Page 1 of Dalla’s Royal Guards (Second Chance #3)

Dalla Bogadottir laughed as she danced around her two younger sisters and little brother.

Runa and Olaf were playing with a set of wooden swords, their epic battle ensuring that they would be loudly and gleefully underfoot.

Aesa shook her head and adjusted the basket of freshly laundered linens on her hip.

Dalla carried a matching basket, though hers was filled with vegetables from her mother’s garden.

“Watch this, Dalla!” Olaf shouted.

Of the four of them, Dalla was the most skilled at fighting, her specialty hand-to-hand combat, the longbow, and the sword.

Runa was nearly as good—especially with the short bow and blade, but this time, little Olaf, only ten and one years old, twisted under Runa’s outstretched arm and slid his sword between her arm and her body.

Runa groaned, dropped her sword, and twirled in a graceful circle before she crumpled to the ground in a dramatic defeat worthy of the thespians who had visited their small community.

Dalla and Aesa laughed as Olaf strutted like a gander around Runa before she caught him by the ankle and tripped him.

In seconds, she was sitting on top of Olaf, tickling his sides as he begged for help.

“What is all this noise?” Asta, their mother, called from the door to the longhouse.

“Runa has defeated Thor!” Aesa shouted in answer.

“Nev… never!” Olaf laughed.

“Runa, give your brother mercy and come help me prepare dinner,” their mother shouted back.

Runa made a face and rolled off Olaf. “She knows I hate cooking.”

“Not as much as we hate eating it,” Dalla retorted with a laugh, dancing out of the way when Runa picked up her wooden sword and swung it playfully in her direction.

Dalla turned to Aesa, her eyes bright with mirth, but her smile slowly faded as she noticed the thoughtful, uneasy expression on her sister’s face.

“You need to work with Olaf more, Dalla,” Aesa quietly reflected as Runa and Olaf ran off. “Runa defeated him far too easily.”

“He did well,” Dalla replied. “He simply forgot that an opponent who is mortally wounded on the ground could still be dangerous.”

“ Ja … but he should not forget that,” Aesa insisted.

Dalla frowned and touched her sister’s arm. Aesa looked away from her questioning gaze, and her stomach clenched with alarm.

“Did you have another vision?” she asked.

Aesa swallowed before she reluctantly nodded. Dalla pulled back with a low hiss and waited.

As far as she knew, only she and their mother knew of Aesa’s gift.

The visions had begun after Aesa had almost drowned two years earlier.

Dalla would always remember Aesa’s still, unbreathing form on the sand, her face pale and cold.

Aesa had visited the gates of Valhalla for a moment before their mother had brought her back.

Since then, Aesa could ‘see’ some things before they happened, sometimes in her dreams at night, other times during the day when she was awake.

Dalla had learned of it when Aesa asked her to return to the spot of her death two days after the event. She hadn’t understood why Aesa would want to return there so quickly, but it soon became clear.

Two years earlier:

“Tell me how it happened, Dalla,” Aesa quietly requested.

Dalla stopped where the water, now at low tide, left a line in the sand.

She curled her toes in the cold, moist sand and stared out at the breaking waves, wrapping her arms around her waist as she remembered the shock of the freezing water when she dove in after Aesa.

The waves had tumbled the sisters against the coarse bottom, and Dalla had struggled to escape the current that swept them toward the rocks.

“You had your back to the water and didn’t see the wave when it struck you. It happened so fast. One moment you were there, the next you had disappeared, as if Njord had reached his hand out of the ocean and wrapped it around you.”

Aesa stared out at the water. Dalla was surprised by the serene expression on her sister’s face.

Two days before, Aesa had been dead. Dalla’s screams of anguish, captured on the wind and delivered to their mother, had brought Asta down the treacherous path as if carried by Meili, the god of travel.

Their mother had the healing touch, a gift Aesa had inherited.

Asta had drawn the water from Aesa’s lungs and delivered air in a kiss of life only a mother could give.

“I saw a vision whilst I was dead,” Aesa confessed.

“A vision? Have you told mother?” Dalla asked.

Aesa shook her head. “ Nei . The vision was not for her. It was for you.”

Trepidation filled Dalla. Visions were seldom a good omen. Most of the visions that she had heard of spoke of…

“When… How will I die? Can you tell me?” she forced out past the lump in her throat. At ten and nine years old, she was not yet ready to die.

Aesa smiled and shook her head. “I did not see your death. I saw you… in a strange place, a place far from here.”

“I will travel with Thorsten to a distant land?” she mused, staring out at the sea.

“ Nei . I did not see Thorsten. I saw two men. Strange men. They will be your guards.”

Dalla snorted and waved her hand in dismissal. “Let them try! No man, not even Thorsten, can keep me prisoner.”

Aesa shook her head again, her expression thoughtful and fond. “I do not know if that was exactly what.... Well, what I do know is that these are no ordinary men, Dalla. They live in a world where magical things exist.”

“So, I do die,” Dalla replied.

Aesa frowned. “I don’t know.”

Dalla huffed and kicked at the sand in frustration. “You need to work on clarifying your vision if you are going to have one. They are as murky as the waters after a storm!”

Aesa laughed. “I will ask Njorun to work on them.”

Dalla bent down and splashed her sister with a handful of freezing water. Aesa squealed and danced away. Dalla chased her sister, delighted because Aesa was still with them. They fell to the sand in a tangle of sandy skirts.

“Mother is going to make us wash tonight before she allows us inside,” Aesa groaned.

“It is worth it to laugh with you,” Dalla confessed, rolling onto her back and staring up at the brilliant blue sky with its soft, fluffy white clouds. “Tell me about this magical realm and the two mysterious guards who will try to capture me.”

Aesa turned her head to look at her with a worried expression. “Are you sure you wish to know?”

Dalla cupped a handful of sand and let it flow through her fingers, thinking about Aesa’s question for a moment before she gave a sharp nod.

“ Ja . Father says the more knowledge you have of your enemies, the more control you have over your destiny.”

Aesa smiled and stared up at the sky. Her expression turned dreamy. Dalla wished she could see the images in her sister’s mind. They were probably much nicer than the ones she had.

“The wind is hot, but the landscape is beautiful. There are horseless wagons and magical birds that fly people across the great ocean. Your guards are part of this world. They know how to control such magical beasts—and they have powerful weapons.”

Dalla listened, trying to visualize the wondrous beasts that lived in this strange world and the weapons that she would clearly have to steal from her guards as soon as possible.

The only part she scoffed at was when Aesa teased her about how handsome her guards would be and how she would fall in love with them. Dalla chuckled and shook her head.

My hand has already been given to Thorsten. I will miss this when he returns from his travels, she silently mused.

“I love you, Aesa,” she murmured, reaching out to hold her sister’s hand.

Aesa smiled. “I know.”

Present day: 832 A.D.

“Dalla! It’s father!” Runa frantically called.

Dalla straightened up from where she’d been clearing the weeds in the garden, and the hoe dropped from her hand at the sight of her father, Sven, bloody and bent over the neck of his horse.

Asta, Runa, and Aesa were already helping him off his horse while Olaf held the reins.

Four other men, each with wounds of their own, slid from their horses with the help of several women.

Dalla ran down the long row, cursing her long skirt when it caught around her legs. She bunched the material between her dirty fingers. Her mother and siblings were already inside the longhouse.

“Dalla, fetch water and heat it. Runa, gather some clean cloth. Olaf, take care of your father’s horse. Aesa, you will assist me and the other women in tending to the wounded,” her mother ordered in a terse, steady voice.

Dalla’s eyes flashed to the broken shafts of the arrows protruding from her father’s thigh and shoulder. Sven groaned when Asta gently leaned him back.

“Dalla.”

She paused mid-turn and looked over her shoulder. Her mother’s face was tight with suppressed emotion.

“Yes, Mor ?”

“Tell the others to set up a guard. Those who did this may attack again,” her mother quietly instructed.

Dalla gave a brief, sharp nod. She grabbed two wooden buckets, one in each hand, and hurried out of the door. Several residents of their Thorpe gathered around the well as word of the men’s injuries spread.

Most members of their small but prosperous extended family were former thralls, captured during raids her father took part in.

Her mother did not believe in slavery, and as fast as her father would return with new ones, she would free them.

Sven had eventually given up on returning with people and instead focused on horses, sheep, and other items that would benefit the growing population.

Dalla’s sudden appearance at the well drew attention, and she took advantage of it.

“Caleb, gather arms and set up additional sentries with at least two members always together. Amal, I want the same for the cliff. We do not want a surprise by sea. Bjorn, ride to Jarl Asvaldsson. Tell him what has happened and ask for support,” she ordered.

“ Ja , Dalla,” Bjorn replied before darting away.