Page 10 of Lord of Fire and Ice

“Nothing. He’s dead.” Even as he said them, the words sounded unreal to his ear. “My brother is jarl in Jondal now, and he’ll need all your swords.”

His friends scoffed.

“When did Arn ever want anything to do with us?” One of the twins demanded.

“Never, but he needs you now. He’s…a leper. The chieftains will test his leadership.”

Harald put a hand on Brandr’s shoulder. “We’ll hold Jondal then.”

“I’d be grateful.” Brandr covered Harald’s hand with his in a quick clasp. These five men had each been more a brother to him than Arn had ever thought about being. “And so will Arn.”

“No, he won’t. It’s not in him to be grateful,” Harald said. “We’ll try to hold Jondal for you, my friend, but you know as well as I that an iron crown won’t wait. Plenty will rise to try to wrest it from Arn. We need you there to take it in peace. Get clear of this mess as quick as you can. What’s your plan? I know you must have one.”

Harald was always ready to pull out his ax, but Brandr was the strategist of the group. A well-executed plan often trumped superior numbers and strength.

“I don’t know yet,” Brandr admitted. “But I’ll come up with something.”

“I hope so,” Harald said as they turned to go.

Brandr watched them till they disappeared around a bend in the path. “So do I, my friends. So do I.”

***

Katla stretched and dug her fists into the small of her back, trying to work out the knots. The day’s work had progressed nicely, even though the memory of Brandr Ulfson’s kiss still made her lips tingle. She tried to banish thoughts of him as she walked past the barn where cows lowed, impatient for their evening milking. The ram’s bell tinkled in the distance. Shepherds drove her flocks down from the upper pasture to the safety of the fold for the night. Between her herds of cattle, sheep, and goats, Katla owned more hooves than any other farmer on Tysnes Island.

She smiled as she surveyed the busy farmstead. She was happy. Certainly she was. Why had Brandr thought she was not?

Osvald’s holding had been impressive when she first married him, but after his death, the farmstead prospered even more. She no longer had to answer to her husband for her decisions. Or have them overridden by him.

Whole families of women worked the big looms in her longhouse, producing linen and wool cloth for trade, while their men tilled the patchwork fields and tended stock. All told, thirty souls depended on Katla for each bite of food in their mouths and each coin in their belt pouches, including her three shiftless brothers. That would change if her prospective bridegroom could afford to set them up on their own farmsteads as Finn hoped.

Brandr Ulfson stomped past her with another armful of wood for the growing pile.

Make that thirty-one souls in her care.

She tamped down the flutter in her belly at the sight of him. The man was her thrall. It wouldn’t do to start imagining the yearning hollowness in her chest had anything to do with Brandr Ulfson.

She’d experienced a moment of concern that morning when his friends turned up. She half expected the son of her enemy to take to his heels with his companions. They all had the battle-hardened look of warriors. If they were determined to take him, she’d have been powerless to stop them. But hidden in the shadows of the longhouse door, she watched as the men from Jondal left without Brandr.

He’d kept his vow not to run away. Brandr’s worth rose several notches in her evaluation.

“Katla!” Waving one long arm, Finn loped up the hill from the wharf toward her.

“I see you managed to find your way home now that night meal’s not far off,” she said, settling her arms across her chest. She wished her brothers would grow up. It wearied her to have to scold them as if she were their mother.

Finn shoved his sandy hair out of his face and eyed her up and down with a frown. “What are you doing? Your suitor’s ship has docked. He’s on his way to the longhouse, and here you are looking like a common drudge.”

“Freya’s cats!” Katla had forgotten they’d be bringing around a new suitor today.

She tucked an errant strand of hair back under her headdress. The linen kerchief that covered her braids had been starched and bright white when she donned it that morning, but it was probably limp and gray now.

“You promised, sister,” Finn said. “I’ve lived up to my end of the bargain and brought you a man to consider, but you’re not even trying.”

“Well, if the man you’re bringing doesn’t like my looks,” she said, “he’ll have to look the other way.”

“Don’t fret. I expect he’ll be too taken with this place to notice you overmuch, in any case.”

Katla flinched. It was one thing to agree to a loveless match. It was another to be considered of no import whatsoever in the making of it. Was she really nothing more than the lands and stock she possessed?