Page 100 of Lord of Fire and Ice

“Safe travels, beloved.” Then she closed the door to her mind, oh, so softly.

It wouldn’t do for Brandr to know what she planned. He’d only try to talk her out of it.

Chapter 34

Jondal was a beehive of industry when Brandr’s small craft sidled up to the wharf. Earthworks and barricades, the very defensive measures he’d suggested and Arn had dismissed when he first returned home, were now being realized. He wasn’t surprised Katla wasn’t on the wharf to greet him, since he’d heard nothing from her for a couple days, and so hadn’t been able to warn her of his arrival. She was no doubt in the hub of all this busyness.

There was a prickle between his shoulder blades as he climbed the hill to the jarlhof. It usually boded no good tidings, but he’d learned to trust that prickle.

The prickle became a serrated edge between his teeth when Brandr stopped by the smith’s shed and realized the man had halted work on his design for the Greek fire machine.

“What was I to do, my lord?” the smith asked. “The jarl ordered me to turn out swords.”

“Arn will be worm food before the season turns,” Brandr said coldly. The truth of it made his gut churn, but he needed to startle the smith to attention. “Your future jarl orders you to return to the commission he gave you and have it ready and loaded onto Arn’s dragonship before the next tide.”

“You will sail the jarl’s vessel?”

Brandr silenced the man with a glare. Arn’s ship was swift, shallow on the draft, and answered to the steering oar more faithfully than a blooded hound obeying her master’s commands. Arn was in no shape to sail her. It was folly to let her sway idle at the wharf.

“Finish my design,” he ordered. “Then you may make all the swords you wish, much good may they do you.”

His foul mood didn’t improve when Hilde greeted him at the jarlhof door with the news that Katla was gone.

“What do you mean she’s not here?” Brandr demanded. When Katla refused to answer his Sendings over the last two days, he’d been worried. Now he was livid.

“She left with her brother Finn for Tysnes the day before yesterday,” Hilde said.

He listened with growing agitation as Hilde recounted Finn’s tale of the invasion of Tysnes Island and Katla’s determined response to it. No wonder she’d closed her mind to him. If she lived through this ill-conceived venture, he was of half a mind to take her over his knee and paddle her arse soundly for it.

“What of the child? Did she take Linnea?”

“No, though it pained her sore to leave her,” Hilde said. “She knew the babe would be safer here in the care of her nurse.”

“If Bloodaxe is coming, there is no safety anywhere in Hardanger,” Brandr said bluntly.

Hilde’s pale eyes told him she already knew that, but for the sake of the people busily scurrying around her, she was keeping up a brave face. “Will you see the jarl before you go?”

“I haven’t time,” Brandr said, turning on his heel and starting back down the hill. “We need to provision the ships and—”

“If you don’t see him now, you won’t see him again.”

That stopped him. He couldn’t sail till the next tide, in any case. “I’ll see my brother.”

He followed Hilde to the jarl’s private chamber. Though Hilde was the finest of housekeepers, the miasma of a sickroom assaulted his nostrils when he entered. His brother rotted while he was yet alive. Brandr wouldn’t wish such a death on anyone—not even the heir of Bloodaxe. He sent up a silent prayer for a quick, clean battle death.

At least that’s a prayer likely to be answered soon, he thought with grimness.

“Brother.” Arn’s whisper was wraithlike.

“I’m here, Arn.”

“Lead the defense of Jondal for me,” he said, every word expelled with effort. He lifted his nubbed hands. “I cannot hold a sword.”

“Arn, the time for burrowing in holes is past,” Brandr said. “If we wait for Bloodaxe and his horde to come to us, we’ll be overrun. We must sail out to meet the foe. Give me your blessing before I go.”

“No. Bloodaxe sails with twenty-five ships. We cannot meet him by sea. We must make our stand here.”

“We can defeat him on the water if we use the weapon I’ve brought from the South—Greek fire.”