Chapter Three
Hulda Elvarsdottir narrowed her eyes against the glare of dawn and gazed hard at the strip of land.
Naught but cold rock it was, with a gray keep crouched at the midpoint of the headland, dwellings spread out from it higgledy-piggledy like errant children at their móeir’s skirts.
It did not look like much of a target, yet blood had been spilt there. Norse blood.
“Duck in behind the island,” she told Garik, the helmsman. “Swiftly now.”
She did not want to be seen. Not yet. The Scots had quick eyes, and like all along this rocky coast, they kept good watch.
Garik obeyed, but Ivor rolled his eyes at her, his lips set in an insolent line. Ivor, her second-in-command.
Curse him.
When she had talked her faeir into letting her make this venture, taking one of his longboats and returning to the Scottish coast—and a long, hard argument it had been—he’d agreed only if she’d take Ivor along with her.
Ivor had been second-in-command to her brother, Jute—and his close friend, though Hulda had never understood why. They’d all grown up together, but she had never taken to Ivor, finding him crafty and sly and all too often cruel. No matter; he and Jute had been blood brothers sworn.
So she undertook this voyage lumbered with him.
Thus far he had questioned everything she did. Disapproved of most of it, and of the whole venture in deed, if not in spirit. He wanted revenge, ja, for Jute’s death. He merely did not think Hulda could achieve it.
Who else, though? She and Jute had been born less than a year apart and were close as twins. He’d taught her everything she knew about fighting. About sailing.
A great deal.
She had not been with him last year when he was killed. Here, upon this stretch of shore. She’d been off sailing with Faeir, raiding farther north.
Ivor had been here. Another reason Faeir wanted her to bring him.
“He knows the coast, Hulda. And he is a strong sword.”
He was. A vicious one. She sometimes thought Ivor killed for the sake of it, even when he did not have to. Did he not know slaves were more valuable than dead men—and women?
“If you are going to attack,” he said now, in full hearing of the whole crew—the men she commanded—“then attack. Morning is the best time, when the lazy bastards are still trying to lever their asses out of their beds.”
“I know what I am doing,” Hulda told him. She had a plan, one Ivor would not like. Nor would Faeir, truth be told. But this was her venture, her chance to avenge her brother.
Ivor needed to learn he must accept her decisions. Answer to her will.
Perhaps a punishment, if he continued to speak out so freely against her. He did not think her woman enough to do that. He would learn.
She had questioned many of those who had accompanied Jute on his last voyage, and had a good idea what had happened to him.
She had also gathered knowledge of these islands, clustered like sleeping dragons off the shore.
Many of them, like the one behind which they now hid, were small and uninhabited. Rocky and barren.
“There.” She gestured to a narrow inlet that pierced the rocks ahead of them. “Can you take us in?”
Garik eyed the rocks that flanked the inlet. Nodded. He was young but an excellent helmsman. A good crew all round, but for Ivor.
“Are you mad?” Ivor asked now, baring his teeth at her. “You cannot take us in there. You’ll scrape bottom.”
“Take us in,” Hulda ordered Garik again.
On a wild day with high seas and storms pounding the rocks, it would be impossible. And if weather came, as it did so often along this coast, ja, they would be trapped. Foolish, as Ivor said.
But no one would see them tucked in there against the isle, not from any direction. If it stormed, they would just have to sit tight. For days if need be.
Would that not drive Ivor to a berserker’s rage?
Once Garik had them safely within the rocky arms of the inlet, she walked to the rail and stood looking out as the men dropped anchor and prepared to settle.
Not much to see but those stony arms, more stones on the shore, and the rough green turf of the barren island.
From here, she could not even see her goal. Her target.
As she might have predicted, Ivor was not done with her. He approached her with that swagger he so often employed. A tall woman, she nearly matched him in height, him being a not especially tall man. So their eyes were nearly on a level when he glared into her face.
Dark eyes, Ivor had, brown tinged with red, unusual for their race. It was rumored his mother had been a slave from the eastern lands, some place called Constantinople. He’d inherited her dark hair, though he had his father’s brawn and cunning.
Hulda could not say for sure, since the woman had died long before ever Ivor and Jute became such fast friends.
As she had many a time, she wondered what Jute had seen to like in the fellow. His slyness, perhaps for, ja, Jute had possessed a measure of that also. His cunning and his dark sense of humor.
“Before you begin to rant at me,” she said, “I will remind you of who is in charge of this war party.”
“It is not a war party,” he retorted. “It is a pleasure cruise, so far.”
She drew a breath and wondered how best to deal with him.
Before she could speak, he said, “Your brother died out there.”
“Which is precisely why we are here.”
“Skulking.”
“We are not skulking. We are the cat waiting for the mouse, which does not know it is there.”
That made him blow a breath between his teeth. “Cats! I came for vengeance.”
“And you shall have it.”
“We are Norsemen. We do not play at games.”
“You want to redden your sword?”
“Ja.”
“And you shall. But it will be done my way.”
“Women,” he mumbled under his breath, but meant for her to hear.
Ja, to Hulda’s knowledge he had extensive acquaintance with women. Young maids, older widows, even the jarl’s daughter, so it was rumored, and all manner of slaves. Jute used to speak of it when he thought Hulda could not hear, and sometimes when she could.
She narrowed her eyes at him. Faeir joked sometimes that his daughter had the most intimidating stare of all his warriors.
“Pity the fellow she weds,” he’d said, “if ever she deigns to accept any husband.”
She had no time for following after men. They made her impatient with their bluster and their insistence on being right. Rarely, since she’d grown from a girl to a woman, had one turned her head.
There had been Karl. That thought arrested her where she stood. Karl had betrayed her. And then he had died. Swift justice, that, but it just went to show…
She did not need a man.
“I thought,” Ivor said roundly, “we came here to attack.”
“You thought that, did you?”
“Ja. It is why I came.”
Hulda deliberately took a look over one shoulder and then the other. “Do you see a fleet of longboats?”
Ivor’s expression settled into a glower.
Hulda went on, “That is a strong settlement out there. So strong that when my brother came last year with three boats, he met with defeat. You think we can batter them with one?”
“Then why are we here?”
The rest of the crew, with the boat at rest, had moved in close and listened. Hulda spoke to all of them.
“We are here to take revenge on the man who killed Jute. But we will be clever about it. I mean to negotiate.”
“Eh?”
“Those who were there at Jute’s death—you yourself, Ivor, say they think it was the leader of the settlement who struck Jute down. The chief. That man will not know how many ships we have hiding here.
“A good chief will surely sacrifice himself to save his people. It is what these Scots do.”
Ivor studied her face. “You are mad.”
“And once he agrees to deal with us, we shall betray him.”