Viking Hunter Vol 2 Kill Them Twice

Viking Hunter

War of Outlaws

By Wulf Anson

Volume II

Kill Them Twice

Text and Cover Copyright Wulf Anson and Wulf Publish 2016

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Also Available

Viking Hunter Volume 1 Grab The Wolf

Viking Hunter Volume 3 The Valkyr's Kiss

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Viking Hunter is a work of fiction set in the 13th Century. It is not meant to disparage today's Catholics, Jews, Gays, Native Americans, Savage Mastiffs or any other current sub-groupings. The prejudices of its characters are historically accurate.

When Leif Erickson sailed home to Greenland from his trip to Markland and its mammoth forests his news was snatched up as if it was free silver. The few trees in Greenland grew no taller than man height. Fortunes had been made importing wood from Norway to Iceland and Greenland. Land, forests, fish and game waited just over the horizon. The news shot back to Iceland and from there to Norway and Denmark and the rush was on. The Swedes were too busy taking over Gardariki (Russia) to notice, much less care.

First stop was the island of Hellulandia (today's Newfoundland), across the icy seaway from Markland (today's New Brunswick).

Markland to Hellulandia's west then became a dumping ground for Outlaws exiled from Hellulandia by its Courts.

These following events occurred in that part of Markland known as Skoggangurstrond, (Outlaws Strand) in the years 1278 and 1279.

Note on names:

Before you dislocate your tongue trying to pronounce the Viking names in it, the Icelandic J is retained in them.

Pronounce it as either a Y, or a long E.

Jarnulf becomes Yarnulf.

Anja becomes Anya.

Kjartan becomes Kee-yartan.

Table of Contents

LXIII Get Lost

LXIV Goood Kitty

LXV To Live Through This

LXVI About The Sharp End

LXVII Fellow Castaways

LXVIII A Dragon's Puzzle

LXIX Waiting To Make Dinner

LXX A Ghost Couldn't Slip Him

LXXI Right At Home

LXXII That Was Uncalled For

LXXIII Morrow's Troll Wife

LXXIV Well Now Ain't That A Bitch?

LXXV Loving Nothing More

LXXVI You Sure This Is A Good Idea?

LXXVII They Got Dead And Fell Down

LXXVIII To Kill

LXXIX Two Dogs

LXXX An Emissary

LXXXI I'd Throw Some Water On That

LXXXII The Murder Of Danny MacTanner

LXXXIII The Riches Within

LXXXIV Hero Of The Battle

LXXXV A Religion

LXXXVI That Evil Bastard

LXXXVII Of Quarries Bagged, And Quarries At Large

LXXXVIII No Place For Us

LIXC Shovels And Swords, Rabbits And Rain

LXC Respect And Friends

XCI Aud Hallfreddottir

XCII Saddlebags Full

XCIII The Prince Of Summer

XCIV Damned Ingrate

XCV I Never Liked You Anyway

XCVI Borrowed Swagger

XCVII Tore Hears About A Lot

XCVIII Deaf, Dumb, And Blind

XCIX More Than A Quarter Share

C Thor's Goats

CI The Dragon's Kiss

CII But I Can't Swim!

CIII Welcome To Thingi Hrafn

CIV Point Me To The Pantry

CV Spider And Pussycat

CVI The Malefic Of Its Opiate

CVII Scorned

CVIII Field Of Stars

CIX Just Be Yourself

CX When You've Got The Wolf By The Ears

CXI This Isn't Before

CXII Strife Inciters

CXIII The Spirit Of The Thing

CXIV Kveldalf Senna

CXV Come Get Them

CXVI Gone

CXVII Cwithan Orcneas

CXVIII The Troll Means Business

CXIX A Mistake

CXX The Dream Gift

CXXI Broken Necklaces

CXXII Hell Must Be Filled

CXXIII Our Wounds Should Not Be In Our Backs

CXXIV Hey! You!

CXXV Your Turn To Buy Tonight

CXXVI The Devil's Engineers

CXXVII Father, Wait!

CXXVIII Fire Jotuns

CXXIX Darksome Laughter

CXXX You Should Have Thought Of That Earlier

CXXXI They're Coming

CXXXII Apostasy

CXXXIII The Devil

Viking Hunter Continues In Volume 3, Sample Chapters

LXIII Get Lost

Leif and Knut finished their four block sprint doubled over, hands on knees and gasping. In the stars and moon's sliver they felt as if they'd been surprised by some girl's father. They scampered up the alley and cloaked themselves into the shadows hugging a building.

We'll get the log if we're not back soon with a damn good story. Leif whispered.

What's your rush? Knut said. Hauling a log on your shoulder all day beats getting shot in the eye.

Someone's coming. Leif hissed.

A buckskinned urchin with charcoaled features ghosted through the intersection they'd quit. Once safely out of the light the urchin meowed and five more flitted through the open after him. Knut was tempted. If they bagged one of the two brats toting bows he'd have a shot at a double share. Leif reminded him that for every rat you see there's twenty you don't.

After giving the kids time to get out of earshot the deserters clinked and clanked westward up the alley paralleling their band's line of march, inventing heroics for their cover fantasy. They started with every other step at creaks and groans from cooling buildings, wind sighs and imaginary lurkers. Within two blocks there wasn't an un-frayed nerve between them.

Knut's crossbow flew to his shoulder to spit its bolt into a patch of shadow ahead. An arthritic mongrel hobbled out into the cold, colorless light, looked back over its shoulder, growled halfheartedly, and limped away on three legs.

From the next corner as the mutt disappeared around it, a man's voice called out.

Gol?

Not me. another replied, behind them.

Shut up and find them. a third said.

The deserters pressed themselves into the wall's only doorway as the slumbering dark around them yawned in a scattering of stealthy footfalls and phantoms stretching through the shadows. Leif tried the door. It was barred within.

That's it. We're going to die. he said.

Knut forced his knife point between the frame and the door. A pimp's knife was what Karl called it, he remembered as its hilt of polished walrus ivory kept slipping about in his sweat slick palms. With the heel of his hand he hammered it into the frame and with an apocalyptic 'Crrack', split out a long strip of wood.

His point found the bar within. He leaned on it and lifted. The door swung back and they slipped inside. Knut thanked his maker that somebody had oiled the hinges. He closed and rebarred the door.

In the still, sarcophagal black they held their breath as the door strained inward against the bar and then relaxed.

Night blind they listened to their sanctuary depict itself. The pounding in their ears gradually subsided unmasking ever more distant and subtle accumulations of reverberant, complaining wood. The building was cavernous and choked with that glorious smell of money.

Fresh cut timber, turpentine and oils vied with musty grains, cheeses, and a chimeric taint of the devil's nerve queller. After hugging their chiming mail into silence they discovered patches of an even darker hue in the void before them. The starlight trickling down between the roof planks fell upon lofts to either side, and an aisle between stretching away into the black.

Whatever was beneath those lofts, be it riches or murder, remained hidden. If they went back out into the alley however, getting ambushed was a dead man's bet.

Leif's nose, panting in the murk, caught another whiff of mischief and the issue for him was settled. He revealed his objective to Knut.

Are you mad? Knut said. We disappear for half the night, come back with a shit song about chasing snipers and sing it drunk?

Fat chance. Leif whispered. With the trouble we just saved him finding this place we'll get fat bonuses. We've had a busy night you know, getting pinned down on that rooftop and killing four of them before we lost the other three in here at daybreak. I'm getting thirsty just thinking about it.

What about the bodies outside? Knut said. The four we killed?

Their friends hauled them off after we left. Leif said.

Through the mob of jostling smells tiny atomies of potable courage pitched their wares like hawkers at a brothel's door and dragged the pair by their noses to the mead casks. They groped them one by one. Knut found the one with a spigot, removed his helmet and quarter filled it. He gave it a sniff, a sip, and a choked back whistle. It was the burnt stuff, potent as a snake bite. Most of the water had been cooked out of it.

They felt their way twenty yards back to the wall and settled in to expand their saga. Three fingers of mead later and drenched in sweat Knut knew his woolen surcoat had to go. He crawled out of his mail and its scratchy insulator, and rebuckled his sword belt determined on a refill.

As he poured his helmet almost full, there was no telling how hard that barrel might be to find again as the night wore on, a muffled voice filtered through the black from across and above the aisle. Knut scrunched down between the barrels, sipping, listening, and peering up into the dark. The voice spoke again but he couldn't make out any words. It was a girl's voice.

The level in his helmet dropped as she tittered away unanswered.

From the jet of the building's far end a barn owl's scream slashed and gutted his surrogate womb. It thundered and bounced about in the dark above a sibilant rush of tiny vermin feet.

Knut spilled half the mead into his lap. He left off his whispered cursing and winced as a door opened and a shaft of yellow candle light flooded the loft and ceiling. The girl's petulant whine, nasal but now distinct, called out.

Tyto be quiet! Do you want them to find us? she said.

The closing door swept the arc of feeble light back into the room. Intrigued, Knut rose, set his helmet atop the cask and drew steel. He tip toed across the aisle drawn by her singsong teasing away from up in the dark. Halting at each second step, he strained for any reply to her as he felt his way along more casks and pallets of lumber.

He found the back of a stair tread with his forehead, felt his way round the staircase and began his halting ascent, avoiding the creaking center and hugging the rail. Her converse from behind the door grew intelligible as he gained the landing. It was that gibberish people spoke to pets when they were alone with them.

He lurked at the threshold through an eternity of Aren't you a gooood kittys and I love you too Spots before trying the door. This door too was barred.

Somewhere back in his mind an inhibition kept sputtering that Spots wasn't a kitty cat's name, but it was too thoroughly mead logged to keep its mouth above the roiling surface of that sea for more than a half thought or two. He lifted the bar with his knife point and swaggered in.

A tiny field mouse of a brunette fresh to her teens turned and stared at him in wide eyed horror.

LXIV Goooood Kitty

Leif had killed his drink and was weaving up and down the aisle looking for Knut, noisily crashing into things and wondering where that idiot had got off to. Perhaps he'd run into someone in here and bolted back for the column.

Knowing Knut, there was a chance he'd improvise on their cover story and earn them both a lashing. But that was unlikely as Knut had left his chain behind and they both reeked of mead. It would be after daybreak before the smell wore off and they'd both been on thin ice with Dalla and Tore for some time.

Knut dropped the bar back into its lintel, and moving to block the door, surveyed his prize. The clanking of chain links whipped his stare sidelong into two marsh gas green eyes rising towards him. Knut sprang back from the claws coming for his neck. The chain snapped taut and the leopard at the end of it, now raising vocal murder, dropped out of the air raking Knut's left thigh in its descent.

Leif, after traversing the building's length unknowingly found himself back where he'd started when the leopard cut loose. His sworn brother be damned whatever awaited him with Dalla and Tore beat all hell out of remaining blind in this menagerie. Owls, giant demon cats, what was next?

Knut staggered back from the clawed and fanged, shrieking horror to grab the girl by her hair and hurl her into a corner. Taking his own quaking stand between her and escape, he dropped his woolen breeks.

The three, ragged, finger length tears in his thigh weren't deep but they were enough to kill him. The film of rotting meat under a leopard's claws would have his leg looking like a ripening corpse in a few days as the mottled purple, green, orange and red spread.

Screaming delirium and joint racking convulsions would follow.

He snatched the candle from the desk and thrust it at the screaming leopard. It was a lot cleaner and better fed than the only other one he'd seen, the dead one, but that was no guarantee. A jug on the desk snared his eye.

He traded the candle for it. He set his teeth and pulled its cork. A quick sniff confirmed its contents.

A sotted old biddy at Thing had once confided that the stuff was a good bet against cuts from rusted blades and such. Remembering his experiment the time he'd slipped with a whetstone he wondered if she'd made her discovery after a sword stroke through her own brain.

Between watching the cat and menacing the girl he managed a vicious pull at the jug before setting it down among stacks of ledgers on the desk.

Beside the leopard's mattress squatted a three foot cube of browned iron strongbox, its padlock and lid open.

Beneath opened cabinet doors against the opposite wall all the way back to the room's other door lay stacks of oddments.

Spots very essence had been transmuted to rage with a thoroughness to turn an alchemist green. With cocked ears and baited breath he'd heard every tiny noise the pair had made since their forced entry.

Spots little friend had tried to distract him with conversation and banging around in cabinets the whole time. Even through all that mead Knut was wearing his cat nose caught something ugly about him from the foot of the stairs. It got stronger as the anger smell lingered in the still air beyond the door. But when the door opened and that stench of hatred, fear and aggression swept into the room before him Spots coiled and tensed.

After his ambush failed the hate stink shoved fire in his face to taunt and humiliate him.

He vented his frustration in a bloodcurdling racket, shooting back and forth at the end of his chain while making damn sure the smelly bastard got a good look at all of his teeth.

Knut dropped the idea of killing the cat to shut it up, as even chained, a full grown leopard was more than he was ready for. The girl cowering before him wasn't.

You and me are going to have us a party and kitty can watch. he said, yanking her to her feet. Grinning as she pled for mercy, he slammed her face down over the desk, still brandishing a sword while assaulting a girl half his size as if he might need it to protect himself from her. Between relishing her struggles, and the leopard's fury, he missed the heavy boot falls in the hallway beyond the far door.

The door crashed inward and Knut glanced up. A man in chain bearing a heavy axe was headed his way. Knut pinned the girl to the desk with his left hand and pointed the sword in his right at the intruder.

Get lost. he snarled. She's mine.

Viking Bitch. the intruder grunted, cocking his axe for a swing as he charged.

Garth! the girl screamed.

Pants about his ankles, Knut's rearward leap landed him flat on his back as the axe whistled through the air above him. From the floor he aimed a frantic slash at his attacker's knee. Garth kicked Knut's wrist, sending the sword clanking out of reach as he raised his axe to cleave Knut's chest.

The axe poised at the top of its arc and Knut, unable to see beyond the next heartbeat, rolled left into the center of the room. He didn't feel a thing as the leopard's canines drove through his left arm. He did, however, feel its claws in his back and gut as it wrapped both forelegs around his neck, anchored them, began biting him, and then wind milled a trench into his belly with its hind legs.

The girl covered her eyes as the cat spattered flying entrails and crimson splotches onto the walls, floor, strongbox, and its mattress. Garth on the other hand, after leaping clear, lustily cheered the cat on while enjoying every bit of the affair with a scribe's eye for detail.

Shaking and crying, the girl stammered gibberish as Garth found her a blanket and wrapped her in it.

Sinead, we're leaving, there's sure to be more of them. he said.

Sinead's leopard was still savaging the corpse as Garth steered her toward the door grateful that the cat had waked him. He hadn't meant to drift off but she'd taken forever collecting things she just couldn't live without after gathering father's ledgers.

Spots turned his Viking drenched face up to eye quiz him with that single, universal cat question that begs ten in return because no man has ever figured out what that cat brain is asking, as he and Sinead slipped past just out of reach.

Gooood kitty. Garth purred down to him.

Starlight blinded Leif as he shot out the building's far end. Shielding his eyes he dashed down the empty alley. He stopped at a corner trash heap and buried all but three of his bolts in it. He'd get skinned for certain showing up with a full quiver and a tale about a long shootout.

No sooner had he finished than it came to him that the column wouldn't be where he'd left it. Those bolts might be sore needed. He dropped to his knees and began rooting through the garbage. Thoroughly engrossed in his search he wondered why his slice of luck always seemed so rotten.

His remaining moment of consciousness was filled with a whorl of colors beyond the natural spectrum and a feeling like being dropped on the back of his head from a high roof as the blunt back of a hand axe dented in the rear of his helmet.

You're holding it backwards. Use the sharp edge. the axe wielder's girlfriend urged.

Sixteen wintered Caoimhe had never killed anyone before and putting an axe through a man's brain was more than she was ready for on her first try.

LXV To Live Through This

Garth in mail with a satchel of ledgers and little Sinead in a blanket stepped out into the night, turned right, and paralleling the main street headed for the heart of town.

I told you to be quick. I knew those bastards would show up. Garth said.

But what about Spots? Sinead said. He's why we went there. He won't stand a chance when the rest of those pirates find him.

Just because he lets you pet him and play with him doesn't make him a dog. Or have you already forgot what he did to that Viking? Garth said, greatly annoyed at the way his father's request for his ledgers had turned out.

What use could the damn things be to him anyway? There wouldn't be any shop and most of the folk who owed him money would be dead if they weren't already when this was over.

He'll be fine. Garth said. His water bucket's full and I doubt he'll need to be fed for a few days.

After watching Spots finally earn his keep Garth was beyond certain that he didn't want the cat anywhere near him now that its blood was up. With all the excitement Spots had probably forgot he was part of the family. He'd been pampered and fussed over since Garth brought him home as an orphaned cub but he was still a leopard.

Can't we please go back and get him? Sinead whined.

Garth said no again.

Garth? Sinead's tone said she was not about to stand by and let her kitty be murdered.

All right already. he barked. I'll go get him but not till you're indoors with the others.

Sinead said that would do as they marched stepped east towards the old blockhouse where the others were massed.

I'm going to get through this. I'm going to get through this. Garth swore repeatedly, as he donned the chain coif and steel gauntlets he'd retrieved in his father's warehouse.

Because if I don't, I can't get even with her. he said. I'm going to live through this.

He cinched the fasteners of the black steel greaves tight behind his calves and then traded helmets until one of them fit over the coif. Thrice tonight counter sniper fire had near shaved his chin as it whistled by on rooftops. He'd got half way to the warehouse on his father's idiot errand when his baby sister caught up to him all worried about the damn cat. Then he'd been scared motherless the cat would maul him instead when he chased the rolling pervert into its reach.

Spots had been hand fed his whole life. He'd never killed anything before. Now, Garth thought, I'm going to pull a full grown, tom leopard off its first kill. He damned the little witch again. There was no way she realized what she'd got him into.

LXVI About The Sharp End

The candle on the desk still flickered as he pushed open the door. His unctuous pleadings were answered by a guttural, rattling hiss from the floor by the strongbox. Carefully skirting the chain's limit Garth gained the rear of the desk and eyeballed kitty. Spots was hard at work on a thighbone as he lay partly across the Viking's remains.

Garth waved the hunk of venison he'd hoped to bribe Spots with. Spots laid his ears back, lowered his head, and curled his lips open. The cat's whole face and forepaws were bloodied and festooned with little chunks and strings of Viking. Garth waited a long, nervous year as Spots ate his fill, returned to his mattress, and cleaned himself.

Garth reached behind himself and retrieved a shaft of oak ten feet long and the thickness of a girl's arm. It bore a padded loop at one end and a smaller one to draw it tight at the other. Repeatedly telling Spots that he was a good kitty between asking him if he were going to behave himself and cursing Sinead, Garth gave the kill a wide berth and inched closer. The big meal Spots just had might make him more tractable, or not.

Spots lifted a foreleg and snarled as the loop approached.

Come on boy, Garth pleaded. let's go for a nice walk.

Walk seemed the magic word. Spots dropped the idea that he was being challenged for his kill and submitted as the loop snugged around his neck and Garth unlocked the chain from the wall. Garth steered Spots around the corpse and led him through the door.

The poor bastard Sinead married someday would soon wish she hadn't, if she could hector her own brother into this. He hadn't put anything on underneath that chain coif. The damn thing was pulling a hundred hairs out of his head at every step, and chewing the hide off the back of his neck. He'd be in a fine mood after delivering and stowing her cat.

Spots dragged him out into the alley and almost off his feet, and eagerly tugged him half a block in the wrong direction, towards home. A hat full of whoas later Garth got him stopped and turned around. Now that blood was no longer in his nostrils Spots capered about like a big, fawning puppy again.

On his rooftop Diarmud swallowed his heart, pushing his stomach down beneath it. His heart was blacker even than his hair. All thoughts of flight and life had left him.

That's it. They're all dead. he whisper moaned.

The chimney soot on his forehead came off on the back of his hand. He backed away from the edge and put his head in his hands. His kin, friends, and neighbors all lie in the field before town, strewn like the hell leavings of some devil sized leopard. Some had still been moaning, unable to crawl from the field when he awoke earlier this evening. They'd quit now. A handful of real leopards had seen to that. He damned the devil.

He spared an awful, tear choked gaze up into the stars, and promised them all he'd be along shortly, as shortly as his luck held and it wouldn't hold long because he was about to push it past breaking, taking a red wave of Viking blood in return for theirs.

And now there were the kids he'd just lost. One was his nephew and two more his cousins. The others he saw daily. How he was going to tell their folks he'd no idea.