Page 107 of Lord of Fire and Ice

Malvar stood in the prow of his ship, scanning the horizon for any signs of organized resistance. The mist obscured his vision, but it seemed the signal fires hadn’t called down the warriors of Hardanger to meet him. The only thing out of the ordinary was the way the mist piled up in one place, dead center in front of Malvar’s ship.

“What’s that?” one of his men asked, a superstitious tremor in his voice.

Out of the watery mists, a fierce dragonhead rose, and behind it, as if he were mounted on the great wooden beast, a single man wreathed in clouds lying on the water. Silently, he stood, unmoving and unflinching, as Malvar’s flotilla drew nearer.

The mist parted, curling upward like disembodied souls straining skyward, and a blue glow was visible, growing between the man’s upraised palms. It bloomed as big as a head of cabbage and then divided into two, so the man held a glowing orb in each hand.

“Sorcery,” someone whispered.

“A fire mage,” said another. “He holds the flame and isn’t burned.”

“Who is this that he thinks to dazzle us with cheap tricks and false magick? The Old Ones are the only power we revere,” Malvar roared. “Someone put an arrow down his gullet. He’ll bleed like the rest of us.”

But before anyone could obey him, the man hurled the ball of flame to the base of Malvar’s mast. The sail caught in a searing moment. The second ball of blue fire burst on the deck of Bloodaxe’s flankship, sending the crew into a panicked rout.

“Archers!” Bloodaxe bellowed. “Bring that man down.”

***

“Shields up,” Harald shouted from the tiller.

Brandr’s crew let their oars drift in the oar ports while they hunkered beneath their round discs of hardened leather. Brandr flattened himself to the dragon’s neck, sheltering under the beast’s horny head. He was glad Arn had spared no expense for this figurehead, choosing a design with a flared horizontal crest at the base of its skull that acted as a shield for Brandr now.

From this place of relative safety, he commanded the existing flames on his enemy’s ships with a slow wave of his arm. Tongues of fire leaped from one ship to the next, dancing along the rigging and dropping burning ash on the panicked crews beneath. The long line of attackers broke as the outer ships sheared off, trying to distance themselves from their burning cohorts. Brandr arced fire from his palms to their retreating sterns.

The air was filled with screams and the hollow song fire always sang when it fed, licking at the pitch-soaked hulls with relish. The fjord around the attacker’s ships boiled with the flailing of drowning men as they fled the flames for a watery grave. Brandr recognized one of them as Albrikt Gormson.

But Bloodaxe’s burning flagship continued to advance on Brandr’s. While panic reigned on the other ships, a bucket brigade had formed on this one and was dousing the flames with methodical efficiency. Growling curses carried across the water as Bloodaxe drove his men to keep rowing.

Brandr glanced back at his friends. “He means to ram us. Time to abandon ship.”

Without a word of dissent, Ragnar, Orlin, Torvald, and Torsten grasped their oars with both hands and leaped into the water.

“You too, Harald.” Brandr clambered back to the stern where his friend still sat.

“Can’t swim.”

“You’ll never learn any younger,” Brandr said as he broke off the steering arm of the tiller, shoved it into his friend’s hands, and pushed Harald over the gunwale into the frothing water.

Harald surfaced, sputtering and complaining, but he was afloat.

Brandr turned to face Bloodaxe’s dragonship bearing down on him. His Greek fire mixture didn’t work as he’d planned, but he was certain it would burn. He gathered all his concentration and drew a deep breath. The shouts and chaos faded around him. Flame grew between his palms, beautiful in its purity, terrible in its destructive power.

He focused all his strength, and as the neck of Bloodaxe’s drakkar smashed Brandr’s dragonhead to kindling, he hurled the hottest ball of fire he could produce into the prow of his own ship.

The Greek fire machine erupted into a blazing inferno that scorched the sky.

***

After Bloodaxe’s horde left her steading, Katla and Finn sailed around the island and cautiously nosed into the sheltered cove. Her people who’d survived the invasion were overjoyed to see her. She ordered all their thrall collars struck, because she wanted to convince them Bloodaxe wouldn’t be returning. He was going to meet her husband in battle, and Brandr Ulfson was more than his match.

Even if she wasn’t entirely convinced herself—after seeing Bloodaxe’s massive flotilla of ships—she had to present a brave face. But that didn’t stop her from having Finn organize a party of archers to guard the cove against returning enemies.

Then she asked for help moving Ulf Skallagrimsson into her old chamber. At first her people balked, since they’d seen him with Bloodaxe, but when she told them he’d been responsible for lighting the signal fire, and the defense of the fjord was underway because of it, they grudgingly accepted him.

It was a small matter. He was dying, at any rate.

When Ulf refused to let her try to remove the arrowhead, she was relieved. The shaft had sunk beneath his skin, and going after it was beyond her doctoring skills. So she cleaned and dressed his wound and made him lie down in her own bed. She gave him willow bark tea for pain until he demanded mead instead.