Come the morning, Arva and Fiske – my most trusted advisors – met me at the breakfast table, where we ate the little dried fish that made up so much of the winter diet. There was some thickness in my head from the previous night's feast – the one I had been late for after chasing that foolish girl through the frozen woods – but I knew good food and drink would send it away.

"The spring will be here before you know," I said, seeing the downcast look in my friends' eyes. "I've been told this is an unusually cold winter for the Kingdom. We need to move ahead with the conquest of these people, settle down, build a village that can't be taken down by a high wind. I see the high days of many summers ahead. We'll have fertile land, fruit and berries aplenty, and the people of this place will know us as their rulers. But first, we must work."

Arva pushed a lock of blonde hair off her pale face and pressed her lips together in an approximation of a smile. "I know it, Jarl. You keep us well, and we're grateful for it. It's only the season brings us low, and we know it will soon pass."

"A message in the night," Fiske piped up then, always eager to get to the meat of any gathering. "From Jarl Eirik, who is encamped more permanently a day or two up the coast, to the north. He seeks out the counsel of the other Jarls already in this land."

"Ah yes," I replied, thinking of my childhood friend. "I have not seen Jarl Eirik since we were boys, playing at being warriors while our fathers led the people. He seeks counsel when the weather turns warm?"

Fiske shook his head. "Sooner. As soon as can be managed."

"Was that it?" I asked, curious about Jarl Eirik's apparent urgency. Surely there were many more estates to take before the return of summer and the discussion of how to conquer and order our new lands. "Is he ill? Has something happened?"

"There was no mention of it, Jarl. Only that he seeks your counsel."

"Perhaps a trip to see your boyhood friend would be good for you?" Arva suggested, in her gently persistent way. "I won't pretend the raids have been arduous lately, but your men – and your people – could do with a time free of worry to welcome the new year."

Arva was quieter than Fiske, her manner softer, but she was no less intelligent for it. She was right, too. My people had the necessities of life – food and fire and protection – but what they did not have that winter in the Kingdom of the East Angles was peace of mind. Almost every day their Jarl and his warriors rode out on raids, which meant almost every day the people left behind were flooded with worry until we returned. They knew as well as we did that past ease did not necessarily indicate future ease. They knew that one estate being no trouble to take did not indicate the next would be so. And they also knew that eventually the battle with the King would be upon us, and that such a battle would not be easy.

I nodded at Arva and Fiske, indicating that I'd heard all they had to say.

"Are you leaving already, Jarl?" Arva asked, eying me pointedly.

"Aye, I am," I told her, slightly puzzled. "Why? Is there some other matter that needs my attention? Fiske? How about you?"

Arva suddenly took a great interest in one of the ties holding her woolen cape around her shoulders. "I thought you might like to eat some more before you leave, Jarl," she replied. And then, a few seconds later – as was her manner – she said what she'd been meaning to say in the first place. "I hear you've taken interest in one of the prisoners from Lord Cyneric's estate. Is that where you go in such a hurry at this early hour? To check on her?"

I opened my mouth to respond and then snapped it shut again as I watched something almost imperceptible pass between my two advisors – some tiny shift in body language, a slight changing of the tilt of Fiske's head. It was knowledge I saw passed between them.

"I see word has already spread of my evening ride," I smiled, and my smile gave Fiske and Arva their own permission to smile back, slightly sheepishly because they knew I'd caught them taking an interest in matters of less than life-or-death importance – in gossip.

Fiske shrugged, pretending in that way that men pretend, even as their interest in delicious personal matters is just as strong, that somehow the subject is only fit for women. Arva immediately saw this and laughed out loud.

"Look at him! Acting as if he weren't the one in such a hurry to tell me of your pursuit of the prisoner, Jarl!"

Arva and I both turned to Fiske, who had suddenly spotted something outside that needed his attention.

"I reported on what the men spoke of when we woke," he grumbled, getting to his feet. "If you'd rather I keep you out of these matters, Arva, I would be happy to –"

"Go!" I ordered him, still grinning at his reaction to being caught. "Go and take care of your tasks, Fiske. When I have a response for Jarl Eirik you will be the first I speak to of it."

When my advisor had scuttled away I turned back to Arva and shook my head. "Don't be so hard on Fiske. He does his job well – and he's a man. He needs to think of himself as honorable."

"And a woman has no need to think of herself that way?" Arva responded at once, her eyes sparkling with mischief.

"Oh, I'm sure you do," I told her. "I'm sure of it. But even as we're bigger than you, and our shoulders broader, men are brittle in our own ways. Aren't we? His withered arm has kept him from a warrior's life and it's made Fiske very sensitive to his value. All I ask is that you keep it in mind."

Arva nodded then, as she listened. "Of course, Jarl Ragnar. I'll be more gentle with him."

"Is there anything else?" I asked, readying myself to leave. "Any problems with the captives, any sickness within their ranks?"

Arva shook her head. "Not as such, Jarl. Some of them are malnourished, but not badly. Four of the women are pregnant. We'll feed the ones who need it and, when the earth softens after this cold, put them to work."

I nodded and turned to leave, but Arva wasn't finished with me yet.

"Is it as I assumed?" She added quickly, before I was out of earshot. "You rush off to see the girl prisoner from Lord –"

I stopped in my tracks and raised a single eyebrow at my sometimes just-a-little-too-forward advisor. "First, Arva, I do not rush. Where do you see the rush in me?" She declined to answer, although I thought I saw something in her expression that said she wished to, even as she held it back. "Second, there are important matters that require your attention. I scarcely think it worth your time to spend it on my recapture of an escapee. The raid was easy yesterday, I required more exercise to whet my appetite before the feast, nothing more."

I shouldn't have included that last part about needing more exercise before the feast. It was that, more than anything else, that made me appear defensive. But it was too late and Arva, respectful as she knew to be at the right moments, was carefully concealing her woman's skepticism at my assurances that I wasn't interested in the prisoner – the beautiful, young, female prisoner with the way about her that I seemed already to be slightly mesmerized by.

The day was, once again, hard-edged with cold. On my way to the longhouse where the prisoners were being kept as we sorted through them and what to do with each one, I stopped one of the household thralls and bid her fetch me one of the thick bearskins we'd brought with us on our journey across the Northern Sea. When it was in my arms, I continued at a brisk pace, blissfully unaware of how right Arva had been about my hurry.