Iron-Clad

The longship's bray split the morning mist. Vikings with mud-streaked faces and blood-soaked fists. Villagers screaming "Sanctuary!" to the barred chapel.

Tearing my door from its hinges, a lone drengr claps iron around my arm. My charred writing stick is flicked away. "Bryti," he decides.

Br ... his bride?

"Too old," boys sneered. "The Devil's doing," wives hissed. Scarred and schooled, I was no match even for the idiot a town over.

Bryti. I shudder, realizing the Norse word for valued slave.

Hearth fire burning my memory, I drop the scraps of my old life into the abyss of the sea.