The Viking’s Sacrifice Read Online Free PDF

so much easier. The pig snuffled at his boots and tried to steal the turnips he’d pulled.
    His horse stamped a hoof and snorted in alarm. A raven made its perch on the horse’s back, digging in its scrabbling claws. It cocked its head and regarded Toki with a beady eye through the swirling snow. He sat back on his heels and watched it in turn, a feeling of foreboding churning his stomach. Raven’s Home Fjord saw many of the birds. They nested on the outcrop of rock called Odin’s Helm, their cries echoing round the mountaintops. Odin’s birds, which gave warning, birds of sacrifice and ill-omen. It was rare they came so close, almost within touching distance. Toki slid a hand to his amulet, a warding, a protection.
    The raven launched into flight and stooped down over the fjord below with a triple warning cry. Toki lurched to his feet and watched it plummet almost to the water before it turned and skimmed the smooth surface of the fjord, the water dark and bleak, smooth as oil, cold as death. With a further triple cry that sounded thin and weak, the raven swooped up and over a ship and was lost to view in the swirling snowfall. Sigdir’s ship, with its raven’s sail. Two more behind. The raiders had returned and that must count a success.
    The ships cut their paths through the water, oars in perfect rhythm, the wind that blew stinging little flakes of snow into Toki’s face pushing the raiders home. Bausi had been right about one thing; they had become strong. He’d increased the raids and, with the wealth that brought in, many men had come to join him from other fjords. He rewarded them well and so they stayed and each year the raids became bigger, ranged farther, brought back more wealth in gold and slaves. Each year they became stronger. This was the last raid to return this year and the first one Bausi had allowed Sigdir to lead, while he’d led the main force elsewhere and killed a king, or so he boasted.
    There would be a feast in honour of Sigdir’s first success, Bausi would lay on meat and ale, and the spoils would be bartered and sold. A good day for the fjord, for the men who’d raided. Meat and ale. Toki’s stomach rumbled at the thought. The snow had come too soon, before half his crops had ripened properly in their shady bed. The pig wasn’t fat enough to slaughter, but it would have to be done. Toki didn’t have enough food to keep it alive during the long snows and dark days, and meat from the pig was almost all he had for himself.
    The ships pulled up on the shore and men tumbled out, greeted by their women and Bausi’s warriors, who’d returned only two days ago. Other men, those who hadn’t raided—the too old, the too young or, like Toki, deemed too incapable—gathered round with much slapping of backs and rough laughter that drifted up to Toki like acrid smoke.
    He should go to the feast. It was time to come down the mountain for the winter anyway. If he had the courage, if he wasn’t the coward they made out, he would go, would close his mind and ears to the by-names he now went by. It wasn’t courage that decided him in the end. It wasn’t even the thought of a full belly for once, of proper meat—beef, pork, mutton—not the scant and scrawny hares that were often his only source of food. It was company he craved, even company that shunned him.
    Far below, Sigdir jumped down from the ship, instantly recognisable from the shock of flame-red hair he’d inherited from their father, and a tightness in Toki’s chest loosened. His little brother, not so little now, a full-grown man of eighteen, strong and brave. Unlike Toki, Sigdir came back in one piece, came back a man of Thor. Toki would go to the feast, if only to see Sigdir and Gudrun, whose safety had led him to this shameful hovel, to this lonely, silent life. To see them, know they were safe, he would brave a dragon’s den, cast all his courage on one action.
    He packed up what little he’d managed to gather to see him