3: The Berserkers

Varg the Black snarled to himself, and raised his head from the turf to glare feebly at Brak Broken-neck, who stood before him, looking down uncertainly in his cock-eyed way. Briefly, he remembered the battle where Brak had sustained his injury. A lesser man would have died from it, the berserker was a fine warrior. But Varg had never known such an oaf.

'So you're not going to kill this one when you get bored with her, then?' Varg mumbled sarcastically. He glanced over to the nearby rocks, where the other berserkers were raping the screaming nun. 'Ah, can't you shut her up?' His head was aching. He always felt like this after going berserk, it was worse than a hangover. Shivering, he turned to retch on the rabbit-cropped grass beside him. Then he leant back, his throat raw, and stared painfully up at the blank white sky above him.

The berserkers were camped some way inland, on the far side of the island from the nunnery, in a shallow, scruffy valley surrounded by sandstone blocks and steep grassy slopes. An ill-tended peat-fire smouldered near the middle of the desolate dell, and a sluggish stream oozed down from the rocks and flowed towards the far side of the hollow. Varg had slumped on the grass near the smoking fire while his followers took the girl into the lea of the rocks. A cold wind was blowing, and the berserkers wanted shelter for what they were doing.

The nun's screams stopped briefly, and were replaced by a muffled choking sound. Varg squinted in her direction to see with some relief that Brak Broken-neck had gagged her with strips of material torn from her tattered clothes. He glanced round to see his leader glaring at him, and rose quickly, pulling up his breeches.

'D'you want her next, then?' he called. 'We've finished with her.'

Varg shook his head, too feeble to demand satisfaction for this insult - sloppy seconds, for him? He was their leader! He should command more respect than that. But until the inevitable fit of weakness passed, until he got over the exertions of sending his soul into the beast-world, he would be unable to control them at all.

An idea came to him. Iit was always like this, ideas always came to him in his weakest moments, when he was least suited to put them into practise.

'One of you,' he muttered thinly, 'go back to the nunnery and give them this final ultimatum. If they don't give us their gold by sunset tomorrow, we'll burn their nunnery around their heads. Oh, and watch out for Inghen the Red; if she's anything like her father, she's trouble.' Brak Broken-neck nodded, and made his way to the edge of the hollow. Varg lay back again.

His mind went back to the encounter at the nunnery. What was Raudi's daughter doing here? It worried him, that his old skipper's daughter was here - ha! a berserker like him, afraid of a woman! Such was life - one day the skipper of a longship full of berserkers and ruthless warriors, the next shipwrecked and abandoned on a rock in the sea, living in fear of the vengeance of a woman.

Still, he had heard that she'd got a reputation for herself. The Red Daughter! A name that struck fear into the hearts of all Irishmen, and caused even the Norsemen of Dublin and the Danes of Limerick some concern. Shocking, these days, that women were brazen enough to take up the Viking way, and live by the sword's edge; it had never been like that in Starkad the Old's day, or when Harald Wartooth ruled the Danes with an iron fist. Yet it seemed that Inghen was no more at the height of her fortunes than Varg himself, she had recently lost her fleet in a battle with a Danish Viking named Hvirvil Einhandi, and now it seemed that she, too, was stuck on this island. But she had her wits about her, and presumably her crew were somewhere around, doubtless they would outnumber his own men. Still, his warriors were berserkers, and when they went berserk, they were unstoppable. Only other berserkers knew how to deal with a man gone berserk, although the Irish chieftain who had broken Brak's neck had come close to learning the truth. So, was there anything to worry about? Inghen would doubtless try to kill him again, probably with the aid of her Vikings - that would be just like a woman. But he would be prepared. As long as she didn't take him unawares, or when he was in his current state, he had nothing to worry about.

Apart from how he was going to escape this island with enough loot to get another ship. He would need at least one ship to plunder more villages and churches, and get enough loot to buy more ships and men, to amass more and more plunder, to get more and more men - so he intended to build up his empire. One day, he - Varg the Black, who had been born in a small Norse farm overshadowed by the heights of Dovrefell - would be the mightiest sea-king in the North! He would rule more islands than the Earl of Orkney, or the King of the Isles himself!

But just now he was stuck on a rock in the middle of the ocean, miles away from any land, his only companions four common berserkers whose highest ambitions were rape and plunder, and nothing more.

And he had a hell of a headache.