The Warrior's Viking Bride

‘Who requires me?’ she said in a snarl, annoyed that she had noticed the breadth of his shoulders.

‘Ah, there you are, Dagmar,’ Olafr said with a smirk. ‘I had wondered if you in your eagerness had already departed for battle.’

Dagmar ignored the jibe. Before her first battle, she had set off early as her mother had been delayed with a split shield. Dagmar’s actions had ensured they surprised the raiders and carried the day. Olafr had not even been part of the felag then. Her mother had found it amusing and the tale had grown with each telling.

Whenever Olafr repeated the tale, he made it seem as though she was some sort of spoilt and naive girl, rather than a shield maiden who had taken a wise course of action and turned the tide of the battle.

‘A visitor before battle?’ Dagmar tapped her sword against her hand.

‘Sweetling...’ Olafr began with another smirk.

Dagmar cut him off with an imperious gesture. ‘My mother bequeathed her men to me. I should’ve been informed immediately when a stranger came into the camp.’

‘Always leaping to the wrong conclusion.’ Olafr’s smile grew broader. ‘I brought him to you. Is it my fault that he encountered me first? If so, I beg your pardon and will turn my back on any other messenger. No, no, I will tell them, I’m but a humble servant who can give no counsel.’

‘Humble is the last thing you are, Olafr.’

‘I know my worth.’ He gave a little swagger. ‘Your mother saw it. Others see it, Dagmar the Blind Shield Maiden.’

Dagmar belatedly wondered if she had fallen into a trap. For all his bluster, Olafr was a capable warrior. Her mother had relied on his counsel during her final few months. On her deathbed, she’d urged Dagmar to do the same. However, there was something about the man which made her flesh crawl.

‘Go on. Why do you seek me out rather than readying your men for battle as I instructed?’

‘This man, Aedan mac Connall, seeks Dagmar Kolbeinndottar. Urgently.’ He bowed. ‘Are you acquainted with such a person? Or shall I send him away to seek her elsewhere?’

Dagmar pressed her lips together. Her stepmother would not send a Gael if her father had died, she would send an assassin to ensure that her son inherited all her father’s holdings, rather than sharing it out equally between his children like the law in the North demanded. Her mother had drummed this into her since the night they fled into the forest with only Old Alf for protection—to be prepared for the knife in the night.

‘I’ve no time for riddles or to slit his throat. More’s the pity. The men need to be ready to march when the trumpet sounds.’ She turned towards the warrior and said very slowly in his tongue. ‘I will lead my men to victory and then we will speak, Gael.’

Olafr raised a brow in that irritatingly smug way of his. ‘It might be worth your while to hear the man out before cutting his throat. No harm, unless you wish to continue with a battle that you must surely lose. You get more impulsive by the day, Dagmar.’

Dagmar ground her teeth. He made it sound as though she was unblooded, rather than being a veteran of five summers’ fighting. She’d stopped being so eager years ago. There was a sort of nervous anticipation, a wanting to get the waiting finished. But after her first experience, she had never been eager for a battle. People she loved died or were injured. Battles were ugly messy things and had to be endured. If today went as she planned, this would be her final one.

‘I gave my word to my mother and she gave hers to the King.’ She crossed her arms over her bound breasts and glared at Olafr. ‘Would you have me break my promise? Would you have me lose my mother’s lands? Would you have me branded an untrustworthy traitor?’

‘What I have to say can wait until you have time.’ Aedan mac Connall made a smooth bow. ‘But it will be in your interest to hear me out before you slit my throat, Dagmar, daughter of both the great Helga and Kolbeinn the Blood-Axe.’

‘If you wish to stay, you must be prepared to fight,’ Dagmar said, her look scathing. ‘We require warriors who are capable of lifting a shield.’

‘My skill with sword and shield has never been in question.’ He raised an arrogant brow. ‘If I fight for you, will you hear me out? Will you listen to your father’s message right to the end? Will you allow me to keep my head attached to my shoulders and breathing?’

Dagmar hated the small shiver of anticipation that ran down her spine. Her father must have heard about her mother’s death. Perhaps he would be open to an alliance now... But then she dismissed the thought as wishful thinking. Her father cared little for her hopes and dreams and everything for his legacy, the one which would go to his son. ‘After the battle, much can happen including listening to my father’s emissary.’

His blue-green eyes assessed her as if he could see the woman beyond the snake-plaited hair and the paint. ‘Very well, my dog and I will fight for you in the coming battle.’

She noted that Olafr appeared to be nonplussed. Perhaps Old Alf was correct—he did intend mischief during the battle. ‘Problem, Olafr?’

He smoothed his face. His smile was far too quick and assured to be genuine. ‘Not in the slightest, Lady. After the battle, you say...’

‘I will fulfil my promise to my mother before I entertain anything else.’ Dagmar grabbed her shield. She felt more in control with it in her hand. Her father’s messenger could wait. What he wanted from her was the least of her concerns. If he died in battle, then the fates will have decided her path. ‘Go to the westernmost edge of the line, Olafr, and fill the gap caused by the loss of Gunnar.’

Olafr’s eyes flashed. ‘I thought I would go more to the right.’

‘Do you wish to challenge me for the leadership of this felag, Olafr?’ she asked, putting a hand on her hip. ‘If so, I would suggest making that challenge before the battle begins. Otherwise allow me to deploy the men as I see fit.’

A tick developed under his right eye. ‘I will go where my lady desires.’

‘What happened to your missing warrior?’ the Gael asked.

‘He ate something which disagreed with him and lurks in his tent with watery bowels,’ she replied, rubbing the back of her neck and trying to get rid of the sudden tightness. ‘As you don’t appear to have a working shield, you may use his, if you are sincere about wishing to assist me. Or return to my father and inform him that I have little time for him. You’re lucky. I’m in a good mood. Did my father inform you of his other messengers’ fate?’

‘I appreciate the shield, Lady.’ The Gael made another bow, perfectly correct, but there was a hint of arrogance in it as if he could make her change her mind about not having anything to do with her father.

‘After the battle, we will talk.’ Silently she prayed to Odin that it would not be necessary to kill this Gael, but anyone sent from her father’s house usually brought trouble.

* * *

Aedan ground his teeth as he waited for the signal that the attack could begin. How Kolbeinn must have chortled when he waved Aedan goodbye. Kolbeinn stood to win whatever the outcome—either the man got his daughter returned or a troublesome enemy was eliminated and his lands acquired. Aedan had gone into this quest blind and naive. A Northman never offered a fair deal. He had little hope in winning this wager without divine intervention.

‘He means to kill her.’ An old man sidled up to Aedan while keeping a wary eye on Aedan’s dog.

‘Who? Olafr Rolfson?’ Aedan asked the grizzled warrior.

The man gave the briefest of nods towards the warrior who had greeted him. ‘Now he has to wait until you have said your piece, to see if it brings him some advantage. He is greedy, that one, make no mistake.’

‘Why are you telling me this?’

‘You’re from her father rather than that witch of a stepmother. You mean to take her back. There is no point denying it or causing your dog to growl at me. I’m far too long in the tooth, but I know the meaning of the sword you carry. Now that her mother has died, I am the only one left who does. You are to be treated like a friend, not an enemy. After all this time, he remembered the signal.’

‘That surprises you?’

The warrior gave a lopsided smile. ‘I know what he is like. His daughter takes after him in many ways, except she wants her way, not his.’

Aedan narrowed his eyes, wondering how much he should confide. ‘My honour and my people depend on me fulfilling this quest.’

The man nodded. ‘I always knew he would send someone honourable one day. Where is the she-witch of a second wife? Quickly now.’

Aedan cocked his head to one side. ‘His wife died. It is why he has sent for his daughter. He wants her near.’

‘A hard woman, that one, but Kolbeinn was obsessed with her. He destroyed his marriage and his daughter’s life to be with her.’ He gestured towards where Dagmar stood, waiting with her sword raised. ‘Her mother bargained her entire life’s work away to keep her daughter safe.’

‘And this is what she considered safe?’ Aedan regarded the woman with the strange blue markings on her face and plaited hair which quivered like snakes when she spoke. From what he could tell she was slender to the point of being mannish under the armour she wore. But she waved her hand with absolute authority.

‘We advance,’ she cried. ‘As long as our shields hold, Constantine holds the field. Thorsten and his Northmen have overreached. We will carry the day and with it, our lands, the lands Constantine has promised. Our servitude is at an end. One more battle. One more victory.’

The men cheered and gave their battle cry and beat their swords against their shields.

‘Can she fight?’ Aedan asked in an undertone.

‘Her mother saw to that. Few men can compete with her. Kolbeinn in his prime, maybe.’ The man shrugged. ‘I do not worry about the enemies in front of her. I worry about the ones behind her. Gunnar drank the goblet Olafr intended for her this morning and now his bowels suffer.’

‘How do you know this?’

‘I switched them.’ The old man gave a chuckle. ‘Serves Gunnar right for throwing his lot in with Olafr.’

‘You are her protector.’

‘Helga was far from an easy woman, but I gave her my oath to protect her daughter and I do.’ His eyes narrowed. ‘What does her father require from her now that the witch is dead?’

‘He wishes to speak with her. I am to return with her.’

‘Where precisely is Kolbeinn these days?’

‘Out to the west, in command of Colbhasa,’ Aedan said, naming the Hebridean island where most of the Northmen from the Western fleet were based. ‘He requires his daughter by All Hallows or my people will die.’

‘I see your difficulty.’ The old man nodded gravely. ‘She will not go willingly to see her father. But you must first guard against that snake Olafr.’

‘Would Olafr shift his allegiance on the battlefield?’

The man was silent for a long heartbeat. ‘I believe in my heart he is capable of that.’

Aedan nodded. His mission had suddenly become more complicated. Not only did he have to convince Dagmar to meet with her father, he might also have to save her life first.

A horn sounded and the lines moved forward. Out of the corner of his eye Aedan kept a watch on Olafr. He hung back slightly, never quite being part of the action while there was no doubting Dagmar’s courage. She shouted orders, rushed to reinforce the shield wall and encouraged her men to keep going forward.

Slowly, against the odds, it appeared that she was gaining the upper hand in the battle. She was keeping her vow, delivering the victory for Constantine.

* * *

When the battle was at its height, Olafr raised his sword and lifted his shield, shouting for Thorsten over and over again. A sudden hush fell over the battlefield. Aedan froze in mid-swipe of his sword. Immediately several of Dagmar’s men stopped fighting, allowing the shield wall to collapse and the Northmen from the Black Pool to stream through.

‘Treachery!’ someone yelled.

Aedan hacked his way to where Dagmar fought against several warriors. In a matter of heartbeats, she would be dead along with his hopes for his people and their freedom. The sword he carried shattered as he reached her.

He brought the hilt of his broken sword down on the back of her head. She crumpled.

He scooped her unconscious body up. She was slender, but all sinewy muscle, rather than soft womanly curves.

‘You go to her father?’ the old warrior cried.

‘God and the saints willing.’

The man smiled and tossed him a brooch. ‘Look after her. I will distract them. Give her that when she goes to rip out your throat. Tell her that Old Alf kept the faith.’

He gave a shout and went forward, drawing the opposing warriors to him, giving Aedan a corridor to escape.

‘Good.’ Aedan whistled to his wolfhound who bounded forward, snarling. ‘Time to fulfil our vow and return to the West.’

Behind him, he heard the old man’s dying agonies, but he honoured his sacrifice and did not slacken his pace.

Chapter Two

Dagmar slowly struggled from an all-engulfing black pit and tried to make sense of the world. Positively, she lived. She knew that from the faint drizzle which landed on her face and the prickle of pine needles in her back. However, instead of the sounds of battle raging about her, there was a low hum of crickets and the faint chirp of some bird.

She flexed her fingers and toes, relieved everything seemed to work. Her right arm was a bit stiff and her thighs screamed like they always did after a battle.

Her mouth was drier than the sand on the beach below Constantine’s court at St Andrew’s. But mostly, it was the back of her head which pained her, a great searing ache which made her nauseous and threatened to cause the enveloping blackness to return.

She tried to piece together how she’d arrived here but could only remember in snatches—the sword thrust towards her chest that she’d been certain would end her life, the sudden searing pain in the back of her head, the bumpy movement of a galloping horse and the strong arms about her as a low voice told her she would live if she obeyed. She pinched the bridge of her nose, trying to rid the buzzing noise from her ears.

She cautiously raised herself up on one elbow. A wave of pain rocked her, causing the world to spin and blur, but she fought against it, refusing to return to that black nothingness. Gradually it cleared and her eyes focused.

She lay on a bed of dry leaves and pine needles. From the sky, she reckoned it was nearing owl-light, then she immediately revised her opinion. The world was becoming lighter by the breath. She’d lost at least one day and night. A large multi-coloured wolfhound stood guard over her. Nearby she saw a dark auburn-haired figure sitting on a log, watching her intently. But her men had vanished. Neither were there any horses. She put a hand to her head, trying to remember where she’d seen her captor before.

At her small movement, the man straightened, his hand going to his sword and recognition crashed through her. The Gael! The man who claimed to have a message from her father. The man had kidnapped her! She’d been ten thousand times a fool not to consider such a possibility.

‘Aedan mac Connall!’ she spluttered, but it came out weaker than a kitten’s mewl.

She ground her teeth. Olafr had not required a confrontation; he’d simply arranged for her removal. She had been fooled by the oldest trick in the book. Her father would never have sent a Gael. He despised them. The only mistake Olafr had made was that she still lived. Silently she swore revenge for everything he and this Gael had done.

‘Aedan mac Connall, you’ll pay for what you’ve done!’ she said again, this time with greater force. ‘My men will be massing! Release me at once and you may yet live!’

‘You’re awake and in good voice,’ Aedan mac Connall said, lifting a brow but seemingly unimpressed and unperturbed by her threat. ‘Good. It makes things easier.’

Dagmar’s next snarled threat died in her throat. ‘Easier for whom?’

‘Everyone concerned, but mainly for me.’ He leant forward. ‘I require you to be alive, Dagmar Kolbeinndottar.’

Her hand instinctively searched for a sword, but found none. She cursed under her breath. Someone, probably the Gael, had divested her of her armour. She was simply clad in her trousers and tunic. Nearly defenceless, but her boots with their hidden gold remained on her feet and she possessed a mind if she cared to use it, instead of panicking and behaving like a feeble-minded female.

‘Helgadottar, not Kolbeinndottar,’ she said, curling her hands into impotent fists.

‘Yet your father remains Kolbeinn the Blood-Axe. Changing your parents is a privilege given only to a few.’

Dagmar screwed up her eyes and refused to allow tears to fall. Tears were what other women did, not the daughter of Helga the Red. She concentrated on breathing until she felt in control of her body once again.

The Gael had removed her sword. It was what happened when a person was kidnapped. The kidnappers took steps to secure their prisoner. She needed to stop acting like a thick-headed panic-stricken mouse and formulate a plan for escape.

The Gael wanted her alive and he claimed to be from her father. If her stepmother had sent him, she would be lying in a pool of blood with her life slowly ebbing from her. Small comfort, but a chance for escape would present itself.

‘Where are my men? Where is the High King?’ she asked, fixing him with one of her harder stares. ‘Take me to Constantine immediately. There are things which need to be said before we depart. My father wouldn’t want to anger the High King of the Picts.’

She breathed easier. The Gael would have to see the logic and yield. Once she was back in Constantine’s camp, she would not be going anywhere near her father.

‘Constantine was last seen on a horse headed towards the coast. He lost. A comprehensive defeat. No longer High King of the Picts. Perhaps he remains King of a very small slice of Alba’s eastern shore.’ The Gael rose and dusted down his trousers. ‘Thorsten and his Northmen from the Black Pool now control the Northern Alba, from the isles of Orkney to the Firth of Forth and beyond.’

She winced. Constantine had lost. Badly. The day was getting worse and worse. Her mother’s lands would also be gone. Overrun and parcelled out to some Northern jaarl. ‘And my men? Did any survive?’

‘Those who lived switched sides. Celebrating Thorsten’s historic victory for the north.’

She cursed Olafr under her breath. Old Alf had been correct in his mutterings about betrayal. ‘Who are you?’

‘Your saviour. You were supposed to die on the battlefield. I saved your life.’ His lips curved upwards. ‘You may thank me appropriately later.’

Dagmar balled her fists and struggled to breathe slowly. Saviour? Thank him? How—by sharing his bed? Not likely. Even if he did have shoulders which blocked out the light and long legs that went on for ever. She pressed her hand to her head. The blow was affecting her reason. Men had no interest in her in that way. Her chin was too pointed and her nose too long.

She had no business noticing the Gael as a man. She was dedicated to the arts of war, rather than the pleasures of bed sport.

Her finger drew a line in the dirt. He’d taken away her world. She might as well be dead. She’d lost everything that her mother had worked so hard to achieve. She’d betrayed her final vow to her mother. But she had someone to blame—Aedan mac Connall with that self-satisfied smile on his face, proclaiming he had saved her from certain death by snatching her while the battle still raged.

‘Saved my life?’ The words exploded from deep within her. ‘You kidnapped me in the heat of the battle! I could have fought my way to Thorsten and bested him.’

‘Forgive me, but I was on the battlefield. An axe was aimed at your back as well as a sword at your neck. Your man—that elderly warrior—leapt in front of the sword while I handled the axe. He perished to assist our escape, so you could live.’

The angry words dried in her throat. The man had unerringly found the flaw—why leave her alive if he only meant to kill her at a time of his choosing? ‘Old Alf died?’

‘No man could have survived that scene.’

She silently whispered a prayer for the grizzled warrior who had served her mother and her so faithfully. He’d taught her how to handle a sword and had dried her tears when her mother had become too exacting.

‘Then he is fighting for Odin now as he always wanted to,’ she said around the lump in her throat. Old Alf would be the first to scoff at tears, acting like a fragile female he’d call it, instead of behaving like a warrior. She wiped an eye. ‘A fitting end for him. Good. Old Alf trusted you. Why?’

The Gael shrugged. ‘He understood what I had to do. He urged me to do it. He knew the sword I wore came from your father, the sword which shattered saving your life. Your friend died so that you could live.’

‘My men...’ Dagmar whispered as the lump in her throat had begun to choke her. ‘My men are loyal.’

He lifted a brow. ‘Obviously not as loyal as you might have thought. Some of them betrayed you, led by Olafr. As we were leaving, they shouted for Thorsten while beating their swords against their shields. They turned the tide against Constantine.’

The buzzing in her ears increased. Her men, her mother’s men had betrayed her and broke the fellowship when she needed them the most. How was that even possible? Her mouth tasted bitter. The Gael had to be lying, hoping she’d go quietly to wherever he intended for her to be ransomed.

‘They wanted the land the King promised my mother,’ she said as her gut hollowed out. ‘One more victorious battle and it would have been theirs.’

‘Your mother is dead. Why would Constantine honour that promise even if he could? Or perhaps you know more than I, Shield Maiden.’

Dagmar’s fingers itched for a knife, for anything to wipe the knowing look off his face. He mocked her. She didn’t need telling that competing with her mother was an impossibility. Her mother had been more than an equal to men, a legend in her own time and Dagmar was merely the daughter.

She forced her hand to relax. She had to start behaving like her mother’s daughter, rather than giving in to her desires and curling up in a pathetic ball.

‘How do I know you tell the truth? I take it you conveniently disposed of this shattered sword.’

‘Old Alf gave me this brooch. It apparently belonged to your mother. He entrusted me to get you to safety and that means going to your father.’

He held out her mother’s favourite brooch, the one she had used to fasten her cloak, the one she had handed to Old Alf as she’d breathed her last. Dagmar’s heart twisted. The Gael was telling the truth. Why else would Old Alf have entrusted his most beloved possession to him?

With great difficulty, she rose. The world swirled about her, making her stomach swoop, but she forced her spine to stay erect. ‘I will go to see the High King. I will not allow this insult to go unavenged. Constantine will see sense once I explain the situation. If not for Olafr’s double-dealing, I would have given him victory. I can still do it. Once the land is confirmed, the men will see they made a mistake in betraying me and return to my felag. Without them, Thorsten will find it impossible to hold Northern Alba.’

‘You will go nowhere except where I say you go.’ The Gael snapped his fingers and his giant dog instantly blocked her way. It bared its teeth and gave a low growl. Dagmar retreated several steps.

‘I need to go there and confront the King. Please, call off your dog.’ She hated how her voice trembled on the words. ‘There are women and children’s lives who depend on me making this right. I gave my word to my mother. My first duty is to them.’

‘Your name will be the byword for treachery in Constantine’s camp,’ he said in a low voice. ‘You will not be allowed within ten paces of him. Your life expectancy would be a few breaths at most. I regret I cannot allow you to go there to your death. My people and I need you alive. Afterwards...you may go where you will, but my people come first.’