Free Book 4 - The Fire in His Hands by Glen Cook

Sturla or wept softly for those who had not returned.
    There was no joy in Ragnar’s longhouse, only the numbness that follows disaster.
    Draukenbring had come to the end of its years, but the realization of that fact had not yet
    struck home. The survivors faced uprooting, diaspora and persecution by the Pretender’s
    adherents.
    The falling snow muted the cries and clanging of weapons, but not completely. “There,”
    Bragi told his mother. One of his father’s howling war cries had torn the belly out of the night.
    Ragnar soon staggered through the doorway, bloody from chin to knee. Much was his own.
    He had his stomach opened by an axe stroke.
    With a peal of mad laughter he held Bjorn’s head high, like a lantern in the night. Bjorn’s
    horror remained fixed on his features.
    Ragnar mouthed one of his battle cries, then collapsed.
    Bragi, Haaken and Helga were beside him instantly. But it was too late. His will had, finally, broken.
    Helga plucked at the ice in his hair and beard, ran fingers lightly over his face. A tear
    dribbled down her cheek. Bragi and Haaken withdrew. Even in her loss the plunder-bride from
    the south could not shed her pride, could not reveal the real depth of her feelings.
    Bragi and Haaken crowded the main fire, and shared their misery.
    The funeral was managed in haste. It was an expediency, unworthy of the dead man, rushed
    because Hjarlma would return. It should have been a warrior’s funeral with pyres and ricks,
    following a week of mourning and ritual.
    Instead, Bragi, Haaken, Sigurd and Soren carried Ragnar up Kamer Strotheide, above the
    tree- and summer snow-lines, and placed him, seated upright, in a stone cairn facing both
    Draukenbring and the more distant Tonderhofn.
    “Someday,” Bragi promised as he and Haaken placed the last stone. “Someday we’ll come
    back and do it right.”
    “Someday,” Haaken agreed.
    It would be a long tomorrow, they knew.
    They shed their tears, alone together there, then went down the mountain to begin the new
    life.
    “This is how he managed it,” said Helga, while watching her sons chop at the frozen earth by
    the broken hearthstone. She held a golden bracelet, slim but ornately wrought. “It’s half of a pair. Hjarlma wore the other. Each reacted to the other’s approach. When Bjorn drew close,
    Hjarlma realized that Ragnar was coming.”
    Bragi grunted. He did not care now.
    “I think I hit it,” Haaken said.
    Bragi started digging with his hands. He soon exposed a small chest.
    Sigurd and Soren arrived with the packs. The four surviving warriors would go south from
    the shingle pine.
    The chest proved to be shallow and light. It was not locked. Little lay within. A small bag of southern coins, another of gemstones, an ornate dagger, a small parchment scroll on which a
    crude map had been inscribed hastily. And a copper amulet.
    “You keep the valuables,” Bragi told his mother.
    “No. Ragnar had his reasons for keeping these things together. And of treasure he left me
    plenty elsewhere.”
    Bragi considered. His father had been secretive. The forest round Draukenbring might be
    filled with pots of gold. “All right.” He pushed the things into his pack.
    Then came the moment he had dreaded, the time to take the first southward step. He stared
    at his mother. She stared at him. Haaken stared at the ground.
    The cord was hard to cut.
    For the first time in memory Helga revealed her feelings in public—though she did not
    exactly go to pieces.
    She pulled Haaken to her, held him for nearly two minutes, whispering. Bragi caught the
    sparkling of a tear. She brushed it away irritably as she released her foster son. Embarrassed, Bragi looked away. But there was no evading emotion. Sigurd and Soren were, once again,
    parting with their own families.
    His mother’s embrace engulfed him. She held him tighter than he had thought possible. She
    had always seemed so small and frail.
    “Be careful,” she said. And what less banal was