The Viking’s Sacrifice by Julia Knight Read Free Book Online Page B

was the courage he had left now, his chance for bravery, worse than battle in some ways. On a raid he’d at least have the chance for glory or to die a good death and have something to tell Odin of his courage when the time came. In this, if he braved the swords of their words, his prize would be a taste of good meat and to get through the night without shame poured on his head. This was his meagre chance for bravery, and he took it.
    He tried to avoid Bausi’s gaze from upon the high seat at the far end and took his place. Not up by Bausi as once would have been his right, but the place farthest from him, by the door.
    He’d barely sat down before it started.
    “Hey, Toki, come to sit with the real men?”
    “Toki, you managed to find a woman stupid enough yet?”
    “I found your tongue, it was in the pigsty.”
    “It’s his brain you want to try to find,” and on. He shut his ears to it and kept his head down. It was worse that the ones who led the jeers were Sigdir and Ragnhilda. His little brother and the woman he’d once hoped to marry. He wouldn’t let their words wound him, wouldn’t let them carry into his heart, where he was still a man. A man who bore this for love of his brother and sister, because he had sworn to Odin on it and no other reason. Halt leg or not, if not for that, then more than one man here tonight would have reason to fear their words. Yet his fear, that need for their safety, bound his hands more securely than any rope.
    Sigdir was Bausi’s man now and Ragnhilda had turned from him the first moment she’d heard of his cowardice, his disgrace. Now she was Bausi’s first wife, heavy with child again. He thought a curse at her, that this child be another daughter, that Bausi would never have a son, no matter how many wives he kept under his roof. He couldn’t bring himself to curse worse, though the deepest part of him wished it. If Ragnhilda’s face was anything to go by—the way it had dried up, as though all the joy was sucked from her—she’d been cursed already. Toki’s shoulders twitched at the thought that conjured, of another curse cut in wood and soaked in blood.
    When they’d returned from the fateful raid, had laid Arni to rest and seen the sad, shrivelled body of their father before they laid him too under his howe, when Toki could finally leave his sickbed, then it had started. Bausi was jarl and had led with his ridicule. The rest followed, some more, some less willingly, and soon it had become as though it had always been so, that Toki hadn’t once been a well-thought-of young warrior, hadn’t once talked with the rest of them. Gone simple-minded from the fear, Bausi had told them when Toki wouldn’t, couldn’t speak for fear of the secret falling out, fear of the curse rune and what Bausi might do to Sigdir and Gudrun because of it.
    Toki had tried to run once, despite Bausi’s warning that it would bring the curse to bear, when it became clear that Sigdir was letting Bausi’s poison grow in him, becoming a hard and hateful man. Yet there was still Gudrun, he could get her away. One day when she’d been about five, he’d made a last attempt at outward courage, had swung her up on his shoulders in a pretence of a game and left. Desperation had driven him to it, but a man with a halt leg carrying a five-year-old had no chance against the seasoned hunters and warriors Bausi sent after them.
    By then it had been clear Bausi was enjoying Toki’s humiliations. Clearer when Gudrun fell ill immediately on their return. Weak, vomiting, seeing things, gradually fading away. Like their father before he died. Things became clearer still when Sigdir guilelessly and earnestly tried to persuade Toki that Bausi was a good man, because he would sit with Gudrun for hours and let no other hand feed her. When the illness mysteriously vanished after Toki went to Bausi and fell to his knees to silently beg, shamed himself still further in the eyes of the village even if they