Cover Reveal & Teaser: Father’s Sun, The Northwomen Sagas Conclusion

Hi all!

It’s time to reveal the cover and synopsis for the fourth and final installment of The Northwomen Sagas. Father’s Sun is Solveig’s story, and her true love is Magni.

If you’re a reader of the series, then you know that Solveig is Brenna and Vali’s daughter, and Magni is Olga and Leif’s son. The two have grown up together.

When I finished God’s Eye, the first book of the series, and Solveig was born, I knew right then that this saga would end with her story—in fact, I knew by then that the series would be four books long, and that Olga and Astrid would be the other Northwomen to lead books. Olga’s story rattled against the cage of my brain, demanding freedom, and Astrid, though she hadn’t asserted a strong presence on the page in GE, had made a deep impression in my head. I knew a lot about her and wanted to tell her story, too. She is my favorite Northwoman, as it turns out.

I liked the thought that by the time GE was over, we’d met all the women who would tell the sagas. I liked the thought of the story making a circle of sorts, so I ran with that. Other characters rose up here and there and waved at me, suggesting they had stories, too, and I have notes for possible shorts I might write someday (about Frida or Mihkel, for example), but it felt right not to let this series range too far from its core.

I didn’t know what Solveig’s story would be until I wrote it, but early on, it seemed fitting to end a story that began with Brenna and Vali’s great love and legend with the story of their legacy, and I had the name of the final book right then: Father’s Sun.

A side note, apropos of nothing, really: I like the symmetry of the titles in this series: God and Father, Heart and Soul. Also, the cover colors come from the shields themselves (there isn’t a color on the covers that’s not also found in one of the shields in the series), and are consistent with colors that were used by the people of that area and era.

I know most of my readers are interested in my bikers and not my Vikings, but writing The Northwomen Sagas has been a passionate love for me, and I’m heartbroken that it’s over. These stories were a joy to research and write, and I’m deeply proud of them.

Anyway. By the first chapter of Father’s Sun, some years have passed since the end of the first book—almost twenty—and about five years have passed since the epilogue of Soul’s Fire. Solveig and Magni are grown and finding their own paths in their world, seeking to step beyond their parents’ shadows.

Since Solveig and Magni’s story is so much about legacy, I wrote this one a little differently from my usual dual POV style. Solveig and Magni are certainly the dominant POVs of this story, but every now and then we connect with their parents as well, and see their children through their eyes. So Brenna, Vali, Olga, and Leif each get a chapter or two in their POV.

On to business:

The release date for Father’s Sun is Saturday, 3 June. I’ll upload it for preorder a couple of weeks in advance, as usual. I’ve set up the Goodreads page, if you want to add it to your TBR.

Here’s the synopsis:

Solveig Valisdottir is said to be born for greatness. The firstborn daughter of Brenna God’s-Eye and Vali Storm-Wolf, she carries her parents’ legacy on her shoulders and strives to be worthy of their legends. She is a strong shieldmaiden in her own right, but her parents are the greatest of their people, beloved of the gods, and she must reach as high as they, or even beyond, to feel she deserves the esteem she already has as their daughter.

She keeps her fears buried deep in her chest, trusting only Magni, her dearest friend, keeper of all her secrets, to know her struggle. Her love for him reaches deeper than friendship, but she cannot allow herself that love until she has done her parents the honor they deserve. She must find her story; she must make her name.

Magni Leifsson is the scion of greatness himself. His father is the revered Jarl Leif of Geitland, and his mother, Olga, is a beloved counselor of their people. They offer him a legacy of wisdom and compassion, and of strength and valor, and he means his story to be the next verse of theirs.

Magni has loved Solveig since they were children playing in the light of their parents’ friendship. The keeper of her secrets, he knows her better than anyone. He understands the burden of her legacy, and he vows to wait for her while she finds her story.

And he is at her side, offering her his strength and his love, when Solveig finds her legend on a field of loss.

Note: Explicit sex and violence.

Finally, as a teaser, I’m offering the Prologue of Father’s Sun, which covers some key moments in Solveig’s childhood:

 Prologue: The Girl She Was

Six Years

As the ships sailed into the harbor, Solveig ran to the fore of the crowd and pushed in between her grandmother and Håkon, her brother.

“Usch, child,” her grandmother said, combing back a loose blonde tress and tucking it into Solveig’s braid. “Always you are elsewhere than you should be. And where was that this time?”

“Helga’s cat had kittens!” She loved kittens. And puppies. And goatlings. And all baby animals. But kittens best of all.

Her grandmother shook her head. “And are kittens such a rare thing that you would miss the return of your father and mother from their great raid? Two of your mother’s cats littered while they were away. We are overrun with kittens.”

“Dagmar. Something’s amiss.” Bjarke, at her grandmother’s opposite side, spoke, his voice low and dark, like night thunder. There was such foreboding in his tone that even Solveig understood it—even Håkon, more than a year younger, seemed to understand it; his hand grasped Solveig’s and squeezed.

She looked out at the nearing longships, which had come close enough to drop their sails and go to oar, and tried to see what Bjarke could see. Their mother and father had been gone for a long time, Solveig thought, but not too long; summer was still warm and bright. They had gone off to raid in a faraway place called Anglia.

Her father was the Jarl of Karlsa. He’d left Bjarke, his good friend, in charge of Karlsa, and their mother had left her mother in charge of their children.

Their father raided every year, sometimes more than once, but this was the first time in Solveig’s life that their mother had gone as well. She was Brenna God’s-Eye, a great shieldmaiden, and the skalds told many stories about her—and about Solveig’s father, Vali Storm-Wolf, as well. Both were legends.

But to Solveig, they were simply her mother and her father. She missed them when they were away, and she was glad they were back. But something was wrong. She didn’t understand what it was, except that usually when the raiders came home, everyone was loud and happy. They had been that way when she’d run from Helga’s house to wait at the pier. But now everyone was quiet. There was a low mumble rolling through the gathered crowd; she tried to open her ears wide and hear what people were saying. Behind her, two women spoke, and she turned her head so she could focus her ears on them.

“Where is he?”

“He always stands at the prow, but I don’t see him. Where is she?”

“Would the gods take them both at once?”

“That is how it should be, the two lovers hand in hand, though I hope not yet. They are too young. Their children—”

“Öhm! Enough!” Solveig’s grandmother wheeled on the women, whose mouths snapped shut, and then turned to Solveig and forced her head forward again. “Pay them no mind, child.” Her hand shook against Solveig’s cheek, like she was chilled. Or frightened.

Solveig didn’t know who they’d been talking about. So she did what her grandmother said and stopped thinking about them. She looked for her mother and father on the ships. Her father was usually standing up front, just behind the dragon’s head, when he came home, but there was no one there this time.

The people on the ships were quiet, too. Usually, people on the shore called out to the raiders, and the raiders called back. Usually, there was much more noise.

Solveig began to understand that the wrong thing was about her father, who was not standing where he should be. Raiders were warriors, going off to fight for and win treasure and honor and glory, and to have their stories told in the sagas. Many, many times, she had watched her mother and father and all the other warriors in Karlsa practice fighting, with swords and axes and spears and shields, so they could make war on the weak people of other worlds.

She couldn’t see her father or her mother. The ships were pulling up to the piers now, and she couldn’t see them at all. She let go of her grandmother’s hand, and her brother’s hand, and she walked forward.

“Solveig!” her grandmother called, but she moved forward, drawn by a terrible curiosity.

Her mother was there; she had been sitting, and now she made her way to her feet. Solveig saw her fair hair in braids she knew, and, relieved, she broke into a run just as men jumped out to tie up the first ship.

Her mother’s arm and neck were wrapped up in dirty bandages, her arm bound to her side and across her middle. She’d gotten hurt in the raid. She had many scars, but Solveig had never seen her hurt before.

“Mamma!”

Her mother looked up. Weary anger had pulled her face tight, and Solveig felt real fear, though she didn’t understand yet why.

Solveig’s grandmother reached her just then and clamped her hand around her wrist, keeping her in place. As she drew Solveig into a stifling hold, she called down to the ship. “Brenna. Daughter, are you well? What do you need?”

Her mother gave her a small, tired smile, but she didn’t come out of the ship. She turned and looked down again, and Solveig finally saw what was really wrong. Not her mother in bandages.

Her father, her mighty father, bound to a litter, being lifted out of the ship by six men, carried up to the pier. He wasn’t moving. His eyes were closed. His chest was bare except for bloody, dirty bandages. His skin was shiny and grey.

A strange whoosh went through the crowd as the men carrying him climbed onto the pier, and the people on the shore saw the litter. And then all sound seemed to die.

Solveig stood in the silence and watched the men carry her father toward the great hall. Her belly felt funny, like something small and frail inside her had curled up at the bottom and died.

“Come, daughter.”

She felt her mother’s hand on her head, and she looked up into the beautiful face she loved above all others but one. “Did Pappa go to Valhalla?”

The weariness in her mother’s eyes twisted into something like hurt, but then she smiled and brushed an errant lock of hair from Solveig’s eyes. “No, Solveig. He is the mightiest of men, and he lives. It is up to Frida and the gods to make him well now. Hello, Håkon. I have missed you all so very much.” She patted Solveig’s brother on the head, then bent down and lifted little Ylva, the youngest of them, into her unhurt arm. To her mother, she said, “We need Frida, Mother. There is so much fever, and he hasn’t woken for days.”

“She was at the pier, waiting for Jaan. She is already in the hall.”

Solveig’s mother nodded and headed up the berm toward the hall, Ylva in her arms. Her grandmother and brother went after them. Solveig stood and stared at the emptying ship. Everyone had been happy when they’d sailed away. Everyone in Karlsa had been happy when they’d seen the ships on the horizon. Now everyone was sad.

Her father was the Storm-Wolf. The stories said that he’d fought Ægir, the lord of the sea, and won. He’d challenged Thor himself to combat and remained standing. He’d been split in twain in battle and put his parts back together to fight on.

He denied all these things, said they were stories, not truths, but Solveig believed them all. Never had she known her father even to be ill. He was big and strong and fierce. He was kind and warm. He was the mightiest of men, and her mother was the mightiest of women. Everyone agreed they were favored by the gods. How could they have been hurt?

She didn’t understand. Her head filled with noise, like Thor’s thunder, and her chest seemed to shrink and squeeze her heart.

“Solveig! Come!” Her grandmother stood with her hand stretched out, beckoning.

Solveig ran the other way.

Ten Years

Geitland was a much bigger place than Karlsa, and Solveig always felt smaller and less brave in the wild bustle of the town. On this visit especially, when they had grand guests from afar, her parents’ good friend, Astrid, and her husband, Leofric. He was a prince, which made Astrid a princess. They would be King and Queen of Mercuria someday.

Mercuria. A kingdom of Anglia. Solveig remembered that her father had almost been killed in a raid on Mercuria, and her mother had been badly hurt. She remembered the grief of the failed raid; Karlsa had lost many warriors. They’d thought Astrid dead for a long time, too. She didn’t remember many of the details, only enough to be confused by the celebration of their visit. They were friends, even after all that had been suffered and lost.

Her father and Jarl Leif of Geitland had once taken a massive fleet back to Mercuria to start a war and had returned instead allied with the people who’d almost taken her parents away.

She’d seen it many times in Karlsa’s great hall. Her father wanted people to be friendly when their conflicts had been settled. He believed that there was greater strength in friendship than in war.

Her mother didn’t always agree. Many times, Solveig had lain quietly in her bed, feigning sleep and listening to her parents talk out their own disagreements on matters of the hall. She listened because she wanted to understand. She was the daughter of the Storm-Wolf and the God’s-Eye, her life was filled with great heroes of the sagas, people touched by the gods, and she wanted to know all she could of everything, so that when it was time, she could take her place among them.

“Their ship is so grand,” Magni, said, stretching out on his belly beside her. “I want one like it when I grow up.”

Solveig rolled her eyes. Magni was the only living son of Jarl Leif and his wife, Olga. He was almost a year younger than she and still a child with much to learn. He needed to listen better. “Our ships are much grander than his. His is too big and too deep and can  sail only in open water. Our ships can go anywhere.”

“But his has rooms. With beds.”

“Comfort is for soft people, not warriors. It’s why we’re better than they are at everything. Where’s Håkon?” She looked around; she was supposed to mind her brother, but he’d gotten bored with watching the hall, and she hadn’t. She liked to listen in when the adults didn’t know. She learned far more from the things they tried to keep from her than from the things they tried to teach her.

She’d heard him leave, but she hadn’t thought long about it. Only they two had sailed with their parents for this visit. Ylva, Agnar, and little Tova had stayed home with their grandmother. Håkon was next oldest. He had eight years and was old enough to mind himself, even if their mother didn’t think so.

“Gulla found him and sent him to bed. She’s looking for us, too, but I went through the goat pen and she didn’t see me.”

“She’ll not find us here.” Solveig had discovered this gap under a grain bin, against a wall of the great hall, a few years earlier. She’d kept it a secret unto herself until Magni had demanded to know where she disappeared to so often. When he’d claimed that Geitland was his home, not hers, and it was wrong to keep secret places from him in his own home, she’d made him swear an unbreakable oath never to reveal it. They’d cut their thumbs and mingled blood.

And then, the very next summer, he’d let Håkon follow him, and she’d had to make her little brother swear on blood as well. Magni hadn’t meant for Håkon to follow; he simply hadn’t noticed—which was just as bad, and perhaps worse.

Boys were fools.

She wasn’t sure how dolts like Magni and Håkon might someday grow into great men like their fathers. It seemed a tall mountain for them to climb. Nearly as tall as her climb to her mother’s greatness.

Solveig appraised the boy beside her now. She knew, from listening, that his parents and hers wished them someday to be wed. Since she’d heard that, during their last visit to Geitland, she’d tried to imagine mating with Magni. She’d known him all her life, and she liked him well. He couldn’t help that he was a boy and boys were fools.

He was pleasant to look at—as tall as she, though he was younger, with long blonde hair and dark blue eyes like his father. For all that, he was not so bad. But she couldn’t imagine doing with him the things men and women did together—the grunting and groaning and sweating.

Truthfully, she couldn’t imagine doing those things with anyone. She turned from Magni and resumed her watching. It seemed strange and unpleasant, even though men and women all seemed to seek it out as much as they could. Her parents certainly did. In the great hall right now, most people had wandered back to their own homes, and those that remained—Astrid and her husband, Magni’s parents, her own, a few others—had stopped talking amongst the group and started murmuring in mated pairs. While she watched through the gap under the wall, her father pulled her mother onto his lap and put his hand between her legs with a loud grunt like a bear.

She didn’t want that. What she wanted was the other thing—the way her father looked at her mother across the hall, when her mother didn’t know. Solveig didn’t know what that look was, but it was…replete. And utterly bare. She wanted a boy to look at her like that. Even if she never actually saw it directed at her, she wanted a boy to feel for her so deeply and truly that he looked at her that way when her back was turned.

Or the way her mother smiled when she heard Solveig’s father laugh. That smile was akin with her father’s secret look. It made Solveig’s chest feel warm and full to see them both.

In those moments, not in their wild wrestling, Solveig saw her parents’ love for each other. That was what she wanted. Someday. When she was worthy of such love.

“Usch,” Magni groaned quietly beside her. “I don’t want to watch that. Let’s go to the water. I want to look at the ship.”

“Why do you suppose they do it so much?” Solveig asked, ignoring his suggestion and his foolish obsession with the Mercurian ship.

“Erik says it’s like when you scratch an itch. He says you can do it to yourself, too.”

“Who’s Erik?”

“He has twelve years,” Magni answered, as if that were enough. She supposed it was. Twelve years was grown. Some boys got their arm rings and became men when they had twelve years. Sometimes, they took wives as well.

“Have you ever done it?”

He pulled a face and shook his head. “You?”

“No.” She considered Magni again and wondered if they should try.

“Do you want to?” he asked before she had decided.

“Do you?”

His shoulders came nearly up to his ears. “Perhaps it’s nice.”

Solveig doubted that. But she nodded. “All right.” She leaned toward him and pursed her lips.

Magni leaned toward her, and their lips touched.

He smelled pleasant, like wood fire and the goat pen. His lips were warm and dry, tense and puckered against hers. His breath, coming through his nose, tickled her cheek. It wasn’t unpleasant. Or pleasant. Or really anything at all. Their blood vow had had more feeling than this.

Solveig didn’t know what to do next, so she pulled back. She rubbed at her lips; they tingled.

Magni rubbed at his lips, too. “Can we go look at the ship now?”

Relieved that the experiment was over, and more sure than ever that whatever it was their parents liked so much about rutting, it wasn’t for her, Solveig sighed and scooted back from the wall. “It’s not as good as our ships. Let’s go and I’ll show you.”

Thirteen Years

Solveig stared up at the sky, a cloudless canvas of brilliant blue, no variation in its color at all, from horizon to horizon. Below them, Karlsa was quiet. The revels after the raiders had departed had gone on long, and those who remained behind were slow to begin the next day.

Time changed when the raiders were gone, and not only when the people were weary and ill from drink. The pace of the town slowed to languor, and only essential business was conducted. Everyone seemed to hover, waiting.

For her part, since the time her father had come home strapped to a litter, Solveig had never been able to put worry from her mind when he sailed away. On that day, when she’d been only small, she’d lost the belief that he was strong as a god. He was only a man. A great man, the best man, but only a man, and he could be taken from her.

Her worry was greater when her mother stayed home, as this time she had. Her father told many stories about the times her mother had saved him. He said often that his wife was fully half of him. He needed her at his side. But Solveig’s youngest sister, Hella, barely more than a babe, and small and frail, had taken ill, so her mother was in the hall tending her, and her father was alone in the wide world.

“When we are wed, will you live in Geitland, or will I live here?”

Solveig rolled her head on the soft grass on which they lay, at the edge of the Wood of Verđandi, and studied Magni’s profile. His cheeks were yet smooth, but his face had changed since she’d last seen him. It had become more angular, more manly. He looked much like his father.

“Who says we’re to be wed?” Honestly, everyone said it. Even she herself thought about it. It wasn’t an unpleasant thought, and sometimes, she entertained it for quite a while. Sometimes, things inside her stirred and ached, and all she could think of was him.

He turned and met her eyes. His were a blue darker than her own, more like the sea than the sky. “Everyone. Do you say we won’t?”

She shrugged and turned back to the sky. An eagle flew across the smooth blue and then dived, and she didn’t need to lift her head and look over the cliff to know he’d plucked a fish from the water below. “I say that when we wed, and whom, and if, is not for anyone but ourselves.”

His hand went over hers where it lay on the grass, and he squeezed. She felt his new arm ring, bestowed only weeks before, when he’d declared his loyalty to his father. She hated that twisting band of gold and silver, not for what it said about him, but for what the lack of such a thing said about her.

In Karlsa, as in Geitland, women were not given arm rings. They swore their fealty, and they fought alongside the men as equals, but they were not gifted a token of their allegiance. Solveig enjoyed trinkets and baubles, but it was not for its sparkle that she envied Magni his arm ring. She cared not to be excluded. Magni wore that arm ring, and now all he met would know he was a man and had been deemed a worthy one. Solveig would have to prove her worthiness every day.

She tried to pull her hand from his, but he held fast. He’d grown taller than she since they’d last seen each other as well, and stronger, too.

Magni shifted to his side, still holding her hand, and looked down at her. His long hair fell forward from his shoulders and shaded his face. Its ends brushed her neck. “I would wed you, Solveig. Not for our parents’ wish. For my own.”

That stirring she sometimes felt became a spasm, and her chest ached. But she wanted more than him. She had only just begun to train to fight, still with wooden swords. She wanted to find her honor and make her parents proud. When girls her age wed, they soon swelled with babes and spent their lives chasing children and chickens.

Her mother had wed much later, after she had made her name. Her father had been even older. She would wait for love until she had honor of her own.

“My mother and father are legends. I’m made from them. If I’m anything less than a legend myself, I diminish them. That’s all that matters—I must do them honor. I’ll wed no man until I have made my story and it shines with theirs.”

Her voice trembled, and she cleared her throat to rid it of its weakness. She felt strangely exposed, and that made her feel defensive. She’d given something away just then, though she wasn’t quite sure what.

His expression changed, and Solveig saw pity in it—and with that, she was sure that she’d exposed something raw and weak in herself. She yanked hard and freed her hand, pushing him away. She sat up and turned, making distance between them and facing him directly.

“If you share a word I’ve said with anyone, I’ll kill you.”

Magni put up his hands, as if warding off a blow. “I keep your secrets, Solveig. Always.”

He did, but her vulnerability wasn’t calmed. “Swear.”

“I swear.” He pulled his short blade from his belt. “I’ll swear on blood, if you need it.”

They’d made many such oaths, and both carried scars from most of them. Most had been childish vows, only requiring the solemnity of blood because they’d been too young to know any risk greater or to keep deeper secrets. But this one felt especially important, even if Solveig wasn’t sure why. “Yes. Blood.”

Without a blink, Magni drew the tip of the blade across his palm. She took the blade from him and made a cut on her own palm. The sting was mild and familiar. They clasped hands.

“I, Magni Leifsson”—his voice always deepened when he said words he thought important—“swear to you, Solveig Valisdottir, never to speak the words we’ve spoken here on this day to any other soul, or to share their import with any other soul. On my blood, and on my honor.”

“Swear on your arm ring, too,” she added as an afterthought, studying the sunlit glint of his new trinket.

“I swear on my arm ring as well.”

Satisfied, she tried to release his hand, but, again, he held on. “I will wait, Solveig. I would wed you, when you wish.”

Fifteen Years

“Pick it up.” Solveig’s mother brought her sword up and held it before her, pointing it straight up to the gods.

It wasn’t really her sword. Her true sword was a storied thing. She’d wielded it through many great raids and slain hundreds of men and women. She’d never named it, but everyone Solveig knew called it the God’s-Eye Blade.

Her mother’s eyes were unlike any other eyes in the world. They didn’t match. One was blue, a paler shade than Solveig’s, who had her father’s eyes. The other, though, was every color in the world, and through it ran brown lines that made the image of a rooted tree. Yggdrasil, the world tree. People said that that eye was Odin’s own, the one he’d sacrificed so that he might gain all the world’s wisdom. Thus, she was known and revered all through their world as the God’s-Eye.

She said that it was a story, not a truth, like all the stories about her, and the stories about Solveig’s father as well. But Solveig listened hard everywhere she went. She watched and saw, too. And she thought deeply about the things that she heard and the things that she saw.

She thought that stories were truths, no matter how many facts they stretched. The story of a thing was what really mattered.

There was truth in the belief in them, and there was magic in the telling. She didn’t know if her mother’s marvelous right eye was Odin’s very one. Neither did she know why it couldn’t be. But she did know that her mother was a great warrior. Her mother wanted that awe and fear for herself, not for her eye, but Solveig thought that one was the same as the other. People knew her as a mighty shieldmaiden, and they also believed that her eye had its own power. However they came to it, the awe and admiration they felt for her were true.

The same was true for her father. He said that the great stories of him were really times when he’d been saved. He hadn’t fought Ægir, but the jötunn had simply spat him out of the sea and saved him. He’d been badly hurt in battle, nearly split in twain—and he had a long, wide scar down his back to prove it—but he’d only fallen to the ground to fight no more that day, and he would have died right there had not Solveig’s mother saved him. In grief for the loss of his firstborn child, her older brother, who’d died on the day of his birth, he’d challenged Thor to kill him, not to fight him, but Thor had had mercy and let him live.

She believed that her father’s versions of events might be more factual, but not that they were any more true. People made their truth in the telling. What had happened wasn’t as important as what was made of it.

They also said, now, that his heart had been run through with a spear but he had not fallen, and that his heart had pushed the spear out on its own. She knew the facts—she vividly remembered seeing him carried off the skeid in a litter, his soul only inches from the door of Valhalla. It was one of her most complete early memories. Most of the people who now told the story of his mighty heart had been there the day he’d been carried off the ship. Many had been present on the day he’d been wounded. They knew the facts and told the story anyway. The facts were different, but the story was true.

He’d been shot with three thick arrows. One had struck near his heart, and all of the wounds had putrefied before they’d gotten him home. He’d nearly died. Often, in the weeks that he lay insensible, they’d thought that he would.

But he’d survived and recovered completely, but for the new scars on his broad chest. And that was the real story. Again and again, Vali Storm-Wolf had taken injuries that would kill any mortal man, and again and again he’d recovered and reclaimed all of his strength. Those were facts of things that happened.

His heart was mighty enough to push a spear from its chambers. His body was strong enough to hold itself together. His will was powerful enough to take on the gods. That was the truth the stories told.

“Pick it up, daughter. We go again.”

The God’s-Eye Blade hung in its scabbard in the great hall, beside her mother’s shield. But the dull iron of the practice sword her mother wielded now seemed legendary in her hands.

Solveig glared down at the hunk of iron her mother had knocked from her hands. A true blade awaited her, one that her father had given her mother upon their wedding. A day would come when she would be worthy to wield that gleaming thing. But not now. Now even worthless iron was more than she could hold. Her palms and fingers still ached and quaked with the force of her mother’s strike. It took all her concentration not to allow herself to shake the pain away.

She was the daughter of legends, and she wanted nothing in the world so much as she wanted one thing: to be worthy of their truths.

Standing before her mother, pain singing through her hands, she didn’t feel worthy of anything.

“Pick it up, my sun.” Her father’s shadow fell over her and the dull blade she had not yet recovered. He must have come from the hall to watch her humiliation.

She did as he’d said. When she stood straight and wrapped her hand around the hilt of the practice sword, he stepped behind her and put his arms around her, closing her sword hand in his, and gripping the elbow of her shield arm. His weapons were axes, not a sword, and he didn’t fight with either shield or armor, but he knew well how to wield all the tools of the warrior. He was a berserker of the Úlfhéðnar—the fiercest and boldest of all warriors.

Seeing her father’s intent, her mother relaxed her stance and let her dull sword point downward.

In her father’s arms, dwarfed by his body, Solveig felt stronger, like some of his storied might had moved into her through his touch.

“Always know the field around you. Front, back, and sides. Never expose your tender center. Protect yourself neck to thighs. Keep your shield facing your opponent, always, and brace it well”—he lifted her shield arm and set it where he wanted it, pushing her shoulder down and in—“and use your blade from the side. You cannot be disarmed if your blade is not where his blade is. Step to the side and push in.” He moved her body sideways and then forward, bringing her sword arm down and across to slash the air. Three more times, he made the same move.

Above her head, she felt him nod, and then her mother lifted the sword again and brought her shield up as well. Her mother attacked, and her father moved Solveig’s arm so that her shield took the blow. He pushed her inward, moving her sword arm, and she connected with her mother’s body for the first time, slashing with her harmless blade across her mother’s midsection.

Her mother smiled, her magical eyes landing first on Solveig and then lifting to linger on her father. Moving like water, her mother stepped back and came in again, and Solveig’s father helped her block the blow.

It was all slow and graceful, like a dance rather than a fight, but Solveig better understood what she was supposed to see and feel and do.

She relaxed and enjoyed the dance, letting her parents, the Storm-Wolf and the God’s-Eye, show her the steps of love and war, and she felt, for the first time, that she might someday be a shieldmaiden worthy of her lineage.

© 2017 Susan Fanetti