The Storm God's Gift (Ulfrik Ormsson's Saga Book 5)

by Jerry Autieri

  Chapter 11

  In the depth of the night when crickets chirped and owls called, Ulfrik awoke to a flaming, body-encompassing pain. He cried out, forgetting the admonition to make no sound. A thousand needles sewed agony up both of his legs. Every beat of his heart pulsed suffering into his limbs. His head and eyes throbbed, and he felt as though wire had been wound tight over his brows.

  He was still stuck in the mud and buried beneath branches, and he grunted as he struggled against the haphazard pile. Pine needles fell into his eyes and mouth and he cursed, then stopped for fear of drawing wolves to himself. Despite the cloak he was cold. The damp of the earth seeped up through his mail into his body, which absorbed it like a rag left in a puddle. In this moment of clarity, he realized Einar and Hogni were dead. All twenty of his men were burned alive, just as Throst had promised. Hadn’t the woman named Audhild confirmed it for him? He had smelled the smoke of the burning hall.

  Worse now than any pain was the thought of the men he had led into a trap. Einar had been like son to him. He cursed his wakefulness and wished for the bliss of dreamless sleep. Better still, he wished he had died if it somehow could have spared his men, or Einar at least. Tears leaked down his face, rolling into his ears as he lay facing the patch of stars visible through the lattice of branches.

  Eventually his wakefulness faded again, and he passed out. Just as suddenly his eyes fluttered open. He did not remember closing them. A myriad of triangles and rectangles of faint light hovered over his eyes. The predawn light seeped through his blanket of pine branches.

  Sounds of cracking branches drew nearer, and Ulfrik held his breath at murmured voices gathered over his pile. Branches lifted away, dropping more needles onto his face and releasing the cloying pine scent to escape. Cool air washed over his skin, but instead of refreshing him it heightened the ache permeating his body. The woman from the prior day reappeared over him as indistinct voices spoke behind his head. Her cold hand touched his cheek and she smiled at him. Her voice was a whisper.

  “I’ve brought something to ease your pain. We are going to move you before the Franks come searching at first light.”

  She searched through a hide pack at her side, producing a wooden bowl that she placed to the side. Ulfrik could hardly turn his head to see what she placed in it, but he heard fluid splashing. He felt the press of others standing close to him. A man’s voice, hoarse with the effort of keeping it low, spoke just over his head.

  “Are you sure about this one?”

  “He came from the sky as Eldrid foretold.” Ulfrik saw the woman whose name he could no longer remember pause to jab a thin finger at the tower. “The gods marked this place. Gudrod knows. We do not question what the gods chose to send us.”

  No more voices protested, but others continued to lift away branches. He heard one voice mention covering their tracks from the Franks. Another mentioned Ulfrik’s helmet. The swish of the branches overpowered their conversations. He guessed there were at least four other men accompanying the girl.

  “Drink this,” the woman said, and proffered a bowl as she gently cupped his head forward. It smelled like bile and Ulfrik recoiled. Her hand did not yield. “The pain will be great when we move you. This will dull it. Drink.”

  The cold fluid was bitter and slimy in his mouth, but he gulped it. He had no choice other than trusting these people; they could do no worse to him than Throst would and seemed determined to keep him alive. Almost instantly his tongue and lips numbed, and he grew weak and heavy. The woman monitored his face beneath her furrowed brow, the white scar above her eye pulling down. She was not as young as he had thought, but a woman of at least nineteen or twenty years. He had no more time to judge her appearance, for whatever she had fed him made his body melt. His head fell back and his jaw slackened.

  “That’s good,” the woman said, carefully placing his head back into the muck. “He’s ready. Let’s be quick.”

  The drink had rendered him limp and numb, but he was aware of the activity around him. He felt hands working at his belt, pulling down his pants. True to the woman’s word, he was numb but not without pain. As someone worked his pants off, both legs blazed in hot agony. He wanted to scream but found himself unable to form more than a gurgle of protest. Cold air washed over his exposed leg as the woman examined his naked lower body. She tightened bandages and checked the splints on his legs. Ulfrik hadn’t realized his legs had been braced, even if crudely done with branches and linen.

  The sun was approaching the horizon and now Ulfrik could see the men surrounding him with greater clarity. One stood waiting at Ulfrik’s feet, staring pensively at him. He wore the clothes of a slave, but was strong and tall and with a full head and beard of blond hair that had grayed at the temples. The woman moved in between them, and she began to lift away Ulfrik’s chain shirt. The pain jarred him as she wrestled with it.

  “This shirt has been a burden from the start,” she muttered. “Help me get it off.”

  Hands lifted Ulfrik on both sides, and his head flopped forward like his neck had broken. Drool spilled out of his mouth as he struggled to lift his head, but had no power to do it himself. His shoulder burned deep in the tissue as the woman and another man worked off the shirt. It caught on his face, the scent of iron thrusting into his nose as they finally lifted it off. The shirt crunched into the mud beside Ulfrik’s head, and they laid him back. They stripped him of his armbands, rings, even his Thor’s hammer necklace. He was completely naked now, and no one thought to cover him. A desperate cold filled him as the group sorted out his clothing.

  “Take off your clothes,” the woman said to the slave. “Put on his. The mail, too.”

  The slave stared at her a moment, then moved out of Ulfrik’s sight. His heart pounded in his chest, confused at what these people had planned for him. He stared at the stale sky above, until the woman leaned next to him and whispered in his ear. Her sweet scent was a welcome relief from pine and mud and her breath was wet against the side of his face.

  “We must leave the Franks something to find, or they will know you survived the fall. Wait a moment longer, and all will be clear.”

  She gingerly positioned his head for him to see the slave struggling to wear his armor. Two men helped with it, and another stood by with a sharp rock held low in both hands. When the shirt was in place and the belts strapped around the slave’s waist, the woman hung Ulfrik’s necklace over his head. They worked on arm bands, and one of the men corrected the number and placement on each arm. Rings were slipped onto the correct fingers. When finished, Ulfrik wanted to sneer at the man. He looked like a slave wearing his clothes. Did these people think mail and gold armbands made a jarl of his standing? They were sorely wrong.

  The man dressed as Ulfrik knelt in the mud. “You will keep your promises?” he asked. “My sons will be freemen?”

  “They will,” said the woman, and the other men nodded in agreement. Nothing more passed between the slave and the others.

  The man with the rock hoisted it overhead and stepped behind the slave. He slammed it down on the slave’s head, collapsing him to the ground. The slave’s head bent sideways and blood flowed out of his nose. Immediately the other men began to beat him with heavy limbs, clubbing him like a seal stranded on a beach. The slave suffered the injuries with nothing more than a moan. Ulfrik wanted to turn his head away, but was powerless to do more than stare and drool as this man died. The killing of a slave did not disturb him, but what it portended for his future with these people did.

  “That looks like he fell through the trees,” said the man named Gudrod. The woman watched impassively, but said nothing. She swept the men aside with an outstretched arm. She held a freshly broken branch in one hand.

  “The wounds have to match the blood on his clothes.” Gripping the spear-like branch with both hands she rammed it into the slave’s leg. He jerked with the pain, apparently still alive. The woman did not stop, but leaned with both hands on the branch to drive it throu
gh the meat of the leg. Ulfrik was suddenly glad he had only broken his leg rather than suffer the impaling he witnessed now.

  She stepped back, out of breath. The slave’s hand was balled tight, though Ulfrik did not think the others saw it. She gave a tired gesture to the man with the rock. He straddled the slave and lined up his rock to his head.

  Then he bashed the man’s face into bloody pulp. When finished, blood and brains had splattered over his arms and chest. The others watched as they erased the man’s identity, making it easier for Throst to believe that it was Ulfrik’s body and not a replacement. Ulfrik considered it might work, now that the head was little more than a collapsed pocket of hair and gore.

  The group raised Ulfrik out of the muck and began to dress him in the slave’s clothing. As cold and sore as he was, he welcomed the rough wool over his body. He was still numb and had no control over himself, but he felt the cold as sharply as a blade to his flesh. Once they had finished, the men lifted him onto a litter they had set beside him. The sky had brightened considerably, and while Ulfrik heard nothing, all of the men turned as one toward a point beyond Ulfrik’s vision.

  “This is earlier than expected,” said Gudrod. “Move fast.”

  “We’ve got to cover these tracks. The damned mud—”

  “Do your best,” said the woman. “Get this body into the hole.”

  Ulfrik heard her grunt as she helped move the body, presumably into the hole he had made in the soft earth. He heard the mail crunch as the body rolled into it.

  “We didn’t cut off his finger,” the woman said, her voice flat. “He’s missing the little finger of his left hand.”

  “Gods, they’re coming straight here,” said Gudrod. Ulfrik still could not hear anything, but everyone had grown agitated, their movements hurried. They constantly looked over their shoulders at the same direction.

  “Shit, my knife is too dull,” said the woman. “Give me something sharper. Quickly.”

  Gudrod shook his head and stomped out of Ulfrik’s sight. Two other men each lifted an end of the litter and began to jog away.

  “Forget it,” he heard Gudrod say. “It’s close enough. We’ve got to cover these tracks now or we’re done.”

  “We can’t risk something so obvious,” the woman said, but the litter bearers carried him beyond hearing the response. He jostled along, watching the sun stain the gray sky as the argued details of his faked corpse faded away. While in as much danger for being caught as the others, his numb state made him feel more like an observer than anything else. He hoped his rescuers would get away, but if they did not then it just did not matter. Ulfrik realized he was dead either way.

  Chapter 12

  Sleep and delirium were Ulfrik’s twin keepers. A terrible, winter cold set him shivering from the inside. Ice water poured from his skin. He fell endlessly from the tower, slamming into the cliff face, smashing through branches, and plowing into the mud. Over and over. His guts lurched and his body wailed with the pain each time he fell. Sometimes, he was not falling from the tower. Instead, he plummeted off the walls of Paris, forced over the sides by pig-faced demons in Frankish surcoats. Other times, giant sea gulls picked him off the cliffs of Nye Grenner and dropped him into the sea. Still other times he fell through total blankness, never landing anywhere.

  Hot, smooth hands touched his face. He opened his eyes but saw nothing but muddy darkness and vines of smoke growing among rafters above him. Cold fluid slipped from a bowl held to his lips as a woman’s voice whispered in his ear. Then numbness and the relief of dreamless sleep.

  How many days fled in dark and madness, he could not reckon. Fractured scenes of faces staring into his, men and women studying him like he was either a mound of gold or a heap of trash. Sometimes he awoke to find children staring at him. Once he swore Aren and Hakon stood at his bedside, if indeed he was on a bed—he did not know—and they shook their heads in silent reproof. Aren placed a rock by his bedside, as he had done for Gunnar when he had lost his hand. In a blink his sons were gone and he was staring at the rafters once more. A dream.

  In a moment of clarity, or at least a moment without confusing visions, a group of people appeared around him. His body pulsed with pain, which he had rarely felt in his delirious condition. Mournful, grave faces ringed him and were lit only with the dancing light of a candle held outside of his view. The shadows danced around their frowning mouths, adding a judgmental cast to their expressions. The woman who had saved him, Audhild, stood at his feet. She was dressed in fine clothes of russet and green, and silver rings glittered from her hands folded at her lap. A string with a key hung from her belt, a symbol that she ruled the hall and was most likely the wife of a jarl. She did not smile when his eyes met hers, only reflecting a yellow point of flickering candle flame back at him.

  He realized he had moved his head to see her, something he had not done since his fall. The effort of holding his head up exhausted him, and he let it fall back into a pillow. Next he tried to move his legs, but found them too heavy and painful to shift. A blanket covered most of him and it felt as heavy as lead. He started inventorying the rest of his body, flexing his hands and feeling the burn of where his finger had been severed. Rotating a shoulder to have it burst into hot agony.

  All heads turned to face a sudden light, and Ulfrik heard a door open. He let his head flop toward the source, but a woman blocked his view. Two people stepped away, and into their place came another woman. She was willow-branch thin, dressed in an ill-fitting gray wool dress cinched at the waist with a frayed leather strap. A necklace of bones clattered across her chest as she leaned over Ulfrik. A bony, blue-veined hand extended to his arm and lightly brushed his skin. He was cold, but she was colder still. His eyes were now hot and watery, blurring the scene into a smeary haze. Yet he did not doubt what he saw. The woman’s eyes were covered with a dirty binding of gray cloth which disappeared beneath long, greasy locks of faded blond hair. Then he noted a staff clutched in her other hand. She was blind.

  A long hiss escaped her thin lips as she moved her hand along Ulfrik’s body, touching his injures beneath the blanket. Her fingers lingered over his broken legs and her head cocked as if listening to distant voices. Sometimes she nodded as if agreeing, and other times she waved her hand as if shooing away a fly. Ulfrik was too weak and too painful to inquire. His mouth was full of wool and he wished for nothing more than a drink as the woman examined him. The other figures around the bed waited in silence. At last, she stood back and rested on her staff.

  “He is the one from my visions,” she said with a firm but rough voice. Ulfrik was reminded of barnacles being scraped from an old hull. The men and women exchanged cautious glances, and several stole looks at Ulfrik staring up at them from his bed.

  “Eldrid has verified this man,” intoned Ulfrik’s caregiver, Audhild. “He was at the place Thor marked. We will have success.”

  A weight seemed to lift from the room, and Ulfrik noted how some postures relaxed and heard a woman standing behind him let go of her held breath.

  “You did not say the gods would deliver a broken man.” The protester’s voice was familiar to Ulfrik, the same man who had argued with Audhild beneath the tower.

  “Gudrod, you lack belief,” the blind woman, who Ulfrik guessed was Eldrid, tipped her staff across Ulfrik’s body at Gudrod opposite. “Yet here is exactly what I promised: a champion thrown from the sky, delivered by the storm god Thor, to lead us in safety and bring us the favor of all the gods. With this one among us, we cannot fail.”

  Voices murmured approvingly, but Ulfrik was already slipping away. Sounds echoed in his head as he strained to listen and his blurry vision grew darker. Audhild watched him as if she did not recognize his suffering, merely tapping a silver-ringed finger on her arm as she observed. She now was a smear of brown and green with gleaming splotches in his vision. Still her echoing voice was clear when she finally interrupted the general chatter.

  “Broken or not, Eldrid has fore
told all this. His fever must break before we can move him, but while we wait I expect all of you to prepare.”

  “What is his name?”

  Heads turned to Eldrid, who stiffened at their stares. “The gods speak through me and their visions grant me no rest. You must fulfill what the gods have shown, or perish in the attempt. Do not trifle with small matters. Names are unimportant.”

  “Ulfrik,” he managed to squeeze out his name. While he had his mind and strength, these people needed to know him. He prayed they would recognize they could claim a reward from Hrolf for returning him home. Had they wanted a bounty from Throst, they would have left him beneath the tower.

  The blind woman Eldrid lowered her head to his ear. A scent of ale was strong on her wet breath. “Save your strength, champion. The gods will reveal their purpose for you soon enough.” She placed thin, pale fingers over his neck and dropped her voice even lower. “If I say names are unimportant, then they are unimportant.”

  Her ragged, chewed nails dragged across the coarse flesh of his neck as she straightened herself. Though blindfolded, she appeared to stare at him through the dirty cloth. “We are done here. Let our champion take his medicine and rest.”

  Chapter 13

  Days and nights were erased. Ulfrik knew only restless dreams or painful wakefulness, which rotated in a maddening cycle. Men and women attended him, feeding him beer and broth, changing buckets of his waste, and rotating him in his bed. Always Audhild came with that terrible brew that rendered him numb but motionless for hours at a time. She also oversaw the progress of his wounds and ensured bandages were changed on schedule. This all happened in a timeless space where he floated in a bed, alternately staring at rafters or at a wall remarkable only for its lack of any features.

  When he could speak, no one answered his questions. Some of the women recoiled at his attempts, dropping whatever they were doing to fetch Audhild who came with her brew. Despite fighting her, she managed to force him to take enough to slacken his resistance, then she would coo to him like a child. If she intended it as a reward for his compliance, it only fired his rage at being helpless. The relief from pain was welcomed, but not the destruction of his will.