The Viking's Woman Read Online Free PDF Page B

when he lay down and closed his eyes.
    “Oh!” He felt her move beneath him. She shoved him, and an awful lethargy swept over him. She was up upon her knees, staring down at him, meeting the blue ice in his eyes. She reached for the knife. His fingers closed around it but he was fading fast. She dug at his hand where he held the blade. He heard her sobs, coming hard and fast and desperate. She intended to slay him. She needed the weapon.
    “My lord! Where are you?”
    Rollo was coming at last. Horses’ hooves pounded against the earth and then ceased, and Eric knew that help had come. He held fast to the knife.
    The girl rose to her feet. Her pulse palpitated furiously in her throat. She turned to run.
    Eric pushed himself up, holding the knife. She made it to the hall and turned around.
    He had a vision of her for a moment in the haze of his mind, caught in the dying light of the day. Tall and slim and regal, her radiant hair flowing out around her like a glorious golden cloud.
    She saw the dagger and his icy gaze, and she gasped, her back against the wall. He held her life in his hands.
    He could have slain her then and there, and they both knew it. Instead he took careful aim and threw the knife, catching her sleeve, pinning her to the wall. He caught the material of her gown, just to the left of her heart.
    He smiled at her with deadly, chilling intent. “I am a Viking, as you say, and you live. Pray, lady. Pray to your God with all your heart that we do not meet again.”
    Her thickly lashed eyes betrayed her terror and her hatred. She stared at him, cried out, and spun around, tearing her tunic free from the blade and the wall, and ran again.
    Then she was gone.
    Rollo burst through the doorway. “Eric!”
    “Here!” Eric called. Rollo reached him, came down to the floor, and helped his leader to his feet.
    “Get me to a bed,” Eric breathed. “Get my physician and an ample supply of ale or mead.”
    “The blood!” Rollo moaned. “Hurry, we must get your wound bound. My prince, you must not die!”
    He smiled at Rollo with grim determination.
    “I’ll not die. I swear it, I’ll not die. I’ll live to find vengeance for this day. I will know what happenedhere, else Alfred of Wessex will soon find himself battling the Norse and the Irish, as well as the Danes.”
    High atop a white-cliffed hill, overlooking the destruction of the Wessex town, a slim youth pushed to his feet from the dirt, backed his way into the foliage, and then ran. His fleet young legs carried him swiftly into the forest on an old Roman trail. His heart pounded, his legs were raw with pain, but he kept on moving until he entered into a copse and there found two mounted English noblemen from Wessex. They were fine lords of the realm, the elder in blue wool and stoat, the younger in forest green trimmed with white fox.
    “Well, boy, tell me of it,” said the elder nobleman.
    The boy panted and was urged, none too gently, to speak up. “It went as you wished. Lord Wilton of Sussex led the battle and fell to the Viking blade immediately. None knew of the king’s invitation or that the Viking ships carried Irishmen as well. Wilton and Egmund are assuredly dead and may well be fingered as the traitors. The townspeople met the Vikings as invaders. The town burns. The men not slain are caught. They will be slaves, and the women concubines.”
    The elder man smiled, a cruel twist to his lip, and the younger of the two noblemen spoke up more anxiously. “What of the ladies Adela and Rhiannon?”
    “Adela escaped as was planned.” The boy paused, fearing the men’s wrath. “The Lady Rhiannon would not leave men loyal to her since birth; she stayed to join in the fight.”
    The younger man began to swear viciously. The serf continued hurriedly.
    “She was caught in the manor by one of them, but in time I saw her escape into the woods by the rear of the manor.”
    “She was caught by a Viking, you say?”
    The youth nodded. “But she