Wild Moonlight by Miriam Minger

Author:Miriam Minger
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Walker Publishing
Published: 2016-10-14T21:00:00+00:00

Chapter 12

“You burned down the church?” Magnus MacTorkil stared in disbelief at the smoldering ruins while Sigurd Knutson swore vehemently and spat with disgust at the ground.

“A foul crime happened there, MacTorkil! What else could I be expected to do? That damned Father Edmund wed my promised bride to another man!”

Now Magnus felt like he’d been struck at this unexpected news.

He had only just dismounted from his lathered horse, having ridden like the devil east of Ostmentown when he’d heard from some of his men that Sigurd was laying waste to the countryside. “Nora is alive?”

“Aye, she’s alive and run off into the mountains with her husband, Niall O’Byrne!”

A sudden sharp pain made Magnus clutch at his chest. This astonishing news was too much, too much!

Struggling to catch his breath, he glanced around him at the grim faces of Sigurd’s men…scores of them. More than Magnus would have ever imagined would cross the sea from Norway to witness a wedding. A whole army of Norsemen!

But now to learn that Nora was alive and married to an O’Byrne? A second pain gripped him, though not as intense as the first. God help him, he could not make sense of it!

“Where is Father Edmund?” Magnus rasped, still finding it hard to breathe. “I would speak to him—”

“Too late.” With his axe, Sigurd indicated a charred corpse near what was once the front door of the church…no, two charred corpses, one larger than the first.

God in heaven, no, Father Edmund and Father Gilbert?

Sickened by the sight, aye, and the smell of burned flesh that suddenly assailed his nostrils, Magnus now felt rage rising inside him though he did his best to tamp it down.

He was a merchant, not a warrior! All the wealth he possessed and hoped yet to gain depended on his trade alliances with such ruthless men as Sigurd Knutson…though Magnus at that moment rejoiced that his daughter had been spared the fate of marrying this monster.

So Nora had called him, begging Magnus with desolate tears in her eyes to reconsider the marriage though he had turned a deaf ear to her.

How could he not what with Agnes’s incessant harping? His shrewish second wife had threatened to make his life a misery if he did not fully support the match!

Magnus shuddered, wondering what Agnes would say at this surprising news. At least Nora hadn’t drowned, but he still knew so little. Sigurd had left his side to approach one of the corpses. With a terrible howl, the enraged Norseman brought down his broad axe and buried the blade in what was left of poor Father Edmund.

Now Magnus did become sick, dropping to his knees to vomit upon the ground. As he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, Sigurd’s men began to jeer his weakness and beat their weapons upon their painted wooden shields.

“Get up, MacTorkil!”

Magnus began to rise but he wasn’t fast enough for Sigurd, the hulking giant grasping him by the collar of his tunic and hauling him to his feet.

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