“Einarr has forbidden the women and children to be harmed, and I will uphold his command to the letter. If you rape a woman or a child, I will not wait to deliver you to my brother, I will kill you myself.”
The man glared back, but made no argument. Disgusted with the brute, Torsten shoved him away and continued running.
“It’s not worth it,” he heard another man say to the first. “After we’re done, you’ll have enough plunder to buy whatever tail can be found at port.”
“Ja,” said a third. “And they’ll give you their pox and sores for free, too.”
Torsten did not join the round of laughter that followed. His blood was still up over the man coming so close to disobeying Einarr’s orders. Thor’s balls, why had he come? He knew Einarr would not be able to enforce his command. Please the gods that he would not be a part of any raid that lead to the deaths of innocents.
In less than an hour they had crossed the distance between their northern entry point into Bjarmaland and the port at the south. More farmers and their families ran as they encountered the Viking raiders, and as the homes closer to the town’s centre showed signs of greater affluence, Torsten could no longer prevent his men from entering and plundering for riches. It was not often that they found anything significant, but the occasional discovery of a silver goblet or a bejewelled necklace was encouragement enough for all to keep trying.
Torsten turned away from the destruction and the pillaging, listening for the sounds of forbidden attack by his men so that he could run the blade of his sword through whatever devil had disobeyed his order.
None dared attempt it after the first confrontation.
It was not long before the evidence of the carnage upon the town became visible on the horizon. Billows of black smoke surged upwards as buildings burned to the ground. Screams echoed on the wind, and the sharp clanging of steel upon steel rang out, spurring Torsten’s men onward.
“Faster, men,” he called to them. Reaching to his shoulders he gripped the protruding handles of his weapons and pulled them out of their sheathes in a mighty arc. His feet moved with a will of their own, covering greater distance, pounding the dirt beneath ferociously. The sound of the footsteps behind him followed suit, sending a sound like thunder up into the air to meet the battle in the distance.
Ordinary townspeople, fleeing for their lives, tore past him with whatever belongings they could carry bundled in their arms. Women tugged the hands of their young ones, meeting Torsten’s eyes with a terror so acute it pierced his heart. He let them pass and did not look back. They would be safe. He needed to believe they would be safe.
And then his first enemy was upon him. The man, older than Torsten but not yet old, might have been one of Dagfinnr’s men, but then again he might not have been. For all Torsten knew, he might be a simple Bjarmalander trying to protect his property, his possessions, his family from yet another raid. He charged Torsten with a brutal cry of hatred, his sword drawn and raised. In one swift motion, the man brought his ropy arm down, swinging his sword in an arc at Torsten’s head. Torsten ducked and swiped at the man with his axe.
His aim was precise, his timing perfect. He caught the man in the chest with the blunt end of the axe, knocking the wind out of him and sending him to the ground. The man stared up at Torsten, his eyes wide with fright as he watched his impending death.
Torsten raised his axe ... and caught the man in the temple with the handle, knocking him unconscious. When the man woke, he would be nursing a mighty headache. But he would live.
Torsten moved on. He was aware of the destruction his men caused behind him, could hear the sounds of doors breaking, and women screaming as their houses were looted and their possessions with little or no value senselessly burned. He would have stopped them, wanted to stop them, but could not. More men advanced on him and he had to fight for his own life. For most of them, he could not tell whether they served Dagfinnr or were mere Bjarmalanders. Nevertheless, he managed to dispose of them in the same manner as the first, slicing at a leg here, breaking an arm bone there. Killing no one.
“There you are,” said Einarr jovially when Torsten’s raiders finally met up with his brother’s men. He raised a powerful arm and slashed at a foe with one decisive motion. The man fell forward, blood turning the dust beneath him to mud.
Torsten tried not to see the man, tried not to look at his face in the gruesome agony of death. He lunged at another which moved to strike him, knocking the teeth from the man’s mouth and slicing the flesh at his thigh. Then he kicked the weapon from the man’s hand.
“You are ridiculous,” Einarr scoffed, watching the performance. But he left the man alone and attacked another, cleaving his skull open with a sickening crack.
“Must you kill every man that attacks you?” Torsten grunted as he dislocated the kneecap of the next attacker.
Einarr rolled his eyes and left his brother, moving further into the crowd of fighting men, thrusting and skewering any that opposed him.
At last the town was in ruins. The lesser buildings had been ransacked and burned, save a few near the water that would act as the raiders’ base overnight. There, they would take stock of their victory and their plunder, and partake of a night of wine and Bjarmaland food before they set off again for Hvaleyrr. A number of the townspeople had been captured, rounded up to be sold as slaves overseas. Most were women, many attractive, and would fetch a good price on the markets. For now they were huddled together in a guarded root cellar until they could be chained and transported.
So much for making Bjarmaland their allies; Einarr and his men had decimated the town worse than Dagfinnr had in the first place. Whoever was left would hate them to their core.
With the main battle over, Torsten had time to take his own stock of the carnage that he’d shamefully been a part of. Damn Einarr, he never should have let his brother guilt him into this.
Why had he, then? Why could he never manage to resist? One of these days he was going to say no and stick with it.
Angry with himself, he made his way down to the docks where Einarr’s two drekar longships were beached. The mud of the streets was a sickening dark brown where the dirt mixed with blood. It had a smell to it, a thick, foul scent that followed death but preceded decay. Torsten breathed as little as he could as he strode towards the port and onto the wooden docks.
Bending down, he dipped his hands into the water to wash the sweat, dirt and blood from his face and hands and forearms. The water was crisp on his skin, cool and soothing to his senses. But it did nothing to soothe his conscience. Einarr was wrong: Dagfinnr’s taking of the town was not a reason to counter attack it, to burn it to the ground. The people of Bjarmaland had not deserved either raid, yet they were the ones who suffered the greatest for other men’s ambitions, for other men’s wars.
He hated the Viking way.
Perched on the balls of his feet and wiping the water from his face, Torsten rested his forearms on his knees. Glancing to his left towards the beach, he noticed a flash of colour at the water’s edge. It floated up and down gently, following the motion of the waves as they lapped at the shore.
When he realized what it was, he didn’t know whether to kill the closest man to him or vomit into the water.
Dazed, he moved closer to the burgundy cut of wool, and gazed into the blood-streaked face of a young woman. A young woman guilty of nothing but fleeing from the beasts who landed on her shores. Her blue eyes were wide open, staring but not seeing. A fatal gash was visible across her back.
Into the crook of her neck was pressed the face of a small boy no more than three years. His mother held him in her arms, cradling him to her breast as if to protect him against the force of the weapon which threatened him. She had not succeeded. The small face was white in death, the tiny body still. Mother and son had been brutally murdered in this barbarous raid which Torsten himself had helped carry out. Horrified, he pressed his hand to his mouth. It trembled uncontrollably.
&nb
sp; Great Odin, what had he done?
Five
For hours Torsten wandered the devastated remains of Bjarmaland. Many of the houses and buildings had been burned, their thatch and wood construction an easy target for the invaders’ torches. Of those structures which still stood, a number still held the bodies of victims, their silent forms lying where they’d fallen.
He counted another three women among the dead. Three elderly women who had not been able to run and save themselves when the alarm was raised.
He should have known Einarr’s orders would not be obeyed.
But then, he was fooling himself. He had known; of course he had. He knew the men that followed Einarr’s command. They were battle hungry devils, eager for carnage and bloodshed. They lived to kill, and it mattered not which victim met the sharp end of their blades. There was nothing Einarr could say that would stop them. Not completely.
Torsten had known all this. And yet he had gone anyway.
The vision of the dead woman and her child had burned itself into his mind, was vivid in his reflection as he wandered. In that time Torsten had come to a conclusion. An unwavering one. He would no longer be a part of this senseless killing and plundering. No longer would he let his brother and his father push him into action he neither sought nor agreed with.
This war was not his to fight, nor was it Einarr’s. His brother made it his war. Their family had not been threatened by Harald Fairhair. Not yet, not directly. It was wealth that Einarr was after, for there was much wealth to be gained in this pursuit of his. War was only his excuse to raid, his justification to pillage.
Even the small, inconsequential island in Orkney that he’d annexed for himself and on which he planned to settle—what had he called it ... Rysa Beag?—it was more than a tactical stronghold, it would bring a profit during the farming months. And he’d secured himself a bride in the process, a well connected bride by the way he told it. Wealth, power, land, prestige. That’s what this war was about. Though Einarr professed differently, Torsten saw it clearly now.
Let them do what they would. If he could not stop his brother from carrying on, then he would leave. Perhaps he would take up merchanting of ... something. Wine. Silk. Gemstones. He was fair in his ability with numbers, and could barter as well as the next man.
Yes, he could spend his days quite happily travelling the world, procuring goods for trade in exotic lands like Hispania and Ravenna, Marrakech and Damascus.
It was dark by the time he finally returned to the harbour. There the men had set up quarters for the night, in a group of undamaged buildings along the street that ran parallel to the docks. Lanterns flickered quietly, casting a dim glow over the town which, only hours before, had been ablaze with uncontrolled flame. Happy chatter, punctuated occasionally by rounds of laughter, echoed through the empty streets. It was an unsettling sound: the celebration of barbarians in the blackness of a dead town.
Milling about at the entrance to what used to be one of the harbour taverns was a group of men. Torsten approached them.
“Which one’s he in?” he said flatly, nodding towards the occupied buildings.
“Einarr?” responded one. “This one here. But I wouldn’t disturb him if I were you. He’s busy just now.”
The man’s companions snickered amongst themselves. Ignoring them, Torsten pushed his way through the group to the open door.
The scene inside was a chaotic mix of depravity and drunkenness; he had expected nothing less. Raiders occupied every table and chair that was available. Those that did not occupy a seat leaned against the yellowed, plaster walls, and helped themselves to whatever was stored behind the bar.
The whores had already descended upon the town, pecking at the spoils to be gained. These men certainly had the loot to pay for their charms now. Their sloppy, leering faces foretold that many a wench would leave here black and blue in her professional areas, but with her pockets heavy with plundered coin for her troubles.
Torsten observed the group with a bitter taste in his mouth. Beasts, all of them. Vultures.
“Einarr?” he repeated to the men at the table closest to the door. A rail-thin whore who had been busy entertaining one of them glanced up. Seeing Torsten, with his tall, lean form and handsome face, she batted her eyelashes invitingly, pressing her pale bosom and skeletal sternum upwards at him.
Recognizing a threat to his claim, the man pulled his wench closer to him roughly. “Upstairs,” he growled.
Torsten declined to offer thanks, and strode the length of the room to a set of stairs at the back of the tavern. There was a crash when he passed as one man behind the bar thumped another across the face over a rare bottle of Cyprian nectar. The force of the assault sent the latter into the middle of an occupied table which shattered to pieces beneath the man’s weight.
Torsten did not look back to see what the occupants of the former table had to say of their drinks being spilled. He mounted the worm-eaten staircase, taking the steps two at a time.
A narrow passageway dissected the second floor down its centre. Eight doors, four on each side, lined the crumbling plastered walls. They, too, were narrow, and suggested that the rooms behind them were intended for neither comfort nor slumber.
At the end of the hall, standing guard at the last door on the right, was a large man, heavily muscled even for a Viking. His left cheek was scarred from temple to jaw and he was missing three digits from his right hand. This was Einarr’s personal guard, Bjurr. Torsten had never liked the man and his particularly insatiable bloodlust.
“You’ll have to wait your turn,” Bjurr warned. “There are a good fifty men downstairs lined up for their go, and I’m next as soon as Einarr’s done with his wench in here.”
“I’m not here for a room, I need to see him,” Torsten said evenly.
Bjurr shook his head. “No one disturbs him tonight.”
“No one but me,” Torsten bit back and made to push past him.
With a malicious grin which betrayed that his desire had been to fight all along, Bjurr swiped his great paw at Torsten’s arm.
Torsten anticipated his adversary’s move, for he knew the brute relied exclusively on his strength. He whirled sideways and danced out of his reach, and with a speed and fluidity which Bjurr could never hope to match, Torsten unsheathed the dagger that he kept tucked into his belt. Stepping forward into the man, he let Bjurr’s momentum carry his own unbalanced weight onto the point of the blade. It sunk into the soft pocket of fat at his belly just as he regained his balance. Any greater pressure from Torsten and it would pierce the skin.
Bjurr grunted, and his shoulders slowly sagged in defeat. He’d been bested and he knew it. One ill advised move and Torsten would drive the blade home to the hilt. Narrowing his eyes, the man straightened himself and stepped back to let Torsten pass, which he did with backwards steps. Only when he’d crossed the threshold of the room and shut the door behind himself did he turn around.
And groaned.
Lying prostrate on a pillared oak bed, naked as the day he came into the world, was Einarr. His head was where his feet should have been and his feet where braced against the headboard, which was furiously knocking against the warped, wooden wall behind it. His head was thrown back in a most uncomfortable position, and his eyes were clenched shut with the ferocity of his pleasure.
Straddled atop him and riding him as if her life depended upon it was a young, buxom whore. Einarr certainly had saved the best for himself, Torsten thought snidely as he studied the bucking pair. Her face was down, but Torsten could see the promise of a fine bone structure. Her hair was a river of gold which spilled over bare, supple breasts peaked with neat, pink nipples. They undulated and bounced as the wench rhythmically rocked her curved hips. Her dress, a simpler garment than those worn by her companions below stairs, was torn to her narrow waist and lay puddled atop her skirts which, mercifully for Torsten, hid the place where she admitted his brother’s staff.
From his increasingly br
eathless moans, Torsten judged that Einarr was about to loose his seed. He waited.
“Oh ...”
And waited.
“Ja, oh ...”
And waited.
“There it is; there it is—”
Torsten cleared his throat. Loudly.
Startled, the wench yelped and scuttled backwards off her mount.
“Damn you to the fires of Muspelheim,” Einarr roared, his face flushing scarlet as the evidence of his thwarted pleasure pulsed pathetically onto the bare flesh of his belly. “I’ll kill whatever strodinn cur dares to disturb me!”
Frightened by his outburst, the wench scrambled from the bed and threw her half-naked body into the corner where she pulled her shredded dress back into place. For a brief second Torsten watched her with furrowed brows.
What curious behaviour for a whore.
“It is your brother,” he answered calmly as Einarr turned to fix a deadly glare upon his intruder. “And though I may be a cur at times, I am no strodinn. I prefer the company of women as much as you clearly do—not men.”
A snivel from the corner drew his gaze once more, and Torsten examined the face that stared at him more closely. The wench’s eyes were an enchanting blue, and were wide as trenchers with fright. She’d been crying. Tear tracks were visible on her rosy cheeks, and her entire frame trembled visibly.
“Mighty Thor,” he swore under his breath. This young woman was no whore; she was one of the captured Bjarmalander survivors.
“Einarr,” he breathed, deeply disappointed in his brother. “I did not think you would be one to rape a maid in the heat of a raid.”
“I’ll have you know I have never, nor will I ever, rape a maid,” Einarr barked angrily, covering himself with the bear skin blanket which lay rumpled beneath him. “You misunderstand what you have seen.”
Tossing his brother a reproachful look, he approached the woman cautiously. Bending down to her level, he brushed a golden lock from her face, and tisked at the sight of a fresh welt across her forehead.
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