Half-hidden in the growing smoke, an assassin with a silver scar like a shooting star emblazoned across his cheek had blocked their way, his sword wet with blood. His grin had increased when he saw Ingrid’s distressed loveliness. He tore her from Sandulf’s protective grip, slicing through Sandulf’s forearm, declaring she’d be his prize. She’d screamed and beat at him with her fists. Sandulf had drawn his sword and attempted to free her, tearing an arm ring from the attacker, but another assassin had struck him from behind, forcing him to his knees. Sandulf had rolled and struck back. They’d tussled for a while, grunting and slashing at each other until he’d finally managed to disarm the female assassin, cutting her on her back. He made sure she was down before pivoting to confront Scarface and coming face to face with a sight more horrifying than any he could have imagined.
In the last rays of the sun, Sandulf shuddered and knew the image of the man standing over his brother’s dying and defiled wife would linger in his mind for the rest of his life.
When the woman assassin had cried out, Scarface had abandoned his prey, and they’d both vanished into the smoke. Sandulf had stood guard over Ingrid, powerless to do anything more than bear witness as the life seeped from her womb. Her chest had wheezed and rattled as she gasped out her final words. He had not abandoned her to chase after the woman, Scarface and their two companions. He’d stayed by her side until the flames had licked them both and his father’s helmsman had arrived, insisting he move or die.
* * *
A shout went up and the party led by his eldest brother returned, not to the resplendent wedding feast they must have been expecting, but to a ruined shell of a longhouse, all of the boats hulled below the waterline, and the dead and the dying laid out in rows exposed to the autumn sun.
Sandulf raced towards his eldest brother, reaching him before anyone else. ‘Brandt, there’s something you must know,’ he whispered, starting to say the piece he’d rehearsed in his mind—delivering his brother’s wife’s final message—but Brandt pushed past him with hard impatient hands and turned towards their mother who gestured towards where the bodies lay.
An unearthly howl emerged from his brother’s throat when he discovered his wife’s mutilated body.
Sandulf started towards where Brandt crouched.
‘Leave him,’ his half-brother Rurik said with a curl of his lip. His gaze seemed to take in Sandulf’s injured arm and the gash on his head. Small injuries. Injuries which would heal in weeks, unlike the ones his middle brother had endured, the ones which would take years to heal. ‘What happened?’
‘They went into the longhouse... I tried to...’ Sandulf’s throat closed and he knew no words could do justice to the carnage. ‘Father is dead, Rurik.’
The others started speaking, drowning out his words. Sandulf waited until they had stopped and Rurik turned to go. He grabbed his arm. The look Rurik gave him spoke of his contempt at Sandulf’s failure.
‘I tried to stop this. I injured one of them, on the back,’ Sandulf began his speech again, intending to tell him everything about his fight to save Brandt’s wife, show him the arm ring he’d wrestled from Scarface and explain about the female assassin, but Rurik stopped him with an impatient gesture.
‘Only marked? Were you not able to kill even one of them? You with the fabled sword skills you always boast of?’
Sandulf gulped and closed his hand about the arm ring. ‘No.’
His half-brother stalked off in search of his twin, without waiting to hear more.
‘Sandulf,’ his mother called, reminding him of his duty towards Brandt.
Sandulf gulped and obediently went over to Brandt to try again. ‘Brother.’
His brother’s eyes, which had been so full of life and love for his wife when they parted, were bleaker than Maerr in January. His face had settled into unfamiliar harsh planes which reminded Sandulf of their father when he was in one of his fearsome moods. ‘Yes?’
Sandulf straightened his spine. The time had come. He knew what he had to say. ‘I stayed with her until the end. She didn’t die alone.’
Brandt’s gloved fingers closed about Sandulf’s neck, cutting off his air, and as they tightened they made the world go dark at the edges. Sandulf struggled against the force, but his struggles made his brother grip tighter. ‘You should have given your life for her.’
His mother’s screams for Brandt to stop echoed in Sandulf’s ears. ‘Please, please.’
‘Enough. If we fight among ourselves, our enemies win.’ The hard arms of his father’s helmsman forced them apart. Sandulf gulped a lungful of life-giving air.
‘I will kill him, Joarr. I swear it.’ Brandt wiped a hand across his mouth. ‘One job I gave him, one job, and my dolt of a baby brother couldn’t even do that. Just like he made a hash of the last battle and we were stuck on that promontory.’
‘I...’ Sandulf’s throat worked up and down. He fingered the arm ring in his pocket. If he showed it now, Brandt might not realise its potential. ‘I tried. You weren’t there. It happened so fast. The doors were bolted.’
‘You froze, Sandulf. You froze last summer and the summer before that. You always freeze and expect others to come to your aid,’ Brandt said, his face turning a deeper shade, the same shade their father had always turned before he exploded in temper. Brandt drew his sword. ‘You are a disgrace to the family’s name. Father isn’t here to protect you any more...’
‘Enough killing, I said!’ Joarr’s voice resounded around the yard.
Even Brandt in full temper had enough sense to obey Joarr, the man who had taught them all navigation skills and was considered one of their father’s best fighters. Brandt collapsed full length beside his wife’s corpse, his body racked with sobs and cries of anguish about how it should have been him.
‘You need to get Sandulf out of here,’ his Aunt Kolga said moving from her seat where she’d been holding her only son close—a thin weak lad several months younger than Sandulf. ‘Brandt is like his father. In that sort of temper, anything can happen. He may be sorry afterwards, but sorrow cannot bring the dead back to life. You and I both know that.’
Standing beside Joarr, Sandulf’s mother, Hilda, became white-lipped. There was no need for his aunt to explain further. Everyone knew who his aunt blamed for her husband’s death and why.
‘I know,’ his mother said in a barely audible voice. ‘I am the one person you don’t need to remind of what Sigurd was capable, Sister. I can see much of him in Brandt.’
‘I can help in the search,’ Sandulf shouted before his mother agreed to send him away to somewhere boring with his cousin where he’d be safe. And he didn’t believe his aunt—Brandt knew where the lines were drawn. He knew how to control his temper. ‘I can help hunt them down. I am more than capable of wielding a sword. Every man will be needed to revenge this...this insult.’
‘Leave that to me and your brothers,’ Joarr said. ‘There is truth in what your aunt speaks. Brandt in this temper will kill first and suffer remorse after. You have been trying everyone’s temper sorely, Sandulf, since this summer’s final battle. Luck was with you in that victory, but it won’t always be.’
Sandulf regarded his brother who slowly rose to his full height. His ravaged features showed how deeply he felt this blow. ‘Give me another chance. I saw the assassins. I know things. You will see. I have value to you and my brothers.’
Brandt’s lip curled. ‘How many times have I heard that claim fall from your lips, only to have it proved wrong? Like our last-but-one battle where you failed to protect the flank, seeking your own glory instead!’
Brandt never hesitated to bring up Sandulf’s faults, claiming he needed to learn lessons. Their father had believed his explanation that he’d seen the enemy creeping about and had gone out to engage them, even if the others refused to. Sandulf rapidly examined the ground. His throat tightened. His father would never ag
ain speak in his defence.
‘One of my new husband’s ships leaves for the Rus with a view to trade down to Constantinople on the next tide,’ his aunt said, putting a hand on his mother’s sleeve. ‘A place can be found for Sandulf. I am certain of it. By the time he returns, Brandt will have forgiven him.’
Hilda covered her face with her hands. ‘Not that. Many who go never return. Isn’t there another way?’
His aunt resembled Hyrrokkin, the most fearsome of the frost giantesses. ‘Give him a chance of living, Sister. The winds of change have finally arrived. You know this as well as I.’
His mother examined the corpses rather than confronting her older sister. ‘I lost a husband today. I’ve no wish to lose my youngest son. In time Brandt will forgive.’
‘Why should I forgive him when the assassins who did this to my wife still have life in their bodies?’ Brandt drew his sword and pointed. ‘Go to Constantinople, Sandulf, and let your big brothers clean up the mess you helped to create. I’m done with you. We have all finished with you and your excuses. You are not worthy to be called my brother.’
Rurik and his twin came to stand shoulder to shoulder with Brandt. With a sickening thud, Sandulf realised the sole reason why his middle brother Alarr was not there standing beside them, too, was because he was injured so badly he was incapable of standing. His brothers, the great sons of Sigurd, his boyhood heroes, were united against him. They were banishing him without listening to his story or understanding the truth.
Sandulf gripped the arm ring and glared back at them. Brandt had no right to command him, but he’d do it anyway. He’d find the assassins who’d murdered Brandt’s wife and he alone would destroy them. Then all his brothers would see that he, too, was worthy of being called a son of Sigurd. Worthy of being their brother in arms rather than the nuisance whose presence was merely tolerated for the sake of blood ties.
‘I accept your offer, Aunt, with pleasure.’
Copyright © 2020 by Michelle Styles
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ISBN-13: 9781488065781
The Earl with the Secret Past
Copyright © 2020 by Janice Preston
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
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The Earl with the Secret Past Page 25