Viking: Legends of the North: A Limited Edition Boxed Set (2 page)

The brothers who’d banished her had probably expected her to starve, her and her “bastard Viking spawn,” as they called Kimbery. Certainly, her death would have been convenient for them.

But Avril hadn’t obliged them.

As willful as her daughter, she’d persisted, refusing to die. The land was hostile to crops, but she’d adapted to it. She’d learned to fish, to dig for clams, to pry mussels from rock, to snare coneys, to raid seagull nests, to make broth from seaweed and pottage from oysters. She’d even traded a silver cloak pin to her closest neighbor for a ewe that had lost its lamb, so she had milk, butter, cheese, and wool for clothing. A stream emptied into the ocean a short distance from the cottage, giving her ample water for drinking and bathing, and trout for supper.

But none of it was easy. So when the weather turned violent as it had last night and the ocean’s belly roiled, spewing its contents onto the beach, Avril considered it a gift from the sea. She might find a few stranded fish not yet picked apart by the gulls, a sizable clump of kelp, a useful shell, or even an odd tool or bit of line lost from a fishing boat.

Kimbery, of course, was convinced she’d unearth a mermaid’s jewels or Poseidon’s trident or an otter to keep for a pet. She’d learned to relish the flash of lightning and the crack of thunder that foretold a day of treasure-hunting on the beach.

The wee lass didn’t know any different. But Avril was well aware of how wrong their life of scraping and scavenging was. If she thought too deeply about what had been taken from her—her maidenhood, her lands, a proper family and playmates for her daughter, and about the fact that she’d been groomed from birth, not to dwell in a hovel, but to command a sizable holding—she’d be filled with constant rage and an unquenchable thirst for vengeance.

But there was nothing she could do. Invading Northmen had left her with child and killed her father. And once he was dead, her four younger brothers, racked with jealousy over the favoritism their father had shown her as the rightful heir, declared Avril unfit to rule Rivenloch. All the years her father had spent training her to take over his command—schooling her in the law, teaching her to wield a sword, bringing her up to be a moral, fair, honest leader—had been wasted. She was sent into exile with her daughter and what little she could carry on her back. And not a soul in Rivenloch had had the courage to face her thieving brothers and come forward in her defense.

Still, not a day passed that she didn’t think about winning it all back. It was only concern for her daughter’s welfare that kept Avril from taking up her sword and marching boldly to the gates of Rivenloch to demand the return of her keep.

“Mama!” Kimbery cried, draping a piece of dark seaweed over her sun-bright curls and skipping along the sea foam. “I’m a selkie!”

She smiled. She often wondered if ocean-loving Kimbery might indeed be half-seal. It was the little girl’s inventiveness that kept her own bitterness at bay and kept her fighting for survival. Sometimes Avril thought that being impregnated by a Viking berserker was the best thing that had ever happened to her.

She scanned the rocky tidepools as she walked toward the ocean, searching for periwinkles, glancing occasionally up at Kimbery to be sure she wasn’t straying too far. The wee lass had a healthy respect for the sea, but the tide could be unpredictable and unforgiving.

The air was calm today, and the sky was an unchanging gray, but evidence of the storm littered the beach. Avril picked up a piece of driftwood and poked at a clump of kelp on the sand. A fat abalone was attached to one of the strands, and it would make a nice supper tonight. She cut it loose, plopping it into her basket. A small purple starfish with six legs was stuck to the kelp, too. Though it was inedible, she added it to the basket to show to Kimbery, knowing she’d like its color. Closer to the water, she found a few crabs, but their shells had been picked clean by the seabirds.

She glanced up. Kimbery was hunkered down beside a tiny crab on the sand, and when the tide rushed in to cover it, the lass shrieked and leaped up, running and giggling as the ocean chased her.

Avril was still grinning when her attention was caught by something floating off the rocky point that jutted into the sea. It looked like a substantial piece of wood, maybe a crate or part of a cart, something that might prove useful. As she gradually made her way toward the point, she collected a few mussels for pottage and a large clamshell suitable for a bowl.

“Mama!”

Avril narrowed her eyes at the wood bobbing in the water. What was it? Though one end appeared to be splintered, the other sides were finished. Maybe it was a broken chest or a table.

“Mama! Look what I found!”

“In a moment!” she called back, studying the piece as it was tossed by the current.

“Mama! It’s my da!”

That got her attention. Avril whipped her head around and peered down the shoreline to where Kimbery was squatting beside a furry bulk on the sand.

It looked like a dead seal.

“See, Mama?”

Of course, Avril realized—Kimbery was pretending she was a selkie, so the dead seal must be her da. The lass had a vivid imagination. “I see!” A seal was indeed a good find. If it was freshly killed, its meat could keep their bellies full a long while. And she could make coats and slippers out of its fur. “I’ll be right there! Don’t touch it!”

A few more yards and she’d get a good look at whatever was floating off the point. If it wasn’t worth salvaging, she’d leave it be and see what she could get off the dead seal.

A broad wave caught the wood and turned it on its side. The instant she saw the design, her heart dropped to the pit of her stomach. A great round knob rose above the water. Painted on its surface in hues of red and blue was the face of a snarling dragon. It was the masthead of a longship.

Time slowed as she dropped her basket and turned toward Kimbery.

“Nay!” she screamed.

She picked up her skirts and tried to race across the beach, but the air suddenly felt heavy, and the sand dragged at her heels. Kimbery seemed impossibly distant and far too close to the body that Avril could see now was not a dead seal, but the remains of a man.

The bloody images of the berserker attack were as clear and fresh as that day five years ago...

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.

Avril was glad Kimbery hadn’t witnessed her mother clouting a helpless castaway.

She winced as she used the pointy end of the driftwood to cautiously sweep aside the unconscious man’s hair. Blood tricked down his temple where she’d struck him, but his pulse still beat steadily in his throat.

Thank God she hadn’t killed him. True, Northmen were degenerate and insidious and evil. But slaying an unarmed man went against everything her father had taught her about honor.

Now what was she going to do with him? He might wake again at any moment. She couldn’t keep clubbing him. But she had to keep him subdued. And she had to get him out of sight.

She didn’t really want him in her home, but she didn’t have much of a choice. She couldn’t afford to have him roaming loose. At least in the cottage, she could keep her eye on him.

Dropping the driftwood, she separated out one long strand of tough kelp caught on his boot and wrapped it around his ankles several times. She wrapped another thick strand around his wrists, noting that his left forearm was bruised and swollen.

She scowled. It looked like he’d broken his arm. Then she remembered he was the enemy and it didn’t matter to her if he’d broken his arm. She only hoped the bonds would hold until she reached the cottage and could tie him up with something more substantial.