Lord of Fire and Ice (20 page)

A slovenly croft spread below him. Movement drew his eye. A watchman.

The man walked from one outbuilding to the next, stopping from time to time to scan the surrounding hills. Finally, he stopped to relieve himself against a sagging cattle byre.

Brandr had run his quarry to ground. But as he crept closer, Orlin’s advice rang in his head.

“No animal is more dangerous than the one you hunt in its own den.”

“Katla.”

Even though she was still sitting up, she’d been feigning sleep, hoping it would lull her captors into forgetting about her for a while. When she heard her name, her chin jerked up, and her gaze swept the common room.

The other women were still asleep. Tryggr and one of his companions were tossing knucklebones against the low bench. When his underling threw well, Tryggr scowled so fiercely Katla suspected his pinch-faced friend began to hope for ill luck.

She bit back her disappointment. She must have skimmed the surface of sleep and only dreamed she’d heard Brandr call her name.

“Courage, love.”

There. She hadn’t imagined it. She was wide awake, and his voice sounded as clearly as if he’d spoken directly into her ear.

Except he wasn’t anywhere near. She glanced up at the smoke hole, half expecting to see Brandr peering down at her. Only sluggish fumes escaped into the black night.

“I’m coming.”

The voice was so close she flinched. The woman beside her on the wolf pelt didn’t stir. Tryggr didn’t stop the dice game mid-toss to leap up and grab his sword.

No one else heard Brandr speak.

Either Katla teetered on lunacy or…

Old Gerte’s words about her grandparents and the special bonding of
inn
matki
munr
resurfaced in her mind.

“It mattered not how distant they were from each other,” Gerte had said. “She could hear him, and he her.”

Was it possible? It was worth a try.

I
heard
you, Brandr. Now hear me
. She scrunched her eyes shut and thought, clasping her hands so tightly her knuckles went numb. Everything in her wanted to shoot a plea for him to hurry and come for her, but if the arrow of thought was limited, she tried to concentrate on something more practical.
There
are
three
of
them, one outside, two in. Have a care.

She swallowed hard, straining her ears for a reply.

There was only the click of dice, the occasional crackle of the smoky central fire, and a rustle of skin and fabric as the women on the other bench shifted in their sleep.

No reply came to her from the dark.

***

Brandr smacked the man’s cheeks, trying to bring him around. He’d held him in a choke hold only long enough to render him insensible for a short while. Now the fellow’s eyes were rolling around, and his head lolled back, but he was aware enough to respond to questions.

“Blink once for yes, twice for no,” Brandr said to the man who was trussed up and gagged before him.

It had been a simple thing to sneak up on him, since the man had lowered his trousers and started to mount one of the sheep. Brandr could have killed him with a quick jab of his dagger under the man’s ribs, but he might have raised an alarm with his dying breath, and Brandr judged the information he might glean from the sheep molester was more valuable than a corpse.

Besides, Brandr wanted to be sure he deserved killing for more than buggering livestock.

“Did you and your scurvy friends take a woman captive this night?”

The man’s lips pulled back from the leather gag, revealing teeth that had been filed down till there were vertical ridges on each of his upper choppers. The indentations were stained with permanent blue dye in an attempt to give him a fierce appearance. The gag rendered the effect more comic than terrifying.

The man blinked once.

“How many men in the house? Blink the number.” When he didn’t respond immediately, Brandr laid the flat of his blade across the man’s windpipe to encourage honesty. “Two, eh? You’re sure.”

The man blinked once emphatically.

“Is there anyone else in the house?”

Another blink.

“The woman you took?”

He blinked once then twice more.

“More women?”

The man started to nod but thought better of it with Brandr’s dagger at his throat. He settled for blinking once more.

“How many?”

The man’s eyelids fluttered several times.

“Lots of women. Maybe children too,” Brandr surmised. He brought the butt of his dagger down hard on the man’s temple, sending him either to dark oblivion and a three-day headache or a more merciful death than he deserved.

Brandr didn’t much care which.

He couldn’t break into the
sethus
and engage Katla’s captors in that tight space with so many innocents within range of a sword stroke.

He needed to draw the other men out.

In case the man at his feet was only unconscious, Brandr picked up his feet and dragged him a few paces away from the byre. Then he opened the gate and quietly drove out all the mangy-looking stock.

He needed a diversion, and a burning outbuilding would do admirably.

Controlling an existing flame wasn’t so hard a trick, so long as Brandr was able to concentrate on it. He could usually make a blaze burn hot and fiery or subside to smoldering ash with a mere thought.

But calling up fire from nothing…that was another matter entirely. It required a clear head and an untroubled heart, neither of which Brandr possessed at the moment. He was so worried for Katla he wondered if the flames would appear when he conjured them.

“The fire of creation is all around us, bound in the air, hidden between one breath and the next,” the sorcerer who trained him in Byzantium had told him. “If the flames hear your summons, they will come to you, and you can bend them to do your bidding. If they hear you not…”

The old master had shrugged with his palms turned up, a purely Eastern gesture, and cast his gaze skyward. Fire was too volatile an element ever to be wholly under a mage’s control, especially if the mage wasn’t of calm mind.

Brandr extended a splay-fingered hand to the night sky then held it before his chest, sheltering his hand against the breeze. He closed his eyes and drew a deep breath, trying to empty his mind of everything but the dance of all-consuming light. Then he blew softly on his palm, letting the god who’d made him a fire mage work, if He willed.

When Brandr opened his eyes, a small blue flame flickered in the center of his palm, hovering a breath above his skin. There was no heat, but the fire cast a circle of yellow light around him, shooting beams as if Brandr held a tiny sun in his grasp.

With the speed of thought, the flame arced from his hand to the rotting thatch on the cattle byre. It caught in a heartbeat and sprinted along the sagging ridgeline, standing at attention like a row of fiery warriors waiting the command to charge. He ordered it to work.

He’d give the blaze a few moments to take firm hold, and then he’d sound the warning.

***

“Fire!”

Brandr was in her mind again.

“Fire,” Katla repeated softly then louder. “Fire.”

Tryggr turned to glare toward her corner. “What did you say, wench?”

“Fire!” A voice bellowed from outside the
sethus
. It was Brandr again, and this time everyone heard him. The whoosh of flames outside made the smoke hole in the roof stop drawing correctly, and a fug of black hovered along the dwelling’s ridgeline.

Tryggr and his companion drew their swords and headed for the door. Before he ducked into the night, he turned and glared at the women, all of whom were awake now and cowering. Then he glowered at Katla while he surreptitiously made the sign against evil with one hand.

“I don’t know how you knew there was a fire, but don’t try any more
seid
-craft tricks. If any of you tries to leave this
sethus
, when I catch you, I’ll cut you up and feed you to the pigs. And two of the others with you.”

After he slammed the door behind him, Katla heard the dull thud of a beam being dropped into brackets, locking them in from the outside.

***

Brandr waited in the shadows, sizing up his adversaries while they spilled out of the
sethus
. One was considerably smaller than he, but he’d learned never to discount a wiry, quick fighter, and this man moved with the slippery grace of a ferret. Such a one might have more tricks up his sleeve than a man who relied on brute strength alone.

The other fellow was easily Brandr’s match for weight and height, but he moved swiftly to the flaming cattle byre, swearing the air blue at his loss. He found his unconscious friend, still tied up, but instead of coming to his aid, he gave him a vicious kick.

Fighting two at once was always a dicey bargain. If one of them was a madman, all bets were off.

“Where are you, son of Ulf?” the big fellow shouted, doing a slow turn. “Show yourself, traveler, and we’ll kill you quickly.”

Brandr narrowed his eyes, trying to strategize the best approach.

“Come for your woman, have you? Too late. She won’t want you after I’ve had her,” the man taunted, grasping his crotch.

Brandr’s eyes burned. That one he’d kill last. Slowly.

“There’s nothing for you here in Hardanger. Son of the
jarl
, you call yourself. Not for long,” the man said, his eyes flashing feral in the dark. “There’s change on the wind, and death to your kind is riding with it.”

“
Ja
, once the Bloodaxe comes, he’ll—” the little one began.

“Shut up, fool,” he snarled at his friend. “What are you waiting for, coward?” the big one shouted to Brandr. “Ah, I know. You need a little more encouragement. Bet you thought this is my
sethus
. No, we’re just borrowing it from the farmer who used to live here. He was nice enough to let us use it when he and his family died…sudden-like.”

The little one laughed at his friend’s wit.

“Who’d want to live his whole life in a hovel like this?” He snatched a burning brand from the cattle byre and tossed it onto the roof of the
sethus
. “Come and fight us, or watch your woman burn, Ulfson.”

Brandr tried to squelch the blaze on the
sethus
roof with his mind, but the blood in his veins was the blood of warriors, and its battle song was too loud for him to think over. He couldn’t find the calm center he needed to use his gift.

Fire spread over the dry thatch running along the ridgeline like lemmings headed for a cliff.

Brandr’s lineage was filled with men who’d lived and died by their swords. The urge to brutish violence went clear to his bones. Now the
berserkr
lust he usually kept under tight control burst into full passion.

A feral cry burst from his lips and head down, he charged.

***

“Katla, get out of there!”

Brandr’s voice sounded in her head again. She leaped to her feet and ran to the barred door.

The other girls clawed at her, pulling her back.

“No,” they shouted. The tallest one continued: “You heard him. If you escape, Tryggr will kill two of us with you.”

“But I’ll take you with me,” Katla said. “We can’t give up. We have to try.”

“Look at Aldis there.” The tall one pointed to the woman with the babe. She sat rocking herself in the corner with her knees tucked under her chin. “There’s no try left in her. If we leave her, she’ll die.”

“Then we must take her too,” Katla said, struggling to shake free of the others’ grasps. “Or we’ll all die.”

A contemptuous snarl lifted one corner of the girl’s mouth. “You shouldn’t cross Tryggr. I’m his favorite. He’ll listen to me. I’ll tell him you tried to run, but we stopped you, and then it’ll be only you who’ll die.”

Then there was a loud, whooshing sound, and when Katla looked up, flames licked at the thatch over their heads.

That settled the argument. The girls turned as one, shrieking and pounding on the barred door.

Katla stripped off her outer tunic and plunged it into the bucket of scummy water by the smoldering central fire pit. Then she ran back to Aldis and her child and covered them with the wet fabric.

“Come,” Katla urged, holding a hand over her nose and mouth against the billowing smoke. “We must find a way out. Is there a bolt hole? A root cellar?”

“There is only the one door, and he’s barred it.” Aldis clutched her babe to her chest, and the child wailed, sensing its mother’s anguish. “One way in. One way out.”

Burning ash began to fall around them.

“Katla, hold on.”
Brandr’s voice had a serrated edge of panic.

Aldis was wrong, Katla realized, her whole being dead calm as her fate scrolled before her. There was another way out. Once the burning thatch collapsed on them, their souls would fly to the stars through the open roof.

Good
-
bye, Brandr
, she thought with fervor, hoping he could hear her.
At
least
I’ll leave this world knowing a good man loved me with a mighty passion.

She wished she’d returned it with more grace.

In a melee, a man dare not look further than the tip of his own blade. Brandr’s attention was divided between three adversaries, the little wiry fellow, the big man, and the fire quickly engulfing the
sethus
.

Any one of them, he was sure he could best.

All together, he had his doubts. The other men took turns fighting, snatching bits of rest Brandr was denied. His sword arm grew heavier with each pass.

The women’s screams from the burning house pierced his chest sharper than a blade. He pivoted, slashing with his broadsword, trying to get close enough to lift the bar on the door and free Katla.

The little man sneaked in under his guard while he whacked away at the big fellow. Pain screamed up his leg. He twirled and caught the wiry man across the throat. Blood spurted like a red fountain as he sank to his knees in the dirt.

“Guess he won’t be here when the Bloodaxe comes,” Brandr said as he sliced the other fellow across the chest. The man’s hardened leather breastplate took the brunt of the blow and left him unscathed. “What’s your friend going to miss?”

A wicked smile stretched unpleasantly across the big man’s face. “The return of the Old Ones and the Old Ways. And death to those who think to stop us.”

The man shrieked a battle cry and launched a flurry of blows.

Brandr could think only as far as the next parry. The coppery scent of blood filled the air, mingling with the reek of smoke and his unwashed enemy. Sticky warmth streamed down Brandr’s thigh, but he couldn’t let it slow him down. His wound was a small matter now.

Keep
moving. Only the dead deserve rest.

Part of the
sethus
roof collapsed near the back wall. A fresh chorus of wails pierced the night. The women’s screams were joined by a baby’s cry. Brandr tried to send an order to still the flames, but he was too distracted by his remaining combatant to focus his thoughts adequately. The big man began circling again, thrusting and jabbing.

The fire roared in triumph.

“Don’t be thinking you’ve done anything praiseworthy, Ulfson. You’ve killed only a pus-filled worm,” the big man said, kicking his friend’s body out of the way. He crouched into a defensive posture and beckoned with one upraised hand. “Come now and try to kill a man.”

“I would if there was one to hand,” Brandr said through clenched teeth. “I’ll settle for killing you instead.”

He sucked in a deep breath then loosed his rage in a fierce
berserkr
howl before he charged. His blade sang a death song as it flashed in glittering arcs. His strength waned. This blistering attack would be his last.

Only death would stop him.

***

Katla pried Aldis and her child from the corner mere heartbeats before that part of the roof would have caved in on them. Sparks filled the air, and the woman collapsed in a coughing fit as the black smoke grew thicker.

“Come,” Katla urged, crouching down. “Stay low. The air is better here. We must get to the door.”

The other women were obscured by dense smoke, but she could hear them still clawing at the locked portal. Perhaps there was a way to dislodge the hinges.

“It makes no difference,” Aldis wailed. “Here or there. We die anyway.”

“Do you want the child to die too?”

The woman’s face crumpled, and she thrust the babe into Katla’s arms. “Take Linnea. Take her. I can’t bear to watch when death comes for her.”

Katla clutched the squirming babe to her chest and crawled one-handed toward the door. Aldis keened behind her but didn’t follow.

“Keep moving. Only the dead deserve rest.”

Brandr’s last message jerked her from hopeless stupor and filled her with determination. Katla wouldn’t give up. Not so long as she could draw breath.

A fiery beam crashed to earth behind her, burying Aldis behind a wall of flame. The keening stopped abruptly, the sound snipped off mid-wail.

Katla kept moving.

The child stopped struggling and went limp in her arms. She passed the bucket by the central fire pit and splashed a handful of water over the babe’s face. Linnea sputtered, gave a weak cry, and began rooting against Katla’s breast. Katla swallowed back a sob and poured the last of the water over both of them to protect them from burning ash. Then she continued to crawl toward the door.

As she neared it, the smoke parted, swept away as if by an invisible hand. Overhead, there was a loud whoosh, and the fire was suddenly snuffed out. The opening to the
sethus
swung wide, and a man was framed in the doorway, his face in shadow.

The other women pushed past him, squealing with relief.

He strode into the
sethus
and knelt beside Katla long enough to scoop her into his arms.

“Brandr.”

With a grunt, he rose, carrying her and the baby out into the night. Once they cleared the doorway, Brandr set her down a safe distance away. She sank onto the stubbled grass, dragging in breaths and coughing out the smoky air trapped in her lungs. The sickly sweet scent of roasting meat made Katla want to retch.

There was no sign of the other women. Katla assumed they’d taken to their heels without stopping to see who’d won the fight.

“Is there anyone else inside?” Brandr asked.

The child’s mother was dead. She shook her head and clutched the snuffling baby tighter.

“It’s dangerous to leave the
sethus
like this then,” Brandr said, “Only half-destroyed. It might fall down on someone.”

Then as Katla watched in amazement, a blue flame bloomed in the center of Brandr’s palm. He tossed the ball of fire to the charred roof and rib cage of beams, where it caught and blazed up into an inferno almost instantly.

Katla gasped. “What did you…what
are
you?”

Her vision wavered for a moment, then darkness gathered at the edges. Finally she winked out as completely as a pinched-off candle.

***

Brandr lifted the baby from Katla’s arms and set the squalling mass off to the side.

As
long
as
the
brat’s making enough noise to wake the dead, there’s nothing truly wrong with it
, Brandr reasoned.

Katla, on the other hand, was pale and drawn, her eyes open and unseeing. He checked her for injury and found none. He laid his head between her breasts and was relieved to hear her heart beating, though it was thready and rapid.

“Princess.” He gave her shoulders a slight shake and tried to wipe the black soot from her face with his sleeve. Panic clawed at his gut like a cornered badger. “Katla. Love. Come back.”

Her eyelids fluttered closed, and she coughed twice.

She sat up, her body racked by another bout of hacking. He wished he had a water gourd to offer her. She lifted her arms to him, and he gathered her close, rocking her slightly.

“You’re alive,” she whispered. “We’re both alive.” Then she pulled away and cocked her head at him. “Why is the baby crying?”

“Because it’s a baby, I expect,” Brandr said with a grin. Always looking out for someone else, his princess was back.

“She. Not it. And her name is Linnea. She’s not hurt, is she?” Katla snatched her up and examined her down to counting her toes. The child quieted and tucked its tiny thumb between a pair of rosebud lips.

Brandr sank down beside her. Of the three of them, only he was bleeding, but that’s how he’d have ordered matters if he’d been given a choice. He’d already decided the wound on his leg wasn’t serious. Blood had matted his trousers to his flesh, and it would bleed again when the wound was cleaned, but there was no major damage.

“What did you…before I…” Katla began. “I saw you and…there was…”

“What did you see?” He’d known this was coming, but he’d hoped to break the truth to her in a gentler way. Of course, there was nothing gentle about what he was.

“You were holding fire,” she whispered.

“
Ja.
” He blew on his palm. “Like this?”

The blue flame sparked to cheerful life. He’d almost forgotten how good it felt to summon fire. As if his life had turned a perfect circle. Complete.

Katla scooted away from him, her eyes round as an owlet’s. “Are you a…
seid
-man?”

Brandr snorted. “What do you take me for? I dabble not in magick. You’ve been in my bed, and you’ve seen me fight. Do I seem the weak-wristed type who takes power by dark methods?”

“No, but…how else could you do that?”

One shoulder lifted in a shrug. “I don’t know. I’ve always been able to call the fire. I set any number of accidental ones when I was a boy, and was whipped for it more often than I like to remember. Mayhap if I’d told my father the truth of how the fires happened, he’d have seen the matter differently, but I doubt it.”

She leaned forward to peer at the tiny flames licking his palm but not raising so much as a blister.

“Some are gifted with prodigious memory. Others can sing the stars from the sky. I was given control of the fire.” He snuffed out the flame between his palms. “At least, that’s how it’s supposed to work.”

“What does that mean?”

“I didn’t understand it myself until I met a sorcerer in Byzantium and sat under his tutelage. According to him, there are four elements—earth, air, water, and fire. Once in a great age, someone is born with the ability to call a particular element to them, to shape and control it.”

“And you’re one of them?”

He grimaced at her. “I’m a fire mage, Katla. I don’t know how I do it, any more than I know everything involved in drawing a breath. It’s just part of who I am.”

“I see.” She stared at the burning
sethus
as the back wall collapsed in a shower of sparks.

“To control flame takes concentration,” he said as he rose and retrieved his sword. It was still implanted deeply in the big man’s chest. “I wasn’t able to stop the fire right away because…well, I was a little distracted.”

He pulled out the sword and cleaned the blade on the grass. “Did that worthless piece of shite harm you?” He shot her a piercing gaze.

“No, once I told him you’d be coming, he decided to wait until he’d dealt with you,” she said with a sigh. “Thank the gods.”

“It wouldn’t have been your fault.”

“Nothing happened.” She shook with delayed tremors but managed to settle herself. Then she asked in a small voice, “Did you start that fire?”

“No, not on the house, at any rate.” He shoved his sword back into the shoulder baldric. He pointed to the mound of cooling meat that used to be a man splayed on the ground. “That was his doing.”

“Oh.”

“I’m very careful about how and when I use my…ability.”

Brandr noticed a bulge beneath his slain enemy’s belt. He bent and fished it out. It was a small figurine of a pregnant female. He’d never seen its like, but the way his palm tingled, he sensed it was a thing of power.

“The return of the Old Ones and the Old Ways,” the man he’d killed had said.

Could this image have anything to do with that?

He secreted it away in the leather pouch at his waist. When he reached home, he’d ask someone with a much wiser head about the figurine and the power he felt emanating from it.

Silence drew out between him and Katla, a wall of separation growing higher as the moments slipped by. He turned and looked back at the
sethus
. The last of the roof had collapsed into the main room, and the charred walls began to sag inward.

Say
something.

“What do you want me to say?” she asked.

He turned back to her. Had she heard his thoughts? No, that was fanciful in the extreme. Katla was many things, but fanciful was not one of them. She was the practical sort. If she had an ability to hear another’s thoughts, she’d have used it on him long before now.

“Say you understand,” he suggested.

“How can I? You don’t even understand it.”

He had to give her that one.

His leg was starting to throb. He swallowed back a foul curse.

“There’s no need to be vulgar,” she said primly.

“Wait. Are you telling me you heard that?” He hurried back to her and settled by her side.

“I’m not deaf. Of course I did.”

“But I didn’t say anything,” Brandr said. “I only thought it.”

A smile burst over her face. “Oh, then I didn’t imagine it. I heard you, your thoughts, in my mind when I was trapped in that awful place.”

“You did? What did I say?”

“Encouraging things mostly,” she said. “Things to give me hope.”

“Can you hear my thoughts now?” he asked, imagining her on his bed of furs in Jondal with a whole night of loving before them and nothing of this sorry night in their heads.

She studied him for a moment then shook her head.

“Pity,” he said with a waggle of his brows. “You’d have enjoyed it.”

She gave his chest a playful swat.

“Maybe it works only under duress.” Katla frowned, tapping her front teeth with her fingernail. “While I was in the house, I tried to send my thoughts to you as well. I told you how many men were in the house and to be careful. Did you hear my voice in your mind?”

She looked so hopeful he wished he could say yes. If she had a special gift, perhaps she’d be more inclined to accept his.

But truth would serve him better than hope at present.

“No, I didn’t hear your voice,” he admitted, “but as I said, I was distracted at the time.”

“But not too distracted to make fire out of thin air.”

“No, I set the cattle byre ablaze before those two came out of the house.”

That was how his gift worked. He needed to be able to empty himself of all fury, all feeling. A double-minded mage is mute to his element. The fire wouldn’t be able to hear him. If he’d been able to control his emotions, he’d have put the fire out before he engaged in swordplay. But with Katla in danger and armed men between them, there was no use seeking that dispassionate, calm center he needed to draw the flames out or make them dance to his will.

And he certainly didn’t need to go into a long, drawn-out explanation of how his gift meshed with the secret of Greek fire.