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contracts for them both.
    Erika should be ecstatic. He had promised her she would be well pleased with the man he brought home for her, and she had little doubt she would be, for Ragnar wanted her to be happy. The trouble was, a husband of her own was no longer such a hoped-for circumstance. Her brother had given her so much—spoiled her, actually—that she was perfectly happy to remain where she was. Even her desire for children was answered in Ragnar’s son, Thurston, whose upbringing she had taken over.
    In truth, she did still want a husband, and did still hope for love to come her way, and she prayed often that the man Ragnar found for her would be that love. But she was so content as she was, that she feared a change, feared she wouldn’t be as happy as she was now.
    She supposed her fears were normal, the same shared by most women when faced with imminent marriage to an unknown man. Herlife would change again, when she was not long used to the one she had.
    Yet she knew her lot would change anyway when Ragnar married again. That was inevitable. And although she would be welcome in Ragnar’s home for the rest of her life if she chose to stay here, she didn’t care to feel useless and unneeded again.
    So she hadn’t mentioned her preference when the subject first came up, nor did she ask for a year or two of grace before she must wed. Ragnar thought he was giving her her fondest wish. She let him think so. But she wasn’t all that happy about it. She simply wished that things could remain just as they were now. But then, she had no idea that things were about to change drastically, and much sooner than she expected.

Chapter 5
    T HE OXCART TRUDGED slowly down the wooded lane, an old woman, hands gnarled, gray hair straggly, sitting behind the reins. A young woman limped beside the cart, though without pain, the limp caused by one leg being shorter than the other, a phenomenon she was born with. The stench of death met them long before they came upon the bodies in the road. It was a smell old Valda welcomed. It was a smell her young niece, Blythe, abhorred, but had grown used to.
    Seeing the corpses finally, Valda guided the cart to the side of the road and eagerly jumped down. She was spry for an old woman, and swift to move through the dead, searching through a pocket here, turning a body over there.
    It wasn’t long before Blythe heard her grumble. “Faugh, scavengers have beat us to them.”
    She should have said other scavengers, for Valda supported herself and her niece on the leavings of the dead. The wars that had ravaged the land for so many years were a boon to her and her kind, and she would followin the wake of the Danish armies. With the excuse that she was looking for her son, no one would bother her as she picked through the bodies of the fallen, pocketing whatever coin or jewelry came easily to hand.
    But what Valda had said was true. Other scavengers had already found these dead men and picked them clean. All the boots save one hole-ridden pair were missing; all the cloaks, the leather, the weapons, the wool. Only two tunics remained, these rent so badly by the inflicted wounds as to make them unwanted even by a scavenger. Most of the men still had their braies on, bloodied and stinking of death, though their chausses were gone. Two were completely naked, even their underwear fine enough to warrant taking. Lords, likely, those two.
    Blythe stood upwind of the carnage, patiently waiting for her aunt to finish. Valda was angry that naught had been left behind for her, and was yanking off one of the remaining tunics. Blythe knew that she would wash the garment, stitch it, and sell it at market for a hot meal.
    Blythe was loath to touch the dead bodies herself, and her aunt never insisted she help, which she was grateful for. She did the selling of whatever they found, and the selling of herself when times were lean. Valda had raised her, and it was the only life she knew. But Valda was getting on in