Berserker (Omnibus) Read Free

shaking his head and grinning: Sigurd Gotthelm.
    They had fought a war of conquest, a war that would continue as long as the people of the southern lands clung to their territory of rock and stone. In the earth was their heritage, and few men would part with that heritage without first leaving their blood in the soil. The battle would not be finally won until the Norse blood ran in Celtish veins as well as across the Hibernian earth.
    He was proud, young Harald Swiftaxe, of his part in the fighting. He was proud of the killing he had done. And somewhere deep inside him there lurked a lesser pride, a pride that he would not acknowledge aloud, and yet which set him apart from many others of his own age, and race, and warlike position.
    He was proud of the killing he had
not
committed.
    In the sword of Swiftaxe, Odin was a merciful god. Odin was always as angry or as merciful as the warriors who wielded metal in his name, and itpleased Harald to think that Odin might not be unhappy with the young warrior’s compassion.
    There had been the pagan monk, cowering in a brick grotto below the ruined chapel where he worshipped his one god. So young, so innocent of war, and instead of screaming abuse and chanting the weird spells of his solitary god, he had watched the smoke and blood-encrusted figure of the Viking through tear-filled eyes and finally had bowed his head, waiting for the death-blow.
    Harald had leaned his sword against the man’s neck, and some primitive impulse had been urging him to strike the head from the shoulders; and yet …
    He had spared the holy man.
    The monk had looked up at him and puzzlement had creased his face in an almost comical fashion. He had made the strange cross sign, and Harald had tensed, waiting for some magic effect, but nothing occurred. The monk had spoken incomprehensible words to him. A question?
    ‘I shall spare your life,’ Harald had said. ‘If that’s what you’re asking me. I can’t kill a man who wields trust and love instead of a sword.’
    Backing out of the small grotto he had paused, for a moment, and wondered if he was right to spare this
Christian
.
    Later, retiring hurt from a skirmish, he had watched from some high rocks as three monks raped and slaughtered a young Celtish girl by the banks of a winding, red-stained river. Too tired, too hungry to attack them, he had crawled away and wondered at what he had seen.
    And later still, recovered and running through a small town, sword in one hand and a fire-brand in the other, he had found himself alone with a screaming woman, a woman who was both young and yet experienced, because she clutched a child to her breast and cowered away from the lean warrior who approached her. Fire-brand dropped behind him, sword held towards her, as he had reached down and torn the woman’s child from her arms, and then her rough woollen robe from her plump body. She had frozen, in shock perhaps or hope that her submission would earn her the right to live. Full breasts, not sagged from their nourishing of the child, and a thick, handsome waist … he had stood above her and stared at her, and his desire had increased with every racing heartbeat, every wafting scent of her body odours, every glance to her slowly parting thighs.
    She spoke strange words – like the monk’s words – and again he felt he understood her. Her knees had drawn up, and her white belly shook as she invited him to be gentle and to spare her all but his rape.
    But he had backed away.
    In the doorway he stopped and watched as she gathered her robe about her, clutched the screaming child to her body, and raced into the shadow ofa large, metal cauldron. He had burned the house, standing in the flickering light, breathing the flesh-stinking smoke, listening to the screams of the dying and suffering, the cries and shouts of his own men, and had watched the woman slip from the hut to vanish into the darkness.
    A hand on his shoulder!
    Whirling, bringing up his sword to hack