by Mia Marlowe
“Where are you taking me?” Snow-kissed air washed down from the high summit, and she pulled her cloak tighter.
“To the new fields,” Bjorn said, a heart-stopping smile on his lips. The sunlight glinted blue highlights on his dark hair. When he went out of his way to charm, she had to admit Bjorn was devastatingly appealing.
So must Loki appear when that shape-shifting godling has a fool to bedevil, Rika reminded herself. She tore her gaze from her captor, trying to ignore the way her insides tightened with excitement.
Bjorn gestured up the trail. “There’s a nice level spot up there. Once we clear the trees and pull up the roots, we’ll double our tillable soil. We can plant more barley and rye. There are more people living in Sognefjord now than ever in memory. And people need to eat.”
“But why do I need to see it?”
“The extra tillable land is important to the whole settlement,” Bjorn said. “I thought skalds were interested in the lives of the people, not just in entertaining them.” When she gave a grudging nod, he continued. “Anyway, it’s also important to me.”
“And why should that interest me in the least?” she snapped back at him, wishing she could drive his kiss from her mind.
“Because I wish you to know it whether it interests you or no,” he said, his dark eyes narrowing at her. Then he looked around and inhaled deeply. “The land gives us all we need if we care for it. Rika, I brought you here to show you the things that mean something to me. How else can I persuade you that I am not the ogre you think me?”
“How indeed?” She glowered at him with her best frown, the one that’d sent several would-be swains in far-flung settlements scurrying back to their local sweethearts. “I’ll never forget that you are responsible for my father’s death. You waste your time, Bjorn the Black.”
“It’s mine to waste,” he said with deceptive lightness. “But when I kissed you last night, I did think you were almost of a mind to forgive me for a bit.”
Heat surged into her cheeks. He had felt it then, that brief flicker of a moment when her body had betrayed her, opening to him, tumbling into him as gently as a stream into the fjord, and she responded to his kiss. She burned with the shame of it.
“You spoke of a proper time for all things last night,” she said grimly. “The time for us ended before it began. When my father died.”
He dug his heels into his horse’s flanks and spoke no more as they continued to ascend the steep trail into the thick forest. Soon Rika heard the resounding thwacks of axes on trunks and the rasping thrum of the long two-man saws. Before she could see them, she smelled the dying trees, perfuming the air with the pungent aroma of the heart of pine.
They broke through the dense woods into a clearing, where men and teams of horses strained to uproot the broad stumps left by the woodsmen. Sweat darkened the chests of the horses as they bent to the will of their equally sweaty masters.
Bjorn slid off his horse and put a shoulder to one of the more stubborn stumps. The thick muscles in his biceps bulged with effort, as he grunted beside the other workers.
“Get up, now!” he bellowed as the whole crew of men and equines strained together. The long, snaking roots finally released their hold on the earth and wrenched free, pointing skyward in surrender. A cheer went up from the gang of workers.
Bjorn vaulted up onto his horse’s glossy back with the sturdy grace of a born horseman and chirruped to the gelding to walk on. He glanced sideways at Rika, but she riveted her gaze away, determined not to let him catch her paying any attention to him. She scanned the field instead.
“You said Ketil was here.” She lifted a hand to shade her eyes. “I don’t see him anywhere.”
“He’ll be working with an ax someplace. He told me this morning he likes to chop wood,” Bjorn said as he looked for Ketil at the far end of the field. “He’s a strong one, your brother. I asked Surt to watch out for him, but he said Ketil seems to know his way around a blade with a handle.”
“That he does. Ketil will chop up a tree just for the pleasure of stacking up cordwood.” It irritated her that Ketil should be talking to Bjorn. It was one thing for her to spar with their captor. Especially since she had no choice in the matter and the wit to be wary of him, but Ketil wouldn’t know a grass snake from an adder. Her gentle brother always accepted everyone at face value. He’d be easy prey for someone like Bjorn, who could turn anything Ketil might say to his own advantage.
“There he is.” Bjorn pointed at the young man in the distance, who was flailing at a towering pine. He nudged his horse into a trot and Rika followed.
When they were near enough, Rika cupped her mouth and cried out Ketil’s name.
He stopped chopping and looked around. His sweating face broke into a wide grin when he saw Rika. He buried the ax head in the trunk he was working on and lumbered toward her.
A brisk wind whipped across the open field and caught the treetops, sending them swaying back and forth. Ketil’s tree shuddered and cracked and, in a sickening surrender, slowly started to come down.
“Run, Ketil. Run!” Rika screamed.
Ketil glanced over his shoulder, but instead of running to the side to avoid the falling timber, he kept running straight as a plumb line in the same direction the tree was toppling. Rika’s throat constricted as panic rippled over her. Ketil would never clear the treetop in time.
Bjorn dug his heels into the gelding’s flanks, bolting into a gallop. He closed the distance between him and Ketil in only a few heartbeats. Rika watched, hand clasped over her mouth, as Bjorn leaped from the back of his mount and plowed into Ketil, shoving him aside just as the giant trunk came crashing down.
Rika gasped as Ketil rolled to safety. But the jarl’s brother disappeared under a solid avalanche of boughs and needles.
Chapter 8
Men swarmed over the fallen tree like bees around an upturned hive. Rika slid off her horse and ran to Ketil, afraid to look lest she see Bjorn's crushed body under the pile of shattered timber. Tears coursed down her cheeks.
Shock, she told herself. Relief that Ketil was safe, surely. The choking knot at the back of her throat couldn’t be for Bjorn the Black, the man who’d enslaved her and altered the course of her life forever.
Ketil’s friend Surt slithered in among the boughs of the fallen pine. After a few moments, he crawled back out from beneath the mess of limbs, rubbing a hand across his grimy neck. “He still lives, but...”
Rika didn’t wait to hear more. “Why are you just standing around?” Her voice held all the commanding power of her art. “Cut him out. Surt, show the others where he is so they don’t damage Bjorn further.”
Rika took charge of the recovery, encouraging here, railing at them there, until finally the last section of the trunk pinning Bjorn to the spongy ground was lifted.
His eyes were half-closed and an egg-sized lump swelled one temple. Bjorn’s arms and chest were laced with countless small punctures and slashes. A limb as thick as Rika’s wrist stood upright in the heavy muscle of Bjorn’s thigh, quivering like the shaft of a giant’s arrow.
Surt grasped the limb and started to pull it out.
“No, wait!” a young man commanded. Rika recognized him as Jorand, the fellow with an easy smile she’d met on Bjorn's dragonship. Now his face was drawn with concern. “The limb is stopping the flow of blood. If you pull it out now, he’ll bleed to death before we get him down the mountain.”
Jorand stripped the leather sweatband from his head and cinched it around Bjorn’s thigh above the wound. “I need some cloth.”
Rika picked at the hem of her soft new tunic. She started it unraveling and then ripped a long section of fabric from the garment.
Jorand nodded his thanks and motioned to Surt to remove the limb. Black blood surged from the deep wound, followed by a flow of bright red, proof that Bjorn’s heart still pounded in his chest. Jorand packed the wound with Rika’s cloth and bound it tightly. Through it all, Bjorn never moved so much a
s an eyelash.
As the men loaded Bjorn onto a waiting travois, a feeling of dread settled on Rika. In the short time she’d been there, she’d learned from the serving girl Evja that the Jarl of Sogna was not known for his mercy. Thralls had no rights, even if they hadn’t done wrong. What might Gunnar Haraldsson do to the thrall responsible for his brother’s death?
She pulled Surt to the side.
“Take Ketil and hide him until. . .” She couldn’t finish the thought. Her throat tightened at the possibility that Bjorn might die. “Just hide him until I send word.”
Surt nodded and slipped away from the main body of men with Ketil in tow as Rika and the others started back down the mountain. She trudged beside the travois, watching the color drain from Bjorn’s face with each step.
Runners fled ahead of them to announce the accident and make what preparations they could. By the time the travois pulled into the grassy area in front of the longhouse, Astryd was ready and waiting, doctoring being the province of the lady of the house. Bjorn was carried to his airless little room and Rika tried to follow, but Astryd blocked her way.
“Stay out of here,” she ordered, her lip curling. “He no longer needs your services, perhaps for good.”
“But I want to help,” Rika said.
The Lady of Sogna slapped her across the cheek with a stinging blow.
“Thralls do not talk back to me. Do as you’re told or it will be the whip for you next time,” Astryd said. “Now fetch me some raw spirits. Then help Evja boil water.”
Face burning, Rika ran to the brewing shed for the alcohol Astryd needed. She delivered it to Bjorn’s room but still wasn’t allowed inside the door. Then she helped Evja scrub the large soapstone kettle at the central fire and hauled water from the stream to fill it.
Jorand came out of the room once. He glanced Rika’s way, a grim set to his lips, but he didn’t say a word. He drew out a leather pail full of the boiling liquid, still refusing to meet her eyes, and disappeared back into Bjorn’s room.
Finally, Astryd’s bulging belly filled the doorway. “He asked for you,” she said with disdain.
Rika scurried past her. Bjorn was stretched out on the bedding; his leg bandaged tightly, a red stain still seeping through the cloth. His eyes were completely closed now, in what might have passed for natural slumber except for his pallid complexion. His chest rose and fell shallowly. The lump on the side of his head was turning a royal shade of purple with yellowish undertones.
“Bjorn,” Rika whispered as she knelt by his bedside and took one of his callused hands in her own. His hand was cool and his fingers didn’t respond to her grip.
“He’ll not answer you,” Astryd said. “He came round for a moment, but he’s slipped away again. He may wake up. He may not. Only the Norns know.”
The Norns, the three weavers of all human lives had undoubtedly calculated the length of Bjorn’s skein and decided his fate long ago. If he’d reached the end, and the Norns were determined to snip him off, nothing could stop it.
“I’ve done all I can for him.” Astryd shook her head. “Pity that he should meet such a death. A warrior like Bjorn should go out with glory, not shriveling in his bed.”
Rika wanted to say that Bjorn had done something glorious. No one else of noble blood she’d ever met would’ve risked himself for the life of a thrall, but she couldn’t voice the words. Astryd would not believe saving Ketil from his own blunder was a heroic act, and if the reason for Bjorn’s accident ever came to the lady’s sharp ears, it would only endanger her brother.
“Jorand, undress him,” Astryd ordered. Then she turned to Rika. “Bathe him and dose all the small punctures with this.” Astryd handed her a small bowl filled with noxious-smelling paste.
“And then what?” Rika’s eyes widened. She’d never been in a sickroom before, let alone nursed someone who’d been grievously wounded.
“Sit with him and tend to his needs,” Astryd said.
Jorand cut away Bjorn’s clothing to avoid moving him any more than necessary. Then the young man spread a thin blanket over his captain to cover his nakedness. Without a word, he gathered up the scraps of fabric from Bjorn’s tunic and leggings and filed out after the Lady of Sogna. Rika was left alone with Bjorn.
She lathered up a small cloth and began washing the spatters of dried blood from Bjorn’s arms and chest. His tunic had offered little protection from the scrapes and jabs, but she patiently removed slivers of wood and gently cleansed the abraded skin. The ointment Astryd had ordered her to doctor him with was pungent with ammonia. It made her eyes water and she almost envied Bjorn his oblivion as she dabbed some on each scrape and puncture wound.
When she reached his waist, her gaze was drawn to the narrow ribbon of dark hair that started at his navel and spread downward. What if he were damaged in his most sensitive male part? Holding her breath, she drew the blankets down.
He seemed to be intact, with no injury she could see. She stood there for a moment just looking at him, the mysteries of a man becoming clear to her. What an odd combination of strength and vulnerability Bjorn was, and nowhere more obviously than in the tangled thicket of dark hair between his legs.
She’d seen him fully engorged and aroused, and the disturbing image had flashed through her mind unbidden several times since. It was hard to believe this soft, limp tissue was the same organ. Something that might have been tenderness swelled in her chest.
Gooseflesh rippled over the darker skin on the bag of his seed and she was startled out of her study of him. Guiltily, she drew the blankets up to his chin and folded back the bottom edge to soap and doctor the hurts on his well-muscled legs.
Tend to his needs, Astryd had said. Rika soon discovered the needs of an unconscious man were few. She held a wet cloth to his temple, willing the lump to subside. She rearranged the blankets over him and tucked them around his feet. When she could think of nothing else to do, she perched quietly at his side on the bedding, with one of his hands in hers.
He had strong hands, broad fingered and lightly peppered with dark hair. A little bit of dirt had collected under his nails and she used a knifepoint to clean it out.
She searched his face. The hard lines around his eyes etched by years at the steering oar battling the wind and waves had relaxed and he looked years younger. His skin was so pale, with an unhealthy undertone, almost gray. She put a hand on his chest to feel the great muscle of his heart constricting under her palm. The rhythm seemed steady, if a little fast.
“Open your eyes, Bjorn,” she whispered. Her stomach twisted like raw wool on a spindle. Why should she care what happened to this man? Wasn’t he the enemy? The blood of Magnus Silver-Throat might just as well drip from his hand. The hand she held gently, even now. As she willed him to wake, part of her heart damned her for a traitor.
“Poor little brother.” The voice behind her made her jump to her feet. She was so intent on Bjorn, she wasn’t aware when Gunnar slipped into the room, silent as a cat. “He must be dying. If you sat on my bed, I’m sure I’d rouse.”
Gunnar’s voice was greasy, like a slick of whale oil on the waves. She didn’t like the way his gaze traveled over her body.
“He hasn’t wakened?”
“No, lord.” Rika folded her hands before her, keeping her eyes cast down. When he took a step toward her, crowding closer than he should, she reflexively moved back. Before she knew it, he had her cornered.
“Nowhere else to run, my little skald,” Gunnar said, his pupils enlarging to make his pale eyes nearly as dark as Bjorn’s, black holes ringed with icy gray.
“I’m not your skald,” she said. “I belong to your brother.”
The words sounded strange to her ears, yet if it would protect her from the jarl, she would readily admit to being Bjorn's property.
“That’s an odd turn now, isn’t it?” he said, still crowding close. “Ever since we were boys, Bjorn has always wanted what I have. He wants the land, you know. Always, he’s wante
d the land.”
Rika remained silent. She didn’t dare meet Gunnar's gaze, so she studied the plank floor trying to control the tremble that threatened to take her.
“He’s always been eaten up with envy,” Gunnar continued. “Seems strange that now I’m envious of him.” The jarl leaned toward her and inhaled deeply, nuzzling along her neck, where the wisps of her shorn hair curled around her ears. Her breakfast of cheese and bread curdled in her stomach.
Gunnar placed a possessive hand on her waist. “But of course, even though Bjorn can never have what’s mine, there’s nothing of his that didn’t come to him through my good graces. You were mine by right. I think I may just decide to take you back, Rika.”
“Bjorn might have something to say about that.” She schooled her face not to show her rising panic. Bjorn the Black may have had compunctions that guarded her against rape, but she doubted that his older brother was troubled by any pangs of conscience in that regard.
Gunnar tossed a dismissive look over his shoulder at his brother, who lay pale and drawn and still as death. “I don’t hear him objecting.”
She tried a new tack. Ducking under his arm, Rika managed to get away from the corner. “Have you considered the danger you bring to yourself?”
“I see no danger,” Gunnar said. “You’re not big enough to fight me, and Bjorn is in no mood to.”
“But what of the danger of bedding a skald?” Her mind worked feverishly, as her feet managed to keep her out of his grasp. “I’m a gifted poet. Suppose as a lover, you suffer in comparison to your brother and I compose a little ditty about your . . . inadequacies?”
“I’d cut out your tongue.” The hard glint in his eyes told her it was not an empty threat.
“And how would you explain that to the men who expect to hear me each night at your table?” She sidestepped to avoid his grasp. “I promise you I would only have to sing it once and my words will dog you for the rest of your days. It will be too deliciously scathing not to repeat. Whether they sing it in your hearing or not, you’ll be forever known as Gunnar Short-Sword to the men you want to lead.”