Book 4 - The Fire in His Hands by Glen Cook Page B

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.
    In a brief exchange, from ambush, Bragi and Haaken slew three men and sent a fourth
    fleeing into the pines. They received their own first man-wounds.
    “Half of us are down,” Bragi observed, after studying the main action. “Bors. Rafnir. Tor.
    Tryggva. Both Haralds. Where’s Bjorn?”
    Ragnar, roaring and laughing, stood out of the fray like a cave bear beset by hounds. Bodies
    lay heaped around him.
    “We’ve got to help.”
    “How?” Haaken was no thinker. He was a follower and doer. A strong-backed, stolid,
    steadfast lad.
    Bragi had all of his mother’s intellect and a little of his father’s crazy courage. But the
    situation had rattled him. He did not know what to do. He wanted to run. He did not. With a
    bellow imitative of Ragnar’s, he charged. Fate had made his decision for him.
    He had discovered what had become of Bjorn. Ragnar’s lieutenant was charging him from
    behind.
    No warning could reach Ragnar’s blood-drugged brain. All Bragi could do was race Bjorn to
    his prey.
    He lost the footrace, but prevented the traitor’s blow from being fatal. Bjorn’s deflected
    blade entered Ragnar’s back kidney high. Ragnar howled and whirled. A wild blow from the haft of his axe bowled Bjorn into a snowdrift.
    Then the Wolf’s knees buckled.
    The rebels whooped, attacking with renewed ferocity. Bragi and Haaken became too busy to
    avenge their father.
    Then twenty rebels wailed.
    Ragnar surged to his feet. He roared like one of the great trolls of the high Kratchnodians.
    There was a lull as the combatants eyed one another.
    The pain had opened the veil across Ragnar’s sanity. “A crown has been lost here tonight,”
    he muttered. “Treason always begets more treason. There’s nothing more we can do. Gather the
    wounded.”
    For a while the rebels licked their wounds and fought the fire. But the raiders, burdened
    with wounded, gained only a few miles head start.
    Nils Stromberg went down and could not get up again. His sons, Thorkel and Olaf, refused
    to leave him behind. Ragnar bellowed at all three, and lost the argument. They stayed, their
    faces turned toward the glow of the burning longhouse. No man could deny another his choice of deaths.
    Lank Lars Greyhame went next. Then Thake One Hand. Six miles south of Hjarlma’s stead,
    Anders Miklasson slipped down an icy bank into the creek they were following. He went under
    the ice and drowned before the others could chop through.
    He would have frozen anyway. It was that cold, and the others dared not pause to light a
    fire.
    “One by one,” Ragnar growled as they piled stones in a crude cairn. “Soon there won’t be
    enough of us left to drive off the wolves.”
    He did not mean Hjarlma’s men. A pack was trailing them. The leader already had made a
    sally at Jarl Kinson, who kept lagging.
    Bragi was exhausted. His wounds, though minor, nagged him like the agonies of a flensing
    knife in the hand of a master executioner. But he kept silent. He could do no less than his father, whose injury was much greater.
    Bragi, Haaken, Ragnar and five more lived to see the dawn. They evaded Hjarlma and drove
    the wolves off. Ragnar went to ground in a cave. He sent Bragi and Haaken to scout the nearby forest. The searchers passed near the boys, but without slowing.
    Bragi watched them go, Bjorn, the Thane and fifteen healthy, angry warriors. They were not
    searching. They were talking about waiting for Ragnar at Draukenbring.
    “Hjarlma’s not stupid,” Ragnar said when he