Ice Maiden

Her companions lifted him from the bench.

“Wh-what’s happening?” he breathed, and met Lawmaker’s stoic gaze.

“Something I never thought to see.” The older man smiled cryptically, then followed the woman warrior, Ulrika, daughter of Fritha, into the haze of the longhouse.

“Vikings,” he mouthed.

A band of bloody Vikings.

Rika sucked down the draught of mead and cast her drinking horn aside. “So, old friend, what think you of my plan?”

Lawmaker toyed with the end of his beard and looked at her for what seemed an eternity before answering. “You’re sure you wish to do this?”

“It’s the only way. You know that as well as I. The dowry my marriage brings with it will buy Gunnar’s release.”

“So it would. But we know not where your brother is held.”

“Dunnet Head,” Rika said. “On the mainland. I heard Brodir’s men speak of it.”

“You are certain?”

“Ja.”

Lawmaker nodded. “Brodir will not be pleased. He expects to come home to a bride—and a dowry that will buy him fine goods and timber for ships.”

Rika looked away and swallowed hard. She did not wish to think of Brodir. Not now, not ever. True, they were betrothed in the Christian way—her father had arranged it when she was a child—but Brodir had gone a-Viking months ago, and she prayed each day that some evil would befall him and he’d not return. Absently she twisted the bronze bracelets circling her wrists, and mustered her resolve.

“Brodir will return to a penniless divorcée who will no longer be of interest to him.” So she hoped.

“And her brother restored to his rightful place as jarl,” Lawmaker said, finishing the thought for her.

“Exactly. It will work. It must.” Her brother, Gunnar, meant the world to her. He was the only family she had left. Her estranged father didn’t count, of course. All she wanted from him was the dowry.

She’d do anything to free Gunnar. Anything.

Lawmaker eyed her again, silently, while she fidgeted on the bench, impatient. She must have the elder’s blessing and his help. The henchmen Brodir had left behind to watch her were dangerous men. Without Lawmaker’s consent, her plan was doomed.

Finally he said, “It will be dangerous—and complicated.”

Rika flew off the bench in elation, ignoring the warning in Lawmaker’s implied consent. “I’m prepared for danger. As for complications, I leave those to you.”

“Ja, well…” Lawmaker’s gaze drifted to the bed box at the end of the longhouse where the Scot had thrashed all day in a fitful sleep. “He might have something to say about it.”

Rika smirked, triumphant. The Scot had little choice but to comply. “He’ll do as I bid him.”

“He is a chieftain, a laird. Think you he’ll agree to wed you just like that?”

“Chieftain, indeed.” She made a derisory sound.

“He’s a weakling. Look at him.” Her gaze washed over George Grant’s unremarkable features. “Why, he doesn’t even have a beard.”

Lawmaker cast her one of his ever-patient smiles—the kind he reserved for children, and for her. “Don’t underestimate the man. A beard is not the quintessential mark of virility among all peoples, Rika—only ours. You’ve much to learn about the mainland and its folk, should you think to venture there.”

“Perhaps,” she said absently, and continued to study the Scot. He was more formidable than she’d first thought. Broad of shoulder and well muscled, though she hadn’t seen him on his feet yet, so it was hard to judge his height. Surely he wasn’t taller than she. Few men were.

Her gaze fixed on his long, tousled hair. Rich and tawny, it spilled across the pillow like a river of honeyed mead. Thin braids, like a woman’s, graced each temple. Never had she seen a man plait his hair so.

She smiled inwardly. Ja, this chieftain would be easy to control.

George woke with a start, fumbling for weapons that weren’t there. “What the devil—?” All at once he remembered—the voyage, the shipwreck, the Viking woman.

He blinked the sleep from his eyes as a barrage of peculiar sounds and smells assailed his senses. He lay in a strange sort of bed at one end of the longhouse. ’Twas more of a box, really, elevated off the hardened dirt floor.

In the center of the room a fire blazed, curls of smoke drifting lazily upward and out a hole in the roof. Strangely clad folk—men and women and children—gathered around a long table for what looked to be the evening meal.

His gut tightened as he recalled the last meal he’d eaten. A bit of bread and cheese shared with Sommerled, his younger brother.

Dead.

All of them dead.

Grief gnawed a hollow inside him. He pushed through it and, moving carefully, swiveled naked from the bed box, pulling the soft blanket with him. The sea had had her way with him. Every muscle cried out, and he grimaced against the pain.

Before his feet touched the ground, she was there. Rika, daughter of Fritha.

He stared at her, tongue-tied. She looked different without her warrior’s garb. Her hair shone white-gold in the firelight, falling loose about her shoulders. She was dressed simply in a gown of pale wool, girded with the same finely tooled belt she’d worn that morning. Her hand twitched on the hilt of her sheathed dagger.

“You must eat,” she said. “I’ll have something brought to you.”

“Nay, I willna lay here like a—” He grunted as he tried to rise. She instantly placed a hand on his shoulder to stop him. ’Twas warm, surprisingly so, given the coldness of her eyes.

“Lay back,” she ordered, and pushed him down onto the soft pillows. “You’re hurt and must rest.”

She spoke matter-of-factly, with not a hint of compassion. Could he not see with his own eyes that she was a woman, he would not have believed it, so cool and authoritative was her demeanor.

He obeyed, and slid back into the bed box.

She called for a woman to bring food, then settled next to him on a bench, her back arrow-straight, her expression unreadable.

“You are Grant,” she said.

He nodded. “Aye, George of Clan Grant—of Scotland.”

“George?” She wrinkled her nose. “Not a manly name at all.”

Her impertinence stunned him. “’Tis a proper Christian name. But I expect ye wouldna know of such—”

“I shall call you Grant.” She turned to accept a trencher of food from a woman who bore a babe straddled across her hip.