Black Monastery (5 page)

But then, her father had been wrong about so many things. Most of all, he had been wrong about the village and its residents. They had never truly accepted her family. She hadn’t realized this when she was little, but she understood it as an adult. Her fellow villagers, Christians all, had made sure she learned this particular lesson well—especially her former in-laws.

She crouched beside a tree near the edge of the woods facing the monastery and its salt fields and shivered, despite the summer heat. Something evil had always been hidden away within the monastery. She had felt it when she was a child, regardless of her father’s admonitions, and she felt it now. She had always been very sensitive to omens and the secret world around them. Some hidden thing, some dark force that had been slumbering within the monastery had awakened. She felt this in her soul. And whatever it was, it had passed its evil on to the monks. They were no longer men of God. What were they doing in there to the women, to Celsa? And why couldn’t she find the courage to go help her?

Alda tugged at her hair, rocking back and forth on her heels. Her muscles were sore and beginning to cramp from exertion and lack of sleep. She should go inside, she knew, to search for Celsa. She should confront the monks and demand that they let Celsa go, but she just couldn’t find the courage to move. She was so pathetic and weak, so cowardly. She would never save Celsa from outside. She ground her teeth together, shaking her head. What were those damned monks doing to her? Why had they taken her and the other women? Celsa was innocent, as good and pure a soul as any that lived, better than those damned villagers they lived among, who professed to be Christians yet abused those weaker than themselves.

Knowing she should go inside, go find Celsa, she stared at the monastery’s dark walls, but something stopped her from entering—some sense that there was still something hidden away within the monastery. If she went in there, she would die.

So she did nothing, and hated herself for her cowardice.

And then she saw the warriors arrive, slipping from the woods not a hundred paces from where she hid. When she heard their leader speak, she realized they were foreigners, raiders, Vikings. They had to be Vikings, bloodthirsty murderers all.

Death from the sea.

Two

The Black Monastery,

August 2, 799,

Early afternoon

Asgrim was pacing in the courtyard when his brother and his men returned from the fort leading a prisoner, a Frankish soldier. Asgrim met Bjorn at the entrance to the monastery. His brother’s eyes widened when he saw the corpses lying about the courtyard, and his face wrinkled in distaste.

“What in the name of the gods happened here?” Bjorn asked, indicating the corpses with a jut of his chin.

Asgrim shook his head. “Don’t know, but they killed each other. There’s none left living here. The fort?”

“Just this one.” Bjorn indicated the Frankish soldier with his thumb. “We saw nothing moving within, so we searched it. Empty. Like they all just piled out and didn’t come back. Left everything in place, though. Food, belongings, some small coin. We found this one hiding in the woods nearby.” Bjorn smirked. “Shit his hose when we grabbed him.”

Asgrim considered the Frank. The man trembled like a sheep being led to slaughter. He was short but well fed, with a soldier’s solid build. He wore a boiled-leather tunic studded with metal rivets. Dried blood matted his long dirty hair and had crusted down the side of his face. His hands were bound behind his back, and one of Asgrim’s men held him in place with a hand on his shoulder.

“Didn’t want to come with us at all,” Bjorn said. “When he saw we were coming here, he kept trying to run away.” Bjorn snorted. “Tried
real
hard to run away.”

Asgrim stepped closer to his brother and whispered near his ear. “You’ll soon see why. The monks and soldiers fought one another. I don’t know what’s happened here, but it looks like the monks were crazed, attacking each other and murdering girls from the village. The men are already muttering of spirits, of
draugr
.”

Bjorn stepped back, shock on his face. “
Draugr
?”

“This place is cursed, brother.”

“Odin’s balls,” Bjorn muttered, his hand going to the wooden hammer hanging about his neck. “We can’t stay. The silver?”

Asgrim shook his head.

“Damn,” Bjorn said. He held the great ax between his knees as he removed his battle helm.

Asgrim had inherited their father’s stern, dark looks, but Bjorn had taken after their mother. He even had her blue eyes and long straw-blond hair. Like Asgrim, Bjorn sported a short-trimmed beard, but unlike his brother, he shaved his upper lip. He was a good-looking man, who was blessed by the gods and popular. In battle, he may have been fierce, but back home, he would dangle a baby off his knee and bellow with laughter. Long married, he already had three daughters and two sons, all tall and good looking like their father. His younger brother had everything Asgrim could never have.

The gods probably thought that a great joke.

Sighing, Bjorn stared at the carnage covering the courtyard. “How long do you plan to stay?”

Asgrim rubbed the back of his neck. “As long as it takes.”

A heavy silence fell between them. The frown on Bjorn’s face grew. “Brother… the Franks will come. The best we can hope for is a day or two… maybe not even that.”

“I know.”

Bjorn leaned in closer and lowered his voice. “The men won’t like it, and assholes like Harald will cause trouble, undermine you.”

“Harald doesn’t have the balls,” said Asgrim.

Bjorn snorted. “Don’t be so sure about what he’d try.”

As if on cue, Harald Skull-Splitter—a nickname Asgrim was fairly certain the man had given himself—stormed out of a monastery doorway, his face white. Just behind him, trailing him like puppies were two of his closest friends, Koll and Mar. Harald was a large man, not as big as Bjorn, but a strong, capable fighter just the same. Unfortunately, he was also a hotheaded loudmouth and saw himself as an up-and-coming war band leader. Bjorn was right to worry, Asgrim admitted. Harald had his own little circle of admirers, and someday, he might become a real threat. But he was not now, not on this voyage.

Asgrim drummed his fingers over his sword hilt as he watched Harald. “All right. Keep an eye on him. If he starts causing problems, then do something. Make an example. But
don’t
kill him.”

“Someday you’re gonna have to,” said Bjorn.

“Not today,” said Asgrim. Wanting to change the subject, he turned to stare at the Frankish prisoner. “I need to know what happened here. Knut and his father used to trade with these people. Have him question this one.”

Bjorn nodded, then walked over and gripped the prisoner’s shoulder. As Bjorn led him away, the man went docilely enough, but Asgrim suspected he would bolt if given the chance.

“And find out about the monks’ silver!” Asgrim yelled at his brother’s back.

Asgrim shook his head and swore beneath his breath. He needed information. The villagers might know what had happened here. They almost certainly knew the Danes had arrived. No doubt they had already run from their homes to hide within the forest. Even now, they were probably spying on them.

The Saracen merchant had said there was a long bar of land to the south of the island that reached most of the way to the mainland. At low tide, men would be able to ride across it. Eventually, the Franks would defend their kingdom; they had to. If Asgrim and his men were caught by horsemen while away from their longship, it could be a disaster—especially if the Franks brought bows. They could stay at a distance and pick them off. Asgrim and his men couldn’t stay here, but he was not willing to let go of his chance at plunder.

But the Franks weren’t the real problem. As great a worry as they were, at least he knew how to fight men. But there was a supernatural menace here—one that he could do nothing about.
Something
had driven these men to kill one another, something nebulous and invisible, yet deadly just the same. The longer he and his men stayed near this accursed place…

He bent down, picked up a round stone, and hurled it at the stone wall of the monastery. “Gods damn this shithole!”

He wasn’t going anywhere without the silver. Fate had driven him here, where he could find the means to atone for the blood on his hands. He refused to believe the Nornar would lead him to the island just to deny him a chance at redeeming himself.

Freya.

“Gods damn their one god!”

He’d lost so much already because of his rage. Without plunder to pay his wergild, he could never go home again. And without home, the men would begin to turn against him. Soon, he would face a mutiny as his warriors demanded to return to their families, to the fall harvest. What then? What destiny waited for a man like him?

“Gods damn the crones,” he muttered, closing his eyes and seeing Freya’s face again.

* * *

The monastery sprawled over numerous buildings. Some, such as the kitchens and latrines, were kept separate from the rest of the monastery. Other buildings had been added on over the years. The bakehouse, brewery, piggery, stables, smithy, and other workshops looked to be newer buildings than the others. Searching all these buildings took time. Unfortunately, even after hours of searching, they found nothing, and Asgrim’s desperation grew. He even ordered his men to dig up the newest graves in the monastery’s small cemetery. When the men hesitated, he cursed them, grabbed a shovel himself, and began to dig, shaming them. After that, the men rushed to help. So far, though, they had found nothing but rotting bones. Asgrim was standing in a grave, dirt to his knees and leaning on a shovel, when Bjorn approached.

“Anything?” Asgrim asked.

Bjorn shook his head and glanced about warily at the disturbed graves. “They killed their own horses, still in their stalls. Stabbed them with sharpened staves.” His brother paused and spit on the ground.

“Why?” asked Asgrim.

Bjorn sighed and shook his head. “Brother, these men were crazy. For all I know, they killed the animals for sport.”

Chills ran down Asgrim’s back.

His brother glanced about, making sure none of the others were within earshot. “Brother, these holy men were crazed. We should leave before—”

“We leave when we have their silver,” Asgrim said.

“There may be no silver,” Bjorn said forcefully. “Not here, but there’s still time to raid somewhere else. We can still raise the wergild.”

“There’s silver here,” said Asgrim. “I know it.”

Bjorn wiped his palms on his leggings and looked away, his face clearly showing his unease.

“What?”

Bjorn stared at the ground. “There’s something down below, beneath the monastery.”

“A cellar? Storeroom?”

“Not a storeroom,” mumbled his brother. “Something… else.”

Asgrim’s skin flushed with anger. He climbed out of the hole and grasped his brother’s upper arm. “What?”

“A crypt, I think.”

Asgrim smiled. “Crypts are important. What’s down there?”

His brother looked away, then lowered his voice. “I… don’t know. We didn’t enter. I was… afraid.”

Asgrim let go of his brother’s arm and stepped back, staring at his brother’s face. In battle, Bjorn was always where the fighting was fiercest. And once, Asgrim had watched with pride and fear as Bjorn, still wearing his chain mail, had danced on the oars, jumping from one to another, risking certain death if he fell in the water.

“Brother,” Asgrim said. “What are you doing? You can’t act like a woman in front of the men.”

Bjorn’s head jerked up. His eyes were filled with offence. Any other man, Asgrim knew, would be dead in moments. To call a man womanish was to give him the right to kill you. It was the worst insult Asgrim knew, one his brother could never ignore.

“You say this to me? Your own brother?” Spit flew from Bjorn’s mouth, and he seemed to grow in size. Just for a moment, Asgrim feared he had gone too far, but then his brother’s gaze lowered, and he stared at the ground.

“You don’t understand,” Bjorn said. “We found the entrance past one of the storerooms. Stairs cut into the earth. The walls are stone. Not earth, but stone, and covered in their damned Frankish runes. I think it’s supposed to be a holy place, but it feels…
dirty
. I almost shit myself, and so did the others. I’ve never, not
ever
, been frightened like that.” He looked up, locked eyes with Asgrim and gripped his brother’s shoulders with both hands, squeezing tightly. “There’s something down there, something evil.”

“Brother,” said Asgrim, choosing his words carefully. “I don’t know what’s happened here, but our choices are few. If there’s treasure here, we need to find it. The crypt may be cursed—if a crypt it is—but we need to search it. It’s the best place to hide something. This place scares me as well, but we need plunder.” Asgrim paused, gripped the back of his brother’s neck, and pulled his head down so that Asgrim’s forehead touched his brother’s. “You and I, we can’t let the men see we’re frightened. You know this.”

A silence stretched between them, and Asgrim knew the other men had stopped digging and were watching them. Bjorn nodded, then tried to smile.

“Okay, then,” said Asgrim. “So let’s go do this.”

* * *

Harald Skull-Splitter stared at the writing on the wall of the monks’ library. The blood forming the runes had dripped and run down the side of the wall. Flies buzzed about his ears, making a never-ending droning that disturbed him more than the obscenity on the wall. He was glad no one could understand the runes. He didn’t want to know what they said. This was just wrong. What kind of a mad fool wrote messages in human blood? This place was cursed by the gods, and they shouldn’t be here. It was all wrong.

Asgrim should have stayed in Hedeby and taken his justice like a man. Instead, he had run away. What was worse, he had forced Harald and the others to run with him. And while it was true that Harald and every other man had just sworn an oath to sail with Asgrim Wood-Nose, they were supposed to have been part of an invading army in Ireland, not a single longship farther south than any man had a right to go. Despite what the others like that toad Gorm said, the trip didn’t feel like a raid. If this was to be a true raid, they should have sailed away from Hedeby with their shields hung on the side of
Sea Eel
for all to see. Their families should have been there, cheering them off. Instead, they had skulked away in the dark of the night like thieves. Harald had barely had time to say goodbye to his father before that giant idiot Bjorn had dragged him from his home. The others didn’t want to say it, but Harald knew they had run away in the night like cowards, barely escaping the earl’s rightful vengeance. Asgrim had been a decent enough captain in his time, leading a number of profitable raids in the Kingdom of Wessex, Frisia, and once even in Breton. But that was in the past. Now, he had nothing but bad luck. Harald saw it; the others must see it, as well. And once a captain’s luck went foul, a man could do nothing but find someone else to serve.