Page 1 of Her Viking Warrior (Forgotten Sons #2)

Chapter

One

B jorn stood over a rain barrel, washing dirt and blood off hot skin.

Water rippled his reflection, a hard Northman who chewed iron and breathed battle.

Victory was his today, a truth that never unsettled him.

The news he carried did. Four of the Breton Queen’s men had died with honor by his hand.

One warrior had lain in the grass, gasping sweet words about spies in Rouen. The revelation—both spies are women.

He splashed his face. He’d not hunt them. He refused to—something he’d have to tell his jarl.

Light and laughter burst from the feast hall’s open shutters.

If trouble lurked, he couldn’t see it. The rest of Rouen was peaceful as a sleeping virgin.

Doors shut tight. Torches flickering at crossroads.

Ships anchored in the Seine River like docile beasts.

Even the Christians’ stone abbey was sealed for the night, the pure among pagans.

Finger-combing wet hair, he waded into Longsword’s hall.

Farmers and fighters bumped his shoulders, their conversations bouncing off the rafters.

Mead, ale, Frankish wine flowed freely in honor of Mabon season, the pagan harvest. It was a time to give thanks and a time to end unfinished business.

Deep in the crowd, his feet stalled. Kohl-rimmed eyes a shade of the Aegean Sea fixed on him.

A lady in white across the longhouse, a newcomer.

Chin tipping high, she studied him in the manner of a merchant considering new wares.

His pulse kicked up. He stared back, masculine instinct meeting feminine confidence.

She was a powerful Viking woman, Freyja in the flesh with wide gold earrings gleaming against her neck.

Her smooth jaw spoke of youth, her angled cheeks of experience.

She was knowing and proud, with a small straight nose.

Life had fashioned her close to his age of thirty, a woman who’d lived well and taken her reward.

He liked watching her sip from a silver-trimmed horn while listening to the jarl’s half-brother, Ademar.

Bjorn grinned. More like she tolerated him, by her bored nods.

Beguiling lips curved the longer she eyed Bjorn, the smile painting her softly. Basking in the lady’s attention was akin to falling into cool seas. Deep. Refreshing. Teasing his mind with?—

“Are you going to stand there all night?” Thorvald thumped the table, rattling wooden plates. “Come. Eat.”

Typical Thorvald . Filling his belly always came first.

“I have news for the jarl.” He glanced at the head table and stiffened. The woman’s head bent intimately with Longsword’s.

“It’ll have to wait.” Thorvald waggled bushy brows. “He’s busy.”

“Who is she?” Bjorn slid onto the bench, putting his back to her.

Jewel-encrusted earrings should’ve been his first sign the lady in white wasn’t for him. Her place of honor between Will Longsword and his bastard half-brother was another. The jarl ate two steps above the earthen floor for a reason. He’d be wise to forget her.

“Don’t know.” Thorfinn, twin to Thorvald, waved over a thrall. “We were discussing bigger matters than women.”

“Such as?”

“Land.” Erik jabbed his knife into a heaping tray of meat.

Gunnar wiped his blade on his arm brace. “He means we were discussing which one of us will be the next landsman.”

Bjorn tore off a chunk of bread and slathered it with butter.

The Forgotten Sons, his brothers-in-arms, hungered for land.

It was a sickness, consuming their conversation when they trained, when they ate, and probably filling their dreams when they slept.

Not his. He was a simple warrior who preferred their old ways, roaming from border to border, serving caliphs, viziers, and kings. But they were men of Rouen now.

Only one of them would get the next holding.

The hall’s revelry showered him, a good distraction after blood-pumping combat.

Battle’s fire ebbed from his body, taking with it the need for constant vigilance.

The Breton Queen was a vicious wasp protecting her nest. He couldn’t fault her ferocity, but her methods were dirty, plying poor tribes with lies, stealing their sons—and now their daughters—to fight her battles.

But this was not the time to unload such weighty news on Longsword.

The thrall, Gyda, a favorite of the Sons, approached the table. Honey smeared her apron, proof of her mead-making. She’d likely labored since sunrise to make the feast a success, and she would labor long past midnight to see its end. Quiet and without complaint.

Brown wisps brushed her rosy cheeks as she filled his cup. “You’ve returned early.”

“To sample your mead before this lot drinks it all.” The bread forgotten, he guzzled spiced honey, its sharp-sweetness drenching his mouth.

He checked Erik, his partner on the day’s ride. A slight shake of Erik’s head told him, I didn’t say a word to our brothers about the spies . Loyalty to Longsword first—something else to get used to.

Thorvald gnawed a hunk of meat, talking between bites. “Bjorn should be the next one to get land.”

“Why?” Gunnar’s arms spread wide. “Because he is second-in-command?”

Bjorn frowned. The Whelp .

“The gods do not go by rank.” Thorvald pointed a pork rib at Gunnar. “Longsword might, not the gods.”

Gunnar scooped buttered turnips from a platter onto his plate. “If that’s true, why does Rurik sit at Longsword’s table, and we do not?”

Five pairs of wolfish eyes took in Rurik, his mouth curving in a wicked smile as he listened to his bride whisper in his ear.

He was the Forgotten Sons’ leader, yet Rurik profited the most from the decision to stay in Rouen.

A beautiful woman. Wealth. A holding big enough it took two days to ride from end to end.

A carving of Yggsdrasil sprawled floor to ceiling, the mythical tree a mighty crown on the wall behind the jarl’s table.

Did the gods believe Rurik the most deserving?

A wide silver band wrapped around his upper arm, announcing him the third highest man in Rouen.

As a boy, he’d led the Forgotten Sons when they were impoverished troublemakers in Birka.

Skalds already lauded Rurik, the hardscrabble Viking who rose from nothing.

Bjorn swallowed mead, unable to muster even a drop of envy. Rurik earned his place. As long as the Sons stayed together, naught else mattered.

“Do you really care that Rurik sups at the jarl’s table?” Gyda asked. “All of you feast in Longsword’s hall. Is that not enough?” Petite of frame, she reached forward and splashed golden mead into Erik’s cup. “Why not turn your minds to better things?”

“What better things?” Erik’s features flickered at the edge of malice, a common state.

“Truth and love.” She looked at the men with eyes the shade of newly plowed earth. “Are those not worthy rewards?”

The hall’s doors blew open and gusts kicked skirt hems everywhere.

Gudrun, a Norse witch, entered, her frosty stare hovering on the Sons before finding her sister, Ginna, talking to a young farmer.

Bjorn shivered at something tracing his spine.

Had to be excess water trickling from his hair.

Nose in his cup, he hoped that was what touched his back.

Wherever Gudrun went death wasn’t far behind.

“We’re arguing about the usual rewards,” Erik said gruffly. “Fame. Wealth. Land.”

“You must think bigger than that,” Gyda chided.

Thorvald swiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Sounds big enough for me.”

“Then that is all you will have. In small measure.” Her pink lips firmed. “Which is no doubt the same size as other parts of you.”

Hoots of laughter followed her jibe. A thrall since birth, Gyda spoke her mind freely under Longsword’s rule, but she was a woman who would bend, a reed in the wind. Her pliant nature was her strength, so was her tolerance with men.

Gyda tipped her pointy chin at one of the posts holding up the roof. “Look at the carving of Tyr.”

Each man swiveled around to view a pillar of such size no man could fully wrap his arms around it. Tyr’s battle with the wolf Fenrir had been chiseled on one post, the work of a traveling carver.

Gyda rested the earthen vessel on her hip. “He fought to save others?—”

“And lost his hand,” Thorvald put in.

“—but fame and wealth followed.” She stopped and scanned their faces. “Is it not obvious? You must ask the gods for your purpose and seek it. No matter the sacrifice.”

Words overlapped as the men argued about sacrifice and purpose, greatness and riches.

Gyda was wise beyond her years, pretty too.

An easy companion, she joined the fray. But, these were the gods she spoke of, while the Sons were mere men.

Bjorn ate peppered pork, studying the carving of Tyr and Fenrir, their fight curving around oiled wood polished to a shine.

Lose a hand to save others? He was Viking, yet he didn’t see the need for that kind of sacrifice. Fighting to win? That he understood.

Gyda set her pitcher in front of him and murmured above his ear, “I’ll leave this here. Something tells me all this talk will make your men very thirsty.” She winked and sauntered off, blue skirts swaying.

Skin on his bare arms pebbled from air crisp with the promise of winter. Astrid, the keeper of the jarl’s longhouse, quickly worked her way down one wall, closing shutters against the chill.

He scooped blackberries from a wooden bowl. “We’re getting ahead of ourselves. Think instead of the tasks before us.”

“What tasks?” Gunnar popped a berry in his mouth.

“Securing the Seine at Rurik’s holding for one, getting ready for winter for another.”

Nods of assent were slow. Thorvald wiped greasy fingers across the wolf head carved onto his leather vest. “Makes sense.”

Gunnar’s brow clouded. “What if Gyda is right? What if we must first find our purpose?” His arms spread with appeal. “Why else would the gods bring us here to stay?”