Skadis saga 1, p.1
Skadi's Saga #1, page 1
Contents
Skadi's Saga #1
Copyright
Map
Quote
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Thank you! Please read!
Skadi’s Saga
Book 1
By
Phil Tucker
SKADI’S SAGA#1
Copyright © 2024 by Phil Tucker. All rights reserved.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either a product of the author’s imagination or used fictionally. Any resemblance to actual events, locals, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. All rights reserved. No part of this publication can be reproduced in any form or by any means electronic or mechanical, without expressed permission of the author.
See the full-sized color map here.
“Gæð a wyrd swa hio scel.”
Fate goes ever as fate must.
~ Beowulf
Chapter 1
Skadi scaled the raw boulders and strode up the occasional goat path toward Widow’s Rock with fierce resentment. The chill wind that blew down the length of the fjord from the Shattered Sea did nothing to cool her anger, and she climbed over outpourings of stone bramble and bittercress without noting their new blossoms. She ignored the view from the clifftop of the gleaming dark waters below, nor bothered to watch as a great eagle broke its glide to dive at some hidden prey.
Higher she climbed, moving quickly and with confidence. The wind tore at her heavy cloak and set the slender, brown braids that had escaped her bun to dancing. Her anger beat dully in her temple, and it was with brusque athleticism that she vaulted the last ridge and raced up the final rise to see Naddr Leifrson standing at the very lip of the overlook.
He was dressed in his finest, the same outfit he’d worn at the Winternight Festival some four months ago. A cerulean blue tunic edged with patterned azure, a fine woolen cloak of the softest gray, and elegant calfskin boots that were ridiculously inappropriate for this climb. Gold sewn into his cuffs, gold his kneecap-sized brooch, gold the buckle on his belt. A new blade hung from his hip, the scabbard inlaid, and his hand rested upon the pommel as if he were a jarl gazing out over his land.
Skadi clenched her jaw and resisted the urge to shove him over the edge.
Naddr must have sensed her, for he turned, the motion abrupt, nervous, and then smiled broadly, the expression stiff.
He’s scared, Skadi thought, walking forward with great reluctance. As well he should be.
“Skadi Styrbjörnsdóttir. Thank you for coming.”
“You gave me no choice. Not if I wanted to return this to you.” And she held out her hand, the fine gold necklace pooled like a fiery snake in her palm.
Naddr made no move to take it. “It is yours, freely given, though I’d hoped you’d appreciate its worth - and what it means for me to gift it to you.”
“I appreciate your intent well enough.” She tilted her hand so that the necklace slipped from her palm to fall gleaming to the rocks. “And my answer remains the same as it was at Winternight, and the month after, and the month after that. No, Naddr. I care not for your family’s wealth nor for you.”
His smile remained fixed, though his eyes glittered coldly. “So you said, and said again, but I’m convinced that I will change your mind. No - hear me out. The world is changing, Skadi. Who knows better than I? Just last year the Archean Empire drove my family out of Laxa as they took Skrímslaeyja with fire and iron. Do you think that was all they desired?”
Skadi raised her chin and smiled at Naddr as a wolf might smile at a hound. “Don’t compare the jarls of Skrímslaeyja to my father. He’d never abandon his home to flee with all his wealth to another island. That, and he has more ships and huscarls under his command than Geirsa, Sanda, and Laxa combined.”
“But your father isn’t here,” said Naddr softly.
“What of it? The Archean Empire will never suspect his being gone raiding this early in the season.” She squared her shoulders. “And King Harald is alert to their ambitions now. He’ll be ready.”
“King Harald sits in Stóllborg, a good four days’ sailing from here. By the time he heard of an attack it would be - again - far too late for him to respond.”
Skadi studied Naddr’s face. There was an arrogance, a boldness there that she’d never seen before; his smile was smug, his stance proud. But he’d startled when she’d arrived.
“What are you talking about?” she asked, taking another step closer. “What are you saying?”
“What I’m saying, Skadi, is that a wise woman would realize when her options have narrowed to one. A wise woman would appreciate an outstretched hand when all others have closed into fists. I know you disdain me. That you’re unimpressed with my father’s wealth and care little for my jokes and the great tales I tell in the hall after dinner. But that’s fine. Your love will come in time, just as you’ll come to appreciate what I’m doing for you. The favor I’m showing.”
His eyes burned fever bright and he licked his lips quickly, his tongue darting into view like a lizard’s tail flashing before it flicked back under its rock.
“You’re talking madness.”
“When the world’s going mad, what else would you have me say? Come. Step up beside me. Don’t be afraid. I want to show you something.”
Keeping out of his arm’s reach, though she feared his strength not at all, Skadi stepped up to the edge of the Widow’s Rock and gazed out over the fjord.
They were a hundred feet above the frigid waters. Across from them the wooded flanks of the far slopes were yet wreathed in dawn mist. Kalbaek was nestled at the head of the placid waters, its folk already at work amongst the many piers that extended from the docks, the town alive with industry and activity.
Skadi’s looked to the bend of the fjord, the massive shoulder of mountain blocking the view of the Shattered Sea beyond.
The bend around which Archean triremes were easing into sight, huge eyes painted on their prows, their black sails limp, their banks of long oars dipping in perfect unison into the dark waters.
The warning bell began to toll, its golden peals echoing within the fjord.
“How did you know?” she whispered, her whole body petrified by the sight.
“How did I know? You haven’t guessed?” His voice was hearty, relieved. “Who do you think it was that told them your father planned to slip away?”
She rounded on him, eyes wide. “You betrayed us.”
“No, I bowed to the inevitable.” His face flushed. “This was always going to come. But now we can manage it, benefit from it. Which is why I’m making you this offer, Skadi. Agree to become my woman. If you please me, if you work hard enough in bed, then I might even make you my wife. Refuse?” His voice turned ugly. “And the Archeans will enslave you just like everyone else.”
Skadi’s mind was blank, her very being overwhelmed. “My father gave you guest right. We’ve sheltered you since Laxa fell. How could you do this to us?”
Naddr sneered. “Don’t give me that. I told you. This is a new world. Archea’s world. The North Kingdom, the Iron Isle, Isern, Wuduholt - everyone will fall before the True Sun. But it’s a world of opportunity, Skadi, one where you and I can prosper - oh, I know you will hate me at first, but this is your chance to live -”
Skadi drew her hatchet from its loop at her waist, took a single step forward, and buried its gleaming edge in Naddr’s face.
The blade bit deep as it broke the architecture of his skull. Blood spattered her. Naddr’s shock was such that he didn’t even scream; for a moment he fumbled at the buried blade with clumsy fingers, then he collapsed and fell over the edge of the overlook.
“No!” A second too late Skadi realized he’d taken her only weapon with him. She dropped to her knees but he was gone, his body twisting and then breaking far below as it hit the rocks.
The bell yet tolled. People were rushing to their homes that lined the shore, even as huscarls boiled out of the longhouse or raced toward the water’s edge from far-flung corners of the village.
But her father’s five ships were gone, and with them the vast bulk of Kalbaek’s defenders.
Aghast, Skadi looked back to the Archean triremes. They drew ever closer with implacable surety. Five ships. It wouldn’t have been enough, shouldn’t have been enough, but they’d known her father was gone.
What to do? At their current speed, they’d reach the docks far before Skadi could run back down the mountain.
She was breathing rapidly, her shoulders rising and falling, her heart pounding.
What to do?
She’d always dreamed of being a shieldmaiden. Demanded lessons from anyone who would give her a few minutes, practiced with stolen weapons in the woods just outside the village.
“You’re to be a peace bringer, little one,” her father had said the first and only time she’d begged for formal training. “You will end wars, not fight them.”
“No,” she whispered, climbing to her feet and drawing back from the edge. “You’re not here, Father.” With nerveless fingers, she pulled her brooch free so that her cloak pooled around her feet and then peeled off her knee-high boots. “I can’t end this war. But I will fight it.”
Before she could change her mind she broke into a sprint. Seven long steps, and then she leaped, pushed off the ragged edge of rock to soar out into the void.
The urge to scream was violent, but she clenched her jaws as she fell feet first toward the dark waters below.
The cliff rushed by.
The world became too much.
The widow from legend had thrown herself onto the very rocks that had burst Naddr, giving the overlook its name, and for a terrible second Skadi thought her wyrd was to be the same, but then she knifed down into the frigid black just beyond the last boulder.
The winter ice had melted away weeks ago, but still it felt as if she broke through a layer of black crystal, the water thick and viscous with life-sapping cold. Down she plunged in a profusion of bubbles, the violence of her fall driving her to the unlit depths.
Terror clawed at her heart. Down here, far beneath the surface, was where the salt hags whiled away their bitter eternity. She’d entered their domain, maybe drawn their yellow eyes.
Desperate, she clawed at the water, fought for air, and swam back to the glimmering surface.
Her head broke free and she inhaled a ragged gasp, then set to swimming before the cold could numb her to death. The triremes had already rowed past, and shouts and screams echoed off the sides of the fjord now along with the still tolling bell.
Skadi swam, putting her fear and fury into the long strokes that pulled her through the choppy water. She was a jarl’s daughter. She knew that five enemy ships would carry far too many warriors for her father’s men to fend off.
She couldn’t pretend this wasn’t going to be a massacre.
But still she swam on, cutting through the water toward the rear of the closest ship, praying all the while that no bony claw would curl about her ankle with a grip of steel to drag her back under.
The trireme’s curved stern rose from the waves like a fishtail, its side flanked by twin pinned ladders, an Archean flag whipped by the wind. The oars were banked, the rudder still, the gunwale too high above the waterline for her to reach.
Wild thoughts. Swim between the boats to the shore? No. She swam up to the rudder oar’s great pole and clasped it, the wood slick. She fumbled for the small knife stowed in her sash. Thought it gone, lost to the fjord, then closed her nerveless fingers over the familiar wrapped hilt. Tore it free. Lunged up and stabbed its point into the rudder.
Heaving, slippery as an eel, she worked her way up the rudder’s oblique length, stabbing the blade higher up once more. She hauled, legs wrapped around the pole, wanting to gasp from the shock, higher and higher, till she lunged, grasped the edge of the gunwale, and pulled herself shivering and wide-eyed onto the deck.
The pilot’s seat was empty. The deck was a smooth expanse, the rowers being situated below. Bodies swarmed at the prow, men in Archean winter armor loosing flaming shafts at the shore even as others leaped onto one of the piers where the fighting was thickest.
Skadi’s every instinct told her to lie still, to not draw attention to herself, but she thought of her mother in the great hall, the hundreds of friends and people she knew who were fighting for their lives even as she lay there, and with a grimace she rose like a vengeful ghost, shivering and dripping and without a weapon but for the two-inch blade in her fist.
One of the archers turned to snatch up a new quiver and saw her. He was a short man, shoulders broad and back hunched from a lifetime spent drawing arrows, clothed in quilted black armor and with a cloth cap pulled tightly down over his ears. His eyes widened in surprise and then narrowed with delight. He lowered his bow and drew his sword from its sheath.
“Come here,” he called as he approached, the blade gleaming brightly like a shard of the moon. “Come here, beautiful girl. Bardas is going to take good care of you.”
Chapter 2
The air was brutalized by screams and shouts, the bright clangor of weapon meeting weapon and the first hints of burning thatch.
Skadi half-crouched, her two-inch blade held before her, the waxed boards slick beneath her wet, bare feet.
“Are you a water sprite, come to offer me gifts?” Bardas’s voice was distracted, his eyes flat and hungry like those of a stoat that has seen a fledgling fall from a nest. “Hmm? Will you invite Bardas down into the sea with you, to braid shells into my hair?”
But his blade never wavered. Over two feet long, broad and sharp along one edge, it was more cleaver than anything else.
Skadi glanced about the deck, seeking any advantage. Instinct urged her to move to the gunwale.
“Shh, shh,” urged Bardas, dropping his bow so he could raise his hand as one might placate a skittish horse. “No need for that. Stay still. Put down the knife.”
He moved against the gunwale as well, drawing ever closer, and Skadi forced herself to relax, to straighten as if the fight had gone out of her.
Bardas smiled, revealing missing teeth.
Then she flicked out her hand, throwing her knife as she’d done a thousand times before, but now she hurled it at a man’s face and not the knot in the old birch behind the smithy. The blade flashed through the air, and she ran after it. Bardas cried out as he jerked his head back reflexively; he staggered, then put his hand to his brow.
Her blade had bounced off his cap, spinning out to fall into the waters below.
“Cursed whore!” Bardas stared at the crimson on his fingers. She’d cut open his scalp, nothing more. “I’ll -”
But Skadi hadn’t hesitated. She closed and slipped within his guard to duck and rise so that her shoulder slammed into his chest, just as she’d done time and again against her brothers Svinnr and Riki when playing knattleikr in the clearing by the falls.
Bardas yelped then cursed as he went over the gunwale, top heavy, hand outstretched, eyes wide as blood ran between them to fall and disappear under the waves.
May the salt hags take you.
Skadi rushed to his fallen bow. It was a well-worn weapon, the yew polished to a gloss, the grip wrapped with black leather. Hunched over low, she scooted down the deck, snagged the closest quiver of black fletched arrows, and drew back.
The other archers were wholly focused on the fight swarming across the docks, loosing as quickly as they could arrow after arrow. Nobody heard or saw her until it was too late.
Skadi raised the bow, set an arrow to the string, and drew with a deep inhalation. It was a powerful bow, the draw too strong for her to pull all the way to her ear, but there were only a dozen yards between her and her prey.
She loosed.
The first arrow sank its wicked head deep between the closest archer’s shoulder blades, who screamed more in shock than pain and arched his back.
Her motion was smooth, as if she wove at the loom and was not plucking arrows from a quiver, and she neatly set another arrow to the string and loosed, then again, and then again.
Each arrow found its mark.
The other archers glanced back, their eyes widened, panic turning to disbelief then into fury. One of their number, a gold band about his arm, barked a command in their complex, liquid language, and three archers turned their bows on her.
The sound of the battle had receded. The world faded away but for this knot of Archean archers. She placed an arrow in the center man’s neck. Sidestepped as the enemy loosed and dropped into a crouch to nock another. Twin arrows sped through the air where she’d stood, buzzing like hornets.
She loosed her second arrow, but missed her man by a finger, thwipping past his cheek so that he startled and jerked away.
