by Nancy Morse
He opened one eye as confident, heavy footfalls approached, recognizable as his father’s. The other lid flicked up at the expression on the hard, weather-lined face. Now over fifty years old, his sire, David of Alda, still handled himself with a deadly confidence other soldiers measured themselves by. Trained by him, built like him, Rowan performed admirably in battle even if he lacked his father’s natural instinct for combat. His father recognized the difference and never pushed him beyond the level of accomplishment needed to do his duty and survive on the battlefield. Even that had required endless months of practice and sore muscles.
Rowan absently stroked a hand down the spata on his lap. He could defend himself and kill when necessary, but the only part of war he’d really taken to was the weaponry. At the forge at Alda, he fashioned blades that functioned as extensions of their wielders’ arms, and his skill at weaponsmithing would soon surpass his father’s, who had dabbled at the craft for decades.
“Paris was sacked,” Father said without preamble.
Rowan frowned. “The Northmen?”
“Yes.”
“Will we go there, then?” he asked, thinking that the legions of men encamped, bristling and ready for battle, might be put to some good use.
Father shrugged. “It is Charles’s problem.” He rubbed at an old scar on his forehead, hidden by his hair of dark blond streaked with regal white. The action betrayed his discontent.
“You do not think it Charles’s problem?”
“It does not matter what I think.”
Rowan arched his brow at the uncharacteristically snappish tone.
Father sighed. “Heric is there, making weapons for Robert the Strong.”
Rowan hid the sharp intake of his breath by rolling to his feet in a single motion and sliding his spata into its scabbard.
Heric was a master smith he’d studied under for three winters when he’d been young enough to avoid the responsibilities of nobility. Those years brought wonderful memories ended by a slash of pain he never allowed himself to dwell upon.
“Surely he would be under the protection of Robert’s household,” Rowan said, trying to reassure them both.
Rowan recognized the frown of doubtful worry. His father considered Heric a friend as much as Rowan considered him a mentor. “I’m not certain what his accommodations would be, but we are less than a day from Metz. Perhaps we should pay Abril a visit.”
“We could be there by tonight,” Rowan agreed readily. Hopefully Heric’s wife would know enough details about his situation to put their minds at ease. He could also hope her daughter’s hatred of him had eased in the last two years, though he doubted it.
Dusk was more than a threat by the time they reined their tired mounts to a stop in front of a respectable yet compact house.
The woman who emerged to see who had clattered up to her door wore the nondescript tunic of a tradesman’s wife. It was Abril, and her hand flew to her mouth at the unexpected visit of two aristocrats.
“My lords,” she said, her whole body quivering and slouching toward the ground in deference.
“None of that,” David said as he slid down from his great warhorse, its coat gritty with dust. He stood for a moment to acclimate his legs in a way he never would have needed a few years ago.
Rowan hopped down lightly and took the reins of both animals so that his father could properly address Abril and soothe her rattled nerves. She looked much as she had when he’d last seen her two years ago, though the wrinkles on her tawny face had deepened. Her wariness faded as Father greeted her in the easy way he had with their own tenants and craftsmen back at Alda. He’d soon put her at ease.
“Julius, come to take these horses,” Abril called into the small dark house.
She slanted a look at Rowan. He bowed slightly to show his respect for the woman who had fed him and cared for his clothes, generally seeing to his well being while Heric had trained him until his hands were blistered from fingertip to wrist. She may have nodded slightly in acknowledgement, or she may not have. It was hard to tell in the dark, and then a youth strode out the door, interrupting the awkward moment.
Rowan stared at the young man for a count, finding all his boyish roundness replaced by the skinny legs of his father, though he had not yet earned the proportions of Heric’s work-made upper body. The most recognizable feature remaining from boyhood was the head of unruly black hair.
“This cannot be Julius,” Rowan said with a smile, wondering if the boy would remember him and unexpectedly gratified when he did.
“Rowan!” the youngster cried. They exchanged manly thumps on the back. “Why are you here?”
“We’ve come to see what news your mother has, if any,” he said quietly as he heard Father and Abril begin a tense conversation about that very thing. “I’ll take the horses back by the forge. No sense in stabling them until Father and I know what we’re doing next.”
Rowan let Julius lead the way while he managed both animals himself. The horses all but filled the small yard at the back but stood quietly once offered water.
“The forge is cold,” Rowan said.
“Yes, sir, ever since Papa left. Seems odd, I know.”
“Never took a breath back here that wasn’t filled with smoke. Odd, indeed,” Rowan observed. The entire household felt empty, almost desolate, and he wondered where Julius’s two sisters were.
“Have you heard from your father in the last week or so?” Rowan ventured as he hobbled the horses. He noticed Julius stood well clear of beasts and was glad he hadn’t foisted their care on him.
“No, and Mam is worried,” the boy said. “We just heard this morning that Paris is on fire and the red-haired giants have taken it over.” Julius tried to sound matter of fact, but his voice had not yet caught up to his height and his dark eyes were wide with uncertainty.
Rowan rose and placed a hand on his thin shoulder. “We heard about the fire, but we don’t know that the town has been conquered. Shall we go hear what our parents are deciding without us?”
He had to crouch to pass below the lintel of the door. The familiar single room of the house enveloped him with the comforting embrace he’d missed while outside. He’d passed many an enjoyable hour at this hearth, eating and talking with Heric and his family, with nearly all their worldly possessions surrounding them. Their beds, clothing, food, dishes, everything neatly if tightly arranged in the small hut. He’d always slept at the forge — some of the coldest nights of his life — but in every other way, had been welcomed here.
Abril twisted the rough linen of her tunic in her hands as she spoke to David, barely aware of their entrance. “The only message I got was a few weeks ago, sent with a traveler right after they’d safely arrived. The man who brought word said they were set up in a shed near the river, on the main island of the city. He never mentioned a stronghold or anyone protecting them.” She pulled the corner of her veil up to dab away the tears collecting at the corners of her eyes.
Rowan and his father exchanged knowing looks. The Northmen always invaded by boat. Being near the river did not bode well.
Abril looked from one to the other, and asked desperately, “You think they are in danger?”
Rowan registered the word “they” but assumed Heric had taken a helper or apprentice with him. He watched Father knead his thigh, too deep in thought to realize he again betrayed the wear and tear of the journey.
“I believe it is worth a trip to Paris to see how he has fared,” Father said.
Abril gaped at him. “Sir. You would do that? For us?”
“Heric was a good teacher to both me and my son. Many called him a fool and worse for catering to the nobility.”
Abril flushed. “He never paid much attention to the talk.”
Rowan tried to smooth away his frown. He’d never known Heric’s family endured ridicule because of him. “’Tis a solid week’s ride to Paris, if we push ourselves and the horses,” he noted quie
tly. “I’ll gather some supplies so we can leave in the morning.”
“Julius, go with him,” Abril clucked, flustered as a hen again. “You know the merchants who will be eager for business so late in the day.”
“Yes, and you can tell me how your sisters are,” Rowan said casually.
“Oh!” Abril said in distress. “Stella is an apprentice down the street, but Fia is not here. She is in Paris, helping her father.”
Rowan stopped. Ice trickled into his belly. He turned slowly to avoid escalating the buzzing in his head, watched David scoot to the edge of his seat toward Abril.
“Your daughter went with Heric?” Father asked. Once again, the glance he shared with Rowan spoke as loudly as words.
Abril did not question them this time. Instead she began to weep. Tales of the Vikings’ treatment of women in their path were well known to all.
The buzz in Rowan’s head gathered and swarmed like bees that moved behind his forehead, down his neck and arms, stinging from the inside until his whole body prickled and burned. He cleared his throat. “Come, Julius, I want to be ready to ride before sunrise.”
Rowan sat in the forge, familiar yet bare, to sharpen his blade by the light of a torch. Packs of food arranged in neat piles around his feet were ready to load on the horses at dawn. The twilight of the long summer evening had entirely faded, shrouding everything in a darkness that went straight into his guts.
Faxon shifted and nickered in the yard, then finally settled to the ground as Rowan knew he did every night for an hour or two. He wished he could calm his careening thoughts as easily as the immense bay stallion could. Even the steady rhythm of the whetstone did not help.
The last time he’d seen Fia, her oval face had been contorted in angry grief, fine black brows drawn down over stricken, tear-filled eyes. She’d shoved at his chest and said things —
“Fire and smoke.” A deep oath echoed to him, accompanied by the sound of a wooden bucket toppling and a very large man hitting the earth, hard.
Rowan’s blade thudded to the dirt floor as he dashed from the shed, then turned back for the torch. “Father, where are you?”
“I’m fine. Just tripped like the blind old man I’m becoming.” He took Rowan’s extended hand, stood up normally enough, then nearly fell again when he put weight on his right leg. “Give it a minute. I’ll be fine,” Father insisted. After mere seconds, he tried to step on the ball of his foot, winced and cursed softly.
“Let me help you to the stool,” Rowan said as he gripped an elbow with one hand while holding the torch aloft with the other. The two men, equal in height and weight, shuffled slowly forward until Father dropped with a frustrated huff onto the wooden seat.
With the torch safely in its bracket, Rowan knelt at his father’s feet. “Let’s see it.”
“I’ll be fine by morning,” the older warrior said through clenched teeth.
Rowan wasn’t sure if it was the pain or pride making his temper so short. “I’ll fetch a bucket of cold water to soak it. Take off your boot.”
“I’m not a child. I said I will be fine.”
“I know you aren’t a child, but we are leaving on a ride of well over fifty leagues into territory controlled by another king and being invaded by the Northmen. You at least need to —”
Father lifted his hand. “Go get the water.”
By the time Rowan returned from the town well, the ankle looked bad, with swelling and a streak of a bruise Father insisted was not a bruise, but a shadow. He soaked it for an hour and they watched it grow fatter and darker, and when he tried to rotate his foot, his face tightened. Without a word, he eased himself to the ground in the pretense of going to sleep.
When they rose at the first paleness on the horizon — neither of them were sleeping anyway — Father tried to saddle his horse while hopping on one foot. Abril, who must not have slept either, tried to feed them but ended up scurrying after David, fretting and begging him to sit. Years of training could not stop the warhorse from shying as his master bounced inelegantly beside him, earning a sharply toned rebuke. The horse braced itself, stoic, when his master leaned hard to fling the heavy wooden saddle over its back.
Rowan stood back with arms crossed over his chest. “Father, you cannot ride like this.”
“Once I get in the saddle, my weight will be off it.”
“And it will hang all day and swell up like the udder of a cow. As it is, you can’t get your boot on. What will we do, fight the Vikings with you leaning on me?”
“I am still your father and I say I will be fine.” At his shouting, Abril ducked her head and sidled back into the house.
Rowan frowned across the broad back of the horse. “What would Mother say?”
His father glared. “She would say I’m a fool for tripping over a bucket in the middle of the night.”
“No, she wouldn’t. She would be fussing over you more than me, and what else?”
A loud humph showed exactly how much his father resented the question. “She’d warn me about my pride.”
“Yes. She’d say even the fiercest warrior in all Christendom sometimes needs to rest.” Rowan continued over his father’s protests. “Now, if you must ride somewhere, then ride east to camp where you are sorely missed. They need your wisdom, and the young men need your courage. Come to think of it, fetching a blacksmith and his daughter should only require one soldier. At twenty-one years old, I think I’m equipped for the task, don’t you?”
Father looked at him levelly through the quickly brightening dawn, brown eyes boring into Rowan’s, so similar he could be looking back at himself from a mirror. “Your mother will never forgive me if I let you go alone and you are hurt.”
“She will skin me alive if I let you start a long journey on an ankle that looks like a bladder full of mulberry wine.”
The bowed head and rasping sigh told Rowan he’d finally convinced his father.
While he knew it was the right decision, a few moments later when he rode away to the west while his sire, with all his strength and experience, turned east, a hastily eaten breakfast curdled just a bit in his stomach.
Chapter Three
June 17, 861
Fia slept fitfully from dawn until the sun sat high. The nights alone in the open-sided shed were too terrifying for sleep and the afternoons so swelteringly humid she could barely do anything except sit and stare. Every hour, light or dark, fostered tiny flying, biting pests that left itchy welts if she didn’t notice them eating her alive and spots of blood when she managed to smash them.
What would it be like to fly and find sustenance on unwilling bodies wherever one went? If she could do those things she would be home by now instead of scrounging for food Mam would think hardly fit for their goat. She might as well be a goat. She smelled like one and sat here, penned in this shed, waiting as if tied to a post because that’s what Papa said to do.
And it certainly won’t help to start crying again, she thought as she used her filthy veil to rub gritty wetness from her cheeks. Filling the Seine with her tears hadn’t accomplished anything. In fact, her situation became more desperate every day. The priest swore to her he had sent the message. In her brave moments she reminded herself how long a messenger’s journey to Metz would be. In her not-brave moments she wondered who would come save her, anyway? Who? Her younger sister Stella — or Mam — wouldn’t be any safer than she was, and Julius was still too young for such a trip. If only Victor hadn’t died….
Of course, if that dream had come true, every part of her life would be different. She certainly wouldn’t have been here helping Papa, though wishing for her absence made her a terrible daughter because she wouldn’t have wanted for him to die alone.
Alone, just as Victor had been.
She shook her head against the maudlin thoughts. At least the marauders had been turned away. Robert the Strong had managed that much. Then his head armorer had washed his hands of Heric the hirel
ing by paying Fia for some of the small, unfinished blades the Viking hadn’t carried off and for the chunks of iron bloom he could use back at his own workshop.
She had nothing left but Papa’s tools hidden on her body under his tunic, the coins she must somehow get back to Mam and her red glass disc, nestled among the coins. Like her, the Parisians needed food, clothing, and shelter, so the rest of her belongings had been stolen in bits and pieces, including all her clothes. She guessed no one had moved in with her because of the shed’s loose affiliation with Robert the Strong, though strangers and hordes of orphaned children turning more feral by the hour looked at her shadowy home more longingly and for longer intervals every day. She should share the space but had no idea who to trust, having seen a dirt-encrusted child no older than nine nearly strangle an old woman for a crust of bread yesterday while his equally filthy packmates yelled encouragement from the street.
Papa’s directives still bound her. She could feel his disappointment from that horrible, shallow grave as she wondered if the priest knew anyone trustworthy to take her home. How long before she would find the courage to pursue the pitiful plan beginning to sprout in her mind? How long would she last if she didn’t? Oh, she would give anything to have him here.
Crying did not help.
The humidity pressed on her like an unwelcome sibling, pushed her into a near-stupor with sweat making a path between the tongs tied on the left side of her back and the chisel on the right. She mindlessly filed at a small blade the armorer had rejected. It hadn’t really been ready for finishing, but she needed something to do with her hands, and quite frankly, anything with a sharp point might help if that pack of displaced youngsters got brave enough to come under her roof tonight instead of just staring threateningly from outside the way they had last night.