The Enchantment

by Betina Krahn

“‘A prisoner’?” she said, smiling, relieved to hear the playful tone in his voice once again. “You are hardly . . .” She stopped as she recognized the sensual vibrato in his voice. Then she seized his wrists and slid her bare body over his to sit astride his belly. “I believe I owe you, Wolf-tamer, for the time I spent as your prisoner.”

  “And what revenge will you take on me, She-wolf?” he said, sucking in a breath as she began to move. Above him her rounded breasts jiggled and swayed, their dark tips hardened by the chilled air, and against him her honeyed heat rubbed and writhed, blazing a searing trail of sensation down his belly.

  “You kept me cold and naked in your lair,” she purred. “I intend to keep you hot and naked in mine.”

  THE NEXT DAY, as yet another snow fell, Jorund called the assembly of warriors and prominent villagers together before his high seat and laid forth his plan to send an emissary to Gunnar Haraldson. He braced as he finished, expecting a storm of protest, and was not disappointed.

  “Talk?” someone from the back shouted. “I say we make ’em scream for mercy!”

  “Talk?” Garth bellowed in a voice reminiscent of his father. “They rob and bleed us and you would have us talk?” And behind his complaint there welled a fist-shaking, finger-jabbing clamor of agreement.

  “They wouldn’t have attacked if Borger hadn’t been so eager to bleed them . . . of both blood and silver,” Jorund answered, boldly engaging one pair of eyes after another among the warriors, pouring the oil of new reasoning on the troubled waters of their thinking. “Ask yourselves: What would you have done if it was your son held captive, your last mark of silver demanded to free him? I say Borger would have done the same to Gunnar . . . and more so.”

  “That be truth!” Old Oleg Forkbeard cried, thumping his knee. “Borger wouldn’t rest till he carved the blood-eagle on old Gunnar’s back . . . if it was Jorund held for ransom.”

  “That be truth, old warrior,” Hakon Freeholder declared, rising. “The old jarl—he knew how to answer force.” He raised a brawny fist and shook it. “With greater force!”

  There was more commotion around the assembly as Jorund’s attempt to get them to think of more than one side faltered. He tried again.

  “Who among you would not defend his home, his flocks, his harvest? Perhaps Gunnar believed that was what he was doing when Borger attacked on the first raid. It could be he wishes peace, as well. I want to end this feud before there is more killing.”

  “We’ll end it,” Freeholder proclaimed. “When the last son of Gunnar goes to ninth Hel!”

  “It seems to me you don’t mind killing, Brother Jarl,” Garth snarled, just loud enough for a number of others to hear, “as long as your opponent has four legs.”

  Jorund’s fists clenched as he confronted the surly Freeholder and his backers, then swung his gaze to an equally hostile Garth and his comrades. He had tried talking with them, tried reasoning, and they were too stubborn or too stupid to see. All they understood was force. . . . Well, then—by Godfrey’s Hell—he would give them force. He took a deep breath and stalked toward them, his eyes narrowing, his shoulders swelling.

  “I have tried to reason with you, but you stop your ears and harden your hearts. So be it,” he declared, his voice deepening to a raw, angry scrape. “I need no counsel or blessing from you. I am jarl here and if I wish to send someone to talk to Gunnar and his son Leif, I shall!” He raked a challenging stare through the ranks of his warriors. “I need but two warriors to carry my words . . . two men of courage willing to risk much . . . to gain much for all our clan.”

  “It’ll be ridin’ to a useless slaughter,” Garth proclaimed sullenly, crossing his arms and glaring at Jorund. “No warrior of any sense will go.”

  “Someone of courage will,” Jorund decreed. “Who?” He searched the faces of his men, looking for that spark of belief, or that trace of loyalty that would yield to persuasion. One by one they lowered their eyes or turned their faces away, squirming under the challenge he had laid upon them.

  “I . . . I will go. I will speak to Jarl Gunnar for you.”

  Shock rippled through the hall and eyes widened on the source of that clear, feminine voice. Marta Serricksdotter stood at the edge of the high seat, clutching a fur wrap to her breast. Her face was pale and her clear blue eyes were wide and utterly sincere.

  “I am not afraid to go, Jorund. I will carry your words . . . and speak of peace.”

  With the first stunned moment past, a gasp, a stammer, and a choked laugh of surprise were heard, but quickly died. She came to Jorund, squaring her shoulders under the weight of their collective disbelief. It took every bit of her courage and her hidden love for Leif to speak out so in public. This was her chance . . . her one chance. She managed a tentative smile at Jorund, then turned her earnest eyes on the others.

  “Who will go with me?” Her words dealt them all a stunning blow.

  “Marta . . .” Jorund smiled wanly at her, then shook his head and made a gesture of exasperation. “I cannot send you, Little Sister.”

  “I am not afraid, Jorund,” she responded, wincing at the way the men glowered at her. She did not mean to shame them . . . only to find a way to be with Leif and to stop the feuding. Her voice dropped to an urgent whisper. “Send me.”

  A shocked hush fell on the assembly. A mere girl was making cowardly fools of them!

  “I will go with her,” Aaren said, shoving to her feet and hurrying to put her arm around Marta. “I believe in your desire for peace, Jorund.” She turned a fiery look on her fellow warriors. “Perhaps it does take a woman’s heart to yearn for peace. But most certainly it takes a warrior’s courage to seek it out.” This time even Jorund was dumbstruck . . . and scrambling for a way to deny them.

  “Nej,” came a seasoned male voice from the side, “you must not go, Fair Warrior. You are needed here with the jarl. And you, Little Maid . . . your heart is bold, but it is a warrior’s task.” It was Hrolf the Elder who spoke. He stepped forward and turned to search the hall for another. When he found the face he sought with an inquiring look, he received a nod in response. “You have two now. My son and I will go.”

  “But Young Hrolf was injured.” Jorund shot a look through the assembly to the young warrior who stood with his arm still in a sling. Young Hrolf promptly removed his arm and showed it to be hale enough to travel.

  “You have your peace-speakers, Jarl,” Hrolf said solemnly. “Now grant us a boon in payment for our hard task.” Jorund jerked a nod, admitting his petition. “While we are gone, sharpen your spears, swords, and axes. Strengthen your shields and prepare well for the fight . . . if we should fail.”

  Jorund searched Hrolf’s leathered face, understanding the warrior’s message. So it was. Speak of peace and prepare for battle. It was the price of his vision. He looked around him at the proud and stubborn faces of his warriors and kinsmen. Without their cooperation, there would never be real peace. He would have to give them this, to let them have their weapon-strength, and to pray their preparations would prove unnecessary.

  “So be it,” Jorund declared. “Hrolf will go to speak. And we will prepare ourselves for battle . . . if the talking fails.”

  The next day, Jorund sent a rider carrying a colored arrow to all the outlying farms, alerting the freeholders to their defenses and summoning them to armed duty at the first major thaw. After much consultation with Jorund, Hrolf and his son set off for the farmstead of a prosperous farmer, nestled in the oft-disputed borderlands between Borger’s and Gunnar’s holdings. From there they would send word to Gunnar’s village of their mission and await reply: admittance or refusal. The entire village turned out in the fresh snow to bid them farewell and a new blessing that had nothing to do with the gods of Asgard: peace-luck.

  After all the others, even the Hrolfs’ wives, had returned to the warmth of the hall, Aaren and Jorund stood together in the pristine cold, watching the two figures growing more distant. It was the launching of a dream. With a sig
h, Aaren threaded her fingers through his and strode with him to the smithy . . . to prepare weapons for battle.

  THE NIGHT WAS moonless and the trees loomed black and spidery at the edges of the village. Great patches of night-blue shadows veiled all movement, cloaked all presence from the few dozing watchers still posted along the routes to the village. The snow-blanket cushioned the sounds of feet and hooves, and only the occasional creak of harness and the motion of limbs against leather bore witness to the ominous gathering in the trees along the eastern edge of the village, between the dwellings and the silent lake.

  Stealthily, a dark tide of human forms flowed along the edge of the houses surrounding the commons, wrapping past the smithy, extending like an uncoiling serpent to loop the granary . . . then gliding through the snow-laden huts . . . inching toward the women’s house. An arm flashed as a signal, and a well-tended coal ignited a torch, which lighted another, then another. A ring of fierce yellow flames soon circled the granary, and with another signal the serpent struck, sinking those searing yellow fangs into the low-hanging roof.

  Soon the cedar roof was burning and the thrall who slept on a pallet inside awakened to the flames and came tumbling out the door—straight into the invaders’ hands. They allowed no sound as they dragged him away and silenced him.

  “Fire!” One of the night-watchers by the shore spotted the flames and came running toward the village, banging on doors and calling out the alarm. This time, the invaders let him run and call and bang. Soon the hall itself was being alerted with cries of “The granary—fire!”

  A horde of invaders burst through the unbarred door of the women’s house with weapons drawn and torches raised. They pulled the shocked women from their pallets and muffled their screams. Snarling threats and shoving them back against the walls and down on the floor, they groped the women’s frantic, writhing bodies with coarse pleasure. Then the raiders’ attention focused on two of the thrashing, protesting forms, and they seized them, stuffed cloths into their mouths, and wrapped them in blankets snatched from nearby pallets. With ugly laughter and talk of taking their rewards in their captives’ flesh, they slung the two over their shoulders and carried them out into the frigid night.

  At the same moment, the doors of the smithy were breached and the thralls who slept there were knocked asunder. Brun tried valiantly to prevent them from gaining access to the armory, blocking the door with his thick body and flailing fists—for, ironically, he seldom wielded a blade and thus never kept one near at hand. The attackers soon overpowered him and bashed him senseless, and poured into the armory to seize newly struck blades and spears and set flame to the new wooden shields stored in the smithy’s open shed. Then with their arms full of weapons, they raced for the nearby trees. And in the burgeoning confusion of fire and shouting and running, they were not even noticed.

  Fire! Aaren and Jorund sprang up in their furs at the first shout in the hall and in a heartbeat were frantically donning their garments. Jorund only bothered with breeches and boots before racing out into the hall and seizing the sentry to rattle the news from him.

  “F-fire—the granary’s afire!” the man gasped. It might have meant a hundred things . . . Around Jorund, warriors were lurching from the benches to their feet, instantly awake and reaching for their blades.

  “Garth!” Jorund shouted, and his younger brother appeared at his shoulder in a bare tunic, his boots half laced. “Take a dozen men through the village—find out what’s happening. The rest of you—follow me!”

  As they ran across the commons, the door to the women’s house swung open and Old Sith and Inga and Gudrun staggered forth, crying. But their shock and anguish was caught up in the general panic of the fire, and not even Aaren, running past in her breeches and boots, Jorund’s tunic in her hands, could hear more than fire-fright in their calls and did not stop to listen. When flames were spotted on the roof of the smithy as well, the entire village was galvanized. Panic erupted and Jorund and Aaren and the Freeholder and Garth had to seize control and shake people to make them listen and obey.

  “Buckets and pails and bowls—bring all you have!” Jorund shouted at one after another.

  “Keep the children back—bring spades and shovels, rakes, blankets—anything to beat out the flames!” Aaren yelled, running for the smithy and seizing a pole from a corral fence to pry stacks of burning wood away from the walls.

  They worked in shifts in the freezing cold, wetting blankets and braving the thick smoke to beat at the flames and pour buckets and pails of snow on them. The entire village, from the youngest child and lowliest thrall to the mightiest warrior and jarl, labored heroically to save the granary and the forge. The plentiful snow proved a blessing. Cold and wet, more accessible than water would have been, it gradually turned the tide as they scooped it up and threw it onto the flames. The fire at the smithy was beaten without heavy loss to the enclosed structures, the harness storage and armory. It was mostly the open shed over the great hearth and bellows that suffered.

  But the fire in the granary was hotter and fiercer. The dusty grain itself had caught fire. Then the burning roof timbers collapsed on the interior, and all they could do was pour snow on the smoldering wreck and watch with heat-singed faces and frozen hands as much of their bountiful harvest turned into cinders and smoke.

  As the frantic pace eased, someone spotted the granary clerk in a nearby snowbank, bleeding from a belly wound. The sight of blood on snow, in the light of early dawn, was a grisly shock to senses already reeling. Even as they called for help to carry the fellow, Aaren was discovering the half-smothered forms of Brun Cinder-hand and his helpers outside the armory door. She called for help to carry them to safety—then glimpsed the nearly empty armory and realized the blood on Brun’s battered head was from a beating, not from the fire.

  “Jorund!” She went running to find him, searching through the sooty, exhausted villagers who stood like crumpled stalks around the smoking granary. She found him standing before the blackened doors, his back rigid, his face scorched and glowering.

  “It’s ruined. A whole year’s harvest . . . most of a year’s grain,” he said bitterly, as if still trying to comprehend it. He looked around at the devastation in the faces of his people. “They worked so hard . . . even the children.” They had come together, had struggled side by side to snatch their harvest from the jaws of the Cold Reaper—only to see it go up in flames. In their faces he could already see fears for the winter ahead; there would be much hunger in the village before spring.

  “Jorund . . .” She touched his gritty arm. “It was an attack,” she choked out, scarcely able to speak as the cold air seared her smoke-weakened lungs. “Brun and his helpers—they were beaten. Someone broke into the armory and stole most of the weapons—” The news produced such a look of loathing in him that she shivered.

  “Gunnar,” he said hoarsely. “He came back to finish his treachery.” A searing pain slashed through his consciousness. While he had talked peace and tried to convince his people to set aside old hatreds and lay down their arms, Gunnar and Leif had been talking of war and spurring their warriors to a raiding frenzy.

  He shifted his gaze back to the smoldering wreck of the granary. It was a perfect lesson in the destructiveness of the fighting and bloodshed . . . but one that could only incite his people to new hatreds and deepen their desire to fight. Then the crowd that had gathered around him murmured and parted to admit four men carrying a body. He stared down at the limp form of the thrall man who had tended the grain . . . stained with garish, jarring crimson. And he felt something cold and brutal inside him beginning to loosen . . . to uncoil . . . and he tensed furiously, trying to fight it, clinging to reason.

  Aaren looked up, her face filled with horror. “Jorund, something must be done.”

  He wiped his eyes with both hands, as if trying to clear away that hideous red from his vision. “I have a treasury,” he ground out, looking into the faces of his people. “I will buy grain.” But
even as he said it, he knew that finding surplus grain among the clans would be difficult. “No one will starve!”

  “That is not what I meant. Jorund, this cannot go unredressed,” Aaren declared, drilling her meaning into his eyes with quiet force. His breath came harder and faster as he looked around him at the anger and expectation in the others’ faces. They believed it, and now his Aaren believed it, too.

  A commotion at the edge of the crowd disrupted that painful exchange. Oleg Forkbeard jostled people aside and ushered a weeping, wild-eyed Sith forward to Jorund. Between sobs, the old dairywoman choked out: “They come for . . . the women. An’ took—” A shuddering gasp choked off the rest. Aaren wheeled to face Sith and felt a tremor of panic for the first time that night as the old woman’s anguished eyes turned on her.

  “Who?” she demanded, rushing to the old woman and seizing her shoulders. “Who did they take?”

  “M-Miri and Marta . . . our little Miri and Marta!” Sith gasped out.

  The news hit Aaren like a blow to the gut. She was unable to take a breath. Her senses contracted massively . . . she could scarcely hear Gudrun’s tearful voice saying: “They broke in on us—snatchin’ and grabbin’ and shovin’ us—sayin’ old Gunnar would have the lot of us for flesh-sport. Then they spotted Miri’s and Marta’s yellow hair and took them . . . bound them up in blankets and carried ’em off . . . laughin’ about how they would . . . would . . .” The shock and pain in Aaren’s face stopped her from finishing it. But Aaren knew—they all knew—what fate the raiders had planned for her sisters.

  “Nej! Nej!” she wailed, making fists and stiffening against the pain erupting in the middle of her belly and slamming upward through her chest. “Not my Marta—my little Miri—not them!” She ran for the women’s house.

  “Aaren—” Jorund grabbed her, but she wrested from his grip and kept going.

  He bolted after her, as did half the village. They raced to the women’s house and he charged in after her to find her standing, staring at their empty pallets. She began furiously stripping the furs and blankets and straw from the bench, dragging them onto the floor piece by piece, as if searching for some shred of their presence. Anguish mounted in her.