Soon they came to agreement, and the farmers set their torches to the thatched roof. Within moments the house was burning. Light spilled out, illuminating the field, the forest, and the spot where Heingistr’s scouts watched.
“It must be those wretched vermin,” Snurri said. He sucked at the back of his hand again. “What is yig? Snakes?”
“I don’t care what it means.” Hoensa stretched, swung his sword experimentally. “Let us kill who we can and take the others as slaves. And find more farms to raid. No?”
Grislae nodded, gripping her sword.
The Northerners fell on the farmers from behind as they watched the house burn. Snurri let forth a terrible scream as he ran, so by the time Grislae came near, the men had turned to face them, startled. Hoensa’s sword took one in the arm, deep, and the man fell. Hoensa wheeled toward the next man, who raised his axe.
In the shifting yellow light from the burning roof, Grislae found herself facing a burly farmer whose expression lacked sufficient fear to suit her. He whipped his axe in a tight circle, but she rocked back on one leg, letting it pass, and then sprang forward in the wake of his missed blow. She spitted him through the belly, and once his face showed the death-fear, she smiled and ripped the sword free, turning to face the others.
Snurri clubbed a man in the face with the pommel of his sword, dropping him, and Hoensa had killed another. The last farmer bolted into the dark and Hoensa sprinted after him.
“They are strong but none of them know how to fight,” Snurri said, and sucked hard at the back of his hand. “You did well, Boy-Lover’s girl.”
Grislae ignored him. The farmer he’d clubbed stirred and moaned through a bloody mouth. She stripped one of the dead of his belt and tied the moaning man’s hands as Hoensa returned, breathing heavily.
Snurri and Grislae looked to him and he nodded. “They will be alerted by mid-morn at the latest, when their men do not come home to their soft beds. Let us take this one back to the boat and hear Heingistr’s words.”
They roused the battered farmer, bound his mouth, and marched him back to the Reinen. Heingistr, Wen, Urtha, — Hoensa’s wife — Rill, and Uvigg waited for them. Soon the other new men roused from their slumber on the Reinen’s decks, coming to join them by the fire on the shore.
“We saw the light,” Heingistr said. “You must have good plunder to have burned the first farmhouse you came across.”
“We did not burn it,” Snurri said. He waved a hand at the new slave, who had collapsed on the shore near the fire. A pot hung there and the smell of goat stew lingered in the air. “This one and his friends did the burning. The farmhouse was overrun with snakes.”
“Snakes?”
“Countless snakes,” Snurri said, and looked to Grislae and Hoensa for support.
Hoensa nodded. “There were many.”
“I am bit,” Snurri said, holding up his hand. It had swollen like a sack of barley soaked by rain.
Heingistr’s face remained impassive. “Uvigg, your father took a slave woman from this region. Do you know their tongue?”
“Some,” Uvigg said.
“I would put questions to this man, and then you can take him to the hold.”
Uvigg unbound the captive’s mouth and gave him water.
“He’ll be shitting teeth for a moon,” Hoensa said.
Heingistr questioned the toothless farmer about nearby holdfasts and villages. There was a fortress, far inland, ruled by a lord named Risle with a crowing cock as his family sigil, but far enough away to not be a concern. Closer there were farms, but the real prize was a mill five miles inland. Quickly, Heingistr and company decided on a course of action — to leave with enough men to take the mill, the miller’s fat wife and daughters, and all of their grain and gold, and be back at the Reinen before the tide turned. Many of those newer to the company grew excited. Urtha kissed Hoensa fervently, and Heingistr began sharpening his axes.
“What of this thing they kept saying?” Grislae asked. “This yig?”
Uvigg put questions to the captive in his language. The man raised his hands as if warding off a blow. Uvigg withdrew a knife, and with a casual motion picked at the dirt under his own fingernails, and repeated his words. The slave answered haltingly.
“Some local haunt, maybe? It has been long since I’ve spoken this tongue, and truly the man’s accent is fucked beyond repair. He’ll eat soup for the rest of his life,” Uvigg said. “Some sort of serpent, like Jorgumandr, except not so fierce, nor so divine. He spoke of the ‘children of Yig,’ and ‘Yig’s retribution.’ All sheep shit, in my judgment.”
Snurri stirred. “Maybe it is their name for Jorgumandr.”
“These people do not worship the same gods as normal folk. They have their wounded man and their mother and the sightless ones and the forest,” Uvigg said. “They know nothing of Valhalla and Yggdrasil. They are blind.”
“But fat,” Heingistr said. “And we will take what is theirs. Hoensa, ready the men.”
“Grislae will come too. She handled herself as well as Snurri, at least,” Hoensa said.
“That is not a high sheaf to hide in,” Rill said. Snurri bristled.
“She split a farmer without hesitation. A big fellow,” Hoensa said and gave Grislae a nod.
“Then she is with us.” Heingistr turned to her. Pulling a knife from his belt, he cut his forearm and cupped the blood that ran there. He slapped Grislae, a big open-handed blow, catching her mouth, cheek, and ear in his massive hand, sending her reeling. She sat down forcibly, motes of light swirling at the edges of her vision. “Get up, Ordbeg the Boy-Lover’s girl. You are blooded now and one of my company. Get up,” he said, and taking her arms, raised her from the ground, the stag-faced prow of the Reinen behind him, looming.
She tasted the blood on her face, some of it hers, streaming from her nose, some of it Heingistr’s. The eyes of the company were upon her, blooded and unblooded alike.
“My name is Grislae,” she said. “I put aside my father and his name.”
Heingistr remained still and everyone was silent except for the soft moaning of the captive.
“So it will be, Grislae No-Man’s Girl,” Heingistr said. “So it will be.”
“Grislae,” she said.
There was a long silence where the men waited expectantly for Heingistr to react to her last words, to see if their company’s leader would take it as a challenge. A big grin split his beard and he extended his hand still mired with blood.
“You will shoulder many names in this world, Grislae,” he said. “As long as your sword strikes and your heart remains true, you are one of my company.”
She gripped his forearm in friendship. For the first time in her life, Grislae was happy. The feeling was so foreign and short-lived, she was only aware of it once it was gone.
Of the thirty-three in Heingistr’s company, they left a third with the Reinen, Wen, and Urtha, and took twenty-two inland to raid the mill. Heingistr was concerned that the burning farmhouse might draw others, and so men were needed to guard the longship. Grislae and Hoensa led them past the farmhouse, Snurri staying behind to tend his greening, unusable hand.
They followed the road away from the smoldering farmhouse and inland, past sucking muddy fields and dark forest. The wind picked up and the clouds cleared, leaving gashes that allowed the milky half-light to filter onto the face of the land.
At the first farm there were two women and a boy. They boy tried to fight them with a cudgel, so Uvigg killed him. They bound the women and left three men at the house to take what spoils they could from the premises. The rest of the company moved on.