Black Monastery by William Stacey Read Free Book Online Page A

said Asgrim. “I know it.”
    Bjorn wiped his palms on his leggings and looked away, his face clearly showing his unease.
    “What?”
    Bjorn stared at the ground. “There’s something down below, beneath the monastery.”
    “A cellar? Storeroom?”
    “Not a storeroom,” mumbled his brother. “Something… else.”
    Asgrim’s skin flushed with anger. He climbed out of the hole and grasped his brother’s upper arm. “What?”
    “A crypt, I think.”
    Asgrim smiled. “Crypts are important. What’s down there?”
    His brother looked away, then lowered his voice. “I… don’t know. We didn’t enter. I was… afraid.”
    Asgrim let go of his brother’s arm and stepped back, staring at his brother’s face. In battle, Bjorn was always where the fighting was fiercest. And once, Asgrim had watched with pride and fear as Bjorn, still wearing his chain mail, had danced on the oars, jumping from one to another, risking certain death if he fell in the water.
    “Brother,” Asgrim said. “What are you doing? You can’t act like a woman in front of the men.”
    Bjorn’s head jerked up. His eyes were filled with offence. Any other man, Asgrim knew, would be dead in moments. To call a man womanish was to give him the right to kill you. It was the worst insult Asgrim knew, one his brother could never ignore.
    “You say this to me? Your own brother?” Spit flew from Bjorn’s mouth, and he seemed to grow in size. Just for a moment, Asgrim feared he had gone too far, but then his brother’s gaze lowered, and he stared at the ground.
    “You don’t understand,” Bjorn said. “We found the entrance past one of the storerooms. Stairs cut into the earth. The walls are stone. Not earth, but stone, and covered in their damned Frankish runes. I think it’s supposed to be a holy place, but it feels… dirty . I almost shit myself, and so did the others. I’ve never, not ever , been frightened like that.” He looked up, locked eyes with Asgrim and gripped his brother’s shoulders with both hands, squeezing tightly. “There’s something down there, something evil.”
    “Brother,” said Asgrim, choosing his words carefully. “I don’t know what’s happened here, but our choices are few. If there’s treasure here, we need to find it. The crypt may be cursed—if a crypt it is—but we need to search it. It’s the best place to hide something. This place scares me as well, but we need plunder.” Asgrim paused, gripped the back of his brother’s neck, and pulled his head down so that Asgrim’s forehead touched his brother’s. “You and I, we can’t let the men see we’re frightened. You know this.”
    A silence stretched between them, and Asgrim knew the other men had stopped digging and were watching them. Bjorn nodded, then tried to smile.
    “Okay, then,” said Asgrim. “So let’s go do this.”
    * * *
    Harald Skull-Splitter stared at the writing on the wall of the monks’ library. The blood forming the runes had dripped and run down the side of the wall. Flies buzzed about his ears, making a never-ending droning that disturbed him more than the obscenity on the wall. He was glad no one could understand the runes. He didn’t want to know what they said. This was just wrong. What kind of a mad fool wrote messages in human blood? This place was cursed by the gods, and they shouldn’t be here. It was all wrong.
    Asgrim should have stayed in Hedeby and taken his justice like a man. Instead, he had run away. What was worse, he had forced Harald and the others to run with him. And while it was true that Harald and every other man had just sworn an oath to sail with Asgrim Wood-Nose, they were supposed to have been part of an invading army in Ireland, not a single longship farther south than any man had a right to go. Despite what the others like that toad Gorm said, the trip didn’t feel like a raid. If this was to be a true raid, they should have sailed away from Hedeby with their shields hung on the side