“I Can’t Bear Children,” She Told Giant Viking — He Grinned, “My Five Sons Already Love You”

Chapter 5

The storm hit three days later.

It came screaming down from the mountains with a fury that caught everyone unprepared — a winter tempest that turned the sky black and buried the village under snowdrifts that reached a man’s chest. The wind howled like the dishonored dead, rattling shutters and tearing thatch from roofs. The cold crept through every crack, every gap, every insufficient barrier between the world outside and the fragile warmth within.

Brinhild was preparing for the worst when the pounding came at her door.

She opened it to find Eric half-frozen, his face red with cold and his breath coming in desperate gasps.

“The roof,” he said, stumbling inside. “Part of it collapsed under the snow. The hall’s flooding. Father sent me to —” He stopped, looking around her small cottage with sudden, hopeless understanding. “You can’t come. The storm is too bad.”

But she was already moving — grabbing her herb satchel, her warmest cloak, the extra blankets she’d been saving for winter. “Is everyone safe?”

“Ulf is terrified. The sound of the roof breaking reminded him of his fall. He won’t stop crying.”

“Then he needs me.”

The journey to Magnus’s Hall was a nightmare. The wind tried to tear them from the path a dozen times, hurling snow and ice into their faces with relentless fury. They clung to fence posts when the gusts became too strong, pressed forward when they relented, and prayed to gods Brinhild wasn’t sure she believed in anymore.

When they finally reached the great doors, the scene inside was chaos.

A massive beam in the eastern wing had given way, bringing down a section of roof and opening a gaping wound through which snow and wind poured without mercy. Water pooled on the stone floors, mixed with debris from the damaged roof and the shattered remnants of what had been the boys’ sleeping quarters. Servants rushed about with buckets and blankets, their faces grim with exhaustion.

And in the center of it all, Hal Stoneback moved with the calm efficiency of a man who’d led men through worse.

His hair was matted with melting snow, his tunic soaked through, his hands muddy from crawling through wreckage. But his voice remained steady as he directed the salvage efforts — organizing men to move furniture, women to dry what could be saved, children to gather in the main hall where the great fire still blazed.

He saw her the moment she entered.

Something shifted in his face. Not surprise — he’d sent Eric for her, he must have hoped she’d come. But the relief that flooded his features was raw and unguarded, the look of a man who’d been holding himself together by sheer will and had finally, mercifully, found someone to share the weight.

“The boys are safe,” he said, crossing to her. “Ulf is by the fire with the others. But we’ve lost most of their belongings to the water.”

“Things can be replaced.”

“Not all things.” He touched her arm, a brief, grounding contact. “The wooden horse. It was in their room. They couldn’t —”

“I’ll make him another one.”

She said it without hesitation, surprising herself. The horse had been a relic of her past, a precious memory of Aar. But standing here, in this wreckage, surrounded by a family that had lost so much already, she understood something she’d been too afraid to see before.

Some things were meant to be lost so that new things could be found.

She found Ulf huddled in a nest of furs near the fire, his small body shaking with each howl of the wind. The other boys surrounded him — Leif telling stories in a desperate attempt to distract him, Bjorn holding his hand, Olaf pressed against his side like a living shield.

When Ulf saw her, his face crumpled with relief.

“Brinhild! The roof broke, and I thought — I thought I was falling again, and the horse — I couldn’t find the horse —”

She gathered him into her arms, cradling him against her chest, feeling the wild flutter of his heartbeat against her own.

“Shh,” she murmured, stroking his hair. “I’m here. And I’m not going anywhere.”

She hummed the old lullaby — the one her mother had sung to her, the one she’d hummed the first time she held Ulf, the one that seemed to live in a woman’s bones whether she’d borne children or not. Gradually, his trembling eased. His breath slowed. His small hands clutched at her cloak with the desperate trust of a child who’d learned, far too young, that the people you loved could disappear.

“I think we should stay here tonight,” she said, looking up at Hal. “All of us.”

“You can’t possibly fit all of us in your cottage.”

“I can if we don’t mind being close.”

The silence stretched between them. Hal’s expression shifted — from exhaustion to something softer, something that looked almost like wonder.

“You would do that? Invite chaos into your home?”

“Your boys saved my life, Hal. They fought for me, defended me, called me family before I ever earned the right to be called anything. The least I can do is offer them a warm place to sleep.”