Excerpt from The Thrall's Tale by Judith Lindbergh, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

Just once, when we were sent to the water to help clean some fresh-caught fish - it was a clear, calm day then, with the sunlight bounding off the fjord's water. The stench was up to my elbows and down about my knees, and globs of pink flesh stuck to my dress when Inga laughed and bid me follow her to wash in a shallow pool. There I bent and would have dropped my hands in fast if Inga had not caught my wrist and held me, saying, "Look. That's why the others stare so cruelly when Torvard comes."

And I saw, only for an instant before the wind stirred the image, a face like those I thought only goddesses wore. Inga touched my cheek, and I knew she wiped away a tear, but then I smelled the fishy stench, and both of us laughed, thinking how silly such passion could be roused for a stinking fish-girl.

But since that time, I have tried to see that vision again clearly and for longer than before. Some have called me vain, but it is not so much that as curiosity, especially as the time has passed and daily Torvard troubles me more and more, until it seems even his father, Einar himself, is hard-pressed to keep him back. Torvard listens with far less care than Einar is due, simply because he was fostered by Eirik Raude.

Now there is none to Torvard so great as that man. Since his return to his father's stead three years ago, there has been no peace. Constantly they are fighting over how a man should be: Einar is moderate and calm in all his dealings, while his son seems to mimic his foster-father's airs, being wild and bawdy and headstrong, affecting whims in manner and dress. If he could dye his blond hair red he would; but happily he cannot. He is no Eirik Raude. Eirik, despite his wild temper, has wisdom, too, and a sense of righteous justice. The crimes of Eirik's youth were made to protect what was his; Torvard's crimes, Einar fears, when they come, will be random and raging as the winds.

For that reason most, my mother tried to keep me safe, for it is not strange for a man to take a concubine. My mother was for Einar since the day he bought her at the Althing market; and well he treated her, as well as he might a slave; and even shed a tear when he learned last winter she was gone: dead with his child. Yet he knew she was never happy here. He'd always known, for my mother made no secret that she was not willingly a slave. Even in his arms, she said she never would allow him to forget she had once been free and always would be in her heart.

For her stubborn, still resolve, I think Einar most admired her. Often he told over the drinking horn the story of my birth, how proudly my mother dared defy him, giving me suck at her breast just at the moment he'd prepared to see me killed. If not for my mother's courage, I'd have lain exposed before the winds to fend until death took me to Thor's palace, Bilskirnir, where all thralls of the Norsemen go, or to the gentle arms of the White Christ, of whom secretly my mother whispered. But my mother would not have it so. I was her husband's child, the last she would ever have of him. She would not live to see me slain by the same cruel fate as he. This last she told me many times late at night, and then would kiss my forehead and say her Christian prayer, "Kyrie Eleison. Christe Eleison." By the Althing's law, once I was given suck Einar could not expose me. For that courage, he put me in her arms and said she could keep me. Mother always laughed in her telling then, saying that I howled out my lungs, which is why he named me Katla, for the mouth of the Norse's cold Hel.

Up till the day she died, he'd kept me safe and close, yet I can feel my mother's power waning. Her memory fades from Einar's thoughts like a shield that's begun to rust and crumble. Torvard's attempts since her death have grown bolder, while my master, consumed with plans for these new lands, pays less and less heed.

Now it seems only Inga stands by me. All the other thralls sit in wait and judge. I feel their eyes even now, as I sink down to the deck to rest my head against the planking of the bow. I gaze straight into their condemning looks. On this long trip, there will be no place to hide, so I will face them. We all do what we must. My mother did, and for me also. She gave her body so I might not give mine. For her I will protect what she has saved, even if it means they hate me and say I gad about as if a chieftain's daughter. How can they understand? They don't even remember from which land they came.

Excerpted from The Thrall's Tale by Judith Lindbergh. Copyright © 2006 by Judith Lindbergh. Excerpted by permission of Plume, a division of Penguin Group, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.