Éire’s Captive Moon (26 page)

She felt pressed as she tied the last knot on Snorri’s arm. Pressed in, suffocated, unable to think. The coppery tang of blood suffused her nostrils as she gritted her teeth in an effort to just get past the repressiveness of the atmosphere. Then her back spasmed for no reason that she could comprehend. She had had
enough
.

“I’ll be right back,” she muttered, annoyed with herself as she pushed to her feet from beside her patient’s bed. Gerda snorted derisively, but didn’t keep her at the man’s bedside. Charis hated leaving a patient, but she had saved his life and stitched the worst of his wounds. Gerda could attend to the rest of the very basic cleaning and bandaging.

Charis managed not to stumble as she reached the door. Cowan would be on guard outside, she was sure, and she had no compunction in exposing herself to possible risk. She just had to get out of the healing place for a moment.

Wind whistled as she opened the door. Cowan’s shoulders were in front of her eyes, but she pushed him aside. “Let me out.”

“
Na
, lass, they’re coming this way,” he informed her, moving to stand in front of her again.

A bitter froth of anger rose inside of her. “Get out of my way,” she growled, pushing forcefully.

Cowan turned then, his red beard holding ice and snow that sparkled incongruously with the temper in his bright green eyes. He opened his mouth to speak, but she did not hear him. A flash of metal caught Charis’s eye and she moved past him to see what was going on. Were the warriors moving farther into the village?

No, only one pair of them was battling, swords ringing and shields knocking together with a strangely soft, wooden sound. The one with hair as light as her own had been backed against the well and she hoped he wouldn’t fall in and foul their water supply.

But then she noted his opponent. Agnarr.

Fierce pleasure coursed through her limbs.
Yes!
He was tiring, she could tell from here.
Yes!

The realization lifted her spirits, but they came crashing back to the muddy earth in the next heartbeat—when Agnarr’s opponent unbalanced and struck Agnarr over the head with his shield.

Later, the healer told herself it was her lifelong calling to her craft that sent her—a high-pitched scream bursting from her throat—out to Agnarr’s side. With nothing more than her personal knife in hand, Charis ran to the well, intent on distracting the invader. The man had regained a firm footing by now and lifted his sword to finish his opponent.

“
Né!
” she shouted. She leapt into the small space between the men. Could she reach his sword and help? Could she lift it if she did?

The invader laughed—a sharp, hard sound with triumph at its heart. “You think to save him? Are you his woman?” He moved his sword, stopping her from kneeling to reach the deadly length of metal. “Shall I keep you?”

Charis snarled and pushed the sword away, ignoring the pain of the blade. “Dog!”

“Charis!”

She ignored Cowan’s call. She had to focus on the invader, perhaps to push him into the well.

He caught the brief flicker of her eyes and moved forward, momentarily abandoning his fallen foe. “No, I’m not going into the well, woman,” he said, a maddening smile on his face. He reached for her. “Perhaps you’d like to?”

“
Né!
” she said, pushing again.

The smile faded and he drew back, moving away from the stone wall of the well, gaining ground at his back. Charis took advantage of his movement to kneel at Agnarr’s side. For a moment, Charis felt her mind go blank as a field of snow, as flat as a pool of dead water. Then the lack of feeling was replaced by a need to help, to heal, as she had done all her life. But she could not heal him until his opponent had been defeated. She slid the sword across the mud to grip the hilt in both hands and tried to stand.

The tall warrior laughed at the same moment that Agnarr groaned at her side. “I am Vigaldr,” the invader informed her with a sharp gesture. “I might just keep you after all.” He laughed again.

She reached for his sword’s hilt with one hand and sought his lifebeat with the other, all the while watching the circling invader. Agnarr lived. Charis drew in a slow, deep breath, trying to focus on the sword in her hands, the man at her side, and Vigaldr, who was moving his own weapon back and forth in a teasing, taunting manner. The snow had started falling faster. She could hear the shouts of the warriors to her left, the faint sounds of children crying out to her right, in the
fjørd
, and behind her, suddenly, Gerda’s voice.

“My son! Get him away from there!” No longer a confident woman of her own abode, Agnarr’s mother sounded panic-stricken. “Eir! You must!”

“Get back!” Cowan directed. “Healer! You, too, come back!” The son of King Branieucc cursed colorfully and Charis took her attention off Vigaldr long enough to see what had upset her countryman.

“Damn,” Charis spat. Gerda had left the healing house and was running to join her at Agnarr’s side.

Vigaldr ceased laughing and put himself on his guard again. He swung his sword in Gerda’s direction, moving toward her.

“No!”

Two men rushed Vigaldr: Cowan and Arknell, Agnarr’s brother.

Arknell claimed Charis’s attention first, because he charged at the tow-headed invader with a ferocious roar and the wind-whipped whistle of an axe blade. “Hah!”

Vigaldr raised his shield to counter the axe. The blade hit the metal rim of the shield with a clanging sound. Next to Charis, Gerda winced at the noise.

“Come,” the older woman urged. “We must get Agnarr away.”

Charis was still gripping Agnarr’s sword but she was forced to relinquish it. Not to Gerda, but to Cowan.

“Move, woman,” Cowan shouted, reaching for Agnarr’s weapon. It had been long months since he had last wielded a blade, but when the healer slid it to him, he felt a rightness in it. Then he glared at Gerda, at the fighting men, and even at the pale woman he had been yelling at for what seemed an age of men. Chaos. It was all chaos.

As he pushed Charis behind him and moved to stand over Agnarr’s prone form, Cowan did not see the white swirls of snow. Nor did he see the battle just in front of him. The shouts of the battle, the smells of earth and blood and sweat, put to his eyes the image of his first exposure to a real bloodbath.

He had seen thirteen summers. A neighbor, King Aidan, wanted the land and cattle of Branieucc’s people, which was cause enough for war. Cowan remembered the deep, vibrant greens of the grass as the armies lined up for battle. The rich aroma of healthy earth had surrounded him and his blood sang with anticipation of seeing his people triumph. He had never before seen violent death and knew only the glory of song and legend.

Intestines liberated by an axe. Brains bashed out with wooden clubs. The cries of the dead and dying filling Cowan’s ears. And then, like the dark goddess, Morrigan, the crows descended to feast upon corpses of once-valiant men. Cowan remembered looking at the blade he held—his father’s old sword—and tossing it from him before disgorging the breakfast he’d eaten not long before. Then his older brother had come behind him, slapped him on the back, and laughed.

“
Na, na
, Cowan. None of that here. We won, boy! We won!”

Victory had never looked so ugly in Cowan’s imagination. But they had won, and they had kept their cattle and lands, and he had learned to value the continued training he received with a blade, staff, and axe. Yes, he was a follower of the Christ, but he was also, occasionally, a man of war.

So be it,
Cowan told himself on this snowy morning.
So be it.
“Jesu!” he called aloud. “Be with me!”

He lifted the heavy sword and balanced himself against the weight of the blade. Hardening his heart, Cowan gritted his teeth but made himself turn to help Arknell take on Vigaldr, the man feared around the
fjørds
of
Nordweg.

“Arknell!”

Cowan pushed Gerda away. She was apparently out of her mind with fright. Tugging at Agnarr’s moaning body, she was pleading with Arknell to get away from the accursed outsider. Vigaldr spun so quickly that Cowan had difficulty seeing beyond the snow-blurred sheen of the invader’s hair.

A flash of orange light caught his eye. A fiery arrow arced in from the center of battle, passing between Cowan and Arknell, over Agnarr’s body and into the well. Arknell was distracted, Cowan saw. Vigaldr took advantage and brought his blade down with obvious power to hack into Arknell’s shoulder.

The
vikingr’s
scream was horrifying. Cowan made himself ignore it, because Charis moved at last, tugging Agnarr from the confusion of moving feet. Gerda gasped her younger son’s name and fainted on the snow.

 
Cowan had to ignore her, barely comprehending that Charis was somehow managing to lift her hulking husband so that she half carried, half dragged him safely back to the house of healing.

A spear whistled by next, its passage marked in a way that seemed suddenly strange to the man from Éire. It clinked harmlessly against the stones of the well. Cowan noted its fall with a curious detachment as he swung Agnarr’s sword to meet Vigaldr, weapon to weapon. And Cowan had no shield.

He heard music.

The great, wordless song is the
Oran Mór.
Though a Christian, Cowan did not disbelieve in the existence of the
Oran Mór.
All good things originate with the Creator God, he’d been taught, and the Song of Life was no exception.

“Cowan!”

He felt, more than saw, Charis’s presence behind him.

Did she think he needed saving, too? Cowan felt empowered by this great, sweeping song. He could hear it in his bones, on the wind, in the snow.

He was invincible!

“Get back,” he told Charis while concentrating on Vigaldr. The men circled, leather boots becoming heavy with sucking mud. “I’ll be fine,” he assured the healer.

Cowan felt the
Oran Mór
on his skin, raising the fine hairs on his body. He let it help him lift the unfamiliar sword, and laughed at the apparent ease with which his body obeyed him.

Charis’s presence receded. Vigaldr’s advanced. Cowan met him, blade swinging. Sparks leapt from the iron. Vigaldr shifted balance and Cowan matched him, moving at the last minute to bring his own blade high and against the building wind. The shield met his blow, but Cowan was unsurprised to see the wood and metal crumble like the last dead leaf of winter.

His opponent’s disbelief was obvious, and Cowan laughed loudly. He sliced his weapon sideways, the Great Song still singing in his mind. Every detail was sharp, so sharp that he seemed to see each moment pass as the blade cut through empty air to hit Vigaldr’s waist. The invader’s metal-studded armor did not meet at the sides, so the iron blade sliced easily through leather ties to cut through cloth. Cowan barely felt the resistance of the Northman’s armor, noted only the parting of flesh with steel.

Blood seeped then spurted as Cowan watched. He was still swinging the blade on its flat path into Vigaldr’s middle. The invader struck back, but Cowan did not do more than see the blade flash. Did it connect? He had no idea, nor did he care. Vigaldr faltered, falling . . . falling to land in the mud.

Victory!
Cowan shouted his thanks for the victory, but the
Oran Mór
stayed with him. His grin was fierce as he turned to meet the nearing battle. “Come!” he invited the invaders.
Go!
he commanded himself. He felt a new energy in his muscles, in his bones, and he plunged forward, catching an onrushing spear with his left hand and throwing it back into the fray.

Slowly, slowly it seemed to him that he battled forward. Agnarr’s sword was part of him now, a part of his body that reacted with the pure simplicity of his own limbs. A prayer to the Creator God that he would not hurt any whom Tuirgeis would call “friend” was Cowan’s last conscious prayer as he advanced.

A dark-haired spear-bearer rushed him, roaring to Odin. Cowan cut at the spear with his knife and bent so that the warrior fell over his back, landing with a grunt on the ground. It was a simple matter to disembowel him, and then Cowan moved on to the next enemy. Red hair and dark gray eyes flashed with battle-lust, but that did not bother Cowan. He himself had turned into a man made for the glories of battle as sung by every bard of his people.

Then enemies fell to his knife and sword. He whirled, sometimes killing one with his left hand while pushing another back with his right leg. No pain reached him, only the
Oran Mór’s
magnificent encouragement to strive for victory. His movements were sure, no strokes were wasted. Cowan only marveled that the friendly faces—those belonging to Tuirgeis and men of Balestrand whom he recognized—showed none of the spirit he himself felt in his gut. “Come!” he shouted to the men. “We are winning!”