Read Heart's Ease (The Northwomen Sagas Book 2) for Free Online Page B

seems.”
     
    She crouched at Vali’s side and pulled up his sopping tunic. Examining his back, she spoke a long string of words Leif did not understand, and then she sighed and looked up at him. “Get him to bed. I find”—she said something else in her own language and sighed again—“things I need.”
     
    Leif nodded and turned to the raiders. “Let us get our friend into one of these royal beds.”
     
    It took four of them to carry the big man up a winding stone staircase, trying not to bend his back, but they found him a bed and got him into it.
     
     
    ~oOo~
     
     
    Later, after Olga had tended to Vali, and Leif had spoken with him, Leif found the God’s-Eye in the stable, combing her fingers through the lush, creamy mane of the mare she seemed to favor. Leif had long known her to prefer the company of animals—any animal, from the goats and fowl that ran loose in the Geitland hall to a magnificent beast such as this mare.
     
    She glanced up briefly as he came to her side, but she didn’t speak. She rarely did except in necessity.
     
    “He is awake and asking for you.”
     
    No response or reaction.
     
    “You are important to him, I think.”
     
    At that, she scoffed quietly.
     
    “You are not?” Leif didn’t believe that. It was obvious to any who cared to see it. Too obvious, he thought.
     
    Brenna God’s-Eye paused and looked up at him, her eyes meeting his. Like any other of their people, Leif felt the urge to drop his eyes. He did not fear her or her eye, but there was something unreal in it, something so intense that he felt as if she were seeing too much of him when she looked him dead on.
     
    He meant to hold her gaze, but he blinked, and then she broke away. “He seems to want something of me, but I don’t understand.”
     
    Leif fought back a smile. He knew the God’s-Eye to be naïve in many things—most things, in fact, that didn’t have to do with war and battle. It was said that she might steal the will, and even the soul, of any man who coupled with her, and he doubted any had ever tried.
     
    If he read Vali right, then it seemed the Storm-Wolf thought to try. Despite his concerns, Leif hoped he was successful. This brave, lonely woman deserved to know some happiness.
     
    But there were serious concerns to be managed if there were a strong bond between these legends.
     
    “Be careful, Brenna God’s-Eye. Know where your allegiance lies and keep true to it.”
     
    She frowned at him. “Now I don’t understand you, either.”
     
    “Forgive me,” he chuckled. “Go and see him. If there is nothing you want of him, then tell him so. If there is something, tell him that. But know your heart and your mind. Every choice carries its own burden.”
     
    “I like it better when no one talks to me,” she grumbled and turned back to her horse.

 
     
     

     
    Often of a morning, when Olga came to awareness and opened her eyes, finding herself nested in a cozy bed in the shelter of the castle proper, she felt a heady disorientation. At the hands of the monsters from the sea, she had found herself in a position of unfamiliar power and comfort.
     
    The same men and women who had killed every inhabitant and visitor of the fishing village, except her, who had enslaved and beaten and raped her and the few other women they had not simply murdered on sight, who had seemed to leave oceans of blood and mountains of bodies everywhere they went—those same monsters had, within a mere few weeks of inhabiting the castle, improved Olga’s life and the life of all of the people who’d survived their claiming.
     
    It was as if they’d sent the monsters back to the sea on their strange dragon ships and left the human beings behind.
     
    They had opened Prince Vladimir’s stores to the villagers. People who had lived whole lives with the barest enough now knew plenty. The savages in bloodied leather had proved themselves more noble than any titled gentleman in gold chains and