In Bed With The Viking Warrior. Harper St. George

I was a child. Eight winters. An ague took them within weeks of the other. I have good memories of her teaching me the skill, but I miss her dreadfully. I miss them both, but mothers are special, aren’t they?’

      He met her gaze, wanting to comfort her in some way, but unsure how. ‘I’m glad you have the tapestry.’

      She frowned again and looked over at the bare walls. ‘I had more, but they were taken from me. Payment.’

      ‘Payment? For what?’

      Shaking her head, she shrugged. ‘Payment for something Godric did. It doesn’t matter.’

      He frowned and opened his mouth to ask more when she continued. ‘You should know that a few men went to the stream and found the Dane. They identified him as one in a group of rebels that has been plaguing us since summer.’

      ‘What have the rebels done to plague you?’

      ‘It started small—burned crops, stolen sheep. But at the end of summer two of our young women went missing and the rebel Danes burned our wall. Some say the women were lured away by them, others believe they were murdered, sacrificed in a barbarian ritual. They simply vanished.’

      ‘And what do you think?’

      ‘I don’t know. For their sake I hope they found men to care for them. But it seems unlikely. The Danes are brutes. All of them. The rebels and those from the settlement.’

      ‘Do you have no one to appeal to for help? No lord?’ It seemed only right that the villagers wouldn’t exist on their own in the middle of the wilderness—that they’d have someone to appeal to for help.

      ‘Aye, we have a lord and we did appeal to him. But Lord Oswine wasn’t very interested in dealing with any Danes. The Danes at the settlement run the region now. Though the rebels are a separate group and are even supposed enemies of those Danes, I fear there is no safety from any of them. Whatever they want is theirs for the taking. And to complain to them is to invite more trouble.’ Her voice and jaw had hardened as she spoke while settling herself on a stool she’d placed next to the bed. She brought a small vial to his lips and he drank the draught down, though his stomach tried to rebel against the bitter liquid.

      Once the nausea passed, he tried to place the name, but Oswine was not familiar to him. Not that he’d expected it to be, not when his own name was still an enigma. ‘Your lord has not challenged the Danes?’ The frustration clouded his mind, but he pushed back the darkness and focused on the bowl before him as she raised a spoonful of stew to his mouth. He felt like a child, but the fact that it was she who wielded the spoon somehow eased the shame of being spoon-fed.

      ‘The Danes at the settlement control him now. He won’t do anything to disrupt their hold.’

      Finishing that bite, he asked, ‘But these Danes that plague you, are they the same ones controlling Oswine?’

      ‘Nay, not precisely. The man at the stream was one of the rebels. The rebels broke off from the Danes at some point and answer to no one. The man you killed bore the rebels’ markings. But it hardly matters. The Danes at the settlement care little for our problems. One is hardly better than the other,’ she said, her voice tight with bitterness.

      She wasn’t his problem, yet he couldn’t help thinking that she shouldn’t have been out alone when he’d come across her. Not in peaceful times, but especially not with the threat of the rebel Danes. She was a prize any man would find alluring and, with no man to protect her, they could have easily taken her. The thought of her at the hands of that brute he’d killed made his gut clench.

      What could he do about it, though? He had to keep moving, to figure out where he belonged and who he was. He undoubtedly had other responsibilities waiting for him somewhere in the world. The thoughts made his head ache, so he forced himself not to think as she brought another spoonful to his lips. Just as he was taking the bite, there was a brisk knock at the door.