A Dynasty of Giants (Viking Sagas Book 1)

by J. A. Snow

  “Ja,” said Kari, “I see that he has not. It is true to Logi’s nature to use the element of surprise, coming in the night.” The jarl’s breath rose from his lips just as the adrenaline rose in his chest. Grabbing their axes and bows, the two brothers ran out to join the fray.

  Almost immediately the men heard the distant sound of people screaming and they could see tall flames shooting up from the village in the night sky. There hadn’t been time to bring the people inside the palisade.

  “My gods!” shouted Weyland. “He is torching the entire village!”

  Outside the gate there was a clamoring of fists and voices. “Let us in, Jarl Kari!” the people were screaming as Valdar’s soldiers looked on silently.

  “He wants us to open the gate!” Aegir warned his brother. “He is using the villagers to get to you. If we let down our guard, he will overtake us and kill us all.”

  Kari tried to think clearly. Since they had buried poor Dansa in a grave in the yard, decision-making was not his strength. His head seemed to be suddenly spinning with confusion and he was having difficulty completing even the simplest task. Now, he stared blankly at his brother, as if looking to Aegir to make the choice for him. The villagers were crying out to him and he was their jarl, the one they looked to for protection. What was he to do?

  “They are not harming the villagers,” said Snapp, from the catwalk on the wall. “Logi’s army is just looking on, waiting. What shall we do, Jarl Kari?”

  “We will not open the gate under any circumstance,” Aegir said. “His quarrel is with us, not the villagers. I don’t think he will harm them.”

  Weyland wasn’t so sure. “Your brother is capable of anything,” he warned. “He is a mad man.”

  “Tell them to go back to their homes and lock themselves inside,” said Kari. “We cannot open the gate.”

  The group outside the gate grew larger, as more of the villagers escaped their burning homes, and the wailing got louder and more insistent. Now the crying of infants and children added to the pleading voices outside the wall and it was a torment to poor Kari, who was helpless to do anything for them. Opening the gate now would be a sure invitation to death. Outside, Logi and Valdar watched the gate and waited.

  “It appears your brother is not fooled by your ruse,” said the commander. “It appears our only course is to batter the gate and bring it down.”

  “Give it a little more time,” Logi replied. “My brother has a weak side for children. Let him hear the children wail a little longer.” In truth, he was enjoying watching the suffering of the villagers who had always whispered about him behind his back, the same villagers who had supported his brother. He had his brothers cornered. There was no need to hurry now.

  But, even as a dozen more women and children came to the gate, still Kari did not order the gate to be opened. They waited. The soldiers began to drowse in their saddles and the horses slept, shifting their weight from hoof to hoof. Valdar finally overruled Logi and sent out an order for two men with axes to make waste of the gate and they came out of the darkness and began chopping away at the hard, oak timbers. From the top of the wall, arrows whistled and the two soldiers fell back, bleeding in the puddles of melted snow and mud. Valdar sent another two men and they too were taken down with arrows from Kari’s men on the wall; wounded, they limped back behind the siege line.

  “What would you have me do now?” Valdar asked Logi. “We are just offering my men up as targets. I’ll not have them slaughtered in this manner. We must bring all the men together. We need a shield-wall to approach the gate. I have to pull the men back from the perimeter.”

  Logi thought for a moment. “I have another idea,” he said. “Keep watch on the wall. I will return with a solution to this problem.”

  And, once more, Logi galloped into the village, past the exodus of people escaping the flames, seeking the protection of the palisade.

  “You are evil!” they shouted. “Kaleva would be ashamed of you!”

  “You are nei jarl!” another said. “You are nothing more than the spoiled boy you always were!”

  Logi galloped past them, ignoring their insults and dodging the rocks they were pelting at him. What did he care about the common people? He was the rightful jarl of Kvenland! He would not be bothered by the disapproval of a few peasants! Once he defeated his brothers and took his rightful place, he would have them all flogged, the ingrates! By the time he reached the foundry, nothing but its rock walls were left unconsumed by the flames, but the firepot was still blazing amidst the smoldering heap. He jumped down from his horse and made his way carefully through the pile of ash, searching for the materials to make another torch. Finally, he removed his cloak and tore his tunic into strips that he wound and knotted around a piece of wood. After lighting it in the still-bubbling firepot, he returned to his horse outside. The villagers had gathered in the street, watching as their homes burned. Several men approached Logi with axes raised but Logi mounted quickly and galloped ahead of them; his horse taking the brunt of the barrage of rocks that followed them.

  “Take a handful of your horse’s manes or cut off a piece of their tails and knot it around your arrows,” he told the men. From soldier to soldier he rode, lighting their arrows. “Now, send them over the wall!” he said. “Burn it! Burn it to the ground!”

  The soldiers stepped up, one by one, protecting themselves behind their shields and sent their flaming missiles over the wall, retreating quickly each time beyond the reach of Kari’s men. Some of the arrows landed in the yard, several embedded themselves in the thatching of the boathouse and the animal barn, narrowly missing the longhouse. Outside, Logi leaned back in his saddle and took delight in the sight of his family homestead going up in flames. Still not satisfied, he lit another round of arrows and watched as a second bombardment went over the wall.

  Inside, Kari seemed to have come out of his trance. He and the others helped the animals escape the barn that was burning around them. When an arrow finally landed on the longhouse and the roof began to burn the women came outside, Hildi carrying little Frosti on her hip.

  “Where shall we go?” she asked. “Kari, I am frightened! Your brother is going to kill us all!”

  “I won’t let him do that,” Kari assured her. He ushered his mother and his mother-in-law to a sheltered corner of the wall where he had Snapp and the others carry an unfinished boat, rescued from the smoldering boathouse, and place it, keel-side up, for the women to hide beneath. Clutching little Frosti in between them, Hildi and Rolleka huddled together in terror under it.

  “What will he do next?” asked Weyland. “Is his army just going to burn everything around us?”

  “I have nei idea what his plan is,” said Kari. “Keep watch on the soldiers and shoot anyone who comes near the wall.”

  The stand-off continued until dawn. The army continued their vigil in the morning sun, growing sleepy and weary, while Logi and Valdar discussed their next plan.

  “We will just camp here,” said Logi. “We will have the men put up their tents and build fires all around the perimeter. We will send men to scavenge whatever food is left in the village. And, we will wait. My brother cannot escape unless he makes himself invisible.”

  Valdar was growing weary of Logi’s battle strategy. He was tired and he wanted to go home to the Trondelag. When burning everything in the enclosure to the ground had not worked, he doubted anything short of death would make Kari and Aegir open the gate. “I must send a hunting party out, at least,” he said. “We will not starve again.”

  Valdar’s dismissed a few of his men to plunder the village, to retrieve everything usable or edible, with orders to strike down those who resisted them. By mid-morning, a ring of campfires had sprung up around the palisade. The soldiers cooked their breakfasts and let the horses graze on the newly-sprouted, spring grass, while the villagers, knowing they were no match for Valdar’s army, huddled in fear in their burned-out homes. Inside the palisade walls, Kari and Aegir tried to
repair the roof of the longhouse, piecing together bits of charred lumber from the remains of the other buildings, while the others cleaned up the ash and rubble on the floor. Another day and night would pass before the women could take shelter inside it again. Meanwhile, they waited in fear.

  “What are they waiting for?” Aegir asked. “Why don’t they make a move so we can get a shot at them? How long can this go on, Kari?”

  Kari knew their situation was dire. “We must ration our food,” he told the women. “Dansa’s vegetables are already coming up in the garden. We have the goats for milk and cheese for little Frosti. We’ll slaughter them if we must. Logi is stubborn. This could go on for weeks!”

  And, day after day, they worked together to survive their captors who waited like vultures beyond the gate.

  Logi was growing impatient. When it appeared his brothers could not be forced to surrender, he clashed with Valdar over what to do. “We can’t wait forever!” he told the commander. “We must go up and over the wall. We will lose a few men but it is the only way. My brothers have settled in now.”

  “Your brothers appear to be every bit as stubborn as you are, Logi,” said Valdar. “But I’ll not have my men slaughtered like pigs going over the wall. I tell you a shield-wall is the only way! I must bring the men from around the wall.”

  “We’ll start killing the villagers!” Logi suggested. “Let Kari hear their screaming!”

  “I’ll not murder innocent women and children,” said Valdar. “The villagers are not fighting us.”

  Another day and a night went by. Attempts to sneak over the wall in the darkness were thwarted. The brothers were at an impasse, and there seemed no end in sight.

  Chapter Forty-Two “A Potion in a Wine Skin”

  Hildi and Rolleka continued to tidy up the mess in the longhouse as best they could, sweeping up the piles of debris beneath their makeshift roof and trying to keep little Frosti from playing in it, but the little boy was already covered in soot from head to toe. The air inside the longhouse swirled with grey ash that stuck in their throats and, yet, Hildi and Rolleka did not cry. Dansa was the one who had paid the ultimate price of this war. Now she lay in a burial mound, covered in several feet of brown earth, gone from them forever. They grieved for her but they kept the men on the wall fed and kept the fire pit burning with dried animal dung when the wood was depleted. And, just like the men, they waited for Logi to make his next move.

  The men had eaten their supper in silence; the siege was wearing them down. When they had gone out again in the night to guard the wall, Hildi and Rolleka put little Frosti to bed and settled down by the fire, unable to relax.

  “Do you think he will kill us all tonight?” asked Rolleka solemnly. “Is this what it feels like to know you are going to die?”

  Hildi reached for Kari’s wineskin which he had left behind. “Here,” she said to Rolleka. “This will help you sleep.”

  “I don’t drink wine,” said Rolleka, taking the skin and sniffing at it with a grimace.

  “Drink it anyway,” said Hildi. “Ignore how it tastes. Think of it as one of old Nordrana’s potions.”

  Rolleka reluctantly put the skin to her lips and took a sip. She coughed and took another. After three or four sips, she passed it back to Hildi. “Here, you try some.”

  Hildi, too, drank the wine, in long swallows. She knew the wine’s effects well. She felt it burn in her belly for she had eaten very little supper.

  “I am afraid of your son,” said Rolleka. “I have never mistreated him and still he wants to kill us all. Was he always so cruel?”

  Hildi shrugged helplessly. “He is like his papi,” she murmured, the effects of the wine slowly beginning to slurr her speech. “My husband was a tyrant, you cannot begin to imagine how bad, and my son is just like him.”

  “But, not Kari and Aegir!” said Rolleka. “They are fine young men!”

  “Maybe it was one demon seed that was allowed to take root,” replied Hildi, remembering Nordrana’s haunting words.

  “What?” asked Rolleka. “What is this demon seed you speak of?”

  “Oh, its nothing,” said Hildi. “It is just the wine talking.”

  “I didn’t know wine could talk,” said Rolleka, as she drank again from the skin. She laughed suddenly.

  “Nonsense,” said Hildi. “Can’t you hear it? It is speaking now!” She began to laugh too.

  They passed the wineskin between them again and before long they both were laughing hysterically.

  “Shhhhhhh!” whispered Rolleka. “We will wake Frosti! And, what will the men think of us, getting drunk while they are out on the wall protecting us?”

  “You are right,” said Hildi. “We shouldn’t be doing this.” Her laughter faded and she tried to compose herself.

  “Oh, Hildi,” said Rolleka. “I don’t want to die! I don’t want my husband to die!”

  “Nor I, my dear,” said Hildi. Her eyes misted and began to flow. She put a motherly arm around Rolleka’s shoulder.

  “Don’t cry,” said Rolleka. “Or I shall start crying too!”

  The two women clung together, there in the firelight, weeping softly on each other’s shoulders, until they finally drifted off to sleep.

  Chapter Forty-Three “The Battle for Kvenland”

  Spring was in full bloom around the palisade, but there was no enjoyment in it while they were prisoners in their own home. The boats in the harbor bobbed on the water around the burned-out shell that once was the Kaleva. Traders entering the harbor from the Gandvik turned their boats around at the first sight of the smoldering village and the armed soldiers and fled. The villagers joined together, repairing their homes, whispering and tiptoeing and staying out of sight of the invaders; everyone was afraid of what Logi would do next. The entire village was in a suspended state of animation, sleep-walking through a ghostly dream.

  Logi grew even more impatient and the clashes with Valdar became more heated and nasty. “Damn the casualties!” he swore at the commander. “What good is an army if they can’t bleed a little?”

  Valdar had been contemplating silently. Something had to be done to break the impasse. “A shield wall is the only way,” he kept repeating. “It would mean breaking the line around the wall. Your brothers might escape out the back if it is not guarded.”

  “Let them run,” said Logi, growing weary and anxious for action. “They will be on foot and I can hunt them down easily on horseback. How far can they go anyway? I know these woods as well as they do. They can’t hide from me!”

  Finally, Valdar ordered his men back from the perimeter and they formed a great moving wall of shields, beneath which they held their axes. Kari watched from atop the palisade as the wood of the shields rubbed against one another and the leather of a hundred boots stomped across the ground up to the high gate. With half the men holding the shields over their heads, the others began to attack the gate with their axes. Splinters and chips of wood began flying through the air. Kari’s men sent out a barrage of arrows only to see them bounce off the protective shields and fall back in the dirt. The old gate trembled and shook. Kari knew it would not hold for long. He looked up at Aegir on the wall above him.

  “Do you see Logi?” he shouted to his brother. “Call to him. See if he will stop this rampage if we yield.” Kari was not about to see his family harmed any more. Logi had already murdered his wife with his carnality, he would not let his son die too! If they continued to resist, there was no telling what Logi would do. He had to try and reason with his brother.

  From the wall, Aegir shook his head. “It has gone too far now,” he called back. “Logi won’t listen to me. He is out for blood and only blood will satisfy him.”

  Aegir turned and looked down at his brother in the field; even at a distance their eyes found each other and locked in hateful stares. Aegir opened his mouth to call out, but what he saw beyond the village left his mouth agape and silent. He raised his arm and pointed. Weyland and Snapp saw it too!
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br />   “What is it?” shouted Kari, wondering what they were all looking at. He vaulted over a hogshead and climbed up to join his brother on the catwalk.

  There, on the horizon in the noon-day sun, the Gandvik glittered blue and cold. Kari narrowed his eyes and strained to see what he thought he saw. He rubbed his disbelieving eyes. Kite-boats! A dozen or more, filled with the wind, bobbing and sailing toward the village; a fleet of boats of their own design was nearing the dock! Kari looked at his brother in shock. “Who?” he muttered under his breath.

  “I sent word with my people that there might be trouble,” said a woman’s voice beneath them. Kari looked down and saw his mother standing there with a nervous smile on her lips. “I expected you would be fighting your papi and I thought you would need Gustav’s help.”

  “Gustav?” asked Aegir. “You sent for Prince Gustav?”

  Hildi nodded. “I knew he would come for the grandsons of Kaleva.”

  The rumble at the gate suddenly stopped as Logi and Valdar saw what the men on the wall saw. The commander immediately ordered the men to abandon the gate.

  “Mount your horses!” he yelled and the army left their posts outside the palisade, galloping off through the village to defend themselves against the approaching army that was now tying their boats up at the dock.

  “You did not tell me your brother had an army and a fleet of boats,” yelled Valdar, as his men began to clash with the others in the street.

  Logi shrugged. “I did not know,” he answered. “I don’t know where these men came from. They are foreign to me.”

  At first, the villagers looked on, silent with apprehension. Were these boats carrying more invaders out to burn their homes? The people watched from their windows and waited to see who was descending upon them now. When Valdar’s men began to fight with the new arrivals, the families realized their jarl must have summoned reinforcements and the men took up their axes and joined the battle, while their women and children remained inside, praying silently for Logi and his men to be defeated.