Page 117 of Down and Dirty

“Our time?”

“Let us save that story for later.”

“One last thing. Was it some special man who taught you these things?”

“Yea, but he is far, far away, and we will ne’er meet again.” Leastways, Britta did not think they would meet again. “Let us speak of our battle plan instead of lost loves.”

“I like your idea of gorilla warfare, though I ne’er heard that word afore. Nor ‘Look and See,’ ‘Growl and Prowl,’ ‘Escape and Evade,’ ‘double-backs.’”

“We must needs take the advantage out of our father’s hands. We will choose the site where the fight will take place. He has left the area, but he will return.”

So it was that two sennights later, several aged nuns went begging alms to one of her father’s Northumbrian keeps; he had several here and in the Norselands, and still he wanted hers. The aged nuns were performing their own lackwit version of ‘Look and See.’ Whilst there, spying, they spoke of a nunnery in Northumbria where they had stayed overnight… a nunnery where two sisters, Britta the Big and Angelique of Frankland, were plotting the takeover of some castle or other owned by their father. “Is that not odd?” Sister Clementina inquired through rheumy eyes. “Women fighters?”

“And they with only slingshots and broomsticks for weapons,” Sister Mary added, also blinking her rheumy eyes in innocence. “And they will be leaving the abbey grounds as they march to battle. Imagine!”

The men in the great hall guffawed and made coarse jests, even in the presence of the good nuns.

The two nuns reported back to the abbey that even before they had left the bailey, men-at-arms were being called forth. A small band because, as her father had remarked, “How many men does it take to topple a few lackbrained women?”

A sennight later, her father’s small hird of ten men on horseback, including himself and his three sons, was on the move. When they were several hides from the abbey, Britta and Angelique’s band surrounded the two forward outriders and offered them the opportunity to surrender. The men laughed and attacked. A mistake. The women soon hid the severely wounded bodies and rushed away from the scene. Escape and Evade.

The nuns at St. Anne’s would be used for nonviolent activities, because they were reluctant to take anyone’s life, even a man as evil as her father. Caring for the wounded. Preparing arrows and boiling oil, a contingency plan.

Closer to the abbey, they maneuvered and reined their horses in at the far end of a tight pass where there was a hillock on one side and a rocky cliff on the other. Laughing, they taunted the hirdsmen, rode off, then did a double-back to the other side of the pass, thus blocking them in. With the element of surprise, they managed to kill one brother, Trond, and three other men, which left her father, two brothers, and one hirdsman. Looking down at Trond, all Britta could see was her brother laughing as he held up her skinned cat all those years ago.

No longer able to ambush, the eleven of them faced the men, full-on, swords and spears raised. The men probably thought these split-tail bitches, as her father ofttimes referred to females, would be easy pickings. But they had not counted on their expertise, as meager as it might have been in comparison to the battle-hardened warriors. Their downfall was overconfidence and surprise.

Her father smirked at the nerve of these women thinking they could best him. But then he recognized Britta, and his eyes narrowed with hatred. “So, Daughter, you think to send your own father to Valhalla?”

“Not just me, but my sister, Angelique, as well. Your other daughter.” She indicated with a jerk of her head Angelique at her side. “And know this, you scurvy cur who does not merit the name father, you will not go to Valhalla. That is for noble warriors who die in battle. Today you will burn in Muspell.”

It was an even fight, despite the odds of eleven to four. In the end, both Britta and Angelique put their swords through their father’s chest, coming at him from two sides.

Some of Angelique’s band were retching at the side, now that the fighting was over. It may very well be true that warfare was contrary to a woman’s nature.

“Do you have any regrets?” Britta asked Angelique as they both knelt before a small pond, washing the sword dew from their arms as well as their blades.

Angelique shook her head vehemently. “He was a bastard. He needed to be put down like a rabid dog. Do not tell me you are feeling sorry after all he has put you through.”

“Not sorry, exactly. Just sad. He was our father. They were our brothers. Blood kin. Why were they so… mean?” She had told Angelique about their father’s pressure to wed, her one brother’s attempt at rape, and another’s displaying her private parts to his friends.

“Some men — some women, too — are just born bad, to my way of thinking.” Angelique shrugged. “Methinks our killing them was a good thing. Leastwise now other women, not just us, will be spared their cruelty.”

Britta nodded. “Best we get back to the abbey. There is much work to be done.”

The nuns and novices had already brought all the dead back. Father Caedmon would be performing death rites for the men, a service Britta and Angelique declined to attend.

Later, having bathed and eaten, Britta and Angelique were sitting on benches in the back garden, sipping from horns of Margaret’s mead.

“I have an idea,” Britta said.

“Should I be afraid?”

Britta punched her playfully on the upper arm. “Nay. You know that Everstead and all the surrounding estates now belong to me?”

Angelique nodded. “So I am in the exalted company of a wealthy woman. Shall I bow?”

Britta said a foul word rarely used by women.