Blood Feud Read Free Page A

ear as I pitched down. In all likelihood that fall saved my life. I had a moment’s confused awareness of men and cattle above and all around me, and of Brindle springing with a snarl at the throat of one of the raiders; and then a flying hoof caught me on the side of the head, there was a burst of bright sparks inside my skull, and I went out into jagged darkness.
    When I came back to myself, the rain had stopped, and I was sprawled on my back staring up at a blurred moon riding high in a sky of racing cloud-wrack. I lay for a while vaguely wondering where I was, and why my head hurt so much, until suddenly the memory of what had happened kicked me in the belly. I rolled on to my face and vomited, then got slowly on to one elbow and clawed myself up to my knees.
    Under the booming of the wind and the surf, there was silence all about me. Nothing moved but the lashing furze branches: no men, no cattle. I managed to get up, the world dipping and swimming round me; and with my first step fell over something that brought me to my knees again. It was the body of old Brindle. I put out my hand and felt a sodden mass of hair with no life under it; and my hand came away sticky from the gaping hole in her throat. I wiped it on the grass. And as I did so, a kind of red wave rose from somewhere deep within me, engulfing all things save the thirst to kill.
    In the years since then, I have come to know how large a part the blow on my head must have played in what followed after. Such a blow may make a man seem quite foolish, or see two of everything and wish only to sleep; or be for hours, maybe days, as though he were fighting drunk.
    I felt about and found my knife, then got once more to my feet, and stumbled back to the place where I had first seen the fire in the cove. It was still there, and the long ship-shadow beyond it, and a movement of figures, half seen in the flame-light. They would not care who saw their blaze, I thought, for when the Viking Kind come ashore, sensible folk stay away. It seemed to me that I was thinking quite clearly, and yet I did not think it at all foolish that I should be scrambling down the cliff path towards them, with a knife in my hand. They had killed my dog, the only thing I had to love, and I was going to kill as many of them as I could, in return.
    I slipped and half fell the last part of the way, picked myself up, knife still in hand, and charged on towards the dark figures round the fire. I was seeing everything through a red haze, but sharp-edged and for one instant frozen into stillness like a picture on a wall: the battered ship, the wind-torn fire, the carcasses of three yearlings lying on the blood-stained shingle while great joints hacked from them were already half-cooking, half-scorching on spear points over the heart of the blaze, the men in rough dark seamen’s clothes, their faces all turned towards me as I ran.
    Why they did not kill me then, I shall never know. A flung spear would have brought me down easily enough. Maybe, seeing that I was alone, it seemed scarce worth the trouble at least until they had had a bit of fun with me first.
    Then I was among them, and the scene splintered out of its stillness. Someone stepped into my path, grinning. I saw the white animal flash of teeth in a wind-burned face, and the firelight on the blade of a dirk, and hurled myself forward, choking with the rage and grief that was in me. ‘You killed my dog! Devils! You killed my dog!’ There was a blare of laughter, and an arm came round me from behind, crushing me back against somebody’s body. My dagger hand was caught and wrenched upward. I fought like a trapped animal,and when the knife was twisted from my grasp, ducked my head and bit into the arm that held me. I tasted blood between my teeth, and the laughter turned to a bellow of surprise and pain, but the grip never slackened.
    ‘Ach! It bites like a wolf-cub!’ somebody said. The Norse is kin to the Saxon tongue, and even through the