Page 105 of Lord of Fire and Ice

His attack had lost the element of surprise.

No matter. He still had the weight of a superior force behind him. Even the smallest ship in his flotilla bore two-dozen warriors. There were fifty shields affixed to each side of his ship, one hundred strong backs bending in concert to row his drakkar into the fjord.

Wind sang in the rigging. Death rode on his shoulder. Malvar was proud to be the one bringing it.

***

The zing of an arrow in the dark. A man’s guttural cry. The figure was shadowy on the far side of a towering fire, but Brandr saw him go down in the images Katla Sent to him. He felt her distress as if it were his own. She crept forward.

“No, girl,” he mumbled in his sleep. He drifted up to full consciousness and back down again, unsure whether he was dreaming or waking. He smelled the pitch-soaked pine blaze and recoiled from its heat as she moved around it. He’d never had such a vivid dream, and even as he lay in his hudfat, heart pounding and fully awake now, disjointed images continued to scroll across his mind.

Her white hand showed stark against the man’s dark shoulder. The fletching on the arrow sticking out of his back was so vivid Brandr could see where the feather’s barbules had separated from one another. The man turned his head.

“Father.” Brandr sat upright.

Harald still manned the steering oar. His other friends still slept. The wind had lessened, but they were making good progress toward the mouth of the fjord.

And if his dream…or vision—he was unsure what to name it—was true, Ulf Skallagrimsson was still alive.

“Brandr, look.” Harald pointed off the starboard bow.

A signal fire was burning. An answering blaze flared to life on the opposite side of the waterway.

“They’re all lit,” Harald said. “All the way to the sea.”

And the people who lit those fires were preparing to join Brandr and his men. If there was enough time, the fighting ships might form up into a force sufficient to make a stand on the narrow waters of Hardanger.

Then between one breath and the next, the sail on Brandr’s ship went slack. The wind died, and the waters that had been surging out of the fjord, rushing to join the sea, now pushed the defender’s drakkar back.

“We’ve lost the tide,” he said. Momentum would swing around to the force heading into Hardanger now. “Wake up, men. It’s time to row.”

Chapter 36

“Haukon, are you injured?” Katla called down to the faering.

“No, not so much,” his voice rose, thready and weak, from the bottom of the boat. “Just feel like I lost a dozen fights and drank far too much mead.”

“Katla, what are you thinking, dragging that traitor along?” Finn demanded when he noticed she had Ulf in tow at the water’s edge.

Haukon lay sprawled in the bottom of the boat, but he was conscious and smiled weakly at her as she helped Brandr’s father into the bobbing faering.

“All the time I was bound, this man was ever kind to me when the others weren’t looking,” Haukon said. “It’s all right, Finn.”

“No, it’s not all right.” He untied the line that moored the craft to land and pushed away from the island with an oar. “He’ll lead them right to us.”

Katla bristled as she ignored her brother’s objections and hustled Ulf into the prow of the faering. Finn hadn’t seen all Ulf had done at the top of the hill. With a touch on her forearm, Brandr’s father stopped her from arguing.

“Rest easy, girl. He’s right. I was a traitor, but Bloodaxe has bigger plans than following me,” Ulf said with a wheeze. “Look.”

Katla peered over Finn’s shoulder to where Ulf pointed. Once Finn glanced that way, he settled on the bench to use both oars to keep the faering in the deep shadow of the land. Their only safety lay in going unnoticed.

A flotilla of at least thirty ships passed by on their way into the mouth of Hardanger Fjord. By the time the last one sailed by, the tide and prevailing winds had turned, and the invaders oars were shipped. Their square sails billowed out in the fading night.

“Oh, Brandr, he’s coming.”

“I know, love. I see the signal fires. Is that your doing?”

“No. It was your father’s. He’s alive.”