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in your bed, hump your woman—”
    “I have no woman!” Magnus roared, rage almost blinding him. “And you are dead!” He charged, his sword clashing furiously against Godred’s blade, the force of the blows knocking Godred to his knees.
    “Stand and die!” Magnus snarled, glaring. “I’ll no’ kill a kneeling man.” He whipped his blade, flashing it within a breath of Godred’s neck. “’Tis time for your blood to color the sea and feed the gulls.” The wheeling birds were already gathering. “They will grow fat on your flesh.”
    “Nae, yours!” Godred surged to his feet, howling as he swung his sword. He cut air again and this time the blade flew from his bloodied fingers and disappeared beneath the breakers, sinking into the sea.
    “Greet Odin!” Magnus lunged, his sword taking Godred’s throat in a single vicious swipe. Godred crashed into the water, blood fountaining in a hot, red arc, splashing onto the sand and staining the waves’ frothy spume.
    He toppled, writhing and jerking, clutching his opened gullet, as the surf washed over him. His face said he knew he’d not be greeting Odin or any other Norse god, dying without a weapon in his hand. Then, at last, he gave a pitiful, gurgling cry, and a final twitch, his hate-filled eyes glazing.
    It was done.
    Panting, Magnus glared down at his foe and then slammed his sword, Vengeance , into the wet, bloodred sand. The blade quivered, singing death’s song, her steel humming with the force of Magnus’s fury.
    Alan and Donnie came forward then, both men spitting on Godred’s corpse.
    “Shall we bury him?” It was Donnie who spoke, his tone revealing that he’d sooner slice his own throat than give Godred even that courtesy.
    “Nae. We leave him.” Magnus gazed out over the empty, rolling sea. He didn’t look at his men, or what was left of the bastard he’d once thought of as a friend. “The gulls will have done with him. The tide and wind will take whatever they leave behind.” It was a kinder fate than Magnus’s own.
    It was a kinder fate than Magnus’s own.
    He closed his eyes then and shoved both hands through his hair, not caring that his fingers were sticky with Godred’s blood.
    Vengeance had been served.
    Nothing else mattered.
    He did draw a tight breath, the echo of Godred’s slur squeezing his chest, pummeling his heart. “ . . .
    Sigurd will hump your woman.” Liana had been spared from suffering that horror. And he, Magnus MacBride, Viking Slayer, wouldn’t sully her memory by taking another bride.
    He didn’t even lay with whores.
    Donata’s curse couldn’t touch him. Any lust that burned in him was killing fever.
    And looking down at Godred’s hacked and mangled body only fueled the flames of his anger.
    So he knelt and—as he always did—slid a twisted gold ring from Godred’s limp arm. When he stood, his blood finally cooling, he turned to Alan and Donnie.
    “Gather the coins and whate’er else spilled from thon bags”—he jerked his head at the bride goods fanned across the sand—“and take them with Godred’s sister and his other women to the first nunnery that will have them. The coin alone will buy the ladies a good life behind cloistered walls.
    “I’ll no’ have any of the treasure at Badcall Castle.” A wash of distaste rolled over him. “No’ after the grief it’s wrought.”
    Donnie and Alan exchanged looks. Glances that made Magnus’s anger start to ignite anew. He arched a brow, waiting.
    Alan spoke first. “Those bags hold a fortune, lord.”
    “They cost me more.” Magnus yanked his sword from the sand, wiping its blade on his plaid.
    “Something far more precious and that all the world’s gold cannae replace.”
    Alan looked down, shamed. “I dinnae mean—”
    “Godred’s bitches will nae thank you.” Donnie glanced across the strand to the cliff path. From above, Donata Greer’s angry voice could be heard shrieking at Magnus’s men. “One o’ them bit me when we