Sandra Hill - [Vikings I 02] Read Free

her dream—at the Battle of Brunanburh in 937 A.D., more than one thousand years ago, just the way it looked in the museum painting.
    She looked down and saw that the mail-clad man who’d covered her face and chest had his head half-severed at the neck. That accounted for all the blood. A man near her feet—a handsome youth whose body was protected only by a tightly fitted helmet and a thick leather vest over a thigh-length tunic and leggings—had a sword still stuck in his chest. His open eyes—a pale, pale blue—stared up at her.
    Nausea churned Rain’s stomach and rose to her throat. Bending over, she vomited repeatedly untilonly bitter bile remained. She threw her blood-stained blazer to the ground and used the rest of her tissues to wipe her mouth, then turned stoically to view her surroundings.
    Thousands of men lay dead and dying about her on the plain. Weondun , the museum card had called the flat-topped volcanic plain, or “Holy Hill.” More like “Unholy Hill,” Rain thought, recalling that it had once been the site of some heathen temple.
    If ever Rain felt justified in her pacifist views, it was now. Everywhere she looked, she saw evidence of man’s inhumanity to man. Some soldiers had succumbed instantly from quick thrusts of a sword or battle-ax; others were grotesquely mutilated and missing body parts—arms, legs, heads.
    Rain retched again, then picked up her shoulder bag and moved gingerly through the fallen warriors. She slipped often in spots slick with the vast quantities of lost blood and human viscera.
    Although the battle appeared to be a decided Saxon victory, judging by the disproportionate number of large, Viking-clad soldiers in their conical helmets and mail tunics who lay on the field, death had taken its toll indiscriminately among the thousands that day. Fair-haired Norsemen, English-looking Saxons, dark-eyed Welshmen, Scots in their clan plaids, and Irish in their saffron trews—all fell, side by side.
    Rain wanted desperately to believe that this was all a dream…a nightmare, but the stark reality surrounding her told another story. Despite her resistance, Rain was beginning to believe she had traveled back in time—just as her mother had claimed all those years.
    Rain’s misery weighed heavily on her shoulders. Why was she sent here? What could she possibly do?
    Considerable distance separated her from the savage hand-to-hand combat still taking place amonghundreds of soldiers on the far side of the once verdant plain. Rain could see the Saxon troops with their shield walls as they moved with deadly force toward their foes. The Viking companies fought valiantly in a defensive wedge formation, with chieftains at the point and the lower ranks spread out fan-like behind them.
    For some reason, she wasn’t frightened. Just disgusted.
    A soft nicker drew Rain’s attention, and she turned to see a large horse standing at the edge of the field, its saddle empty and its reins trailing on the ground in front. The destrier nudged the bloodied, mail-clad chest of the knight who lay before him, then raised its soulful eyes to Rain, as if she could help its master rise.
    Rain wiped her nose and turned back to the battlefield with a sob. So many needed her medical skills, far more than one doctor could handle. And the wounds required more than the basic medical items she carried in a compact emergency kit in her carryall. She shook her head in despair.
    With a deep sigh, Rain began to inch her way along the edge of the battlefield, stopping wherever she felt she could be of some help. She applied a tourniquet to the upper arm of one pleading Scots knight with a deep cut at the elbow, using a strip of leather lacing torn from his shoes. She didn’t know if it did any good. He’d lost so much blood.
    Rain moved on to dozens of men, uncaring of their nationality, stanching wounds, pulling out swords, holding a hand, closing dead eyes. She stood finally, arching the kinks out of her aching