Chapter 35
“Let me spell you at the steering oar,” Harald said to Brandr, deep into the second watch of the night.
The dragonship’s sail billowed out like a pigeon’s breast as the vessel sliced cleanly through the smooth water of the fjord.
Orlin, Ragnar, and the twins were taking advantage of the favorable sailing weather to snatch a few hours sleep, curled up in hudfats in the narrow craft.
Later, when the tide changed, they’d have to row, but for now, the Jarl of Jondal’s ship made fair speed toward Tysnes Island.
“You need rest.” Harald insisted.
Brandr sighed. When his friend set his feet, he would not be moved.
“I don’t think I can sleep.” But he stood in any case and let his friend take the heavy arm of the tiller in his beefy hands.
“You worry for your woman,” Harald guessed.
Brandr nodded. Among other things.
He feared he’d seen his brother for the last time in this life. He feared the weapon he pinned all his hopes on wouldn’t work, since they hadn’t been able to test the mixture. He feared the destruction of everything he held dear.
But most of all, he feared for his stubborn, willful wife.
Why did she not Send her thoughts to him? Why did she ignore him when he broadcast his to the four winds? Surely she realized he knew she’d sailed away to Tysnes with Finn on a fool’s errand. Hilde had already told him all. Katla’s silence wasn’t keeping any secrets from him.
The cold, dark possibility she was dead stabbed his heart, but he shoved it away. Surely he’d know if she was. He’d feel her absence in the very air around him. His body would refuse to keep breathing in a world where she did not.
“You sure we shouldn’t have strapped more shields to the sides of the ship?” Harald’s voice pulled him back into the moment. “Might have made it seem as if there are more of us aboard.”
“It wouldn’t make that much difference.” He hadn’t even told Arn he was taking his ship. He couldn’t very well add to that misdeed by depleting his brother’s armory for the sake of appearances.
“Twenty-five ships we’re sailing into, eh?” Harald’s voice cut through the wind soughing through the rigging and the steady shush of water against the hull.
“Ja,” Brandr admitted. “Maybe more.”
“Well, that gives us the advantage, then,” Harald said.
“How do you figure?”
“When they see us coming, at least half of them will die laughing.” Harald smacked his knee and threw back his head in a guffaw that echoed off the rocky sides of the fjord.
Brandr laughed with his friend.
May as well let Death know they were coming to meet Him unafraid.
***
“Who might you be?” Ulf asked, stopping his ascent of the woodpile but not lowering his dagger.
Katla pushed out of the overgrowth behind Finn. “We’re the owners of this farmstead.”
“Stay back, Katla,” Finn ordered. “We’ll ask the questions here, traitor. Step away from our brother.”
“I’m trying to help the lad.”
“Like you helped your friends?” Katla asked.
Ulf spat on the ground. “They weren’t my friends. I know what it is to be bound against your will. I wouldn’t suffer them to treat a dog so. This is the first chance I’ve had to free the lad.”
The sound of men tramping through the woods, swearing and breaking off bracken, wafted up to the top of the hill.
Ulf swore. “It’s later than I thought. The watch is being relieved. They’ll be here in no time. If you want me to free your brother, lower your bow, Tysnesman.”
“Do it, Finn,” Katla said.
With reluctance, he replaced the arrow in his quiver and slung the bow over his shoulder. Then he ran and climbed the woodpile to help Ulf bring Haukon down.
Katla was right behind him. “Easy,” she cautioned. “He may be injured more than we can tell here.”
The men’s voices were nearer now.
“He’ll be injured, all right, if you don’t leave now,” Ulf said. “Do you have a boat?”
“Hush, Katla,” Finn said as he lifted Haukon in his arms. The lad’s head lolled, but Katla heard him catch a snuffling breath. “Don’t tell him anything. He can’t be trusted.”
“If you do have means off this island,” Ulf said, ignoring Finn, “I advise you to make for it and don’t look back.”
“You could come with us,” Katla said.
“Are you mad?” Finn hissed and headed for the path in the woods where they’d hidden before.
“But he’s Brandr’s father.”
Ulf’s hand snaked out and grabbed her forearm. “How do you know my son?”
“Brandr is my husband,” she said.
“You lie. He’s in Byzantium.”
“He’s returned. And he’s leading the defense of Hardanger. Something you should have done, old man.”
“Enough, Katla,” Finn said as he ducked into the thick forest bearing Haukon. “We must go now.”
“He’s right,” Ulf said, releasing her arm. “Go. I’ll see about a diversion to cover your escape.”
Katla hesitated. Traitor or not, the man was Brandr’s father. “Follow that path down to the water,” she whispered. “We’ll wait for you if we can.”
An ugly smile spread across Ulf’s tortured face. “I can see why he likes you. Now, get you gone, girl.”
The sounds of the approaching guards were nearer now. Fear made her wing-footed. Katla flew across the clearing and disappeared into the thick undergrowth. She started to follow Finn down the path, but angry shouts behind her made her look over her shoulder.
Ulf knelt at a corner of the man-high stack of wood, sparks flying as he tried to ignite the tinder. In a sudden whoosh, the flame caught on the dry wood, spread through the rotten interior of the pile, and blazed out the top to lick at the stars.
Ulf Skallagrimsson dumped all four buckets of water on the ground so there’d be no way to douse the signal fire.
Then laboriously, Brandr’s father rose and cast a death’s-head grin toward the place where Katla and Finn had fled, before he began to limp away from the inferno, heading in a different direction.
He’s covering our retreat, Katla realized.
“Who is?” She’d lost her strict discipline, and Brandr’s question flooded over her mental wall.
Before she could regain control, she felt her mind’s images winging to her husband. She let them fly. She had enough to deal with without trying to shield her thoughts from Brandr any longer.
Four new guards poured into the clearing. One shouted for Ulf to halt, and when he didn’t, the man raised his bow and planted a shaft in Ulf’s lower back. He plummeted face-first to the dirt and didn’t move.
Katla clamped a hand over her mouth to keep from crying out.
The men found their dead comrades and the empty buckets. They beat on the flames with their cloaks, but it was too late. The blaze leaped higher. The fire would burn hot till all the wood was consumed, and then it would smolder for days.
“We have to tell the Bloodaxe,” one shouted.
“I’m not going to be the bearer of this news,” said another.
“At least we killed the man who did it,” growled a third.
“Bloodaxe’s temper won’t improve with waiting,” said the one who’d actually loosed the shaft that dropped Ulf to the ground. He turned to lead the way back toward Katla’s longhouse. “Come, you spineless old women. See if you can find where you left your manhood on the way down the hill.”
When they’d been gone for the space of ten heartbeats, Katla crept back out of hiding and ran to Ulf. The long shaft of the arrow stuck out of his back.
“Do you yet live?” she asked in a whisper.
With effort, he raised himself to his hands and knees. “Ja, girl. Why are you still here? Fly while you can.”
“Not without you.” She helped him rise to his feet. “Can you walk?”
“Not far.” He spat a gob of blood and reached around and broke the shaft of the arrow off close to his skin.
“Why did you do that?” Katla demanded as she propped one of his arms over her shoulders. “It’ll be even harder to get out now.”
“’Tis not coming out, and we both know it,” Ulf said, not bothering to stifle the groan that followed. “I’ll not stir a step unless you promise to leave me if they return or if we are followed.”
Katla tried to move him, but it was like shoving a boulder. There was no give to the man.
“All right, I promise,” she said. “Now come.”
“’Tis hopeless.”
“No, it’s not. Look.”
On the dark shadow of the mainland, an answering signal fire burned brightly. As they watched, another farther in the fjord blazed to life. And another. Pinpoints of promise, they called the folk of Hardanger to honor their oaths to meet a common threat.
Katla looked up at her husband’s father. “There is always hope.”
***
“To the ships!” Malvar roared when the guards reported that their captive had been freed and the signal fire had somehow been lit. Even now, the flame on Tysnes Island’s high point was being answered by other fires on both steep sides of Hardanger Fjord. “Move!”
He gave one who didn’t scramble away fast enough a vicious kick. “Before I order you roasted over that flame.”
His men poured out of the longhouse in a near stampede and made for their waiting ships in the cove. They would have to row to clear the narrow mouth of the inlet. And after that, the tide was against them.
Once Malvar’s flagship waddled into the main channel of the fjord, he saw the sky to the East was lightened by dozens of signal fires winking on one by one.
He gripped the gunwale by the long neck of the prow so hard his nails bled.
His advance guard had failed to disable or secure the system of signal flares.
His attack had lost the element of surprise.
No matter. He still had the weight of a superior force behind him. Even the smallest ship in his flotilla bore two-dozen warriors. There were fifty shields affixed to each side of his ship, one hundred strong backs bending in concert to row his drakkar into the fjord.
Wind sang in the rigging. Death rode on his shoulder. Malvar was proud to be the one bringing it.
***
The zing of an arrow in the dark. A man’s guttural cry. The figure was shadowy on the far side of a towering fire, but Brandr saw him go down in the images Katla Sent to him. He felt her distress as if it were his own. She crept forward.
“No, girl,” he mumbled in his sleep. He drifted up to full consciousness and back down again, unsure whether he was dreaming or waking.
He smelled the pitch-soaked pine blaze and recoiled from its heat as she moved around it.
He’d never had such a vivid dream, and even as he lay in his hudfat, heart pounding and fully awake now, disjointed images continued to scroll across his mind.
Her white hand showed stark against the man’s dark shoulder. The fletching on the arrow sticking out of his back was so vivid Brandr could see where the feather’s barbules had separated from one another. The man turned his head.
“Father.” Brandr sat upright.
Harald still manned the steering oar. His other friends still slept. The wind had lessened, but they were making good progress toward the mouth of the fjord.
And if his dream…or vision—he was unsure what to name it—was true, Ulf Skallagrimsson was still alive.
“Brandr, look.” Harald pointed off the starboard bow.
A signal fire was burning. An answering blaze flared to life on the opposite side of the waterway.
“They’re all lit,” Harald said. “All the way to the sea.”
And the people who lit those fires were preparing to join Brandr and his men. If there was enough time, the fighting ships might form up into a force sufficient to make a stand on the narrow waters of Hardanger.
Then between one breath and the next, the sail on Brandr’s ship went slack. The wind died, and the waters that had been surging out of the fjord, rushing to join the sea, now pushed the defender’s drakkar back.
“We’ve lost the tide,” he said. Momentum would swing around to the force heading into Hardanger now. “Wake up, men. It’s time to row.”