Merciful Conquest (Heart of a Viking #1)

Prologue

Orkney Islands

Randvior Sigurdsson planted his feet in the sand and gazed eastward across the North Sea.

He raised his war axe high above his head and saluted his forefathers.

A yellow-tinged quarter-moon, haloed by rings of light and mist, loomed overhead like an apparition.

It inspired the Viking to speak ancient verses to attract Odin’s favor.

Only six days separated him from Norway and he desperately wanted to go home.

Motionless, he closed his eyes and swore he heard his ancestors chanting the same praises to honor the old gods.

Every night for the last three months, he’d walked this shoreline and surveyed the flat landscape.

At times, he regretted establishing new steadings in the Orkneys—tonight seemed to be one of them.

Barren hollows of sand and withering bushes stretched as far as the eye could see.

The only redemptive qualities in these islands were the familiar scent of salt water and the brooding sounds of gulls.

Sighing deeply, he turned and walked toward the flimsy lean-to he slept inside when he chose to stay onshore.

As he neared the camp he shared with his men, he spied a few soldiers sitting near a roaring fire, passing wine around.

They greeted him and offered the bottle.

Randvior shook his head. No spirits tonight, unless they were the kind the gods sent as messengers in dreams.

He kicked open the plank door and stepped inside the shelter.

It was barely large enough to accommodate his bulk.

He stripped off his cloak and lay down, stared overhead, and studied the brightening nighttime sky between gaps in the boarded ceiling.

Thousands of stars twinkled above. He counted them one by one, as he’d often done as a child.

And very slowly, his eyes grew heavy with sleep.

In the middle of the night, Randvior’s dreams caught fire.

He growled and cursed, challenged and defended, until he rolled off his cot and knocked himself awake.

He tried to remember where he was exactly.

The shelter was dark, but the vision of a woman’s face glared at him through the pitch.

Almond-shaped eyes pinned him to the floor.

He thought he remembered that beautiful face, crowned by a mane of honey-colored hair. She resembled one of Odin’s Valkyries, perhaps a match to the ones depicted in the tapestries in his hall.

He sat up and she uttered a single word. Durham.

But … why?