Page 21 of Her Viking Warrior (Forgotten Sons #2)

Chapter

Ten

“ T hank you for showing me the pelt,” he said gruffly. “It’s time I rejoin my men.”

“Wait. This wasn’t what I wanted to show you.” Hints of friendliness crept into her voice. “Come. You will like this.”

She charged ahead, and he followed, frowning. This was becoming a bad habit.

Ilsa opened a door he hadn’t passed through in years: the jarl’s inner rooms.

He hesitated under a lintel carved with fierce, round-eyed beasts.

To enter here was stepping into his past. Limestone covered the walls in privilege.

A shelf displayed foreign glassware and silver-trimmed drinking horns, fewer of them now.

A polished copper disc hung on the far wall for viewing one’s reflection.

In the middle of the chamber, simple chairs rimmed a round table with a bucket-sized cask on top.

He dragged in a breath and entered, heart pounding and his joints stiff. He was in his childhood home.

The door to the chamber he’d shared with Thorstein was on one side, the jarl’s sleeping chamber on the other.

Barrel-chested Bodolf stood in the shadows, arms folded with a sword on his hip.

He was the jarl’s personal guard and closest advisor.

A true friend. The warrior had taught Bjorn how to throw an axe, ride a horse, and spit apple seeds farther than any boy in Vellefold.

The important skills in life. Best of all, Bodolf had been the sole voice warning Egil not to banish his bastard son.

The Viking’s smile was slow. “Welcome home, son of Egil. You’re a sight for my tired eyes.”

He clasped forearms with the grizzled mountain of a man. “Bodolf. It’s good to see you.”

A lump swelled in his throat, and by Boldolf’s awkward swallow, the same dry lump had formed in his throat. They held fast, neither ready to let go. The old wolf’s eyes watered as he soaked up the young bear, now a man of thirty years.

“Let me see if the jarl is ready for visitors,” the old Viking mumbled. Bodolf ducked into the jarl’s chamber and shut the door behind him.

Bjorn faced the brightly painted lintel.

Yellow, red, and blue decorated viper-like dragon heads had been carved into the door frame long ago.

Behind the door, muffled voices rose, one cavernous and full of authority meeting Bodolf’s grumble.

Curling both hands into useless fists, he breathed his boyhood in the chalky walls, smelling sea and earth.

He was utterly alone. Adrift. A man lost.

It was his past crashing into his present.

How many times had he stood outside this door, listening to the jarl confer with his most trusted man, Bodolf? This time, he wasn’t waiting to go on a sea journey with his father. This was different.

Empty. And confusing, the floor, shifting.

“Bjorn,” Ilsa called gently.

His feet were heavy and his body numb. He looked at Ilsa, but he couldn’t see her because parts of the new Vellefold were falling into place. Ilsa was Jarl Egil’s most trusted woman, a female hird , an advisor, rare but not unheard of.

How did that happen?

He was in no state to ask, drowning as he was in his past. His father was on the other side of that door.

They would meet again. Then what? He had no answers.

Ilsa stepped nearer, an arm outstretched as if to touch him.

But her hand fell to her side and shoulders sagging, Ilsa turned slowly to the table.

She took the lid off the cask. “This is why I brought you in here.” She pushed the cask to the table’s edge. “As promised, half your father’s wealth.”

Half his father’s wealth wasn’t much. He had to peer over the rim to see what was inside.

Scratched silver ingots layered the bottom, a nice diversion from the man on the other side of that closed door.

Half the ingots were as thick and long as his thumb, others were thin as a child’s finger.

They could be river rocks for all he cared.

He riffled through a sparse collection. The cask’s bottom showed between lumps of silver, all his for simply returning to Vellefold, and he didn’t care.

He picked up an ingot, the weight cold in his palm. “Why didn’t you bring this with you to Rouen?”

He heard his voice, distant. Neutral. As if the voice belonged to another man.

“Jarl Egil thought I should. As a show of good faith.” Ilsa hesitated. “I argued against it.”

“Clearly, you won.” He picked another ingot and examined it. “Were you afraid someone might steal it?”

A moment passed, then two before he met Ilsa’s gaze and found her manner severe.

“I was afraid you’d take it and not come to Vellefold. And I would not be able to stop you from taking it.”

Irritation flared fast, scorching his iciness, a feat, since he was brimming with cold emotions. Apparently, a lack of faith cut both ways. He didn’t trust Ilsa, and she thought him a callous thief.

“So, you kept it here because a man like me needs enticement,” he said, each syllable cutting.

“Don’t you? You’re not here out of Viking pride.”

Head shaking, he laughed without humor. “You think I have none.”

Her silence stung. Ilsa’s chin was high and her eyes ablaze. She thought him an aimless warrior. In some ways, she was closer to the truth than he cared to admit.

“You think I’m shiftless. You could be right. Years I sold my talents to the highest bidder.” He eyed the scratched silver, his tone biting. “After serving all those viziers and kings, did you ever think to ask, ‘Why isn’t Bjorn a wealthy man?’”

Her head tipped a fine degree. Perplexed, Ilsa was prey in his net and she wisely help her tongue. The girl he remembered didn’t like riddles to which she had no answer.

“You’re too haughty to ask,” he scoffed.

Any bid for a rekindled friendship slipped away faster than grains of sand through a hole. He’d not argue his worth. Or his honor. She was to blind to see it. Any other settlement and he would’ve fought for Norse pride alone.

Proud Ilsa clasped her hands over perfect pleats. She looked the same as other high born women he’d encountered over the years: rigid, indulged, ready to exercise newfound power.

“I spoke honestly to you when we were children,” she said. “I’ll do the same now.”

A primal beast unfurled inside him. Hot. Sharp and snapping. Ready to bite. “Be careful lady. You bought a war wolf, not a pet you can rule over.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means…” He stepped casually around her, his shoulder brushing her body. He sniffed her hair, lingering on her foreign scent and was pleased when gooseflesh pebbled her nape. “…be cautious or your wolf will bite the hand that holds the leash.”

She angled her head to him, green eyes burning with fury. What a fiery ice queen she was.

“Think you’re the one to tether me?” he asked in cold, cold humor.

Anger left her tongue-tied and prideful with her nose in the air. If Ilsa was going to play the virtuous Viking woman, then he would play the heartless warrior she believed him to be. He dropped the ingots in hand into the cask, the metallic chink, chink loud.

“You promised me half of Egil’s wealth. Where’s the rest of it?”

Her chest rose and fell from furious breaths. “That is half his wealth. The other half is what you see around you.”

He dragged the cask closer to him. “No thralls?”

“Helge is a free woman. Two men, thralls, serve the jarl.” Her words were brittle. “That is all.”

“But no women.”

“They’re gone.” Her scowl darkened. “I never took you for a man who cared about women thralls.”

Something in him broke and he swore under his breath. “I don’t.”

The way Ilsa spit the word women at him fed a new seed of anger.

Ilsa thought the worst. That he’d use thralls for base reasons.

He didn’t want a single person to serve him.

He preferred his life on one horse, his men, and the weapons he strapped on daily.

A man needed little else. When it came to bed sport, he enjoyed the willing companionship of widowed farmwomen and merchantwomen, but that was his business, not Ilsa’s.

“Is what you see here not enough?” Ilsa seethed, each word a sword slice when she spoke.

“Enough? I don’t care about silver. Never have.”

Her eyes narrowed to sharp slits. “Do you care about anything?”

His smile was goading arrogance. “I care about the men who watch my back. I care about the hammer that stops my enemies. Aside from that, not much else.”

“I—When I saw you with Turid, I thought…” Chin to chest, she shook her head as though to rid herself of wrong ideas. “I—I was hoping…”

“You hoped for what?”

Ilsa was slow to answer. When she looked at him again, weariness lit her eyes and tension wreathed her mouth. She was quiet…like the defeated.

“I was hoping that you would prove to be a good man.”

He balked, cut to the bone. Ilsa wanted the storied warrior.

A hero. In her eyes, he was a drifter and occasional thief.

Gritting his teeth, he would admit he’d been what she’d accused him of and worse.

He’s also been a better man, done courageous feats, but no skald knew of those acts. And he’d not stoop to boast of them.

His pride skewered, he dropped the cask’s lid back in place.

“Beware of what you ask for, lady. A good man would want the truth from you, and he wouldn’t stop digging until he got it.”

Feminine shoulders tensed under midnight blue cloth. “What do you mean?”

“Thralls disappearing. Raiders vanishing in mountain mists. And there is the matter of your husband’s death,” he said all too softly and menacingly. “I know you’re hiding something from me.”

“I’ve told you everything.”

“Of course you did,” he mocked. “You’re the dutiful high-born daughter.” He felt a sneer building as he warned her, “Have a care, or my men and I will leave.”

“You don’t have the means to leave.”

“I’ll steal your boat and sail away without a second thought.”

She gasped in horror. But from the doorway, a dry laugh came.

“I’d do the same if I could.”

Bjorn’s knees locked. Jarl Egil.

With a crutch under his right arm, Bodolf steadied him on the other.

Bjorn’s pulse banged erratically. Terse words with Ilsa riled him, but anger was a fickle master.

His heart splintered as he faced the man he once revered.

Years of pent up wrath didn’t rule him—loss did, wide and unending as the North Sea.

The rich inner room, the silver ingots, all could be ashes. His father had been stolen from him.

Valda. She had been the acrid poison.

He released a harsh breath and willed his bitterness gone. Valda was the dust of his past. He’d not give her anymore of his present life. Nor could he give it to the man he’d once called Father. Egil was a willing partner in the wrong done to him.

No man should let himself be led by an unworthy woman. Ever.

Father and son stared at each other. Silence reigned, horrible and still. Jarl Egil didn’t stretch a hand in greeting, a good thing because Bjorn wouldn’t step forward to clasp it. His wounds were too fresh as if he were a twelve-year-old boy abandoned on the beach all over again.

Jarl Egil’s smile faltered. His once thick beard was sparse and his cheeks colorless. Blond hair streaked with grey draped a brown bear pelt shrouding wide but thinning shoulders. Egil loved hunting bears. It was why he’d named his firstborn son after the mighty animal.

An unseen iron manacle squeezed Bjorn’s lungs. Mere paces separated him from his father, yet the spread may as well be Hel’s chasm. Both men were too proud to cross the short distance. When Bjorn’s gaze drifted higher, he witnessed sadness flooding the Viking leader’s eyes.

Eyes a distant frozen blue. Eyes like Bjorn’s.