Page 22 of Her Viking Warrior (Forgotten Sons #2)

Chapter

Eleven

A wave splashed his face. Salt stung his eyes. Ferocious winds blew his father’s black mantle sideways in iron-colored skies.

“You’re a natural born fighter. The best. You’ll find your way,” Jarl Egil’s voice rumbled.

Bjorn eyed his father, towering over him. “I don’t understand.” He gulped. “You’re—you’re leaving me?”

“Birka is your new home.” His father squinted at a weathered longhouse built for unmarried warriors. Beserkers lived there. “You have a sword. That’s more than most men.”

“But…I’m twelve.”

A wintry gaze speared him. “You’re man enough. Now go. Make your way in the world.”

Jarl Egil charged into the sea and climbed aboard his dragon ship. The mighty chieftain bellowed orders his warriors obeyed. Raw-boned men rowed against crashing waves, a few of them stealing glances at Bjorn standing alone on the beach.

His father never looked back.

Bjorn fisted both hands, fighting that wretched memory.

At least his father was looking at him now.

Helge’s scarf-covered head poked around the door to the inner rooms. “The table is set, jarl.”

“Thank you, Helge.” Jarl Egil nodded to her and stared again at his son. Agony misted his eyes.

Bjorn bolted from the inner chambers. In the hall, he was a drowning man sucking one lungful of air after another.

He’d swear he tasted seawater on his lips.

Feet stalling, he reached out to steady himself, his hand landing on the white pelt covering the jarl’s chair.

Everyone was talking, finding their seats at tables covered in cloth befitting a fine celebration—the son’s homecoming.

His mouth twisted bitterly. He was hungry, but he couldn’t eat.

“Bjorn,” a voice called to him. Fast footsteps came—Ilsa. She squeezed between him and the chair. “That could’ve gone better,” she said in a tense whisper. “There was no honor, running out like that.”

On reflex, he grabbed her. Really, he meant to set her aside and go to the table. But she’d questioned his honor. Twice in the last hour. He was shaking. Livid with emotions. Gripping her shoulders, he glared down at vivid green eyes spreading wider.

“There are few things I call my own. Loyalty is one. Honor is the other,” he said. “Egil exiles his son to protect his fame. And you say I have no honor?”

He could barely contain his sarcasm. Many jarls fathered hrisungrs . Few banished them. None went as far as to send a seductive messenger with promises of wealth and power to lure the bastard back home.

He searched Ilsa’s face unsure of what he was looking for. “A hard-won lesson I learned years ago—loyalty is worth more than love.”

“Stop,” Ilsa hissed.

Across the hall, Gerda tugged her husband’s sleeve. Odell patted her hand, but his mouth was a grim warning line for Bjorn. Holding her by one arm, Bjorn walked Ilsa quickly across the bear rugs for a discreet conversation. A useless ploy, since they were on display.

Ilsa’s heat wrapped around him. She was a hands breadth from him, her eyes glowing the strangest hue.

He’d seen the color once when Erik had tossed copper dust into a blaze and hypnotic green flames erupted.

A short time reunited with his childhood friend, and she was the woman he wanted nowhere near him, yet the one he craved.

“I know you’re hurting,” she said, low-voiced.

A frustrated growl caught in his throat. He let go of her.

“Bjorn, please…” Lines of sorrow bracketed her mouth.

The tender-hearted woman . She was showing sadness for him and his father.

“You knew you would see him,” she whispered.

With feather-light fingers, she touched the wolf on his chest. His heart beat faster from the strangest idea: Ilsa was trying to heal broken places inside him. To soothe a wounded beast.

Swallowing hard, he yearned to let her do that.

Until she said, “You know we must work together. You. Me. Jarl Egil. I am his hands and feet and his eyes and ears. My word is his.”

Howling need roared inside him. Vellefold’s needs were the last thing on his mind. Was he a selfish man? For wanting her to think of his welfare and no one else?

But, he’d never ask for that.

Instead, he lashed out. “When did you and Egil get this cozy?”

Her hand dropped to her side. “When he knew he could trust me.”

“What endeared you to him?”

Her lips firmed. She hesitated as if deciding how to respond to his thinly veiled accusation.

“I tried explaining the circumstances to you in Rouen, but you refused to listen.”

“So you keep saying.” His stance widened. “Tell me, in all the talking you did in Rouen, did you mention to Longsword your lack of ivory hunters and your lack of ships?”

Kohl-black lashes shuttered her eyes. Evasive woman . He sought a grain of revelation in her expressive mouth and found none.

“The jarl I serve thinks you’re bringing ivory next summer. From what I’ve seen, it’ll be a long time before your father has ships and men for the hunt.”

Bodolf and the jarl emerged from the private chambers.

The hird assisted Jarl Egil in his walk across the pelts.

Jarl Egil was of towering height but one leg had withered, pole thin and weak.

The proud Viking shuffled forward, head high.

A pang hit Bjorn. It hurt to see the man he’d once revered brought low.

Stiffening his limbs, he fought the urge to rush to Egil’s side and help.

Two male thralls leaped off the benches, scurried up the steps, and hauled Jarl Egil’s great chair to the table.

Stilted conversation peppered the room. People tried minding their empty wooden platters, but everyone from Frida to Thorfinn darted looks at the raised floor where he and Ilsa stood.

“I will do whatever it takes to save my home,” she announced in a voice for his ears alone.

He snorted softly. The woman had ogre-sized balls to say that.

A sunken fleet, a beleaguered people, and an enemy bent on death and destruction. With all that, what was one angry warrior? He took in her smooth cheeks, her boldness. In Rouen, Ilsa had unwittingly planted a seed of admiration in him.

Despite his best effort to stamp that seed out, it was growing, multiplying by the hour.

“I gave a blood oath to my jarl that I’d bring you back. And I did,” she said.

His vision narrowed. A blood oath. No Viking gave one lightly.

Ilsa was hemmed in by a vow to Jarl Egil, the man she served with all her heart. He checked the thralls pushing the wounded man’s great chair to the table with the jarl they served in it.

What did Egil do to win Ilsa’s ferocious loyalty?

To have a tenth of her devotion would…

He cursed under his breath. He’d finish that thought another time.

Ilsa searched him. “I cannot change the past, Bjorn. Truly, I am tired of it stealing my life today.”

“Then, we share common ground.”

“Let us start there. Ships will be built and jarls who hunger for trade will be fed.” Her eyes were soulful and her voice quiet. “Why don’t you and I work to that end?”

In the turmoil of seeing his father and sparring with Ilsa, his purpose for being here had slipped from his mind. The eyes of his brothers watched him from the table. Their presence reminded him that death and destruction hung in the shadows, ready to devour the unwitting warrior.

He’d have to work with Ilsa.

If threads of friendship wouldn’t bind them, common labor would. For now.

“Then let us start by eating together.” He motioned to the tables where others waited. “After you, lady.”

Ilsa gathered her skirts in one hand and walked with him under the weight of curious stares.

Two seats were open to the left and right of Jarl Egil.

One for Ilsa. One for Bjorn. Two balding thralls, their baggy sleeves jammed to their elbows, made a slow circle around the table, serving food.

Rounds of cheese, pan-cooked rye bread, boiled leeks, and venison dripping in sauce was the fare.

A thrall bent between the jarl and Ilsa. “Venison, lady?”

“Thank you, Brede.” She was subdued as he served her.

Spoons and knives scraped wooden platters.

Jarl Egil stabbed a hunk of cheese set before him.

Helge poured ale into drinking horns. The hall’s unease broke as bits of conversation started.

Frida sat beside Bjorn, her laughter sprinkling Thorvald’s low-voiced jests at her other side.

The thrall who’d served Ilsa made sluggish business of his task.

He was banging his tray into shoulders or bumping the backs of heads, mumbling apologies as he went.

Odell frowned at the man and addressed the Sons. “Forgive us. Brede is not used to woman’s work.”

“I’ve noticed few serving women,” Erik said.

“We’ve lost them.” Odell waved a vague hand. “Most gone this year.”

Thorfinn chuckled. “How can you lose women? Or do you mean they were stolen in the raids?”

“No.” Gerda tipped forward. “Many disappeared before winter. Mostly thralls from my house and the jarl’s. No footsteps in the snow. Not a trace of them…anywhere.”

Erik’s dark stare bounced from Gerda to Bodolf. “Like Aseral’s warriors disappearing in the mist.”

“You think our thralls are fighting against us?” The lady was aghast.

“It’s possible.”

“But they are serving women, known to be weak,” Frida scoffed. “Not fighters.”

The Sons eyed each other before their collective gazes went to Odell’s youngest daughter.

She was a headstrong innocent among wolves.

Her careless manner warranted a lesson. Erik set both elbows on the table.

Brash, like a barbarian of old, he was the kind of fighter men of Rome spoke of on their travels.

Erik smirked. “Serving women can be the deadliest of all.”

“How?”

Erik eyed Frida’s cup. “They serve your food and pour your wine.”

“You fall asleep each night, assuming they’ll do no harm,” Gunnar said.

“You rarely notice them—” Thorvald leaned into her “—until they slit your throat.”

Eyes big, Frida clapped a be-ringed hand over her throat.