by Swan Road
"Aye." The word was soft, broken, her earlier defiance and laughter stilled now, as though she feared to arouse him again.
And Rhowenna had such apprehensions, for quite simply, she did not know if she was strong enough to resist another such onslaught upon her senses. No man, not even Gwydion, had ever dared to make so bold with her, to kiss her so fiercely, so ardently, forcing her lips to part, to yield to his plundering tongue, taking her breath— and her reason, scattering her senses to the four winds. She could not seem to think when Wulfgar kissed her, but only to feel exquisite sensations that he had wakened within her, a fire in her blood, spreading and burning, charring her bones to ashes and leaving her weak, dizzy, pliant, as fluid as quicksilver, like wet clay in his embrace, his to shape and to mold as he willed. She was powerless against him, dependent upon him for her food, her clothes, her very life; she should have hated him for that. She did not know what was wrong with her that she did not. She did not understand these strange, disturbing emotions and sensations he evoked inside her. She thought she must be a wanton or mad to feel as she did in the arms of her enemy, her captor, the man who had stolen her from Usk and made of her a slave. Had Flóki the Raven not interrupted them when he had, Rhowenna had no doubt that Wulfgar would in moments have been forcing her down to slake his lust on her upon the pelts that covered the pallet on the hard-packed earth floor.
At the thought, she inhaled raggedly, one hand going to her tremulous mouth, knuckles pressing hard to still the quivering of her lips, to hold back sobs of confusion and despair. Presently, as she became aware of the silence in the sleeping chamber, she realized dully that Wulfgar had indeed left her, slipped away as quietly as a stealthy predator on the prowl; and recovering some of her composure, she turned finally to the tasks he had assigned her.
Only the burning whale-oil lamps that hung from the smoke-blackened, freestanding poles that supported the thatched roof chased away the shadows with which the sleeping chamber was long and dark. Little light came through the two small, high-set windows that were covered with pigs' bladders instead of being set with glass. The room itself— little more than a lean-to attached to the great mead hall, really— was sparsely furnished. Piled high with a multitude of pillows and fur blankets, the huge, thick, eiderdown-stuffed wool pallet that lay upon the floor was its only luxury. Other than this, the sleeping chamber contained only a few coffers, low stools and cushions, and a big wooden bathtub ringed with iron hoops. Striplike tapestries hung upon the walls; fur rugs were scattered upon the floor, and in one corner was a small stone hearth. That was all. When she thought of her own sleeping chamber in Usk, with its large bed, wooden dressing table, polished bronze mirror, bronze bathtub, iron brazier, and stone floor, she knew with certainty that she had come to a hard, barbaric place, to a way of life much more difficult than she had known before Wulfgar had swept her up in his arms and carried her on board the Dragon's Fire.
The great mead hall was as dark with gloom and smoke as the sleeping chamber, and so was equally depressing, lacking even such basic furniture as the trestle tables and benches that had filled her father's own great hall, although a large loom stood in one corner. On the dais at the sleeping-chamber end, between two massive, intricately carved pillars there sat a high seat; but even it was just a more elaborate version of the low stools to be seen elsewhere. At the opposite end was the kitchen, no more than a small area separated by a wooden screen from the rest of the great mead hall and boasting few conveniences besides a shallow wooden tub for washing pots and dishes, which were stored in chests that sat alongside barrels and jars of provisions. Just beyond the kitchen, in the great mead hall itself, was a domed baking-oven of stone. Save for that, meals themselves, it seemed, must be cooked over the central hearth. Facing the kitchen was a modest storeroom, largely empty when it ought to have been filled with supplies.
Everything was layered with soot and dust, and festooned with cobwebs, as though it had not been cleaned in many a long year; and Rhowenna knew she had her work cut out for her. Hesitantly, remembering what had passed between them only moments ago in the sleeping chamber, she approached Wulfgar, who stood to one side, giving commands to his men. When he had finished, she asked him to translate her instructions to the slaves allotted to assist her; and presently, several women laden with cloths and pails of hot, sudsy water were busy scrubbing the walls and the freestanding poles, while others took down tapestries, carrying them and the cushions and rugs outside to beat them vigorously until they were free of their burden of dust. Still other women labored in the kitchen and at the hearth and oven, preparing fruits and vegetables, roasting a sheep Wulfgar had ordered slaughtered, and baking fresh bread for supper. Male slaves emptied overflowing slop buckets and, armed with scythes and rakes, were dispatched to the heaths and marshes to cut rushes to lay upon the floors, there being none of the grassy plants dried and in storage, for this custom was not prevalent in the Northland. The thegns and freedmen Wulfgar had put to work, as well, cleaning weapons and armor, and repairing the palisade's fortifications. Only Morgen, the "princess" of Usk, was spared from the hard chores, which no doubt suited her just fine, Rhowenna thought with a trace of wry amusement as she glanced at Morgen sitting idly on the edge of the dais, a piece of tapestry that required mending half sliding from her lap, a cup of wine and a bowl of fruits at her side.
Despite their terrible ordeal, Morgen was obviously enjoying the role she played to the hilt, her lovely face cool and haughty— so Rhowenna, stricken with a twinge of guilt, wondered if she herself had often looked so at her father's royal manor, distant, disdainful; and she thought of Wulfgar's calling her proud, and she knew in her heart that it was so. Generations of royal blood ran in her veins, and all her life she had been made aware of that heritage and taught to honor it. Now she was a captive, a slave, and she saw the world through different eyes— not as the secure, happy world she had known, but as one fraught with peril and hardship and suffering. No matter what happened, she knew she would never again be the same woman she had been before the Northmen had descended upon Usk. Much of her innocence of youth was now lost to her, she realized, and she would never find it again. The thought saddened her; with difficulty, she forced herself to put it from her mind, remembering suddenly the words of advice her mother had often spoken to her:
Yesterday is an old sheet of parchment whose words can never be rewritten or its mistakes blotted clean; but tomorrow is a new page, and wise are those who take up quills afresh instead of wasting precious time by rereading old scrolls long yellowed with age.
She would heed her mother's sage counsel, Rhowenna told herself fiercely. Come what may, she would not look back, but only ahead. Determinedly, she pressed on with her work.
It was not, of course, to be supposed that the longhouse could be set to rights within a day. But by the time the sun had dipped below the western horizon, leaving behind a grey twilight that would not fade to darkness for many hours still, she had made a good start. The hof at least was clean, and there was a hot, appetizing supper waiting for Wulfgar and his men. They wolfed the meal down with gusto, drinking and shouting and laughing boisterously as they toasted one another to celebrate their successful voyage and raid, and told the tale of their battle with the Usk men, which Håkon, the skáld, wove into a spirited song. Morgen had the good grace to blush when he sang her praises as the "princess" of Usk.
Rhowenna was both attracted and repelled by the Víkingrs' unbridled behavior. Truly, she thought, they were savages, sitting cross-legged on their cushions on the floor, using their strong hands to tear off huge chunks of the meat roasting on the spit over the hearth, pouring onto their heads quantities of wine and ale from overflowing horn cups, and openly kissing and fondling the slave women, sometimes pulling them down upon the floor of the great mead hall to slake their lust upon them, while the rest of the men roared encouragement and approval. To Rhowenna, seated on the dais at Wulfgar's feet, such raucous, ribald revelry was shocking an
d mortifying. Her father's housecarls had never demonstrated such lack of restraint. Still, she was forced to admit that the Víkingrs also possessed a vitality, a zest for life that she had seldom before witnessed and that held its own strange, wild, earthy appeal; these were men who lived hard and died hard, unafraid of what tomorrow might bring. There were few warriors greater.
When supper was done, Wulfgar rose slowly and took up one of the broadswords for which he had bartered in Sliesthorp; and one by one, quieter now, the thegns came forward to kneel before him and to place their right hands upon the blade's gold hilt, swearing solemn fealty to him, their lord, their jarl. His heart swelled with pride at how high he had risen from the depths into which his father and half brothers had cast him. His only regret was that Yelkei was not there to see the oath-swearing that her prophesying had wrought. Then Håkon sang a mighty thegn's song, followed by a soft, melodious love ballad, the strains of his lovely, carved harp echoing on the wind that swept gently through the open door of the great mead hall, setting the whale-oil lamps and rushlights aflicker; and of a sudden, it seemed that there was magic in the night that was not really night at all, but a gloaming, aglow at its edges with the far-distant flame of the midnight sun. Abruptly, Wulfgar caught Rhowenna up in his arms and strode toward his sleeping chamber, stumbling slightly along the way, so she knew then, with a sudden lurch of her heart, that he was as drunk as the other men, although he held his liquor well.
Drawing back the hide curtain, he carried her inside and laid her upon the pallet, his eyes holding hers steadily as he stripped off his leather tunic and sealskin boots and tossed them aside. Then, after a moment, he bent over her, pressing her down, his gilded mane of hair falling about his bare, broad shoulders, glowing like a nimbus in the shadowy half-light cast by the whale-oil lamps, making him seem like one of his ancient pagan gods. Rhowenna's breath caught in her throat at the way the light gleamed upon his bronze flesh, shimmering and dancing with each sinewy ripple of the powerful muscles that corded his arms and layered his chest and belly. In her breast, her heart pounded with apprehension mingled with a strange, leaping anticipation that caused her blood to quicken, her body to tremble.
"Lady, tonight... tonight was a night of which— all my life— I have dreamed," Wulfgar said, his words soft and slurring, his eyes shining with wonder and triumph. "How I would that you knew what it has meant to me! But how can I make you understand— you, a princess? I was... nobody, Rhowenna, nothing, a bastard my father would not acknowledge, and belonging nowhere. My mother, a Saxon woman taken captive by my father, died when I was just a lad; Yelkei reared me after that, she herself a yellow slave from the grassy steppes of the Eastlands. She and my mother were the only two people who ever loved me. To the rest of the Northland, I was naught but a lowly bóndi, undeserving of life's rewards or, at death, of a place in Valhöll, Odinn's great mead Hall of the Slain, in Asgard. Can you imagine what that was like for me, Rhowenna? I hardly dared to hope that the gods would grant my dream of becoming a warrior, much less a jarl. But now they have, and I would share it with you, who might have been my queen and chose instead to be my slave. But in truth, 'tis I who am enslaved. I could take you— I want to take you! But I will not unless you wish it, for I have given you my word. But I would kiss you, Rhowenna, and lie beside you and hold you through the night if you bid me do no more than that."
Stretching out one hand to caress her cheek, he slowly lowered his mouth to hers and kissed her lightly, once, twice, before he claimed her lips more firmly, nudging them apart with his tongue that teased and twined with her own. Startled, touched despite herself by his words and gentleness, Rhowenna did not at first resist. She had feared that in his drunkenness, Wulfgar intended at last to rape her callously; she had not expected tenderness and respect for her wishes, much less his confession of his ignoble birth and humble background, of his innermost hopes and dreams. It had not occurred to her before to wonder why he was different from the other Víkingrs; it had been enough that he was. Now she glimpsed the lonely boy inside the man and saw him as more than just her captor, a man with emotions far deeper and more complex than she would ever have suspected, and with demons that haunted him. She had not known he was illegitimate; she could only guess what his life had been like until now— hard, wretched, solitary, with only his impossible dreams to comfort him, dreams that had this night come true. He was right; how could she possibly understand what that meant to him? In her life, all things had come easily to her, save for Gwydion, who had not come to her at all, who had never spoken to her as Wulfgar did, impassioned words of love and desire, words as beautiful as the strains of music that drifted from beyond the curtained doorway, plucked by Håkon, the skáld, upon the strings of his wild harp, a song for lovers and dreamers.
Wulfgar's kisses tasted of mead, a taste so familiar upon Rhowenna's tongue that almost, she could imagine she were home again in Usk, lying in her own bed— save that no man had ever shared it with her, except Wulfgar in her dreams. Wulfgar held her now in reality, his kisses bestirring her traitorous young body, kindling within her the hot, licking flame she had felt before in his embrace, as though it had been smoldering inside her all along, waiting for him to stoke it anew. Fueled by his insistent lips and tongue and hands, the fire burgeoned, seeping through her veins, like a strange, languorous fever overtaking her, dizzying her, clouding her senses, setting her body ablaze. She must shake it off, she told herself dully; she must make him stop. He had promised he would do no more than hold her, kiss her— and she should not have permitted him even those liberties. No matter that Wulfgar had aroused her compassion, her empathy, he was still her enemy; why did she keep forgetting that?
Bewildered, frightened now by the feelings he evoked within her, Rhowenna attempted to fight them and, at last, to fight him, too. But her strength was nothing compared to his, her fleeting struggle that of a swan against a wolf, her defeat swift as his hands easily caught her wrists and, with surprising gentleness, pinned them to the pillows beneath her head.
"There is no need for this, sweeting," he whispered huskily. "Did I not say that I would not take you against your will? I want only to taste the sweet nectar of your lips, to hold your body close to mine, and to feel you tremble against me as a woman does when she is wakened to passion by a man. Don't be afraid. I won't force you; I won't hurt you. By the gods, I swear it!"
His mouth claimed hers once more, his tongue slowly tracing the outline of her lips before again plunging deep between them to taunt and to wreathe her own tongue, as though he entwined it with silken ribands that he would tie in a love knot to hold it captive— as she was held captive until, releasing her wrists, his hands swept down to tangle in her long black hair. Impatiently, he pulled the thong from the end of her braid, loosing and spreading her tresses so they rippled like an ebony sea about her, shimmering in the diffuse light. His fingers sailed upon its waves; like a gust of wind, he lifted one thick strand, drawing it across her face and her throat before wrapping it about his own throat, binding them together.
"Rhowenna..."he muttered thickly as he buried his face in her hair, inhaling deeply the sweet, heady fragrance that clung to her locks, born of the heather with which she had scented the water in which she had bathed earlier, just before supper. "Rhowenna... kjœreste..."
Like Wulfgar, she had drunk too much mead, she thought, else surely she would not feel like this— burning with a treacherous fire and dazed by his kisses and caresses. Or mayhap she was really asleep— and dreaming, a midsummer night's dream of a midnight sun that shone in a forgotten, faraway land of a more ancient, atavistic world, a land where time stood still and darkness never came, only a strange and magical twilight touched by flame. Tendrils of smoke wafting from the whale-oil lamps garlanded the sleeping chamber, giving it a primitive, mystical air, as though it had become an unreal place, a place that existed only in the realm of the old gods, or in her dream. Wulfgar's breath was a wind primeval against her flesh— sultry, sava
ge with quickening as he rained hot kisses upon her face and hair. His fingers wove through the sweat-dampened tresses at her temples, disheveling, ensnaring, compelling her head back to bare the long, smooth white arch of her throat. Purring low in his own throat, like some predatory animal, he scalded her there with his lips before he found the tiny pulse fluttering at the base of the slender column, and his tongue stabbed her with its heat, setting her aquiver with the sudden, wild tremor that coursed through her. All the while, his hands moved with skill and assurance upon her body, embracing, exploring, and exciting her, so she felt as though she no longer had any strength or will to resist his increasingly fierce, demanding kisses and bold, sensuous caresses.
Of their own volition her hands slid up his naked, hard-muscled chest, sheened and slick with sweat, to fasten about his neck, drawing him down to her; for, despite herself, she longed for more of him. She felt as though, somewhere deep inside her, a dam was bursting, unleashing a flood of want and need that sluiced through her to sweep her up as ruthlessly as a madding sea, bearing her swiftly, helplessly, toward some distant, unknown, uncharted shore— and Wulfgar was the northern star that guided her there, bright and golden in the gloaming. Her skin felt so incredibly sensitive that his every touch scorched her, like sparks cast from the strange and beautiful flickering lights that he had told her of while aboard the Dragon's Fire, that she would see shining in the night sky of the Northland, and that were the flashing swords of the Valkyries, the helmed maidens who, on their magnificent white horses, came to fetch home the Einheriar, the brave warriors killed in battle, to Valhöll, Odinn's great mead Hall of the Slain, in Asgard.