The Viking’s Sacrifice Read Online Free PDF Page B

through the long winter, got the brace of hares he’d trapped that morning, and shooed the pig ahead of him while he limped to the grazing tether.
    He’d named the stout dun horse Einar, silently in his head, for he was sheen-mane, young, strong and handsome. As Toki had once been.
     
    Wilda gave thanks to God when the ships finally stopped moving and pulled up on the shore. She lay shivering under the scant protection of a blanket, no match for the bitter wind or the biting flecks of snow. It had been worse for some of the other women the Northmen had taken, from other villages along the coast, who Sigdir’s men claimed for bed-slaves. Sigdir himself had chosen Myldrith. Wilda had protested, had even offered herself instead, because Myldrith wasn’t strong enough, had never seen the inside of a man’s bed before and still had rosy notions of how it should be.
    Wilda was strong enough, open-eyed enough—she’d had to be. A bed-slave wasn’t much different from your father selling you to a man twice your age and more in return for no outright hostility, to settle a decades-old feud. It was to be borne, that was all, if she wished to survive. Be practical. Live, and thank God for His mercy in allowing your life when too many died. Think only of that, not how you want to run.
    Sigdir had brushed her off with a wave of his hand and his cryptic words through the collared slave. “I would not dishonour a lady of the Saxons in such a way.” Though he’d said it with a look that Wilda had taken to mean “Yet.” A look that had made her heart shiver. You will bear this. You will live. You must, if it is God’s will.
    She’d tried again, until the threat of a sword had her acquiescent. When Myldrith returned to their little patch at the rear of the ship—some blankets to hold out the chill was their only luxury—Wilda had done what she could to console her, but it was precious little, even if it seemed Sigdir hadn’t been overly rough with her. No more so than Wilda’s own wedding night perhaps.
    It was enough that Sigdir had the power over them, and that was what made Myldrith sob. That, and that she’d sinned against God, lying with a man not her husband, and a heathen too. No soft words of Wilda’s helped. Until today, Myldrith had never let go her foolish dreams of marriage and a man’s bed, had never discovered as Wilda had that the bards lied, that a marriage was a bargain, a sale from a father to a husband as surely as a slave was sold, and yet was necessary. It was how it was.
    The stripping of those dreams laid Myldrith bare, as they had made Wilda cold of heart when hers had been taken by blood and murder. She hoped Myldrith didn’t end the same—for all her faults she was a sweet girl and didn’t deserve that, to live in cold numbness.
    Finally, after three days of rough weather, slanting sleet and now snow, the ship stopped rocking and Wilda’s stomach began to settle. One of the heathens came toward them, his face wild and ruddy behind his tangled beard. Wilda faced him steadily at the forefront of the gaggle of slaves and refused to cringe back as he reached down, grabbed her arm and dragged her and Myldrith to the rail. He spoke to them in a language Wilda could only make out bits of, and shoved them toward the front of the ship. Another shove, like being barged by a horse, indicated they should get off. Wilda managed all right, but Myldrith stumbled onto the shore, weak from days of sickness on the sea, the oddness of the places they passed, the looming mountains seemingly made for fog and cloud and snow. All that had gone before faded in the face of the sea and now this harsh landscape.
    Wilda held herself together and helped Myldrith up. The heathen shoved them again with an angry wave of his hand. It was so odd, that the men and the country seemed made for each other. Hard and forbidding, dark in the deep parts, yet Wilda had seen high pastures and lower fields trim and tended, seen