Soul's Fire (The Northwomen Sagas Book 3) Read online

  “So much war. To take more when we already have so much. I don’t understand.”

  For Astrid, it was the war itself that appealed, the fight and the victory. She had little more need or use for riches than she had for a husband. But for others, for most, it was the looting and taking they wanted. Flush with gold, they now had appetite for land. “It’s our way, Olga.”

  “Yes, I know. The way of things,” she muttered and then turned away, headed back to her son.

  ~oOo~

  They sacrificed a great boar to the gods to ask their blessing for a raid of which stories would be told, and then they feasted long into the night, and even so, most of the raiders were spry as they loosed the skeids from the piers and rowed toward open water. Two ships bore the sails and shields of Leif Olavsson, Jarl of Geitland, and two of Vali Storm-Wolf, Jarl of Karlsa.

  The wending course to Anglia was the most challenging that Astrid, or any of them, had ever run, and each year had brought some new challenge. Even so, they had grown accustomed to that route over the years they’d sailed it. This course, to another part, farther, of that land, one they’d only seen on a ‘map,’ would be more challenging yet. But the sun was bright and the wind was favorable, and on the first day, and the second, it seemed that the gods had heard their plea.

  Clouds took the sun on the third day. Storms crashed over them on the next, and they huddled under the sails, left to the whim of Ægir and his wild sea. They lost two men and a woman to the wind as they lashed a torn sail. Their first raid losses in years, and they hadn’t yet struck land.

  Those who’d been long raiding had been through worse seas, and they battened down their wills as they did their supplies, and they rode out the fury of the gods. When the storms subsided and they could unfurl the sails again, the raiders opened their hope, too. But Astrid saw that the storms had weakened some of the new raiders, in will and body both. If their courage flagged already, they would be a liability in a fight.

  With the sun shining again, they pored over the sunstone and the ‘map’ and oriented their ships, with the hope that they had not been thrown too far off course.

  When they first found land, it offered them no beachhead. Tall, looming cliff walls faced them, forbidding entrance.

  And then the ships were framed by cliffs on either side—and at that, the raiders rejoiced. They were on course.

  The journey had taken days longer then they’d planned, and by the time they put their feet on land again, they were hungry and weary, but they had found the world they’d sought.

  It was verdant and aromatic, and not far from their landing, they found a village with the telltale symbol atop a roof: the crossed bars that told of the house the Christian god kept in every village. Where he stored his treasure.

  A rustle went through the raiding party, the sound of a whoop held back for stealth, and then they descended the lush green hill to take the town for their own.

  ~oOo~

  The raiders always surprised the Christians, taking the little places along their edges which no Christian king thought to defend, and moving inward from there, meeting with soldiers somewhere on the road to their great stone castles.

  Astrid, like many of her clan, found these kings and their kingdoms repugnant in every way. They left the poor at a distance, in broken huts too small to hold any life well, while they themselves sat behind high stone walls in massive stone mountains far too big for the life they held. It had been the same in Estland. They set out their poor as fodder to feed their enemies and distract them, then sent their shiny armies to meet them in the forest before their walls.

  But this time it was different. For a small village, unremarkable from all the others they’d ransacked over the years, this one was shockingly well guarded. The raiders hadn’t even made the Christian god’s treasure house, which was always at the center of every village, before guards in mail were on them, at least a score of them, fighting as if they themselves kept homes in the tiny huts.

  This king had learned the lessons of the kings before him, those who’d handed over vast cascades of their treasure to send the raiders away. This king had protected even his humble villagers. More likely, considering where they found the greatest concentration of soldiers, he had protected his god’s house, and the villagers were an afterthought, but no matter. There were strong soldiers ready to defend this place.

  She was glad. There was little satisfaction in taking a village when the hardest fight came from their smith, and most of their opponents fought with scythes and pitchforks. But a soldier, one trained to fight and armed to do it, that fed the fire in her belly.

  The guards near the village’s edge fought well and hard but were drastically outnumbered and fell quickly, and the raiders stormed through the town toward the center, killing any who would raise arms and marking good loot to return to after the residents had been cowed or killed.

  But when they arrived at the center, they found the treasure house all but surrounded by guards in full armor, their swords and shields at the ready.

  Vali and Leif called “HOLD!” nearly in unison, and Astrid moved to stand with them and with Brenna. They scanned the area. Except for the sounds of fear and suffering that they’d left in their wake, the moment was perfectly still.

  Without a word, the four of them—Vali, Brenna, Leif, and Astrid—knew that they were thinking the same thing, and they all nodded. Leif gestured with his hands, and the rest of them repeated his movement. The raiders, keeping their eyes turned on the guards and their ears turned behind them, began to move out into the center, spreading out their ranks—which was a weakened position should they need a shield wall, but it seemed they would not.

  The raiders had landed in their great skeids and left only the essential workers back to set up camp. Many score warriors and shieldmaidens had stormed the village, and none yet had been lost in this fight. The guards holding this house were outnumbered at least four to one. And they had their backs to a building, with nowhere to break away and regroup, now that the raiders had surrounded them. Their defensive position was terrible.

  It was as if their god were actually in the building at their backs, and they were making his last defense. Astrid wondered if he might be.

  The guards shifted warily as the raiders spread out but didn’t attack. Astrid found that strange; she would have attacked a force moving into position rather than waited for it to have taken that position.

  But then the door of the god’s house opened, and a man in a long dress stepped out. Their seer. This one seemed young. He held out his hands, his arms wide, making himself a perfect target. He began speaking in the Christian language.

  To Astrid, it was babble. She’d learned the Estlander language when she’d spent nearly a year in that land, but she would not learn the Christian words. Her disgust for these savage people, who kept their women like helpless children and fed their poor to their enemies, while they knelt to a god who claimed all power to himself and preferred sacrifices of shiny baubles to one of hot blood, knew no bounds, and the taste of their language burned her tongue. Leif had taken some words over the years, and Vali a few, too, but they seemed to understand this seer no better than she.

  At the moment her impatience for the standstill became critical, a spear went through the seer’s chest, and she didn’t have to look to know it was Vali’s. He roared as his strike sent the seer’s body back through the still-open doors, and the raiders charged forward.

  Astrid went for the nearest guard and swung her axe. He showed none of the surprise or hesitation so many of these Christian men showed when they faced a shieldmaiden, and he blocked her blow deftly. He was bigger than she and probably stronger, but she could use that against him. When he swung his own sword, narrower than a raider’s longsword and more pointed, she blocked him with her shield and swiped her axe low at the same time, cutting him across his legs.

  He wore armor head to toe, so her blow was not perfectly disabling, but her axe was hea
vy and sharp, and the metal around his calves dented deeply. The guard’s knees gave just enough to upset his next strike and force his head back as he regained his balance, and Astrid swung high, dragging her honed edge across his throat. When his blood gushed into her face, she closed her eyes and allowed herself a single heartbeat to savor the hot wash.

  Then the fierce shout of another shieldmaiden cut into her brain, and she turned and found more fight.

  ~oOo~

  They’d lost two shieldmaidens and two warriors to the fighting, and had seven whose injuries would keep them down until it was time to sail again. As raiders carried the dead and wounded back to their new camp, the rest of them, led by Vali and Leif, and Brenna and Astrid, went into the god’s house to see what was so precious that it had been heavily guarded.

  Nothing.

  Not even a golden cross on the wall. But for a wooden cross on the table at the back, the church was barren.

  “The floor,” Leif said, and Jaan and two others moved the table. They’d discovered that most of these houses had doors in the floor and dark holes underneath where they kept their best treasures. And bones. Many bones, in boxes. With more crosses.

  Such a strange people these were.

  The dark hole was empty, too, except for bones.

  They stood in a loose circle in the middle of a building they’d fought hard to take. A building utterly empty of anything worth taking. This village held nothing of value, yet it had been defended nearly as if it were at the doors of the castle itself.

  “I don’t understand,” Brenna said, her hands on her hips. “Why fight so hard for this?”

  “A trap.” Vali stalked to the door and looked out, an axe cocked in his hand. Vali fought unshielded, wielding two axes. He also fought bare-chested, as the Úlfhéðnar he was. His back and chest were streaked and smeared with blood and sweat.

  “There is no one,” he said at last and came back to them.

  “They could not know we’d landed.” Leif went to the hole in the floor and frowned into its depth. “Even a lookout couldn’t have brought soldiers to this place before us. They were already here. Guarding nothing.”

  “Waiting for us, then. They weren’t guarding. They were waiting,” Astrid offered.

  Jaan came to Astrid’s side. “But why?”

  She shrugged and stepped away from him. Her body was fired from the fight, and so was his. She didn’t rut with other women’s men, but she might tonight, with him, if she were not careful. Best to stay clear.

  “To take our measure and thin us out.” Brenna’s tone was decisive; she’d seen the sense of this baffling development. “Did any flee? The peasants? The soldiers?”

  Because they didn’t kill all they came upon, in the heat of the fight it was likely that some had fled the village. Brenna knew as much and didn’t wait for her question to be answered. “We’ve lost eleven fighters, and this small battle has given them more time to mount a force against us. This king was ready.”

  Leif nodded. “You’re right. We should return to camp and prepare to defend it.”

  ~oOo~

  The camp had the curious feel of defeat in victory. All the raiders were agitated. They’d taken the village and looted it to its rafters, but there was little good treasure in it, and no satisfaction. They’d taken a few slaves and left the rest with nothing but their wooden cross.

  And now they hurried to bolster a camp they’d only just staked. When they’d returned, Leif and Vali had explained the disappointment of the god’s house and their suspicions about the reason, and even the ransacking of the village had taken on a murky shade, as if they’d been made to fight for it and then allowed to have it, tricked into giving away too much of themselves in the bargain.

  It was a dangerous mood, and they were already bickering amongst each other. Full-out fighting might not be far behind.

  As the afternoon light began to deepen and make the green fields of this place glint gold, Astrid left the camp alone to find a tree to squat behind. She went with her axe and her dagger, and she kept her eyes and ears sharp for signs of scouts.

  A night attack would be unlikely; these woods were dense, too dense for even an army familiar with them to be mobile in deep dark, and there would be no moon tonight. But scouts—a scout, or a team of them, could take away crucial information. Astrid knew there would be some in the woods tonight, and she would love to find them and silence them.

  As she finished and resettled her breeches, she heard a rustle at a fair distance. Crouching low, unsheathing her dagger, she crept toward it. Within a few feet, she knew it could not be a scout—or it was the worst scout ever to hold the position—because he made no attempt at stealth. She did, however, sneaking forward until she saw the back of a raider behind a shaking bush.

  Just as she understood what the partial scene before her meant, a soft, heavy thud sounded. The raider reared up, clutching his head, and Astrid knew him at once: Vidar.

  An older raider, Vidar had once been sworn to Åke, and he had been among the last of Åke’s men to accede to Leif’s more temperate way of raiding. Vidar carved a line into his own chest to mark every kill, and his chest was covered with those marks. He had massive lusts for the spoils of victory.

  Now, he roared and picked up the rock he’d just been hit with, slamming it down on the body beneath his.

  Astrid came quickly around the bush and put her dagger to his throat before she had entirely understood the scene she’d come upon. Instinct had made her draw on her own clansman in defense of an enemy. A Christian.

  She almost backed off in shock at herself, but before she could, she understood the scene entirely.

  Beneath Vidar was a girl. A small girl. A child. A peasant, in tattered rags. Those rags had been rent from her body, and her bare skin was covered in blood.

  As it splashed onto her frail little belly and thighs, Astrid understood that it was not her blood, but Vidar’s. The little thing had opened his head with a rock—more than once, by the look of the blood.

  And he had bashed hers in with the same rock. Blood pulsed from a dent in her head, staining her long, matted, honey-brown hair.

  “Leif will take your head for this,” Astrid hissed in Vidar’s ear.

  “She hit me!” Vidar growled, then grunted as Astrid pushed the point of his blade into his skin until blood beaded up around it.

  “A child. You would claim that you were forced to defend yourself from a child? And why do you sit astride her naked body?”

  His only answer to that was a grunt. Then he threw his body backward and dislodged her. Spinning, he came to his feet and pulled his dagger. He hadn’t brought any better weapon. And his breeches were fastened, so he hadn’t yet unsheathed the weapon he’d meant to use.

  Astrid kipped up to her feet and faced him, taking her axe from her back.

  “If I’m to die, you’ll have to kill me, Astrid. I’ll die in a fight. I’ll not go back to kneel before the jarl for taking what should be mine to take! What other spoils are there here?” He sidestepped unsteadily; the girl’s blow with the rock had shaken his head some, it seemed.

  The little one had been a fighter. She might have been a shieldmaiden someday, if she’d been born to a people who knew women’s strength.

  Vidar swung, wildly, and Astrid dropped and took out his knee with the poll side of her axe. When he collapsed with a shout, landing on his knees, she broke his arm as well with another blow.

  “You will kneel, Vidar. And die a coward’s death.” One more blow, this to the head with the flat of her blade, and he fell unconscious.

  With a sigh, still keeping alert for scouts, Astrid bent to the work of dragging Vidar back to camp.

  She left the little body where it lay. Such a tattered, matted little thing would probably not be missed overmuch.

  “There is one among them…” the soldier’s words faded away. “Your Highness, he cannot be born of man.”

  Leofric chuckled, but his brother shot hi
m a corrective glance, then returned his attention to the young man—a boy, truly—whose job it had been to observe the barbarians and return. The alarm had gone out long before he’d made it through the forest, and Eadric and Leofric, as well as Dunstan and the other lords at court, had their base set up well outside the castle walls. They had no intention of letting the barbarians within an arrow’s distance of the bailey, but they were willing to let them encamp and take their leisure.

  “He cannot be born of any other, lad,” Eadric said. “He might be no better than a beast, but we know he cannot be one. Why would you think him so fearsome?”

  “He is…” Again, the young soldier’s words failed, and he instead threw his arms up, high and wide, as if he were describing a mountain. “And he wore no armor! Arrows bounced from his bare chest, and swords sparked and glanced away! He roared like a lion! And he was not all! Many giant men—and women, Your Highness! There were women with paint on their faces, and they shrieked and flew over the soldiers and slashed them to bits! Their swords go through armor like through air!”