Page 42 of Her Viking Warrior (Forgotten Sons #2)

Chapter

Twenty-Six

C ries of terror pitched high. The feast hall was rife with nervous sweat and shrill screams. Bjorn yanked the jarl’s axe and shield off the wall and banged axe to shield. The crack, crack stopped his panicked people.

“Calm yourselves.” He strode forward. “You know what to do. We’ve worked for this day. Trained for it every morning.”

Mothers clutching children straightened their spines. Life or death. The choice was theirs.

“What should we do?” a nervous voice shouted from the back.

“We fight.” He scanned the hall. Every eye was on him, all of them like lost sheep desperate for a shepherd to guide them.

“All of you. Pay attention. Every child who stands this tall—” he flipped his axe and held it in a horizontal line below his navel “—goes with Helge and the elderly women.” He eyed Helge.

“You will take the children and the buckets of rocks outside the hall to Odell’s weaving shed.

Hide there. If the enemy comes, throw rocks until you have none. ”

Helge and her crony friends blinked at him. Frozen sheep.

He slapped the axe on the shield and yelled, “Go. Now!”

The frightened matselja jumped to action. She scrambled like a mother hen, gathering little ones. Her elderly friends carried babes while herding small children out of the feast hall.

With the vulnerable ones gone, Bjorn raised his axe to mid-chest.

“Look at me,” he bade the nervous crowd. “Every Viking at least this tall will take bows and arrows and follow Gunnar. He will position you.” A nod to Gunnar, who was ready, his order was given, “Go!”

Older children scattered. They snatched bows and quivers full of arrows resting under food store shelves.

The wide-eyed youths trotted out the door after the flaxen-haired Son.

The hall was half-empty. Fifty or so fighters remained, older youths on the cusp of manhood, maids wearing braided leather kerstans and fearsome glares.

Bodolf snorted like a bull ready to charge.

He and his men were banging fists to chest, hungry for a fight.

Bjorn pointed to a cluster of aged men with fleece-white beards. “The five of you. Go to Egil’s barn. On my signal, set fire to the balls of twine and send them rolling down the harbor.”

“Yes, Lord,” a bass voice said. The men made a hobbling run for the door. Two of them grabbed torches outside the feast hall.

Inside the hall was a bloodthirsty lot. Men growled. Women’s voices rose in a fight song with curses heaped on the enemy’s head. Bjorn raised a silencing hand when Erik called from the doorway.

“Bjorn. Three longships are breaking through the fog.”

“How many oars?”

Erik shaded his eyes to count. “Twenty each, I think. Some are two men to an oar. Slender-hulled ships. No dragon’s head.”

No dragon’s head meant no jarl, king, or chieftain led this assault. Less experienced fighters? Or men desperate to destroy the settlement that kept them under heel? A morning raid was a bold move when night was better to launch a surprise attack.

Daylight combat was a clash of purpose.

Slanting the axe over his shoulder, he grinned like a beast of war. To the crowd, “This sounds like a simple raid, my friends.”

“Bjorn…” Thorfinn held up Bjorn’s helmet and lobbed it through the air.

Dropping the axe, he caught it with one hand and set the iron on his head. Outside, faint shouts reached into the hall from the harbor.

“The cries of farmers and fishermen,” he said to the hall. “People just like you.”

Nods of assent rippled, one Viking to the next. Hums of agreement rose. Snarls and growls followed. Bjorn picked up his father’s axe. With arms spread wide—the shield on one side, axe on the other—he tipped his face to the heavens and roared, a lung clearing, heart pumping sound.

Goll. A blood-curdling battle cry.

Sweat pricked his brow. Copper flooded his tongue.

Knocking axe to shield, he marched through the longhouse.

Color was high on Thorvald. Tendons strained on the giant’s neck as he bellowed a call to battle.

His laugh was wicked when he was done and his grin bloodthirsty.

Thorfinn’s eyes were stark and primitive within his helmet’s iron eye rings.

Weapons were sharp. Death was coming.

Men and women fell behind the Forgotten Sons. They banged axes and shields. Noise shook the rafters. A small but hearty force, they marched into daylight.

The gods would bear witness. Vellefold’s Vikings would meet their foe, teeth to teeth.

Air carried their offering. The crack, crack, crack of iron on wood echoed off the cliffs. Bjorn didn’t check to see if the gods were watching. He stomped the snowy road, leading a hive of hungry warriors.

In the harbor, three ships glided out of the mist. Fog had peeled back from the docks. The clash would be on the settlement’s storied crescent harbor.

Twenty paces from the dock, Erik led Bodolf’s men on one side. Bjorn led fighters on the other. Thorvald and Thorfinn were with him.

“ Svinfylking ,” Bjorn called out.

The boar’s snout, an age-old battle form.

Footfalls pattered. Wooden shields thumped.

Vellefold’s people were fanning out in a wedge on either side of the two strongest warriors.

The formation ran the length of the harbor.

Bjorn and Erik pushed forward, tip of the snout.

The design was meant to penetrate enemy lines; today it would defend Vellefold.

“Stand ready,” Bjorn said. “Make the enemy come to you.”

The Svinfylking line huffed chilly little clouds above their shields. The dock groaned under the weight.

Aseral’s men sprang off their benches and ran forward on their ships. They lobbed insults and brandished axes.

“No swords. No bows and arrows,” Erik said, his black eyes on the ships.

“Be ready,” Bjorn said to the line on his left and right. “Pride is a vicious teacher if you aren’t.”

A thin body bumped him. The red-haired boy. His knobby Adam’s apple bobbled in his throat.

“I’m sticking with you, Lord.” The youth swiped his sleeve across a sniffling nose, showing the sweat-darkened seams of his tunic’s underarms.

He liked the boy’s grit. “What’s your name?”

“Trygg.”

“Be ready.” Bjorn fixed his grip on his axe. His legs yearned for battle’s crouch, an urge as needful as women bearing down in childbirth.

The ships were closer. Men shouted. Teeth were bared. The enemy itched to climb the rails and leap forward.

“They are two and a half ship lengths and closing,” Bjorn’s voice rang loud the warning

He checked the docks. The lines were unflinching. He glanced behind him. The old men waited at the top of the hill with barrel-sized balls of twine.

Sweat popped on Trygg’s upper lip. Heat surged in Bjorn. It bounced off growling Erik.

A blood-thirsty hum spread through the shoulder-to-shoulder formation. They were seconds from violence. Shields banged. The dock swayed under anxious feet.

To nervous Trygg, he said low, “Kill them on their ships…”

A din of fury blasted his ears. The enemy was one and a half ship’s length from hitting the dock.

“Don’t take the insult of even one enemy foot on our land,” he said for all.

Trygg’s chest heaved. He was gulping air, his mouth wide.

Bjorn cuffed his shoulder. “Do you want revenge?”

“Yes.”

Mouth in a snarl, Bjorn roared, “DO YOU WANT REVENGE?”

His roar was for Trygg and Turid, for Vellefold, and for brave beautiful Ilsa who was seeking a new life. He yelled for the fledgling warriors who’d lost mothers and fathers, their fists raised to the sky.

“YES!” was their battle cry.

Bjorn turned and raised his axe. He swung it down hard, the flat of the blade striking snow, a signal. White flakes swirled around him. The first keel was an oar’s length from the dock.

“Back up! Back up!” Erik yelled.

The hive of warriors split in two. Orange balls of fire tumbled down Vellefold’s center road to the harbor. First one. Then, a second and a third. Flames whooshed . The firestorm rolled through the opening in the formation onto the center ship.

Bladders of oil planted in twine burst, splattering the enemy. Men on the ship caught fire. High-pitched shrieks ripped through the fjord. Wails of agony sounded. Aseral’s men with backs aflame, leaped into the water, landing with wet, meaty slaps.

“Back. Back…” Bjorn steered Vellefold’s fighters. “Back…”

As one, they crouch-stepped backwards off the dock.

Aseral’s men jumped like fleas to the dock. Shields broke. Men stumbled and fell in ice cold water. None fished them out. Odors of sweat and piss rent the air.

“Back,” Bjorn ordered.

Vellefold’s fighters crouch-stepped backward.

“We’re losing our lines,” Erik groused. “Not enough of them—” he jerked his head at men clambering out of the water “—are dead.”

“We hold,” he shot back, and louder to the formation. “HOLD. YOUR. LINE!”

Bjorn could see the whites of their eyes. Aseral’s men raging. The middle ship was burning. Fire devoured the red and white striped sail. Too far from the dock, men leaped into the harbor and swam with all their might for the dock.

Whistling sounded overhead.

“Crouch low!” Bjorn shouted. “Crouch low!”

Flaming arrows cut through the sky. Wave after wave, a well-timed gift from Gunnar and his band of young archers. Death cries warbled. More bodies teetered over the ship’s rails and fell into the harbor where smoke and mist gathered.

Blood pounding in his ears, he squinted over his shield. Aseral swarmed like insects on the dock. They outnumbered Vellefold three men to one. Arrows rained down, this time from the enemy’s ship closest to the Eiken River.

Bjorn raised his axe high. “Shield wall! Shield wall!”

Trygg, Bodolf, and the other warriors circled him. Shields slapped into a wooden shell. Kneeling in the shade of wood, he was jostled by knees, elbows, shoulders. In a break between the shields, he could see three archers hiding behind hulls and boulders at the river’s mouth.

“Hold strong…” He yelled to the thunk, thunk, thunk of arrows striking their shields. One iron tip pierced wood and grazed skin above his eye.

His laugh was vicious.

Gunnar and his fighters answered with arrows, darkening the sky. The enemy took cover, and Bjorn shot up, his shield high.

“FIGHT!”

At his battle cry, the fighters swarmed the enemy. Erik, and the men and women with him, fought hard. Swords rang. Iron clanked. Metals flavor flooded Bjorn’s tongue. All around pairs of fighters clashed. But on the ship, a beardless Viking marked him.

Bjorn stalked to the water.

Calm as you please, the lone man on the last ship jabbed an oar on the burning sale. Fiery wool wilted off the mast around the oar.

Aseral’s men advanced on the settlement. Teeth bared, they clambered over rocks. Bjorn cut down one man. He swiped the thigh of a second enemy and went for the killing thrust.

Sweat trickling down his nape, he strode onward. Wood creaked underfoot. He was on the dock.

The man on Aseral’s burning ship caught his eye. Smoke and flames danced around him. At the other end of his ship, fighters battled an unseen enemy in mist and fog. Bjorn squinted. Sweat and blood stuck to his skin.

The great longship cracked and buckled. The beardless fighter leaped onto the rail and hurled the fiery oar at the heart of Vellefold’s crescent-shaped dock. At him.

“Fire!” Bjorn yelled, bracing for the hit.

It banged his shield with the force of a spear. He stomped the flat of the wood. Fire sputtered to dying embers in snow dark with ashes.

Blood dripping over one eye, he cuffed it. He breathed steadily. Calmly. In control. He banged a fist on his chest.

“Come get me!” His taunt carried across the harbor.

The beardless brute eyed Erik before his gaze shot back to Bjorn.

This was Aseral’s leader—he was coming for Bjorn when smoke and mist parted in the harbor.

A small, scrappy boat cut through the haze and banged the great longship.

Aseral’s leader lost his footing. A band of ragged women overpowered three or four men still on the ship with their leader.

They were crazed, screaming, swinging oars.

The burning longship hit the south side of the crescent dock. The beardless brute was lost in billowing smoke.

A byrding vessel slid across dark waters. One woman in sea-stained leather jumped bravely off her ship into the chaos.

His heart seized. She came back.

Two blood-sprayed men advanced on Vellefold’s newest fighter. She faced them, eyes ablaze as her name ripped from his throat.

“Ilsa!”