Glen Cook - The Fire In His Hands

Hjarlma was waiting. They could see his sentries from the mountain.

Bragi looked down only long enough to assure himself that Hjarlma had indulged in no destruction.

His mother’s witchcraft was held in great dread.

He did not understand why. She was as compassionate, understanding and loving a woman as any he knew.

Slipping and sliding, they descended to a vale where, in summer, Draukenbring’s cattle grazed. They then traveled by wood and ravine toward the longhouse. They halted in the steading’s woodlot, a hundred yards from the nearest outbuilding. There they awaited darkness and grew miserably cold.

The inactivity told on Ragnar most. He got stiff.

Bragi worried. His father had grown so pale...

His mind remained a whirl of hope and despair. Ragnar believed he was dying. Yet he went on and on and on, apparently driven by pure will.

It darkened. Ragnar said, “Bragi, the smokehouse. In the middle of the floor, under the sawdust. A metal ring. Pull up on it. The tunnel leads to the house. Don’t waste time. I’ll send Soren in a minute.”

Sword ready, Bragi ran to the smokehouse, stirred through greasy sawdust.

The ring was the handle of a trapdoor. Beneath, a ladder descended into a tunnel. He shook his head. He had known nothing about it. Ragnar had secrets he kept even from his own. He should have been called Fox, not Wolf.

Soren slipped into the smokehouse. Bragi explained. Then Haaken, Sigurd and Sturla followed. But Ragnar did not come. Sturla brought the Wolf’s final instructions.

The tunnel was low and dark. Once Bragi placed a hand onto something furry that squealed and wriggled away. He was to remember that passage as the worst of the homeward journey.

The tunnel ended behind the wall of the ale cellar, its head masked by a huge keg that had to be rolled aside. It was a keg Ragnar had always refused to tap, claiming he was saving it for a special occasion.

The cellar stair led up to a larder where vegetables and meats hung from beams, out of the reach of rodents. Bragi crept up. Someone, cursing, entered the room over his head. He froze.

The abuse was directed at Bragi’s mother, Helga. She was not cooperating with Hjarlma’s men. They, after the hardships they had faced in the forests, were put out because she refused to do their cooking.

Bragi listened closely. His mother’s voice betrayed no fear. But nothing ever disturbed her visibly. She was always the same sedate, gracious, sometimes imperious lady. Before outsiders.

Even with the family she seldom showed anything but tenderness and love.

“Banditry doesn’t become you, Snorri. A civilized man, even in the house of his enemy, behaves courteously. Would Ragnar plunder Hjarlma?” She was overhead now.

Bragi could not repress a grin. Damned right Ragnar would plunder Hjarlma. Down to the last cracked iron pot. But Snorri grumbled an apology and stamped away.

The trap rose while the doeskin larder curtain still swayed from Snorri’s passage. “You can come up,” Helga whispered. “Be quick. You’ve only got a minute.”

“How’d you know?”

“Ssh. Hurry up. Hjarlma, Bjorn and three others are by the big fireplace. They’ve been drinking and grumbling because your father has taken so long.” Her face darkened when Haaken closed the trap. Bragi had watched her hope die by degrees as each man came up. “Three more are sleeping in the loft. Hjarlma sent the rest out to look for your camp. He expects you to come in just before dawn.”

The others prepared to charge. She touched Bragi, then Haaken. “Be careful. Don’t lose me everything.”

Helga was rare in many ways, not the least of which was that she had borne only one child in a land where women were always pregnant.

She held Bragi a moment. “Did he die well?”

He hated the misdirection. “Stabbed in the back. By Bjorn.”

Emotion distorted her features momentarily. And in that instant Bragi glimpsed what others feared. The fires of Hell shone through her eyes.

“Go!” she ordered.

Heart pounding, Bragi led the charge. Fifteen feet separated him from his enemies. Three rebels had no chance to defend themselves. But Hjarlma was as quick as death and Bjorn only a split second slower. The Thane rose like a killer whale from the deeps, dumped a table in Bragi’s path, hurled himself to where Ragnar’s battle trophies hung. He seized an axe.

Regaining his feet, Bragi realized that the surprise was spent. Hjarlma and Bjorn were ready to fight. Haaken, Sigurd and Soren were already in the loft. That left only himself and Sturla Ormsson, a man well past his prime, to face two of Trolledyngja’s most wicked fighters.

“The cub’s as mad as his sire,” Hjarlma observed, turning a swordstroke with ease. “Don’t get yourself killed, boy. Inger would never forgive me.” His remark was a sad commentary on the nature of Man. Had the Old King not died unexpectedly, Hjarlma would have become Bragi’s father-in-law. The arrangements had been made last summer.

Don’t think, Bragi told himself. Don’t listen. Old Sven and his father had beaten those lessons into him with blunted swords. Don’t talk back. Either remain absolutely silent or, as Ragnar did, bellow a lot.

Hjarlma knew Ragnar’s style well. They had fought side by side too many times. He handled it easily in the Wolf’s son.

Bragi entertained no illusions. The Thane was bigger, stronger, craftier and had far more experience than he. His sole goal became to survive till Haaken had finished in the loft.

Sturla had the same idea, but Bjorn was too quick for him. The traitor’s blade broke through his guard. He staggered back.

Two pairs of ice-blue eyes stared into Bragi’s own.

“Kill the pup,” Bjorn growled. His fear was plain to hear.

As stately as one of the caravels the longships pursued down the southern coasts, Helga glided between them.

“Stand aside, witch woman.”

Helga locked gazes with the Thane. Her lips moved without speaking Hjarlma did not back down, but neither did he press. She turned to Bjorn. The traitor went pale, could not meet her terrible eyes.

Haaken jumped from the loft, snatched a spear from a far wall. Soren and Sigurd came down by the ladder, but nearly as fast.

“Time has run out,” Hjarlma observed laconically. “We have to go.” He directed Bjorn to the door. “Should’ve expected them to slip the picket.” He whipped his axe past Helga, struck the sword from Bragi’s hand, creased the youth’s cheek on the backstroke. “Be more civil when I return, boy. Or be gone.”

Bragi sighed as the wings of death withdrew. Hjarlma had done all he dared because of old friendship.

The fear of Ragnar haunted Bjorn’s eyes throughout the encounter. He kept looking round as if expecting the Wolf to materialize out of fireplace smoke. He was eager to flee. He and Hjarlma plunged into the night, where the snow had begun to fall again.

Helga started tending Bragi’s cheek and berating him for not having killed Bjorn.

“Bjorn hasn’t escaped the storm yet,” Bragi told her.

Haaken, Soren and Sigurd lingered near the doorway. They kept it open a crack. The women, children and old folks of the stead, who had done their best to remain invisible during the skirmish, tended Sturla or wept softly for those who had not returned.

There was no joy in Ragnar’s longhouse, only the numbness that follows disaster.

Draukenbring had come to the end of its years, but the realization of that fact had not yet struck home. The survivors faced uprooting, diaspora and persecution by the Pretender’s adherents.

The falling snow muted the cries and clanging of weapons, but not completely. “There,” Bragi told his mother. One of his father’s howling war cries had torn the belly out of the night.