Slave Girl

Hekja is nothing but a slave. The property of her Viking masters. But one day soon, those masters will live to see a slave become a heroine: they will live to see her fight alongside them, for the very survival of the clan. ‘Hekja's ma was white with terror and twisted with pain too. She screamed out, 'Run! That was the last thing she ever said. One of the men – the largest, with a chin like a cod fish and almost no beard at all – plunged his sword into her heart, then pulled it out, all bloody. Hekja screamed. She ran towards her ma's body and knelt down. Her ma's eyes stared at the sky and there was a froth of blood from her mouth…’ When Hekja’s family and friends are killed by Vikings, she is taken as a slave and carried away to Greenland. But she is lucky: her mistress Freydis is a kind woman who wishes her no harm. Fiery determination, intelligence and fleet-footedness soon make Hekja indispensable to her new owner – as a messenger, an advisor and a friend. So when Freydis sets off for America with her husband, Hekja accompanies her, along with the treacherous Viking lord Finnbogi. There, she finds a forbidden love with a free man. But this new world holds even greater dangers. Before Hekja can be free, she has to take a bloody stand alongside her captors: against the furious natives, but also against enemies closer to home…