Legend of the Mist Read Online Free PDF Page B

your business, but I have not.”
    “Good. I hope she’s hurt that you ignore her.”
    “ As much as I hate to upset your youthful flights of fancy, I hardly think hurt has anything to do with it,” he corrected her. “And I hardly think she’ll have given it a second thought when she has more than enough customers willing to pay for the pleasure of her charms.”
    “Charms? H a!” Siri barked, tossing her long, golden hair over her shoulder. “Ten years ago, perhaps. Her fruit is a little overripe now, I think.”
    “Mind your tongue,” Torsten admonished, swatting at her. She ducked easily out of his reach, skipping sideways with a grin.
    “ I knew you would not pursue a withered old bat such as Gnud,” Siri continued, unfazed. “No, my Torsten would not lower himself to consort with her lot. My Torsten is waiting for a chaste, young maid.”
    “I doubt I’m waiting for anyone.”
    “So you say . But I know different.”
    “Is that so? Do enlighten me, sister, on the secrets of my heart. I certainly don’t know what they are.”
    “It is because you are not a woman,” she responded matter-of-factly. “A woman knows these things. You, my dear brother, are destined for a great love. I feel it.”
    “You’ve been paying too much attention to your silly, young companions and their girlish stories, more like. I can assure you that my lack of a wife has nothing to do with some great plan. It is a selfish act on my part: I simply don’t feel like taking a wife. Really, Siri, you must get such ridiculous notions out of your head. Especially now that you are to be wed.”
    “ You need not remind me,” she sighed. “I know my marriage is one of strategy and alliance. I’ve no illusions that Rulfudd is in love with me.”
    “Does Einarr know yet of the betrothal?”
    “I think he does, though I have not yet spoken with him myself. Father greeted him when his longships docked, then took him straight up to the castle to discuss the goings on here. I cannot imagine he forgot to tell him about such an important match. You should have seen him,” she added laughing. “He was down at the docks waiting when Einarr’s ships came in. Practically hopping with excitement, he was.”
    “ I have no doubt,” Torsten agreed dryly. Their father pined for the loss of his eldest son to the a-viking season each year, and was like an excited child each time Einarr returned home to Hvaleyrr.
    In that manner they ascended the incline on which the village was built together, their banter easy as it usually was. At length the castle at the heart of the village came into view. It was the seat of Jarl Alfrad Greybeard, Torsten, Einarr and Siri’s father. It was one which Harald Fairhair was eager to get his hands on, being a rather lucrative port in the commercial trade between Norway and the lands of Britain and Ireland.
    As they reached the summit of the sloping town and approached the main gate the castle loomed before them. It was a vast and impressive structure, built to such a grand scale to demonstrate Alfrad’s wealth and position.
    A group of Einarr’s men loitered about the entrance to the castle as Torsten and Siri passed through the arched gates. Their faces were rough and weathered from a summer on the seas, and they looked as though they had not bathed in months. Which, likely, they hadn’t.
    “Welcome back,” Torsten greeted them.
    A number of them grunted in response. There weren’t very many of them that Torsten liked or respected, but he maintained a level of civility with all of them for the simple fact that he had no concrete reason not to.
    The feeling was reciprocated: the men didn’t much like or respect Torsten either. Torsten didn’t go a-viking often. He did not like it, did not like constant war, constant killing. It was draining to the soul. When he did go, he was usually guilted into it by Einarr and his father, by talk of Viking pride and Viking revenge.
    They were both in the hall when