God's Eye (The Northwomen Sagas #1)

by Susan Fanetti

  She found that the name fit comfortably now.

  The cart driver and his boy collected the riderless horses and led them off into the deeper woods. They would wait for the raiders’ return.

  They all awaited the scouts’ return.

  Leif and Hans were first back, bringing their horses nearly face to face with Brenna and Orm’s.

  “No sign of the patrol. All is quiet eastward.”

  Waiting for Vali and Bjarke to return, Brenna felt a tightness in her chest that had nothing to do with her injury. Each breath, each heartbeat seemed an infinity.

  And then she saw him, and she was dizzy with relief. He rode up, wearing the heavy scowl and snarl that was his battle face, but it softened into a smile as he pulled up his horse. “The patrol was three. We came up behind, and Bjarke took all three down before they could turn.” He reached over and punched the man’s arm. “I will tell that story all my days, my friend.”

  Bjarke grinned shyly and then turned, headed toward the other archers. When the four were together, they nodded at the leaders and rode off. They would ride to the woods, staying mounted for the superior coverage that height would offer.

  It was time. Leif and Vali sent the teams off on foot, then took their positions at the head of the line of riders. Again, they put themselves to either side of Brenna, and Orm lagged back to the second row. Vali had shed his tunic, and his massive chest rippled with readiness.

  No one spoke as they came onto the road and approached the castle gates. Those who had shields pulled them forward. Brenna found strength in that, too, in the familiar and secure heft of her shield.

  The gates creaked open, pushed by four men, and a force came through on foot. One rider, in splendid armor, led them all. Brenna scanned the top of the wall for archers but saw none. She did not for a moment think that they had no archers to guard the wall, only that they had been, as planned, caught unprepared. Their task would be to keep the archers from rising to the top of the wall—that was part of the plan for the villagers.

  The sole rider spoke, but Brenna’s struggles with the Estlander language impeded her full understanding. She thought she heard the word tulid, which she knew was a form of ‘come,’ and his voice had lifted at the end, as for a question, so she guessed he’d asked why they had come.

  Leif gestured subtly with one hand, and to her right, between her and Leif, a spear flew past her head. It sank into the mounted soldier’s throat.

  They had not come to talk.

  As the soldier fell, the raiders jumped from their horses and sent them away from the fight. Brenna turned Freya and gave her a sharp slap on the rump, sending her off with a loud, strident Ha! The mare ran swiftly with her fellows. In this way, they saved the resource of the horses and ensured that they would not be obstacles in the battle. A horse made good transportation but a terrible weapon.

  Then Brenna pulled her sword forward and charged into the fight.

  They drove the soldiers quickly back into the castle grounds, and as the raiders cleared the gate, Brenna saw that the villagers were already teeming over the rear wall, jumping onto the straw-covered ground bearing pitchforks and tree limbs, hammers, shovels—the tools of their lives now purposed as weapons for the fight of their lives.

  The archers stayed atop the wall and fired down and across the grounds. On either side, Astrid and Harald brought their teams over the walls, all of it timed as if the gods orchestrated from above.

  Brenna had no time to look long at the chaos beyond; she was caught in the roiling knot of raiders and soldiers. There was no chance to form a shield wall, no way to gather into a single force. So she focused on the fight before her, using both sword and shield as weapons and both as defense, in the way of her training, a training that was so ingrained in her bones that she needed not think at all. She needed only see, and in battle her vision opened wide and saw all.

  She saw that Vali never left her side. Always at her left was his massive, unshielded body, his deep, furious, feral battle cry. Leif was not far, either. In fact, each time she made a move toward the outside of the scrum, she found herself back in the center, surrounded by men she knew. They were managing her, protecting her, and they were stealing her kills as well, taking over every time she made a strike, and blocking strikes aimed at her.

  But she fought best from the edges. Fired by a fresh new anger, this at her friends, Brenna screamed and jumped forward, feinting around Vali and past Orm. As she vied with their enemies, she found a way clear of her friends’ stifling protection, driving her sword into the soft underarm of a soldier and pushing him through to clear her way.

  When she got into the grounds—no less chaotic but slightly looser—before she could pull her sword free, Vali yelled, “SHIELD UP!”

  Instinctively, not knowing if he called for her, she threw her shield up high, and an arrow came through it, slicing into her arm.

  She yanked her sword from the soldier and brought it around as he fell, striking him across the back of the neck. Then she slammed her shield on his body and broke the arrow free of it.

  Vali grabbed her. “You stay with me!” He shook her with each word, and his eyes were wild in his blood-streaked face.

  “You hold me back and yourself, too! Let me fight!” Brenna caught sight of a soldier charging up behind Vali, and she bashed her husband hard with her shield, forcing him to the side, then blocked the strike with the same shield as it came down where he would have been. The blast of impact made her wounded arm shriek, the first pain she’d felt in the fight, but she pulled her shield away, lifting up as she yanked, throwing the soldier’s sword arm back. Then she spun and took his legs out with a slice of her sword across the backs of his thighs.

  Crippled, he fell oddly, to his knees and then backward. His helm fell off as he landed hard, and Brenna saw a face she knew. It had been obscured by his helm and nose plate when she’d last seen him, but she would know his eyes anywhere—pale brown like the color of mead.

  The soldier who’d saved her in the woods. One of those who had beset the sledge and caused her to give birth to her son too early. Who had caused his death.

  He recognized her, too. Those eyes she knew went wide. “Halasta minu!”

  She knew those words. He asked for mercy.

  Leaning close so that he would hear her whisper even in the din of war, she growled low, “Ei! Kõik surnud!”

  When she saw that he’d heard and comprehended her, she brought her sword down and drove it into his chest.

  She stood and looked for the next fight, coming face to face with her husband. They stared at each other, and then he looked down at her latest kill. When his eyes returned to hers, they were full of knowing.

  Then he nodded, and they returned to the fight.

  ~oOo~

  The plan had worked almost perfectly. The back of Harald’s team had been caught as they’d come over the wall, and they had lost six to those of Ivan’s archers who had made their posts. Eleven of the raiders’ villager friends had been lost in all, and two more raiders. Quite a few of Ivan’s villagers had perished as well, but they did not yet have a count. Brenna wished that she knew what Olga’s brothers looked like, or her father. She hoped that they lived.

  Now, while they sorted their dead from the soldiers and killed any soldiers who yet breathed, Leif and Vali had one man who had worn more decorative armor than the others tied to a hitching post. He was a leader of some sort.

  Ivan had had few noble attendants and a remarkably small army. It had taken an unabashed, arrogant courage to have mounted any attack on the raiders. He’d managed to do real damage, and would have crippled them, possibly beaten them, if he had been prepared for their retaliation.

  Now, though, his holding was theirs, as were all his resources—sparse though they were, his livestock and supplies would help to restock and rebuild the burned village. And, if the villagers agreed, it was Leif’s thought to bring the two villages together, reuniting families and consolidat
ing resources.

  But first, they wanted Prince Ivan, who seemed to have slithered away.

  Vali had his dagger in his hand and was peeling the skin from the last living soldier’s arm. At each pause in his screams, Vali asked him the same question: “Kus on prints?”

  “Ma ei tea! Ma ei tea!” the man wailed, screaming it when Vali cut into him again. MA EI TEA!”

  I don’t know.

  When Vali moved from the soldier’s arm, which now showed bright red muscle from wrist to elbow, and instead pushed the point of his dagger lightly into his belly, he begged, “Peatuge! Palun peatuge!”

  Stop.

  Vali stopped and asked again, “Kus on prints?”

  “Tunnel. All köök.”

  Vali looked up at Leif and then at Brenna. They had all understood that there was a tunnel under the kitchen. ‘Kitchen’ was one of the first Estlander words Brenna had learned.

  Then he turned to Orm. “Keep him alive. We will return. If not with the prince, then”—he pointed his dagger at the soldier—“this one’s suffering is not at its end.”

  Leif, Vali, and Brenna went into the castle and located the kitchen. A portly old woman was still there, hiding under the table. Leif crouched down and led her gently out. “Tunnel?” he asked, his voice kind and soothing.

  She pointed at the enormous fireplace. At its side, behind the wood ring, they found a door. It led to a dark, narrow, set of stone steps. Vali grabbed a torch from the wall, and they descended.

  They found the prince wedged into a hole carved into the tunnel wall. He had not fixed the door of it properly, because his bulk would not allow the door to close completely.

  Brenna thought that if all the princes of Estland were like the two they had fought—a liar and a coward—then this country deserved to be overrun by raiders. These nobles fought their wars on the backs of peasants while they hid in their castles.

  Vali dragged Ivan out by the scruff of his neck. The fat man sputtered and babbled, but Vali punched him hard in the face and silenced him well and truly. Then he heaved the round mass onto his shoulder, hunkered down even lower in the low-ceilinged space, and they turned and went back up into the castle and then out onto the grounds.

  They wanted an audience for Prince Ivan’s demise.

  Seeing that Vali bore the prince, Orm opened the soldier’s throat and then untied him from the hitching post, letting his body fall to the bloody straw.

  Vali bent over and dropped the unconscious body of the prince onto the straw, into the pool of his last soldier’s blood. Then he slapped him about the face and head until the man roused.

  As the prince sat up, cowering and again babbling, Vali spoke over him in the Estland tongue. He spoke loudly, to the Prince and to everyone else as well. Brenna didn’t understand all of what he said, but she picked up a few words, and she understood his body language, so she thought she grasped enough.

  He was telling the prince to look at what his mistake had wrought, and that in his greed he had only succeeded in making the enemy that was the end of him and all he had. He was telling the people, she thought, that they were free now to earn their way fairly, and that they could join the villages together.

  Then he dragged Ivan to his feet, said something else, more quietly, that Brenna did not understand at all, and buried his axe in the prince’s face.

  ~oOo~

  They brought their dead back on the cart. By the time the raiders crossed through the gates they had left that morning, the night was dark and cold. The bright of a nearly-full moon had lit their way safely, however, and the chill did not harden into frost.

  The gods were with them on this day and night. Brenna would have rather they had been with them on the night of her son’s birth, but she was grateful for their aid nonetheless.

  She ached badly everywhere. Her chest felt full of spikes. Her lower back and abdomen cramped hotly. Her arm, the new gash as yet unattended, had gone stiff long before. If Freya had not been such a steady mount, and if their mutual trust had not been so complete, Brenna might have had trouble controlling her.

  When Vali helped her from the saddle, she could not suppress a sharp groan.

  He scowled. “To bed with you. Right now. I’ll see to Freya, and then I will be with you.”

  She did not argue.

  She did, however, go to Olga, who had run from the castle upon their return. “We bring you gifts, my friend,” she said and took Olga by the hand.

  In the middle of the busy mass of dismounting raiders were two young men, dressed in coarse woolens too light for the cold, but under furs offered to them by new friends.

  Olga’s brothers. All that survived of her family. Both were young men, too young to be bearded but old enough to fight. Their father had not survived the raid. Their mother was long dead.

  When she saw them, Olga ran and grabbed them both, sobbing and clutching them to her. Feeling that she intruded to be witness to such a private moment, Brenna turned and went into the castle.

  The long walk up the dark stairs to her chamber would, she believed, be the hardest part of this day.

  ~oOo~

  It was long before Vali opened the door to their room, but Brenna had not managed to do much more than remove her boots. She sat by the fire, feeling weary and sore, and listened to the roars and laughter of her friends below, celebrating their victory and expending what remained of their ferocity.

  She was out of temper. She had sought vengeance, and she had found it. But her soul was not appeased. Vengeance had not brought her son back. Or their friends.

  Vali came and crouched at her side. For the first time, he saw the slice in her tunic and the blood that stained it. He lifted her arm. “You’re hurt.”

  Her arm ached and was stiff, but it was a pain she knew. Too much time had passed for it to be closed, so she would scar, but otherwise, it needed only to be cleaned and covered. She pulled her arm from his searching grasp. “Not badly. The arrow through my shield caught only meat.”

  “It needs to be cleaned and wrapped.”

  “And it will be. I needed some time to rest first.”

  At that, he surprised her with a smile. “I’m glad you’re not abed. The women are bringing a bath to us.”

  Tired as she was, a bath sounded wonderful, and she smiled, setting aside her turbulent thoughts and dark spirits. “I would like that.”

  He brushed back the hair that had fallen from her braids. “They drink in celebration below, telling already the story of the God’s-Eye, who whispered an incantation into her enemy’s ear before she cleaved his head away, and who rose up and saved Vali Storm-Wolf with her strong shield arm, as if Odin himself had given her his strength.”

  “You saved me as well. You would have saved me from all the fight if I had let you.”

  “I am not threatened by my wife’s greatness. They tell my story, too. And yes, I would have, and it would have gotten me killed, I think, to have kept you stifled.”

  She took his hand from her hair and held it. “We save each other.”

  “My shieldmaiden. We are destined.” He pulled her hand to his mouth and kissed it.

  A knock on the door heralded the coming of the tub and hot water. Vali stood and called, “Come!” As the women came in, he smiled down at Brenna. “Now I ask, humbly, will you let me tend to you tonight? I would wash you and ease your aches, and I would hold you tight while we sleep.”

  The thought of it made tears spring up in Brenna’s eyes. She blinked them away before they could fall.

  “You save me every day,” she whispered.

  As Brenna still slept in the dawn of an early summer morning, Vali lay on his side behind her and watched the subtle lift of her shoulders with each deep, peaceful breath. Her long, fair hair, its waves wild from sleep and from their tumble the night before, trailed over his arm, and he pressed his face into the flax and breathed deep.

  He almost always woke before she did, and over the past quiet weeks, he had take
n up this waking habit: to lie quietly and watch his wife. To bask in the peace of his love. The peace was hard won and not yet assured, but the love had come surprisingly easy.

  After they’d defeated Prince Ivan and claimed his lands, Prince Toomas had sent an envoy; he’d wanted to meet. They had made a peace between them, with Toomas offering resources and assistance in rebuilding the village. He had even offered a daughter in marriage to Leif, but Leif, with no intention of settling here, had declined. Toomas had been insulted, and negotiations had been briefly tense, but when the parties bid each other farewell, a peace was in place.