Captured
“Bishop!” Ailia yelled, trying to pull his attention back to reality. “The Vikings are burning the church down!”
Bishop Peter looked at her. “What?” he said, his eyes in a daze.
“We must stop the Vikings, or they’ll burn the church down and the scrolls with it!” she said.
One more torch cracked through another stained-glass window, landing on one of the pews, bouncing on impact. Ivar darted over, picked it up and chucked it back out the same broken window it had entered.
“Toll the bell!” Bishop Peter yelled to the deacon. The deacon nodded and vanished to the back again.
Suddenly, the front door opened with full force, the splintering sound of cracking wood reaching all the way to the front where Ailia and the others stood. A heavily-weapon-laden Viking with long blond hair and a full red beard entered in through the door. Four other large Vikings followed behind him. Their thick burgundy wool tunics all had black embroidered ravens on them and on their heads, they wore simple iron helmets that covered their ears and necks.
“Look who we have here.” The leader said and smiled wickedly when he saw Ailia. He pointed toward her. “Finn, grab her! She’s mine! Remember me, Ailia?”
“Should I?” Ailia asked. Is that—?
“Gunnar!” Ivar yelled from the pews, stepping into the hallway, becoming a barrier between Ailia and their attackers.
Ailia recognized him now, a friend of their family from long ago. But there was something else she was not remembering.
The bell began ringing, warning Bergendal of the attack.
“Ah, Ivar,” Gunnar said. “This time, you will not rob me of my woman.”
“She is not your woman. Leave her be, Gunnar. If our former friendship meant anything to you at all, leave her be and we will be on our way.” Ivar stood unwavering in his spot with his feet firmly planted on the floor, his hand already reaching for his sword.
“Friendship? We had no friendship. You made sure of that when you deprived me of my freedom. Do not deceive yourself into thinking I was ever your friend or you mine.” Gunnar spit on the floor, the frothy discharge landing right in front of Ivar. “Take her Finn,” he commanded again, signaling his head in Ailia’s direction while holding his hands on his hips as if he owned the city and everyone in it.
Finn dashed across the room to where Ivar and Ailia stood, and he withdrew his sword from its casing. Backing up, Ailia panicked and tripped over a pew. Ivar responded by drawing his sword and stepping forward ready for assault.
“Do not disgrace the Lord’s house!” Bishop Peter yelled, raising both hands up into the air.
Meanwhile, Ailia could hear the hammering sounds of planks being nailed into the exterior walls over the windows. The Vikings were probably planning to pack the church full of Bergendalers and burn it down, but only after they had relieved the church of all its gold, silver and other valuables.
Finn came down the center of the pews toward Ivar, swinging his sword so fast that it could cut through a man like butter. Their swords met, chiming loudly as they collided in the holy sanctuary.
“Ivar, I’ve learned this valuable truth from you: once a friend, soon an enemy.” Gunnar was standing in the corner, shouting over the loud blows of the crashing swords. “I used to believe there was such a thing as a true friend, but now I have learned the truth. I must trust no man better than I trust myself. I find the money I want, I take the women I want, I demand respect and I live in excitement every day. It is a much better life, and what man wouldn’t want that?”
The three other Vikings who were watching the duel nodded in agreement.
Gunnar glanced at them over his shoulder. “Haven’t I given you all you ever wanted, boys?”
“Yes!” they all praised.
“This is a Viking’s life, Ivar. Why don’t you join us and I will give you this little handmaiden as your first reward. Ah, look at her, Ivar! She’s youthful, beautiful, and she has a flower that’s still waiting to be taken. I can taste girls like her a mile away. They are ready and waiting for a man to make a woman out of them! This time, she’ll break—I can feel it.”
His proposition sounded despicable to Ailia and her skin crawled just thinking about it. “Who do you think you are to give my life away?”
“Ooh, this will be a real exciting game,” Gunnar laughed. “I can already see the battle concluding in my favor. Your freedom has ended and now you finally belong to me, my sweet blossom!” he said, claiming his prize before he had won it.
Ailia felt violated and disgusted at the same time.
Ivar and Finn kept hacking at each other, both fighting for their lives, though for two completely different reasons: one to take away freedom, one to keep it.
The sword duel escalated, both men panting, groaning, and grunting as they chopped at each other, destroying and hacking at the pews when they missed. Finn gave Ivar a shove, knocking him to the floor so he skidded across the surface. Ivar dried his sweaty brow with the sleeve of his tunic, and started toward Ailia.
He means to kill me!
Ailia ran behind the pulpit and into the rotunda, and from the corner of her eye she could see the Viking holding his sword high, coming at her as if he intended to run her through. Just as she reached for the doorknob, he shoved her away. Lowering his sword, stroking it up against her face, he pressed the blade into her skin.
She felt the edge pierce her skin and she winced at the burning pain.
“Finn!” Gunnar yelled. “The girl is mine! If you lay a finger on her, you die!”
Finn laughed mockingly, but he obeyed his chieftain and stepped back into the chapel.
Ailia never imagined that the battle for her life would start so soon. They were not prepared to fight against mere mortals, far less against the Empress of Darkness. She inched toward the chapel and glanced at Ivar. He was out of practice and he looked ashamed for having taken the first beating of the combat, but he was all she had.
Ivar climbed to his feet, shook off his defeat, and snuck up behind Finn. He lifted his sword high above his head and was about to finish him off. But the Viking was too quick. Finn dodged Ivar’s sword, and it became imbedded in the altar instead.
The Vikings laughed as Ivar jerked the sword out of the sanctified table.
“So, what do you say, Ivar?” Gunnar chimed in. “I’d hate to see a strong, trained soldier like you be sent to Valhalla years too early. Join me and you’ll all be spared and live and reign with us as kings—and queen—” he said, glancing at Ailia. “—of Midgard!”
“I am not at all enticed by your future promises,” Ivar spewed. “A man who would live off of the welfare of others is no man to respect or follow. Do you think this is the life, Gunnar? Living off others, murdering innocent lives, plundering churches and instilling fear in the hearts of innocent people? The friend I once knew is dead if this is the man who is standing before me,” he yelled as he fought off Finn, jabbing at him quicker than before, trying to finish him off. “I will never join you, for living a life like yours is worth less than not existing at all. I do not live to serve my passions like a primitive animal that only knows how to eat, sleep and piss, but I live so that others may benefit from my life.”
Their swords met, metal to metal, ringing with every clash. Finn lunged forward, jabbing at Ivar who aggressively riposted Finn’s advance by swerving around and forcing his sword to the ground. Ivar stepped on Finn’s arm, locking his weapon useless. Pressing his sword up to Finn’s throat, he said, “Now, let us go and we will spare your lives.”
Gunnar started clapping, applauding the duel’s end, but laughed mockingly. “In case you haven’t noticed, I have three other willing strong Vikings ready to fight, with hundreds upon hundreds more outside, and if I command they kill you, you’ll be dismembered faster than the flash of Thor’s almighty lightning bolt.”
Finn was tugging uselessly to get out of Ivar’s deadlock, trying to free his arm.
“I am not playing games, Gunnar. I will not hesitate to take this Viking’s life, especially if it means I must do that to get out of here alive. Now, let us go. One more threat from you and I will end this man’s life,” Ivar said.
Gunnar paused. “I’m sure glad I’m not in Finn’s position,” he said. “You’re a skilled swordsman, Ivar, I will give you that. Even at your age and with the extra layers of fat you’ve put on. It appears I’ve underestimated you and, in the process, overestimated Finn.”
Finn snarled at Gunnar.
“I hope this is not still about King Olav rejecting you in his guard?” Ivar said.
Gunnar scowled. “No, this is about Ragnvei.”
“But, I spared your life and then you left her to die!” Ivar said.
“It was your fault she died!” Gunnar yelled back.
Finn looked at Gunnar with pleading eyes, but it was to no avail.
“Kill the damn fool,” Gunnar said, staring Ivar in the eyes. “He’s been a very disappointing Viking from the start.”
He left Ivar no choice, if he wanted to live and have any chances of saving Ailia. Ivar raised his sword and, with one deft move, decapitated Finn.
“Now, Ivar, why did you have to go that route?” Gunnar said. He looked at Bishop Peter whose jaw was wide open. “Just remember who desecrated the church first, Your Holiness,” he said, raising his eyebrows as a smile glazed his lips.
Bishop Peter ran through the back door and disappeared, with the Aesira Jewel in hand.
“Bishop!” Ailia yelled after him, but he didn’t respond. Is he a coward after all?
Ivar stood up tall and gave Gunnar a fierce look. “Who is next?” he said.
The other three Vikings stood ready to attack at Gunnar’s command.
“Get that bastard and kill him. And bring me the girl alive!” Gunnar commanded.
All three Vikings started moving, slightly hesitantly, toward Ivar. Just then, Bishop Peter came back out without the Aesira Jewel, but with a loaded crossbow. He wasted no time in shooting one of the Vikings in the chest and quickly re-loaded the crossbow again with another bolt. This time, he leveled the crossbow directly at Gunnar. “You have one chance to get out before I will shoot again,” he said, his hands shaking like leaves on a tree in the middle of a storm. “I am going to count to three, and then I will shoot.”
“Now, certainly we can work this out, Your Excellency—” Gunnar said, his voice as humble as an angel’s.
“One—” Bishop Peter could not be deterred. “Two—”
“All right, all right, I will take my men and leave,” Gunnar said, finally backing down, oozing anger from his eyeballs. The remaining Vikings left the chapel and closed the double doors behind them.
“They’ve surrendered too quickly. They’ll be back soon with more men,” Ailia said frantically.
“Where in Helheim’s name did you get that crossbow?” Ivar asked Bishop Peter.
“I purchased it from a constable from the Southlandic Kingdom when I was there.”
Ailia remembered how he used to be an archer for King Olav.
“Let us depart from the back of the church,” Ivar said.
Ailia folded her arms stubbornly across her chest. “We cannot and I will not leave without the scrolls. If the church burns down, I will burn down with it.”
“We have no choice. There is no time to look, now,” Ivar barked, beads of sweat dripping down his red face.
“But, they will burn the church down and then we’ll never have a chance to find them,” she said.
“We have to take that chance. Hopefully they will be content with the gold and silver and leave the church be,” Ivar said.
“Not likely,” Bishop Peter said. “It is been said that their goal is to burn all Christian churches in the Northlandic Kingdom, leaving none for the worship of the heathens we supposedly are.”
“To live life in oppression or die trying for a mightier cause, which will it be? Which one must it be?” she asked, still believing a path would reveal itself for the liberation of the manuscripts tonight.
“A scroll of no substantial importance may have been left here to burn, but the scrolls of deliverance for all beings in Midgard is worth dying for,” Bishop Peter said. “No time like the immediate, for tomorrow we may be dead, serving life and God’s people no longer. It is in the now we must take action to become the heroes of the morn’,” he finished.
A sledgehammer and wedge were quickly located and the triangle floor underneath the rotunda was quickly removed. Underneath the floor was a bronze chest placed inside a square wooden cavern. The trio looked at each other in excitement, but their joy was short-lived.
“It’s a shame I don’t give up so easily,” Gunnar announced as he entered the church again, this time accompanied with a whole gang of ravage-hungry Vikings.
Ailia and Bishop Peter blocked the newfound treasure with their bodies while Ivar rapidly re-laid the floor. They heard the thud behind them as the triangle descended back into its frame.
It appeared Gunnar had planned the next attack in advance, for his Vikings all strategically went after their own prisoners.
“Remember boys, the girl is mine,” Gunnar said, oblivious to their huge discovery. “Anyone who tarnishes her will suffer death by the blood eagle.”
Ailia had vaguely heard of this method of torture and she knew that threatening this unthinkably gruesome method would immediately make lambs of wolves in any situation.
Two Vikings grabbed Ailia and another three, Ivar. Six others went to the back to round up Bishop Peter who had disappeared through the backdoor again.
“Don’t worry, Ailia. Finally with Ava gone for good, I will make a woman out of you this time,” Gunnar said as the two Vikings dragged her past him, out into the night.