Foreworld Saga 01 SideQuest Adventures No. 1 The lion in chains, the beast of Calarrava, the shield maiden

by HISTORY Stephenson, Neal

  And another.

  Their attackers were packed against the wall so tightly they could hardly fight, but their mass was enough to force the Jarl’s shield wall back. Slowly, one step at a time, the shield wall retreated. The Sworn Man in front of her dropped, opening a hole in the line that she thrust through instantly, taking the man that had felled him in the belly before the other Sworn Men closed the gap. Another man fell—she dimly tried to recall his name, but her mind was no longer focused on such minutiae. All she could see was the gap in the shield wall he left behind.

  She stepped forward, shifting her grip on the spear to one hand and holding it before her vertically like a shield as she snatched out her langsaex. Her focus collapsed even farther, even as her awareness expanded, and she felt like she was in the yard, fighting Äke again. Knowing what was coming next without thinking.

  The Danish attackers seemed to have fallen asleep on their feet. Their motions—the set of each foot, the way they held their weapons—were slow and exaggerated. She watched them coldly, aware on a level far below thought of their movements and knowing how little she had to move in return. A slight turn of the wrist and a blow that would have killed her missed by a hairbreadth; a small twist of her blade allowed it to scrape along the rim of a shield to its target instead of being deflected; the thin space between the helm and the armor where her blade could slip through and pierce flesh. Despite the uneven ground, the uncertain light, the bodies, and fallen weapons, she never doubted her footing. Everything around her was frozen, and she moved through the battlefield with infinite precision and grace.

  Do you dance?

  Yes, the thought came to her distantly, as if someone else were having the conversation—in another time and place. Yes, this dance I know.

  At some point she left her langsaex jammed through the chest of a mailled warrior. At another she left her saex knife in a man’s groin. Wielding her hewing spear with both hands again, she danced through the battle like a wraith, omniscient and untouchable.

  The shield wall crumpled, and she fought on. She felt a savage spike of joy when the wedge of Shield-Brethren scythed into the Danish flank. Sometimes she allowed weapons to slide past her guard to grate along her mail or pierce her flesh if it would not cripple her, but in turn gave an advantage. When she saw her aunt beleaguered and failing, she threw her spear without care of the fact that it was her only weapon. The spear took the man that would have killed Grimhildr through the throat and drove him into his companions. Grimhildr recovered her footing, and her blade flashed in the morning light as she took to the offensive against the Danes.

  Sigrid stared at her empty hands, and she had barely begun to ponder what she should fill them with when a Dane came at her, lang ax raised over his head. She lunged under his blow, setting her hands on the haft of his weapon and twisting it free of his grip as she threw him heavily to the ground. She reversed the lang ax in her hands, striking the fallen Dane in the face—almost as an afterthought—before continuing her relentless and unstoppable dance of death…

  She had been lost in the rhythm of the lang ax: striking with the head, haft, and butt; feeling the impact of each on metal, flesh, and wood; hearing the pounding drum of her heart. And then, without notice, the rhythm stopped, and her lang ax swung through empty air. There was no one left to fight.

  The Danes had been broken. They were retreating under a hail of spears, rocks, and curses.

  She stood still for a moment, listening intently to the fading rhythm that had been coursing through her. Her chest rose and fell in time with that martial music, and as she realized the sound was nothing more than her own heartbeat, she sank to her knees, her breath changing into quaking gasps. She leaned heavily on the butt of the lang ax, suddenly unable to keep herself upright. The morning sun shone down on a field covered in gore, and she was stained with blood as well, from head to boot. There were bodies—and pieces of bodies—scattered all around her. Ripping off her spangenhelm, she doubled over, spewing the contents of her stomach onto the already fouled earth.

  At length, Sigrid became aware of another presence, and her body tensed, thinking it needed to fight again, but the person wrapped strong arms around her. A rough voice, feminine and familiar, spoke in her ear. “It’s all right now, child. Let it out,” Grimhildr said softly. “Let the battle go. It takes most like this the first time.”

  Sigrid’s stomach stopped heaving, but the shakes would not leave the rest of her as quickly, and her aunt held her tight until the last quivering sigh fled from her aching chest. Grimhildr let go, and Sigrid struggled to her feet, wiping her mouth with the back of her wrist.

  Äke stood nearby, bloodied and helmetless, with a gash along the side of his head, and the upper half of his ear missing on the left side. He had a skin of mead in his hands, and he offered it to her. “Rinse your mouth out with this,” he said, “but mind you don’t swallow any or you’ll be right back at it.”

  She did as he told her, rinsing her mouth and sloshing the honey wine through her teeth before spitting it out. He was right. As much as she wanted to swallow the sweet mead, her legs quaked at the thought, and her stomach flipped.

  Grimhildr offered her a different skin, one filled with water. “Slowly,” she instructed. “Let each sip settle before you take the next.”

  Sigrid returned the first skin to Äke and took a tiny sip from the second. Her stomach rebelled at first, but the water was cool in her throat, and she could feel the tension in her lower body fading as the water fell into her stomach. She took another sip, slightly larger than the first, and her stomach received it gladly.

  “Better now?” Grimhildr asked.

  “Aye,” she said, looking about. “Moreso after I get out of this gods-damned muck.”

  Äke shook his head in wonder. “By the All-Father,” he said. “You make quite a mess, don’t you?”

  SIX

  Kjallak perched painfully on an upturned bucket, his left leg thrust out before him. From where he sat on the berm, he could see the fishermen milling about on the shore as the fishing boats were beached once more. The cottages were safe as was the beached karvi. They had beaten the Danes back.

  He heard Halldor call his name, and he spotted his second approaching from the beach. He adjusted his position on the bucket, easing the pain in his hip. “Ho, Halldor,” he said, “I am taller than you for once.”

  Halldor squinted up at him from the base of the berm. “Your seat looks precarious, Kjallak,” he said. “Do you dare to take both hands off that bucket?”

  “Later, perhaps,” Kjallak said, keeping his tone light. “What news?”

  “The good news is that our vessel is unscathed,” Halldor said, waving in the general direction of the strip of beach where they had pulled their karvi ashore. “The bad is that the villagers claimed back their pitch pots before the battle. Many of them were set afire and thrown at the Danes.”

  Kjallak grunted. “I bet they were surprised.”

  “Aye, they probably were,” Halldor said. “It will be a week, at least, before they will have enough to re-tar the hull.”

  Kjallak glanced over his shoulder, nearly tipping his bucket over. “And the Danish boats?” he asked, once he had resettled himself, ignoring the flare of pain from his left hip. The spear tip that had penetrated his maille had also scraped across the bone. He could see the lazy curls of smoke up the beach behind him. “Did they burn them?”

  “Aye,” Halldor nodded. “Two of them.”

  Kjallak sighed. He would have been surprised if they hadn’t. The Danish forces had been decimated enough that they had no need for all four boats, and they had put two of them to the torch as they had fled so that the Jarl could not pursue them.

  Nor, unfortunately, could the Shield-Brethren take one of the boats to replace their damaged vessel.

  “The Jarl will see that we get horses,” Halldor said. “It would be best for us to continue with that plan.”

  Kjallak made a face, th
inking about sitting on a horse with his injury. “Aye, we’ll proceed overland. We are already late. It makes little difference now.” He sighed and let his gaze roam over the stained battlefield on both sides of the berm. “We have done a fair service to the Jarl this day. To all of Göttland. Those Danish bastards will be rowing hard for home.”

  By his estimate, nearly sixty Danish bodies littered the field south of the village. Thralls and villagers moved among the corpses, first stripping them of the more obvious valuables and then loading the bodies onto narrow, hand-drawn carts. A massive pyre was being assembled along the beachfront of the village.

  Enemies or no, the dead deserved to go to Valhalla, though they would go without their arms and armor.

  “Did you tell him?” Halldor asked.

  “The Jarl?” Kjallak shook his head, knowing what his second was talking about. “There was no need. We stood and fought with him. It does not matter.”

  “He lost good men. Men he might not have lost otherwise.”

  “This is a raw land, Halldor,” Kjallak said firmly. “There are too few of us in Týrshammar. We cannot take on the responsibility of protecting every hold and house. Besides, there is no way of knowing if these Danes were the same.”

  “There were four ships, Kjallak,” Halldor pointed out. “The same number as were pursuing us.”

  “We cannot know if they were the same ships,” Kjallak repeated, his voice stern. Halldor stared back at him, and Kjallak wondered again if he was high enough that Halldor couldn’t see the blood staining his maille.

  “How many injured?” Kjallak asked, changing the topic. Trying not to wince as he shifted his weight on the bucket. “How many of ours did we lose?”

  “None,” Halldor said. “Three, at least”—and Kjallak wondered at the stress Halldor put on the words—“are injured badly enough that it will be several weeks before they are ready to travel.”

  Kjallak nodded. “The Jarl lost a goodly number of his Sworn Men,” he said. After a pause, he asked: “Did she survive the battle?”

  “Who?” Halldor said. His face was turned away, and so Kjallak could not see his expression.

  “The little—well, she isn’t so little—the skjölmdo.”

  “She did,” Halldor said. He nodded toward the battlefield. “Did rather well too, according to the Holmgard.”

  “Did she?”

  “Aye,” Halldor let a grin slip across his face. “We saw the shield wall break as we came, the Danes overrunning the Jarl’s men. The only reason they held at all was because of Sigrid. If we were the hammer, she was the anvil upon which we broke the Danes.”

  Kjallak’s eyes grew wide in disbelief. “Sigrid? Her not yet twenty and never been in battle?”

  Halldor had a strange expression on his face, one that Kjallak could not judge. “If we’re to believe the stories the Holmgard tell, she killed more than a dozen Danes all by herself.”

  Kjallak stared at him suspiciously, but his suspicion rapidly melted into disbelief before becoming thoughtful consideration. Halldor had a peculiar sense of humor, but his expression was too intent—too serious—for this to be a jest.

  “Berserker?” Kjallak asked.

  Halldor shook his head. “According to those who witnessed her fighting, she showed none of the signs. And, as soon as the fighting was done, she stopped.”

  Kjallak nodded, still thinking. Berserkers were known for fighting on when the battle was over until they dropped from exhaustion, often injuring their own companions. “A potion?” he asked. “A method of setting aside her mind?”

  Halldor shook his head to both.

  “What, then?”

  “Vor,” was Halldor’s reply.

  Kjallak frowned. Vor? In a fighter that young? That untested? And a woman? The idea was preposterous.

  Most fighters at some point in their lives, either in practice or in battle, experience a moment where everything comes together, a moment of perfection where they can achieve the near impossible. It might last but an instant and might come to them only once, but this was the basis of Vor—the fate sight. The Ordo Militum Vindicis Intactae had long trained its knights to enter this state willfully in battle—extending it as long as they could sustain the focus—allowing them to fight with astonishing effectiveness. Several of the men in his company had shown promise—Halldor, the best among them. They were disciplined, exceptionally well trained; it was due to their ability to touch Vor that none of them had fallen in the battle.

  But to kill a dozen men in the chaos of general battle? That seemed impossible. Even for an adept one who had been taught the inner mysteries.

  “A gifted initiate? And a woman besides.” He shook his head in disbelief. “It has never happened.”

  “It has,” Halldor reminded him. “Once.”

  Kjallak’s frown deepened. “There is much that is disputed about the founding of the Rock,” he said, referring to the nickname the order gave to Týrshammar.

  Halldor inclined his head, indicating that he didn’t disagree with Kjallak. “But no one disputes her presence.”

  “Yes, well, and it was a bloody time for all,” Kjallak snapped, disliking the direction of this conversation. “I’ll not discount the possibility,” he said, “but I’ll not base any decision on idle battlefield reports from untrained eyes.”

  “We should look upon her ourselves, then,” Halldor said quietly.

  Kjallak couldn’t stop the shiver that ran up his spine. Halldor had that iron calm about him, much like he had on the boat when it had been damaged. A resolute confidence that came from knowing something with complete conviction.

  He knows, Kjallak thought.

  His hip ached.

  Sigrid’s wounds were minor, and in short order she was washed, bound, and poulticed as needed. The various cuts, bruises, and punctures had started to ache, and that coupled with the lack of sleep and morning’s exertions left her exhausted. She drifted in a pain-haunted daze where they had seated her by one of the many fires lit to warm water for cleaning wounds and cooking.

  She roused from her stupor when a platter was set before her: soup made from the leftover gravy and ox meat with chopped vegetables, a chunk of dense, black bread, a wedge of cheese, and a large mug of mead. She didn’t have to be told twice to eat, for she was suddenly ravenous and thirsty both. She felt a momentary surge of nausea after the first few bites, but she simply swallowed and rode it out until it subsided, and then forced herself to continue eating.

  Pettir had established this shelter as his command post, so Sigrid was in a good place to hear the aftermath of the battle managed. This meant first and foremost organizing the fighters still hale to follow after the Danes and ensure their rapid departure. Next, the Jarl’s own people had to gather and treat their injured if their wounds were not mortal. They also gathered and cataloged the personal possessions of their own dead and returned them to their families.

  The bodies of their enemies had already been looted, and all their possessions would be put into a pool to be distributed by Pettir, with the lion’s share handed out to the families of the dead and the rest divided between Pettir and the fighters. Pettir would retain half of this store, and the remainder would be distributed equally among the men. Lastly Pettir would distribute special awards from his own share to those who had distinguished themselves in battle.

  Certainly Sigrid was in line for a special award, and none could claim favoritism in this case. The surviving Shield-Brethren would also come in for special consideration for their role, and not just because they were guests and volunteers. They had fought with an effect out of proportion to their numbers. From what she heard from the Holmgard, it was their attack on the flank that had ultimately broken the Danes.

  Äke was the one who told her about the casualties among the Sworn Men, and she lost her appetite upon hearing the news. Skeggi and Ulf would not go avikinga come the spring after all. Sweet, funny Thorbjorn would never again lighten their days with his humor
and japes. Gyrdh’s young bride-to-be—her own childhood friend and playmate Hilary—was widowed before she was even wed.

  Tears welled in her eyes as she thought of them—her brothers in arms and men she had known all her life.

  Äke droned on, his voice as empty and lifeless as his report: in the end, fully half their order of battle was dead or expected not to live out the day.

  “How…” she struggled to find the words to express what she was feeling. How could people bear such losses? How could they go on when friends and family were taken from them, and many of them so young…

  “We will honor those who have fallen, Sigrid,” Äke said, his eyes bright with tears. “We will live because that is the gift they have given us.” He leaned over and picked up the mug she had been drinking from. He solemnly poured a measure on the ground, the mead spattering his boots, and then he drank deeply. He gave the mug back, and she poured out a similar measure, fighting back the tears that still yearned to spill down her cheeks. “We shall raise a toast to them tonight,” she whispered. “And they will toast us as well, from the tables in Valhalla.”

  “Aye, that they will,” Äke said. “The fishing boats are safe, and the scouts report that two of the four Danish boats were fired before they could get into deep water. We sent more of them on than they took from us.”

  The folk assembled on the beach west of the fishing village as sunset approached. The able-bodied had amassed a huge pyre stacked with the bodies of the Danes. It had taken the entire day to gather enough wood and used most of the hold’s oil to ensure that it would light quickly and thoroughly. Once lit, it would burn for days, tended by thralls and the villagers. Their own dead were laid on planks atop their foes, dressed in their best finery and armed with their favorite weapons.