Prologue
Comes a time when all good Viking men must bite the shield ... and wed ...
“Toss the babe in the fjord. Or leave it on the cliff. Either way, the whelp will be dead afore morn.”
Sidroc Guntersson, third son of Jarl Gunter Ormsson, was a noted warrior who had seen cruelty in all its forms, but his father’s pronouncement about Sidroc’s newborn child turned his blood cold. “How can you suggest such for your own kin?” Why am I surprised? No doubt you wish you’d ended my life in the same manner.
His loathsome father, who had the paternal sensibilities of a rock, shrugged and leaned back in the throne-like armed chair atop the dais in his great hall. Even as he spoke, one paw-like hand stroked the long, pale blonde hair of his latest concubine, a girl no more than thirteen. In all his twenty and six years, Sidroc had many times witnessed his father’s lusty appetites appeased by the more danico, multiple wives, as well as numerous mistresses, bed thralls, and any serving maid of passable appearance. On occasion, all at the same time. The gods only knew how many by-blows he’d bred, along with his four legitimate sons and two legitimate daughters.
“ ’Tis a split-tail,” his father pointed out, as a defense for abandoning a newborn.
Sidroc bristled. “Yea, ’tis a girl, and the mother is dead.” Sidroc’s voice was raspy with emotion. He’d seen men cleaved from head to belly in battle, but the image that would stay with him forevermore was of Astrid lying in a pool of her own blood. With a bloody mass of squalling, flailing arms and legs lying betwixt her thighs, its cord still uncut.
Eydis, the wet nurse serving his brother Svein’s one-year-old boy, had agreed to take his daughter to teat, but only until he hired another suitable maid, or until his brother found out. Svein did not share anything with anyone, especially not with him, ever since Sidroc thrashed him as a boyling, despite being five years younger. As he recalled, he’d been provoked by Svein’s drowning a stable cat, just for sport.
Sidroc was full aware that it was the practice in some parts of the Norselands to put a newborn out to die when it arrived underweight or handicapped in some way. After all, living was difficult in the harsh northern climate, and survival was indeed best reserved for the hardiest. But to stand by and watch a child, one not handicapped in any way, be killed, well, it was something he could not do. Whether it be his child or some other’s.
To be honest, he felt no strong connection with the baby, less than a day old now. But he would be less than a man to abandon its fate to others like his father.
“ ’Tis not uncommon for a woman to die of the childbirth fever,” his father remarked coldly. “You are too missish by half.”
Missish? Sidroc shook his head at his father’s perception of him. He was a far-famed warrior, adept with halberd and broadsword. But all his father saw was a man not in his selfsame mold of cruelty.
His wife had not been a love match for him; as in most noble families it was an arranged marriage for gain, but he had held an affection for Astrid from the start. Not that he’d seen much of her in the two years they’d been married, what with his a-Viking and fur trading. “I promised Astrid on her deathbed that I would care for the child.”
His father shrugged again, and now his hand was groping his concubine’s small breasts. The silly girl giggled and preened at the attention of her master, even such a public display.
Sidroc knew he did not have his father’s full attention. Still, he persisted. “Signe deserves to live.”
“You named the child?” His father made a tsking noise of disapproval.
It nigh gagged him to ask his father for favors, but needs must, he chastised himself. His much smaller keep at the edge of the Vikstead estates had burned to the ground last winter, along with a storeroom piled to the ceiling with precious furs intended for market. He and Astrid had been living with his father until he could rebuild. Even that favor had galled him. “All I ask is that Svein’s wet nurse be permitted to continue caring for the baby here at Vikstead until I return from a commitment I have made to the Jomsvikings. Once I have regained my wealth—”
“If you care so much, take the babe with you.”
“They do not allow women or children at the Jomsborg fortress.”
“How long would you be gone?”
Someday, old man ... someday! he seethed with tightly fisted hands. As a third son with two healthy older brothers, Sidroc knew he would never inherit the jarldom and that he must accumulate wealth enough to purchase his own lands, hopefully away from Vikstead this time. Joining the elite Jomsvikings had been his best option for increasing his fortunes. “Two years. Three at most.”
“Pfff!” his father scoffed. “Find a wife then, a rich one this time, for Thor’s sake! One with lands.”
This was a refrain he’d heard from his father many times in the past, a demand he’d resisted mightily. No doubt he’d married Astrid in part because she carried no dowry, just to defy his father. At the time, he’d had wealth and property enough that it had not mattered.
“Six sennights I give you to find a bride and a home for the whelp,” his father conceded. “At the end of that time, the babe goes. That is my final word.”
How had this argument with his father snowballed from a disagreement to a battle of wills? How had he allowed himself to be backed into a corner? “I suppose you have someone in mind, even with Astrid scarce turned to ashes in her burial pyre,” he gritted out.
“King Thorvald of Stoneheim has one more unmarried daughter. Try her.” His father gave him an evil grin. “Or not. It matters not to me.”
Sidroc knew the woman his father referred to. Princess Drifa. Although she was long in the tooth for a woman—at least twenty-four years old—she was not unattractive. Being half Norse, half Arab, her features were exotic with slanted dark eyes, and her body was fine-boned. As he recalled, however, she had an outlandish passion for growing things. There was ofttimes dirt under her fingernails, dried leaves in her black hair, and she was known to bring flowers and bushes indoors. On one occasion she even reeked of manure that she claimed made her flowers sweeter.
Ah well, he supposed there were worse things. He would need to find a mother for Signe eventually, in any case. Besides, it was good to have a ready bedmate when no other was available.
Thus it was that Sidroc Guntersson of Vikstead, instead of going a-Viking this springtime season, as was his norm, or rebuilding his home, went off a-courting. May the Norns of Fate guide him!
Chapter One