by Robin Brande
Someone had left the book out on the library table. She had never heard of the sagas of the Icelanders, but there they were, just a fraction of them collected in one thick volume. Annie had some vague impression of the Vikings and their exploits, but here were epic tales as absorbing as any of the Greek legends she had studied in college.
Hardy seamen and warriors and their even hardier wives. Women widowed and remarrying repeatedly as their men fell under sword or wave. Love affairs giving rise to blood feuds that spanned generations.
And there in the midst of the turmoil was the fearsome Freydis, illegitimate daughter to the Erik the Red, half-sister to the great explorer Leifur Erikson.
Pregnant, unarmed, the men in her party besieged by a band of warriors who had landed on their beach, Freydis erupted into action. She refused to give in to the inevitable slaughter. She charged down the beach toward the invaders, scooped up a sword from one of her fallen companions, and shouted with all the fury of a wild animal. She tore open her shirt and bared her swollen breasts. Now she had the warriors’ attention. She beat the sword against her breast, screaming and cursing and threatening their very souls. The invaders fled to their boats and rowed away, Freydis’s screams filling their ears.
Wow. Annie had thought. Why can’t I have that kind of fire?
Sitting there in the library, the sagas open on her lap, she replayed the scene in the teachers’ lounge.
I open the door. There’s Mark, there’s Sherry. His hand is hidden behind her. He looks up, sees me, pulls his hand away. They scoot away from each other and smile at me in that fake, guilty way.
I run to the coffee machine. Rip open my blouse. Pour scalding coffee on my breast...
Annie shuddered. No, try again.
I rip open my blouse. (Leave the lacy bra on—it’s one of my favorites—no point in ruining it on his account.) Take the grammar book I’m holding and beat it against my breast while shouting—while shouting—
And there the fantasy ended. What could she have said? “I wasted four months on you! Die, fiend!” Words seemed inadequate. Maybe she’d done the only thing she could do under the circumstances: close the door and walk away.
He tried to lie, of course, but Annie knew. She realized she had known for weeks. She didn’t love him, but hoped to if she gave it enough time.
Once again Annie wondered if it was really her fault, rather than any of the men she’d met. Yes, Mark was a bastard, just like Shannon said, but so what? What about any of the others she’d tried to talk herself into liking? Maybe there was something wrong with her. This kind of numbness inside her, this hollow in her chest that had only grown larger since her mother died.
Maybe that’s why the Icelandic sagas had hit her so hard. Women like Freydis weren’t numb. The women in those tales were passionate and angry and fierce. They loved so hard their men sometimes died from it. Nobody was living a half-life. Nobody was just watching their lives pass by, wondering if there was something missing that would help them feel more. Those people felt plenty, every second of the day.
So she’d done the unexpected. For once in her life been irrational. Gone home, done a bit of research, and booked her trip that very night. Then packed a single bag and left her home behind before she could think too hard about what she was doing.
She would play the part of heroine for once—bold, uncompromising, fearless. Maybe she would find a bit of Freydis’s spirit somewhere in Iceland, and let the woman warrior fill the hollow in her heart.
The flight attendant moved through the cabin with a cart of duty-free items. Annie glanced at the jewelry on top. What she needed was a duty-free vacation—no obligations, no schedule, no one expecting anything from her. She closed her eyes and settled back into her seat for last three hours of her flight.
* * *
Kjartan Thorbjornson grunted his good mornings. Five riders stood waiting in the stable, their boots already muddy.
“You,” Kjartan said, pointing to a gray-bearded German, “get a helmet.” Kjartan surveyed the rest of the group. He could usually tell from the way they stood which ones were the novice riders. He picked out a British woman standing stiffly near the railing. He would assign her the slowest horse. The rest—he’d just have to see. He could switch around horses on the trail once he had a better sense of his customers’ skill.
Kjartan’s assistant Petra, a red-haired German woman in her late twenties who had been working for him on the farm for the past five summers, helped her countryman select a riding helmet. They muttered in low tones, deferring to Kjartan’s preference for silence. When the man was properly capped, Kjartan said simply, “Good.”
While Petra cinched the saddles and checked the bridles, Kjartan directed riders to their horses. “You, take that one. You, over here.” The group was a mix of Germans and French and a Brit, with Kjartan the only Icelander. English was the group’s common language. Although Kjartan, like all Icelanders, had learned English in elementary school, he still preferred using as few words of it as possible. Even when speaking Icelandic he was terse. No good had ever come from saying too much.
He was right about the British woman. She clutched her legs around the horse like she was straddling a high wall.
“Petra,” he mumbled to his assistant, “that one’s yours.”
Petra nodded. She led her horse toward the woman’s, then withdrew a tether from her coat pocket and clipped the two bridles together. “We’ll go slow,” Petra assured her. The woman nodded nervously.
Kjartan looked at his watch. He preferred to move through his day without ever looking at the time, but he didn’t have that luxury today. He had three groups to guide before supper, and another one that night. In between he had supplies to pick up, a meeting with the vet who was coming out to check on one of the mares, and a new guest arriving at the bus stop.
In his e-mail confirming her registration, he’d promised someone would meet her with the van. Kjartan worked through the logistics as he turned his horse onto the trail. If he took this group across the short cut, he would just make the American’s bus in time.
Americans. Why his ex-wife had been so fascinated with them, he still didn’t understand.
In his eight years running a tourist horse farm, Kjartan had found Americans to be arrogant, self-involved, and condescending. More of them arrived every year as travel magazines touted the charm of Reykjavik and the country’s exotic landscapes filled with volcanoes, glaciers, and towering waterfalls. One man—a tax attorney from Dallas—had actually told Kjartan he was disappointed the volcano looming over the farm hadn’t erupted during his visit. Kjartan bit his tongue and nodded empathetically.
The ones who came to his farm had seen pictures of shaggy Icelandic horses and thought the “ponies” would be fun to ride. They had no appreciation for the horses’ history as the original Viking breed, kept pure for the last thousand years. He could count on one hand the Americans who knew anything about Iceland beyond the fact that the singer Björk was from there.
Because most Icelanders spoke English, the Americans made no effort to learn even the simplest Icelandic words. Those who had stayed at the farm expected world-class, 24-hour service, despite the fact that Kjartan did most of the work alone. Petra had worked for him over the past several summers—cooking, cleaning the cottages, helping him guide trips —but the bulk of the details still fell on Kjartan’s shoulders.
Which was why he would have to find time to retrieve the American from the bus stop.
American or not, this one was traveling alone, and that posed its own burdens. Male or female, the solo traveler expected to be entertained, coddled. Kjartan had neither the time nor the patience.
He would make it Petra’s job to keep this woman Annie out of his way.
HEART OF ICE is available in both ebook and paperback.
For more books by Robin Brande, go to:
www.robinbrande.com/books.
About the Author
Robin Brande is an
award-winning author, former trial attorney and law instructor, martial artist, teacher, entrepreneur, and medic.
* * *
She writes in multiple genres, including young adult, fantasy, science fiction, romance, and nonfiction.
For more information:
www.robinbrande.com
Also by Robin Brande
Romance
Love Proof
Right On Time
Freefall
Heart of Ice
Fire and Ice
Fantasy and Science Fiction
The Bradamante Saga
Into the Parallel
Caught in the Parallel
Seize the Parallel
Beyond the Parallel
Replay
Brindle
A Skip of the Mind
Mystery
Painted Lady
Nonfiction
What If You’re Doing It Right?
What If You’re Doing It Right? For Teens
Young Adult
Evolution, Me & Other Freaks of Nature
Fat Cat
Doggirl
Parallelogram Series
Replay
The Good Lie
Contemporary Short Fiction
The Fishwife
Nude, Smiling
A Kindness, Really
There in the Stairwell