Viking Gold Read Online Free PDF Page A

filled the room. Redknee’s mother gripped a big
cooking pan to her chest like a shield. “Oh Sven,” she said, her face tensed
with fear, “it’s not happening again, is it?”
    “Mind yourself, woman.” Sven
leant on the table and his long hair fell across his face, hiding his
expression.
    Redknee hadn’t known his
father, but he’d often wondered if he had looked like this man. Six and a half
feet of tightly thatched muscle, with wide grey eyes carved in a face the
colour of sandstone. Redknee reckoned most of the villagers would do anything
for Sven. They would stand their ground and defend the village to the death, if
that was what Sven asked of them. Redknee wondered if his father had mustered
the same respect when he was jarl.
    Sven straightened to his full
height and turned to Redknee. “Did Ragnar mention anything else at all? Think
Redknee, did he talk about hidden treasure?”
    “Er … other than wanting to
steal Wavedancer ?”
    Sven nodded.
    Redknee remembered Skoggcat’s
words about the book. He should probably mention that, no matter how crazy it
sounded. “Erm … I think he also said something about a book. But I’ve never
seen a book in the—”
    Sven slammed his hand on the
table. “Damn it, Redknee!”
    “Sorry,” he said, hanging his
head. “Does that mean he really is coming to … to kill you?”
     “I thought I’d seen the
last of Ragnar sixteen years ago,” Sven said quietly. “I should have killed him
when I had the chance.” He took his battleaxe from an iron hook on the wall,
slung it over his shoulder and crossed to the doorway. He paused, his hand on
the oak frame. “It seems I’ve failed.”
     
    Uncle
Sven stood beneath the village oak and bellowed orders. Everywhere Redknee
looked, people were readying for the attack, their faces pinched with fear,
their hands shaking. Two boys scurried past laden with scythes, axes and lumps
of wood. Makeshift weapons.
    Gudrid the Healer and Thora,
the Smithy’s wife, women Redknee knew as his mother’s friends, were gathering
rocks and piling them inside the door of the feast hall. Their faces shone with
the effort and sweat darkened their coarse brown dresses.
    Redknee recalled the fine
tempered swords Ragnar and his men had carried and his heart sank. There were
only five seasoned warriors in the village. The rest of the free men were just
farmers, used only to the occasional summer raid. There were the slaves, too,
of course. Wends from the Rhineland and Celts from Ireland . In total Redknee estimated there were maybe twelve
male slaves. But they couldn’t be trusted. And Uncle Sven would never give them
weapons.
    Add
to this the fact that Koll the Smithy had spent the spring helping build Wavedancer instead of making new weapons or fixing the old ones. True, the village would
have the advantage of numbers – it boasted the thirty free men needed to sail a
longship. But everyone knew that, even under Uncle Sven’s direction, farmers
and part-time raiders, even ones strong and willing to defend their homes, were
no match for Ragnar’s warriors.
    At the edge of the village,
just short of the treeline, a group of men were digging knee-deep pits. Redknee
watched as they filled them with wooden spikes and covered them with grass – a trap
that would lame a horse or snap a man’s leg like a twig.
    Something soft pressed
between Redknee’s shins. He patted the pup on the head. “Hey, Silver,” he said.
The pup nuzzled his hand and he knew the name Sinead chose fit. “There’s going
to be a fight here this morning. I’ll need you to help me defend the village.”
    Silver blinked and rubbed his
cheek against Redknee’s boot. “I’ll take that as—”
    The scrape of iron on granite
made him look up. Harold the Thin sat on a big stone sharpening his dagger, his
hard blue eyes trained on Redknee. Harold uncoiled and swaggered over. “Where’d
you get him?” he asked, pointing at Silver with his dagger.  
    “The