The Viking's Woman by Heather Graham Read Free Book Online

father and Egmund and Wilton had slain them all and sent their boats back to sea, afire. She had known fear before. And there had always been danger, enough that her father had determined she should learn something of archery and swordplay. With him she had always hunted boar and deer in the forest, with falcons and hawks. But it was at archery that she excelled. Her father had boasted that she could thread a sewing needle from a hundred paces, and though his men had laughed, they had all known thatit was not far from the truth. She could hit almost any target.
    Until today, when it had mattered so desperately.
    She wondered then, bitterly, why her arrows had not hit home.
    Or why the Viking had thrown his dagger so as not to slay her. She knew instinctively that if he had wanted to kill her, she would be dead.
    She gave a deep sigh. Night was falling. She did not want to think about the fair-haired giant anymore, and she would not. She would not tremble, and she would not remember the heat or the strength of him, or the danger in his ice-blue eyes.
    Pray, milady … that we do not meet again …
.
    An owl shrieked in the night. Rhiannon nearly fell from the horse, then she caught her seat again. The moon was rising. It would light her way and she would not stop.
    But she was exhausted and heart-weary, and she suddenly felt terribly, terribly alone. She could not help but remember when they had brought her father’s body to her mother. Rhiannon had seen his face, his handsome, proud face, reduced to the ashen pallor of death. She had seen the blood dried upon his temple, and the massive gash from the Danish battle-ax that had split his skull in two. She had screamed, held his bloody head, and crooned to him as though to revive him. Then her mother had pulled her away at last, and she had nearly ceased to believe that there could be a God in heaven.
    And now Egmund, Wilton, and Thomas. And so many others.
    Rhiannon threw back her head and screamed, andthe heartbreaking sound was terrible. They would take no more from her. She swore it. They would take no more from her—ever again. She would die first.
    Alfred, King of Wessex, paused as he walked from the chapel to the manor. He stared up at the morning sky. The rain had stopped, and it seemed that the crimson streaks of morning painting the sky were like a portent of blood. He was a pious man, a great believer in the one and only Catholic church of Christ, but this morning the sky seemed an ancient, pagan warning.
    He sighed. He was not ready to return to the house. To see his wife’s face, to listen to the children. To have the children see him and stop their laughter and grow tense.
    He wound his fingers tightly into his fists.
God in Heaven, in Your infinite mercy, let this battle that comes be the one to tame the beast that plagues
.
    He could not remember when the Danes did not control his life. His earliest memory of childhood was his pilgrimage to Rome, a journey taken by a four-year-old because his father and brothers could not be spared from battle. And now they were gone. All gone. His father, three older brothers. None had had the opportunity to grow old.
    There was a natural seat, formed from ancient rock, between the wooden chapel and the long manor house. Alfred sat there and realized that his fingers were still clenched into fists.
    He had battled the Danes first with his brother, and when he had died, Alfred had been twenty-one. A young man, with a young wife and a child due. Nowthat child was nearly fifteen, and Alfred was grateful that his firstborn had been a girl and that her coming of age would not prepare her for this endless war and for death. But a son had followed his daughter, and he would come of age soon enough.
    He stared up at the sky and wondered at the message in the bloody-looking streaks. What had happened, or what was to come? Though he hadn’t the fey instincts of the Celtish folk, he knew that England herself still hovered sometimes on