Prologue
Isle of Skíð (modern-day Scotland)—ad 877
The woman appeared out of nowhere. One moment Danr Sigurdsson was alone, his body cradled amid the tangled roots of an oak tree, the next she was looming above him, the spear in her hand pointing straight at his throat.
He stared up at her, absently wondering who she was and where she’d come from, then gave up the effort and closed his eyes. His head and chest were throbbing. So, too, was his pulse, so hard and fast it felt as though his heart were trying to force its way through his ribcage.
Considering how much blood he’d lost over the past few hours he was surprised it could still summon the strength to beat at all, but at least the pain in his arm was fading to numbness now. If he kept still, he could almost forget the angry, red gouge where the blade had caught him, slicing through skin and muscle and tendon. If he didn’t move at all, scarcely allowing himself to breathe, in fact, he could forget almost everything.
The rustle of leaves overhead had already faded to a dull murmur and the light behind his eyelids was dimming, narrowing around the edges like a tunnel collapsing in on itself, enveloping him in darkness.
Something prodded his neck and he prised his eyelids open again. It was the woman, the blunt edge of her spear nudging lightly against his skin. What did she want? Was she threatening him? If she was, then she didn’t need to. At that moment he couldn’t have put up a fight with a kitten.
The very air felt heavy, pinning him to the ground as if there were a fallen tree lying across his chest. He was going to die whether she impaled him or not and he wasn’t going to protest either way. Perhaps it was best that she went ahead and put him out of his misery quickly. He would have failed his brothers—again—but at least it would have been while trying to fulfil his oath.
He curled the fingers of his good arm around the hilt of his sword, Bitterblade, determined to die like a warrior even if he couldn’t fight back, but the woman didn’t move as much as a muscle. As far as he could tell, she didn’t even blink. He felt a flicker of unease, wondering if she were some figment of his imagination or apparition. She looked like one, her narrow, expressionless face streaked with grey smudges while her hair tumbled in such wild, half-braided, half-loose disarray that it resembled a cloak of golden hay around her shoulders. She was a lot like a spear herself, he thought, sleek and slender with a flat chest and shoulders the same width as her hips, though he hated himself for noticing. Apparently it was true what Rurik had always said: Danr would still be looking at women on his deathbed... Well, here he was on it now, though perhaps it was only fitting. A woman had brought him into the world, albeit reluctantly, and now a woman was going to take him out of it. It would be a fitting revenge for all the ones he’d known and discarded in between.
He waited, feeling increasingly uneasy beneath her silent scr
utiny. Even from where he lay on the ground he could see that her eyes were pale and striking, like oyster pearls, mirroring the sky behind her head, an iridescent grey speckled with flakes of silver that looked a lot like...snow?
Somehow he dragged a laugh up out of his chest. This was truly the end, then. He hadn’t even realised that it was cold enough—or late enough in the year—for snow, though now he thought about it he could see whispery coils of air emerging from his mouth. From hers, too, which at least proved she was a real flesh-and-blood woman, no matter how spectral she seemed. Snow was filling the air all around them, covering his broken and bloodied body in a gauzy white layer. After everything that he and his brothers had gone through, after they’d travelled so far and fought so many enemies from Maerr to Eireann to Constantinople to Alba, now he was going to die here in a forest all on his own and be buried in snow. His body would probably lie where it was for months, encased in ice, refusing to rot away until spring. Maybe Hilda would be the one to eventually find him and know that she’d won.
He gave a grunt of disgust and then froze, the hairs on the back of his neck rising at the sound of an answering growl. With an effort he lifted his head, his already pounding heartbeat redoubling in speed at the sight of a wolf—no, two wolves—stalking through the undergrowth towards him, their teeth bared in twin snarls, no doubt drawn by the scent of his blood.
Quickly, he shifted his gaze back to the woman, trying to convey a warning with his eyes since his throat was too dry to speak, but she appeared not to notice, her expression unreadable as the wolves came to stand on either side of her like a pair of dark sentinels. Maybe she really was an apparition after all, Danr thought with a shudder, an unforgiving ice maiden like the ones of which his mother had told him and Rurik as boys, a supernatural force able to control the animals of the forest as well as the elements. If she were, then he was entirely at her mercy. She could do whatever she wanted and there was nothing he could do to stop her.
He swallowed, waiting for her to decide his fate. At least a spear would be quick, whereas being torn apart by wolves... Surely not even he deserved that?
Did he?
He dropped his head back to the ground and closed his eyes for a few seconds, feeling the kiss of cold flakes on his lids and lashes, but when he opened them again she was gone and the wolves were nowhere to be seen. All he could see was snow.
Chapter One
Six hours earlier
It couldn’t be this easy.
Danr stood among the trees at the edge of the forest, watching a solitary figure walking along the stony shore of the sea loch below. He could see only the side of her face, but there was no doubt in his mind that it was Hilda. Even if it hadn’t been for the braid of dark hair hanging down to her knees, there was the familiar stiff posture, the self-important tilt of her head and the imperiously raised chin. He didn’t need to see her expression to know what it would be. She’d wielded it against him for twenty-two years, the arrogant look that proclaimed she was the only woman in Maerr who mattered—who’d ever mattered; she was Jarl Sigurd’s wife, a hundred times more important than Danr’s dead mother who had been his concubine.
Not any more.
Three years ago, everything had changed. The bloody massacre on his half-brother Alarr’s wedding day had brought the world they’d known crashing down around their ears, destroying their home, their security and their family’s reputation all in one fell swoop. Their father, the mighty Sigurd, had been murdered alongside Alarr’s betrothed, Gilla, his elder half-brother Brandt’s wife, Ingrid, and several of the helmsmen who’d tried to defend them. No one in Maerr had been the same since, especially Danr and Rurik and their half-brothers Brandt, Alarr and Sandulf. Afterwards, their need for answers and vengeance had eclipsed all other concerns, including holding on to their father’s kingdom. Eventually they’d all left their homeland in pursuit of the assassins while the widowed Hilda had fled to the island of Skíð on the west coast of Alba with their father’s former helmsman, Joarr.
At first, her hasty remarriage less than a year after her husband’s murder had seemed a reasonable response to all the political upheaval in Maerr, but now there were questions, significant ones, that needed answers. Which was why he was there on Skíð, just for answers. That was the agreement he’d made with Sandulf when they’d parted ways. He was there to confront Hilda with the evidence they’d uncovered and demand an explanation. Under no circumstances was he to seek retribution, no matter what that explanation turned out to be. Of course, Sandulf was still looking for alternative answers, not wanting to believe his mother guilty of any involvement in the massacre, but Danr’s intuition told him the opposite. Between them, the five sons of Sigurd were closing in on whoever had sent the assassins and he knew Hilda was involved somehow. All he needed to do was prove it.
But it couldn’t be this easy. He’d been on the island for less than a day and there she was, the very first person he came across, alone and seemingly unarmed. It was much too easy. He was known for his cunning, for his well-laid plans and clever stratagems in battle, for never rushing in without looking at a situation from all angles first, but at that moment he didn’t care. His temper flared like a torch dipped in oil at the sight of her. He wanted answers and he was going to get them any way he could. Now.
He threw one last cautious look up and down the beach, making sure that no one else was in sight before striding purposefully across the pebbles towards her. The sea loch was long and narrow, bordered by rolling hills and thick forest on the south-western edge of the island, with impressive views of the mountains that rose up like stone giants to the north. At any other time he might have stopped to admire the jagged ridges and snow-capped pinnacles in the distance, but now his vision seemed to be glazed with red.
Hilda turned at the last moment, alerted by the sound of crunching stones beneath his feet, her welcoming smile turning immediately to a look of surprise and hostility. That was familiar, too. Obviously her low opinion of him hadn’t mellowed in the three years since they’d left Maerr and the feeling was more than mutual.
‘You?’ She kept her haughty chin raised.
‘Me.’ Danr curled his lip in a pretence of a smile. ‘It’s been a long time, Stepmother. Did you miss me?’
If he hadn’t been so angry, he might have laughed at the way her whole body stiffened, like wood petrifying before his very eyes. She’d always hated him calling her that—which was exactly the reason he did it so often. His very existence—and that of his twin brother, Rurik—was a source of deep-seated resentment for her, a resentment that had only grown stronger since their mother’s death when Sigurd had brought them to live in his own hall. For as long as Danr could remember, Hilda had done her best to ignore the two boys, as if by doing so she could wilfully forget her husband’s infidelity, too. His quieter twin had responded in kind, but Danr had chosen the opposite approach of baiting her at every opportunity he got. And he saw absolutely no reason to stop now.
‘What are you doing here?’ Hilda’s voice positively seethed with dislike.
‘Can’t I come for a visit?’ He spread his arms out as if he expected her to embrace him, knowing full well she would have preferred to walk over hot coals. For his part, he would rather have hugged a snake. ‘For old times’ sake?’
‘No!’
‘That’s not very hospitable.’
‘I’m not feeling very hospitable.’ She looked past him, her expression turning hopeful. ‘Is Brandt with you? Alarr? Sandulf?’
‘No.’ He took pleasure in her obvious disappointment. ‘I came alone.’
‘Why? What do you want, Danr?’
‘Straight to the point, as always.’ He laid a hand on the pommel of his sword, drumming his fingers lightly against it. ‘I want the same thing my brothers want: the truth about who killed our father.’
‘We all want that!’ She sounded impatient. ‘It
still doesn’t explain what you’re doing here.’
‘Doesn’t it?’ He let his fingers go still, lowering his voice to an undertone and allowing his smile to fade slowly. ‘Can you think of no reason at all?’
‘What?’ The air between them seemed to thicken with tension as her eyes widened and then darted towards the village at the far end of the beach. ‘Maybe we should talk inside.’
‘I thought you just said I wasn’t welcome?’ He lifted an eyebrow mockingly.