Redeeming Her Viking Warrior

I’d seen an injured warrior.’

‘Then you knew who he was!’ Danr’s eyes flashed accusingly. ‘You helped him even though you knew he was the one who did this to me!’

‘Yes. I help people who need it.’ Calmly, she disentangled a twig from the back of her neck. ‘Just because he’s your enemy doesn’t make him mine.’

‘Then you’re on his side.’ Danr folded his arms belligerently.

‘I’m on nobody’s side. I didn’t tell him anything.’

‘You still could have—’

‘No!’ She put the comb down abruptly. ‘You can’t expect me to take sides when I don’t even know what the argument is and you can’t expect me not to help someone without telling me why.’ She levelled a stare at him. ‘You talk about everything else. Why not about why you’re here?’

‘Because some things aren’t easy to talk about!’

‘Do you think I don’t know that?’

‘You’re right.’ He looked around the clearing and rubbed a hand over his face. ‘Of course you know that, but it’s not as if you’ve told me much either. All I know is that you speak Norse and that you learnt healing from a Gael woman who rescued you from the forest. I have no idea who you are or where you came from. I don’t even know your name.’

‘And all I know is that you came here for answers from a man with two cracked ribs and that you never say two words when ten will do! I don’t owe you an explanation. That was part of our agreement. You’re the one who came and asked for my help!’

They glared at each other for a few seconds, their jaws clenched, before he sighed and sat down on the tree stump. ‘Joarr was my father’s helmsman and my friend. My good friend. He was like a father to me once.’

She lifted her chin. ‘He came to the island with a woman over a year ago. I’ve seen him a few times, but he’s never asked for my help before.’

‘Will his ribs heal?’

‘Yes. As long as he doesn’t get into any more fights.’

’I never wanted to fight him in the first place. He’s a kinsman of Knut’s, but he’s not the one I need to speak to. I came to Skíð for the woman—Hilda. She’s my father’s widow, my stepmother of sorts, although she hates to be called that. She’s married to Joarr now.’

‘So you came to ask questions of her?’

‘Yes.’ He lowered his head, his shoulders heaving as if at some heavy burden hanging around them. ‘I came to find out if she murdered my father.’

Chapter Ten

Danr laid his forearms across his knees, staring at the ground beneath his feet. It was mostly compact earth with a scattering of twigs and pine needles, as well as five woodlice, one spider and a pair of ants skittering towards the stump. Erika-Bersa hadn’t made any response to his last statement, presumably because she was waiting for him to explain, but it was hard to know where to begin. With the massacre on Alarr’s wedding day? No, if he was going to tell her about Hilda then he had to go back even further, back to the aftermath of his mother’s death.

‘I told you that Rurik and I moved into our father’s hall after our mother died. He was the Jarl, but we were acknowledged as his bastards. I looked so much like him that it would have been hard for him not to acknowledge us, but we were still treated differently from his other sons. Hilda saw to that.’

‘You mentioned Brandt and Alarr before.’

‘Yes. Brandt is the eldest, Alarr was born the same summer as Rurik and I, then Sandulf is the youngest. We were always close, as close as full brothers could be, but Hilda hated Rurik and me from the start. She let us know that she didn’t want us there and in return I made it clear I loathed her, too. I thought it was the least I could do for my mother.’

‘Didn’t your father intervene? Try to make peace?’

He gave a curt laugh. ‘Peace was never high on the list of my father’s priorities. Our feud amused him. And I was just a bastard, after all. It didn’t really matter how I behaved or what I said. He liked me to be wild. He liked to hear of my exploits, too. Stupid, dangerous things at first, like diving from cliffs into the sea or fighting other boys twice my size, but as I grew older, it became all about women.’ He looked up to watch her reaction. ‘For some reason women always liked me. It was almost too easy to bed them. And the more women I bedded, the more it amused my father. Sometimes he invited me on to the high bench at nattmal just so I could tell him about my latest partner. He always made sure it was in Hilda’s hearing, too.’

‘Do you mean mates?’ She drew her brows together, her expression faintly quizzical.

‘Temporary mates, yes. They were all willing, but some of them wanted more from me than I could give. Marriage, commitment...’ He dropped his gaze back to the dirt. ‘I treated them badly. All I thought about was myself, never their feelings.’

‘So you treated them the way your father treated your mother?’

‘What?’ He jerked his head up again, angry at the comparison. ‘No! I never deceived a woman the way he did my mother. I never laid hands on an innocent either. All those women knew what they wanted. Half of them only wanted to bed the Jarl’s son.’

‘You just admitted that you never considered their feelings. It sounds similar to me.’