“My arm. You cut off my arm, you goat-shit bastard.”
Ulfrik swept the grass for his sword, but he was lying atop it. It was easier to reach for the knife embedded in his leg. He scuttled away from the crunch of Gudrod’s ponderous footsteps. He flipped to the side when he heard Gudrod inhale. The sword clashed against the ground where he had been.
“How many knives do you carry?” Ulfrik asked, then he struck.
Gudrod hung over his blade as if it was holding him up. His injured arm dangled useless and blood jetted from it in a weak arc. Even as Ulfrik drove the knife into Gudrod’s kidney, he had been killed when first struck. He was bleeding out and collapsed beneath Ulfrik without protest.
“You should have run,” Ulfrik whispered as he slumped over Gudrod’s body. He pulled out the knife and felt hot blood flood onto his legs.
“You should have died,” Gudrod said, his voice hoarse and wispy. Ulfrik felt the body slacken and the jet of blood slowed to a trickle.
He pushed upright. The voices were closer now. Two men were running toward him, and he assumed they would kill him. Though he had no time to spare, he pulled Eldrid’s blindfold from his pantwaist and bound his leg. The gash across his stomach leaked blood but nothing could be done now. He clambered to his feet, hopped on his injured leg while he accustomed to the pain, and began to jog. The two men were almost to him now. He could see their fear-widened eyes.
He started running but the men caught up with him. He whirled on them. Blood coated him as if he had carved his way through an army of men. It stiffened on his face and melted where raindrops struck him. The two villagers recoiled as he ranged his sword at them.
“Go on, attack. You might have better luck than the last three fools.” He spit frothy blood at them and one jumped as if it might explode.
“You are freed? Have you lifted the curse?” The man brave enough to ask had a face red with pimples and scars that obscured strong features and shimmering blue eyes.
“You’re with Lini then?” The two men nodded, and Ulfrik laughed. “Then you better see to him before Audhild does. She’s got killing on her mind, like the rest of you.”
“But the curse. If you were freed, you were—”
“Don’t tell me what I am supposed to do,” he snapped, and the pimple-faced man stepped back. His companion wrung his hands like an old woman. “Let me go and I’ll lift your curse. You want to test me, then I welcome it.”
Both men stepped back again and Ulfrik jabbed his gory blade at them, drawing a yelp from the hand-wringer. Spitting once more, Ulfrik turned and loped north to avoid the village. The gods had favored him this once. They were too cruel to favor him twice.
Chapter 47
Ulfrik reached the birch woods as the storm arrived. Darkness stretched across the land, relieved only by flashes of lightning. The thunder that boomed after it rattled through his chest, and wind shoved him at the trees. He lumbered toward the white trunks that looked like teeth in a black mouth. The closer he drew to them the more the illusion developed until he imagined he was running into the maw of a massive worm. He patted the loose bark and paused, shaking his head to clear the vision. Rain began to pelt the ground and galvanized him forward.
Blood steadily leaked from his stomach, soaking into the waist of his pants. His leg throbbed with every step and Eldrid’s blindfold had darkened with blood. He wrapped his arms tight to his body as he fumbled deeper into the woods. The trees blocked most of the rain but what did reach him was a cold finger against his flesh, draining more of his precious heat. His heart beat as if he had been running at full tilt even though he merely had shambled the final distance.
“I’m bleeding out,” he said to the trees, bumping one as he wandered through the underbrush. “Sorry about that,” he said, and stepped aside.
After more wandering, a loud clap of thunder roused him from his confusion. In the moment of clarity, he realized he had been talking to trees and flopping around aimlessly. He put his hand to his chest, feeling his heart thudding. Blood loss was interfering with his thoughts. He had seen it hundreds of times on the battlefield. A man bleeding out grew cold while his heart thundered in his chest and his mind wandered to strange thoughts. Those who survived later described their thoughts being like a man deep in his cups.
If he did not stop the bleeding he would either die from it or from an accident brought on from confusion. He had to take action while he still had his wits.
The intensity of the storm had grown. Gusts bent the trees and blew leaves and twigs into Ulfrik’s face while the rain splashed through the canopy to churn the dirt into mud. His first concern was to find higher ground or risk becoming flooded. Once on campaign in Frankia, he had found Frankish peasants facedown in a puddle no deeper than a man’s thumb. A sudden downpour had caught them and the fools sheltered in low ground. He learned that day a man need not drown in a lake when a puddle would serve.
Maybe it was the direness of his situation, but Ulfrik marshaled his concentration and found a path up a steep incline. Water was rushing down it in three miniature waterfalls and confirmed his fear of flooding. The ground gave way under his feet and every time he slid back thunder seemed to echo in response. His plight was no doubt grand entertainment for the likes of Thor and Odin, laughing at him as men might laugh at a dolphin stranded on a beach. He gritted his teeth and mounted to another tier of underbrush and trees. The place was vaguely familiar but he could not place it. Nothing was clear anymore and he could not remember the direction he planned to travel.
He no longer felt pain at his stomach but his ankle throbbed. Sitting down on a rock, he unbound Eldrid’s blindfold. The cut oozed black blood from both sides of the wound. He probed it with his finger and searing pain answered. Next he removed his shirt which now from the tear opened by Gudrod’s sword to the soaking rain was useless. Placing it aside on the rock, he examined the stomach cut. Rain water turned the scum crust on his body to mud. He had not bathed in months and his skin was a mass of dirt and flea bites. The wound was not deep enough for serious damage, but a constant stream of blood mingled with the water rushing over his skin.
For the first time he noticed his ribs were visible. The thought staggered him, as if the body under his hands was not his own. Had he withered so badly during his time here? Again he dragged his wandering mind back to the matter at hand.
Using the rain water, he cleansed his body with a rough scrub. He found a flat rock to scrape down his arms and torso. He scooped out a hole to collect rain, which filled up as fast as he had dug it, and then cupped out water to clean the cut on his stomach. It was a large flap of skin and the water burned as he rinsed it, then he repeated the process for his leg. He dipped Eldrid’s blindfold into the water and wrung it out, then applied it as a tourniquet. He tied in a branch to help twist it tight.
For his stomach wound, the only recourse he had was to apply pressure and not move. Being it traversed his midsection, every motion reopened the cut. His only hope was that Audhild had larger issues and would not seek him in the storm. Her madness made her unpredictable, and so he had to plan for the worst.
After a cursory search, he found heavy underbrush and a rock where he could conceal himself. The wind gusted through the forest and thunder roared across the skies, but the fury of the rain was already settling into a calm patter. Wringing out his shirt, he slapped it across the stomach wound, the wetness making it stick. He pressed it against his cut then settled to wait out the storm beneath the bushes. The mud was cold and sucked against his exposed flesh. He shivered to his bones and his heart still raced.
He lay down and closed his eyes against the rain falling into his face. Never had he felt more miserable. He was dizzy and his mind roved across a dozen different images. At times he thought someone was speaking to him, but then realized he was talking over the storm. Whenever he realized this he pressed harder on his stomach wound. I can’t bleed out, he thought. The wound is not so serious. I’m just tired.
At some point he had fallen asleep, for he awakened to sunlight filtering through the trees and underbrush. When he could not sit up he panicked, thinking the worst had overcome him. Instead he found the suction of the mud bed he lay in held him down. For his efforts the bush he hid beneath dumped collected rainwater on his face. He heard a voice hush him to his left and he turned to face it.
Yngvar hid under the bush with him, his face strangely dry after the downpour. He placed a finger over his lips and warned with his eyes to look past him. His vision was blurry and it hurt to crane his neck, but he saw vague shapes moving cautiously. Only goatskin booted feet and green wool pants all thick with mud were visible. At least three pairs approached in a line.
He looked at Yngvar, who shook his head and kept his finger pressed to his lips. Ulfrik agreed with his assessment. He was in no condition to fight or run, but had to remain hidden and hoped these men passed him. Without a doubt these were either Audhild’s or Gudrod’s men seeking revenge upon him. He watched the feet avoid branches and puddles with care. The lead pair stopped abruptly and the other two continued another pace forward before also halting.
Yngvar was gone now, probably to scout the area. Ulfrik counted on his experience to lead him out of these woods alive. While he waited, he felt along his stomach at the tender edges of the cut. The area was warm and wet, but his fingers came away only with residual blood. As he struggled to examine his wound he shook the bush and more water trickled down.
The cold water snapped him out of the confusion. Yngvar was long in his grave, and Ulfrik figured if he was seeing ghosts then either he was dead or close to it himself. He did not want to find out until the men moved past, and all three of them remained still. He held his breath.
Voices were indistinct, but the hunters sounded as if they were in conversation. The boots all pointed toward each other, indicating they were not looking at him. One pair of feet turned and lightly stepped to the right and out of Ulfrik’s view. The other two split apart and continued to pad cautiously through the brush. The pair eventually stopped only a few feet distant and now he could hear their hushed talk.
“Mud’s thicker than cow shit,” said one man, a voice smoky with age.
“Good for making tracks,” said the other, a clear and youthful voice.
“Yeah, so why haven’t we found any yet?”
The legs remained still and Ulfrik only heard the patter of rain dripping from the leaves overhead. A bird sang in the distance. Through the tangle of bushes he saw the profile of a man with a bushy black beard fringed with gray. He wore a wool cap, and his finger was thrust under it to scratch his head.
“I don’t think he came this way,” the older man said. “Egil said he was covered in blood. If that was so, we’d find a blood trail by now.”
“The gods covered his tracks with the rain. Maybe they want him to escape?”
“Well, I don’t want him to escape. Dalla’s got the fever now. You want all of us to die like that?”
Ulfrik closed his eyes as if it could make him disappear. The two men grumbled and shifted. The older man was so close he shook the bush when he turned, and more water flecked onto his face feeling like pins of ice. The third companion called from a distance and the two left him alone.
He remained lying there for what felt like another hour. Rain plopped into mud and puddles with a maddening regularity, while birds screamed their indignation at the storm damage. The voices never left his range of hearing, but they were not close. He did not dare to move.
A splashing, sucking noise caught his attention. Now whoever moved cared not for stealth, but approached from the opposite side of the others. Ulfrik realized this was the path he had taken. He could not see the person without shifting and revealing himself. Instead he wished he could burrow deeper into the ground, lacking the strength for battle or flight.
The new arrivals batted around the area, shaking out the underbrush more thoroughly than the former searchers.
“Look at this,” he heard a man say. “A bloody cloth.”
Ulfrik could not think of what they had found, then someone tugged on his injured leg. They had found Eldrid’s blindfold tied to his leg.
“Hey! A body!”
A surge passed through Ulfrik’s body, but the strength felt more potent than it was. The bush concealing him was pealed aside and two unfamiliar faces peered down at him. Calls were already going up in the distance.
“It’s him!”
Ulfrik wanted to scream, but he only closed his eyes in defeat. Hands began to lift him out of the muck and the twist to his stomach made him open his eyes and cry out.
“Careful with him!” The voice was a woman’s. Her visage made Ulfrik’s blood run cold. It was Eldrid.
She laughed, but it was not the same. He peered closer as the two men fished him from the bushes like a sodden bag of grain. The woman wore the plain gray robes and the necklace of bones as well as leaned on her wood staff. But the face was Audhild’s. She stared down at him, her pale hands wringing the staff.
“I had hoped to never see you again,” Ulfrik managed to say. His voice was raw and cracked, thick with his torment. “This feels a bit too familiar.”
Again she laughed, leaning her head back to reveal deep gashes on her face and the ragged scratches at her neck. “A storm sends you to me once more. The gods do not intend for you to escape your insolence.”
A dozen rejoinders sprung to mind. He lacked strength for any of them. The men laid him out on the mud and at least half a dozen others converged on him. He recognized the older man’s voice from earlier.
“What now? He looks almost dead.”
“Take him back, of course. I will see that he is healed.”
The answer satisfied everyone except Ulfrik. His mouth began to work in protest but he could say nothing. All his strength had been expended and it had not been enough to break free. He was as good as chained for these men, too weak to even crush a fly. They laid out a clean and dry cloak to serve as a litter, then two men lifted him into it. He groaned as they hauled him off the ground, and the makeshift litter sagged to compress his stomach. Warm blood began to leak fresh from his wound.
Audhild sneered at him, her once pleasant features now scratched into those of a hag. Eldrid lived on, it seemed, though in a new body.
“Why?” It was the only question Ulfrik could form.
“I will make you whole again to remove the curse from our people,” she said loudly. She leaned into him and kissed his forehead. Her lips were cold and dry.
Then she whispered, “And you will need to be strong to survive the torment I plan for you.”
Chapter 48
Waking from a shapeless nightmare, the familiarity of the room lulled Ulfrik into calm. The bed and its duck feather mattress embraced him like an old friend. Wolf fur pelts abraded his exposed chest, but he welcomed the warm dryness of them. Above him was no earthen ceiling dripping water, but rafters and straw thatch. The milky tendrils of hearth smoke formed lazy curls along its length. Warm light flickered from candles and throbbed from the opposite room where the hearthfire crackled. This was peace and beauty.
When he moved to scratch his nose, the illusion snapped.
Beneath the wolf fur pelts and all around the frame of his welcoming bed he was tied down. Scratchy rope crossed his chest, arms, and legs tight enough for his skin to feel cold and tingling where it pinned him. The fears of his dreams reignited in wakefulness as he pulled uselessly on the rope. He could raise his head and move his feet, but was otherwise immobile. His escape and resultant injuries had sapped him of all strength, yet even at his peak he would not have been capable of breaking free.
He lay in the gloom, not sure of the hour or day. Since his recapture all had become a smear of unrelenting boredom. He could remember five meals Audhild had supervised while her servant, Kelda, fed him. The meals had been hearty, full of meat and blood, and he wondered if he were being fattened for the slaughter. He had
been promised as much. Now he strained to hear beyond the walls, and voices were muffled and dull yet lost none of their strident tenor. Arguments carried on outside of Audhild’s hall. The rise and fall of the debate was like the tide, at times loud and crashing and at others low but steady.
What if Lini survived his wounds, he wondered. Would he rescue me? Could it be an argument with those who want to free me?
The thought shamed him, but he could not deny it was his only remaining hope. Never in his life had he been rendered so helpless, and by a crazed woman no less. How much nobler it would have been to be a captive of a Frankish lord, dragged back to Paris to be hanged before all its citizens. No count could be made of the times he had wished Throst had killed him in combat. Any other death would be better than a knife stuck through his ear as he lay helpless on a bed. Would Odin welcome him to the feasting hall? Would the Valkyries fetch him or would they shriek at the sight of him dead and weaponless at the hands of a woman with arms no wider around than a new willow branch? A more unmanly and ignominious demise could not be imagined.
As he fretted over the circumstances of his impending death, the shouting outside had subsided. He only noticed the silence later, and then only by the immediacy of the hall door creaking open in the main hall. Audhild and Kelda murmured to each other, then he heard benches shifting across the dirt floor. Clacking sounds of some domestic chore reached him. Such a quaint life carried on beyond the open door of his room, and yet he remained lashed to a bed and awaiting his murder. He considered it true madness that such distinctions were so easily drawn.
Someone approached, and he raised his head to see Kelda staring at him. Her brown eyes were wide with fear and she flitted away before he could say anything. When he put his head back down, Audhild’s voice came from the same place.
“You are awake?”
“If only this were a nightmare.”
The Storm God's Gift (Ulfrik Ormsson's Saga Book 5) Page 27