Why did you tell them we would stand with them in a fight?
Even Garik, who walked close beside Hulda, seemed invested. He did not say as much as the others, but she could feel his uneasiness.
Not till they reached camp did Hulda gesture them to gather around the firepit, where she gave answers.
“Among these people, it is the nature of such an alliance as I have made to offer one another support at arms in time of war.”
Helje spoke. “But yet who would these folk fight, save others like us? Do you mean for us to stand with them against others of our own blood?”
“Other Norsemen,” she corrected him. “Mayhap not of our blood.”
“And are we to ask them about their lineage before we cut their throats? Pardon me, but who are your cousins?”
“And what”—it was Garik who asked this—“of the service we have sworn to our own jarls?”
“List to me,” Hulda said as calmly as she could. “Have our men not in the past hired out their swords? On countless occasions, we have.”
“Ja, but that was for payment.”
“Think of our leave to hold this place as our payment.” Hulda lifted her hands. “A fine place, this is, from whence to go raiding.”
“Then let us go raiding!” cried Sven, one of their youngest men. “I have had my fill of sitting here with naught to do.”
“Ja, we will do that.”
The men turned away, only half satisfied. But when she would have followed, Garik laid a hand on Hulda’s arm.
“I would have thought,” he said, “you would consult with me and Helje before pledging our swords. We are the three of us in this together from the start, nei?”
She met his angry gaze. “You are right. I am sorry. You object?”
“It is too late for that, is it not? You have given our agreement and I stand with you. But ja, I object.”
“Forgive me. I thought the advantages outweighed the price.”
“Advantages to whom?”
He did not give her a chance to answer that but stalked away after the other men.
So she took them raiding the next morning, when they still had sore heads from Quarrie MacMurtray’s heather ale. They loosedFreyaupon the morning tide, threading the needle of the passage, and struck away southward.
That took them past the settlement where Quarrie’s men, out on watch, called and pointed. The keep, up on its rise, looked formidable and impenetrable. It made Hulda wonder. Had Loki been whispering in her ear when she made that agreement with Quarrie?
Yet such agreements must eventually be formed. Warring could not go on forever. The men who had settled at Dublin, at Wexford, at Waterford, and at York must have made similar agreements on a march larger scale, or they would all have slaughtered one another by now.
As Quarrie’s settlement slipped out of sight, she near convulsed with longing for him. Yet she looked at it fairly. She and he might never have an opportunity to be together again.
Their campaign proved a vicious and a bloody one. Her instincts still for Quarrie’s welfare, Hulda made sure to sail far enough south to avoid his immediate neighbors before striking, but her crew, young and hungry, showed little mercy to their prey.
They returned north after more than a sennight sated with goods and gore, Hulda thinking there could not possibly be an attainable future between herself and any man of Scots blood.
The same blood that stained their swords and axes.
What had she been thinking?
At least the crew, well satisfied, seemed inclined to rest at their home base for the time. They boasted to one another of their exploits, the wealth they would eventually take home to Norge, and of improving the camp.
Turning it into a settlement with proper huts, perhaps. Even though they spoke of going home.
