Chapter 23
“I don’t know what to tell you, Malvar. Women are more fickle and changeable than the sea. She ought to have been ordered to accept the match.” Albrikt Gormson curled his lip in disdain. “Why her ball-less brothers even gave her a choice I’ll never know.”
Malvar Bloodaxe poured wine into two precious goblets of Frankish glass. He usually reserved these special vessels for celebrations. They’d have to do to console his ally in an especially ignominious defeat.
To be turned down in favor of a thrall.
It must gall Albrikt more than liquor on an open wound. If a woman used Malvar so sore, he’d have her tongue cut out and fried up with onions for his night meal.
He handed one of the goblets to Gormson.
“You wouldn’t have sailed across the North Sea to bring me this ill news unless you had a plan to counter it,” Bloodaxe said.
Gormson shrugged. “I had thought to attack the farmstead and so claim the harbor we need, but there’s a signal fire system among the islanders. Katla the Black would receive help in short order.”
Albrikt drained the wine and slammed the goblet down with far more force than the fragile glass would bear. A tiny fracture in the delicate stem bloomed near the bottom of the cup.
A muscle in Malvar’s cheek ticked, but he knew the value of controlling his ire. He simply marked down the ruined goblet to Albrikt’s account and knew, someday, the man would pay for this mistake as well.
“It seems fairly straightforward to me,” Malvar said. “You must send a small party ahead, advancing from the opposite side of the island, to disrupt the signal fire, and then you sail into the cove with three or four longships and overwhelm the residents.”
Gormson shook his head. “It’s not as simple as that. That cursed thrall she married used to be a captain in the Varangian guard,” the Stordman said. “He’s a fierce fighter.”
“One man among a couple dozen sheep.”
“You didn’t see him,” Albrikt said. “He’s is the sort who can rally others, and he has a military man’s eye. There were a number of goodly sized men in the household. I wouldn’t doubt Brandr Ulfson has started training them for defense.”
“Ulfson?” Malvar’s ears pricked at the name.
“Ja, Brandr the Far-Traveled has come home.”
“And recently wed. Don’t forget that,” Malvar said, rubbing salt into Gormson’s wounded pride. “Ulfson will be too interested in what’s under his new wife’s skirt to be wary. He’ll not be looking for an attack.”
Albrikt nodded slowly, seething resentment making his eyes narrow for a moment. “You’re right. The timing might make all the difference. We’ll take that cove by the end of next week.”
“Of course you will. The Old Ones have told me it will be so.”
Malvar smiled when Albrikt surreptitiously made the sign against evil. Fearful people were always more easy to control, and it amused him to think that Albrikt believed he could protect himself from the Old Ones with a mere gesture.
So Brandr Ulfson has returned. Interesting.
There was bound to be a way for Malvar to use that information against the traveler’s father.
It might be the last stone needed to crack Ulf Skallagrimsson’s flagging will.
If nothing else, it would please him to inform the jarl that both his sons were about to fall into a trap from which there was no escape.
One their father’s weakness had made possible.