In the distance, a wolf howled, and Aelfwynn could not contain the shudder that moved through her at the desolate sound.
“You would do well to question what your uncle had planned for you,” the warrior told her. He indicated the woods, the road. The last of the pale light that hovered low in the trees, a grim warning. “The night comes, yet you are nowhere near shelter. If you had been set upon, what defense could your men have offered? I ran them off without so much as drawing a weapon.”
I have been set upon, she thought while her heart pounded. By a Northman.
What manner of man was this, to offer her calm words and strange riddles when he could so easily cut her down instead? When she could see the dark havoc in his gaze and knew him for what he was—a man as unlike the two who had abandoned her here as it was possible to be. A man who could take on the woods, the wolves, and any other threat he pleased.
A savage Northman who would not hesitate to spill blood, claim spoils, and pillage as he wished.
“What good is it to tell every truth,” Aelfwynn managed to murmur, wishing the old words her mother had always said brought a better comfort this night. But the cold and her panic and his pitiless gaze were taking hold no matter how she tried to fight it.
“A fine saying.” The Northman’s hard mouth curved and she felt it scald her insides, a fire and a shout at once. “Will it save you, do you think?”
Aelfwynn searched his face, his punishing and steady gaze, for a mercy that wasn’t there. This close, she could not help but notice details about him that seemed to lodge themselves beneath her skin. That his hair was dark beneath the snow, fixed in braids that kept it from his face. His beard was the same rich shade, threaded through with more snow that he appeared to notice not at all. His gaze was dark too, and stirring, though his eyes had the look of midnight—a deep, rich blue. He was a harsh warrior, this much was evident, but he was regrettably not as hideously brutish as Aelfwynn might have liked.
On the contrary, he was hard to look away from. He had moved so swiftly, despite his size. And he held himself in the way some men did, as if they were a thing that happened to the earth and not the opposite.
He was as magnificent as he was terrifying, and Aelfwynn was entirely within his power.
Her mother had been raised on military tactics handed down by her own father, King Alfred, who had routed the scourge of Northmen, Norse, and Danes aplenty in his day. Aethelflaed had always expected she would one day command armies and had prepared for it, in study and action, including her infamous decree that having borne her husband a single child a near decade into their union, she would risk herself in childbirth no more.
She would have advised her daughter to plot, not panic.
Aelfwynn missed her grievously.
But her uneasy months of politics and pretense were behind her now. There was only this man and the woods, the song of the wolves, and a reckoning here in the coming cold night whether she wanted it or did not. She could not pray it away. She could not outrun it.
He had captured her without unsheathing his sword. That was her shame to bear.
And bear it she would, if only she lived, out in the dark with a knife she couldn’t reach to wield on a horse that would not run, her uncle’s men long gone, and safety a mere story told around fires in the halls of her youth. She had left all she knew behind and what remained was...herself.
Only and ever herself.
Something shifted in her, then. A plot, perhaps. Not that blind panic that made her feel as frozen as the old road below her.
I am my mother’s daughter, Aelfwynn told herself. Whether I look it or not.
And to prove it, she did not shrink from the man who watched her so closely, his gaze too knowing, too bold.
Instead, she smiled.
“I doubt you are lingering in a darkened wood, covered in snow while the weather worsens, to play the savior. You will save me or kill me as it pleases you, I dare say, and well do both of us and the wolves themselves know it.”
She sounded cool and disinterested when inside, Aelfwynn felt lit on fire. But she did not let her smile drop, for hers was the blood of kings and queens of old, and she too would fight.
In the only way she could.
The Northman’s midnight eyes blazed.
Aelfwynn did not look away. “Yet you need only tell me what I must do to stay your hand, and I will do it.”
Chapter Two
Eigi fellr tré við it fyrsta högg.
A tree does not fall with the first blow.
—Njáls Saga, common usage
She was not what he’d expected.
Thorbrand had spent the last half of this long year working toward this day. He, his brother Ulfric and their cousin Leif had been tasked with this undertaking by none other than the mighty Ragnall, their king long hated and feared by these Mercians. The three of them had been little more than untried youths when the Irish kings had expelled their people from Dublin. They had grown into fierce and loyal men together, forged in the wicked fire of one battle after another throughout these long and bloody seasons. They were kin, good friends, and battle-honed brothers. Feared and fearsome warriors in their own right, they had fought for glory, honor, and territory at Ragnall’s side from the Isle of Man into Northumbria, back to Ireland to reclaim what had been taken some fifteen years ago, then back to this bitter island and straight into border skirmishes with the vicious Scots earlier this year.
That last battle at Corbridge had whetted Ragnall’s appetite for deception, as he’d led the column that had laid in wait until the Scots thought they’d defeated the rest, only to surge forth and claim their victory. Ragnall had started thinking less of what he could smash with his fists or cut down with his axe, and more of the other games he could play to achieve his ends.
And which among his loyal men could be best trusted to bring his cleverest schemes to life.
It was nothing less than an honor, Thorbrand had reminded himself throughout this long season of planning and plotting, to serve his king in this plot made of waiting. Not in the sharp fire of a straightforward battle, all sword heft and might, but in this deeper plot that would test Thorbrand’s skills in new ways.
Yet the gods knew well that in his heart, he had not felt honored by this assignment.
Then again, he had expected the Lady Aelfwynn to cower and mewl as these Saxon noblewomen did, sending up their frantic prayers to their Christian god and fainting into the mud when their prayers went unanswered.
Better to have a selection of gods, Thorbrand had always thought. Lest one alone prove uninterested in providing aid, as the fickle gods so often did.
Aelfwynn had prayed with her old Roman words, but he had seen no cowering. Instead, she looked at him directly. The challenge of it stirred his blood. Thorbrand was a warrior, not a weakling, and he hungered for the bold, strong warrior women his people bred. Not these grim, cold Christians with their bloodless piety.
And yet this woman, this Mercian princess he was tasked to take no matter what he thought of her, begged a second look.
She almost reminded him—
But he cast such thoughts aside. His past could have no purpose here. What was done could not be altered with memories. Well did Thorbrand know this.
“Do you offer yourself to me?” His question was little more than a dark scrape of sound. He kept his gaze trained on her lovely face beneath the headwrap and hood she wore against the cold night, searching for the fear he’d expected to see there. But did not.
Not that she wasn’t fearful, alone in the dark here with a man she would likely think a monster. He was close enough now that he could see the way she trembled slightly, though her eyes—eyes that gleamed gold, and what man was not partial to whatever gold he could hoard?—did not leave his.
She is brave, Thorbrand thought then, pleased.
“Can a woman offer what has already been claimed by the threat of force in the middle of a dark wood?” Aelfwynn asked, a trace of wry humor in her voice.
Surprising Thorbrand anew. And with that surprise came a new surge of heat. “A woman can always offer. Who does not like a gift freely given?”
“I will confess a certain wariness when it comes to gifts,” she replied, her gaze still steady. She sat straight and tall before him, nothing like the woman he’d seen at first. The one who had bowed her head, then meekly murmured her prayers. Thorbrand found himself more intrigued by the moment and his blood answered that fascination by coursing through him like a newly kindled fire. “I find that the greater the gift, the more obligation expected in return. Is that not so?”
She reminded him of similar words he’d heard spoken in the longhouses of his childhood. It was unsettling. He had not expected she would be anything like him, this almost-queen who was more valuable for what she represented than anything else. She had been stripped of her lands, her people. She had been shunted off from her uncle’s court and could easily have faded off into obscurity in a nunnery, a tale seldom told. Absent from songs and stories evermore, no threat to anyone. He had not expected her to be anything but female goods he would carry off to faraway shores and find a way to live with, eventually. In some or other peace, gods willing—but live with her he would, peace or no.
Not that Thorbrand knew much of peace. Or would recognize it if it fell upon him like a battle-ax.
“The way of the world is unlikely to be changed here in this wood,” he said gruffly.
But he was speaking to himself as much as to her. He could not forget himself here, even if she compelled him more than he’d ever imagined she would. Even if she somehow prodded at memories he had done his best to banish. He knew what business he had with this woman—and would have had even if she’d toppled from her horse in a fright and had cringed about before him in the frozen dirt at his feet.
His orders had to do with his king’s desires, not his own. Never his own.
He should not have tarried while carrying out this errand, yet Thorbrand did not move. He stayed where he was, gazing at her as she sat before him. Almost proudly, he thought, like the queen she might have been. And nearly had been, these last six months, to her uncle’s fury. “Tell me, Aelfwynn, what will you offer me for your life?”
“Is it I who determines what my life is worth?” She inclined her head but slightly. “Or is it he who would take it?”
Thorbrand knew these games. And misliked them. Words like swords, the lifeblood of a royal court, where whispers could poison and rumors could kill. It was good to remember that she had these weapons, little as he might value them. Not when he could measure the world by the swing of his sword.
And did.
“Such philosophical words, lady.” He saw her jaw firm even as she trembled and told himself it was good. Better she should fear him than imagine she could tie him in knots with pretty words. “And yet the snow still falls. The wolves yet howl. And where, do you think, might you lay your head this night?”
Aelfwynn laughed and it startled him, when he was a man so hardened he would have sworn to the gods themselves that there was naught on this dark, doomed earth that could catch him unawares. It was her laughter. That she dared laugh in the first place, and more, the sound of it. It put him in mind of a crisp, cold stream, tumbling from the mountains in the new land called Ísland—that place far to the west he had first seen this summer and now carried in him, as if those mountains like slumbering dragons and black rock beaches had claimed him that quickly.
When he intended to do the claiming.
Because sooner or later, all men needed land.
Trouble was, all the land Thorbrand had ever known was soaked in blood. Battled over, taken again and again, no sword mighty enough to beat back those who would challenge a man’s right to settle. No war ever truly over, no truce anything but uneasy though even a hundred years might pass. Or more.
Thorbrand had never had a home he was not called upon to defend with his body, his sword, the strength in his arms and the will in his heart.
And too well did he know the things a man could lose when his strength was outmatched, his sword overpowered, his will not enough. Well did he remember that bloody morning in Dublin when he had failed.
Gods, how he had failed.
Too vividly did he recall the look on his mother’s face when she had fallen that day. When he had not protected her as he should have done. When the enemy had tossed him aside like a child when he had been a man of fifteen, then cut her down while he had watched and had done nothing.
The shame of that haunted him still.
His mother had been brave and bold, beautiful and clever. She had given his father sons and had feared little. When other women might have begged to be spared, his mother had gone at her attacker as if she’d intended to take his eyes out.
She had fought for her home, but it had been burned down all the same.
Thorbrand had never told anyone what he had witnessed. What he had failed to do that bitter day when the Irish kings had routed his people from the only home many of them had ever known, ordering them to leave Ireland. Or die.
He had told himself he did not look for a home, not when his had been taken from him and turned to ash along with the mother he had not saved. He had told himself that all his years since had been his atonement. For in the wake of that day, Thorbrand had learned to fight—far harder and much better than he had as a boy.
To fight. To win. To put himself on the line again and again.
To do what he had failed to do then, when it had counted the most.
He had long believed that this was what he must do, as penance and proof to the gods. To make up for what he had not done then.
And yet, in these ever-desperate times, he sometimes found himself wondering if there was something more to life than the grim, ceaseless march of so many bloody skirmishes. The cry of battle, the clash of steel. He sometimes dreamed of a home. A true home, not a tent tossed up in another encampment, too near to yet another battleground. A place where he could live instead of fight, battle-weary but free.
Though thinking thus, he knew, was his own great and bitter shame. A man fought until the gods took him, dreaming of Valhalla all the while. A man longed for the honor only found in the fight. And on that dark day, long ago, Thorbrand had pledged that he would never stop fighting as he wished he could have then. Never.
He was not a soft man who dreamed of farms and seasons, the yield of the land and the call of his livestock. Thorbrand had risen from the ashes that day and become a weapon.
It shamed him that he wanted anything more in this bleak life than that.
And still this Saxon lady laughed, as if she had no fear at all. As if she found her own peril amusing.
Very much as his own mother had that hateful day.
“I am pleased I amuse you,” he said to Lady Aelfwynn when her laughter stopped, and he did not heed the strange tightening in his chest at the loss of it. He would add it to the rest of his collection, his shame and reproach. His own personal knarr, not piled high with goods as the merchant ships usually were, but instead laden with his regrets. “That will make our dealings the easier.”
Her golden gaze clung to his. “Then you do not intend to kill me. Is it ransom you are after?”
“Ransom?” He did not laugh, but when his mouth curved her breath came fast enough that he could see the clouds of it upon the air. “I fear you overestimate your worth to your uncle. Had he wished to protect you, would he have sent you on your way in this fashion? Two cowards as some faint enough protection, fat pouches begging for a bandit’s attention, and nothing but y
our prayers to protect you?”
Though color bloomed in her cheeks, Aelfwynn did not wilt at that, either. “It is not mine to question the decisions my uncle has made. As he is also my king.”
“Then I will question him for you, and gladly. He is not my king.”
She did not so much as flinch when Thorbrand had expected tears. Cowering. And not because she was a woman, for he had been raised on stories of shield maidens and Valkyries. His own mother had taught him courage, then proved hers beyond any doubt. But the tales of the Lady of Mercia’s disappointing daughter had spread wide since June. The Mercian Queen—and it was no matter that technically, she had been no queen but merely the royal wife of an ealdorman, not when she had commanded armies as any true queen might—had been a worthy foe. The daughter, it was said with no little scorn, had done naught but bow her head and retreat into prayer when it was a ruler needed.
All would have been different had she been a son. For one thing, Thorbrand would not have been sent on this errand. He would have been sent to fight, and not like this.
But there were different ways to win wars, as well he knew.
“Am I not to learn my fate, then?” she asked boldly, as if she knew the direction of his thoughts.
“We all learn our fate when it is delivered unto us,” he replied. “And none of your prayers will alter what is to come, lady. It is already decided.”
“Yet somehow I feel certain the decision about my fate lies in your hands,” she replied with that maddening, compelling coolness.
“I will not ransom you to your uncle,” Thorbrand told her. He studied her there, the snow turning her dark, rich cloak white. “Surely you must realize he sent you to your death.”
“I fear I am but a simple woman caught up in the affairs of kings,” she replied after a moment, though the steady way she continued to hold his gaze told him what she said was a lie. She might be any number of things, this Saxon princess, but simple was not among them. “It was my mother who dabbled in the politics of all these warring men. I prefer more gentle arts. I find there is less blood in spinning or needlework.”
Kidnapped by the Viking Page 2