Thank you often feels unsatisfactory when it comes to praising the partners that were involved in getting a book from my head into the hands of faithful readers. Nonetheless, I hope these few words of gratitude I offer are read by many fans so that it is clear that any success I’ve been fortunate enough to garner is chiefly due to my associating with patient and talented individuals.

I have read some historical fiction authors who’ve said that they choose not to put any maps in their work or to use only the bare minimum. They have sound reasoning, for these men and women believe it is their job to create the settings with words alone. For this, I commend them and support their endeavors. My approach is a little different. I believe that maps can only enhance the readers’ experiences with the characters and their actions.
Maps can help explain context, proximity, and borders more than my feeble words are able to do on their own. Such maps can be used as quick references whether the book is in physical form or electronic.

Making his
sixth appearance here is Mike Brogan, our master cartographer. If you’ve stuck with me throughout, you know that I cobbled together some sort of pictures on my own that I insisted were maps in my first novel. They left much to be desired. Thanks, Mike, for your partnership and for enduring my six a.m. emails chock full of “clarifications.”

Nathaniel Born
, too, provided a few of the maps this go ‘round. If you recognize his last name, that is because he is my son. At just thirteen, he did a marvelous job. Thanks, Natt.

My co-workers at Camelot Portfolios, LLC and Munn Wealth Management deserve praise. They consistently bear my lunchtime disappearances as I bolt to write a page or two at the local park or restaurant. Tolerating my proclivity to bring up the history of almost any situation during our investment committee meetings takes certain fortitude. My friends at work exhibit such strength in spades.

Michael Calandra continued his string of marvelous covers. His best work comes when I shut up and allow his imagination, pencils, and brush to do the talking. For this cover, I began rambling about the action sequences in
Norseman Raider
. Within moments, Michael had his pencil sketching out what he saw in his mind’s eye. His talent deepens continuously! Thank you, Michael.

Finally, the most challenging of all positions on
the team is that of proofreader and editor. Debbie Long, despite a multitude of deep commitments, makes time to take the sometimes messy pages I give her and form them into something that readers want to read. Similar to our cartographer, Debbie tolerates emails containing “just one more scene” or “an improvement” to another even after I’ve sent her my “final” draft. Though I end up reading each book I write about a dozen times, I am so much more confident in their eventual release because she offers her attention to detail and experience. I thank Debbie for her time and expertise.

NORSE WESTE
RN EXPANSION

GODFREY’S R
AIDING AREA

RAID ON ANGL
ESEY

RAID ON W
ATCHET

RAID ON DU
NADD

PROL
OGUE

Fate goeth ever as she must. ~ Beowulf – J. R. R. Tolkien translation.

986 A.D.

The sometimes-king splashed through a winding ditch. Veritable fear was etched into his face as he crawled up the sloppy mud of the far bank. His shield, his bark, was gone. It lay in a heap of more shields. He felt naked without the armor.

Randulfr offered a hand down and helped hoist the king up. The two compatriots’
worried eyes met. The king offered a grateful nod. On through the scattered trees they trod, not certain whether or not they were pursued any longer.

The thicket to their right rattled. The king reached to his belt for his sword. His hand grabbed air. That’s right, he remembered. The sword was gone, too. It was not on the pile of shields. The bishop down at Lismore would sav
e that prize. The man would clean the blood of his fellow Dal Riatans from the blade and have it mounted above the hearth as a forever reminder of his victory over yet another would-be sea king.

Randulfr held his sword at the ready. He tried to shove the king behind him with one of his strong arms. The king pushed through it and stood planted next to his lieutenant. Together they would meet the
threat.

A small priest punched through the thick mess of thorns. His robes were shredded and covered in blood. He held a sword that was equally drenched in
crimson. Only the torrential rain that fell with thunderous rapidity washed the splattered red from the priest’s face enough to make out his dark features. He saw Randulfr and the king. “Praise God!” he said, resting his hands on his knees while sucking in swaths of wet air.

“Are there others, Killian?” asked the king.

The priest looked over his shoulder. “A few, I think. We should get you to the ship. The men know where to go, lord.”

“I’m not leaving them behind. I mean to be a real king, not some pauper. If I want men to follow, I need to give them a reason. This disaster,” said the king, pointing back the way they’d come, “certainly won’t help.”

“Neither will your death,” said Randulfr.

King Godfrey chuckled like men in nervous situations
do when they are afraid to admit their gravity. “You’ve got a point,” was all he cared to acknowledge. He scanned what they could see of the countryside through the forest. “That hill.” The king was shouting now in order to be heard over the slapping rain. “We’ll flee to the hill and wait. That’s a natural place to assemble. Once we have the men, then, and only then, will we run down to the ships.”

Randulfr and Killian exchanged glances. They decided not to argue.
The king was already bounding up the oozing slop on the hillside, reinvigorated that he once again had a plan.

Once at the top of the rise they peered east. The rolling land was open in that direction. In front of them and extending north the green terrain was dotted with white. Sheep ignored the rain and tore at the grass. Lambkins sullied their nascent wool by chasing one another and rolling through the mud. At the south edge of the pastures was the town they’d assaulted with the monastery at its center. The townsfolk with a brigade of buckets brought up from the sea along with the windless rain had already put out the fire that Godfrey had started. The
king and his two followers crouched in the rain watching for a sign of survivors from their ill-fated mission.

“We’ll have to leave most of the fleet behind, King Godfrey,” said Randulfr.
He said it quietly and wasn’t sure the king even heard him over the din.

He did. Soon, t
he king was shaking his head, no, but that wouldn’t change the facts. “I know. If we could sail most of them back, that would be something good, something we could salvage from this debacle.”

“It’s not your fault,” said the small priest. “For all we know it was that bastard, Horse Ketil. He is curiously absent from this raid. He sits and plots and drinks in your hall whenever plans are made. Runners come and go from his presence. Ketil is . . .”

“Ketil is my cousin’s husband. He and his family still hold sway over half of my island. No amount of hoping will change that. I needed a victory here. Now I still need one.”

“I shouldn’t have let you do this,” said Killian
, changing tack. “It was a misguided . . .”

The king cut him off
a second time. “It is not for you to
let
me do anything.”

Killian knew when his king was malleable and when he was not. It was time for the priest to shut his mouth. He had no real fear of Godfrey. The king wasn’t overly cruel as some men of power could be. The priest bit his tongue because he actually respected Godfrey’s authority – most of the time.

They heard sucking footsteps slowly working their way up the hill. Killian and Randulfr didn’t bother to draw their weapons, for the noise was the plodding sound of defeat, not the heroic resonance of pursuit. They watched a handful of their brethren, their fellow warriors, straggle up the hill. Two of the men carried a third between them. The man in the middle had a wide gash across his belly. His thick leather mail was splayed as was his flesh. Each step of the men who held him aloft, each pattering raindrop caused him to wince. Rain-diluted blood ran down his back and legs and onto the other two. Brandr and Loki set the man against a moss-covered elm whose roots stood up sideways. The magnificent tree had been toppled by a storm years earlier. Stagnant, brown water filled the leaf-strewn pit left behind by the uprooted tree. Loki swore and kicked at the puddle, splashing its rank contents onto the other men. They didn’t notice the extra wetness.

“How many more?” asked the king. He didn’t look back at his men. There was activity in the town that caught his attention.

Brandr said, “The six of us. I saw another batch run off into the woods, but haven’t seen them since we left the town. They should find their way here.” Brandr was shoving his hands into the wounded man’s belly to staunch the blood. Other men came over and offered rolled up pieces of cloth to help. It was no use. The man’s breathing stopped. His head slumped. Loki again kicked the puddle.

“There should be more
of us,” grumbled Godfrey. He moved his eyes from the train of villagers moving out from the town’s north edge to where the main battle had taken place. The dead bodies of his men littered the ground. Godfrey made an attempt to count them from the far distance. After getting to thirty, he estimated the rest. “Eighty or one hundred dead, perhaps,” he mumbled. “But that means we should have another hundred fifty, at least. Where are they?”

“There,” said Killian. The priest pointed to the
growing string of people winding out into the pastures.

Sheep skittered out of their way. Townspeople carrying the farm tools that had been their weapons in the fight walked among Dal Riatan warriors who, by happenstance, had been sojourning on the island when Godfrey landed. Normally, Lismore was the
weakest of soft targets. It had no soldiers, no forts. That is why King Godfrey was a frequent raider of its people and church. Not this time. Fate! Fortune! Happenstance! Or, as Killian thought, it was Horse Ketil’s treachery.

“Thor’s beard,” whispered Godfrey.

In the center of the throng of people were his missing men, their feet clumsily shuffling through the meadows. They were bound. Their long hair was dripping. Their heads hung low. Coagulated blood was caked around their ears where someone had systematically beaten each of them with a club.

The bishop, Godfrey didn’t know the man’s name, led the processio
n. Killian had told him the bishop’s name once or twice, but the king didn’t care. Lismore was to be a source of wealth for Godfrey’s kingdom-building ambitions. The monikers by which the island’s leaders were known were of no consequence to him. It was forever a soft place, tucked in a thin, deep fjord. Until today, the king reminded himself. It was a hard place today.

The bishop stopped next to a great field oak. The tree was majestic and lonely as it stood in the center of the pastures. Its great boughs had been trimmed so that farmers and their sheep could walk under its shade in the summer. He pointed at a stout, low branch and barked orders to some soldiers. A thick rope was soon slung over the limb. It was tied off to the yoke of an old horse. The beast was a grey, dappled thing that might have been pretty fifteen years earlier. Today, its back
was deeply swayed. Its bony hips protruded. Yet it was more than adequate for the job at hand.

The first prisoner was shoved over to the rope. A noose was cinch
ed around his neck. At the bishop’s command, a farmer led the horse forward, slowly lifting the Norseman off his feet. His hands were bound behind his back. The man’s feet kicked, trying to find ground that was no longer there. He flexed his chest and neck to keep the rope from choking him. He held his breath. His face turned red. That’s when he realized his beating feet weren’t helping. The man calmed. That is how he hung for fifteen full heartbeats.

With a whoosh, breath raced from his lungs. His struggling began in earnest. He gurgled. He tried to curse the bishop, but couldn’t find the wind. Spittle shot from his mouth. Tears streamed down his cheeks. Both feet were kicking in time so that his body undulated like a mermaid dancing in a
longship’s wake. His entire body shook, nearly vibrating. The rope shuddered. The tree branch bobbed. Piss mixed with rain-soaked trousers.

The man died.

The bishop nodded. The farmer eased his old grey back. Two soldiers carried the body twenty paces away and flopped it into a mountain of sheep dung. A frightened rat was dislodged and bound through the soaked fields. It ran through the villagers who jumped out of the way until one of them used a wooden shovel to kill the foul beast. Another Dal Riatan warrior prodded the next raider into place.

He was
slowly killed by the rope.

They were dying in their own filth. The incessant rain beat them, keeping the stench of their shit at bay. It was a bloodless affair, but Godfrey knew that each of the warriors being hanged would have rather died from a gaping battle wound if it meant they’d enter that final round of sleep with a sword in their hands. Instead, they died a death gruesomely impish
even in its relative peace.

The king and his followers on the hill watched three more executions in total silence. Only the constant patter of the rain made a sound.

A few more of the survivors climbed the hill. An older warrior led them.

“Good to see you, Turf Ear,” said Godfrey
quietly; resigning himself to the fact that he was a king in name only.

Turf Ear put a hand to the side of his head. “Eh? King I can’t hear ya with the racket made by the rain.”

Godfrey walked over and set a hand on the man’s shoulder, but didn’t bother offering his greeting a second time. Turf Ear plopped down in the mud, not asking again for the king to repeat himself. His name advertised his affliction. Turf Ear was used to missing most conversations. But the king didn’t want Turf Ear along for his ability to sycophantically repeat all that Godfrey said. No, Turf Ear was there because he could fight six other men when the terror of the shield wall materialized.

“We should go,” said Killian, who stood behind King Godfrey.

Godfrey didn’t immediately answer. “We could assault them,” he said glaring down into the pastures. “We send a few more of the Dal Riatans to death. Send them to Hel’s icy depths. Send more of us into Odin’s hall. It would improve the day.”

Randulfr and Killian looked at one another. “We could,” said the priest.

“Or, King Godfrey, we could save the men we’ve got. We’re no cowards. We don’t flee out of fear of death. But why not fight when we know we can win?”

Godfrey looked back at his lieutenant.
Randulfr had been with him for years. And the king knew the man was no coward. Randulfr was closest to the king because he was trustworthy and had his heart chained to the king’s determination. They were one in purpose. He’d always done whatever was asked of him by Godfrey or Godfrey’s queen. If the king gave the order to attack the Dal Riatans in the field around that oak tree, Randulfr would lead the charge.

One-by-one, t
he king studied the exhausted faces of his men.

“Yes. We go,” said Godfrey
at last. “But we don’t leave until we’ve seen all of our men sent on to the next world. We owe them that.”

Killian moved to
stand by the king. “That’s a fine idea. You know Providence, the One True God, has a plan for all of us. This may just be a challenge that you face not unlike Job’s. He moved on to more prosperity after his tragedies, you know.”

Godfrey crossed his arms at his chest, his eyes not deviating from one of his Danes who was dying on the tree. The king
forced a grin. It was his way of compelling his mood to change, to affect the future. “Oh, I have no doubt that I will again rise. Our Christian God will send us deliverance in his time. But our old gods will send us the warriors we need in our time.”

And they did.

Other books

Gladiator: Son of Spartacus by Simon Scarrow

El ayudante del cirujano by Patrick O'Brian

Game On (The Bod Squad Series Book 1) by Gabra Zackman

Skyfall by Catherine Asaro

Love's Peril (Lord Trent Series) by Holt, Cheryl

The Fuck Up by Arthur Nersesian

An Island Called Moreau by Brian W. Aldiss

Subterranean by Jacob Gralnick

The Copper Horse #2 Pride by K.A. Merikan

Male Sex Work and Society by Unknown