Our temporary encampment on the coast had, at the time of the raid on Lord Cyneric's estate, been established long enough to have some semblance of a routine in place. There would be a feast that night, as there was almost every night that winter, with the East Angle's defenses so thin and their stores of salted pork, cheese and grain so ripe for the taking.

The new captives would be fed and put to work right away. It had been easy so far. Easy enough to make me question if my people weren't, perhaps, walking into some larger trap in the kingdom of rolling hills and plentiful game. The clans of the north had been raiding the green isle for many winters, but there was growing talk of something bigger and more permanent – of conquest instead of mere pillage. I was part of a vanguard of the highest Jarls, all of whom had sailed across the gray sea to test the Angles – and their land. How easily could they be conquered? How willing were their kings and lords to accept subordination in exchange for their lives? How fertile was their soil?

Not all men are lucky enough to be born into a role they relish, but the gods saw fit to endow me with a nature that took to raiding the way the spring lambs take to gamboling. Valhalla awaits, life is fickle, what is there to do but follow your nature, raise your children and send them out into the world carrying your name with them into eternity? Not that I had any children at that time. I was not yet twice ten and five and the sap rose high in me still – too high to allow me to choose the sweet shackles of marriage and family just yet.

"Jarl, the prisoners cry for their supper."

I jerked my head up, where it had been nodding down against the table in my temporary Jarl's roundhouse, and allowed the irritation that rose in my chest to drive the sleep away from my mind. "You must feed them then, dullard. How many times have I told you about coming to me with small concerns, Halfgan?"

Halfgan, as usual when he was questioned, simply stood silently in front of me, seeming not to recognize that a reply was expected of him. "Why are you even bothering with the captives? I need a hot bath before the feast – let the women tend to the prisoners!"

"But the women, Jarl, they said –"

I stood up, then, and gestured for Halfgan to leave, which he did. Scarcely two winters younger than me, he seemed to be a boy of ten in temperament. But he was the son of my father's great friend and I had been pressed to take him into my service when everyone realized he was never going to be fit for the warrior's life. He took instructions well enough, as long as they were clear, and usually repeated about three times.

When the bath was ready and I had lowered my cold, aching limbs into the steaming water, I bid the bathing woman to bring me the girl from the estate, the one with bruised wrists. The raid hadn't exactly been challenging, but the men and I often found raiding to be more of an excuse to indulge what desires we would have indulged anyway, with the veneer of tradition now smoothed over our young men's urges. The tradition was raiding, and then women. A fight, the hardness of men trying to kill each other, and then the soft warmth of a woman. I had girls in the camp, some quite well-born girls, but something about the look of that one on the estate had my blood running a little hotter than usual – and it usually ran hot.

It wasn't just her look, as fair and smooth-cheeked as that was. It was something in the way she'd looked at me, before she let fear drive her eyes away from mine. I was Jarl Ragnar, son of Jarl Augnarr, and women had been looking at me in a certain way since I was too young to know what to do with them. It was one of the constants of my life, that look. Soft, coy – eager. The girl on the estate didn't have that look in her eye. In its place had been a surprisingly even gaze. She'd thought herself my equal, I'd seen it on her face. My curiosity at a woman who saw me unselfconsciously as of equal rank to herself, even if it was only for a moment before she caught herself and looked away, was piqued.

The heat of the water sank into my flesh, loosening bones and muscles tightened by cold, and I let my mind wander to what might be underneath the girl's tunic. When the flap to the roundhouse was lifted back I felt a stab of rage at the sight of Halfgan – alone.

"Voss! Halfgan, where is she? Why is it that the simplest tasks are –"

"She's gone, Jarl," he spoke before I was finished – an offense I would have whipped him for if I thought him smart enough to realize he'd done it – and I knew at once that he was serious due to the fear on his face.

"What?" I asked, standing up from my bath as the steam rose from my body and into the bracing air – and unconcerned about the fact that Halfgan was now being treated to a full view of just how eager I was to see the girl prisoner. "WHAT?! She's gone? Gone where?!"

I jumped out of the wooden tub, roaring loud enough for the whole camp to hear me, and at once three of my personal guards charged in, dipping their heads respectfully before speaking.

"She can't be far, Jarl. The women gave her bread and cheese not long ago. The ground is frosty, her footprints will be visible. We'll ride out now and bring her back to –"

But I wasn't about to let my men ride out without me, in search of the wench. She'd escaped – and after we'd rescued her from her captors, allowed her to walk back with us unbound! If there's one thing I cannot abide, it's an ungrateful woman.

"Get my horse," I barked. "I'll find her myself."

* * *

It was a night so cold it half made me think I was at home, with the winds that sweep down from the real north howling outside my longhouse. But I wasn't at home, I was in the woods on the eastern coast of the Kingdom of the East Angles, tracking down a girl who'd be lucky to have her life by the time the dawn broke.

It wasn't difficult to find her – wherever she got her defiance from, it wasn't from someone who'd taught her how to cover her tracks. I urged my horse along gently, not wanting him to make a sound to alert the girl to my pursuit, and soon enough I came upon her, standing in the middle of a clearing and looking this way and that, utterly lost.

Not that being utterly lost stopped her trying to run when she spotted me. She stumbled soon enough, her limbs slowed by a cold the East Angles weren't used to. And when she stumbled, I jumped off my horse and snatched her up off the ground by the tunic the women had dressed her in. She twisted her head around then, not as weakened by the chill wind as I'd assumed, and Thor's fury if she didn't try to bite me. To bite me.

"Voss!" I bellowed, loosening my grip enough to let her twist free, and then angrily making up the distance she managed to flee in two or three strides, taking hold of her once again to the sound of her anguished screams. What did this woman have to scream about?

"What is it you wail about?" I demanded, tightening my grip on the handful of dark hair I held in my hand. "You'd be dead by dawn, girl – sooner still than that – if it weren't for me riding out for you. It's the second time today you've been saved by a Northman and what do I get? A wild beast of a girl, trying to tear my flesh from my bones with her little white teeth?!"

Even in my anger, the flashing brightness of the girl's teeth under the moonlight caught my eye and made me wonder once again where it was she came from, to have apparently had a childhood free of hunger and sickness.

I felt her go limp under my grip, then, and watched as she turned towards me, shrugging my hand off her shoulder the way I might shrug off the attentions of one of the bathing thralls.

"What did you say?" She asked coldly, and I was so completely stymied by her imperious tone that I laughed out loud.

"Who do you think you are, girl, to speak to me in that voice? Are you the Queen of the Angles, is that it? Is that why you look at me with that fire in your eyes, which isn't going to achieve anything but a beating if you're not careful?"

"You're not going to beat me."

I raised my hand at the provocation and then, before I could bring it down on her insolent head, saw that, somehow, I was being challenged. Not to hit her, but to not hit her. The way a mother will eye a child on the verge of a tantrum, daring them to maintain control of themselves. Left without the option of hitting the girl who taunted me with her eyes, I let my arm drop to my side.

"Perhaps you are the Queen of the Angles? You certainly don't seem false in your belief that it's right to speak to a Jarl in the manner that you do."

"I'm not the queen of anything," she responded, calmer now that my hand no longer hung over her head. "I'm just trying to get home. And I wouldn't quite say you rescued me today. Nor would I say that's what you're up to right now."

"Oh you wouldn't? I've known you less than a day," I told her, and I could not keep the smile from my face, "and yet I'm not surprised. You'll die out here, do you understand? I'm here to take you back to the camp, where there's a fire to warm you, meat for your belly and furs for your sleep. How is it, again, that I am not rescuing you?"

The girl wrapped her arms tightly around herself, feeling the cold, and my hand twitched to remove my cape. I stopped myself from doing so, not willing to concede the situation yet.

"You're not here to rescue me," she repeated. "You're here because you're angry I left – I can see it on your face. You don't like being defied, that's why your here. Not because you care for my safety or comfort. What is it you intend to do? Put me to work? Rape me?"

I felt my eyebrows nearly leave the top of my head. "Rape you? Rape you, woman?! I'd soon as toss you into the sea as lay a hand on you, you little demon. And as to being defied, where is the insult there? I'm the Jarl. Nobody defies me. It's not," I paused, searching for the right words – "it's not how it is with my people."

Emma and I stood eying each other, and I could not escape the feeling that she had in some way bested me, despite the fact that I'd thwarted her attempt to flee (and probably saved her life, although that was apparently not worth mentioning) and was about to drag her back to the camp.

"You've a quick tongue," I told her, "but it's cold out here and clever words won't save you from the frost. If you promise to take that look out of your eyes I'll put you on my horse and let you ride back."

"No." She replied simply, taking a step back – a step I immediately remedied by grabbing her tunic and pulling her back to me.

I shook my head, laughing again. "You can't mean it, girl. Is there some magic afoot? Have the gods protected you from the weather? I see you shivering, so I don't think it so. So you choose if you want to come back on my horse, or attached to a rope and led back like a wayward calf."

She only gave in because she was cold, and I could still plainly see the fire of defiance burning in her eyes as I bound her wrists – what reason to take further chances? – before lifting her onto my horse. I knew, even as I generously instructed the household thralls to build the fire up in the prisoner's roundhouse for Emma, and to feed her again and give her a sheepskin to lay underneath her body as she slept, that instead of thanks I would get only another attempt to flee – and another and another.

What did this girl have to flee to that was so much better than the food and warmth at the camp? I pondered this question when I retired to my dwelling to dress for the feast and dismissed Halfgan's offer to bring me one of my favored girls later that night. Perhaps Emma truly believed she was about to be made a servant herself? A stupid belief, as anyone could see she hadn't the temperament for serving.

And if she hadn't the temperament for serving, and she wasn't one of the Lord's daughters, and not a queen herself, as she'd assured me – then what was she?