“You did not wear the dress I sent for you,” Jarl Sigurd growled.
“I do apologize,” Torunn said sweetly. “But the dress was not to my size. Perhaps in time you will come to know me better. I hope that you are not offended by my choice of garment.”
The Jarl glared at her over the rim of his cup, but said nothing. The dress would have been a perfect fit, but Torunn could not bring herself to entertain the thought of wearing anything that man brought her.
Gifts like that were for wives and women who did not wear swords at their hips. She had no intention of being that kind of a wife.
She was a warrior, and Jarl Sigurd seemed intent on ignoring that.
“I have borne many insults from Skaro’s greatest family,” Jarl Sigurd said as he set down his cup. He watched it as it was filled and then took another deep drink. Torunn heard the edge in the older man’s voice and her gaze flickered to the men who stood nearby. Warriors, Bitra’s best, stood near their Jarl’s chair. They did not drink. They did not smile. And they did not take their eyes off the activity in the room.
“Now, now,” Hallvard said. “This is a time of unity, not division. Whatever happened in the past must remain there.” He clapped his hand against Jarl Sigurd’s shoulder but removed it quickly as the old man glared at him. “Tonight is the last night that we are separate settlements. At dawn tomorrow, we shall be brothers. Is that not so?”
“Your father would cringe to see you joining your house with mine,” Jarl Sigurd laughed. “I shall enjoy my last victory over him, as I know I will not be able to challenge him to a duel in Valhalla to settle our differences.”
Asgaut laughed loudly and Torunn’s fingers tightened around her cup.
“No more talk of Valhalla,” Hallvard laughed. “We both know that our father regretted his actions. He would have come to his senses and sought your favor. I know this in my heart.”
Jarl Sigurd snorted into his cup and then tilted it back, draining it in a single gulp. “Your father would have slit his own throat before he stepped foot in Bitra,” he said. The warrior’s behind him chuckled together and Torunn felt her face growing hot.
“As I said, this is all behind us now,” Hallvard said quickly. He glanced at Torunn, but his smile was not as broad, nor as arrogantly triumphant as it had been only a moment ago. “We must look ahead to the future and welcome the blessing of the gods on this union.”
Jarl Sigurd muttered something into his cup that Torunn could not hear, but the warriors behind him laughed louder.
“You are lucky to have something so valuable to trade for my favors,” Jarl Sigurd said loudly. “I would not have agreed to such a thing for just any mare.”
Torunn reached back to touch Bersi’s leg—he had moved closer, and while she appreciated his silent support, she did not need him to start anything that he could not finish.
“Your father would never have agreed to such a match,” Jarl Sigurd continued. “He is lucky to have died—”
Torunn could not sit through any more of the man’s insults. She lifted her cup and drank, but only enough to wet her lips. She stood slowly and lifted the cup high.
“Jarl Sigurd, I would like to thank you for your gifts, and for your presence here in Skaro— My brother has done me a great honor by choosing to unite our two peoples with this marriage.”
Hallvard smiled and drank from his cup, but Jarl Sigurd’s twisted smile filled her with loathing.
“But I cannot thank you. And I cannot thank my brother. Your presence here is an insult to my father’s memory, and your continued slander of his name is an affront to the gods, and everything my father worked his entire life to build. Skaro deserves better than this alliance. And I will not marry you.”
“Torunn, sit down,” Hallvard hissed.
In the silence that fell around them, Asgaut giggled and pulled one of the servant girls into his lap. She struggled weakly and tried to escape his grip, but he pressed his face into her neck and kissed her loudly.
“I will not,” she said. “I have borne this with as much grace as I could muster, but I cannot bear it any longer. Our father swore an oath to me on Freya’s stone that I would only marry a man of my own choosing. I will not break that oath.”
“Your father is dead,” Jarl Sigurd roared. “An oath to Freya meant nothing to him.”
Torunn ignored him, though his words wounded her deeply. No matter how his life had ended, her father had meant what he had promised her. She knew it in her heart.
She turned to the warriors gathered in the hall and raised her voice so they could all hear her. “Those of you who are loyal to my father, I know that you feel the same shame as I do to see his old enemy celebrated and raised up at his own table. My father loved Skaro and its people above all other things. My brothers shit on his memory, and all that he sacrificed, with every breath they take. Every day that goes by is an affront to everything that he stood for.”
“Torunn, sit down!” Hallvard roared.
But some of the warriors set aside their cups and had begun to rise from their seats. More than she had expected. Torunn smiled briefly.
This could work.
“Jarl Arnd was not wounded by a Saxon arrow,” she continued. There was no proof. No one she could call on to speak for her, but she plunged ahead. “My father was the victim of a greater treachery.”
“Torunn!”
She whirled to face her brother. “What is it, Brother? Would you like to tell me how you found our father, wounded on the battlefield, and dragged him back to the healer’s tent? Or will you confess your role in his death? What greater betrayal could there be than for a son to murder his own father!”
She had not intended to shout those words, but there was no stopping her rage. The warriors behind her roared their anger and Torunn heard the scrape of metal over hardwood and the sound sent a chill up her spine.
“What have you done.” Hallvard’s voice was quiet and dangerous.
Asgaut pushed the servant girl off his lap and lunged for the wall behind him. A banner concealed several weapons and one of the warriors shouted in surprise as Asgaut drew a spear from behind the banner and brandished it in front of himself.
“They do not deserve to insult my father’s memory for a moment longer,” Torunn cried. A fight broke out in the center of the hall, just in front of the entrance, and Torunn flinched as she saw the flash of a sword in the torchlight.
The ambush.
“Treachery!” Jarl Sigurd shouted. “You whelp!”
He lunged for Hallvard, but Torunn’s brother moved quickly to avoid the older man’s wild strike, and he ducked under the wooden table. The warriors at Jarl Sigurd’s back were unarmed, but they were still dangerous. Shouts pierced the air and all around them the sound of battle raged. Some of the warriors had found the weapons that had been hidden around the hall, and Torunn knocked over her chair to back away from the table.
Hallvard’s face emerged from beneath it, pale and angry, and she kicked out at him. Her foot collided with his face, and she heard a satisfying crunch as his nose broke under her boot.
“You bitch!” he shouted through the blood that gushed down his face. “You will pay for this betrayal!”
Bersi grabbed for her arm as Torunn reached under her tunic for her knife. She pulled it free of the sheath and held it tightly. Iri was nowhere to be seen, and a sudden bolt of panic seared through her. Had he lost his courage and abandoned her?
“Torunn! This way!”
Bersi pulled her toward the side of the hall, and she stumbled after him as Hallvard reached for her again.
One of Jarl Sigurd’s warriors lunged for her, but Torunn slashed with her knife and opened a gash in the warrior’s cheek that distracted him from his pursuit.
“You are mine, girl!” Jarl Sigurd shouted from across the table. He had found a short sword and he brandished it wildly across the table. Torunn should have been afraid, but the scene was too strange not to be comical. The warri
ors around her seemed to fight in slow motion. She could see the arc of every sword, the counter-attack that was evident in the opponent’s stance.
Warriors fell, cut down by swords or impaled by spears as the fighting men and women discovered the weapons that had been hidden in the straw and behind banners. Whatever Hallvard had been planning, this had not been it, and she felt a small stab of joy to know that she had ruined it for him.
Bersi released her arm long enough to face one of Jarl Sigurd’s guards, the man ran toward him with his teeth bared and his sword raised. She gasped sharply as the man’s sword crashed down on Bersi’s, but Bersi hardly moved, before his attacker could recover, Bersi drove his fist into the guard’s face.
The man staggered back and Bersi slashed down with his sword, opening a diagonal wound in the man’s chest that stretched from his right shoulder to his sternum.
Torunn was frozen in place, but Bersi moved quickly and smashed the pommel of his sword into the temple of another man who reared up in front of Torunn before she could react.
“Hurry,” he growled. Bersi grabbed hold of Torunn’s arm, but she pulled it out of his grasp.
“I do not need your help!”
She did need his help, desperately, but her blood sang with the threat of battle, and she bent to grab a fallen sword from the floor.
But as she straightened, she realized that something was very wrong. The initial thrill of victory was quickly overpowered by the sight of her father’s warriors as they were overpowered by Hallvard’s younger men and women, and Jarl Sigurd’s forces.
“There are too many,” she said softly.
“Torunn!”
Bersi lunged toward the entrance to the great hall, and Torunn leapt over a fallen guard to catch up with him. She had to escape. If she was captured—Hallvard would never forgive her for such a betrayal.
She watched Asgaut drive a spear into the throat of one of Varin’s men and she turned her face away, but the man’s choked scream pierced her ears, accompanied by Asgaut’s unhinged laughter.
“Sister, where are you going?” he shouted as he yanked the spear from his fallen foe. “We have not finished!”
Torunn barrelled ahead, slashing with her sword where she could until she reached Bersi’s side.
“Stop her!” Asgaut cried. “Stop her, she must not be allowed to leave!”
Panic fuelled Torunn’s steps as she ran headlong from the hall and into the darkness. She stumbled forward until a hand grabbed for her wrist. She cried out in surprise and stabbed blindly into the dark. The knife hit something solid, and she heard a grunt of surprise.
A familiar grunt.
“Bersi!”
“Go. You have to run,” he growled.
“Are you hurt?”
“Go!”
He pushed her forward and Torunn ran as her eyes adjusted to the torchlight and the darkness beyond.
“To the healer’s house,” Bersi said from behind her. “The secret path.”
Torunn bent her head and ran as fast as her legs would take her. Every breath was torture, and her mind whirled with confusion and fear.
There were shouts from behind them, and she tried to focus on the path ahead of her.
She dodged around the corner of a house and slammed into the fortification wall, feeling for the seam of the secret door. It had to be there. It had to be…
“Here, Torunn,” a voice hissed from the darkness.
“Iri!”
Of course he had been missing from the great hall.
The coward.
But if he was a coward, why was he here?
Hallvard would kill him for helping her.
He pushed her toward the door. “Go, I will follow. Go to Iarund. He will be ready for you.”
“There were too many of them,” she choked out. Tears stung her eyes and she blinked them away.
“I know,” Iri said quietly.
Bersi ran toward them and Torunn ducked through the door and stepped beyond the fortifications. She had to climb, with no light, and no way to see ahead of them. It was the only way. If she faltered, Hallvard would catch them, and she did not want to think about what would happen then.
Bersi stepped through the door and pushed her toward the hidden path that led up to the healer’s house.
“Go. We cannot wait for him.”
Torunn nodded and ran toward the path. Her legs ached, and her chest was tight, but there was no going back now. She had come too far…
Torunn looked up at the starlit sky and wished for moonlight to guide her, but even moonlight was dangerous now.
“Freya protect us,” she whispered as she grabbed for the rocks and pulled herself onto the path.
“Freya is not watching,” Bersi grunted as he came up behind her. “None of the gods are watching us.”
Torunn gritted her teeth and resisted the urge to snap at him. Shouts echoed through the village and fear rattled through her once more as Bersi pushed her forward.
“Go. There will be time to curse me later.”
She closed her eyes briefly and tried to gather her strength. There would be nowhere for them to hide in the village. She had no choice. She had to climb.
Chapter 12 ~ Torunn
The climb was hard in the dark, and more than once her fingers slipped on the rocks. Bersi was behind her at every step, and she was grateful for his steady presence, and his strength when she faltered and he caught her thigh to keep her upright.
Her thoughts were desperate and disordered. Part of her was proud of what she had done—she had dared to stand against her brothers and Jarl Sigurd. But she had dared too much, and she had not had enough support behind her… She had been a fool to act so impulsively.
But she could not have sat at that table any longer.
Her father would have been proud of her.
That thought bolstered her steps and she let out a relieved gasp that was almost a sob as her fingers gripped the top of the cliff.
Bersi pushed her up and over onto the grass and she lay there for a moment, her chest heaving, as Bersi hauled himself over the edge and fell on the grass beside her.
She listened to his breathing for a moment, and then the tears came, hot and fast, before she could blink them away.
“Are you hurt?” Bersi asked.
She shook her head and then rolled to her side to look at him. “No.”
He reached out to wipe away the tears that stained her cheeks. “You are quite uncontrollable,” he said.
She pushed his hand away. “I am a fool,” she snapped. “I could have gotten us all killed. We were lucky to get away.”
“Iri saw to it that we did.”
“But why?”
Bersi sat up and shrugged. “I asked him to.”
Torunn pushed herself to her knees and glared at him. “And why would he do that?”
“For you.” Iri’s voice was strained as he pulled himself up over the edge of the cliff. He fell on his back on the grass and stared up at the stars. His chest heaved with exertion and his grimace was pained.
“Where is Varin?” Torunn asked desperately. She had seen the old warrior fighting for his life in the great hall, and the thought of losing his sword was a terrifying one.
“Varin can take care of himself,” Bersi growled. He pushed himself to his feet and pulled Torunn up off her knees. “We cannot wait.”
Iri groaned and sat up. “He was right behind me—”
“You heard the man. Varin can take care of himself,” a voice grunted from over the edge of the cliff. Torunn pulled her arm out of Bersi’s grasp and rushed to the edge. Varin clung to the rocks, but his progress was slow and his face was twisted with pain.
Torunn reached for him, but he was not close enough. Bersi pushed her gently out of the way, crouched down, and reached over the edge to grab his friend’s tunic. He dragged Varin up and over the edge and the older man groaned and stretched out on the grass. The side of his tunic was dark and wet and Torunn’
s throat tightened.
“You are wounded.”
“It is a good thing we are going to see the healer,” Varin chuckled but his smile became a grimace as Bersi prodded him with his hand. His fingers came away wet with blood and his mouth pressed into a thin line.
“You take too many chances,” Bersi said.
“I always have,” Varin retorted. “The gods have always watched my foolishness with a kindly eye.”
“It seems they have forgotten you this time,” Bersi said stiffly.
“Stop saying that,” Torunn snapped.
“Keep your voices down,” Iri said as he stood up and brushed the grass and dirt from his cloak, interrupting any other angry words Torunn wanted to say. She glared at him in the darkness. “We were followed,” he continued, “but they did not see us escape the fortifications. It will not take long for them to come looking for us. Iarund is waiting and we must not put him in more danger than he is already in.”
“They would not dare strike at him,” Torunn gasped.
“Your brothers are unpredictable, and Jarl Sigurd’s anger is a formidable force. We cannot trust anything.”
Torunn nodded shortly and laid her hand upon the hilt of the sword she had taken from the great hall. Her knife was tucked against her waist beneath her tunic, and she was grateful that she had not lost it in the fray.
Bersi pulled Varin to his feet and braced his shoulder under the old warrior’s arm to keep him upright. “Lead on,” he said.
Iri strode away from them into the trees and Torunn struggled to keep up with him. “Did you arrange this?” she asked breathlessly.
He glanced at her, and then looked back toward Iarund’s house. There were no candles lit, no lights to be seen.
“He promised that he would assist us,” he said.
“But why? The healers have always been neutral—more so than the priests ever have been.”
“He would not say.”
Bersi and Varin followed behind them, and she could hear the wounded man’s grunts of pain as they moved over the terrain.
Guilt coursed through her—Varin’s injuries were her fault. If she had been more patient perhaps this would not have happened…
Sword of Vengeance: A Medieval Viking Historical Romance (Warrior's Claim Book 2) Page 13