Deep Midnight
Page 41

Ragnor found himself returning again and again to the monastery they had first ravaged, intrigued by the abbot there, the books, and the many languages the monks could speak. He returned his share of the silver reliquaries they had taken.
“And what do you want for these?” the lean, sharp-nosed abbot asked him.
“Languages.”
“What?”
“I want to learn languages, as you speak them. The Latin with which you write, the Gaelic I hear in the villages, the English of the lower countries. Then French and?”
“One by one, lad. One by one,” the abbot told him.
And so, he became a regular visitor.
As time went by, Ragnor learned to join the fighting, and with each season that passed, he became more adept at the art of warfare. Among the Vikings, many came to him to ask him what he thought of a particular battle. “Dublin is a town founded by a Viking. Now the king asks us to fight against interlopers from the north. That is a good fight.”
He agreed it was a good fight. And he discovered, when he was convinced of the valor of a fight, he could be savage. There were times when he could take life with a vengeance, and yet, he always remembered the way he had felt when Olaf died, and he refused to allow wanton murder of peasants, women, children, and the aged in any place where he fought. Revenge, he had noted, could make murderers of those who had been downtrodden. It was amazing, he had discovered, when their force had won the day for a threatened people, just how quickly those people could turn, ready to cut out the hearts of their foes, once they had power.
They fought for the king of an isle off the western coast of Scotland, a battle they fought against a group of Danes, very much like their own.
The king of the isle rewarded them with a smaller island to call their own. They grew wealthy, and others joined them. The men took wives?some willing, and some coerced. They traveled home and brought riches with them, but Ragnor had no desire to stay. In the time he had been gone, his mother had died.
His father had gone a-Viking a different way, and though he felt a deep loss at his mother’s passing, he had not known his father well, and though respected and awed, he had not been in Ragnor’s life enough for him to greatly miss his presence.
He was sorry forever, for the void he felt in many ways. There were so many questions he might have asked.
His uncle, however, was still the jarl. He assured Ragnor that his mother, though originally taken as a slave, had been among their people many years, and had been loved, and had been honored with the greatest of funerals; her byre had burned brightly on the fjord throughout a long, moonlit night.
“There is so much my parents might have told me,” Ragnor said.
“Perhaps there is not as much to tell as there is to learn, and only time and life can be the teachers we really need,” his uncle told him.
With little then to hold him to his old life, Ragnor returned with Hagan and their many men to their isle off the western coast of Scotland.
By his thirtieth year, he had his own home, cattle, sheep, and horses. He had not married, but neither was he lonely. There were many women in his life, strangers in faraway places, captives who were eager to please, and housemaids who were willing to serve. His brother and he had formed a bond of real friendship and led their large army of mercenaries together.
That year, they were called upon by the rich chieftain two days south of them, inward on the river.
Ragnor traveled with Hagan to speak with the chieftain.
Their people were being taken and killed. Not far away, foreign enemies had come in and decimated a village. They were dark invaders, fierce, with small, slim, horses that disappeared into the night; darkness was when they wished to strike.
The people were terrified of them. They did not just come and kill. They could slip through the defenses at night, with no one knowing, and more of their children would be gone.
The mission appealed to Ragnor. But on their return trip, they stopped at the monastery from which they had first stolen the silver. Ragnor wasn’t sure why, but he was keen to talk to the old abbot he had so strangely defended, a man whose name was Peter.
Peter seemed to be expecting them. He had soup and bread ready, and he listened avidly to everything Ragnor and Hagan said.
“The evil has come,” Peter said.
“Bah!” Hagan told him. “They are foreigners? cowards, as Ragnor would say, who only fight the unarmed, the weak. They prey upon women.”
“Are you telling us not to go?” Ragnor queried, for his friend seemed so strange.
“No, you must go. And you must not just kill these infidels. You must destroy them, utterly. They will use any weapon: hands, fists, teeth. Yes, teeth, you must beware in battle. They are an ancient enemy. I think they are the lamia of the ancients in the East; they bring not just death but infection. They are everything against God.”
“If your one great God were so powerful, he would destroy them.”
“God has created man with a heart and a soul. A man may fight for good or for evil.” Hagan was aggravated. “A man’s cause is good; his enemy’s cause is bad.” Peter ignored him. He stared at Ragnor. “Beware.”
“We will destroy them,” Hagan said confidently. “We will return to our isle, gather our ships, and go to the chieftain, and there, build and create his defenses for him. Then we’ll rout his enemies!” Two weeks later, they had made the journey. Yet, even as they steered their boats through the river pass, they could see ahead. As they neared the village, where so recently Hagan and Ragnor had been welcomed and beseeched for help, they saw nothing but burned-out farmsteads and the rubble of homes.
They brought their longboats in, and the men all stared at the carnage in silence. Gudric, the Rune Sayer, shook his head. “Turn back!” he told Hagan.
Hagan would not be persuaded. “We go in. We see if any are living; we promised our aid, and we will see to the dead.”
Even Ragnor felt a hesitance as they stepped ashore. He knew that his brother felt it, but Hagan didn’t believe in allowing cowardice to rule a man’s actions.
They had just gone ashore and seen the death, and the flies, when Eric, left behind to guard the ships, called out to them.
More ships were coming. To his amazement, Ragnor saw that a ship of monks was coming; Peter stood aft, tall and straight against the wind as the ship followed theirs.
The monks all carried swords.
Ragnor walked with Hagan to greet the monks as they arrived.
“You have given up God’s way of peace and taken to the sword?” Hagan demanded.
“This is God’s battle we wage. Against those who would steal the dead, not the living.”
“Monk, you make no sense,” Hagan said flatly.
Ragnor turned to start to the center of the village. The place held an eerie calm. It seemed that no creatures had been spared. Horses and dogs and farm animals lay about in the midst of slaughtered humans.
“There is something evil here,” Gudric warned. Grudgingly, he indicated Peter. “As the monk says, the gods would fear to tread here.”
The Norsemen continued forward. Hearing a hacking sound, Ragnor turned to see that Peter was industriously engaged in removing the head of a fallen man.
“Peter!” he remonstrated, more in amazement than in disgust or anger.
“We will cremate them with prayers,” Peter said, as if that explained his actions.
“Let’s look to the living,” Hagan said.
They kept walking and came to the village church. As they stood there, the door creaked ajar. The brothers looked at one another. Hagan shrugged his shoulders. “Who wants to live forever?” he queried lightly.
“I’ll go first,” Ragnor said and shrugged as well. “I am the seventh son.”
“We go together.”
“It is just a church.”
They took a step closer. The door burst open. A child came flying out; she buried herself in Hagan, who was so startled he nearly fell over.
A young man appeared, a mere boy with no more than a scruff of hair on his cheeks. “We ran to the church when they descended,” he blurted out. “Oh, God, can you understand me? We are all that’s left.
They?they attacked the sheep and the cows. I saw my father ...” He said no more. He collapsed. The monks had come from behind. One of them helped the boy up.
“How many live?”
“Fifteen, twenty ... all in the church.”
“Start building a barricade!” Hagan roared to his men.
“You build your barricade,” Peter said. “But I am telling you?you will be safe in the church.”
“We must build defenses?” Ragnor said.
“Then you must,” Peter told him. “And we must do what we must do. Son,” he asked the boy, “where are the others?”
“Coming out now that... that we see you.”
At that moment, more people spilled out of the church. Those behind were so frenzied, they pushed those in front forward.
A woman catapulted into Ragnor’s arms. She steadied herself against his chest and looked up at him with large dark eyes. Dark brown hair tumbled down her back. Her kirtle was ripped and torn, she was dusty, her cheek was bruised. She was beautiful.
“Thank God!” she whispered to him.
He stared at her.
“You’re here, you’ve come. You didn’t lie to my father, my chieftain.”
“We’ve come too late.”
“But you will keep the rest of us alive!”
“We will, or we will the with you,” he promised.
“Alan?help the men find what remains of our tools. Mary, help me get together water, and what food we can find.”
Her hands were still against him. “We will fight with you, or die!” she said softly.
He watched her as she drew her hands back and walked around him with a determined sway of her hips.
“Let’s get going! Darkness comes quickly!”
“To the dead, my brothers,” Peter said to his monks.
Ragnor shook his head, but the monks went to work with ferocious energy, collecting the animals and the people. A great crematory bonfire was lit.