Immortal Champion

by Lisa Hendrix

  But if she wasn’t dreaming, then what was he? Demon?

  Enchanted through no fault of his own. Gunnar’s words echoed in her mind, and she recalled the hollowness in his voice as he’d said them. He hadn’t been able to face her when he said them. Had they been lies? A demon would lie.

  She tried her feet. They moved now. She could run.

  She should run. She knew which way to go now, and she could be well away before he recovered his strength.

  But then what? Even if men were searching for her, they would never imagine she had come so far, and she’d never find her way back to Raby before dark. She’d spend the night wandering the woods alone. Dread shuddered down her spine.

  And what of Gunnar? The man she called champion, the man who had walked through fire to save her. He still lay there groaning in agony.

  A demon could walk through fire, whispered that voice in the back of her mind. And if he was a demon, staying here could cost her. She should flee for her life, for her very soul.

  No. She couldn’t be that wrong. She couldn’t. She’d told Lucy that he was good, that she could feel it when she looked into his eyes. She’d felt the same deep-rooted good when she looked the bull in the eye, known it in her heart when she touched him, even through the dream. She couldn’t abandon him now, when he might need help.

  And so even though the dream no longer held her, even though she couldn’t fully rid herself of the terrifying idea that he might be a demon, she made a choice, no doubt foolish, not to run.

  Not yet anyway.

  He groaned and moved a little, and she very nearly changed her mind, but in the end, she gave herself over to whatever was going to happen, said a quick but fervent prayer, and stepped out into the open.

  “ARMUBDEM?”

  The veil of pain that still enshrouded Gunnar so muffled things that he couldn’t tell whether it was a man or woman who spoke, much less what they said. He worked his tongue, trying to make his mouth form a human sound. “Wha—?”

  “I said, are you a demon?”

  That voice. He prized his eyes open a slit and caught a glimpse of hem, and beneath it, the toe of a woman’s slipper, Eleanor’s slipper. Hope surged through him, clearing some of the cobwebs. “No. Not demon.”

  He forced himself onto his hands and knees with a grunt, gathered his feet, and pushed upright to face her as a man.

  “Not demon,” he repeated.

  Eleanor stared at him a long moment, her eyes wide over tearstained cheeks, then abruptly turned away.

  “Freya, please,” he pleaded in Norse, then in English, “Don’t go.”

  “If I were going, I would already be gone.” Eleanor spoke with sureness, despite the quaver in her voice, and that gave him even more hope.

  He started toward her. “My lady, I—”

  “You are naked, sir. Dress yourself.”

  Gunnar looked down at his body in surprise. His mind was still clogged with the bull’s spirit, but he dredged up the memory and pointed to a nearby fallen tree. “I have clothes. There.”

  “Then fetch them. I will not run.”

  He found the bundle hidden in a hollow beneath the tree, and dragged on his chemise and braies. He had a harder time with his chausses; his hands were simply too clumsy to deal with them yet. As he struggled, Eleanor glanced over her shoulder.

  Apparently satisfied that he was sufficiently clothed, she faced him with a determined expression. “If you are not a demon, what are you? And do not tell me you are Zeus.”

  “No, not a god either. I told you that night we heard the story. I am naught but a man, enchanted through no—”

  “Through no fault of his own,” she said with him. She shook her head. “That is not enough.”

  He understood what she was asking, and it was what he needed her to know. But for all the hours he’d spent thinking about how to explain it to her, he still wasn’t sure he could. He finally got one stocking on, then drew on the second to buy himself a little time to get his thoughts in order. In the end, though, there was no escape. He began.

  “I am Gunnar, son of Hrólfr, called Gunnar the Red for both my hair and the enemy blood I have spilled.” Even spoken in English, the ancient form of naming made him sit up a little straighter. He was a warrior. Gunnar inn rauði. He could do this.

  Her brows pinched together. “A Dane?”

  “A Northman, as you would say it. I sailed to these shores as a raider long ago.” He hesitated before he added, “In the years before your King Alfred.”

  “This is not the time for jests, monsire. Alfred lived before the time of the Conqueror.”

  “Long before,” he confirmed. “It is no jest. I have lived in England these six hundreds of years.”

  She shook her head in denial. “That is not possible.”

  “You saw what I am, my lady. You know it is true.”

  “I saw the bull and you, but …”

  “Six hundreds of years,” Gunnar said harshly, and his jaw clenched with the memory of each wretched one. “Every day of it changing back and forth between man and beast, made immortal so the torment goes on and on.”

  Paling, Eleanor stumbled over and sagged down on the log not far from Gunnar. “But how did this happen?”

  “A witch’s curse,” said Gunnar. Something prickled at the edges of his memory, something the bull had seen. He reached for it, but it flittered away.

  “No. Surely even a w-witch cannot do such evil.” Her fear of even the word was evident in the way she stumbled over it. She wrapped her arms around herself.

  “She was a priestess of the dark gods,” said Gunnar. “A sorceress of the old ways who held great power in her day. Called Cwen.”

  “She is dead, then.” Eleanor sounded relieved.

  “No.” He got his doublet on and tried fastening the ties, but he was still having trouble with his fingers. He left it. “She lives. She has lost much of her power, but she clings to the same unending life she forces on us, so that she may enjoy our suffering and continue to hound us.”

  She wrapped her arms around herself and huddled there on the log, staring at the ground. “Why would she harbor such hate?”

  “We raided in search of the treasure she guarded, and she sent her son to lead the fight against us.”

  “And you killed him,” she murmured, her voice full of accusation.

  “He died, as men do in battle.”

  “But by your hand.”

  Gunnar’s jaw tightened. “It makes no difference whose hand struck the blow. I would have slain him if our swords had crossed. We each of us would. It was battle.”

  “You say ‘we’ and ‘us.’ Are there others?”

  He nodded. “Nine. All that survived the fight. Two have found release. Seven remain.”

  “All like you?”

  “Not bulls. They take other forms. Dog. Stallion. Hart. Raven.” He stopped there, unwilling to name Brand’s bear or Jafri’s wolf. They were too frightening, too rare in England, too easy to find if someone knew to look for them. If he was wrong about her and she denounced them, the full wrath of Church and Crown would fall on them like Thor’s hammer, and Brand and Jafri would take the brunt of it. Please, Freya, do not let me be wrong about this woman.

  “We each wore an amulet to honor our fylgjur, our guardian spirits,” he went on. “Cwen used them in her spell, to turn us to their image, each man to his own. Some of us are beast by day, others by night, but we all shift at the rising and setting of the sun.”

  Understanding dawned across her face. “The rooster crow. No wonder you left so quickly the night we … the night you had your dream.”

  “I did not want to go.”

  “I know. I knew then that you didn’t, though I thought you left so quickly because we were about to … because you wished to protect my honor. Why do you tell me all this now? Is it because of old Carolus’s tale about Europa?”

  “Yes. The bull … I …” He struggled with the words. “I retain some me
asure of myself deep within the beast. Most times it is barely enough to bring it back to my clothes and horse each night. But if the need is great, I have learned to force myself forward, to know a little of what the bull knows and gain some power over it. When you said you might not run, I saw good reason to try.”

  “I didn’t.” She lifted her chin, a glint of pride in her eyes. Or was that a tear? “Run, I mean.”

  “No, you did not run, and for that, I am most grateful, my lady.”

  “I don’t know why. I wanted to. A part of me still does.”

  Gunnar had nothing to offer her. A part of him wanted to run, too. In all the years of warring and raiding, he had never flinched from battle, but if given the chance, he would flee sunrise and sunset like the most craven dog.

  “It frightens me,” she continued softly almost as though to herself. “All this talk of curses and witches and men who become beasts. It is heresy, all of it. To believe such things puts me beyond the pale of the Church, and yet how can I not believe? I have seen you change with my own eyes. I know there are powers at work here, both good and evil, even if I do not understand them.” She looked him fully in the eye. “Did you enchant me? Is that why I let the bull bring me here?”

  He thought back to the prayers and to the little fallow doe he’d sacrificed to Freya just before dawn. “Not how you mean. I would never inflict on you what has been laid on me, my lady. But I need for you to know, and to know, you had to see, else you would never believe. It is May Day, a day full of the old magic. I asked for help and it was given.” Praise be to Freya.

  “May Day,” repeated Eleanor softly as though she just recalled it. She looked up at the sky, now faded to gray except for where last light gilded the westernmost clouds. “It will be dark soon. They will come searching for me.”

  “The bull carried you into a deep part of the forest. They are not likely to find you here. I’ll fetch my horse and take you back.” Gunnar rose and tried the ties on his doublet again. He did better this time, but it was still a slow process, requiring all his attention. He finished the first tie and glanced up to find Eleanor watching him intently.

  “Have you hurt your hands?” she asked. “You had trouble with your chausses, too.”

  “No, I’m only a little ham-fisted.” He held his hands up and wiggled his fingers. “I regain my strength quickly most days, but when I struggle against the bull’s spirit, it takes longer to find my way back.”

  “ ‘I asked for help and it was given.’ ” She repeated his words back to him, then stood up and brushed his hands aside. “This is a far simpler thing and requires no magic at all.”

  Her touch was shaky at first, then steadied as she finished the second tie and moved down to the next. “Do you suffer such pain every day?”

  “Dawn and dusk.” He stood there as she worked at his ties, desperate to hold her, to kiss her, to ask her if she could love him now, knowing what he was. But that was for later, after she’d had a chance to take in all she’d seen. There was one thing he must have from her, though, and he needed it now, before he took her back.

  He covered her hands with his, pressing them against his chest to hold her there, where she had no choice but to look up at him. “You cannot tell anyone about me or the others.”

  Her brows arched up in surprise. “Who would I tell? They would think me mad.”

  “And then they would hunt us down anyway, out of fear you might not be. We cannot be killed, my lady, but we can be hurt, and we feel the pain of every wound as much as any man. Some would enjoy learning how much pain we can bear—and that, too, would go on forever.”

  “Torture? Dear God, no.” Her hand went to her mouth. “No. Of course, I would never tell anyone. Not even Lucy.”

  “Especially not Lucy,” he warned. “You will be tempted, lying there in bed with your cousin, talking in the night, but you cannot risk it. She is too frightened of the world to keep such a secret for long, and this one must be kept forever. Nor can you confess it. I must have your vow, my lady, that you will hold all this to yourself, whatever comes.”

  “It is my secret, as well,” she said. “No one must know I was here, with you. We both must promise, and so I will begin. I vow I will never tell anyone what I witnessed here this even, Sir Gunnar of Lesbury. So far as the world will know, I was lost in the forest. Alone.”

  “And I vow I will never tell anyone you were here to witness it, Lady Eleanor de Neville. So far as the world will know, I never found you. I was miles from here.”

  “And to seal the vow …” Hands still pressed to his breast, she rose up on her toes and kissed him.

  It was a chaste kiss, meant only as a pledge, nearly as innocent as that first kiss of thanks all those years before, but the touch of her lips to his was like putting key to lock. A door opened, and desire flooded through Gunnar.

  He couldn’t help himself. He kissed her back, lowering his head to follow her as she settled back onto her heels, pouring his hope and longing into her so that she might understand what her staying, her promise, meant to him. She sighed, and as their tongues tangled, he hardened, as ready for her as he had been that night in the solar. Readier. Sliding his hands around to cup the fine roundness of her bottom, he pulled her close, trapping his tarse between them. Her answering gasp went to his head like strong wine.

  From somewhere came the wherewithal to warn her. He wrenched his mouth off hers. “If I don’t fetch my horse now, you will not leave this place a virgin.”

  She arched back, giving herself distance enough to have a good look at him. Her expression was unreadable, and for a long moment he thought she was going to push him away. Instead, she threaded her arms around his neck.

  “Then I will not leave a virgin.” She pulled his head down and kissed him again, no sweetness in her at all, just a fierceness that took his breath away.

  She must love him. She must. The need to test that, to possess her, became his reason to exist.

  He explored every inch of her body he could reach without breaking the kiss, ending with the rich weight of her breasts in his palms. He dragged his thumbs over their peaks and then did it again because of how she shuddered against him. He’d make her do that while he was in her, he promised himself.

  In her. Ah, how he wanted to be in her.

  Flattening one hand over her belly, he slid it down between them to find his way between her legs, where he could stroke her through the cloth. A fevered moan rose from her throat, and he almost laughed at such an immodest sound coming from a maid.

  Not maid for long. Even through the cloth, he could feel her warming and he knew how slick she’d be. Sensation mixed with memory, making him swell more, so hard now that it pained him. But what sweet pain. Eleanor pressed toward him, and through the thickening fog of arousal he knew she sought the same thing he wanted: release.

  But not like this. No, this time, it was going to be the right way, and when he was done, she would be his.

  “I’ll be in you this time when your pleasure comes,” he told her, savoring the rough intake of her breath and her incoherent whine of protest as he set her away for a moment. “Patience, sweeting.”

  He found the blanket his clothes had been wrapped in and made a rough nest in the grass. Eleanor watched, swaying and trembling like an aspen tree as she waited for him.

  For him. Even knowing what she knew, she waited for him. The wonder of it made Gunnar dizzy with need.

  It was nearly dark. He wanted to see her naked before he lost the light, and though the dress she wore was a simple one, little more than a kirtle with a half gown buttoned over it, there wasn’t time for him and his still-thick fingers.

  “Undress,” he growled, “else I will tear that gown off you and then have to send you home like Godiva afterward, bare as a babe.”

  Her fingers flew over the buttons. He helped where he could, but mostly watched as she removed the overgown, slippers, and gartered hose, laying them all on the log. But when she began to gat
her her kirtle at her waist and exposed her legs, he lost the last bit of patience he had. With a growl, he stripped the yards of cloth over her head, tossed the kirtle atop her other things, and scooped her up to lower her onto her back.

  He stood over her a moment, just looking at all that creamy flesh, radiant as the moon in the last glimmer of light, fair as a goddess. The harsh sound of her breath was like a slow drumbeat, urging him toward her. He peeled off the hose he’d just worked so hard to put on and slipped one toe between her knees, nudging them apart. “Spread your legs to me, Eleanor.”

  She hesitated, then obeyed, showing herself to him.

  He nodded. “Wider.”

  He dropped to his knees between her thighs, put his hands to either side of her, and bowed to worship her with his mouth, kissing his way up over belly and breast to her lips, and then back down and lower, bypassing her quaint to nibble his way up the insides of her thighs.

  By now it was too dark to make out much more than the faintest outlines, the light of the stars being far too thin and the moon not yet risen above the trees, but he could smell her musk and hear her moans, deeper and more urgent the nearer he got.

  Finally he was there. He tasted her, gently, then plunged in to devour her.

  With a cry, she arched up off the blanket, surging against his tongue, seeking. Not wanting her to finish too soon, Gunnar stopped and let her cool before he dove down again. She didn’t thrust at him this time, but as he lapped at her, he could tell how close she was, and once more he stopped before she could go there.

  She whimpered and grabbed for his head, twining her fingers into his hair to pull him back to her.

  He loved how willing she was, how quickly she learned. The heat in her fed his own, driving him to take her, take her now. Instead, he shook her loose and shifted around to lie beside her. Working by little more than feel, he kissed his way from mouth to breasts, enjoyed both, then settled in on the peak of one to circle it with his tongue, over and over. As she began to pant, he slid his hand down to cup her.

  She moved restlessly against his hand. “I want … Like before.”

  “Not this time. I told you how it will be. Say it.”