Free Lord of the Runes by Sabrina Jarema Page A

weddings and children might not even be yours. They might be of someone in your family. You said you don’t see your mother any longer?” It might help him to recognize the undercurrents in this place if he knew more of their past.
    â€œNo. I know Asa told you of our father. How he died while on a trading journey. He had stolen my mother and her sister in his wilder raiding days, from a holding near Waterford in Ireland. They were noblewomen and he thought to hold them for ransom, as is customary. But he fell in love with my mother, Ailis, and when the money came, it became her dowry and they married. Her sister, Cliona, he gave to his finest warrior, Togur. They had Estrid, and Ailis bore my brother and me, then Asa.
    â€œBut after my father died, my mother said she wished to return to Ireland. She missed its green mountains and the beauty of it. And her family. Togur had died some years before of a pain in his chest, and Cliona had remarried. But she divorced her second husband and left with Ailis. I took them back myself, to be certain they would be welcomed, and they were. I haven’t returned since.”
    â€œAnd yet, they left their children behind.” It was difficult for Eirik to understand.
    â€œThey wanted to take Asa and Estrid with them, but I forbade it.”
    â€œTo separate mothers and daughters must have been painful.”
    â€œIt was. But it was their choice to leave. They loved their land more than they loved us. I couldn’t risk the two girls being ostracized and rejected because they were the half-breed daughters of Norse raiders. The priests there would have called them illegitimate, for they would not have recognized our marriage rites. They were just becoming of marriageable age, and would have no prospects there. I couldn’t have that. For either of them. As the jarl and the ranking male of the house, it was my decision.”
    After the jarl had thanked him and left, Eirik took a sip of ale and regarded the casting.
    It had been Magnus’s decision, but had it been wise? And yet, Asa and Estrid had grown up in a jarl’s house with all the comfort and privilege they could wish for. Who knew if women who would leave their children behind would take care of them at all in a strange land? What were the repercussions for Asa and Estrid? However, that responsibility lay with the mothers for abandoning them, not with Magnus for trying to protect them.
    A new respect grew in Eirik, for this was a man who was able to make the hard decisions. Perhaps Magnus was someone he could form an alliance with. The runes spoke of a new partnership, and that could go in many ways.
    Magnus said Asa and Estrid would have no marriage prospects in Ireland, and yet neither of them was married now. Had they been widowed? Why did Asa seem so afraid of him? Magnus had asked if the pain Eirik saw in the runes was in the past. Had Asa been abused? He’d seen such women before, how nervous they were, and how afraid they were to speak to men. She was much the same as they.
    A slow anger built in him, his fists tightening. The winter would give him further wisdom, as would the runes. And when they spoke, he would listen.
    * * *
    â€œAsa, why don’t you make a loaf of your bread? We’ll need ballast for the ships come spring.” The voice of the bearlike, red-bearded warrior boomed through the longhouse. He stood with his legs braced, hands on his hips, taunting Asa as she ate her morning bread and honey at one of the tables in the common room.
    Eirik looked at Leif. He took a swallow of his ale and ignored the insult. They’d moved the tables aside to make a place for the men to train, even though there wasn’t much room. Still, when the land lay covered in waist-deep snow, it was better than nothing.
    â€œWhy are you and Magnus allowing that?” Eirik slammed his cup down. He might be a guest, but he would never allow a woman to be misused. The men had been