to ensure his co-operation in fulfilling this quest. He had to retrieve Kolbeinn’s daughter now or he’d be damned for ever.
‘Have you seen a woman, a shield maiden called Dagmar Kolbeinndottar?’ he called to a warrior who was sitting gloomily by the dying embers of a fire.
The warrior raised his grizzled head. ‘Dagmar Kolbeinndottar? She goes by Helgadottar and has done for several seasons.’
Aedan let out a breath. Success at last. Tracking down Dagmar, the daughter of the north warlord Kolbeinn the Blood-Axe, was far worse than tracking a will-o’-the-wisp. He had travelled the entire length of Alba and well into Bernicia searching for her. Kolbeinn the Blood-Axe’s vague description of his daughter as a meek and mild slip of a thing with golden hair, kidnapped by her mother ten years before, had been deliberately misleading. In Bernicia, Aedan had learned that she like her mother before her had pledged her sword to King Constantine.
‘Dagmar Helgadottar, then,’ he said, inclining his head. ‘I have a great desire to speak with her.’
The warrior sucked his teeth. ‘More than my life is worth.’
‘But she is here, in this place?’
‘Oh, aye. That she is.’ The warrior gave a conspiratorial tap against his nose. ‘The King sets a mighty store by her and her men, but can they do more than rattle their shields and look fierce?’
Aedan held out the ring Kolbeinn the Blood-Axe had given him as well as a gold piece. ‘I have important information for her from her father.’
The grizzled warrior nodded and took the piece. ‘I hope you fare better than the others.’
Aedan blinked. ‘Others?’
‘Oh, aye, she cut off their heads and sent them back to her father.’ He scratched his nose. ‘Mind she hasn’t done that since afore her mother died.’
‘She will listen to me.’
‘You must have the skill of Loki to have got this far.’
‘I prefer to think it is the saints who have kept me safe this far.’
The man spat on his palm and made a cross in the air. ‘Them, too.’
Aedan whistled and his wolfhound, Mor, bounded up from where she had been lurking in the undergrowth. ‘Further up the line you said.’
The warrior took a step back. ‘Aye, you can’t miss her. She’s the one with her face covered in blue swirls. And she wears hissing snakes in her hair.’
* * *
Dagmar concentrated on putting the final flourishes of paint on her face. She had done them for so long, they had become second nature to her. First the black and then the blue.
She had acceded to her mother’s wishes and used paint every morning, rather than getting a permanent tattoo. Even now when her mother had been gone for five months she could not bring herself to go against her wishes. It was the design which was important, rather than the medium. One day, her mother had remarked as she’d applied Dagmar’s paint in the early days, it might be necessary to change course and design. But it served her purpose for now to let everyone think them tattoos. A new whorl for each battle she had won.
‘He means to kill you.’ Old Alf sidled up just as Dagmar finished the final whorl. He was the only one besides her mother who knew of the slight deception about the paint. Lately he made simple errors and struggled to lift his shield and sword at the same time. ‘Did you hear me, Dagmar? He means to kill you for real this time.’
Dagmar wiped her fingers on a spare bit of cloth. There was no need to ask who ʽhe’ was—Olafr Rolfson, her mother’s last lover. She’d seen how Olafr undermined her, damning her with faint praise, whilst being outspoken about what he considered was the correct course of action. ‘I can handle him.’
The embers of her mother’s funeral pyre had still been glowing when Olafr had started making noises about sharing a marriage bed with Dagmar. She knew his sudden declaration of overwhelming desire for her had nothing to do with her figure or the curve of her mouth. The whispers of how truly hideous she was had followed her since she was fourteen. Snakes for hair. An overlong nose and pointed chin. A face like a misshapen pile of rocks. A woman no real man could truly desire.
When Olafr persisted with his lies about her beauty, she threatened to forcibly unman any man who tried to warm her bed, including him. He had gone green and had never repeated the request.
‘I need every warrior who is willing to pick up a sword for me.’
‘Pah, you don’t need him that bad.’
‘I gave my word to my mother. Would you have me break my promise with the final season nearly done?’ Dagmar’s throat closed. Her mother had ignored a minor injury until it was too late and the infection raged throughout her body. As she lay dying, she had made Dagmar promise to fulfil her pledge to support Constantine, to get the title to those lands. Land for the men who had shown loyalty to her mother during the lean years and a proper home for her daughter, as she’d vowed when Dagmar was ten. She would hang her sword over the hearth and only bring it down to defend what was hers, instead of using it to further someone else’s ambition. ‘Constantine must honour his pledge.’
‘Your mother knew when a king was not worthy of support. She would not want her only child to be out here, facing these odds. She valued your life above all.’
‘It will be as the gods will.’ Dagmar took her sword, and began the next part of the ritual she always did before going into battle—plaiting her hair so it hung about her face like snakes. ‘Perhaps the Dubh Linn raiders will render this conversation unnecessary. Olafr often leaves his left side exposed.’
‘Make an old man happy—keep an eye on him. You may face more than one enemy today.’
‘I’ve taken care since my tenth name day,’ she said standing up. After her stepmother’s son had been born, the first attack on Dagmar’s life had happened—poison in her stew which her dog had eaten instead of her. A servant had confessed to the entire plot. Her mother had sent the man’s tongue and ears back to her father, but there had been other attempts from men desperate enough to believe her stepmother’s promises of gold if only they’d rid her of her son’s rival.
‘Perhaps you should consider an alliance, marriage to a warrior you can trust, someone who can counter Olafr.’
Dagmar took a practice swing with her sword. It made a satisfactory slicing noise. ‘I don’t need any warrior to counter Olafr. My sword arm remains strong.’
‘Dagmar!’ Olafr called out. ‘Someone asks after you.’
Dagmar swallowed the quick retort when she spied a tall man with dark auburn hair and piercing blue-green eyes, the sort of man who made women go weak at the knees and more than likely knew it. The sort of man who enjoyed a buxom woman in his bed and who would curl his lip at her meagre assets even if they were not bound tightly to her chest.
His clothes immediately proclaimed that he was not from the North. A wolfhound stood by his side. A Gael. Dagmar frowned as she spied the sword stuck in his belt—the hilt resembled one of her father’s, one she remembered from her childhood.
‘Who
