The odor drifted thinly from among the pines. They were near Thane Hjarlma’s longhouse. As one, they sat on their hams to rest.
Minutes sped.
“Time,” Ragnar said. He was also called Mad Ragnar, a crazy killer known for a thousand miles.
Men checked shields and weapons. Ragnar chose groups to go right and left.
Ragnar’s son Bragi, his foster son Haaken and his friend Bjorn conferred with him briefly. The boys bore clay pots containing carefully nurtured coals. And within them the boys nursed grudges. Their father had ordered them to stay out of the fighting.
Ragnar muttered words of caution and encouragement. “Haaken, you go with Bjorn and Sven. Bragi, stay with me.”
The last half mile was the slowest. Bragi kept remembering friendlier visits. And, last summer, spirited, clandestine tumbles with the Thane’s daughter Inger. But now the old King was dead. The succession was in contest.
Hjarlma had declared for the Pretender. His strength had overawed most of his neighbors. Only Ragnar, Mad Ragnar, had remained visibly loyal to the Old House.
The civil war was shredding the tapestry of Trolledyngjan society. Friend slew friend. Ragnar’s own father served the Pretender. Families that had been at each other’s throats for generations now stood shoulder to shoulder in the battle line.
Every spring in Bragi’s memory his father had gone reeving with Hjarlma. Sailing gunwale to gunwale, their dragonships had scourged the southern coasts. They had saved one another’s lives. They had celebrated shared wealth. And, in the same chains, they had shared the despair of imprisonment by the Itaskian King.
Now they sought to murder one another, driven by the bitter blood-thirst only politics can generate.
The news had come south on rumor’s lightning wings: the Pretender had taken Tonderhofn. The Old House was collapsing.
Hjarlma’s men would be celebrating. But the raiders moved carefully. Hjarlma’s men had wives, children, and slaves who would be sober.
They penetrated the trenches and stockades. They passed the outbuildings. Fifty feet from the longhouse itself Bragi turned his back into the wind. He dropped dried moss and tree bark into his jar, blew gently. His father and several warriors held out their torches. Others quietly splashed the longhouse with oil.
A man would be stationed at each window. The best fighters would hold the doorway. They would slaughter the drunken rebels as they tried to escape. The Old House’s cause, here beneath the brooding, glacier-clawed northern slopes of the Kratchnodian Mountains, would revive at the eleventh hour.
That was Mad Ragnar’s plan. It was as bold and ferocious a stroke as ever plotted by the Wolf.
It should have worked.
But Hjarlma was expecting them.
It was a great slaughter anyway. Hjarlma had gotten his warning only seconds before the blow fell. His people were still confused, still trying to shake the mead and find their weapons.
Fire whipped through axed-in windows.
“Stay put!” Ragnar growled at Bragi. “To me!” he thundered at the others.
“Yai! It’s Ragnar!” one of Hjarlma’s men wailed.
The blond giant attacked with sword in one hand, axe in the other. Not for nothing was he called Mad Ragnar. He went into insane killing rages, became an unstoppable killing machine. It was whispered that his wife, the witch Helga, had spelled him invincible.
Three, four, five of the drunkards fell for each of Ragnar’s men. And still he could not win. The odds were too terrible.
The fire had become a liability. Without it driving them to save their families, Hjarlma’s men might have surrendered.
Bragi went looking for Haaken.
Haaken’s thoughts paralleled his own. He had secured a sword already. They had not been allowed to bring their own. Ragnar had not wanted them getting dangerous ideas.
“What now?” Haaken asked.
“Father won’t run. Not yet.”
“How did they know?”
“A traitor. Hjarlma must have bought somebody from Draukenbring. Here!”
A rebel, nearly disemboweled, crawled toward them. “Cover me while I get his sword.”
They did what had to be done. And felt ghastly afterward.
“Who sold out?”
“I don’t know. Or how. But we’ll find out.”
Then they became too busy to speculate. Several rebels, who had crawled out a window no longer held against them, stumbled their way.
The longhouse burned briskly. Women, children and slaves screamed inside. Ragnar’s men fell back before the weight of their panic.
