LITMIR.BIZ

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cut through the whirling air. One of them went inside and returned almost immediately.

      “No one’s inside,” the warrior announced.

      “Check them all,” Skagul ordered. As the men went to do so, he strode angrily to the center of the village. He cursed violently, knowing that the spying they’d done the night before hadn’t gone unnoticed.

      “Norseman!” a voice rang out.

      Spinning, lifting his war ax, Skagul peered to the east and spotted a man standing almost hidden among the branches of a tall spruce tree. He wore reindeer hide in much the same fashion as the Norsemen but stood empty-handed. His skin was too light to be one of the Curonians, but Skagul knew they were in Courland. The man’s beard was fiery red.

      “I am Skagul,” the Norseman roared.

      “I’ve heard of you, Ironhand.”

      Skagul waited but the other man didn’t introduce himself. “Who are you?” Skagul demanded to know.

      “Your death if it comes to that.”

      Fury possessed Skagul. For two weeks the frustration he’d felt at the loss of his cargo to the Finns had festered inside him. To be addressed like this, in front of his warriors, was intolerable.

      “Brave words from a man hiding in a tree,” Skagul scoffed.

      The stranger smiled, calmly and confidently. “I didn’t have to show myself to you at all. I could have put an arrow through your eye.” He paused. “Go to the well and draw the bucket. We’ve left tribute for you. For all your hard work to take what little other people have struggled to gain.” His tone at the end was mocking.

      Skagul walked over to the well. He nodded to one of his warriors. The bucket was quickly drawn. He’d expected a trick, but the bucket was filled to the brim with chunks of amber.

      The material was valuable and could be used in trade in the Arab lands, as well as with the Franks, Saxons and Celts. Fishermen along the coasts of the North and Baltic Seas dredged amber from the seafloor. Skagul didn’t know why the amber was only found there, but knew its rarity made it more valuable.

      “That bucket contains a fortune,” the man in the tree declared. “You’re not welcome to it, but it’s yours for the taking. Accept it and walk away. That way neither side has to lose a life today.”

      Skagul gestured. His warrior poured the contents of the bucket into a bag.

      “You have more than this,” Skagul told the man in the tree.

      “Not for you to take,” the man replied. “I won’t let you strip these people of everything.”

      These people. The word choice hung in Skagul’s brain. “You’re not a Curonian.” The more he looked at the man, the more he thought that the man was a Norseman.

      “I’m not,” the man agreed. “I was born not far from where you were, but I’m raising my children here. My home is here.”

      Skagul nodded and raised his war ax. “As a fellow countryman, I’ll stand you to a proper funeral, then.”

      The man in the tree grinned grimly. “Then I’ll extend you the same offer.”

      At Skagul’s gesture, the archers loosed arrows that flew straight and true. The man quickly rounded the bole of the tree, disappearing from sight.

      The branches deflected most of the arrows, but some of them pierced branches and the tree trunk. Almost immediately, a volley of arrows erupted from the brush, arcing high, then descending on the warriors gathered at the center of the village.

      “Shields!” Skagul shouted, throwing himself to cover next to the well.

      The Norsemen reacted quickly, hauling their wooden shields overhead. The Curonian arrows found flesh, as well as the shields, though. Eight of Skagul’s warriors went down under the onslaught.

      Standing immediately, Skagul grabbed a shield from the nearest dead man and pulled it into place over his head. “Move, you curs! Take the fight to them!” He led the way, pounding toward the huts, slipping through them as more arrows rained death from the sky. He reached the tree line.

      The Norsemen ran at his sides as they had always done, axes, hammers and swords raised. They screamed and growled like a wolf pack.

      Skagul ran for the tree, not expecting to find the man there, but hoping to catch some sight of him before he was able to escape. Carrying the shield through the heavy brush slowed him only a little.

      They climbed a hill, mostly out of sight of the opposing archers, and surged through the forest. Skagul glimpsed the red-bearded man running swiftly through the forest on the other side of a narrow clearing.

      “I see him!” one of the Norsemen yelled. “There!”

      Skagul surged in pursuit, no longer in the lead because some of the younger men were faster these days. But all of them knew not to range too far ahead so they could be cut into smaller groups.

      “Form a line!” Skagul bellowed. “Stay together!”

      On the other side of the clearing, the red-bearded man turned and drew a short-hafted war hammer from his back. He stood his ground, glowering at the approaching Norsemen.

      A few of Skagul’s archers loosed shafts that bit into the dirt at the man’s boots, tangled in his fur cloak and hit the trees around him. One of the arrows pierced his thigh. Without looking down, the man snapped off the end of the arrow and pulled the other half through his leg. He kept his eyes on the Norsemen.

      “Strike now!” the man shouted, raising the hammer above him.

      The storm’s fury suddenly increased. Wind whipped through the trees, clacking naked branches against each other and raising gusts of whirling snow. Lightning blazed through the sky and reached down for the hammer in the red-bearded man’s hands.

      Yellow flashed on the hammer, revealing that it had been inlaid with amber on the sides of the head and the haft. It looked as if the weapon had been forged of lightning.

      The detonation of thunder came immediately on the heels of the lightning strike. A blast of heated air washed over Skagul. When he opened his eyes again, he saw a tree near the red-bearded man topple sideways, trailing smoke.

      All the stories about Thor, the Norse god of thunder, who controlled storms and lightning, rushed through Skagul’s mind. He knew the gods sometimes journeyed from Asgard, where they lived, across the Rainbow Bridge to Midgard, which was what they called the human world.

      This is no god, Skagul told himself, and told himself to believe it. A god would never have retreated or relied on ambushes. For Skagul saw that was what they had run into as shadows shifted in the forest on both sides of the red-bearded man. Man, he told himself again, not god.

      Skagul’s reactions, honed in dozens of deadly encounters, pulled him up sharply. He opened his mouth to shout a warning. Before he could say anything, a withering hail of arrows from the Curonians drove him to cover.

      This time Skagul saw the defenders hiding among the trees and brush. They rose only long enough to fire their bows and drop back behind cover.

      Two of the Norsemen went down with arrows piercing them. But the others never broke stride, knowing from past experience that within a short distance they would be too close for the archers to fire again. As they raced across the clearing, the ground gave way beneath their feet. In disbelief, Skagul watched his men disappear as if the earth had opened up and swallowed them whole. Lightning flashed again and freezing rain poured from the sky. Less than twenty of the Norsemen pulled back from the edges of the pit that had been covered with branches and dead grass so that it blended with the landscape.

      The trap hadn’t been prepared overnight after someone had seen the Norse ship out on the sea. The Curonians had been prepared for an invasion for some time. Skagul thought about the red-bearded man’s statement, that he was raising sons who were Curonians.

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