by Asa Maria Bradley, Gina Conkle, Lisa Hendrix, Anna Markland, Emma Prince, Harper St. George
Her rich laughter was sweet music. Eira rose to her knees and nudged his thigh. “Move over.”
He did and she took a seat on the bench beside him. She snapped the key ring hanging from her waist and lobbed the keys at the shore. The jangling metal arced high and landed at Steinar’s feet. Eira took one oar from his hand and met his stroke with one as strong as his.
“I’ll bear our children, keep our home, and cook and mend.” She faced him, a pearled light sparkling in her eyes as she rowed. “I’ll agree to the pleasuring, but you can rub my shoulders.”
Laughter rolled inside him, freeing him and freeing her. Eira pulled hard on the oar, her smile wide and bright. They sat side by side, working in unison, striving for their future. The rest of Vikingdom would battle on, but he’d fought the greatest fight and won. The truth was in the beautiful prize beside him…his stolen Viking bride.
Did you enjoy To Steal a Viking Bride?
Catch the Norse series excitement with To Find a Viking Treasure
Survival’s in his blood…
Rough-souled Brandr’s ready for a new life far from Uppsala, but the Viking has a final task—protect the slave, Sestra. Her life’s full of hardship…until she learns the location of a treasure. With war coming, stealing the enemy’s riches will save lives, but only one man can defend her—the fierce Viking scout, Brandr.
The two have always traded taunts, now they must share trust. Passions flare as secrets unfold, leading one to make a daring sacrifice on their quest To Find a Viking Treasure
About Gina Conkle
Hi, I’m Gina Conkle and I write Viking and Georgian romance, which makes for interesting characters in my head. I grew up in southern California and despite all that sunshine, I love books over beaches and stone castles over sand castles. Now I live in Michigan with my favorite alpha male, Brian, and our two sons where I’m known to occasionally garden and cook. Living in snow gives me the perfect excuse to get lost in reading and writing. My big dream? To one day hike Hadrian’s Wall…someday I’ll convince Mr. Conkle he wants to go.
Cheers to you, Reader!
~Gina
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Discover Gina Conkle’s Booklist
For Viking Romance
The Norse series
Norse Jewel
To Find a Viking Treasure
For Georgian Romance
The Midnight Meetings series
The Viking’s Immortal Princess
by
Lisa Hendrix
Much happens that one expects the least.
~Old Icelandic Proverb
Iceland
886
“Good boy.” Varinn extracted the wriggling puffin from his dog’s jaws, and slipped it into the willow basket, popping the lid closed before the others could escape. There was a rustle and some squawking as the other birds made room for the new one, but by the time Varinn strung the basket onto the carry-thong with the others, they’d mostly settled. He tossed a piece of dried fish to the dog. “That’s enough for today, Oddi. Let’s get out of this wind. It’s cold as a cod’s arse.”
Sumármal, the summer feast, was barely a month past and Nightless Day still a month away, but Varinn had plenty of light left to start back to the longhouse. He wanted one more night in the wilds, though. In a few days, he would board a southbound ship and then there would be nothing but waves and rowing and shoulder-to-shoulder shipmates for a fortnight or more. He found a place near the head of the fjord, where tumbled boulders and willow bushes broke the wind. There were still patches of snow in the shady places, but he found some dry ground and stacked the puffin baskets against a stone, tossing a few pieces of fish into each one as Oddi sniffed around nearby.
Suddenly, the dog flattened into a crouch, a growl rumbling in his throat and his ears pricked toward a boulder several oar-lengths away. Varinn drew his sword and stepped forward, ready. “Hold, boy.”
It was the she-fox’s odd eyes he spotted first, the sun glinting in their centers, one blue, and one gold-brown. He’d seen the beast before, skulking around the edges of his vision every time he hunted in the area, but she’d never ventured so close. White still streaked her fur, and if not for those strange jewel eyes, she’d look like a dirty snow bank, frozen there in the shadow of the stone. She regarded him and the quivering dog beside him for the space of a breath, and then darted off.
Oddi broke. He flashed past Varinn, barking wildly, tearing after the fox, who bolted up the hill toward the hollow beneath a curve of stone.
“Get back here, Oddi!”
The dog ignored Varinn and shot into to the hollow, his teeth snapping at the disappearing white brush. The fox screamed in pain or fury, and a heartbeat later, the dog yelped once.
Then silence.
“Oddi, come.” Varinn approached the rock and crouched to look under the ledge. Even though the sun was low enough to throw fair light into the cave, he couldn’t see the back wall—or his dog. “Oddi?”
Was that a whimper? He stuck his head into the opening and waited. Only the whistle of the wind slipped past his ears.
Varinn backed out of the cave. “Damn dog.” He shed his sword belt and his thick, bear-hide cloak, then crawled in after the stupid creature. The roof dropped quickly and within a few feet, his spine was scraping stone. He would have to belly-crawl to go much farther. He hesitated, the prospect of getting stuck with no one nearby to help him raising prickles down his neck. The wind died, just for a moment, and in the quiet, he heard another whine. No, not a whine. What was that? Cocking an ear, he leaned forward as far as he could. The smell of smoke filled his nose.
And then the earth beneath his palms vanished and he pitched face first into blackness and heat and hard, hard stone.
* * *
A woman was humming. Even through the throbbing in his skull, Varinn recognized it as the sound he’d heard just before he fell. A moment more and he figured out that he lay on a bed of sweetgrass and furs, and unless he was mistaken, there was a bandage wrapped around his head. He drew a hand up—it seemed very far away from the rest of him, as though he’d drunk too much ale—and probed the lump beneath the cloth. “Ow.”
The humming stopped. “You are awake.”
“I am.” He swiveled his head toward the voice and cracked his eyes to find a woman squatted by a fire pit, her skirts tucked close around her legs as she turned a trio of birds on a spit. “Who are you? Where am I?”
“You are in my father’s hall.”
“I didn’t see a hall.” He hadn’t even known anyone lived out this far out.
“It is easy to miss among the rocks.” She stirred at a small pot that sat at the edge of the fire, barely glancing his way. “You cracked your head when you fell.”
“I was following my dog.”
“He is here, unhurt.” She shifted a little so he could see Oddi, happily gnawing on a fish tail beside her. “Can you sit up? I have marrow broth.”
“I think so.” Varinn eased himself upright. The world tilted, but straightened again as his feet hit the floor. He gripped the edge of the bed and waited for things to settle.
He was at one end of a long, stone chamber that seemed to be carved from the earth itself. A narrow table and benches filled the space beyond the fire, and muffled voices, male and female, slipped past the walrus hide that covered an opening at the far end. It must be a side hall. And he and the humming woman were the only ones in it. Strange.
“Here you
are.” She handed him the bowl and backed away, eyes lowered. The first sip of the salty, rich broth sat well, and Varinn took another, then tilted the bowl and drained it.
“You shouldn’t drink it that fast.”
“I have a bump on the head, not the flux.” Grinning, he held the empty bowl out, but she had already turned back to the fire, and he was left sitting there with his hand out like a beggar. Feeling awkward, he pulled it back and cupped the bowl on his lap. “Those birds smell good.” Birds. It tickled his memory. “I must go. I caught some puffins and…”
“These are them. Well, three of them. I set the others free.”
“You what?” Varinn jumped up, and promptly tilted to the left like a drunkard. He steadied himself with a hand against the wall. “Curse it. It took me two days to catch those birds.”
She pulled a cloth-covered bowl off the ledge. “They would have died out there with no one to watch over them. Now they’re free to breed and make more for next year.”
“I was going to take them with me. They pay a lot for puffins in Jórvík.” Grumbling, Varinn went over to stare at the remains of his hunting. The skin on the plump birds was already brown and beginning to crisp, the dripping fat sending up curls of smoke as it splattered down on an iron griddle that rested on the coals. “You never told me your name.”
She uncovered the bowl, pinched off a bit of the rye dough it held, and patted it into a round before dropping it on the griddle to fry in the puffin grease. “Nor me, yours.”
“I am Varinn Brandsson”
“And I am Halla.” Keeping her head down, she flipped another flat bread onto the griddle and turned the first with an iron hook.
“How long was I asleep, Halla Puffinsaver, that you felt the need to free my birds?”
“Long enough.” A smile curved the corner of her mouth, then faded away. “Where did you say you were taking them?”
He tugged a bit of skin off one of the birds and popped it into his mouth. Making an appreciative sound, he sucked the grease off his fingers and wiped them on his breeks. “Jórvík. We leave in a se’night if the weather holds.”
“I do not know Jórvík.”
“It is a city in Bretland, in the Danelaw.”
“Oh. So far?” She sounded dismayed, for some reason, but she kept at the flatbreads, pulling one off the griddle, turning the next, and readying a third. The nutty steam curled around Varinn, and he watched for a moment, admiring the easy way Halla moved back and forth between table and fire.
She was middling tall and slender, and her silver-gold hair hung down her back in loose waves, barely caught in the gilt circlet that marked her as a gentle-born maid. Her blue overdress was simple, but of good cloth, and it covered a shift of watery green, the color of sunlight through a wave. The silver brooches pinning her straps held several loops of fine glass beads that clinked softly as she moved. She was a fair thing, too, at least as far as he could tell—he still hadn’t gotten a good, straight-on look at her, what with the way she kept her head down and kept turning away as she worked. But from the side, her high-boned cheeks were smooth as milk and her lips as red as whortleberries, and Varinn found himself wondering if she tasted as sweet as she looked. It was so tempting to lean over and find out…
“You don’t plan to settle there, do you? In Bretland.”
He shook his head, as much to drive off the force of that imagined kiss as to say no. “I go to search for my father.”
“Has he gone missing?”
“Years ago. He went raiding when I was small and never came back. My mother waited, but in the end, she married again, and her new husband decided we would follow Ingólfur here to Thule. I was too young to have a say or to stay behind. But before we left, I heard stories…” Varinn hesitated, not certain how much of the dark truth to tell this stranger. “So I go to see if they are true.”
“The food is almost ready. You should sit.” Halla hooked another round of bread and as she turned to add it to the others, she stepped at the same time Varinn did.
They collided, and she stumbled, swaying toward the fire. She grabbed at him and he caught her and set her back on her feet. But even after she was safe, they clung to each other, her hand knotted into his shirt, his spanning her waist. The bread swung on the tip of the iron hook until it plopped to the floor. Oddi scrabbled over to snap it up, and still they hung.
Waiting.
Not breathing.
Halla raised her head, and finally, finally he could look straight into her eyes, one blue as the sky, one the color of old gold.
“You have eyes like….”
“Shh.” And then she lifted up on her toes to kiss him, and any thought of foxes or puffins or anything but Halla burned away with the touch of her lips, every bit as sweet as he’d imagined. Desire washed over him and he surrendered to it, sank into it like the healing water of a hot spring, letting it close over his head.
“Aren’t those birds done yet?”
The voice jerked him back to the surface. They broke apart as a man shouldered through the heavy hide on the doorway. Varinn knew instantly this was Halla’s father—they had a similar look and shared the same slender build and coloring, except his eyes were both blue. He was a chieftain, too, by the gold on his arms and the way he held himself. Perhaps even a jarl. Blood pounding like an oarmaster’s drum, Varinn acknowledged the older man’s position with a dip of the head and wondered if he was going to have to fight him.
“Nearly so, my lord,” said Halla, seemingly less concerned at being caught than Varinn. “I was about to call you to table.”
“Where are your women?”
“Fetching the ale. I wonder what is keeping them.”
She slipped past her father into the noisy hall beyond. The man didn’t move, however. He just stood there, assessing Varinn as though he were a bull he was thinking about buying—or perhaps castrating. Varinn met the unblinking glower straight on and tried to ignore the itch in his empty sword hand. Where was his sword, anyway? Still by the cave?
Halla reappeared with two serving women, one carrying a big pot of ale, and the other, three carved drinking horns and their stands. She took one look at the two men faced off across the length of the table and made a tsking sound. “He is our guest, Father. You cannot kill him simply because I kissed him.”
Her father turned his glower on her.
“I would have gotten to it myself in another moment,” said Varinn drawing the man’s ire back to himself, but also earning a flashing smile from Halla that made his heart do some sort of strange flip in his chest.
Her father snorted in disgust, but the worst of his anger drained away. “You’re a fool. But at least you’re an honest fool.” He plunked down at the head of the table and motioned for them to join him. Halla obediently slid into the place on her father’s right.
But Varinn squared his shoulders and remained where he was.
The man frowned. “You refuse to join me?”
“Your pardon, my lord, but I do not have the habit of sharing a table of a man whose name I do not know.”
His host nodded slowly in approval. “Did your father teach you that, Varinn Brandsson, before he sailed to Bretland?”
“How–?” Varinn began and stopped himself. The man had been listening outside the curtain, that’s all. “He did, my lord. And what he could not teach me himself came through my older brothers in his stead.”
“They did well by him, I think, though perhaps your stepfather is due some credit, as well.” He motioned for the women to begin serving. “I am called Grímr Alfvaldr and this is my hall. Now sit.”
Command crackled in his voice this time. Varinn sat.
The serving women moved silently around them, pouring ale and presenting the meat and bread, then vanishing when the meal was done and the horns filled one last time. The hide had barely dropped into place behind them when Grímr finally spoke.
“You want my daughter.”
“Any man would.”
Varinn met Halla’s eyes across the table and it was barely within his power to keep his seat, much less say the next words. “But I sail in a few days time, and I do not know if or when I will return. I would not bind myself to her, nor ask her to bind herself to me.
“You presume she wants you.”
“He can hardly be faulted for that. I do,” said Halla.
“And both of you presume I would permit such a union.” Grímr’s expression soured again. “You are not her equal and you have nothing to offer as bride price but an old sword and a puffin hound.”
“You do have need of a good hunting dog,” Mischief crinkled the corners of Halla’s eyes.
Varinn’s heart flipped again, but he tried to ignore it. “I own a little more than that, my lord. But as I told Halla, I go to seek my father.”
“You will not find him,” said Grímr. “Brandr is lost to all in this time. The witch has seen to that.”
“How do you know about the witch? I didn’t tell…” Varinn looked back and forth between Halla and her father. “I never…”
“You will fail,” repeated Grímr, ignoring his stammering. “There is only one way to free him and it is beyond your power.”
Varinn leaned forward. “But he yet lives?”
“Not in any way you understand living.” Grímr drained his horn and pushed to his feet. “If you wish to know more, return to this place in a month, on Nightless Day. I will talk to you then.”
“But we sail in a week. It is the only ship bound south this year.”
“Then sail, it is your choice.” Grímr bellowed two names, and a pair of burly men, big as mountain trolls, burst through the curtain and strode toward the head of the table. “But if you return, know that there will be a price for what you want. Nothing in my hall comes cheaply. And now, Varinn, it is time for you to leave us.” He crooked a finger.