Page 121 of The Reluctant Viking

Chapter Twenty-one

The battle had been a bloody nightmare and a resounding defeat for the Jomsvikings, thanks to Ivar’s devious tactics. He’d lured them into a vulnerable position with promises to exchange Eirik for a king’s fortune in gold. Thork had been prepared to pay it.

Thork slumped his head in weary remembrance of the carnage. So many men dead! So many friends gone on to Valhalla, or the Christian heaven. In truth, he did not know if he believed in the existence of either after what he had witnessed the past few weeks.

Worst of all, Olaf was dead, slain by Ivar’s own sword. Damn his evil soul! Thork would gladly have exchanged his own life for his good friend’s. He would probably die anyway. The hole in his chest, just below the heart, festered and continued to bleed. And Ivar, the vicious bastard, refused treatment for any of his prisoners, especially the Jomsvikings.

Today, Ivar promised, the real torture would begin. Hah! As if they hadn’t been tortured enough. Thork looked down at the three additional fingers that had been chopped off his left hand and grimaced. His lone, swollen thumb stood out grotesquely.

“Good thing you can still swing a sword with your right hand,” Selik said dryly from his position next to him on the ground. All fifty of the Jomsvikings were tied together with one long length of rope. “Think you that you can still please your wife with all those fingers missing?” Selik teased morbidly.

Thork closed his eyes on the painful thought of Ruby and the fact that he would never see her again. When he got his emotions under control, Thork tried to grin at Selik over the intense pain in his chest.

“Is that all you can think of? Ivar starts the executions today and you have a woman’s parts on your mind! Thor’s balls! What woman will look at you with that ugly scar on your face now?”

“Do you think it ugly?” Selik countered arrogantly. “Methinks it makes me look the rogue. Methinks the women will love me more.”

“Mayhap you are right,” Thork conceded, examining the unhealed scar which ran from Selik’s right eye to his chin.

“Well, at least Eirik is all right. Ivar does not seem to plan any more harm to him.”

“Yea. Pray he will not,” Thork sighed. Lord, ’twas all he lived for now, to see Eirik safe. He no longer hoped to save his own skin. “Selik, if we should not make it through this day, please know that you have been a good and true friend.” He had trouble swallowing over the lump in his throat before he continued, “Perchance we will meet again in heaven—or Valhalla—whichever it may be.”

Selik appeared to choke up but then gathered his usual wits about him. “’Tis sure you are we are headed in that direction? Mayhap you have been more the saint than I have.”

Despite his excruciating pain, Thork smiled, but he knew they might not have another opportunity to speak and he had much to say yet. “Selik, if you should survive, promise that you will look out for my children…and Ruby.” Oh, God! Ruby! We had so little time together. So little time!

Ivar’s soldiers came and led the Jomsvikings, roped together in a long line like beads on a string, to the bailey outside the fortress. Hundreds of his followers gathered to witness the downfall of the famous Jomsvikings, wanting to see how their renowned valor would withstand death.

Thork saw Eirik off to the side with a group of other prisoners. He lifted his chin deliberately with a jerk to signal his son to be brave. Eirik, God bless his soul, raised his head proudly, his tearless eyes meeting his father’s in youthful courage. Holy Thor! He was too young to have to display such valor.

Ivar’s men released the first three Jomsvikings from their bonds and led them to the executioner, who twisted sticks in their long hair to bare their necks for his sharp blade.

Ivar stepped forward, preening before the crowd. If he only knew what a bloody replica he was of his hated enemy Sigtrygg! Having the same mountainous size, both bore the scars of numerous battles. Both carried themselves with an arrogant, vicious countenance. Both were ugly as sin.

“For years I have been told how brave you Jomsvikings are,” Ivar said loudly to the assembled group. “’Twill be interesting to see if Jomsvikings die different from other mortal men,” he sneered, then turned to the first Jomsviking brought forth. “What dost thou think about dying now?”

Ingolf, a veteran Jomsviking of at least twenty years, curled his lip contemptuously at Ivar. “Jomsvikings do not fear death, just cowardice.” He lowered his head to the block, and it was chopped off neatly in one stroke.

The next Jomsviking, Gaut, spit at Ivar’s feet and snarled, “I die with a good reputation. You, Ivar, shall live with shame.” Gaut, too, was decapitated.

“Ram!” shouted Hedin, the third Jomsviking, then “B-a-a, b-a-a, b-a-a.” Ivar stopped the upraised hand of the executioner, a puzzled frown making his face even more ugly. “What is your meaning?” he bellowed.

Hedin lifted his chin a fraction from the block and stared out at Ivar’s troops, “Are those not ewes who follow you?”

“You bastard!” Ivar yelled, spittle foaming at the edges of his mouth, and motioned for the executioner to continue.

When Ulf, a drinking companion of Selik’s, was brought forward, he commented bravely, “I am well content to die as are all my comrades. But I will not let myself be slaughtered like a cow. I would rather face the blow.”

The executioner hewed him in the face with his bloody sword.

By the time the tenth Jomsviking stepped up to the executioner, Ivar was clearly agitated because the executions were not going as he had planned. Undoubtedly, he wanted to see the elite Vikings grovel for mercy, to cry for salvation. The crowd was turning against him, murmuring with admiration for the brave warriors. Even his own soldiers no longer cheered over the deaths.

But Ivar doggedly repeated his question to the next man, Jogeir. “What dost thou think of dying?”

“I would like to piss first.”

Thork shook his head at Jogeir’s defiant vulgarity. Ivar’s face turned almost purple with outraged disbelief but nodded his permission to do so. When Jogeir finished relieving himself boldly in front of the masses, he commented casually, “Life certainly turns out differently than expected. I had thought to skewer your wife afore returning to Jomsborg.” At that, he shook his staff arrogantly, to the crowd’s laughter, then pulled up his braies. His head was gone afore the pants were tied.