Surrender My Love Read Free

in their party, who was the diplomat. The other three men were along as guards, since they had uncertain lands to pass through that were rife with thieves these days. The bishop could have easily been replaced, but there were not that many men in Alfred’s kingdom who spoke the language of the Danes to make it easy for him to find another interpreter.
    Selig also had to wait until Royce could explain what the problem was, but not because he had been busy elsewhere, as his sister was. He had simply not understood a word of what the Saxons had said.
    Unlike Kristen, who had learned the different languages of all the slaves during her growing years at home, including her husband’s tongue, Selig had learned only those languages he had thought would be useful to him in trading. So he could speak to any Dane and Swede with ease, could make himself understood to any Finn or Slav; and, of course, any Celt would think Selig was one of his own, for he spoke that tongue so well, thanks to his mother. But he couldn’t speak to a Saxon unless like Royce, the man also knewthe Celtic tongue, and fortunately, many of them did.
    Selig had seen no need to learn the other languages that Kristen had learned, because he hadn’t entertained the idea of raiding the southern lands as other Vikings were still doing, but had planned to follow in his father’s footsteps and become a merchant prince. That one raid he and his friends had tried and failed at had been no more than a lark, their attempt to take some of the wealth from this land before the Danes conquered it all.
    It behooved him, of course, to learn the Saxon tongue now, since he had decided to settle in this country, and so he was learning it. But he was no longer a child who had naught else to do but study, so he had not grasped much of it yet, was in no hurry to do so, and was still at a loss in situations like this when no one spoke slowly for his benefit. Actually, the Saxon words he was learning, he was learning from women, and those words did not exactly come up in conversations of this sort.
    When Royce again joined him in the gathering area of the hall, next to the ale barrel, Kristen was also just returning from putting her children down for the night. They had shared their evening meal with the guests, but Kristen and Selig both had refrained from joining in the talk, which was mostly the lamentations of the four strangers. The hall still buzzed with activity, though, and the sky outside had yet to fully darken, it being well into summer.

    After refilling their tankards with ale, Kristen was the first to speak. “Did I hear them aright? King Alfred actually wants some alliances made through marriages?”
    Royce shrugged, not as surprised as his wife. “That is the gist of it. Three of his nobles have volunteered to sacrifice their daughters, all three ladies comely, all three richly dowered.”
    Kristen let that “sacrifice” pass, knowing he had not forgiven the Danes, nor ever would forgive them, for the slaughter they had done at Wyndhurst all those years ago. “Do those dowers include land?”
    “Aye.”
    “God’s mercy, Royce!” she exclaimed incredulously. “Your king and his brothers before him have been fighting all these years to keep the Danes out of Wessex, and now he will just give them property here?”
    “His reasoning is simple,” Royce explained. “Better three properties than the whole of Wessex when the Danish faction that is still greedy grows restless again. We know now that at least half of Guthrum’s army is as tired of war as we are. They want naught more than to settle on the lands they have already taken for themselves. ’Twas the other half, the young men who came late to the war and so had not gained much yet, that started up the last war.”
    Which was the one that had so nearly succeeded. In fact, the Danes thought they had won, thought Alfred had died. And they werenot the only ones to think so, with the Danes so firmly