God's Eye (The Northwomen Sagas #1)

by Susan Fanetti

  Hurt, then. Attacked? In the castle?

  Brenna. Where was Brenna?

  He stood at once, and then fell to his knees when the floor pitched sharply under him. With a deep breath and formidable will, he found his feet and stood, wide-legged, until the room settled. As he searched for steadiness, he tried to remember.

  Åke was here. Raiders. Calder and Eivind. They’d had a feast. Åke had given them his blessing.

  Leif. Leif had attacked him. His friend. He had swung his axe; he must have hit him with the poll side.

  And now Brenna was not with him.

  “BRENNA!” he shouted and stormed to the door, slamming into the wall when the room slanted again. “BRENNA!”

  The door opened and Orm came through, followed by Olga. Even with his double vision, Vali could see that they both looked terrible. Orm had a stitched gash through his cheek, from the bridge of his nose to his jaw, cutting through his grey beard. Olga’s lips were split, and she looked as though she hadn’t slept in days.

  Orm took his arm. “Vali, it is good that you return to us. But sit and rest. There is nothing you can do in this moment.”

  The horror in Orm’s words was so vast that Vali weakened and let the old man lead him back to his bed. “Where is Brenna?”

  “You have been two days away. Let Olga tend to you, and then I will tell you all. We need you well, Vali Storm-Wolf.”

  Olga pushed him to lie back, but he caught her hands in his. “Olga. I need Brenna. Where is she?”

  She was shaking. Tears filled her brown eyes and brimmed over. “They took her. I am sorry. I did not know…I did not think he—”

  “He? Leif? Leif took her?” It made no sense. When he could get no answers from the crying woman, he threw her to the side and sat up again, turning on Orm. “Tell me NOW!”

  “Åke is gone. His sworn men are gone, even those who were with us this winter—those who survived. Leif was with them. Those who resisted Åke’s will are dead, or were left for dead. We are only seven raiders here now, all of us wounded. We found you bound in the stable after it was over.”

  His head pounded and scattered his still-unclear thoughts. It was much like what he’d feared, and yet he could not make sense. “Where is my WIFE?”

  “I was there, lying on the ground. They took me for dead, and so I saw. Åke took her, Vali. She was unconscious, beaten, and bound. Calder threw her over a horse and rode off with her.” Orm paused and took a long breath. “The ships are gone. She is gone. We are only seven now, none of us whole.”

  Vali bellowed in shock and rage. And grief. No, not grief. He would not allow grief to have sway in his heart. Grief was defeat, and he would not be defeated. He would get her back. And he would kill everyone who had conspired to take her from him.

  Leif, whom he had trusted completely, would go first. He would go slow and hard.

  “Who is left?”

  “You and I. Dan. Harald. Bjarke. Knut. And Astrid.”

  “Astrid and Knut are sworn to Åke.”

  “They were. They resisted his intent to destroy us, and he left them for dead.”

  Vali stood up and this time shoved the woozy disorientation away with all of his will. “We shall follow them.”

  Orm shook his head. “Your head is not yet clear, Vali. There are no ships.”

  “The village has five fishing boats. Surely they can spare one or two.”

  “And you know that the open sea would break them apart like kindling sticks. We cannot follow, not until we can build a seaworthy vessel, and that will be months.”

  “NO! NO! THIS CANNOT BE!” What would Åke do to the shieldmaiden who had defied him and dared to make a life beyond his reach? The God’s-Eye, whom he considered his own gift from the gods?

  Vali’s heart raced as if it meant to leave his chest completely. He felt sick at his stomach and consumed by a rage so powerful in its impotence that it drove him to his knees. “BRENNA!”

  ~oOo~

  The castle was eerily quiet with no one else left dwelling in its cavernous depths. Even the raiders who had survived had begun to move to the village.

  Alone in any way that mattered, Vali stood in the grounds and hacked at the log that would make the keel of his ship.

  He had never built a ship or even worked much wood. He understood the way ships worked on the water, and he knew their composition from stem to stern, but he had never considered why they worked as they did or were composed as they were.

  But his father had been a smith, and he had been apprenticed to him in a long-ago life. He had grown up among craftsmen. And he had the will. It would be enough. He would build a ship and sail back to Geitland, even if he would sail alone.

  Then he would kill. And then he would collect his wife and bring her home.

  Five days had passed since he had woken to find his life and love stolen from him, a week since he had lost her. He felt some lingering disorientation when he turned too quickly, and the throbbing ache at the base of his skull had not left him—but he thought that throb was rage more than wound.

  Rage consumed him, waking or sleeping. He could barely speak for the way his fury had made his body taut. Orm, Dan, and the others had tried to engage him in talks and plans, but he cared about nothing but building his ship, finding his wife, and taking his revenge.

  Dan and Astrid rode through the gates at a gallop, and Vali stopped his work and his black thoughts and watched them ride up. There was trouble; he could see it on their faces, and he didn’t bother to ask.

  Astrid spoke, using the blended tongue that they had all picked up, their two languages combined, even when clansmen spoke together. Even Brenna had finally become competent in their communication. “Toomas rides for us. A large mounted force.”

  “Four score at my count,” Dan added.

  An army of eighty. Vali sighed, not sure that he cared to fight. His bloodlust was turned a different way.

  “We have a peace!” Astrid growled.

  “He must have learned that we are weakened beyond resistance.” Vali swung his axe down and buried it in one of the supports for the beam he’d been hewing. “He made peace with a force that had bested two of his fellows. We are no longer that force.”

  “They ride for the village, Vali.” Dan gave him a weighty stare.

  The village, where his half-built house stood. Where he meant to return with his wife and build a life. Where the friends he had left dwelt.

  “Then we fight.”

  ~oOo~

  Vali pulled his axe through the neck of a soldier and watched him drop. The road was piled deep with bodies, and the village burned around him, buildings so new the sap in the wood crackled in the flames that destroyed them.

  It was another total loss, and the bodies at his feet wore the weave of village linen more than the armor of Toomas’s soldiers.

  The soldiers slew indiscriminately, taking unarmed women and children as quickly as they took the men who challenged them. Amidst the clang and grunt of combat, Vali heard Astrid’s warrior shriek, and the echo of it in the few women who had trained with her.

  As he sought his next target, he caught sight of young Nigul, who had only ten years behind him, dangling from the point of a soldier’s blade. As he watched, a short iron dagger dropped from the boy’s hand. He had tried to fight. Vali roared and threw his axe, leaping after it. When it sank into the soldier’s blade arm, Vali was there. He grabbed it, yanked it back, knocked the soldier’s helm off with his free hand, and buried his axe in his head.

  Nigul, on the ground with the sword through his chest, gurgled and coughed as blood bubbled from his lips and down his chin.

  Vali crouched at the boy’s side. “It is a great thing to die in battle. You are young to be so honored to sit with the gods in Valhalla. Odin and Thor will be impressed with you, boy.”

  When the light of life dimmed from his eyes, Nigul was smiling.

  Vali sensed movement behind him and, still in a crouch, spun and swung
his axe. It buried easily in the belly of a soldier whose armor had broken, and when his entrails began to spill out, Vali dug deep and pulled the mass out with his hands.

  He stood and spent a moment to survey what was left of the home he’d chosen. His half-built house was gone, not even enough left to feed the flames that had taken it. No building was left unburned. They were overmatched, two soldiers or more still fighting for every villager.

  And then a soldier blew a horn. Vali didn’t know their signals, but the soldiers in the village did not stop their fighting, so it was not a call to pull back.

  He thought it might well have been a call for another wave. If that were true, it would be an effective means to flatten them completely. They wouldn’t even have to dismount.

  These soldiers had dismounted, and their surviving horses had massed, as if trained to do so, at the edge of the village. About half of the beasts were dead.

  He thought that there were enough living beasts to mount all that remained of his clan and his friends.

  They could hold the castle. Its walls were high and solid, and early on they had reinforced it against a possible siege. At least it would give them time to rest and regroup. To make a plan.

  “TO THE HORSES! BACK TO THE CASTLE!” he shouted, running through the village. “THE HORSES! RETREAT!”

  A familiar voice screamed at his side, and Vali turned toward it, changing his direction without thinking. Olga held a raider’s shield in her hands, and she struggled against a soldier swinging a shortsword. She had no other weapon but the shield, but she was blocking his swings well.

  Then the shield split in two. As the soldier swung for a killing blow, Vali charged and brought his axe in an upward arc, cleaving the soldier’s arm at the elbow. He howled as his blade and forearm fell to the ground. Vali swung again, blood spraying from his axe, and opened the soldier’s chest.

  Olga stared, wide-eyed, as if the splitting of the shield had split her sense and her courage as well. “Come!” he shouted and grabbed her arm. When he pulled, she fell forward like a statue. So he picked her up and heaved her over his shoulder.

  Then he ran for the horses, yelling for his friends to follow.

  ~oOo~

  The soldiers chased after them for a long way, taking yet more of them down. Then they pulled back. When the survivors cleared and closed the castle gates, they were only twelve: five raiders and seven Estlanders.

  Olga was among them, because Vali had carried her on his horse.

  Her brothers were not.

  She had not yet spoken a word. She might not have even blinked. Vali cast his mind’s eye back and tried to see in the fray where the young men had been. He had seen them fighting.

  He had seen them near where he’d collected Olga. He had seen the older of them, Anton, wielding the shield that had broken in Olga’s hold.

  “Olga.” He put his bloodied hand on her pale cheek. “I am sorry.”

  She didn’t acknowledge him at all. She stood as if made of stone. But they needed their healer.

  “Olga. You are needed. There will be time later for grief. Now is for action.”

  After another long moment in which Vali asserted patience over his battle-manic mind, she blinked and looked up at him. “I have no one.”

  “Untrue. You have friends. Friends in need. Stay with us. Do not give up.”

  “Leif did this. He—he made this possible.”

  “And he will pay. Help me, and I promise that he will pay.”

  She nodded and shook herself briskly. Then she stalked off to tend to the wounded.

  ~oOo~

  “We have no other choice.” Vali leaned forward, his arms on the table. Seated with him were the sum total of the survivors, who had once numbered nearly two hundred, raiders and villagers together. Of the raiders, besides Vali himself: Orm, Bjarke, Astrid, Harald. Of the villagers: Olga, Jaan, Georg, Hans, Jakob, Anna, and Eha. Four women and eight men.

  “We will die. All of us. Drowned in Ægir’s drunken sea.” Orm huffed and slammed his cup on the scarred wood.

  “We die on the sea, or we die here.”

  “Fleeing or fighting. I would fight and join my friends and ancestors in Valhalla. My time is long past already.”

  “You have known me many years, Orm. Do you think I would flee? I mean to fetch my wife and kill all those who called us clan and yet left us to this fate.”

  “Vali, do you not see? Your vengeance is good and just, but an Estlander fishing boat is not built for the open sea. We will capsize at the first stiff breeze. We will be swimming among twigs if it storms.”

  “Then we will ask the gods to keep us. As you say, our purpose is good and just. I am named for Odin’s son, born to wreak the Allfather’s vengeance. I go to save the shieldmaiden who bears his given eye. Do you not think he would ease our way?”

  Vali doubted that Brenna’s eye bore any mystical import. But her legend said it did, and he knew that Orm and the other raiders believed it. And he was named for Vali, Odin’s son, who, in his first day of life, had avenged his brother Baldur’s death, as he had been birthed to do. He certainly believed that Odin would see this need for vengeance and know it right.

  “The Allfather let Brenna be taken and us all betrayed.”

  “We will make a sacrifice before we go. Odin will not abandon us. He will not.”

  Jaan spoke up. “One of the boats was my uncle’s. It is sturdy for a fishing boat, and with the women’s help, I can craft a sail for it. I need two days, and the beam outside.”

  The beam that had been meant for the longship that would take Vali back to Brenna. It was fitting that it should be dismantled to be a mast for a wee boat that would have the same purpose. He nodded.

  “Even if Toomas makes a siege, we can hold for that long. Most of you at this table would leave your home to sail with us. All of us, I think, call this home now. I make no claim on you. If you would stay and fight, or try to work a peace, or surrender, I understand. But I sail back for my wife. Someday, she and I will return and pick up the life we had begun here.”

  “That life is dead now,” Olga interrupted. “There is nothing left but ash and bone. None of us have anything left here. I will sail with you. My older brother traveled far in his life and had many adventures. I thought his life was the dangerous one. But it was full. Mine has been empty, and yet I have lost what little I had.”

  “I think we all should sail,” Jaan added. “The voyage has a better chance with more hands to row in still winds, and we are not so many that we would overwhelm the boat, even with supplies. Olga is right. None of us have anything left here. We are all penniless orphans.”

  Vali turned to Orm. “What do you say, old man?”

  Orm sighed. “The offering must be great.”

  “And it shall be.” Vali knew what the offering must be.

  ~oOo~

  Two days later, while Toomas’s men were camped outside the walls, Vali led Freya onto the grounds. She was a beautiful mare, her coat a rich gold, her creamy mane so long and flowing that it had sometimes tangled in the reins when Brenna had given her her head and let her run.

  The mast and sail were ready, and the cart of supplies was loaded. Vali and Orm had ridden out to parley with Toomas’s captain, and they would be free to leave the castle and travel to the coast, abandoning all the holdings to Toomas’s control.

  The twelve were ready to go. Vali knew that they most likely would die on the open water. One storm would break them.

  So they needed the gods’ help.

  While the last of his people stood in an arc, their posture and expressions serious, Vali led his wife’s beloved horse to the middle. The mare nickered quietly and nosed at his side, seeking, he knew, a treat. He rubbed her nose.

  To him, a horse was transportation. He treated his mounts well because he wanted them strong and healthy and steady, to do the job they were meant to do and to do it well. He had never thought to bond with a beast. But his wife had. She liked
animals better than she liked people, and she loved this mare.

  It was the greatest offering he could think to make. Freya represented, to him and, he thought, to Brenna, their life here. The freedom and peace they had fought for and nearly won.

  He unsheathed Brenna’s sword. Holding it up so that the sun shone on the blade and made it glint, he raised his voice and said, “Odin, father of Vali, born for vengeance. Frigg, great mother. Thor, god of war and storm. I am Vali Storm-Wolf, one of the Úlfhéðnar, and I beseech you. Accept this offering and guide us safely over the sea. Our purpose is good and true.”