by Mia Marlowe
He stopped for a moment as if weighing her words. “Of course, that supposes that you will not be pleased with me.” Then one pale eyebrow lifted and he strode toward her with purpose. “But I think you will be.”
He feinted one way and when she dodged the other he caught her and crushed her to his chest. Gunnar plastered his lips to hers, driving his tongue against her teeth to force her mouth open. He bruised her with the force of his kiss. She pounded his chest and shoulders, trying to get away. When he finally released her mouth, she gasped for breath.
“Let me go, you worthless crust of lint from a beggar’s navel,” she railed at him. “Filth from Loki’s un-wiped arse! Limp-sworded, pea-balled troll!”
Gunnar laughed deeply. “Very good insults, but you’ll sing a different tune once I slip my ‘sword’ into you.” He fumbled with the front of his leggings. “You see, it’s not limp at all. Or short.”
“No!” She didn’t care who heard her, though with the foot-thick walls, she feared no one would.
“Let her go, Gunnar.” The voice was ragged, but it was Bjorn’s.
The jail whirled to face his brother. Bjorn was propped up on both elbows, his face a white mask of fury. Murder swirled in the reddened whites of his dark eyes.
Gunnar laughed uneasily. “Come, little brother,” he said. “Don’t distress yourself. What’s a wench, more or less, between us?”
“If you don’t take your hands off her right now, you’ll find out.”
Gunnar narrowed his eyes at Bjorn. “Stop talking like a madman. You’re weak as an old woman. You’re in no position to stop me.”
“If you try to take her, I swear on our father’s grave mound, I will beat you bloody.” Bjorn raised himself stiffly to a full sitting position. His face set like granite, he swung his legs over the edge of the bed and rose to his feet, leaning to keep most of his weight on his good leg. The muscle in his left cheek ticked. Naked but determined, he confronted his older brother with both fists closed tightly at his sides. “As you can see, maybe I am in a position to stop you, after all,” he said through clenched teeth.
Gunnar glared at him, then back at Rika. He made a low noise of disgust deep in his throat. Rika wondered how the jarl would explain a fight with his injured brother. Besides, Bjorn had the pain-deadened look of a berserkr. He was as dangerous as a wounded bear.
“She’s not worth the bother.” Gunnar turned on his heel and stomped out of the room.
When the door closed, Bjorn weaved a little, then collapsed shakily back onto the bedding. Rika hurried to his side to help ease him into lying down.
“You’ve started bleeding again,” she scolded, as she lifted his legs back into the bed. She ripped another section of cloth from her hemline and bound it tightly around his bandaged thigh.
He settled into the bedding, letting her fuss over him without protest. After she tucked the blanket across his chest, his belly jiggled with a small chuckle. When his mouth turned up into a broad smile, Rika noticed for the first time that a deep dimple was carved into one of his cheeks.
“Limp-sworded, pea-balled troll,” he said softly before he drifted off again, this time just settling into a light sleep.
Rika hoped it was a sleep without dreams.
Chapter 9
“Healing is not a footrace,” Rika reminded him. “You can’t force your muscles to mend themselves in little more than a week.”
“I’ll never heal if I let you turn me into a slug-a-bed,” Bjorn said, allowing a sly smile to steal over his face. The woman was a walking distraction. He might yet be an invalid, but she stirred his blood just with her nearness. Bjorn tossed the blanket back in invitation. “Unless you want to give me reason to stay here.”
She frowned. He longed to kiss away the deep furrow creasing her brow.
“You know better than that,” Rika said. “I’m still not your bed-slave. I just want to see you well, and you’re not helping matters. It’s time you admit that there are some things even you can’t control.”
Bjorn shook his head and pushed himself all the harder, but only time would fill the deep gouge in his thigh with muscle and flesh. The swelling at his temple was gone, though Rika told him the skin was still washed with deep indigo and yellow.
Bjorn kept to his room lest the true extent of his weakness be known. He stood for longer periods each day, pacing the length of the small space with sweat pouring down the sides of his face from the effort. Once, the leg buckled under his weight and he went down hard on the plank flooring.
“You’re going to start bleeding again,” Rika chided. “You need a walking stick.”
“You’ll not make me a cripple, girl.” He scowled at her, but when she helped him back into his bed, he relented. “Perhaps a staff might be useful, for a little while at least.”
When Rika asked Jorand, he was happy to honor the request. He took time out from working on his klinker-built longship to cut and sand a staff for his captain.
Each day Rika slipped out of Bjorn’s room only long enough to fill his trencher and empty the night jar. After nattmal, she was hounded into leaving him for the length of time it took her to tell the restless horde of men a story and then Jorand escorted her back to Bjorn’s side.
She carefully avoided both Gunnar and his wife.
A week went by and the true tale of how Bjorn met with his accident had still not reached the jarl’s ear. The incident was cloaked in a conspiracy of silence because Bjorn had committed such an unusual act. Even the ones who’d seen him shove Ketil to safety didn’t know what to make of it. Privately, men thought it strange that the jarl’s brother would risk himself for a mere thrall, and a simple one at that. The fact that Bjorn had done so had a curious effect on the men of Sogna. They rightly reasoned that, in a tight spot, the jarl's brother would do the same for them. That knowledge made them eager to serve Bjorn in a way that had eluded Gunnar, who only knew how to lead with threats and coercion.
Rika sent word to Surt and Ketil came back to the jarlhof after a week of huddling in the woods, none the worse for his scare. Her brother was returned to her. And she owed his life to the man she held responsible for Magnus’s death.
Her insides twisted every time she tried to unravel this hard knot. She’d vowed to hold on to her hatred of Bjorn till the man turned to dust, but every day she found herself smiling at him and aiding him with a willing heart as he struggled to recover. Only at night, while she listened to Bjorn’s deep rhythmic breathing, an image of her father formed in her mind and the guilt overtook her.
Loki himself had never devised a more convoluted puzzle.
* * *
“And how are you feeling, my lady?” Helge ran her gnarled fingers over Astryd’s tight belly. The child inside distorted her skin as it fought against the small confines of the Lady of Sogna’s womb.
“How should I feel, you old fool?” Astryd said crossly. “Like I’m about to burst. I can’t get any bigger. When will the child come?”
“He’ll come when he comes,” the old midwife answered, chipper as a sparrow. She’d dealt with too many irritable pregnant women to let anything one might say upset her. “I’ve helped birth more than I can count, and no one can tell for sure when a babe will decide to come. But I’d say it’s a good thing I arrived today. If you’re still swollen in the morning, I’ll be surprised, so I will. Your husband did well to summon all his karls to his table. My master Torvald never travels without me these days since I doctor his gout, so it was lucky for you we were called.”
“A canny jarl might have wanted all the landholders in the fjord here when his son is born, so they can acclaim my issue the rightful heir to Sogna.” Astryd sniffed with disdain. “The truth is your summons has nothing to do with our child. Ornolf TrueAx has returned from Miklagard with a shipload of trade goods, so Gunnar wanted all his karls to come to the jarlhof to trade. The man can’t think past either his pecker or his pocket.”
Helge clucked her tongue against her tee
th. So there was profit to be made for the Jarl of Sogna. The fact that the general summons had yielded an experienced midwife as well was just a happy accident. If Gunnar put the clink of coins above his wife’s safe delivery of an heir, Helge spared a moment to pity Lady Astryd in her choice of husbands.
She pulled down the Lady of Sogna’s tunic and grabbed her hands to help her sit up. When she did, the old midwife’s gaze fell on the amber hammer at Astryd’s throat. She blinked twice. Before she could stop herself, Helge reached up and grasped the amulet to look at it more closely.
It couldn’t be, and yet there it was. Many amber hammers had been fashioned, but there couldn’t be two little talismans of Thor with a tiny orchid in them just like the one that had belonged to her long-dead mistress.
“Little Elf,” she whispered, as she felt her wrinkled face going pale. How many times over the long years had the memory of that pitiful bundle of fur on the ice stolen into her dreams and woken her with a guilty start?
She remembered it all with knife-sharp clarity. The babe just wouldn't stop wailing. . .
Astryd grabbed the hammer out of Helge’s hand. “What’s the matter with you, old woman?”
“Begging your pardon, my lady, I’m sure.” Helge ducked her head deferentially. “But where did you get that amber hammer? It’s such a pretty little thing, so it is.”
“One of the thralls was wearing it when she first came here,” Astryd admitted. Her face contorted to a snarl. “Far too fine for the likes of her, but she’s a cheeky thing. Styles herself a skald, though for all that, the hussy is nothing more than a bed-slave to my husband’s brother.”
Helge helped Astryd struggle to her swollen feet. “And where might I find that thrall?”
“In Bjorn the Black’s chamber, no doubt,” Astryd said. “But you’ll see her tonight. She amuses the men with silly tales, though what they see in her performance is a mystery to me.”
Helge wondered whether she’d recognize Little Elf when she saw her.
* * *
That night, for the first time since the accident, his little brother felt up to joining the crowd in the great hall for nattmal. Gunnar gritted his teeth while the assembly greeted Bjorn with cheers. His brother leaned gently on his staff as he and Rika made their way to the dais.
“I didn’t know we had such an old man in our midst,” the barrel-chested Canute said loudly as Bjorn limped by. Gunnar smiled at the insult.
Quicker than Gunnar expected, Bjorn shifted all his weight onto his good leg. He brought up the tip of the staff and punched the butt end into Canute’s gut. When Canute doubled over from the blow, Bjorn whipped the staff around and whacked him soundly on his broad backside, sending him sprawling.
“If you’re as slow as that, Canute,” Bjorn said with a satisfied grin, “it looks like we have more than one old man in this hall.” He extended a hand to the fallen warrior.
Laughing heartily, Canute clambered to his feet and clasped forearms with his vanquisher. “It’s good to see you up and about, Bjorn the Black. But I thought all weapons except a meat knife were supposed to be left at the door.”
In that gruffly generous statement, the symbol of Bjorn’s weakness was elevated to the status of a weapon. Gunnar made a low growl of annoyance in the back of his throat. His little brother’s progress toward the dais was slowed by the congratulations and well-wishes of the fighting men he passed.
Gunnar watched the procession through narrowed eyes, distrustful of the deference his brother received. Something would have to be done about that. And soon.
When Bjorn reached the end of the hall, the great bear of a man seated next to Gunnar stood to greet his youngest nephew with a rib-cracking embrace. Uncle Ornolf’s bald pate shined, though the ring of iron-gray hair at the sides of his head grew long enough to brush his shoulders. His clothing was an odd mix of furs and exotic silk.
“Bjorn, my boy!” Ornolf’s voice boomed loud as the crash of a glacier calving.
“Uncle!” Bjorn’s eyes glittered with pleasure. “Why was I not told you were here?”
Ornolf ogled Rika and a knowing smile waggled the ends of his bushy mustache. Their uncle always did have an eye for the wenches and Gunnar had to admit the skald was looking particularly fetching this night. Though, of course, she would stand out on any night.
“Perhaps because I thought you might be busy elsewhere.” Ornolf’s gaze swept her again approvingly. “And to good purpose, too, by the looks of her.”
“Rika, this is my Uncle Ornolf.” Bjorn turned to pull the skald toward the older man. “He’s Sogna’s most profitable trader and a demon in a dragonship. My father and he opened the trade route to the far south when they were young.”
“Bah! You make me sound a doddering graybeard,” Ornolf complained.
“Graybeard you must admit to, but anyone who’s crossed blades with you would never call you doddering,” Bjorn said with obvious affection. “Ornolf, meet the new skald of Sogna.”
“A skald? I look forward to hearing you.” Ornolf bowed his head and sketched a gesture that was purely Eastern, though the smile left his lips. He seemed to have noticed the iron circle at Rika’s neck. He stared at it, his wiry brows nearly meeting over his hawkish nose. When she arched a russet brow at him quizzically, he recovered himself. “Forgive me. I’ve been in Miklagard for the past year, trading with an Arab there. No doubt I’ve picked up some of his effete manners. Sit down, Bjorn, before you fall down. We have much news to catch up on.”
Rika made Bjorn comfortable and filled a trencher with his favorites. Gunnar noticed the way her face flushed with color while she fussed around his brother.
Gunnar couldn’t remember the last time a woman had fluttered around him like that. Even before her pregnancy had turned her into a waddling cow, Astryd had ceased to stir herself on his behalf.
The skald leaned toward Bjorn and whispered something to him. When he nodded, she turned and glided away. Rika moved across the hall in a flowing stride, another new tunic and kyrtle his little brother had given her draped around her. Her limbs were loose and graceful as a long-necked crane. Gunnar’s hard glare followed her.
When Evja came to refill his horn with mead, he stopped her with a hand to her wrist.
“What is our skald doing over there with that big thrall?” Gunnar asked. Rika had seated herself close to the blond giant and was patting his forearm.
“Oh, my lord, that’s her brother, Ketil,” Evja said. Gunnar tightened his grip on her wrist, signaling that he expected more information. “He’s a bit simple, but very sweet and a hard worker. Rika is devoted to him and he adores her. I’ve never seen a brother and sister so close.”
“Have you not?” He released her wrist and extended his empty drinking horn to her, while he studied Rika and Ketil. How was it he’d missed the connection between the two of them? Gunnar narrowed his eyes.
There was no family resemblance between them, so that certainly explained his oversight. They sat with their heads together, sharing a joke that ended in the simpleton rocking with laughter. And by the look on the skald’s face, even though the big thrall was obviously a half-wit, she cared for her brother deeply.
Interesting, and most definitely useful.
“Just what I like to see. A close family always does the heart good, doesn’t it?” Gunnar said as he waved Evja on to fill his uncle’s horn.
* * *
In a dark corner in another part of the hall, another pair of eyes marked Rika as well. The sadness in them was matched only by regret.
“Gudrid,” Torvald said softly. If Helge hadn’t warned him, he’d have been certain he was seeing the ghost of his beloved wife, instead of the daughter he’d abandoned long ago.
Chapter 10
“I've never laughed so hard in my life,” Bjorn said as he collapsed back onto his bed. “The way you told that story about Thor and Loki—”
“Dressing up as women to get Thor’s hammer back from the frost giants?” R
ika interrupted as she unfastened the side buckles on his leather shoes and slid them off, her fingers brushing the tops of his feet. Yet another part of this man she found fair and appealing. Her gut clenched with guilt and another oddly unsettling emotion she couldn’t identify. She looked away.
“It was better than a feast. Just thinking about it makes my ribs ache.” He chuckled again low in his belly.
Rika smiled as she struck the fire steel to light the lamp. Once it was lit, she closed the door on the light and noise of carousing from the main hall.
“I could see the whole thing,” he said. “And some of it I really didn’t want to see. I can’t imagine two uglier women than Thor and Loki in disguise and now I'm stuck with them in my head.” He shook his black mane as if that would expunge the horrific spectacle. “How in the world do you do it?”
“Do what?” she asked.
“Put pictures in other people’s heads, whether they will it or no?”
“Who knows? You might be able to do it if you tried,” Rika said. “It’s really quite simple. First, I see it clear and complete in my mind, and then I think it to my listeners. It just takes practice and a little something else.”
“What’s that?” They’d developed a rhythm between them as she cared for his needs. He lifted his arms to assist her in easing him out of his tunic.
“The gift. Magnus used to say that without the gift, it’s all just words.” She dipped into a deep mock curtsey. “That, Bjorn the Black, is why they call it art.”
“Let me try it then.” He caught her wrists and pulled her in close to stand between his knees. “Tell me if you can see the picture that I think to you.”
She looked into his eyes and found herself caught by the intensity of his gaze. An image shimmered. What did she see? Desire? Certainly. Desire was always there when she caught him looking at her.