Immortal Warrior Read Free

out of a forest? I want to sit in my own hall once more, even if only for a while.”
    “Then you should do so,” said Brand. “You may even make this last a little. You move among them more easily than the rest of us.”
    “Not well enough to do this alone. Come with me,” said Ivar. “Your French is surely good enough now. You had lessons from that hermit.”
    “It is passable, but I cannot go. I have not yet found her.”
    Ivar shook his head. “It’s time to stop hunting, my friend. Cwen is long dead.”
    “No. She used her magic on herself when she finished with us. Ari saw it. She lives.”
    “Ari saw wrong. She is dead,” said Ivar more firmly. “I need you both to help me hold Alnwick. The former lord stood against William. I cannot walk into his hall with no one at my back. And I need Ari to be my voice during the day.”
    The silence again. Brand’s face grew taut in the firelight, and Ivar knew that his friend, too, longed for the old days and the noisy halls of Vass.
    “Come with me,” Ivar urged again. “Fight with me, if need be. And when it goes badly, as it must, and we have to vanish into the woods again, I will come hunt Cwen with you. In the meantime there will be warm fires and good food and the company of men.”
    The raven chortled softly as Brand groaned. “It has been a long time. You tempt me.”
    “If you will not stay, then at the least come stand with me at my wedding,” said Ivar. “William gave me a wife as well.”
    “ Gave her?” Brand’s brow lifted. “Is she thir ?”
    “No, no slave. She is noble born.”
    “Yet this king gives her as though she were chattel?”
    “Under Norman law, she is. William took her grandfather’s lands by forfeit, and now he gives me the maid to confirm my hold on them.”
    “What if she doesn’t want to marry you?”
    “She has no choice. Neither do I. The king has decreed it.”
    Brand muttered something dark and unpleasant about the parentage of men who would treat their own women so. Slaves and captives were one matter, but free women quite another. By both law and custom, Norse women were not forced to wed against their will.
    “No wonder you want us there,” said Brand. “If the old lord’s men do not stick a knife in your back, your wife surely will. What is this maid’s name?”
    “Alaida.”
    It was the first time Ivo had spoken her name aloud, and as he did, his body tightened with desire. A woman of his own, for more than a quick tup.
    “Is she pretty?” asked Brand.
    “I don’t know.” It didn’t matter. She was his . He could spend the long winter nights coming to know her scent and her laughter, and drawing out her cries of pleasure. “Any woman’s pretty enough when she’s under you.
    “So will you ride with me?” he asked Brand once again, suddenly more anxious to get to Alnwick.
    “I will. We will. But you’d better have good ale and plenty of it.”
    “That I promise you. By the by, the Normans know me as Ivo de Vassy. You’ll both have to call me that, so long as we’re there.”
    “Ivo de Vassy,” said Brand, testing the sound of it. “I suppose we’ll have to ‘m’lord’ you now and again, too.”
    “You are my war-leader and my captain. I would not ask that of you.”
    “I released you from those vows long ago. Besides, in this, you are the leader. We will do what we must to help you.” Brand looked up at the patch of sky overhead, reading the time in the stars. “We won’t get far before dawn, Lord Ivo de Vassy.”
    “Then we’ll start tomorrow, as soon as we’re men again.”
    By Odin. A castle and a wife and good friends, Ivar thought as he tore off another chunk of bread.
    For now, he would simply think of that, and not of what would happen when Alaida of Alnwick discovered she was married to a man who became an eagle with the break of every day.
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    CHAPTER 2
    January 1096
     
    THE CANDLES IN the solar flickered in the bitter wind that seeped past the shutter and tapestries. Alaida shivered and continued to squint at her embroidery frame. The cloth on it was