“I’m suffering from guilt before I’ve even incurred it,” Sam replied. “I feel like a yellow dog, although there’s no reason I should. None at all! But I was born to feel guilty about everything, even about being bom.”
Lothar threw his hands up in disgust and strode off, saying over his shoulder, “Follow me or hang back. But you can’t expect me to think of you as the captain of our boat. Captains don’t drag their feet.”
Sam grimaced but went after him. Lothar talked to twelve men he thought trustworthy enough for what he proposed. The sun began to climb down from the zenith while the details were arranged and then the men went to arm themselves. They came back from their huts with bamboo spears and knives. One had a bamboo bow with six arrows, effective only at close range.
Lothar von Richthofen and Sam Clemens leading, the group strode up to the Norse king’s hut. Six Vikings stood guard outside.
“We want to talk to Bloodaxe,” Sam said, trying to keep his voice from quavering. “He’s in there with a woman,” Ve Grimarsson said.
Sam raised his hand. Lothar ran past him and clubbed Grimarsson over the head. An arrow whistled past Sam’s shoulder and stopped in the throat of a guard. Within ten seconds, the others had been killed or wounded too severely to continue fighting. There were shouts from a distance as a dozen other Vikings came running to protect their chief. Bloodaxe, naked, bellowing, his steel ax held high, rushed through the doorway. Von Richthofen lunged with his spear and impaled the Norseman on it. Bloodaxe dropped the ax and staggered back, driven by the German’s weight on the spear, until he slammed into the bamboo wall of the hut. He stared; his mouth worked; blood ran from a corner of his lips; his skin was blue-gray.
The German then yanked the spear out of the Norseman’s belly, and Bloodaxe crumpled.
There was a fight afterward with six of Clemens’ men killed and four wounded. The Vikings did not give up until all were silenced and as dead as their king.
Sam Clemens, panting hoarsely, splashed with blood from others and bleeding from a gash on his shoulder, leaned on his spear. He had killed one man, Gunnlaugr Thorrfinnsson, puncturing his kidney from behind while the Viking was thrusting at von Richthofen. Too bad about Gunnlaugr. Of all the Norsemen, he enjoyed Sam’s jokes the most. Now he was stabbed in the back by a good friend.
I’ve fought in 38 battles, Sam thought, and I’ve slain only two men. The other was a severely wounded Turk struggling to get to his feet. Sam Clemens, the mighty warrior, great-hearted hero. Thinking thus, he gazed with the horror and fascination that corpses had always had for him and would have if he lived 10,000 years.
And then he squawked with fright and yanked his left ankle away in a frantic effort to escape the hand gripping it. Unable to do so, he lifted his spear to drive it into the man who held him. He looked down into the pale blue eyes of Erik Bloodaxe. Life had surged up in Bloodaxe for a moment. The glaze was gone from his eyes and the skin was not so gray-blue. His voice was weak but strong enough for Sam, and others nearby, to hear him.
“Bikkja! Droppings of Ratatosk! Listen! I will not let you go until I have spoken! The gods have given me the powers of a voluspa. They want revenge for your treachery. Listen! I know there is iron beneath this bloodsoaked grass. I feel the iron flowing in my veins. Its grayness turns my blood thick and cold. There is iron enough and more than enough for your great white boat. You will dig up this iron, and you will build a boat to rival Skithblathnir.
“You will be captain of it, Bitch Clemens, and your boat will sail up The River for more miles than Sleipnir’s eight legs could cover in a day. You will go back and forth, north and south, east and west, as the Rivervalley takes you. You will go around the world many times.