Chapter Twenty-One
The voyage home to Avoldsborg was grim and silent. The crew had hoped for spoils—they always hoped for spoils—and returned home empty-handed. They felt they had wasted their time.
Ivor remained angry at Hulda, whether out of damaged pride because he had failed to take up her challenge, or just because their mission had been fruitless, she could not tell.
But he acted sullen and surly. He tried to take out his temper on Garik, faulting him for the Scotsman’s escape, until Hulda had to intervene.
None of this was Garik’s fault, though he alone of the crew knew the truth about MacMurtray’s escape. Ivor was capable of getting the helmsman alone and forcing that truth out of him. Hulda must make sure that did not happen, if only in return for Garik’s loyalty.
MacMurtray. She could not get the Scotsman out of her mind. What was it about him? He was good enough to look upon, ja, straight and tall with that lithe, well-muscled body. But so was many a Norseman, and they did not turn her head.
It was not that.
Though his eyes… There was something about his eyes. They spoke to her. As if, almost, he could tell her things without words, which was as well, since words were not entirely easy between them.
Not that it mattered. They had no future, she and Quarrie MacMurtray.
If she ever returned—and it would take a good deal of talking to win Faeir round—it would be to burn MacMurtray’s settlement to the ground.
There could be no other way.
She mused upon that during the journey home, since she seemed able to do little else. Most of the voyage was calm, but north of Shetland, when they turned toward Norge, they were caught in the teeth of a storm that pounced upon them like a cat on a vole.
Indeed, it played with the longboat in the same way a cat might, letting them think several times they had escaped the worst of it, only to bat them back again. Heavy seas raked the deck. They almost lost a man—Sven—saved from going over only by getting his leg tangled in a line.
When it was over, Sven’s leg was snapped like an alder twig, and the rest of them wetted to the bone. The boat limped into the bay under oars with none of the high spirits that should accompany a return.
“A bad voyage from beginning to end,” Ivor pronounced as he went ashore, speaking to his fellows but making sure Hulda could hear. “I am sorry I ever joined it.”
Hulda lingered to speak with the harbormaster after the crew was gone and make sure repairs would be underway. She was not eager anyway to see her faeir.
When she reached the stony path that led up from the shore, she found that Garik had waited for her.
She eyed the young man with some surprise. Clothing plastered to him, fair hair sodden, he maintained his customary calm expression.
Her stomach tightened. He was a loyal man, ja. Yet he alone knew the truth of what she had done.
And he, like the rest of them, had earned only minimum pay for this voyage.
“Let me buy you a drink,” he said easily as they began walking together.
She gave a tight smile. It occurred to her that Garik alone treated her as if she were neither female or male—just someone with whom he chose to sail.
“You wish to buy a drink for me?” At the end of a voyage, it was usually the other way round.
“You look like you need one.” He shrugged.
“It might not be a bad idea. I will now have to go to my faeir and report we have had a wasted voyage.”
“Ja.” Garik said nothing for a moment. Their boots crunched in time on the stone. The storm had clearly moved through here also, and the sky looked dark as the beginning of night.
“Will you go back?” Garik slanted a look at her.
Hulda shook her head slowly. “If I go back, it would require a fleet of boats. An actual fleet, not a ruse. That is a strong settlement.”
“But I think you will want to go back.”
Hulda stopped walking and gazed at him. She did not wish to insult him by asking if he meant to betray her. But she wondered.
“I had an idea,” he said. “It may be a mad idea, but—”
“Sometimes those are the best kind.”
“Then come have a drink. We will discuss it.”
The ale hall was busy and loud. Other members of the crew had reached it ahead of them.
There were cries of greeting, men wanting to know how the voyage had gone.
They quieted just a bit when Hulda came in.
She understood how they felt about a woman going viking.
It was not unheard of. Tales of fierce shield maidens abounded in the sagas, and were the Valkyries not female?
Rare, indeed, for a woman to command a boat, and most of the men laid it at the feet of favor on the part of her faeir. As if she had not earned her place sailing with Jute and, ja, with Faeir himself. They would likely never believe she had earned it.
Ivor, thanks be to Odin, was not there. Garik indicated a bench in the corner and went to fetch their drinks.
Hulda sat and tried not to shiver. Their bench was too far from the fire—but private. She listened to some members of her crew telling tales of their voyage. It would be all over Avoldsborg by nightfall.
A humiliation, for certain. Faeir would not be happy. She was not happy.
Garik came back and put a mug of ale in her hand. He looked thoughtful.
“They talk,” he said with a jerk of his head at the members of the crew.
Ja, and what if they knew the truth, that Hulda had let their captive go?
“I am curious about something,” Garik said.
Here it comes, Hulda thought. He will press me over his silence. “What is it?”
“I think I understand why you let the Scotsman go. His end would have been long and bitter, and he was not the man who killed Jute.” When Hulda said nothing, he went on.
“Someone like Ivor might say he should have died even though he was the wrong man. Someone needed to pay, and he was a Scotsman. It is enough.”
“Ja.”
“A head brought home in vengeance is a head brought home in vengeance.”
A silence fell, broken when Garik said, “Me, I despise Ivor.”
That made Hulda slant a look at him. “Do you?”
“Ja. He is a bully and a braggart with very little honor. I would not wish to sail with him again.”
“Oh?”
“I would, though”—he leveled a look at her—“wish to sail again with you.”
Hulda sighed. “You will have a long wait. I doubt I will be able to talk my faeir into another such venture very soon.”
“That is just it.” Garik took a deep drink from his ale cup. “I have an idea. It may be, as I say, a mad idea, but I cannot seem to stop thinking on it.”
Just as she could not seem to stop thinking on Quarrie MacMurtray. “As I say, mad ideas are some of the best. Tell me.”
“I am a good navigator, nei?”
That she answered readily. “You are one of the best I have ever known.”
“Yet because I am young, I am seldom offered the place I deserve. Only you offered me such a place. There are many like me, younger men who get pushed aside for those with more experience. The old men say we have not yet proved ourselves and they will not hire us.”
“A pity. So?”
“So what if you did not have to ask your faeir for a boat? What if the rest of us did not have to beg for places on a crew?”
“Garik, I am not following.”
“My friends and I have some wealth laid aside. Some earned from past voyages but most gifted to us by parents and grandparents. You may have the same.”
She did. Not enough, yet, to build a boat of her own. “Go on.”
“There are enough of us to man a crew. If we put our wealth together with yours, mistress, we might have a boat of our own, with you in command. Beholden to none but each other.”
It was the dream of everyone who went viking—to sail for himself and not an overlord or patron. She eyed her companion. “How young are these friends of yours?”
He shrugged. “Young. I am the oldest.”
By Odin’s eye! A bunch of green boys for a crew? “But they have sailed?”
“Ach, ja, they have with fathers or foster fathers or brothers. We have talked about it, see. We all want a chance. We need a leader.”
“Some of your friends may not want a leader who is a woman.”
He shrugged. “You give us a chance, we give you a chance. Do you not see? That is the beauty of it.”
It was the beauty of it.
She huffed a breath. “Everyone in Avoldsborg would think us raving.”
“The reason I proposed it as a mad idea. What do you say, Hulda?”
She did not know what to say. She drank first before venturing, “It is an expensive proposition. Would we have enough to build a boat, even if we pool what we have?”
“Mayhap.”
“And if we did pool what we have, and we fail as we did on this voyage, we will lose everything.”
“We would still have the boat. And we are young. We could build up again.”
“Garik, I do not know. It takes months to build a boat. By the time we do that, the raiding season will be at an end.”
“Ja, but we know of a boat. Frode’s.”
Frode was an old man, a warrior well past viking and, ja, mayhap half mad, whose boat had been wrecked in a storm last year.
“That is far too damaged.”
“Was too damaged. Frode has been making repairs with the help of some of my friends, who have skilled hands.”
“You think Frode would sell?”
“Ja, he will never sail again even though he wants to. Dag, who is his great nephew, can talk him round. Think about it.” Garik gave Hulda a wise look.
“We could raid the smaller targets, and after we build some wealth—well, then we can go back to Murtray, ja? Where,” he added deliberately, “I think you kissed that captive goodbye.”
Hulda’s heart leaped. He had seen that, had he? She’d thought the deck too dark.
“Something, ja, to think on,” she told him with calm she most certainly did not feel.