Kirstie turned in the doorway and smiled. “I have a whole week.” She paused. Inga tried to return her smile but looked worried. “A week,” Kirstie said softly before she shouted, “Only a week! Where is Mother Vrya?”

Inga shook her head as she answered. “In the big house with Chief Birger and the men deciding what to do about the Vanlil.”

“Only a week,” Kirstie repeated and this time she grabbed Inga’s hand. “Come on.” She started toward the big house and Inga did not resist. Inga had too many questions and decided to stick with Kirstie until she got some answers.

When they burst into the middle of the meeting, Kirstie shouted, and the men paused to listen except for one man who said, “You girls don’t belong here right now.” Mother Vrya looked ready to say something, but the room quieted to utter stillness when Kirstie called and instantly got clothed in her armor, weapons included. Then Elgar urged her to let him speak to the men, and Kirstie, not entirely willingly, stepped away and let Elgar take her place. Kirstie knew the men would not really listen to a girl, and she was only ten years old besides.

When the young girl disappeared and a full-grown man, and a fighter by the look of him arrived in her place, most of the men in the room imagined it was one of the gods. They grew silent, and many became too frightened to talk.

Elgar started right in, giving the men little time to adjust to his presence or what just happened. “I am Elgar the Saxon,” he said in Kirstie’s Nordic language, and he paused to let them swallow. “I have come to tell you we only have a week to come to the aid of the king’s house and the town on the Nid River. The exiled chiefs and men, together with their Jamt-Vanlil allies, are gathering and will be attacking the king’s place and the town in a week.”

The room erupted with voices and questions. The men had assumed the Vanlil raided the villages on the eastern shore and raced back over the mountains with their plunder. They were talking about setting a watch in the hills and maybe gathering men to invade Jamtaland. They were not thinking this was an army invading them. Finally, one voice rose above the others and the rest quieted to hear the answer.

“How do you know this?” the man asked.

“This word comes from the god Fryer directly to Kirstie’s ears.” He looked at the faces around him. Curiously, he saw Mother Vrya and the men of Strindlos had no trouble believing him. The outsiders were not convinced.

“No god would lower himself to appear as a Saxon,” one man said rather loudly.

“Are you a goder?” a different man asked if Elgar was a priest.

“Who is Kirstie?” a third man asked.

“Yes, where did that girl go, anyway?” Captain Kerga asked at the same time.

Elgar answered the questions as well as he could. “No, I am not a priest, and where Kirstie went is a very complicated question. Let us just say she left the building.”.

“If not a goder, are you some kind of messenger of the gods?” One man tried to make sense of the conflicting ideas in the room.

“Elgar,” Mother Vrya interrupted everyone, and the men quieted out of respect for the Volva. “These men are from Varnes. That captain is from Oglo. Those two are from the Frosta peninsula, and those two have come all the way from Olvishaugr if you saw the karve in the dock. What is it you recommend?”

Chief Birger thought to interrupt to clarify the discussion up to that point. “We have been discussing gathering our men to strike back at the Vanlil in some way.”

Elgar shook his head. “Not and leave an enemy at your back.” He moved a bench and a chair and explained his makeshift map. “This bench is the Nid River. The town is here at the mouth of the river. The king’s house is here. Mother Vrya is standing in the fjord. I propose we take our footmen and whatever horsemen we can gather and cross the land on the afternoon six days from today. We set a camp and be well fed and rested in the morning while we scout out the enemy positions. If the town is holding out against them, we may have to adjust things, but my guess is they may be around the king’s house, if they have not burned it to the ground by then.”

The men in the room tried to grasp the ideas, and one of the outsider captains asked a pertinent question. “Why don’t we attack them at sundown and catch them by surprise?”

“Men who are hungry and tired do not fight well,” Elgar said, giving the answer he had given more than once in the past to other kings and chiefs. “If we are careful in the night, we might still surprise them at dawn. We will look for where they are vulnerable and attack at sunup. Our job will be to drive them to the sea. I expect every karve and longship we have to arrive in the third hour. No later than the fourth hour. We will have the enemy surrounded and some of them may choose to surrender. That’s okay. Let them surrender. Let the king decide whether to chop off their heads or not. After we protect our own, we can talk about an attack on the Jamts of Jamtaland if you will.”

Men stood around quietly staring at the bench and chairs. No one raised an objection to what he said, so Elgar spoke up again. “The ships need to be full of fighting men, but we need as many men here on foot and horseback to assault the enemy and drive them to the docks by the sea.” He waited another moment before he turned to the men from other towns. “Well? You best get going. Today is day one and that does not give much time to gather your men and get them here by the morning of the sixth day.”

Chief Birger grunted and nodded and made no objection. He waved like giving permission, and the foreign men hurried from the big house. The local men stayed a bit longer while the chief asked. “So, Saxon. I hope for your sake your information is correct.”

“The gods have been known to mislead people at times,” Elgar admitted and saw Mother Vrya nod in agreement. “But not this time. This information was unsolicited. Kirstie did not ask for this. Rather, the god Fryer dumped it on her and said she only had a week, and good luck.”

The men there all knew Kirstie, and they knew and respected her father and mother. They did not really doubt the veracity of the god, or that he might select someone like Kirstie to speak with, but at the same time, Captain Kerga had another question. “And what will you be doing while we prepare for battle?”

Elgar smiled and said, “I intend to get well rested.” He traded places with Kirstie, which looked like the man vanished and the young girl took his place, the armor instantly adjusting to Kirstie’s slim, beanpole body. “I’m going to sleep. I have a lot to think about,” she said, and added, “Weapons go home.” Her weapons vanished and she grabbed Inga’s hand. “Come on.”

Inga had no intention of going anywhere else. She stepped up beside Kirstie and said, “So, Fryer?”

Kirstie simply nodded.

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MONDAY

Kirstie finds a little help for the coming battle, and Yasmina is scared to death and worried about a ten-year-old going to war. Until then, Happy Reading

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