7: Flight of the Eagle

As the sun began to descend over the island that evening, Varg the Black called his men to him.

'Time we went to check whether the abbess has been sensible or not,' he told them. They nodded. Brak Broken-neck looked curiously at him.

'What do we do if she hasn't?' he asked.

Varg shrugged. 'We torch the place, rape them all, kill them - take our revenge. Then we take our loot.'

'And sit on our arses until the man comes with their supplies?' asked Brak. 'I don't like the sound of that.'

'Maybe you want to swim back to Norway, then,' replied Varg. 'It's all the same to me.'

'What about their magic?' asked a berserker named Ari. 'What if they curse us?'

'They're followers of the pallid White-Christ,' sneered Varg. 'They could never have the power to make a curse stick. Look, there's nothing to worry about. If they're sensible, we'll be able to just take the gold and leave it at that.'

'Can we rape them anyway?' asked Ari, grinning. 'I want to know if there're any more like this one.' He nodded in the direction of the nun, who lay quietly in the lee of a boulder, occasionally sobbing to herself.

Varg followed his gaze, and shrugged. 'Whatever,' he said carelessly. 'Just come on.'

As they strode across the moor, one after the other, they began to give forth wolf-howls, and bear-growls, and to champ at their rawhide shield-rims, working themselves up into the age-old frenzy; soon they were all in the berserk trance. Surrounded by his howling men, Varg stomped onwards in the direction of the nunnery, grinning wildly as he felt the numb sense of disassociation that always came upon him when he entered the trance; his skin was iron, and within it he felt gloriously safe, invulnerable. Carelessly, he swung his axe around, and bellowed like a bear.

They crossed the windswept ridge, and began to head down the valley that led to the nunnery. In the gathering dusk, the huts lay before them like a collection of beehives. Light glimmered weakly in the doorways, but Varg could see no sign of the nuns. As they approached, he noticed that a silence lay over the whole place. Had they gone? Were they hiding?

He looked at Brak. The berserker's eyes were staring madly. He noticed his leader's gaze, and grinned back.

'We'll have to smoke them out,' he mumbled unsteadily as they walked towards the circle of huts. They found an untended bonfire at the edge of the scrubby fields that surrounded the huts, and a few of them tore out some burning brands, amusing themselves by thrusting the flaming wood in and out of their mouths. His men were well away, thought Varg.

The berserker leader came to a halt in the middle of the yard, and looked around him. Behind him, his men held blazing torches, baying like hounds. He raised his voice.

'We made an arrangement,' he shouted. His words echoed hollowly in the silence. 'Give us the gold, or we'll burn the nunnery round your heads. Understand? We've lost our patience, and if you don't do what you're told, believe me, you'll regret it - briefly.This is the last time we're going to tell you.'

A woman stepped out of the main hut, her hands behind her back.

'You're right there, pig-face!' she snarled.

It was Inghen. Behind her, from the gloom, came about twenty warriors, all with thier hands behind their backs.

Varg shrugged shortly, and leered at the shieldmaiden.

'Don't get in our way again,' he purred. 'Remember what happened last time? We're all berserk now. Your weapons won't harm us.'

Inghen smiled.

'Is that so?' she asked lightly. 'Is that so?' She fluttered her eyelashes a little.

'Of course it is,' replied the berserker arrogantly. 'Get out of our way. Even if a slip of a girl like you could ever be a warrior, you couldn't stop me. Just like your father.'

Inghen's smile faded a little, but it returned.

'The laws of honour say that I should kill you. I should carve the blood-eagle on your back, Varg the Black,' she said mildly. She sighed regretfully. 'But since I'm just a weak woman, and you are a mighty, invincible warrior, it seems that I will have to let you kill, rape and plunder the people who saved me and my crew from shipwreck - to whom I owe my life. I'm helpless. I wish I could fight you, and so do my men.' She laughed bitterly, and looked with apparent despair at the berserker, whose face had cracked open into a savage smile of triumph on hearing her words. 'But that would be futile,' she added, sighing again. 'Even if you weren't berserkers, my men and I are so poorly armed we'd be hard-pressed to beat a fellow Viking, let alone a berserker in his frenzy. Look!' she said, and at that, she and her warriors revealed what they had behind their backs.

'Clubs!' she said with a pale laugh. 'Pathetic weapons, aren't they? That's all we've got to stop you.'

The berserker's smile froze on his face. He stood silent, rooted to the spot. Inghen laughed again, but this time with real conviction. She grinned harshly at her father's killer.

'Aye!' she hissed venomously, her playfulness gone in an instant. 'Clubs! Fire and iron won't harm you - but we can beat you to death! We can't cut through your skin, but we can beat you until your entrails rupture; until you're a set of walking haemorrhages! Until you die!' She drew a breath, then howled like a wolf, scornful imitating the berserkers' war-cries. As its' echoes died away, she spat at the ground before the chief berserker's feet. He was still smiling madly, but his eyes were beginning to glimmer with an unaccustomed fear.

'Animals, that's all you are,' she snarled, 'and we'll treat you as such. Not as wild wolves, to strike fear into the heart of men, or savage, unbeatable bears - but as docile cattle, to fall beneath our simple weapons!'

She raised the club above her head, and brought it down savagely on the unresisting berserker's skull.

Around her, Inghen's men surged forward to attack the rest of the berserkers, who were all as stunned as their leader. Varg, almost incapable of comprehending this reversal of his fortunes, continued to smile stupidly even as the blows rained down upon his body. He sank to his knees in a daze. She took out a dagger.

And a rictus grin was still on his face as Inghen the Red thrust her blade into the unconscious berserker's back...