Excerpt of Destiny by Helen Kirkman

Kent, England — The Andredesweald, AD 875

ELENE HAD TWO ADVANTAGES — desperation and a spear. She also had a dress fit for a whore. She kicked back her trailing skirts. The man had a sword. Light glittered off his chain mail, off the deep gold fall of his hair. It sparked from him as he moved.

The warrior's sword, gold-hilted, rune-carved, was as yet undrawn, as though he thought he did not need it. She balanced the seven-foot shaft of grey ash wood in her hand. The leafed blade at the tip was strong enough to pierce the hand-linked steel across his chest.

He was shouting; Elene did not heed it. She would deal death rather than be under any man's power, his.

He ran, closing the gap between them, lithe as a grey wolf, fast. He was huge, a shape of strength, threat. His shadow was black. Behind him was the open space in the half-built wall of the fortress. Behind that was the forest.

She tightened her grip on the smooth wood. The distance between her and the warrior closed at a speed that defied reason. Suddenly he was within striking range.

He did not unsheathe the sword. Why?

No weapon. She would have to spear a man unarmed. The world receded around the glittering moving shape, the death-black shadow. She was close enough to sense realness, fast breath, heat, living muscle, the courage to face killing steel. For a critical instant she held back.

Her breath choked. She would have to strike him or she was gone. Back into hell. A captive. She could not bear that again.

He swerved. Left... She tried to follow with the spear point. He yelled, his voice harsh, so strong like him.

He lunged.

The madness made her strike, the point of the spear aimed true, straight at where his heart would be, locked to his movement — it was a feint. She realised too late. The twist of his body, supple despite his size, was too swift to follow.

He took her feet from under her. The spear scraped metal, ripped out of her hand. The point pitched into the dust. He caught her before she could follow. His arms imprisoned her, a solid leg pinned hers.

The feel of his body was pure heat, hard metal, heavy muscle, size. Such size. Weight. It was the way Kraka used to hold her. She struggled, insane.

"Keep still, woman!" The words came through, Danish mangled by West Saxon. She hit, her fist jarring against metal, on flesh hot with sun and exertion, fine skin. "Hell-rune..." Hell-fiend, sorceress. It came out in English, equally mangled. She realised what his accent was and went still. She swore. The language she used was the same, only the dialect was different, the pure Mercian that belonged farther north, in the broad midlands.

"You are English, then." The deep, richly accented voice held a thread of amusement, exasperation, the fierce intensity of the shared struggle. He was breathing hard.

"Will you stop now?" he enquired. She swallowed with a dry throat. The spellbinding shape of his voice had no significance. East Anglians were dead meat anyway, their rich open landscape lost forever to the Viking army, to raiders like the ones she had lived with.

"Well?" demanded the dead East Anglian.

She did not know why he was interested in her answer. He could kill her one-handed. He knew it. Her chance was gone.

For now. "Aye."

He loosened his grip. The fingers of her left hand were tangled in the bright mass of his hair beneath his war helm. She had pulled bits of it out. She unclenched her fingers. Threads of pure gold stuck to her flesh. When he breathed, the solid wall of his chest pressed into her, metal and padding, and beneath it strong life. His hands, huge, heavy, eminently capable, burned her skin through the bedizened inadequate gown. He shifted a dense, thickly muscled thigh. His hands moved briefly across her back, the curve of her ribs, under her arms. Shivers coursed over her skin. Her half-clothed body slid down the metal- clad length of his, hardness and heated flesh. Her skirt caught between their tightly pressed legs, lifting. She yanked it down, vicious with fright. He moved. The material came free, dropped, covering the revealing flash of skin, the bright red shoes.

But he had seen the strumpet's dyed shoes of cheap leather, the curving shape of hidden flesh bared to the knee. He had touched her. She read the flare of heat in his grey eyes, beyond anger or vengefulness, as deep as instinct. Male. Her breath hitched.

He caught her arm, his hand warm, alive, the touch direct, shockingly intimate, more so because of the brief, naked moments when they had fought between life and death. Close. Deep inside her, sharp feeling uncoiled like a snake waiting to strike.

It was anger, the bitter melding of rage and fear like a killing frost. He kept his hand where it was. The heat of the feeling, the solid living touch of him, mocked her.

Her feet lighted on the ground and the dizziness hit her. She felt ill with exhaustion, the mad, fey strength of the struggle, spent. Her belly clenched. No food, no money, no hope of anything. All lost like her freedom. She made herself stand up straight. Not her freedom. She would do whatever it took.

"Lord, you have caught her!"

She stiffened with shock. She had not seen the others, or even realised they were there, that anything existed beyond the man who held her. She turned her neck on tight muscles.

The garrison of the unfinished Kentish fort surrounded her and the East Anglian warrior like a circle of carrion birds after the battle. Near her feet on the dusty ground lay the lost throwing-spear. Beside her captor's large boots lay the scratched linen bag of pilfered food, the leather bottle of clean precious springwater. Someone's ration of dried meat spilled onto the ground.

"She is dangerous, lord. We could have shot her, but..." She saw the man with the arrow ready on string. The bow was still bent. But the East Anglian with the flashing armour, the one referred to as the leader, had flung himself at her with a wolf's speed, shouting. Her foot grazed the deadly spear shaft. The lord held on to her, a tightening of iron fingers on her bare arm, like a warning.

Like a sign of outright possession. "She is a thief," insisted the man who could only be the garrison commander. The speech, thickly Kentish, alien to the richness of East Anglia, brought sullen murmurs of agreement.

"Of the armoury?" The lord's voice was flat. The captain of the garrison flushed. Elene should not have found the throwing-spear. They had been unforgivably careless.

"She speaks Danish."

This time her belly clenched with fear. The accusation was true. She spoke across them, shouting. "I am not Danish." She nearly spat it. She sought for calm, reason, for her voice to ring with conviction. "I was living in the forest. The Andredesweald."

"An outlaw, then. And —"

A hor-cwen. The appalling scarlet dress clung to every curve of her body like a second skin. Her flesh spilled out of it, her arms bare past the elbow, the curve of her shoulder exposed, the tops of her breasts. The material was thin, now travel-stained, ripped at the hem and — heaven knew what she looked like after fighting a warrior built like Beowulf the monster slayer. It required only the iron grip of his hand on her arm to hold her still. The strength seemed to pour from him in hot waves. He did not speak, but her accuser suddenly stepped back, bowing his head.

But it did not stop his vengeful gaze, the mixture of anger and thwarted lust. The same look, the same bitter fire burned in the eyes of every man in the tight circle that hemmed her in, trapping her from escape. She had made fools out of them all. She was a Danish whore. She consorted with those who had raided their land and killed their kindred and taken their families as slaves. Kent had suffered badly, ravaged by horrors.

It was nothing to what had happened in East Anglia. The relentless pressure of the massive hand on her arm increased. The fierce, strong body with its merciless courage moved.

"I will deal with this."

She could feel the unslaked anger in the company of men around them, the resentment. There were a score of weapons. But the unexplained right over them the East Anglian lord possessed, the command, the unbreakable strength of his will was enough.

"My lord Berg."

Berg.

The circle of men opened to reveal a sunlit path that led straight into the heart of the fortress.

"Come," said the man called Berg.

Question, command or offer. It did not matter. The choice was clear — him or the pack of angry bated hounds on the scent. The lord in the brilliant armour did not spell it out. No need.

She tossed her head. The whore's dress rustled as she walked.

SMALL BOLTS OF PANIC DARTED through the pit of Elene's stomach. She should have stabbed the man when she'd had the chance, fled back to the dark forest. She looked at the enormous bulk in front of her, the sunlight flashing on chain mail. Her stolen spear had been strong enough to penetrate his protection. She could have killed him. Mayhap. She tried to imagine it — the fierce, terrifying fire gone from his deep grey eyes. Shivers raced down her spine.

He had charged at her with no weapon.

If he had not done such an insanely dangerous thing, the others would have killed her.

She followed in his heavy footsteps. They beat out a concentrated rhythm on the dusty earth.

She was weak and a fool, and she had got herself caught. She would have to get out of it. There was always a way out if you had the courage to take it.

Her captor led her to a bower. It was roughly made, the walls of wattlework, the furnishings sparse. But it was warm, with a fire to keep the cool wind of early summer at bay. The golden glow of flame accentuated the fading light outside. It would soon be dark. Darkness and the forest. Her chances, any chances, faded with the light.

The monster slayer named Berg waited at the door. She went inside. He clumped after. Then he closed the door. It was like a trap shutting.

His size filled the room. She could not see his face, only a glimpse of straight shadowed features. And the eyes. Grey as the battle steel that encased him. The rest was hidden by a war helm that was treasure beyond reckoning, a master smith's creation carved with boar shapes for strength, crested with an intricately carved, doubleheaded snake for protection.

Its splendour was barbaric, equal parts brute strength and a savage kind of beauty. Wholly intimidating.

Like him.

She had lost the spear. That left only the whore's dress. He faced her. His dark blond hair spilled from beneath the helm, half-hidden by the curtain of fine mail that protected his neck, pouring down to touch a giant's shoulders. Unreal.

She watched the heavy swell of the breath in his chest, which meant he would speak.

Her heart pounded. "What are you doing here?" His accent pulled at her, the sound of a people who lived in a land so open that it had no beginning and no end, just distance stretching out like a long-remembered dream.

"I was thieving," she said. She no longer dealt in dreams. Or memories. Besides, the man was nothing to her, only some great brutish lump. She would escape him. She looked straight back. "As you saw."

"That spear. Aye." His finely made mouth quirked. "I saw it." It was a mad kind of irony, just as it had been a mad kind of courage that had sent him running at her when he could have had her shot. Fool. It had been her intention to kill him.

She would not even contemplate what might have stayed her hand for that heated, fractured instant that now proved fatal.

"And food," he said.

She regarded the costly armour, the well-developed body, the rude health. He did not look like a man who had ever known hunger or the kind of desperation that stripped the soul.

"I was hungry," she said. "There is not a lot to be had in the forest."

The trace of amusement died, leaving his eyes flat grey. "No. And there are other hunters in the forest."

His remark made her lip curl. If he meant the Vikings, he was wrong. Kraka's men were not so close, neither would they come near a West Saxon fortress. It was why she had come this way.

"There are wolves," she said blandly, "and wild boar." His gaze flickered, but he did not pursue the subject. Just a lumpish fool.

She tried not to think of the depths in his eyes. "What is your name?"

The dizziness and the tiredness washed over her suddenly. She thought she would drop. "El —" She choked over the next syllable. Elgiva. She had almost blurted out her true name, the formal name she had been baptised with. Why had she so nearly done that, now, in front of a stranger? It seemed unfitting...dangerous.