by Gina Conkle
Gathering her hem around her knees, Safira stepped down into the river. She waded out and bent low, splashing water on her knees.
“Ride to the abbey,” Rurik said to Thorvald. “Take the beer. Enough for tonight and no more.”
“Christian holy men... Skinny necks and skinny legs, good for nothing but cracking their bones in half.”
Safira dropped her hem, horror writ on her face. “Please. I beg you. Do not harm those men. They are gentle souls.”
Thorvald grunted, folding ham-thick arms across his chest. His bearded war axe gleamed from its place of pride strapped across his back.
She rushed to shallow water, looking to Rurik. “You must order him not to hurt the monks.”
“Our provisions are low. We won’t be able to replenish our supplies until tomorrow.” In Rouen.
“But tonight, you will fill your bellies with beer.”
Thorvald chuckled. “Not a bad idea.”
Her glare bounced from the braided twin to Rurik. “I am serious, Viking.”
“So am I.”
Rurik fingered the axe tied to his thigh. Since setting foot in Longsword’s land, he had a care with every village. Safira’s trade for three days’ food spared them from causing trouble. The Sons’ coin purses were scant. They couldn’t make fair purchases. What money they had was spent on the ermine. Hunting for meat was a long and sometimes fruitless labor.
Stealing was easy.
“Thorvald will take only what we need,” he said.
“But he will not harm them.”
Thorvald’s chin jutted stubbornly at her. “If they resist, they’ll feel the bite of my blade.”
“What good does it do to spill their blood?” she argued. “They have done nothing to you. Vikings once drove them from the abbey. It was years before they returned.”
Rurik was unmoved. “Now they live under Viking rule.”
Safira was just as stubborn. “The Treaty of Saint-Claire-sur-Epte means Vikings protect them.” She inhaled deeply, her eyes looking heavenward as if seeking patience. “At least think, what will happen if you harm these monks or if they die. Who will be left to brew more beer?”
“A fair point.”
Thorvald’s mouth twisted. “You’re going to listen to her?”
Yes, he was. Her passionate plea on behalf of useless monks amused him as much as it intrigued him. She was Hebrew yet she spoke strongly to save these Christian holy men.
“Your people make no sense. You build more houses of stone for monks than you do for your kings. It’s too much power in the hands of weak men who have forsaken the sword.” Rurik grinned at her, pleased with his logic.
Wet skirts clinging to her legs, Safira stood her ground. Her mouth opened, and he was ready for a fine retort about living by the force of his hand. Instead...
“But you will not let Thorvald harm them.” Her voice was confident. Brightness shined in her eyes, the same gleam that showed outside Bermon when she said she was safe with him.
“He will not touch your holy men,” he drawled.
“What?” The smash-faced giant blustered. “Now she has a say about our raids?”
“It’s beer. Go steal it. One look at you and they’ll piss where they stand.”
Thorvald grumbled and collected the pack horses, his eyes shooting daggers at Safira.
“And Thorvald...take Thorfinn and Gunnar with you,” Rurik said. “Let them do the talking.”
The giant lumbered up the bank, yelling, “Gunnar, Thorfinn. We ride to the abbey.”
Safira bent over and wrung out her skirt. “I can only wonder why he has not cracked my bones.”
“Because you’re not a skinny-legged monk.”
She dropped her soggy hem, her laugh shaky. “I have proven myself valuable, no?”
He wouldn’t let on how valuable. It’d go to her head.
The corner of his mouth twitched against his will. “You’re a fair to middling travel companion.”
“I think you like me, Viking.”
Legs brown from the sun, feet pale in ankle-deep water, Safira was a wild creature, a woman of the land, free and beautiful. She was growing on him. That too was against his will, but he didn’t fight it. Men and women danced an ageless mystery. An undeniable weave. What went on was as sure as seasons passing. A farmer never questioned harvest or a hunter his bounty... They feasted.
His time to enjoy his prize was coming. Tonight.
Thorvald, Gunnar, and Thorfinn galloped north to the abbey, their horses pounding a thunderous noise.
Safira frowned at their departing backs. “Stealing from these monks is not good.”
“Why?”
“Because you reap what you sow.” Her lilting accent was solemn. “Your pagan gods must have laws about that.”
“Laws? No,” he said, extending a hand to her, which she took. “Odin rewards clever thinking and courage. A man must know what he wants—” he hauled Safira onto the bank “—and take it.”
Her bare feet bumped his boots. She stiffened. Dirt-smeared nose and a sheen on her cheeks, Safira enchanted him and she irked him. The maid had to feel the same strange teeter of attraction and repulsion to an abrasive Viking. It was written on her lips, soft and pliant, balanced by the glower in her eyes. Neither wanted this seed growing between them.
“Is there ever a time Vikings don’t use force to get what they want?”
“I have not used force with you.”
“That is different.”
No. It wasn’t. When it came to Safira, restlessness hummed inside him. So did a finer point that needed sharpening.
“Do we speak of Vikings and Christians?” he asked quietly. “Or of you and me?”
Safira’s pulse ticked fast on the base of her throat. Standing this close, the top curve of her breasts filled his lower vision. The tender fruit flushed, the sight feeding his lust.
“Are you telling me Christians have never used force to get what they want?”
Her eyes widened. “That is not the point.”
“It is exactly the point.” His thumb stroked a blue-green vein on her wrist. “Tell me, have you ever been hungry? Ever wrapped your feet in rags so that someone you loved could wear scraps of leather for shoes instead of you?”
Safira’s face clouded. He’d revealed too much to this woman with piercing amber eyes. In their depths, emotions warred as a gentling wind blew off the Seine, twining strands of ebon hair across her cheek.
Holding her close, he marveled at the pale underside of her wrist. “I wonder, until you were in Sothram’s outpost, did you ever suffer? Ever go without?”
Pinging taps came from Erik starting a fire. The noise was distant and lulling, like the peaceful river and the horses munching grass. Though they were at odds, he breathed the same air as Safira, needing it as much as he fed on what went on between them.
“Tell me, are the ships left here about hungry people seeking food?” She searched his face, meeting his handhold with a firm grip of her own. “No. These ships were about one thing. Viking greed. Nothing else. I will not cry for you. You and your people have lived by bloodshed.” Her voice was barely above a whisper. “Take away your sword and what is left?”
“It is my sword that protects you.”
Her face tilted as if she would kiss him. Plush, tempting lips spoke inches from his. “So you have said, but without it, who are you, Rurik of Birka?”
Mouth clamped shut, he let her go. Her question stung yet he couldn’t say why. He didn’t need to explain himself to a spoiled maid of Paris.
“I have seen many things in your eyes when you look at me. Greed among them. Be assured, you will be well-paid for my safe return.” Safira gathered her shoes, her profile a tumult of emotion. “What goes between us is about silver and gold. Nothing more.”
/> The reward. They’d not spoken of it since their first night together.
Head high, Safira walked barefoot through the grass. Her ebon hair hung down her back, bound in two places by fluttering white wool—the strips she’d thought he’d use to tie her up. His gut twisted at her proud retreat. He wanted the reward, and he wanted her.
He opened his mouth to call Safira back and say...what?
Chapter Nine
Safira popped a blackberry in her mouth. She’d gathered the fruit in the forest, her contribution to the Forgotten Sons. Thorfinn and Erik finished the last of the dried fish and bread.
The food she’d traded for was gone.
But they had beer. Plenty of it.
The Sons guzzled Wandrille Abbey’s beer from drinking horns. Thorvald kicked a small, empty cask and it rolled into a beached ship. Rurik sat beside her, laughing with the others, doing a fine job ignoring her. Since their conversation by the river, he’d given her his back. This, his profile, was an improvement. On the other side of her, flaxen-haired Gunnar carved a notch in a birch shaft. A work-rough hand tested the wood’s smooth grain before he slipped an arrowhead into place.
“More berries?” she asked, offering a handful to Gunnar.
He shook his head and sat forward for better light. White-blond strands skimmed a chiseled jaw. His trousers were cleaner and his vest unscarred. Nicks and scratches marked the Sons’ vests, yet the leather hugging Gunnar’s torso was smooth...save the wolf carved on the front.
She popped two berries in her mouth. “You had one horn of beer. Do you want more?”
A finger pressing the shaft, Gunnar wrapped animal sinew around the base of the arrowhead. On his right thumb, he wore a wide bone ring with a hart etched on it.
“I have watch tonight.”
“That would be a no then.” She paused to watch him work. “I notice this about you and the others. Whoever has watch does not drink much wine or ale.”
“It is our way.” The fire showed a growing scowl as he twined the sinew around and around. “And I don’t like to get drunk. It makes a man foolish.”
“You are rare among men.”
He flashed a heart-stopping grin before focusing again on the arrow. Eyes blue as an aquamarine stone and light blond hair cut at the middle of his neck, he would be the first among the Sons to capture a woman’s attention with his perfect features. Lithe of form with broad shoulders nearly as wide as Rurik’s, Gunnar was the youngest and, if it were possible to believe, the most innocent. Yet, he wore his handsomeness with a casual air as if his appeal was a nuisance.
She’d learned of these men in her three days riding with the Sons. Gunnar was an expert with the bow and arrow. Every night he whittled shafts from slender branches of ash and birch. The iron arrowheads were unique. A sharp head with two thick, needle-like points at the bottom.
She eyed the bag of arrowheads spilling into the grass. “Your arrowheads are different. Most I’ve seen are triangles.”
“You mean these?” He tapped the lower tips of the arrow in hand. “Jormungand’s fangs.”
“The snake of Ragnarok...the one to end the world.”
Cheer brightened his eyes. “You know our stories.”
She picked up an arrowhead and held it to the light. “A few.”
Her father and Savta had taught her: Know thy enemy.
She tested a fang on the arrowhead, drawing a drop of blood. “Ouch!” She dropped the iron and sucked her finger.
“You must have a care.” Rurik’s smooth voice intruded.
A thrill shot through her. This was maddening. Her body hummed from a scrap of his attention. Glossy-eyed with drink, the Viking stared at the finger in her mouth. She pulled it out and pinched the tip, forcing her gaze back to Gunnar.
“Why the two sharp points on that end?”
“Because it does damage going in like this—” Gunnar jabbed his arrow at the fire. Eyes hard slits, he yanked the arrow back. “And damage coming out...if it lodges in the enemy’s flesh.”
“Or the arrow goes through and sticks out the other side.” Rurik humored voice reeled her back to him. The man was not to be denied.
Truthfully, he was her lodestone. Every nerve ending inside her sparked to life...at the smell of his skin, an elbow brushing her arm, his shoulder glancing hers. Even the faint creak of his leather vest was music to her ears.
She was a rapt audience.
He raised his fist to the light and slanted his drinking horn behind his arm brace, the narrow tip visible on one side of his arm, the wider part on the other. “There is pain if the arrow goes through the limb. Pain if it sticks inside. Gunnar is very good at dealing pain to his enemies.”
She closed her cloak over her heart. Rurik laughed heartily and the flaxen-haired warrior finished wrapping his arrow with a prideful tilt of his chin.
“That’s why Gunnar has a pretty face.” Thorvald drained his horn. “Shooting arrows keeps him far from the fight.”
“I’ve saved your overgrown ass. More times than I can count.” Gunnar cut the sinew and smoothed pitch over it.
“Does that mean a reward is required, according to your second law?” she asked. “A life saved receives equal reward.”
Thorvald belched into his balled fist. “Battle doesn’t count. We always watch each other’s back in battle.”
“The second law is about sacrifice. Blood shed to save another.” Bjorn hitched up his knee, his voice mildly slurred.
The men launched a debate about what was the best weapon in a fight. They all wore the same bone-handled knives with a curved tip, small axes tied to their thighs, and they carried battle-worn shields painted with red and black swirls. From there, the men differed. Rurik favored his sword named Fenrir, Gunnar his arrows, and Bjorn his hulking hammer named Peace-maker. Thorfinn and Thorvald both wielded long-handled, bearded war axes that always gleamed as if freshly sharpened. Those beastly weapons were named Geri and Freki after Odin’s wolves. Erik wore two swords across his back. Curiously, his weapons had no name, but his care for them was meticulous. Hunched over the steel, he scraped blade and whetstone, his dark eyes shiny from too much beer.
“Then there’s Erik with two swords.” Thorvald dipped his horn in the second cask. “Show off.”
“Leif wore two swords.” This from Gunnar, wrapping another arrow.
Leif. The seventh Son. His name cast a pall on the men. Staring at the fire, Rurik set his horn to mouth yet he didn’t take a drop.
“Look what that got him. A ride to Valhalla.” Thorvald rose, mumbling about a trip to the bushes.
Bjorn flung his beer in the grass behind him. Thorfinn set aside his drink, his lids half over his eyes. Valhalla was glory to Vikings, yet she was surrounded by long faces. Bjorn pushed off the ground, and tucking his hudfat under one arm, announced he would sleep by the river. Beside her, Rurik’s profile could be etched in stone. He exuded strength, the solid foundation on which these men began. Peering at him, she would almost think him unaffected. But no. The harsh line of his mouth was different curved downward, his only show of emotion.
“Who is this Leif?” she asked.
Rurik drank from his horn, and the men answered solemnly one after another.
“The seventh Forgotten Son. The finest warrior, skilled at fighting with two swords at once like Erik...” From Gunnar.
“A man of quick-wit and a loyal friend.” From Thorfinn.
“Our skald,” Bjorn said, tarrying outside the campfire’s glow. “You would have liked him. He was a charmer of women.”
That drew limp smiles from the men.
“A fine carver of wood,” Erik added, his voice a churlish growl.
All eyes went to Rurik staring at moths dancing around the campfire.
His fingertips pinched white on the horn. “He was my younger brother.
Ambushed in Byzantium, his dead body tossed in a river.” A long draught of beer and “It happened at winter’s end.”
The dip of Rurik’s Adam’s apple betrayed his steady voice. She hugged her legs close to her body. His agony was hers. It radiated off him like a fire burst, singeing her. She set a hand in the grass beside him. It was the closest she dared to get. From the men, Thorvald was the first to break the leaden silence.
“We lost Leif and most of our coin that day. He’d gone to collect payment from a vizier we’d guarded for a year.”
Gunnar set down his arrow with care. “He had no one to watch his back.”
She checked Rurik’s stony profile. Was it possible to breathe in his heartache? Because her chest hurt and her eyes stung watching him. This was Rurik in deep pain. Tense as drawn cord. Dangerous if he snapped. He was not a wolf to howl and rage. The cool warrior absorbed the grief. The same way he’d absorbed blows for his men when they were boys in Birka.
His mouth twisted. Faintly cruel, as if he sneered at his gods... Do your worst.
An image haunted her. Rurik as a little boy walking through ice and snow with rags on his feet.
Her skin flushed hot and cold. She saw the Viking’s past, the child huddled in clothes that barely kept him warm. Fierce boyish eyes would have rejected pity. Only the strong survived. It had become his creed.
But, Rurik’s thin, youthful arm would’ve wrapped around Leif to keep him warm.
No wonder Rurik stole softness when he could. Gentleness was gold.
His head turned and storm-blue eyes speared her with, Now you know.
She felt... Numb. Inadequate. Far beneath Rurik’s breadth and depth.
Loss flickered on his face. She could almost believe the emotion didn’t exist in him, except she’d seen it. He let her see it. Pain that deep could only come from an equal measure of love, love he’d poured out for his brother. Rurik had wrapped his feet in rags so Leif could wear leather scraps sewn together for shoes—one child going without for another.
Hurt bloomed in her chest. Rurik wants me to see him.
Warrior. Viking. Friend. Brother.
What else did he hide behind the harsh mask he wore each day?