Practiced in his motions and confident in his stride, in one step the older man disarmed the younger.
“K … Konrad made me do it,” the younger stammered. “He was in charge. He told me to be his lookout.”
“Well, Konrad’s dead,” the man said flatly. “So you will be listening to me now.” He jerked the sword out of Konrad’s stomach, and wiped the blood on Konrad’s cloak before draping it over the man’s corpse. Then he seized Runa’s leg. She squealed and thrashed, but he yanked her flat with force enough to quiet her.
“Go get someone from the hall,” he commanded the other man, never taking his eyes off her.
She would be raped again, and then tortured, Runa knew. Tears leaked from her eyes; her gambit had failed. The other man did not linger, seemingly eager to escape the scene.
“You killed a freeman, slave,” the man said as he dropped her leg. He sheathed Konrad’s blade. “I’ll give you credit. It was done like a true Dane. But you’re going to pay now.”
“I’m going to die anyway,” Runa cried. The man yanked her up by the arm, tugging her off the pallet. She crumpled to the floor, dissolving in sobs, but he did not let go, nor did he release the sword in his other hand.
“Stand up or I’ll make it worse on you,” he threatened.
What use was fighting? She would never return to Denmark, never see her brother again. Everything her parents had planned for her had been shattered when the Svear came. Runa complied, and he led her from the barracks, heading for the slave hut. She had achieved nothing at all. I should have fought harder. Maybe they would have killed me then, instead.
“I don’t know what you were planned to do after you killed him,” the man said as he pulled her along. “You’re a marked slave; you would never get anywhere, not with winter approaching. Would you prefer to freeze?”
“Freeze or burn, what’s the difference?” Runa said. “Lord Ulfrik promised me my freedom if I rescued his sword. That’s what I fought for.”
He stopped at those words and turned to face her. “You have spoken to Lord Ulfrik?”
“Yes, when I fled the first time. I met him in the woods.”
The man seemed excited and Runa’s hope revived. “He promised freedom if I could get his sword and mail. That’s why we returned. I fled when Grim appeared, but that creature Aud caught me. Otherwise I could’ve done it.”
“What does Ulfrik plan to do? Is he nearby?”
Runa realized she had already said too much. The hope she felt vanished. This man wanted to be Grim’s hero, to find Ulfrik and kill him. Although she owed Ulfrik nothing, she would not betray him. She squared her jaw as the man awaited an answer.
Releasing her arm, he held up the sword. “This is Lord Ulfrik’s sword. Did you even know? Or are you as poor a liar as you are a slave?”
Runa gasped and unconsciously raised her hand to grab it, but the man snatched it away. “Please,” she begged. “I only knew it was kept at the front of the hall. Please, Lord Ulfrik will free me for returning it. I swear it.”
The man stared at her impassively.
Runa felt heat on her face and a trembling hopelessness in her joints. The man grabbed her arm again, firmly this time and without aggression. As he pulled her toward the slave hut, he began to talk in a hushed voice. “If you can get this sword to Lord Ulfrik, as you say, you can send him a message then?”
“Of course,” Runa said, loud enough to elicit a hiss from the man. She dropped her voice to a whisper. “Of course I would do so, if it meant my freedom.”
“Deliver my message and I can hand you the sword when it is done,” the man said, tightening his grip on her arm.
“No,” Runa said before she could even consider her response. “I must have the sword to prove my trust. Otherwise, he will think I am working for Grim.”
“Won’t he think you’re working for Grim if you have the sword? How else could you get it so easily?”
“You call this easy?” Runa was finding her confidence again. “Anyway, I have to try. He’s my only chance in this cursed place.”
The man smiled and relaxed his grip. “Then here is my message. Tell him that Snorri has no love for Grim, and that he would swear a true oath to Lord Ulfrik. Many others would do the same. We see through Grim’s treachery, but our homes are here and we have little choice. If Ulfrik sends word, we will join him.”
Runa repeated the message to Snorri and he nodded in satisfaction. Then he handed her the sword. “Now take this, and bite my arm as hard as you can.”
At first, Runa did not understand, but Snorri pushed his wrist up to her face. “Go on. After all, you were strong enough to kill a warrior. Why not escape from me as well?”
So Runa bit, sinking her teeth in until Snorri could bear it no more and finally screamed. Then he released her. She stood for just a moment before starting to run.
Snorri gave chase, swearing. As she ran, Runa wondered if he meant all the curses he sent at her. But he let her outpace him, and soon she could see the tree line ahead. When she entered the trees and looked back, Snorri was gone. Resting on her haunches to catch her breath, she noticed a column of men assembling outside the village. They were kitted for war, moving with the gravity of men readying for a fight. Another column marched to join them and drew Runa’s attention to a less orderly group of men appearing over a rise to the far left of the village. There must have been more than a hundred men gathering, bringing mail and flashing spears.
Not waiting to count them, Runa fled to the trees. Now to find the northern path, and hope Ulfrik waited there, as he had said. Clutching Ulfrik’s sword to her breast, she vanished into the shadows of the trees.
Eleven
Black smoke coiling in the clear sky-Ulfrik and his men knew what that meant. They had been making progress in the forest, held back only by a night of cold and heavy rain, which they cursed as they trudged through it. When they turned east to join the northern track, the trees thinned to reveal smoke where Auden’s hall should have been. On the track, scores of jumbled, blurred footprints in the mud marked the passage of an army. Grim’s army.
Ulfrik ran the last few furlongs, charging ahead of the others. Black fingers of despair climbed into the clouds above Auden’s hall, and as he approached Ulfrik heard the fluttering and cawing of crows, arguing over their spoils. He did not slow his run, rushing past the burned remains to where the hall door still held, three spear hafts laced into the handles to trap the victims while the hall burned. Where windows were intact, charred corpses draped over the sills. Some were affixed to the wood by spears, impaled as they attempted to escape the firestorm. The hall burning had been well planned; it seemed no one had escaped.
His mind’s eye saw the hall as it was: wide and warm, filled with boastful songs and roasting meats. Auden and his wife at the head table, raising their horns to toast a warrior’s exploits. Auden asking the riddles he loved; everyone else groaning that they had been heard too many times. His aunt smiling patiently as Auden questioned their guests. Then, warriors banging their tankards on the tables, calling for a song, drinking themselves into a stupor.
Now the tables were corrugated black embers. Ulfrik went around the door, jumping into the ashes and sending the crows screaming. The drinking horns and tankards were lost amid the ash and the hands that once gripped them now clawed from beneath scorched and fallen beams. The white leg of a girl jutted from beneath the debris. Ulfrik thought of his cousins, and his stomach churned. The stench of burnt wood and the tang of burnt flesh seemed to thicken in his nostrils as he began to sift through the ruins, his heart pounding. Perhaps Auden has escaped.Maybe he burst through the burning walls, sword in hand, bellowing curses, and hacked a path out of the men who ringed his hall, Ulfrik thought. Or hoped.
But the more he searched, the more the vision paled. He found mail coats fused into useless clumps, weapons melted in their sheaths-all abandoned as their terrorized owners struggled to escape. Corpses strewn close to the hall were skewered by arrows, archers having picked off those who escaped or who came to extinguish the fire. There had been no bold escape, only panic and death. Beneath the cinders, Ulfrik knew Auden’s bones mingled with the ashes of his men and his family.