Rough and Ready (19 page)

"Insist? What gives you the right to insist?" Thorfinn again. The jerk!

"Norstead is mine, and Amberstead belongs to Hilda. That gives me the right."

"You cannot win without our help," Thorfinn pointed out.

Torolf shrugged. Asshole!

"Tell us what you have in mind," Steven intervened, "and then we will all decide what is best."

"Your brother could take personality lessons from you," Torolf told Steven.

"Dost really think I care what you think of me?" Thorfinn gave him a superior, snoot-up-in-the-air glance of disdain.

"That chip on your shoulder must really weigh you down."

"You do not even speak like a Viking anymore."

"Please!" JAM stood and raised his hands in the air like a referee or a priest.

"Let's calm down and work together."

Torolf and Thorfinn both grinned at each other. They'd enjoyed the verbal sparring.

"CQD is a combination of martial arts, commando-style fighting, and spiritual focusing. It's based on the idea of an inner warrior." Torolf was having a hard time explaining modern military terms in eleventh-century language.

"Speak clearly, cousin. Your words are clear as mud," Thorfinn told him.

"There's one part of CQD that is important to us, and we think it has to be followed here. CQD can be explosively violent in one situation and mild in another. It's called earned treatment. In other words, not all of the enemy deserve to be killed, and that decision has to be made on the spot. There may be people, even soldiers, in Norstead and Amberstead who do not deserve death."

Thorfinn drew his lips in thoughtfully. "It has always been my policy to spare women and bairns."

"That's not what I mean."

"How do you tell the good enemy from the bad?" Steven asked.

At least Steven was allowing that there might be both.

"If a man is coming at you with a weapon, of course, you kill him," Geek interjected. "But what if some dumb fuck is shivering in a corner, wetting his pants? What if some men surrender, hands up? What if there are just too damn many of them to kill them on the spot?"

"There has to be a difference. There has to be humanity," JAM added.

Thorfinn looked at JAM as if he'd sprouted two heads. "That is the most demented thing I have ever heard. Are you a priest or a warrior?"

"Actually, JAM was a priest at one time, but that's beside the point," Torolf said.

"Almost a priest," JAM corrected.

"As my maw maw allus says—" Cage began.

And four SEALs groaned.

Cage flashed them a fake glower. "As my maw maw allus says, 'Ya cain't tell the chipmunk from the squirrel till you got 'em in your crosshairs.'"

"What in bloody hell did he just say?" Steven asked Torolf.

"The same thing I just said. On-the-spot decisions need to be made about who deserves to be killed and who doesn't."

"I am not going to put my men in danger," Thorfinn insisted.

"I'm not asking you to. Just be careful, and let us teach you how to make that split-second decision."

"Why should we do what you ask?" Thorfinn asked him.

"In return, I give you Norstead."

"Whaaat?" Thorfinn was poleaxed by that generous offer. "Why would you do that?"

"Because I intend to leave here after the battle. If possible, me and my buddies are going back to America. It would be a favor to me, actually, if I knew Norstead was in good hands… in family hands."

"And Amberstead?" Steven asked.

"I'm pretty sure Hilda would rather stay here, but that can be decided later."

Steven waved a hand in the air dismissively. "I will have Amberstead, one way or another. Either by gift or wedlock."

You overconfident dickhead! "You're awfully sure of yourself."

"I have wordfame with women," Steven bragged. "Seduction is one of the gifts the gods have favored me with. In truth, there are ways to turn a woman lustsome for a man's touch."

No kidding!

Torolf heard his buddies snicker, but he barely restrained himself from belting his cousin.

"If you are worried about Hilda, do not be," Steven continued. "I would treat her well. And if she chooses to stay here at The Sanctuary, that is all well and good. I intend to bring my mistress from Norsemandy anyhow."

Torolf clenched his fists.

"I need to visit the bathhouse," JAM said, and the other guys stood up with him.

Torolf remained sitting.

As they were walking off, he heard Pretty Boy ask the others, "Do you think Britta would take a bath with me?"

Laughter was his answer.

Once his buddies were gone, Torolf took a deep breath. "There is something important I have to tell you. It's about where I've been all these years…

where

my entire family has been. They are not dead."

Thorfinn and Steven gave him their full attention.

"I have time-traveled to the twenty-first century to a land called America…"

When he was done, a long silence followed as Thorfinn and Steven stared at him with a mixture of pity and disbelief.

"Is this a jest, or have you gone barmy?" Steven inquired as he took a long, final draw on his horn of ale.

As Torolf walked off then, he heard Steven say to Thorfinn, "Methinks we arrived just in time. Our cousin is destined for the barmy farm."

All bad things must come to an end…

This was the day.

Hilda could hardly contain her excitement as they approached Norstead with only the light of a half moon. Norstead was designed over many years in the hill fort style: concentric rings of walls and ditches around a central enclosure, all surrounded at the edges by moat and drawbridge. In front, there was a grassy sward used for military exercises.

She, Torolf, Cage, a dozen women, and one hundred men moved silently through the forest in a series of trains. That was where a person carried a weapon in their right hand and kept the left hand on the shoulder in front of them, snaking their way forward. Torolf was the point man in front of her train and Cage the tail man in back. Cage had made jokes, which she did not understand, when first told he would be the tail man. They all watched for hand signals, which they had learned this past week to indicate silence, man up ahead, number of men up ahead, stop, spread out, ready weapons, those kinds of things.

With silent signals to Torolf, Cage made his way, like a black shadow along the edges of the forest, then ran in a crouch to the moat on the side of the keep, which he crossed. Then he climbed up the timber sides with the agility of a cat.

When he was at the top, he waved to Torolf, then disappeared. Another and another and another followed suit on both sides of the keep, moving stealthily.

Dozens of the cousins' hirdsmen had trained over and over for this part of the battle.

The rest of them hid at the edge of the sward, following Torolf's signal to spread out two strides apart all around the semicircle of forest. A perimeter, it was called. Torolf looked at the ornament on his wrist and indicated it was not yet time. He then held up ten fingers, to show that it would be ten minutes till Thorfinn and his hird were at their appointed place near the rock wall, behind the keep. Steven would be at the ready, as well, at Amberstead.

Their initial assault would be a combination of SEAL and Viking military methods. The leapfrog maneuver of Torolf's special forces would get them in position of the Norse svinfylkja, or swine wedge, with its triangular tactical assault formation, its point facing the enemy.

The drawbridge was already down… thank the gods… due to Steinolf's overconfidence. They needed to draw the sentries forward, away from their shields and guard wall. That would be her and Rakel's job, along with a small band of Torolf's hird, which would pretend to be the assault soldiers, leading Norstead's invaders in the wrong direction.

They hoped.

All of the men and the other women, except for her and Rakel, had their faces cammied up with mud and dirt to blend in with the forest. Blond hair was covered with hoods or scarves on male and female.

Torolf raised a hand for her and Rakel to come forth. He was still angry with her for insisting on participation in this part of the battle. Well, there was naught new in that. He was ever fuming over one thing or another. She and Rakel dropped their fur mantles. Their hair lay loose over bare shoulders of deliberately indecent gowns. Torolf's eyes took in her appearance, and despite the danger of their situation and the coldness betwixt them, she could see appreciation there. Or mayhap he was appreciating her suddenly buxom chest, which she had stuffed with two balls of yarn. Yea, he noticed, all right. His lips were twitching with a grin.

She and Rakel began to stagger drunkenly across the clearing, up to the moat, laughing and singing a bawdy song, with their arms over each other's shoulders as if for support. The night air was cold, and they shivered with the chill, or more likely they shivered because they were frightened to the bone.

"Who goes there?" a guard leaning over the parapet asked.

Rakel looked up, pretended to sway, then fell on her rump, pulling Hilda with her. "Two merry maids," she called up, ending with a very believable and loud hiccup. "Be there any merry men up there?"

There was laughter and several more men joined the first, leaning over the parapet. "Are ye drukkinn?" one asked.

"Nay, jist a bit tipsy from me uncle's ale," Hilda slurred.

"Can we come in?" Rakel asked, also slurring her words.

"Well, that depends," the first guard said. "There are four of us and only two of you."

Rakel said something so vulgar that Hilda could scarce comprehend its meaning, something about what she could do with three men at one time.

Much hooting laughter greeted her words.

Rakel must have sensed her stare, because she turned to wink at her. "Men!

They

will believe anything when it comes to their precious manparts."

"Come in then, lassies. We have somethin' fer you in here. Somethin' big and hard. Ha, ha, ha!"

"How disgusting!" Hilda muttered.

Rakel pretended to try to stand, then fell back down. "Methinks I might need a bit of help here. First one here, gets me specialty."

Five sets of feet could be heard scuffling away, then pounding down some steps.

"What exactly is your specialty?" Hilda asked.

"Shhh. Later," Rakel said.

The men were rushing across the drawbridge, pushing at each other to be first.

Just then, Hilda and Rakel heard a short bird whistle, the signal for the diversionary hird to come forth on the far side of the field. When they became visible, shooting arrows at first, then lances, she and Rakel rushed back away from the fighting, running toward Torolf and his hird.

Behind them, they could hear a bell being rung, alerting the rest of the keep to some danger. Men came rushing out, most having been awakened, since they were still pulling on their clothes. Despite their state of unreadiness, they had swords and lances and battle-axes at the ready.

"You did good," Torolf said to Rakel. He squeezed Hilda's shoulder and whispered against her ear, "You, too, sweetie."

His praise should not matter to Hilda, but it did. She did not even resist as she stepped back to the end of the formation as planned. Torolf had promised that she would get her revenge against Steinolf in the end.

Now that many of Steinolf's men were outside the keep, running after the thirty or so men who were to lead them into the open, Torolf kept muttering, "Double back, double back," as if the men on the far side could hear him. The moment he saw them do just that, he let loose with a wild war whoop, and he and his men went rushing forth, yelling out battle cries. "Go, go, go!" "To the death!"

"Luck in battle!" "Mark them with your spears!" "Smite the bastards!" "Be crows, not carrion!" "Save Steinolf for me!" Those first and last came from Torolf.

In essence, Steinolf's troop was pinned in by their forces on two sides.

There

would be those inside, of course, but this would be a good start.

Presumably, Thorfinn and his hird of one hundred would be assaulting the keep from the back at the same time.

For almost an hour, Rakel and Hilda stood watching, the sounds of swords clanging, the ringing of arrows, the slap of leather, the crack of axe hitting bone, and over it all groans, and shrieks, and screams of hurt and dying men.

Sword dew aplenty flowed, and many broke the raven's fast, even as they watched.

One of Torolf's SEAL friends, JAM, cleft a man to the teeth with an axe, then moved on without looking back. There were berserkers on both sides, those gone mad with the bloodlust. She could not be sorry for the lifeless bodies, because many of the dead would be those who had invaded both this land and hers during the past five years. Vicious, vicious men with no souls. The other four women with them were up in trees near them, picking off stray soldiers who came in their direction with sharp arrows. They were able to differentiate their brothers-in-arms from the foemen because at the last moment theirs had tied a strip of white linen on their left upper arms.

The men under Torolf and Thorfinn fought with great wrath, in some cases backing the enemy up against a wall before spearing them through the heart or garroting them with a thin rope. Thorfinn and Steven had gifted Torolf with a finely crafted sword, which he'd immediately named Avenger. Hilda noted that he was weapon skillful with the broadsword, as were his cousins, hewing down men even larger than themselves.

Though the battle appeared to be over, she and Rakel still waited. And still no Torolf. Geek came over to her at one point and said, "We've found the package,"

which she interpreted to mean they'd found Steinolf. "Stay put. Max's orders."

Orders or not, she could wait no longer. What if Torolf were injured? What if he had died of the sword drink, like so many others? Her heart beat wildly as she ran toward the keep, crossed the drawbridge, and headed for the great hall.

She found Torolf near the stable, fighting hand-to-hand with Steinolf. His men stood back, probably at Torolf's direction. The beast had not aged well.