Page 2 of The Shipwreck (The Warrior Maids of Rivenloch)

Wild-eyed, axe-wielding giants bursting through the gates of Rivenloch, roaring and foaming at the mouth, hacking at everything in their path, smashing pottery, splitting furniture, slicing flesh…

The hounds’ yelps, cut off abruptly as their throats were slit…

The steward falling as his legs were cut out from under him…

A shrieking serving woman losing her arm…

One fleeing child axed in the back while another was trampled beneath heavy boots…

A young lass, frozen with fear, snatched up and carried off, never to be seen again…

It was happening again. The Northmen had returned. Avril staggered onto one knee.

Then she looked up at Kimbery, still yards away, and bit out a curse.

She wouldn’t let the bastards have her daughter.

She was no longer the innocent lass she’d been five years ago who’d become a victim of rape.

She was prepared for them this time. Clenching her jaw in determination, she scrambled to her feet again and hurtled forward across the sand.

At last she reached Kimbery, sweeping her into her arms and clutching her so tightly that the wee lass squealed in complaint.

“Shh!” She spun, searching the boulders and clumps of sea grass lining the shore. The longship must have crashed in the storm. But what had become of its crew? Where were the dead man’s shipmates?

Everything seemed normal, undisturbed. Waves lapped at the beach, leaving arcs of foam. Gulls screed and soared overhead. Crabs skittered over the rocks. No strange footprints marred the virgin stretch of sand.

“Mama,” Kimbery whimpered impatiently. “Put me down.”

“Hush.” Avril scoured the beach once more.

The Vikings had come again. There was no mistaking the origin of the carved dragon’s head.

But they weren’t here now. Either they’d bypassed her cottage and moved inland already, or their dead bodies would be washing ashore soon.

But for now at least, it appeared she and Kimbery were safe.

“Maaaamaaa,” Kimbery whined.

She let Kimbery slip to the ground. The lass immediately skipped over to the dead man.

“Don’t touch him,” Avril repeated.

Kimbery crouched a few feet away from him, resting her elbows on her knees and her chin in her hands, peering curiously into his face. “Is it my da?”

“Nay!” Avril replied, a little too vehemently, though she could see why the lass would think that.

The man’s face was hidden behind strands of long blond hair that was the same pale color as Kimbery’s.

He was covered in a cloak of seal fur, and his sealskin boots looked much like theirs.

But there the resemblance ended. He was a giant, a head taller than any man she knew.

His shoulders were broad and his feet huge.

A silver cuff in a dragon design encircled one thick wrist, and hanging around his wide neck from a leather thong was a hammer of silver with foreign runes carved into it.

Thank God he was dead. His kind—the invaders from the North—were bloodthirsty, vicious, ruthless murderers.

She shuddered. Despite the value of all that silver, she had no desire to loot the corpse.

She didn’t want to touch a Viking at all.

Then she frowned in distaste. What would she do with the body?

She didn’t want it rotting on her shore.

She’d have to bury it, she supposed. It was a pity it wasn’t a beached seal.

That much meat would have seen them through the winter.

Kimbery, flouting Avril’s instructions, picked up a club of driftwood and began nudging the man’s bloody shoulder. Avril shook her head. The lass might not openly disobey her by touching the dead man, but even at four years old, she had an annoying habit of stretching the rules as far as she could.

“Wake up!” the lass shouted into his unresponsive face.

“He’s dead, Kimmie.”

“Nay, he’s not.”

“Aye, he is,” she said, though Kimbery’s yelling was fit to wake the dead.

Kimbery curled her determined lip and nudged him again.

Avril raised a sardonic brow. Maybe she could cook him up for supper. There was probably a few hundred pounds of muscle on his large frame.

Then again, Viking meat was probably tough and foul-tasting.

“Wake! Up!” Kimbery punctuated each word with a hard poke of her driftwood.

“Kimbery, leave the poor—”

Then he groaned.

Avril froze. Shite. Kimbery was right. He wasn’t dead.

“See, Mama? I told you he was—”

She snatched the lass up so fast, the little girl’s head snapped backward.

The man groaned again. Avril snagged the driftwood out of Kimbery’s hand and held it in front of her like a weapon.

Then Kimbery began to wail, which caused the man to rouse.

“Sh-sh-sh-sh-sh.” Avril bounced the lass on her left hip, hoping to quiet her, to no avail. Damn! What would she do if the man regained consciousness? She wished she’d brought her sword. He’d swat away her driftwood club as easily as a piece of straw.

She could run. If she hurried, she could make it to her cottage with Kimbery before the man found his feet. But that would only delay him. Eventually he’d come and knock down her door, probably with one solid punch of his oversized fist.

Kimbery, enraged at being thwarted and oblivious to the danger, squirmed out of Avril’s grip just as the man’s eyes fluttered open.

“Run!” she screamed at Kimbery, who was already tearing off toward the cottage in fury.

Avril turned back to the man. She just glimpsed the ice-blue hue of his opening eyes before she swung around with the driftwood, clubbing him in the head as hard as she could.