He even felt that he had exacted a measure of atonement for the harm done to the woman.
~oOo~
He rode through the wood on his grey charger, moving as quickly as he could while scanning the brush and low growth for signs of her. She was on foot and unfamiliar with the land, but the Northmen had a reputation for astute navigation. The day was clear and sunny, warm with a nip in the breeze that augured the end of summer. If she knew that they’d landed on the western shore, then she could find west easily, by simply looking upward. Even in midday, the chill in the breeze would have shown her which way was north, and thus which way was west.
So rather than take the more wending path of a true search, Leofric rode straight to the shore. To what was left of the barbarian camp.
The sun was low and straight in his eyes when he arrived. A remnant odor of rotting horseflesh weighted the breeze. He dismounted and set his reins. His horse shook forcefully, glad to be rid of his rider for a moment.
She wasn’t here. Had he been wrong about her ability to make her way? Was she lost in the wood? Was she hurt? She wasn’t fully recovered yet, not at her true strength. Had the attempt been too much?
He turned and considered the wood behind him, beginning to darken. If he returned now, the last part of his journey back would be in darkness. But it would be a night just past the full moon, and the sky was clear, so he wasn’t worried. Not for himself.
The night would be cold, however, and unless she had found something warmer than the guard’s breeches and his old tunic, she would freeze.
Or perhaps she wouldn’t. She had gone weeks with no warmth or comfort and survived.
He had to get her back before the morning. He might find a way to buy more time if she were in her room and the truth of the day’s events went unknown.
Perhaps in her attempt, this flash of hope, he could find a way through to her.
But where was she? He’d been so sure he’d find her here.
Staring off to the west, he could just see the greying blue of the sea beyond. The shore was at the base of a steep hill of thick sand and high grasses, and the barbarians had made their camp atop it.
Taking his horse’s reins, he crossed through the charred remains of the camp, to the top of the hill.
There she was. On her knees at the water’s edge, staring out at the sea. The tide was coming in; he could see the water lapping around her. Her flaxen hair was braided simply, hanging down her back in a single, thick plait. The sea breezes whipped loose strands around her head.
His tunic, all she wore over the guard’s breeches, sagged off one thin shoulder. Even from this distance, he could see welts of freshly healed scars.
Every part inside him, from his heart to his sex, throbbed at the sight of her.
He set the reins and left his horse at the top of the hill, then made his way down. Though he didn’t attempt stealth, she didn’t seem to notice his approach. He got all the way to her, his boots in the lapping tidewater, and she never moved. The guard’s lance lay ignored at her side.
He knelt beside her.
Though her face was expressionless, Leofric could see a straight track of gleaming wet down her cheek and the circle of wet on the tunic, on her breast, showing fair, scarred skin beneath it.
She was crying. Silently, passively.
He thought he understood. She’d been left behind, and she only now knew it. Had she not realized that she had? It had been months since they’d driven her people away.
But they’d seen to it that her people wouldn’t wait for her or search for her, hadn’t they? His father and Eadric had made it so her people thought her dead. She hadn’t been abandoned.
He remembered the shock and outrage on her friends’ faces, the way the biggest one had charged them in fury, even facing a line of drawn archers.
No, she hadn’t been abandoned. She’d been mourned.
He couldn’t tell her that, because she’d refused his words.
So he did what he could, and set his hand—gently, carefully, as if he reached out to a wild creature—on her shoulder. Still so very thin. Yet she had bested a castle guard.
She turned and looked at him. There was no contempt or fury in her blue eyes. No fight at all. She seemed empty.
“Forgive me,” he said, unsure whether she understood even those words. “I wish you could know my regret for all of this.” Absurd it was to feel remorse for things done to an enemy during conflict, yet Leofric couldn’t remember if he’d ever felt anything but remorse where it came to this woman and her treatment.
She stood and picked up the lance. Leofric stood as well, warily. The only weapon he’d brought down the hill was the small blade at his side.
But she put the bottom of the lance in the sand and leaned it toward him, offering it to him. Confused, he took it.
Then she stepped back and spread her arms wide. “Aldrig igen,” she said. “Den svarta platsen—aldrig igen.”
He didn’t understand any of the words she’d said, but he understood her meaning nonetheless. She meant him to kill her.
Dropping the lance to the sand, he shook his head. “No. I will not hurt you.”
“Snälla! Snälla! Aldrig igen!”
She lunged for the lance, but he caught her and closed her up in his arms. “You’re safe with me. I’ll keep you safe. Safe.” She’d sagged in his hold, not fighting him at all. He slid his hand under her chin and lifted her face so he could see her eyes. “Do you understand? You are safe with me.”
He was lying, but he didn’t want to be. If only she would open to him, just a little, it could be true. He could keep her safe. But the dead eyes that looked into his and tore him up inside wouldn’t give him more. Perhaps they couldn’t.
“Leofric,” he tried yet again. “I am Leofric.”
His thumb brushed over the faint line of the old scar through her lips. “What is your name? Please tell me your name.”
Yet again, she didn’t answer. But after a moment, she dropped her head, letting it rest on his chest. She let him hold her, and when he took her hand, she let him lead her back up the hill. He left the lance lying in the sand.
She let him hoist her onto his saddle. She let him mount behind her.
She rode quietly, leaning back on his chest, his arms around her, back to the castle.
As much as his heart hurt to see this brave woman give up, Leofric felt the first flowering of real hope. After a rest, when she saw that he’d arranged for her morning activities to disappear, perhaps she then would warm to him again.
Perhaps she’d needed to lose all of her own hope before she could see the kind of hope he offered.
~oOo~
The moon shone brightly over the castle, making stark shadows over the bailey. Leofric rode into the stable and had dismounted and lifted the woman down before he was greeted by a sleep-addled stable boy. He left his horse in the boy’s care and led the woman back into the castle, entering through the servants’ entrance.
She went where he wanted, entirely meek. When they got to the corridor to her room, he pushed her gently into a shadowy nook and left her there, using his body to try to convey that he wanted her to stay there.
Then he went to the guard at her door and dismissed him. As the second son of the king, and the Duke of Orenshire, Leofric was not questioned. The guard nodded his respect and walked away, toward the far corridor, which would lead to the door to the guards’ quarters.
When Leofric went back, the woman was exactly where he’d left her.
He led her to her room. As he ushered her inside, she paused, just a stutter in her step, and considered the empty space at the side of the door, where the guard had been standing moments before.
“No more guard,” he said, without hope that she understood him. But he needed the words to be said. “You are no longer a prisoner.”
She obviously hadn’t understood; she simply walked into the room, reacting to his words not at all.
He came in
with her and closed the door. There was no sign that a man had been killed on this floor. The room was warm and ready for her: torches lit, a small fire burning, a supper tray on the table with bread and cheese and a pitcher. Elfleda and Audie had done well today. Dunstan, too.
The woman turned and stood facing him, her arms slack at her sides.
The guard’s breeches were far too big for her; they sagged and bunched at her hips, bottom, and knees. From the knees down, the leather had been darkened and stained by the salt of the tide she’d knelt in. The boots, too. His tunic had torn at some point during her day’s travels, and, again, it hung off her shoulder, showing her pale skin and a few of the many scars that marred it.
He couldn’t leave her after this strange, long day without trying one more time. When he stepped to her, she flinched back, her eyes wary, and he was glad to see it, even if it meant that she still saw him as a threat. At least it was not meekness. At least there was life in her eyes again.
Standing right before her, he patted his chest. “I am Leofric.” He patted her chest, his thumb and fingers over the high ridge of her collarbones. “Who are you? I so want to know your name.”
When she didn’t answer, he cupped his hands around her face and kissed her forehead. “Sleep now. On the morrow we will try again, but we haven’t much more time. Please help me keep you safe.”
He turned and left the room.
The door was unlocked, and the guard had been dismissed. If she wished to go, she wouldn’t need to kill anyone else.
He was down the corridor and about to make the turn that would lead him to the castle proper when he heard the crank and creak of a heavy door being opened on its iron hinges. Curious, he turned.
The woman stood in the doorway, searching the other side of the corridor. As he watched, she turned, found him, and stopped.
They stared at each other.
When Leofric took a step toward her, she didn’t back away. Keeping his eyes on hers, he retraced his steps. She watched him come, standing firm.
He arrived at the door and stood before her. Then he simply waited. She had made this move, whatever it was, and he would wait for her to make the next one.
She studied his eyes carefully, her own narrowing as if to improve her focus. He tried to fill his head with all the thoughts he had of her, of his feelings for her and his true desire to care for her, in case she could see into his eyes and find those thoughts.
After a long moment of quiet consideration, she patted her chest and opened her mouth.
Leofric’s heart leapt.
“Astrid.” She patted her chest again. “Astrid.”
He had no hope of controlling what he did next; his heart and body didn’t give his mind the chance. He cupped her face in his hands again and kissed her on the mouth.
Astrid tried to remember Hnefatafl, to think of the game and the way that Leif would make her see victory and then snatch it away from her. Leif would concede something, give up a piece or a position, and she would see that he’d lost an opportunity. She’d be lured into believing he’d made a mistake, and leave herself vulnerable to an attack from the side she’d made blind as she’d chased a victory that hadn’t truly been.
She’d always played like that, reacting to what was immediately before her.
Her body was reacting to what was immediately before her now—Leofric’s mouth on hers, his hands gentle and warm around her face, his beard brushing her chin. She needed this; on a physical, primal level, she needed this tenderness. Her heart ached for the past she’d lost, and her belly was full of fear for the future, but in this present, his hands were strong, and his mouth was soft, and he’d been kind since he’d found her at the water.
He’d always been kind.
But she didn’t understand. She’d never understood.
She’d killed one of his men that morning, and now, in the night, she was back in the same room, but without a guard. What did he intend? Was it a trick that she couldn’t see, like Leif’s stratagems in the game? Would she be lured and made more vulnerable?
Could she be more vulnerable than she now was? Alone in the world, weak, unarmed, at the mercy of an enemy she didn’t understand?
No, she could not.
But this man had been kind and had asked only words of her. He’d taken her from the black place. He could return her there if he chose. Only he stood between her and that horror.
She’d begged him to kill her rather than take her back to the black place. She could never survive it again. For the first time in her life, she’d begged. She hadn’t had his words to do it, and he didn’t have hers, but she believed he’d understood nonetheless.
But he hadn’t done what she’d asked. Instead he’d held her, and then he’d brought her back to this room. He’d removed her guard and left her alone.
All he seemed to want was her words.
And this, too. He wanted her body, too. She could feel that want in his hands and his mouth, and in his breeches.
When she pulled back, she could see it in his eyes, which were the color of a cloudy evening sky, dark blue shot with grey. And she saw something deeper in his eyes as well, something too deep for words.
She wanted what she saw in him, even what she didn’t understand.
Staring down at her, his mouth still parted and wet from their kiss, he let go of her face and laid one hand at the top of her chest, his thumb and fingers framing her throat. “Astrid,” he said in a voice silky and deep and gentle.
Then he lifted her hand and set it on his chest, over his heart. With both of his hands, he pressed hers into his heavy, soft chestpiece.
He wanted her to say his name.
More even than finally giving him her name, giving his back to him seemed as if she would be giving him everything. If she said his name, she would tell him that she would give him what he wanted.
But she didn’t know what that was. Was it only her words? Her body? Was it more than that? Was it all a ruse to finish her undoing? She couldn’t see.
What choice did she have? Her people had left her behind. She was alone in this place, where she would die—perhaps soon, perhaps not. If not, and if she wasn’t returned to the black place, then she would have to make her way.
If sending the guard away meant that she was no longer a prisoner, did that mean she was not a slave?
There was no way of knowing. Not unless she could use words and ask.
She had no choice. The man holding her now was all she had. Until she could understand, she would have to give him what he wanted of her.
In his eyes, she saw no threat, only desire and kindness, and hope, and something deeper she didn’t understand.
“Leofric,” she said, making her voice clear and steady.
“Yes, yes!” He smiled and lifted her hand to his mouth. He kissed her fingers, his lips lingering long over each one. “Thank you. Astrid.” His mouth moved over her skin as he spoke. He said more, said the word safe again, but she didn’t understand more than that word.
He’d said the same words before; she recognized their sound, if not their meaning. She hoped he was telling her that she would be safe.
Astrid hated that she could no longer make herself feel safe, but she could not. That was one of the many things she’d lost in the black place.
She would give him anything he wanted if he would give her that.
With that in mind, she caught his hands in her own and backed into the room, leading him with her.
When she was standing in the middle of the room, she dropped his hands and began to remove the clothes she was wearing: the boots of the guard, then his breeches and belt, then the shirt Leofric had given her.
As she lifted the hem of the linen so she could pull it over her head, he set his hands on her shoulders and shook his head. He spoke words she didn’t know, then smoothed his hands down her arms.
“Astrid,” he murmured.
The shirt fell off her shoulder, drawn by his hand moving d
ownward, and she saw his eyes fall on her bare skin.
He wanted her. He was being kind, but he wanted her.
It was only her body. A tool, nothing more. Not herself; no more than the thing that held her self. She could give it and lose little.
What was more, she wanted his touch. It soothed. When he held her, she felt sheltered.
Safe.
Shrugging her arms free of his hold, she pulled the shirt over her head and tossed it away. She stood, straight and still, as his eyes moved over her scarred body, which had lost most of its strong muscle. But the heat in his eyes didn’t flicker.
Soul's Fire (The Northwomen Sagas Book 3) Page 16