Berserker (Omnibus) Read Online Free PDF Page A

whinnied and snorted as if she, too, could sense the danger in the blood stench she could clearly smell.
    The land rose steeply ahead, bare ground, tight, spiky grass thinly shot through with yellow flowers. Overhead the sky was a dark, rolling grey, a sombre build-up towards a storm, marking the turning point between autumn and winter.
    And on the wind, the last thing Harald Swiftaxe had expected this close to his father’s hold, the smell of death.
    Harald turned to Sigurd Gotthelm.
    ‘Unsthof lies over the ridge – it’s just a small farming settlement.’
    The older warrior nodded thoughtfully, almost certainly unaware of the deeper reason for Harald’s concern, imagining that Elena was a girl of his father’s hold. He stared up at the ridge, then twisted round in his saddle, sharp eyes narrowed as he searched for danger, peering hard through the small skeletal eye-holes in his heavy steel helmet.
    Harald’s panic grew and he felt glad that the southerner had agreed to accompany him to his father’s hold, to rest and regain strength in comfort rather than in the filthy wharf-side villages where the Viking forces gathered for their raids. Gotthelm’s presence instilled strength and courage into the youth, and he had an awful feeling that both would soon be needed to fight an enemy that was unaffected by sword or axe – the enemy of grief.
    Gotthelm slipped from his horse and gently removed his helmet. Like a glittering skull it again watched Harald with its empty eyes, the intricate designs on its crown seeming to move, playing through the heroic deeds they depicted. Gotthelm knelt down to the ground and listened.
    After a moment he stood up and stared thoughtfully up the slope, wondering, perhaps, what scene of horror lay over the other side.
    ‘No sound, but it smells like a battle,’ he said, rubbing a leather-clad hand across his blond beard. ‘Fought some hours ago.’
    ‘A battle at Unsthof?’ cried Harald, feeling his unease crystallise into dread. ‘But why? Why would a battle be fought this far north? What point is there in that? And Unsthof! It’s … it’s so insignificant. I know the families who live there.’
    On impulse, feeling the blood draining from his face so he became dizzy with anticipation, he spurred his horse up the rise. Gotthelm shouted to him. ‘Harald!’
    ‘Come on, Sigurd!’
    ‘Harald, wait!’
    Gotthelm climbed back into his saddle and rode up to Harald Swiftaxe, who waited impatiently, his face white and angry.
    ‘What is it?’
    ‘Are the people of Unsthof your friends? Your special friends?’
    ‘I know them well. I spent a lot of time here as a child. Yes, most of them are my friends.’
    And one friend especially!
    Gotthelm drew his short sword and kissed the blade once. He waved it round his head and spurred his horse ahead of Swiftaxe, shouting, ‘Prepare yourself for grief, my young friend. But if there’s any fight to be had, then let’s fight it hard!’
    From the top of the rise they stared down at the silent settlement. It had every semblance of being deserted. A small community, it consisted of no more than four long houses, and a scattering of stables, storehouses and corrals. There was no sign of life, but indefinable shapes lying all around the buildings were a certain sign of death.
    Harald led the way at a gallop, his sword held tightly by his side, Gotthelm’s shield slung behind him, on his saddle, since Gotthelm himself preferred to fight without one. Cows watched them pass, running only if the two warriors rode close by. A broken wooden corral had spilled its population of black pigs and they were spread about the planted land that surrounded the small community, rooting up the winter’s provisions prematurely.
    Arriving between the four long houses, Harald could not hold back his cry of horror. Even Gotthelm was sickened by the sight, but he recoveredquickly and rose in his stirrups to search outside the settlement for a sign of the