A Heart of Fire

Evernight Publishing ®

www.evernightpublishing.com

Copyright© 2014 Kerri M. Patterson

 
ISBN: 978-1-77233-071-7

Cover Artist: Jay Aheer

Editor: Karyn White

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

WARNING: The unauthorized
reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal.
 
No part of this book may be used or
reproduced electronically or in print without written permission, except in the
case of brief quotations embodied in reviews.

This is a work of fiction. All
names, characters, and places are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual events,
locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

DEDICATION

This one's for Tammy, my cousin
and childhood best friend.

Love you!

A HEART OF FIRE

Kerri M. Patterson

Copyright © 2014

Prologue

Norway

Summer, 795 A.D.

“Hadarr!” Aldar bellowed into the field of carnage
that was his brother’s village. Yet Hadarr did not show his despicable face.

On a hard sigh, Aldar’s breath clouded in the cold
gloom of the very early Nordic morning. He had expected his brother to come out
and meet him head on, but as the battle—if their attack could be called
thus—waned, he had yet to see the coward Hadarr.

"Brother, I am here. Why do you not come out to
face me?" Aldar shouted again ferociously, blood sputtering from his lips
with his words.

Aldar looked over the village of his kin.

This place was once his home, too. He paused to watch
as one of his men tightly wound a fist into the flaxen hair of a thrall and
began to pull her away. Her screams filled the yard, and the woman fell to the
ground as his man wrenched her from her crying children and dragged her away,
disappearing around the side of a thatched roof dwelling, her kicking feet the
last Aldar saw of them.

He grunted with disinterest and uncaring, turning his
attention to the line of traitors meeting their execution. He spared them only
a moment of cold hatred as blood spewed from each of their necks as blade met
flesh. A half score of his men moved down the line of his brother's remaining
warriors. All were stripped of their weapons and honor, of their will to live.
His warriors meted out the sentence he had issued for these remaining men left
over from battle.

No Valkyrie would come to take these spineless dogs to
Valhalla.

He spat onto the bloodied dirt as he stepped over a
bludgeoned body at his feet. Perhaps his brother had been slain already, even
though he had given specific order that Hadarr should not be touched. Were his
young brother's death not by his own hand, he would be furious with his
warriors. When his men's blood lust boiled, they could be unstoppable. Likened
to berserkers they were.

A few of his men had returned to this forsaken place
for their wives and families, those they had been forced to leave behind when
they had sided with him in the feud one year past. The wives had been thralls
first belonging to his father and then swore fealty to his brother when Hadarr
wrested the position of Jarl from him. They had never been free women to come
and go as they pleased.

Now, those women and all who returned with him this
day would become his. As they should have been. Aldar clenched his fist,
surveying the area closely.

He had not found his own woman, Surguilde, either. It
did not please him that his dire luck held in the finding of his brother, too.
Rage swelled in his veins at the thought of the many possibilities.

Aldar started for the great hall then, his boots
sinking into the crimson stained ground. As he approached the carved
entrance—so strong, so familiar—he fell into the same awe he had always felt
upon seeing the longhouse.

He and Hadarr had run through those doors so many
times as boys. He remembered the men carving the dragons into the doors. He
remembered the warmth of the hall, the family he had fought for.

The family that had betrayed him.

Aldar clenched his fist again as a coldness swept
those feelings away, leaving no trace of any warmth.

He stopped at the steps where a body lay fallen from
the entrance, sagging downward from the top step, and Aldar lifted his foot to
brace it on the wooden edge by the man's head. With the toe of his boot, Aldar
nudged the blood streaked, axe embedded head over to check the face for any
resemblance to his brother.

He straightened with a grunt, disgusted at seeing one
of his own men.

His heavy sigh hung in the laden fog of morning that
wound through the village like a thick, white serpent.

One would think this might have worsened his
disposition, but it did not. The loss of one man was of no consequence. For the
betrayal he'd been dealt, he wanted blood. He wanted those loyal to his brother
slaughtered! He wanted them all to suffer for the unjustice they had served him
on a cold platter a year ago. He wanted them to suffer as he had suffered.

And to do that, men would die aplenty before he was
done.

“Hadarr!” he shouted again, the words rattling from
deep within. Aldar growled low through his teeth, squinting to see between the
charred buildings. The smoke permeating from those razed dwellings shadowed the
village making it hard to see aught. The other dwellings were in a like state,
but the longhouse had been the first to feel the heat of his warriors' torches.

Still, the flames had not yet damaged the sturdier
building as they had other dwellings. Though the main structure lingered, the
roof and walls on the far end smoldered in a thick haze. The burning thatches
filled the summer air with a choking, fragrant smoke.

Warriors ran between Aldar and the village, looting the
remaining buildings, homes of those loyal to Hadarr.

All traitors.

They would take the women, kill the remaining men, and
seize anything of value.

They
were
Vikings after all.

Who had ever said one could not raid his brother's
lands? One could certainly take his brother's place as Jarl and take his woman,
too!

He should have been named Jarl. He—not his
brother—should have taken Surguilde as wife. Late in returning from a raid only
by a fortnight and he had been passed over, his birthright falling into the
unrighteous hands of his brother.

Aldar lifted his arms high above his head, his sword
in one hand. The air shook with his fierce war cry. Abruptly, he turned and
vaulted up the steps and entered the great room of the longhouse. The grand
fur-covered wooden chairs on the dais caught his eye first.

Empty.

As far as he could see through the thickly falling
gray ash and haze of smoke, the room looked to be devoid of any living persons.
In the center of the large room, near the raised stone hearth, a thrall's body
lay on the floor over a shattered clay pitcher and scattered food from the tray
she must have carried, probably knocked from her hands by one of his men when
they came upon the hall.

Her eyes remained open, but those empty pools were
lifeless. Her kirtle lay pulled to the sides, ripped up the middle, and her
blood stained the brown material black. Her legs were left apart by one of his
men. He wasn’t sure if they had slit her throat before or after raping her.

Such a waste.

Aldar snarled. Where could his brother be?

Something was amiss here.

The great hall of Hadarr Leiknir stood humbled before
him now.

Just as his brother would stand when he found him.

Something caught his ear then, and Aldar turned a half
circle, cocking his head to the side. The distinct wail of an infant trailed
from the far recesses of the longhouse. Aldar turned and looked warily about
himself, scanning the smoky room for any movement, but, seeing no one alive
present in the great hall, he turned to the partition separating the kitchens
from the rest of the house. He watched warily as he silently moved across the
hall, his sword angled before him at the ready. The singed rushes crunched
lightly beneath his boots.

A loud groan filled the room, coming from above, and
he glanced upward. Aldar scanned the beams. The planks of the roof creaked and
moaned with their newfound strain, and some of the beams on this side of the
house supporting a greater weight began to snap as the fire continued to ravage
the house.

Aldar sniffed, rolling his head back to look further
upward. He cared not. The longhouse could fall on his head and he would
continue through the hellish fire until he had his revenge.

Smoke burned his eyes as he searched further into the
longhouse. Years ago, his father had the kitchens shut off, had even begun
plans for constructing an additional level to his home. Yet, his father had
passed the winter before his plans were to be executed. He had wanted to create
such a house as those he had seen on the distant isles when he had gone raiding
in years past. And a fine house it would have been, but Aldar was glad now no
such construction had been wasted only for his brother to gain.