Viking Sword: A Fall of Yellow Fire: The Stranded One (Viking Brothers Saga Book 1) (7 page)

His fingers suddenly found her face and stroked down her cheek. The timbre of his voice held indulgence. “That is why you look as if you have played in the mud. It showered you when you came through.”

She heard the soft creak as he pushed the trap door open and rose into the darkness of the hollow. No one challenged him.

“‘Ware! The opening is small and nettles grow before it, as a guardian.”

He said something short and sharp in his own tongue. “Nettles! Wait here!”

Her relief that no one awaited them died a-borning. “No! We cannot linger. We must all leave, at once!”

But he was already gone. She started to follow but a hand fell upon her shoulder.

“Hold,” Sindre said. “When he is certain it is safe, he will return.”

They waited so long that when his head poked back inside, she jumped like a startled hare. She had begun to fear him captured.

“Come!”

She stood, but before she could attempt to climb out, he slid his hands beneath her arms and lifted her as if she weighed naught. Sindre emerged from behind her, and she heard him stretch. For him, both the passage and the tunnel had been a tight squeeze.

“Our unwanted guests still search the ruins,” Brandr said. “The sun dips below the horizon. Nightfall comes swiftly. There is little wisdom in traveling through unknown territory in total dark. Here is shelter. Let us use it, at least until moonrise.”

The noise of some heavy animal as it passed not far away in the forest underscored his words.

Sindre grunted agreement and dropped to the floor. A few moments later, soft snores filled the hollow.

She listened, astonished. “He sleeps?”

Brandr chuckled. “It is a gift. He was born with it. We should also rest.”

Fearing Talon would arrive to challenge them at any moment, she did not think she could sleep, so she felt her way to the inner wall of the hollow and slid to a sitting position. Brandr sank down beside her and before she could utter a protest, took her in his arms.

“What are you doing?” She struggled against his hold, but the embrace only tightened. His palm cradled her head against his broad shoulder.

“Rest.”

There was no help for it. He would not release her. She relaxed, but her mind still raced.

Where is Talon? With the thegn and my lady dead, he will know I am the only one who could have used the bolthole. He will come.

Despite her agitation, she must have dropped off. When she opened her eyes, Brandr was shaking her shoulder. “It is time to go.”

Talon had not come.

The stinging guardian at the hollow’s opening had been removed. Their weapons at the ready, the men put her between them. They moved without speaking through the shadows beneath the trees until they reached the cliffs overlooking the water. The rising moon smeared an oblique glow of liquid silver across a calm sea so black it seemed part of the night itself.

They paused while Sindre got his bearing. “The supplies are not far from where we beached. Wait here.”

He said something else in their language to Brandr, who stood looking out over the water, his dark form outlined by the moonlight. He did not answer.

She suspected she knew what Sindre had said, for he made no effort to hide his impatience with her, and his distrust. The fear their flight from Yriclea had held at bay resurfaced in a torrent. The víkingrs no longer needed her, and seemed to believe she had somehow betrayed them. The web of deceit she had woven by her silence tightened around her. She should have told them about Talon, but she had said she did not know who the men were. How to explain her unwillingness to call out to the man if she now admitted she did know him? Would they believe she preferred to go with strange warriors, rather than stay with a man she had known all her life? Or, believe she could not have known he would return so soon after the attack? Unlikely. Best to continue as she had begun, and keep silent.

Sindre left and she retreated a step. The back of her legs bumped against a solid object and she sat abruptly. The tall figure on the cliff edge stiffened.

CHAPTER FIVE

“Deal with the female before I return, Músa.”

Brandr ignored Sindre’s charge as his uncle stalked off. He had had enough of killing for one day.

Silence fell. Leaves rustled with the cool evening breeze. In the distance, an owl hooted. It was time for the creature to begin its nightly hunt for food.

Lissa stirred behind him. “He expects you to kill me now.”

She stated the words, rather than asked them.

He turned from watching the waves roll ashore to look at her. She sat on a fallen log, her hands on her knees. Her head was bowed. Moonlight leeched the gold from her hair and highlighted the fair skin of her shoulder where the split fabric drooped. He wondered if she wished for death.

He went down on his haunches in front of her and covered her hands with his palms. They were cold.

“Lissa.”

She looked up. “I want….”

She broke off and her gaze slid away.

His eyes roved the moon-shadowed contours of her face. “What do you want?”

Beneath his hands, her fingers fluttered. “It does not matter.”

His lips curved. She was right. What she wanted was of little importance. Still, he wished to know. “Nei. It does not. But you will tell me. What is it you want?”

“As I said before, I want to go with you.”

The words were so hushed he almost did not catch them. This time, the leap of gladness in his heart did not surprise him, though it should have. It should make no difference to him whether she lived or died, stayed or followed.

“Look at me.” He waited. She raised her head slowly, as if the weight of it was great. “Do you want to die, Lissa?”

“No.”

He lifted her chin and angled her face so the pale light above reflected from her eyes. “Think very carefully. If you come with us, it will be as my thrall. That is the only way Sindre will accept you. Do you understand what that means? No rights. No freedom. You will serve me, instead of being served. Your life, from this point, will belong to me, to do with as I see fit. You cannot later change your mind. You will have naught except what I give, no say in any matter except what I allow. Your existence will be one of obedience, and your service, your only value.”

“I understand.”

Sindre stepped into sight, loaded down with húdfats, furs and weapons. “You are a fool, Brandr. She cannot be trusted. She will delay us. She may betray us. Her usefulness is over.”

“We did not have to fight our way free of the village, and we have the gold. Do we owe her naught?”

“Reward her with the gift of death.”

“My decision is made. She comes.”

“You think with your heart….” He cocked his head. “Or is it your lust that influences your choice, and not your wits? If you want her, take her now, and be done, or send her to those who search the village.”

Brandr stood. “She comes with us. My reasons are my own.” He pulled his sax, cut three narrow strips from the hem of her cyrtel and twisted them into a tightly braided rope. This he tied around her neck. “This symbol of your servitude may not be removed except by my hand. To do so yourself will mean your death. Rise, Lissa Brandr-thrall, and serve me. Your first task is to see to my wound. Sindre bandaged it earlier, but it has broken open again.”

She took from around her waist the bundle she had made before leaving Yriclea. In the bright moonlight, she drew from the sash a ragged piece of cloth, a needle and thread, and the small covered flask he had earlier seen her pick up and sniff. He frowned. Did she think to stitch the wound? She could barely see it!

She gestured that he lift the hem of his tunic.

He quickly regretted his command. The touch of her soft fingers on his bare flesh forced from him a hiss not related to pain.

“The wound shows no sign of rot,” she said, as she cleaned away the blood. She met his look with frank appraisal. “If it is to heal, it needs to be stitched. I will need more light.”

“There is no time now. Wrap it.”

“There is no rush, Músa,” Sindre said. “I scouted the village before returning. They have made camp, and have no reason to come this way.”

“Even so. There is light to see our way, if we take care. I have decided we will risk following the cliffs.”

Lissa smeared the gash with some fresh-smelling herbal ointment from the container, then re-wrapped the binding cloth around his waist. Her fingers paused for a pulse-stopping moment on the flesh above his pounding heart, then moved to linger, as if in question, on the contours of the two pendants he wore.

He thought she might ask about them, but instead, she said, “If I am your slave, what am I to call you?”

Call me to your bed, sweet Lissa.

“It is proper to name me ‘master’, but I give you permission to use my name. In truth, I insist upon it.”

He liked the sound of his name spoken in her lyrical voice.

“Very well…Brandr.” As soon as she was finished he stepped away, annoyed he could not seem to control his reactions to her. He pulled on his ring-shirt, attached his axe to his belt, and slung his shield across his back, then patted Frækn’s scabbard.
Now
, he felt properly dressed.

Next, he redistributed the rest of the supplies—including the furs and the sack from the village, which Sindre said carried eating utensils, candles and food—and rolled everything except their weapons into the sleep sacks. These he tied securely, creating two loads, intending each of them to carry their own. When instead, his uncle slung his heavy, damp húdfat on Lissa’s back, he silently switched with her. His weighed less. Sindre, who carried naught but the gold, humphed at this exchange. No doubt, his uncle thought Lissa should bear both húdfats!

They turned their faces south and east and followed a faint trail along the cliff top.

“Did I mention, Músa,” Sindre said, his tone light now that he had accepted Brandr’s decision, “that before I left them to join you, I told Gorm to sail home with Karl, and ordered Tosti to return to the far side of that small island where we camped two nights out from this place, to wait for us?”

Brandr stopped so abruptly Lissa bumped into him with a startled ‘oh!’ He steadied her and faced Sindre, hands on hips. “You wait until now to tell me this, Uncle?”

“It slipped my mind.”

Brandr snorted. “Then the less we talk, the sooner we will get there.”

He set a cautious but steady pace. Some time after Mithnætti, the mid-hour of the night, they came upon a streamlet where they stopped long enough to clean off the worst of the battle gore and refill the water skins. After, they walked in silence until the bright moon abandoned the sky and it became too dark to move safely. Though she made no complaint and asked no aid, the sound of Lissa’s shambling steps behind him revealed her exhaustion. He, himself, had kept one hand clasped hard against his side almost since their trek began, and though his uncle would never admit it, Sindre was weary, as well.

He led them deeper into the forest and called a halt. Lissa dropped the húdfat and collapsed.

Sindre grasped her shoulder and shook her. “Get up, thrall! You have work to do before you sleep.”

“Leave her be,” Brandr snapped, his temper frayed. “She is not yet accustomed to the rigors of travel. Soon enough, her strength will grow. We all need rest. Sleep, now. I will watch.”

Sindre rumbled an unintelligible response, dropped to the ground and soon snored. Brandr opened his húdfat, laid aside the supplies, and wrapped Lissa in its folds. She mumbled in protest but did not wake. He threw a fur over his shoulders and moved back toward the cliff where he sat with his back against a tree, his legs stretched out, facing the sea. He was weary beyond telling, but he would awaken Sindre at first light. He watched as a shadow darker than the waves moved into his view on the water—a ship, and by what he could discern of its size and configuration, a merchant headed to some port to the east. Though his head ached worse than ever, a smile tugged. He could walk throughout the waxing and waning of the moon if need required, but when haste was needed, he preferred the deck of a ship. If all went well, by this time the day after the morrow, the Hauss would be beneath his feet once again.

He wriggled until his backside no longer made contact with a tree root, and settled to wait out the time until he would wake his uncle. He thought he blinked, but his eyes stayed shut.

∞∞§∞∞

Talon, first marshal of Yriclea’s hearth companions, stood at the edge of the clearing and looked upon the moonlit, still-smoking ruins of the village he had failed to protect. In the woods behind him, the low murmur of voices affirmed the heartening presence of his men. Apart from himself, they numbered eleven—all that was left of what had once been a full contingent of two score and one—but he was grateful for their survival, despite that their mood was grim.

He realized he ground his teeth and forced his jaw to relax.

His purpose in leading out the patrol had been to track down the northern fortress from which a band of raiders originated. The warriors had harassed Yriclea’s ceorls, burning their farms, killing the men and stealing away their women and children. His decision had seemed wisdom at the time. If he could discover which thegn was behind the raids, and gain proof, Thegn Wolnoth could apply to the king’s reeve for protection and wergild.

Day after day, the war band had led him and his men farther from home.

They had followed at a discreet distance. Thus, he had not known until too late that as they pursued, the others doubled back and bypassed them. Wat, his tracker, ranging out from their trail, discovered the war band’s passage and reported their direction took them back to Yriclea. His heart had clenched, for he guessed the band’s intent, and started home in great haste, only to be delayed by an unexpected freshet for the best part of a day. While they awaited the flood’s abatement, a debilitating bout of scours had laid them all low, further hindering their progress. He had hoped Hemart, his second marshal and friend, could hold the attackers at bay until his return.