Page 9 of Her Viking Warrior (Forgotten Sons #2)

Chapter

Four

T he dragon’s wooden tongue licked dawn skies.

Time and storms had chipped away at the once-fearsome creature.

Round eyes were flat and its slender neck riddled with cracks.

Bred on northern fjords and biting winds, the humble byrding vessel thirsted for the North Sea.

The clinker-built beast had done her best in the hunt for Vellefold’s lost son.

Now she would bring him home. But, her joints were creaking, odd since she was moored in a placid river.

“Your ship groans, lady.” Ardith hovered over the hold, her sun-pinked nose wrinkling.

Ilsa passed a blue mantle into freckled hands. “She is showing her age.”

Ardith twisted the rich cloth into a ball. “It’s not that. Your ship doesn’t like this river. Smells like—” she sniffed the air “—watered-down Viking.”

“Rouen is not Viking enough for you? Strange words coming from a woman who tells me Vellefold is a terrible place.”

The servant cast a sullen glance at the river. “Maybe you’re growing on me.”

Slipping an arm through coiled rope, she dipped her head to hide her smile. Ardith. Conversations with her were sword fights. She spewed Norse words like one might spew bile. Understandable. An Angle by birth, she was stolen from her hamlet as a child. Sun had bronzed

her hair, but Vellefold had sheared its length because shorn hair marked female thralls in Viking settlements.

Young Ardith had wailed in Vellefold’s harbor when Ilsa’s lady mother ordered the girl’s hair lopped off.

The careless trader had tossed the braid into the fjord as if the child’s past went with it.

Ardith’s mournful sob had punched Ilsa’s heart. She’d clutched her own braid and cried hot tears for the skin-and-bones thrall. That was how their friendship began. Plaited in loss. Twined with depth.

Now a freewoman serving Ilsa, Ardith stubbornly kept her tresses short.

Ilsa climbed out of the hold with a breezy, “Maybe you can’t admit you don’t want to leave.”

“Because you need me.”

She looked into hazel eyes. This give and take was their lifeblood. “We need each other, my friend.”

They all did: grey-haired Kell and Ingolf sliding oiled oars into throles , Valgerd and Audr, wives of Kell and Ingolf, storing newly purchased food in the hold, and her, a high born woman brought low by dire times.

Their present circumstances were the cost of bad decisions made, layers of them.

To Bjorn and his men, this was a simple fight-and-defeat order given by their jarl.

To her, this was spirit deep, a shift in Vellefold’s way of life and hers.

This path was set last Mabon season, and no reluctant, hardheaded warrior was going to stop her.

Crossing the deck with Ardith, she stepped with care over a fist-sized hole in wood. “Behold, the glory of Vellefold,” she said ruefully and stopped to test the plank’s soundness.

The servant squinted at the riverbank. “Worried your dogs of war will look down their noses at us?”

Would Bjorn think less of her?

She’d tossed and turned on her furs last night, but not over that. Old stirrings had roused her. The boy who’d tugged her girlish braid. She saw him the same yet…differently.

Her brain stalled on their hands gripping the same iron latch. Bjorn’s touch had shocked her. What would happen if more of him touched more of her? Sparks tickled her skin—primitive, thrilling, thoroughly unwanted, and poorly timed.

Bjorn was ten summers too late.

Her body rebelled against that. Sensitive flesh tightened.

Her nipples poked supple leather, reliving ice-floe blue eyes soaking her up last eve.

Bjorn was confident, a man who knew his place in the world.

Something in his manner told her, no king or jarl could force him to fight.

Despite his var to Longsword, Bjorn did what he wanted.

Part of him would always be the wandering warrior.

A singular man, he’d lived by his own decisions.

Plucking her tunic, she fanned balmy skin. Her time for maidenly musings was lost years ago. Out of sorts, she snatched a bucket of apples off the deck, stowed them under a bench, and made her way to the rear dragon’s head with Ardith at her side.

“You should know the Forgotten Sons think of themselves as wolves, not common dogs. You’ll see the wolf head carved on their leather vests.” She set her face to Rouen. “And Ardith…”

“Yes, lady?”

“Be nice. We need them.”

“More men,” the servant grumbled. “When it’s men who’ve caused our troubles.”

A breeze batted flaxen strands across her eyes. “Not all men are bad. You’ve got to have faith.”

Ardith patted a blade sheathed on her thigh. “Faith and a sharp knife, lady. Faith and a sharp knife.”

And a plan that included a reluctant warrior.

She’d add that too, but Bjorn was nowhere in sight.

Morning sun climbed out of the east. A yawning merchant opened his stall.

Another hung copper-banded buckets on pegs.

Mist clung to spiraling smoke from fires nursed to life by sleepy-eyed housekarls.

She had moved heaven and earth to fetch Bjorn from this place.

She’d do the same to take him home. Her task wasn’t done until the banished son faced his dying father.

Do this, and she’d fulfill one of three blood oaths.

Shaking the rope off her shoulder, she cried out, her fingers going stiff. Rope fibers scraped across tender pink flesh under open blisters.

“You need to wrap your hands, lady.” Ardith was hip-cocked on the rail.

She should’ve wrapped them last night, but pride stopped her.

Bandaged hands were a sign of desperation.

A wounded woman. Keep a man looking at your eyes or your breasts.

Divert them and they’ll never know the truth.

The jarl and his charming, oversized brother hadn’t noticed her hands. But Bjorn had.

Hissing through clenched teeth, she picked threadlike bits off stinging skin. “There will be ugly scars.”

“Not scars, signs of honor. What you wear on your hands, lady, are jewels, signs of your goodness and honor.”

“Strange jewels, these blisters,” she said, dropping the fibers into the river.

“No one leaves this world unscathed, lady.”

“You might be ready to leave this world. I’m not. We fight as planned, though I fear the gods are not with us.”

Ardith scowled. “Your gods, lady, not mine.”

She dropped to her knees, signs of honor , echoing within.

Her scars. She had plenty. Those seen and unseen.

Damage to her hands was a puny cost in a war that had begun long before Aseral’s first raid.

Another fire was smoldering in Vellefold.

Change, the nature of which Bjorn and his men could never know.

On the deck in front of her were six limestones. A parting gift from Longsword. Housekarls had delivered them last night along with food and supplies she’d bought. Shoving them under a bench, she doubted the jarl’s generosity with the limestones.

Men did nothing for free.

“Warriors are coming from the feast hall.” Ardith shaded her eyes. “Six men in black. Must be your guests.” A beat of silence and, “I see…shields, helmets, few weapons. Little else in their possession. They travel light, lady.”

Ilsa rose to full height, drawn to the once-loved son of Vellefold.

His jaw was firm, his posture erect. Bjorn strode easily among high born and common folk.

He had been the same as a boy…a boy with a flair for showing off.

He’d visit her grove to display his axe-throwing skills.

With a confident grin, young Bjorn would tell her to pick a tree, the smaller the better.

He’d heft his axe and aim for the hand-sized rune carved on the tree trunk.

When he hit the mark, he’d laugh, pumping boyish fists in victory.

Did the man still laugh with joyful abandon?

Her lips flattened. The past was better left there. She needed a warrior, not a friend.

“They are wolves, lady.” Ardith breathed the words.

Hair on Ilsa’s arm rose. The loud, oafish men she’d witnessed last night were gone.

The Forgotten Sons were quiet beasts with a talent for war, walking two by two through Rouen, sunlight glinting off hobnails encircling each man’s sleeveless leather vest. A wolf pack on the prowl.

Their strides matched in effortless unity, a sign of much time working together.

Their voices calm, their power undeniable.

Primal yet controlled. They passed between the harbor’s twin fires, six masklike faces showing.

Harsh. Assessing. Menace flashing in their eyes.

Who was she to tell them what to do?

A wise woman knew when to ask for help and when to tell a man to get out of her way. These men? She wasn’t sure they’d listen to her, not once they set foot in Vellefold.

One by one, they took in her ship. Her spine stiffened. Small for a byrding vessel, her humble dragon was meant for delivering supplies to warships, not carrying storied Vikings.

“They could fell giants,” Ardith said. “Just look at them. Those men have warrior eyes. Sharp. Ready. They will see things, lady.”

“They will see what I want them to see.” She squared her shoulders when the Sons slipped into a single line on the dock. They strode past her, murmuring greetings. Bjorn was near the end of the line.

Her heart stuttered when he stopped and towered over her, blocking out the sun. The one called Rurik walked on, his hand clasped with an ebon-haired woman who could only be his wife. The rest of the men crossed planks Kell set for them to bridge the gap from dock to ship.

Her gaze locked with Bjorn’s and foolish, lighter-than-air happiness filled her. “Ardith, show our guests where they can put their belongings.”