Summary
A semi-short historical/fantasy about a half-human, half goddess (A Halfenwraith) goes looking for a human hero to marry. Takes place in a mythical Viking-like world.
ACT TWO: ‘The Warrior’
Two months later a small ship grounded its oaken hull on a beach of fine, black sand. The vessel had landed on a large rocky isle that a local fisherman swore was the fabled ‘Vineland’. Icebergs the size of castles had floated by us, and whales of all kinds and sizes had done their age-old dance amid the tumbling waves. Most of us had watched them with a smile tinged with terror as they gently brushed against our tiny vessel.
Swanhild, however, had her dark eyes fixed on the fortress at the top of the overlooking bluff — and the armed warriors that raced their horses across the beach towards us!
When Dalguard, the captain of the small band of mercenaries we had brought with us, nervously pointed them out, Swanhild just smiled and told him not to worry and that all was going according to her plan.
Dalguard, a fighter, not a thinker, grunted and accepted his orders. Myself , neither a fighter nor an idiot, did not. “Plan, my lady?” I asked her as she nimbly stepped down to the beach. “I wasn’t aware that you actually had a ‘plan’ — other than to let Fate take its allotted course.”
She turned and smiled sweetly, offering me a hand to assist my old bones from the boat. Foolishly I ignored it and attempted to disembark on my own. Slipping on a smooth stone, I would have tumbled into the surf if she hadn’t caught my arm. As it was, I stood beside her dripping seawater onto the sand as the mail-clad horsemen approached at a gallop. Before they arrived, however, she had time to quickly whisper into my ear: “Now and then we all need a helping hand, Thorgi. You, me — even the Three Sisters that weave all our fates.”
“But I thought you believed that we make our own ‘fate’, lady?”
Again she fixed me with her knowing smile. “That is what you believe, Thorgi Odinson, though you wisely pretend otherwise. What I believe however is my own affair, and none of yours! But come, it’s time to meet our would-be killers. Halfdain I think you’ll find their leader’s name is. A loyal man, if not an overly bright one.”
The riders pulled up just before ramming into us, and their leader pointed at Dalguard and demanded roughly: “Who’s in charge here?! And what brings you to Lord Erlot One-Eye’s fortress?!”
As usual, Swanhild was right about Halfdain and his men; they had come to kill us, or at least take us to their one-eyed lord for questioning first and then kill us — and Halfdain was the man’s name. And he was loyal, but mainly to his own idea of right and wrong. As for his intelligence, only time would tell, but a good man in the end — as he eventually saved our lives instead of ending them — but more of that later.
Dalguard, the captain of the mercenaries we’d hired, nodded his shaggy head at Swanhild. “The lady pays the bills, so she’s in charge.”
