Fires of Winter Read Online Free PDF

of Slavic nomads, Garrick was not inclined to tarry long at Bulgar. He was anxious to be homeward bound. He still had to stop at Hedeby to dispose of the twenty slaves given to him by Aleksandr Stasov so he could make the journey home with greater speed. His first trip to the East had been full of surprises, but very satisfying.
    After leaving Norway the previous year with a cargo of furs and the slaves he had chosen to sell, Garrick and his crew of nine sailed to Hedeby, the great market town on the Schlei River, where he traded half of his slaves for an assortment of merchandise made by the craftsmen there. He took combs, pins, dice and gaming stones, all made of bone, as well as beads and pendants crafted from amber brought in from the Baltic lands.
    From Hedeby they sailed to Birka, an island trade center in Lake Malar, situated in the heart of Sweden opposite the Slav town Jumne. Birka was a well known Vic, or trading market; in its harbor could be found ships owned by Danish, Slavic, Norwegian and Scythian peoples. Here Garrick bartered for Rhinish glass, Frisian cloth, which was so valued for its fine texture, jeweled stirrups and Rhine wine, much of which he kept for himself.
    Thence Garrick and his crew sailed to Uppland, went on to the Gulf of Finland and then, by way of the Neva, passed the marches and continued on to Lake Ladogo. Old Ladogo, the trading center, was located at the mouth of the Volkhor, and here they stopped for provisions. By then it was midsummer, and they still had a long way to go. They sailed eastward into the land of the Western Slavs, over the Svir to Lake Onega, and on several smaller rivers and lakes to Lake Beloya, until finally they reached the northern bend of the great Volga River.
    Halfway between there and Bulgar, their destination, they came upon a ship under attack by a group of Slavs who lived along the river bank. The screams of both men and women rent the still air. Garrick manned the oars and reached the ship before the bloody attack was finished. He and his men boarded the small sailless vessel and killed off those marauders who did not flee quickly enough when they saw his great Viking ship.
    Only a young woman and her baby were left alive, and that because they had hidden away inside a large, empty barrel. Haakorn, one of Garrick’s men and a seasoned traveler, spoke the woman’s Slavic tongue. He discovered that she was the daughter of a powerful chieftain of a Slavic tribe. Her husband had been killed, and she lay weeping by his mutilated body as she told of the massacre. The assailants were members of an enemy tribe intent upon killing her and the baby to revenge actions of her father’s. This attack had not been their first.
    Garrick held an immediate council with his men to decide what to do with the woman. It was Perrin, Garrick’s closest friend, and as near to him as a blood brother, whose sound advice won out. Since they had already made enemies of those who had fled, they did not need to make more enemies by returning the girl to her tribe for ransom. They would be traveling this route in the future; it could only be to their advantage to have friends in the area.
    Thus they returned the girl and her babe to her father without asking for a reward. Feasts were given in their honor, one after another, and days turned into weeks. The rains came, giving them another excuse to linger, for Aleksandr Stasov was an excellent host and they wanted for nothing. Finally it was too late to reach Bulgar and return home before the cold, so they stayed the winter.
    In the spring, the grateful chieftain sent them on their way with twenty slaves and a bag of silver for each of the crew. All in all, the time lost to them was worth their while.
    In Bulgar the last of the cargo was sold. The furs alone brought an enormous sum, especially the white fur of the polar bear, of which Garrick had four. Each man sold his own goods, for this was a joint venture, among friends, even though it