by Gina Conkle
She attempted a light laugh. “We have another truce, no?”
“We do.”
Rurik stood a respectful arm’s length from her. He was still her protector, the wolf who would watch over her. By a trick of moonlight, hobnails shined a dull circle around the ferocious beast on his chest. Shadows painted dark circles under his eyes. Or was he as exhausted as she was? He checked the camp where the fire burned, its smoke taking the men’s laughter to the heavens. The Sons were his priority. Gunnar snapping open his hudfat. Thorfinn standing tall for a stretch. The band of brothers was his family. Not her.
Rurik’s hand was on her shoulder. “Come. We both need our sleep.”
She stepped onto a fallen tree, and he helped her climb into the boat. Her limbs worked but she was clumsy. And lonely. How quickly the night changed. Rurik would sleep chastely with her. Again. Curling up on his hudfat, she waited for him, the fur coarse on her cheek.
The boat creaked with his weight settling down beside her. He was fully clothed. Closing her eyes, she willed the sting of rejection to pass. He was being practical. What man wouldn’t take the treasure? She’d told Rurik the truth and given him a choice. It was simple as that. Nor could she deny her choices. Freedom was hers. To carry on with a lie and let herself be swept away by living for today without a worry for tomorrow, or go home to her family.
Her knees pressed high to her chest, her body a ball on the fur. A lone tear pricked her eye. She sniffled. Savta, Father, Mother, her sisters and little brother...they must think her dead. It was utterly selfish to want to be with Rurik, to live with him wandering wide open roads and quiet forests. She was never truly a free woman. Her path had been set since birth.
“Safira?” Rurik’s hand was on her shoulder.
She gave in to his gentle tug and rolled onto her back. Where the trees opened, hundreds of stars were the tiniest lights.
Rurik drew one finger down her cheek. “You’re crying.”
Bats flew overhead. The ugly creatures didn’t scare her. Nothing did when she was with Rurik. Colors were bolder. Wine tasted better. And she didn’t care what clothes she wore. No one did. There wasn’t anyone to impress. Curling her fingers around his, she raised Rurik’s hand to her mouth and kissed his battle-scarred fingers. She pushed up on one elbow and pulled the ties on his arm brace, content in the small task of taking care of him.
“It was one tear, Viking.” Her tone was lofty as she loosened the brace.
“You are hiding something from me.”
Her gaze flicked up. Blond hair fell around his face, and his smile was...kind. His ear with the missing chunk showed. She wanted to kiss the indent, to heal his past, and take care of him. Be with him. Rurik filled the boat, and he filled her with his presence.
Slipping the brace off his wrist gave her a moment to collect herself. Tomorrow Rurik would be the abrasive Viking leader. Quiet, hard, calculating about everything he would do. But when they were alone, he was all hers. A man of thoughtful tenderness. A man willing to enjoy their growing companionship. A man who liked her opinions, fed off them, if she guessed right.
She kissed the jagged scar that sliced his skin from hand to elbow. His arm hairs crinkled against her mouth.
“How did you get this?”
“Safira,” he chided. “Don’t evade me. Why the tear?”
Sighing, she curled up against Rurik. She’d slept all her life on the finest sheets, yet the Viking’s coarse-furred hudfat was heavenly. He was heavenly—at least when he was not being a stubborn man.
“I could bend your ear with the whisperings of a foolish, spoiled maid, or we could talk of more interesting things. We have little time left together. I will not waste it.”
He brushed a strand of hair off her cheek. “Nothing with you is a waste.”
“I will remind you of those words.” Her forehead rested near his ribs. “How is it you are this patient with a woman? At least in private with me.” She frowned, imagining a beautiful Viking woman waiting for him to end his wandering ways.
His large body gave a sleepy shrug. “A mother and a sister who lived through too much hardship. Sometimes the best I could give was a listening ear.”
“You surprise me.” She touched the scarred hand resting on his flat belly. “This must’ve been a vicious wound.”
“A parting gift from an old enemy.” Rurik sat up and ungartered his boots, careful to set his knife by his side. He was never without a weapon, even when he slept.
“You are not going to explain, are you?”
She lay on the fur, speaking to his back as he untied his vest. Apparently, Rurik had decided he could control his lust enough to remove the garment after all.
“It’s in the past. A past I’d rather forget.” He yanked free of the leather, his voice humored. “I’d rather know about this tear of yours.”
She rolled onto her back and stared at the stars. “I was thinking how much I will miss this time with you.”
He lay beside her, their shoulders touching. “You don’t have to go.”
“My family must think me dead. I can only imagine their torment. I was in our pear orchard at our home outside Paris when men grabbed me.” Wetness stung her eyes. She curled up on her side, her knees bumping his thighs. If she could, she’d fold herself into him and never let go. “I remember the screams of my little sister, Rinna... We always thought ourselves safe.”
Rurik wrapped an arm around her shoulders. “Shhh...” he soothed her, kissing her head.
“I am not crying,” she said tartly.
“Of course, you aren’t.”
The back of her fingers petted Rurik’s arm draped across his chest. Muscles and furrows fascinated her, the skin brown from the sun. She snuggled close and kissed a dip between two big slabs of muscle. It was like finding a secret place on his body. A place for her alone to kiss. With his calming strokes and soft murmurs, her innocent kisses on his arm... This was cuddling.
How nice.
Her eyelids were heavy. Contentment was a blanket covering her.
“You will see your family again,” he said against the crown of her head.
“Mmmm.” She breathed in his skin.
After a time his voice drifted near her ear.
“There will be a delay,” he said quietly. “I need to go to Rouen first.”
“The furs. I understand.” She yawned again, wider, curling against his warmth. “We can send word to Paris from there.”
The lone wolf howled in the woods, a distant soulful cry. His woeful song grabbed her and coiled around her heart. Would the feral beast find his mate?
Chapter Eleven
Nine pagan bonfires burned. The Sons stopped on a crest above Rouen, witnesses to massive fires forming an arrow off the Seine. Midsumarblot blazes could be guiding the gods from their perches on high to look upon Jarl Will Longsword’s feast hall. The air smelled of smoke and spiced wine. Laughter was a song in the wind. Faces gleamed. Drums and bone flutes set a rhythm for twirling dancers. Drinking horns tipped high, revelers were ready to take their fill of food and sex.
“Look at that.” Thorvald breathed the words.
Rollo the Walker had planted his seed here. His son, Will, made it grow. But, Christian weeds sprouted in this field. Longhouses, large and small, clustered in disorderly fashion...among them light-colored thatched roofs, homes of the Christians. Down river, a single stone structure blighted the landscape. Rouen’s abbey.
Safira sat on her horse beside him, her profile a graceful line in twilight. She soaked in the festival. His men did too. Her face lit up like a woman free. Last night she’d yielded the truth and left him with a new burden.
The wealth? Or the woman? He was greedy enough to want both.
“Rurik, the markets are still open.” Bjorn nodded at stalls and colorful tents lining the Seine.
Matrons ambled through the riverside market, touching bronze buckets and pottery while children darted around their skirts. Three humble coracles bobbed in the Seine alongside Frisian cog ships and two Persian vessels. Coins would pass through many hands tonight.
“Persians are here.” Erik’s dark eyes slanted at Rurik. “This is our chance.”
“You and Bjorn sell the ermine before the feast begins. Thorfinn, sell the pack horses. Gunnar, Thorvald, purchase tents and find a place to camp down river.” He spoke to the men with an eye to Longsword’s hall where light poured from doors flung wide.
Pass through that lintel and the land is yours.
“How long are we staying?” Bjorn craned his neck to follow a wrestling match in a field.
Rurik’s mouth firmed. He hadn’t worked out what he’d say to the men, but the horses chomped at the bit as if sensing rest would be found here. Thorvald and Thorfinn stretched in their saddles for an eyeful of dancing women spinning around a bonfire. A night of richly deserved celebration and feasting was to be had.
“Prepare to stay several days. The jarl is expecting me.” He looked to his men, their eyes bright in their helmets’ eye rings, flicking back and forth from him to Rouen. Gunnar was lost to the wrestling match. Bjorn cuffed his shoulder.
“Pay attention.”
Rurik managed a smile. The storm would come. “Have fun. Stay out of trouble. Watch each other’s backs.”
Wolfish grins were his answer. The men galloped down the road, howling with laughter, their fists beating the air. They were easy to follow until they dismounted and walked their war horses into Rouen, blending with the crowd.
Rurik’s fingers curled tightly around the reins. The time had come.
“What is wrong? You look like a man prepared for a death march, not a feast.”
Safira’s lilting accent was a balm to his soul. He’d made his choices. Now to face them. He urged his horse forward, and she steered her horse alongside his.
“Listen carefully,” he said. “Once the feast begins, you must keep quiet and play the part of my thrall.”
“I’d prefer to play the part of your wife, but your men would ruin the affect by speaking the truth.”
“Why my wife?”
“Because Viking wives are equal with their husbands, no?” Her spine was straight and her smile wide. “I prefer an even standing with you.”
He laughed. “No one would believe I married you.”
“Why not?”
His gazed wandered over her, from her pretty scowl to lush breasts. “You do not have the face or the bearing of a Viking woman.”
“And you must marry a Viking woman? Why?”
A roar came from the side of the road. The horses plodded past the wrestling match. A crowd ringed the field, all eyes on Ivar, the tattooed blacksmith. The painted giant must’ve won. He brushed grass off his shoulder as two men rushed to the aid of a stumbling man. Northmen and women filled the gathering. Rurik could count on one hand those not of Viking extraction.
Meandering hooves beneath him were a sign of his reluctance to race headlong to his destiny. He would savor this time with Safira. But, as he shifted in his saddle, her question gouged him. It was time he spoke the truth to her.
“This land belongs to Northmen.” He waved at grain fields on the left. “I must plant a Northman’s seeds.”
“You speak in riddles.”
Upon entering Rouen, he turned his horse toward the great feast hall. The road was clear with everyone at the markets and bonfires. Two men dressed in the jarl’s favored blue guarded the door, their round shields held waist high. Three yellow wolves chased each other on a field of blue...the color and design of Rurik’s new shield once he swore an oath to the jarl.
“I will stay in Rouen.” His throat tight, he reined his horse in before the feast hall. “The Forgotten Sons may not.”
If Safira was surprised, she didn’t show it. She held the reins confidently in one hand, her amber gaze lingering with his. A connection sparked with understanding in those gold depths before dipping to the leather wolf on his chest. Last night she’d shared her secrets, tonight he shared his.
“A holding has been promised to me,” he said.
Safira took in burning torches and stoic housekarls standing by open doors, their spears pointing to the skies. “You are here to make an alliance with Longsword.”
“Yes.”
“And you will marry a woman of his choosing?”
“He is more concerned with me holding the land in his name.”
Her quick mind made this easy. What she said was true. The jarl would expect him to marry a Viking woman. Safira had cut her teeth in a world of wealth and power, of houses aligning for greater strength. Keeping her would be the hard part, but she would become accustomed to living amongst Vikings as concubine, comfort woman, companion. What people would call her place with him didn’t matter. Nor did her father’s gold. He didn’t need it. Surely the holding would be rich enough.
But he did need Safira in a soul-deep way.
When the time was right, he would tell her she was his to keep.
She studied the lintel with its elaborate knot-work carving. “But the jarl will arrange your marriage to a Viking woman, no?”
“Safira—” he dismounted and stood beside her, a hand on her bare knee “—I have to give my oath to Longsword and get my land first. Enough of this talk about marriage.” He removed his helmet, all the better for her to see his eyes. “It’s more important that you understand, tonight will be...festive.”
“You mean people will drink to excess?” Her voice lilted with humor. “I have seen these things before.”
His thumb drew a gentle circle on her knee cap. He craved her and her unexpected stillness. “I need you to trust me and stay by my side.”
Her mouth curled with mischief. “Where else would I be but at your side amongst so many heathens?”
“Because you fear for your virtue.”
She touched his hand on her knee. “When I am with you, Viking, I fear nothing.”
He stood taller in the glow of her praise. Her smile, her presence warmed him. She was a jewel to protect, a woman men would seek for themselves. Since confessing her secret last night, she’d laughed more. Talked to the men often, even Thorvald, jesting with him about his braids. Windblown from hard riding, Safira was a beautiful creature. One men would covet.
“First, we must see Longsword.”
“You are a little messy. You need fixing for your meeting with the jarl.” Slender fingers stroked his hairline, tucking back strands come loose and wiping a smudge of dirt off his forehead.
He submitted to her touch. It lulled him. Even in small measures. Intimate and peaceful, her nearness fed the strange seed he felt growing inside himself when he was with her. When she was done, he set both hands on her waist and lifted her from the saddle.
Her feet on the ground, he kissed her forehead, and he’d swear he smelled the magic of the Arelaune Forest on her skin. It could’ve been the drums pulsing, the elation at being moments away from claiming the land, but his lips dropped to hers, planting a full, deep kiss, a tender, claiming kiss. Safira grasped his shoulders and her fingers slipped lower, kneading the bare skin on his arms.
Emotions jumbled inside him. Thick like honey and twice as pure—and some not.
Safira’s plush lips slid against his, and he could almost believe he was made for her and she for him.
Breaking the kiss, he whispered, “Safira... I want—”
“Welcome to Rouen.” Amusement tinged a gruff voice.
Rurik jolted upright.
Ademar, Will Longsword’s older half-brother. Hands clamped behind his back, the warrior filled the portal. Big in the way of his famed father, Rollo, Ademar wore his privilege without the patina of resentment at bei
ng the bastard son. On half his head, ash blond hair hung in a thick, straight line ending at his shoulders. The other half was shaved with a scar slicing skin from his cheek to a twisting tattoo on that bare half of his head. He was a worthy warrior, known for his skill with the spear. Nothing about the man bothered Rurik except the direction of his gaze.
The bastard’s stare locked on Safira.
“Ademar.” Rurik set a possessive hand on her elbow.
Ademar caught the move before turning to a housekarl. “Take their horses.” To Rurik, “Come.”
Rurik removed his shield from his back. He passed it to the housekarl and whispered in Safira’s ear, “Stay close. And Safira...”
“Yes?”
“Keep. Quiet.”
Safira didn’t acknowledge his command, lost in the wonder of the feast hall. She untied her cloak, her neck craning at intricate carvings in tall ash wood posts. Four giggling thralls dressed in identical blue linen tunics set wooden bowls brimming with plums and pears on tables. Those four women wore their hair cropped at the shoulders. An older woman with a wheat-blonde braid hanging to her knees stood on a bench and poured oil into a lamp as wide around as a shield. It was Astrid, the jarl’s matselja, the valued keeper of his hall. In center fire pits, young boys cranked meat cooking on a spit, two pigs and venison.
Blue and yellow shields lined the walls...easily a hundred of them.
At the end of the hall an ornately carved chair faced tables that would fit two hundred or more. Behind the jarl’s seat, a carving of Yggdrasil sprawled floor to ceiling across that wall. A housekarl guarded a passage hidden behind a loose-weave leather curtain. The gervibur, the room full of weaponry, and a second storeroom containing the jarl’s wealth hid there.
At the opposite corner, Ademar pulled aside a loose-weave leather curtain. The jarl’s lodgings.
They stepped up onto plank wood floors and walked down a hallway. Ademar pushed open a door, and they entered a room smelling of spicy mead. The Jarl stood over a hnefatafl game. A seated woman dressed in black leather faced him, her pretty features fox-like. The shield maiden, Ellisif.