Maidensong

by Mia Marlowe

  Miklagard had swallowed him whole as surely as if he’d stepped into a bog, but Rika clung to the belief that he yet lived. Her heart would refuse to beat in a world where Bjorn was dead. Though it twisted her insides to come there each week, the few moments she spent weeping at the feet of Mars were the only ones in which she felt truly alive.

  * * *

  Bjorn watched the shadow on the wall and scratched a line in the stone when he thought it had reached its peak for the day. The sun didn’t vary as much here in the southlands, but in this crude way he’d still been able to mark the winter solstice and follow the change of seasons. He’d kept a tally of the days as well, but they depressed him.

  At least the nightmare had ceased to plague him. He’d only had it once, and shortly upon waking, he realized the terrifying apparition of Jormungand was closely connected with Gunnar’s symbol of entwined serpents. He was astounded he hadn’t reached the conclusion before, but then again, he’d never had so much idle time just to think. From that startling insight, Bjorn began to think back.

  Maybe it was his near-drowning with Rika in the turbulent waters of Aeifor that sent his mind wandering down a long-forgotten trail, but another part of the nightmare began to make sense as well. A memory too painful to accept crystallized in his mind.

  He’d told Rika that Gunnar had saved him from drowning on that distant day, but he knew now that wasn’t true. His brother had pushed him into the fjord and held his head below the choppy water. Bjorn was alive only because he grabbed his brother’s arm and threatened to pull him in as well. He’d scrambled back into the coracle by climbing up a startled Gunnar’s arm. Then as a matter of survival, Bjorn altered the incident and swore a grateful fealty to his older brother. In time, he’d even convinced himself of the revised event. Since Fenris the Walker had all but confessed that Gunnar had paid him to kill their father, Bjorn realized the dream had been trying to tell him that Gunnar had murdered their father.

  His childhood oath had kept him alive because it made him useful to Gunnar. Now it curdled Bjorn’s stomach like rancid goat milk. If he’d been in Sognefjord, he’d shrug off the last of Gunnar’s hold on him like an ill-fitting cloak.

  Unfortunately, he wasn't in Sogna.

  Sleep was now a welcome respite, because his waking hours were nightmare enough.

  The window in his cell was too high for him to see out, but it did grant him light, and sometimes when the wind was right, rain as well. When that blessed event occurred, he stripped out of his rags and let the torrent wash away the crust of filth he’d learned to live with.

  Once a day, the slot in the door opened to remove his nightsoil jar and leave a trencher of moldy bread and vile-tasting water. Whether the jailer was forbidden to speak to him or unable to, Bjorn never knew, but he went for months without the sound of another human voice.

  He started talking to himself, realizing he did so, but unable to control it. He carved the futhark on the walls of his cell, desperate to keep his mind active. Privation, he could deal with. Madness, he feared more than Hel itself. In the isolation and silence, he felt himself teetering on the brink, threatening to slide into insanity.

  Then a kind of miracle happened.

  Bjorn glanced over to the corner. His miracle got up off his knees and dusted the dirt from the front of his ratty cassock. The prison was so overcrowded the jailer was forced to house another inmate with Bjorn in his small cell. It had saved him from raving lunacy.

  “Still praying, Dominic?” he asked.

  “As long as I’m still breathing, my son,” the little priest said.

  “Is your God going to get us out of here?”

  “I don’t pray for that.” Dominic's sharp eyes were bright with intelligence. “I pray for your soul. I would that God will release your spirit from its bonds.”

  “Why don’t you tell him to get my body out of here?” Bjorn settled against the wall to let the light hit his face. The warmth soothed him and for just a moment, an image of Rika flickered in his brain. In his mind’s eye, he saw her leaning against an obelisk of some kind, tears streaming. He shook himself. If he were going to imagine her, why couldn’t it be a more pleasant phantom? “If your God sets me free from this prison, then he’ll be welcome to my soul.”

  The priest’s face beamed with a gap-toothed grin. “God is relentless in his pursuit of us. If that’s what it takes to woo you, Bjorn, I’m sure the Almighty will see you free.”

  Bjorn shook his head. “Woo me? You make your God sound like some kind of ardent lover.”

  “So He is.” Dominic nodded. “The first lover of us all and when we least deserve it.”

  A god who loved for no reason. The priest’s beliefs didn’t seem rational to Bjorn. No wonder they had locked Dominic up.

  “Well, my gods seem content to let me stay right here, so I’m willing to give yours a chance,” Bjorn said. “I’ve tried them all, even Loki, but either they can’t help me or they don’t care.”

  “Or they are too small,” Dominic said. “From what you have told me of the gods of Asgard, they exist only inside creation. God is separate from the created world and yet he holds it all together. Beyond all that is, beyond what we believe or think we know, beyond even divine revelation, there is God.”

  It was easy to see how Dominic had run afoul of the local religious leaders. His God was too big for a man to get his mind around, too big to control through appeasement, and far too big to be crammed into a religion.

  “Maybe so,” Bjorn allowed. “But you have to admit my gods are more fun at a feast. Take Thor for instance. Now there’s a god a man can sit down and share a horn with.” Bjorn slapped a hand on his thigh and launched into an old drinking song.

  “Ale I bring, thou oak of battle,

  With strength blended and brightest tunes,

  ‘Tis mixed with magic and mighty songs,

  With goodly spells, wish-speeding runes.”

  * * *

  “I know just the shop, my lady,” Al-Amin said, all trace of whining about the cold gone now from his pleasant alto. “It’s next to that spice merchant from Persia. The pistachios are always of the highest quality.”

  Rika nodded numbly. She always felt drained after her visit to the Acropolis, but she needed to see the statue of Mars. She didn’t understand it, but Bjorn felt closer to her there, as if she could somehow form a connection with him for those few moments. She wondered whether he could feel her love for him still. It was a fanciful notion, but one she needed to believe.

  Rika and Al-Amin walked past the Hagia Sophia, the high-domed Church of Holy Wisdom. Ethereal song floated out to them sung by smooth voices, disembodied and bloodless. The drone of plainsong was much admired. It was considered deeply spiritual and pure, but Rika missed the full-throated singing of her homeland. The raucous timbres heard in a longhouse were often unpleasant, but they were always full of life.

  She could almost hear them now, earthy and bombastic.

  “Less good they say for the sons of men

  Is the drinking oft of ale.”

  “Allah be merciful, what is that dreadful sound?” Al-Amin looked around, trying to locate the source. “All that growling! It sounds like a big dog is being butchered alive.”

  The voice rolled over her again.

  “The more they drink, the less they think,

  And end up on their tail!”

  Rika gasped. She knew that voice. Bjorn had sung that song for her one evening on the island, as they huddled around their little fire. It had a long string of verses each more ribald than the last, presumably as the company became drunker with each round.

  “It’s coming from that building there,” Rika pointed to a fortress across the square. “What is that?”

  “The prison, my lady,” Al-Amin said.

  “We must go there.” She nearly broke into a trot. “That voice belongs to ... a countryman of mine. I will not see a Northman languishing in prison if I can help it.”

&nb
sp; “It’s not seemly for a woman to visit there,” the eunuch complained. “You should tell the master and he will see to it.”

  She wheeled around and fisted her hands at her waist. “I’ll go with you or without you, but either way, I’m going. If there’s one thing I’ve learned in Miklagard, it’s that anything can be bought for the right price. Now tell me, how does one secure the release of a prisoner here?”

  Chapter 35

  Bjorn plodded down the dim passageway, hands and feet bound in irons, with the jailer before and a guard behind. He hadn’t been out of his cell since he arrived and the wonder of being able to walk more than a few steps before turning around was almost more than he could bear.

  “Pity there isn’t time to clean him up,” the jailer said. “She might pay more if he looked better.”

  “I don’t know.” The guard behind him spat on the fetid floor. “I’ve heard tell some of these randy women like ‘em dirty. Big one, isn’t he?”

  “I expect that’s why she wants him.” The first man broke into gales of laughter.

  “If she wants a big fellow, why don’t you get that Nubian and let her have her pick? Maybe she’d take ‘em both.”

  “I suggested it, but the lady has particular tastes. She wants the one that was caterwauling, and this Northman’s the only one who bursts into a singing fit from time to time." The jailer scratched his head, sending his resident lice scurrying.

  “Won’t be no trouble selling him, will there?”

  “No, I conveniently lost his records when he first came. A big bald man came snooping around once, but I told him we didn’t have any new prisoners. I figured on putting this one out on the dock for the slave auction this spring. They always bid up the prices in the spring, but this lady looks to have the coin to beat whatever I’d get later.”

  Bjorn listened to them discuss him as though he were a bull to be brought to market without so much as a ripple of concern. His life seemed to be happening to someone else since he entered this private annex of Hel. Not caring one way or the other what new horror came to him was his only defense and he sheltered behind studied indifference.

  He was shoved into the jailer’s office with a rattle of his chains.

  “Here now,” the guard said, sliding a long club under Bjorn’s chin and forcing him to raise his head. “Let the lady have a good look at you.”

  Blinking in the light, Bjorn tried to get a look at the lady as well, but she was swathed in the folds of her silk bourka. He could tell nothing about her except that she seemed to be tall for a Byzantine. The woman’s hand came up to her chest and she fell back a step or two. He must smell worse than he thought.

  She, however, was scented with jasmine so sweet, it made him feel faint. Months of privation sent his senses spinning. The prison was a miasma of offal and the acrid stench of fear, but this woman’s fragrance was a reminder that his world had not always been so. He could have dropped to his knees and licked the sole of her perfumed foot in gratitude.

  Her eunuch dickered with the jailer over his ‘fine’ and, after much haggling, reached an agreement. The smooth alto voice was somehow familiar, and Bjorn frowned, trying to place him.

  The Arab’s house.

  It was Al-Amin, though it was obvious the big eunuch hadn’t recognized Bjorn. He’d carried Rika into the house and left so quickly the eunuch hadn’t had time to mark him. But Bjorn remembered Al-Amin well from the time he’d come to Miklagard as a boy. The Arab’s servant hadn’t changed much. Bjorn looked down at himself. Tattered rags, crusted with filth, down a good forty pounds. He ran his bound hands over the scruffy beard and mustache covering his face. It was no great surprise that Al-Amin didn’t know him. He barely recognized himself.

  The woman. He suddenly remembered that her jeweled hand was pale. He looked back up, trying to penetrate the armor of the bourka. She was tall by Miklagaard’s standards. It had to be Rika. Her clothing was shot with silver threads and gold coins dangled around the edges of her gauze peephole. A wealthy Arab’s wife. She could have anything she wanted.

  And now she wanted a pet Northman.

  “Make your mark here,” the jailer ordered him with a leer. He pointed to a line on a piece of parchment that would exchange one kind of imprisonment for another. “The lady will pay your fine and you’ll work it off as her slave.”

  “No,” Bjorn said. The jailer frowned in surprise, but Bjorn cleared his throat and repeated his refusal. If Rika wanted him, she’d have to pay dearly. Dominic’s coming was the only thing that had kept him from madness. He couldn’t forget his friend. “I’ll only sign if she’ll take my cell mate as well.”

  * * *

  All the way to the Arab’s house, Dominic praised his God in extravagant terms. As they entered the square fortress, he turned to Bjorn.

  “Remember your bargain, my son.”

  “What?” All Bjorn could think of was Rika under the fluttering veil ahead of him. Rika, whose slim ankles he’d glimpsed as they walked along. Rika, doe-eyed and languid in his arms on the island at the base of Aeifor.

  “God has released your body from prison as you requested,” Dominic said. “I believe you offered him your soul in exchange.”

  “Shall I fit them for your service, my lady?” Al-Amin asked as the heavy door at the house of Farouk-Azziz clanged shut behind them.

  The veiled figure nodded and disappeared into the shadows of the house. Bjorn’s gaze followed her, longing and loathing competing in his heart. She’d made her choice months ago and it wasn’t him. How could she expect him to be grateful to her now? To serve her? Part of him railed in defiance and another part was satisfied just to breathe the same air she breathed.

  “I’m afraid your God will have to wait, Dominic,” he said. “My soul has been claimed elsewhere.”

  * * *

  Rika was shocked by the change in Bjorn’s appearance. He was so thin and pallid. But when his eyes blazed with rebellion, demanding she release his cell mate as well, she knew his spirit was intact. A hot bath, good food, a little sunshine and he’d be back to himself in no time.

  And if in the meanwhile, he had to bear the indignity of being her slave, well, that turnabout satisfied her sense of justice. After all, he’d made a thrall of her without a qualm, she reminded herself.

  Helge was lying down again when Rika returned to her suite of rooms. The old woman fussed and fluttered around Rika when she was up and about, but Helge had been more tired of late. Her advancing years were no doubt weighing on her slight frame. Rika hadn’t the heart to disturb her.

  As she lifted the bourka over her head, Rika felt a twinge of uneasiness. It was clear that Bjorn had suffered already. The thought of him being degraded in any way made her insides squirm. And yet, hadn’t she been suffering when he found her mourning over Magnus’s body? It had made no difference to him then.

  But that was before they loved each other, before they’d found that they were both walking around in pieces, yearning for the wholeness only the other could bring.

  No. She had to stop this. She’d tell Al-Amin to release him and that would be that. She started back down the winding stairs to the lowest level.

  Loud bellowing came from one of the rooms near the stables and all the fine-boned Arabian horses jerked and stamped in their stalls at the unnatural sound. Rika quickened her pace.

  She saw Tariq, Sultana’s eunuch, come out a door, laughing and dusting off his hands. The cry was feebler now, almost incoherent.

  “What’s happening in there?” Rika demanded.

  “Only what you ordered.” Tariq inclined his head toward her enough to avoid insolence, but only by the barest of margins. He still sported the scant facial hair and upper body strength of a late-made eunuch. “Your new slaves are being fitted for your service.”

  “But why all the noise?”

  Tariq’s smile was unpleasant. “The big one objected. It was all we could do to get him strapped to the table. But do not trouble yourself. This
will pass. Unreasonable passions will fade and he’ll soon be biddable as an ox. One gets used to being a gelding.”

  Rika hoisted her skirt and ran, knees and elbows pumping.

  “Do not fear,” Tariq called after her. “AI-Amin is skilled with a knife. They almost always live.”

  Rika burst into the small room. “Stop, oh, stop!”

  Bjorn’s cell mate knelt in the corner, eyes closed, lips moving, but Bjorn was naked, strapped spread-eagle to the long table in the middle of the room. His head lolled to one side and his eyes were glassy. An awl pierced one of his ears, preparing the lobe to receive the ring that would mark him as her servant. Blood ribboned down his cheek. Al-Amin stood over him, knife in hand.

  “What are you doing?” she demanded, rushing to Bjorn’s side. A cord had been cinched around the bag of his seed. Rika fumbled with the knot and managed to hopelessly foul it.

  “Fitting him for your service, my lady,” Al-Amin said calmly. “If you remove the cord and I cut him, he will bleed to death before I can cauterize the wound.”

  “No, you’re not going to cut him,” she said. “Give me that.” She snatched the knife away and worked the point under the cord, taking care not to nick Bjorn.

  “Do not distress yourself, mistress. He will feel very little pain,” Al-Amin assured her. “I always give the men I unmake poppy juice to dull the senses.”

  That explained the spittle drooling from Bjorn’s lips. She sliced the cord and cupped his bag, relieved to her bones to feel the thump of his heartbeat still drumming through it.

  “My lady, this is most unseemly,” Al-Amin said, his lips pressed together in censure.

  “Do not presume to lecture me.” Rika glanced around the little room and spied a pile of gauze. She retrieved some and covered Bjorn with it. “I didn’t order this.”

  “But, my lady, these men cannot attend you if they are intact,” Al-Amin argued. “It would bring shame on my master’s head.”

  “I have always suspected you do not truly serve me with your whole heart, and now I hear the truth from your own lips,” Rika said. “You are still loyal first to Farouk-Azziz.”