian studied the ear for a moment more.  He gave me a knowing glance with raised eyebrows.  “Providence,” he said, before quietly leading me to the conference.

We entered the circle of war planners just as Leif
was finishing his second or third round of pleading for Godfrey to follow his mad plan to invade Anglesey.  “It’s an unguarded treasure!” called young Leif, seemingly unaware that he was shouting at a king.

Godfrey pulled the mustache of his beard to the side as he thought.  “That is not what you said just a few moments ago.  You said that an army of draugr acted as sentries.”

“Indeed, that is what I said.  But you need not worry about that since I have survived a night on a barrow mound, awake,” countered Leif.