Page 1 of Viking Warriors: Vol. 1-3

Prologue

Idreamt the moss was damp beneath my feet and the trees shimmered. A roaring bear lumbered towards me and I fell in terror, my neck awaiting the heaviness of its great paw.

Instead, a hand soft and pale raised me up. A woman spoke my name and her eyes were the mirror of my own. She bid me stroke the bear’s mane and I climbed upon its back, its fur warm beneath me.

1

June, 959 AD

Iremembered what my grandmother had told me.If they come for me, I’ll kill them, or myself.

Villages were being burnt along the coast, men slain, women raped and taken onto the boats. Such stories travel quickly. But it had been years since any Northman had landed this far south.

It was before dawn when they came, following a night of wind and thunder. The cockerel had not yet crowed and most of us lay asleep in our beds.

There was no one to fight for us. What time was there to pick up axe or knife? Those who stirred first from their beds were cut down. It was over before it had begun.

My husband grunted and rolled from the mattress, the thud of his body on the floor bringing me back from my forest dreams. My blood knew, before I heard any cry of fear, that the monstrous uninvited were among us, that the men standing guard beyond our doors had been slain.

He tried to hide under the bed, our brave chieftain. They dragged him out, and me, too, from under the covers, to stand barefoot in my nightshift.

“Take her,” he said, that husband of mine. “Elswyth’s young and strong. You’ll see.”

He crawled like a worm.

“Take anything you like.”

Their eyes had spied the goblet and my jewelled brooches, those which pinned my hair and cloak.

“Anything,” he pleaded, raising his trembling face.

They stopped his voice with a blade to the throat. The crimson pulse of him spattered my hem and he lay unseeing, mouth open in surprise. His blood seeped across the floor, thick and sticky against my toes.

I had no voice with which to wail for him, nor any for myself.

2

Why was I not born a boy? Their life is not that of their sisters.

When I was younger, I’d wait until my grandmother nodded in her sleep, and run to join them in their games. I’d trap rabbits in the forest, and fish for trout in the lake. I could climb as high as any boy. Further even. I’d rather have fallen to a broken neck than show my fear. We lit fires and told each other stories.

What were the women doing?

You know the answer.

They were spinning wool, weaving, sewing, milking goats, and making cheeses, minding babies, tending vegetables, cooking.

I could do these things. My grandmother saw to that. I could spin and weave, though my heart wasn’t in it. The threads always tangled. They didn’t want to follow the easy path.

But she taught me other skills: to start a fire, no matter how damp the wood; and to find and identify any plant. She made medicines, my grandmother, tinctures to heal the body.

I was never like the other girls. Was never invited to share their secrets.

“They’re jealous,” my grandmother would say, stroking my cheek.

How strange for that to be true, when I rarely took pleasure in myself.

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