Page 104 of Lord of Fire and Ice

Ulf knelt at a corner of the man-high stack of wood, sparks flying as he tried to ignite the tinder. In a sudden whoosh, the flame caught on the dry wood, spread through the rotten interior of the pile, and blazed out the top to lick at the stars.

Ulf Skallagrimsson dumped all four buckets of water on the ground so there’d be no way to douse the signal fire. Then laboriously, Brandr’s father rose and cast a death’s-head grin toward the place where Katla and Finn had fled, before he began to limp away from the inferno, heading in a different direction.

He’s covering our retreat, Katla realized.

“Who is?” She’d lost her strict discipline, and Brandr’s question flooded over her mental wall.

Before she could regain control, she felt her mind’s images winging to her husband. She let them fly. She had enough to deal with without trying to shield her thoughts from Brandr any longer.

Four new guards poured into the clearing. One shouted for Ulf to halt, and when he didn’t, the man raised his bow and planted a shaft in Ulf’s lower back. He plummeted face-first to the dirt and didn’t move.

Katla clamped a hand over her mouth to keep from crying out.

The men found their dead comrades and the empty buckets. They beat on the flames with their cloaks, but it was too late. The blaze leaped higher. The fire would burn hot till all the wood was consumed, and then it would smolder for days.

“We have to tell the Bloodaxe,” one shouted.

“I’m not going to be the bearer of this news,” said another.

“At least we killed the man who did it,” growled a third.

“Bloodaxe’s temper won’t improve with waiting,” said the one who’d actually loosed the shaft that dropped Ulf to the ground. He turned to lead the way back toward Katla’s longhouse. “Come, you spineless old women. See if you can find where you left your manhood on the way down the hill.”

When they’d been gone for the space of ten heartbeats, Katla crept back out of hiding and ran to Ulf. The long shaft of the arrow stuck out of his back.

“Do you yet live?” she asked in a whisper.

With effort, he raised himself to his hands and knees. “Ja, girl. Why are you still here? Fly while you can.”

“Not without you.” She helped him rise to his feet. “Can you walk?”

“Not far.” He spat a gob of blood and reached around and broke the shaft of the arrow off close to his skin.

“Why did you do that?” Katla demanded as she propped one of his arms over her shoulders. “It’ll be even harder to get out now.”

“’Tis not coming out, and we both know it,” Ulf said, not bothering to stifle the groan that followed. “I’ll not stir a step unless you promise to leave me if they return or if we are followed.”

Katla tried to move him, but it was like shoving a boulder. There was no give to the man.

“All right, I promise,” she said. “Now come.”

“’Tis hopeless.”

“No, it’s not. Look.”

On the dark shadow of the mainland, an answering signal fire burned brightly. As they watched, another farther in the fjord blazed to life. And another. Pinpoints of promise, they called the folk of Hardanger to honor their oaths to meet a common threat.

Katla looked up at her husband’s father. “There is always hope.”

***

“To the ships!” Malvar roared when the guards reported that their captive had been freed and the signal fire had somehow been lit. Even now, the flame on Tysnes Island’s high point was being answered by other fires on both steep sides of Hardanger Fjord. “Move!”

He gave one who didn’t scramble away fast enough a vicious kick. “Before I order you roasted over that flame.”

His men poured out of the longhouse in a near stampede and made for their waiting ships in the cove. They would have to row to clear the narrow mouth of the inlet. And after that, the tide was against them.

Once Malvar’s flagship waddled into the main channel of the fjord, he saw the sky to the East was lightened by dozens of signal fires winking on one by one. He gripped the gunwale by the long neck of the prow so hard his nails bled. His advance guard had failed to disable or secure the system of signal flares.