Falling for Her Viking Captive
Autorzy
Harper St. George
Lektury
18,7K
Rozdziały
25
Prologue
They were meant to have arrived at a wedding, but they were greeted by the remnants of a massacre. The smell of smoke had been heavy in the air long before Rurik drew his horse up at the highest point of the rise and stared in disbelief at the valley below. Maerr was in chaos. It was as if a vǫlva had spread her dark magic, transforming his home from a place of beauty and celebration to a scene of death and agony in the mere hours since they had left.
His oldest half-brother, Brandt, drew to a stop beside him. ‘What madness is this?’ he whispered with a stunned reverence that could only be summoned when the horror of a situation eclipsed belief.
The air in the valley was filled with smoke and ash. From this distance, only the sounds of wailing reached them. Bodies lay scattered across the clearing, but Rurik could not tell whether they were living or dead. Weak afternoon sunlight reflected off the blue-grey waters of the fjord, drawing his attention to the stark emptiness. The murderers had fled, leaving his brother Alarr’s wedding a bloodbath.
Were his brothers alive? Alarr, Sandulf and Danr had been left behind while Rurik rode north with Brandt to quell a disturbance in a neighbouring village. Had they been left to face their deaths alone or were they among the living?
As his heart resumed its beating, pumping his blood in a fierce rhythm, Rurik roared his outrage and fear as he followed Brandt towards Maerr, their handful of warriors trailing behind them. A rush of anger prickled over his skin and, with no other adversary in sight, it focused on their father. Advisors had warned him against the recklessness of inviting so many warriors, some of them old enemies turned new allies, to the wedding. Having that many strangers about, many of them unknown to their family, invited danger.
King Sigurd had not listened. He had been too caught up in his grand scheme for power to take well-meaning advice from his trusted men. If he could organise co-operation between the diverse group, he could elevate himself from a minor king to someone whose influence would rival that of King Harald Finehair himself, or so he had reasoned.
Father was nothing if not ambitious and it might have killed him.
The need to fight coursed through Rurik’s blood like a second heartbeat, urging him to take action. He had inherited that impetuous need for action from Sigurd and it was not easily tamed. Gritting his teeth, he urged his horse faster and made it into the clearing at the same time as Brandt. His gaze immediately sought out his brothers among the chaos.
‘Where is Ingrid?’ Brandt shouted for his wife as their youngest brother Sandulf ran to meet them. The boy who was barely out of adolescence had blood on his clothing, but Rurik could not tell if it was his own or if it belonged to someone else.
Vaulting down from his horse, he made it over to them in time to hear Sandulf whisper, ‘Brandt, there’s something you must know.’ His voice held a slight waver.
Their older brother was not listening. His eyes were wide and on something in the distance. Rurik turned to see several bodies lined up on the ground. His gaze skimmed over them, unwilling to linger on a face, afraid that he might see one precious to him. On the end, a cascade of golden hair spread across the dirt, somehow saved from the dark red blood that marred the wearer’s gown and puddled next to her. Rurik did not have to see her face to know that his brother’s pregnant wife lay dead. Nausea turned his stomach as Brandt let out a howl of pain so terrifying in its sorrow that Rurik’s limbs went cold.
In his mind’s eye, he saw Ingrid’s smiling face and gentle eyes as she had been mere hours ago. He saw Brandt lean over her, pressing her back to the wall as he grinned and stole a kiss... Their final kiss. Her voice had been high and clear like music as she had called out to them to be safe. No one had thought to repeat the warning back to her. She had been home, surrounded by their father’s warriors. She was supposed to have been safe.
Sandulf made to go after Brandt when he went to her, so Rurik put a hand on his shoulder. ‘Leave him.’ His voice sounded raw and jagged. He existed in a void where numbness and rage struggled for control.
Sandulf paused and up close Rurik could tell that he had minor wounds. He favoured one shoulder while blood and soot crusted over a gash on his head. Though he was young, Sandulf had seen battle before. Rurik could not help but wonder how his wounds were not worse if he had been involved in this battle. ‘What happened?’ he asked.
Sandulf was pale and visibly shaken. ‘They went into the hall and locked the doors. I tried to...’ He swallowed as if the very telling of it was trying. ‘Father is dead, Rurik.’
Rurik’s gaze jerked back to the line of bodies at the edge of the clearing, searching for their father. If Sigurd was dead, then Rurik had no chance of ever reconciling with him. The man had never been easy and Rurik had always felt at odds with him, but never had he thought there would not be enough time. The bulk of a man lying at the other end, opposite Ingrid, drew his gaze. There was a familiarity in the breadth of the man’s shoulders. Pain swelled in Rurik’s chest, drawing his lungs tight as it forced its way up through the numbness.
Sandulf grabbed his arm in a near-desperate grip. ‘I tried to stop this. I marked one of them.’
Rurik should have been here, but instead he had been sent north. He should have stopped this. Instead, Ingrid’s life had been entrusted to this boy. It was unfair, but Rurik could not stop the words that tore out of him. ‘Only marked? Were you not able to kill one of them?’
He left before Sandulf could answer him. Rurik needed to find his twin Danr, and Alarr. They were the only real family he had left. The only ones who mattered to him. He found Alarr lying in his own blood.
Rurik hurried to his side and knelt beside him. ‘Where are you wounded, Brother?’
‘Gilla.’ Alarr’s voice was a harsh rasp as if his throat was raw from yelling for his bride. He seemed only half-aware of what was going on around them, his eyes unfocused and wary. Someone had already tied cloths around both of Alarr’s calves to stem the flow of blood from his wounds. There was so much of it, Rurik could only guess if his brother would ever walk again.
‘Who did this to you? Tell me and I swear to you that I will hunt the coward and cut him down.’ He did not know if Gilla was alive or dead, but the fact that he had not seen her among the living did not bode well for her.
‘Feann,’ Alarr whispered. ‘Feann and his men.’ He closed his eyes as Hilda, Alarr’s mother, brought a cool cloth to his face. She deftly ignored Rurik, much as she had for all his life, unwilling to acknowledge the living proof of her husband’s unfaithfulness.
It was no surprise the Irish King had turned on them. Rurik had been suspicious of the man’s cunning eyes and arrogant smiles from the start. Feann would be taken care of. ‘I will find him. I promise you.’
But now he had to find out if Danr lived. Rurik was close to all his brothers, but Danr was his twin. The only full-blooded brother he had. The only connection left to his mother. If Danr had died... He forced himself to swallow the ache in his throat and stared at Hilda.
Her hands were eerily calm in the face of what had happened. That had always been her way. She faced all that Sigurd and life had thrown at her with a calm efficiency that might have brooked respect in Rurik if she had bothered to offer him a tiny scrap of the affection she held for her own children. Hilda had never liked him and Danr, for they represented a time when she had lost Sigurd’s affection to the twins’ mother.
‘Have you seen Danr?’ he forced himself to ask Hilda. ‘Does he live?’
Her shoulders tightened and she did not look at him, but she did answer. ‘I do not know.’
His breath rushed out in frustration as he raised his gaze to the devastation. The living rushed around them, hurrying to put out errant flames and to tend the wounded. He wanted to scream out the rage and sorrow building within him. Danr had to be alive. He wouldn’t allow himself to believe otherwise. Finally, his gaze dropped to a lone man standing near the line of fallen bodies, near the bulk of the warrior he knew was their father.
‘He’s dead,’ Danr whispered when Rurik hurried up to him.
Rurik drew his brother into an embrace and thanked the gods he was alive. ‘Are you injured?’ He could see no wound, but Danr was covered with soot as if he had been helping with the fires.
Danr shook his head and faced him. His eyes were stricken and filled with pain. Though they were similar in build, his twin’s hair was blond instead of dark like Rurik’s. In many ways Danr was light to Rurik’s dark. He was often quick with a jest when the moment called for levity, while Rurik would rather brood in his thoughts. Nevertheless, the bond between them was unbreakable.
‘I wasn’t here,’ Danr said with disgust in his voice.
‘Why? Where were you?’
‘I... I meant to come later.’ He took in a long wavering breath. ‘There was a woman.’
Rurik turned as a sharp ache seized his throat. There was always a woman when it came to Danr.
‘Alarr says it was King Feann,’ Rurik said.
‘There were others. I do not know who they were, but the whole place burst open with violence,’ said Danr.
Rurik finally allowed his gaze to come to rest on the bodies at their feet. Their father, Alarr’s bride and her parents, with Ingrid on the end. So much senseless death. He might have understood their father’s murder, but why the others? Why did Ingrid and her unborn child have to die? He stared down at the face of Sigurd, his father. He looked strangely peaceful, yet no less severe for the fact that death had claimed him. His arms were crossed over his chest and his formidable brow was as intimidating as ever.
A swell of tenderness and fury for the man rose in his chest. As a bastard, Rurik had always felt as if a void existed between him and his father. The man had claimed him and Danr, but there had lingered a resentment in Rurik that his own mother had never belonged here. She had been treated as little better than a slave. Now that void would always be there.
His gaze sought the fjord, now empty of ships except the burned-out hulls that had been left behind. Sandulf and Alarr had been the only ones here to face those murderers. With Rurik and Brandt sent north and Danr off with a woman, the attack could not have been planned any better. It was almost as if someone had known they would be caught unawares.
‘No one regrets that I wasn’t here more than I,’ Danr said into the silence.
There was a solemnity in his eyes that Rurik had never seen there before. This day had likely changed them all in ways they could not yet determine. In that moment, the rage burst through, overshadowing the sadness and pain.
How dare anyone come here and destroy them? His gaze moved from Sigurd to Alarr’s bride. She should be preparing to dance on her wedding night. Then he looked at Ingrid. She should have been a mother in only a few weeks. Brandt should be looking forward to welcoming his child into the world. Whatever Sigurd had done to deserve his death, these innocents should not have suffered his fate.
Revenge became more important than his own life. It was the only tangible way to deal with the well of anger opening up inside him.
‘We will find who did this,’ he said to Danr. ‘All of them.’
