By Odin’s eye!A bunch of green boys for a crew? “But they have sailed?”
“Ach, ja, they have with fathers or foster fathers or brothers. We have talked about it, see. We all want a chance. We need a leader.”
“Some of your friends may not want a leader who is a woman.”
He shrugged. “You give us a chance, we give you a chance. Do you not see? That is the beauty of it.”
Itwasthe beauty of it.
She huffed a breath. “Everyone in Avoldsborg would think us raving.”
“The reason I proposed it as a mad idea. What do you say, Hulda?”
She did not know what to say. She drank first before venturing, “It is an expensive proposition. Would we have enough to build a boat, even if we pool what we have?”
“Mayhap.”
“And if we did pool what we have, and we fail as we did on this voyage, we will lose everything.”
“We would still have the boat. And we are young. We could build up again.”
“Garik, I do not know. It takes months to build a boat. By the time we do that, the raiding season will be at an end.”
“Ja, but we know of a boat. Frode’s.”
Frode was an old man, a warrior well past viking and, ja, mayhap half mad, whose boat had been wrecked in a storm last year.
“That is far too damaged.”
“Wastoo damaged. Frode has been making repairs with the help of some of my friends, who have skilled hands.”
“You think Frode would sell?”
“Ja, he will never sail again even though he wants to. Dag, who is his great nephew, can talk him round. Think about it.” Garik gave Hulda a wise look. “We could raid the smaller targets, and after we build some wealth—well, then we can go back to Murtray, ja? Where,” he added deliberately, “I think you kissed that captive goodbye.”
Hulda’s heart leaped. He had seen that, had he? She’d thought the deck too dark.
“Something, ja, to think on,” she told him with calm she most certainly did not feel.
Chapter Twenty-Two
“Where is thehead of the man who killed my son?” Faðir bellowed as soon as Hulda entered the chamber where he worked. A bright place, it was, that displayed both his wealth and his power. A good fire burned, and as Hulda had not dried out much during her time with Garik, she went directly to warm herself.
“I do not have it,” she said.
“I know that already.” He pushed back from the table where he sat. “Eager tongues could not wait to bring me the news on equally eager feet.Dottir, you promised me.”
He got up. Elvars Andersson was a tall man, well built, with his daughter’s pale-gray eyes. Eyes that, so he prided himself, could see far. He did not like failure or disappointment.
She faced him boldly. “I did so promise.”
“You have failed me.”
That made her flinch.
“I gave you a charge, my dottir, to avenge my son! Others scorned me, laughed at me for doing so. Put a woman in charge of the voyage? Pah! But your heart was as agonized as mine. I thought I could trust you with it.”
“Youcantrust me. Always.”
