by Gina Conkle
“You will be busy in the coming months.” Safira’s voice was small.
The sad notes ripped him. He had to look away. “There is much to do.”
Her scent was on his skin. He’d awakened with her head on his shoulder and her calf resting alongside his. Their sluggish gait was proof neither wanted to leave the cozy nest they’d made in the dragon ship.
Safira tucked loose hair behind her ear and squinted at southern rooftops. “The jarl will send you to clear Queen Annick’s men from the southern forest. Little chance for you to build your holding, no?”
“We meet later to discuss strategy.” They stepped off the dock. “As to when I build... I don’t know.”
A heavy-wooden wheel ox cart stalled their progress uphill. Five children sped by, laughing at a game with a single stick and ball of yarn. Ivar’s hammer rang a steady ping, ping, ping in morning air.
Erik broke away from his conversation. “Rurik,” he called out. “I have news.”
Rurik guided Safira across the muddy road to meet Erik. The basket-holding maid bid Gunnar good day and left to finish her chore. Both the Sons waited in the yard outside Ivar’s forge which faced Merchant’s Row.
Safira stopped in the sunshine. “I will wait here while you talk to Erik and Gunnar.”
Ivar’s hammering ceased. He set down his hammer and a half-formed scythe to step outside. “Rurik. You need to be ready.”
He was as massive as Thorvald without the short-temper. A talented blacksmith and wrestler, he would make a fine warrior if he chose that path. Bare of his tunic, all could see the tattoos that painted his shoulders.
“Vlad and his men are gone.” Erik was quick and to the point.
Rurik bit back a curse. Three paces away Safira shaded her eyes.
“Did you see that?” She pointed south. “A flash...like metal.”
Ivar, Erik, and Gunnar checked the direction with him. “I see nothing,” he said and turned his back on the road. “What happened?”
“The jarl expected them this morning, but they never showed.” This from Ivar.
“Could be Vlad left with his tail between his legs. He has his pride.”
Ivar grinned. “Which you thoroughly beat to the ground.”
“I don’t like it.” Erik’s tone was full of caution. “He’s too mean-spirited to take a beating like that. He’ll want revenge.”
Safira’s footsteps scraped the ground behind him. “Rurik. Something keeps flashing in the sun. I think it’s coming from that last roof.”
He turned. “I don’t have time to—”
What happened next came like glass shards falling before his eyes.
Ivar yelled to Gunnar.
Children scampered by, chasing the ball of yarn. Crows landed on the smithy’s roof, their beady yellow eyes skimming the ground.
A new ship had taken a place on the last dock. A fine-skinned, ebon-haired woman stepped off her ship, the wind snatching her silken veils. She fussed with her skirts as a tall man in scarlet and black robes joined her.
Safira touched his back. “Rurik.”
Air whooshed. His neck bristled and a metallic taste flooded his tongue. The twang of arrows striking wood sounded. He grabbed Safira and dragged her to the smithy.
Another whoosh. Children shrieked. Arrows arced through the skies, dozens of them aiming for the smithy. Ivar and Erik ducked behind massive doors.
Three arrows stuck to the smithy door. Two more landed in the dirt. Countless arrows skidded across the roof.
Another scream curdled Rurik’s ears. Safira. Amber eyes rounded. She clutched his trousers and fell to her knees. She huddled on the floor against the forge’s stone base. He’d let her recover. She was safe and out of the way.
Ivar stood up, glaring south. “They’ve stopped.”
Erik collected arrows off the ground. Gunnar jumped up from the barrel he’d hidden behind and pulled the arrows from the smithy door. More footsteps pounded. Thorvald, Thorfinn, and Bjorn sprinted from the jarl’s hall with Ademar right behind them.
“We are prime targets, standing like this out in the open,” Erik said, scanning the rooftops.
“The Bretons?” Ademar asked, panting from his sprint.
“No.” Ivar held up the arrow. “I forged these arrowheads. A few days ago. For Sigurd.”
“Who is dead,” Thorvald spat. “Dead men don’t shoot arrows.”
Bjorn eyed the circle of men. “Vlad and his men are alive and well.”
“I’d wager every piece of ivory I own, they’re headed to the southern forest,” Erik said, raising the arrow he clutched. “And this was their invitation for us to join them.”
“Rurik.” Safira’s voice was whispery behind him. He would see her safely to the feast hall and saddle his horse.
His blood ran hot. Vlad and his men would die.
Inside the forge, Safira sat with her back to him. She set a steadying hand on the stone base and pushed to her feet. When she turned, her face paled. Blood ran fresh across her skirts. One forearm clamped his trousers to her ribs.
The other forearm trembled. An arrow had shot through it.
“Safira!” He rushed to catch her as her knees buckled.
She craned her neck and blinked at the road. Intent on looking past his shoulder, her voice was clear.
“Hello, Mother.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Fear was the cold sweat beading his skull. Safira collapsed against him. Hooking an arm behind her knees, he carried her out of the smithy.
The silk-clad woman standing in the yard reached for Safira, her mouth agape “My daughter,” she wailed.
Rurik held Safira close. “I’m taking her to the hall. We’ll treat her wound there.”
A dark-haired man in long robes nodded. “Quickly.”
Rurik trotted up the road to the jarl’s hall. “Astrid!” he bellowed. “To the eldhus.”
The matselja emerged from the weaving shed, both hands clapped on her cheeks. “Yes.”
He shouldered open the kitchen door. Two women gawked at him until he barked, “Get out!”
They dropped empty platters on the floor and scurried from the kitchen. Astrid stepped in and threw open the shutters. “I’ll need light.”
Rurik set Safira gingerly on the table and tossed a basket to a smaller table. “Lay down.”
Shaking from head to toe, she held her arm awkwardly and managed a weak smile. “Do you hear this, Astrid? He’s getting comfortable ordering me around.”
“All men start out like that.” Astrid helped Safira lie down. Her smile was kindly as she stroked Safira’s hair. “It takes time for them to learn.” Astrid’s face grew serious. “I am going to give you something to make you sleep. It will be better.”
Safira nodded numbly. “Valerian and lavender?”
“And a few other things that I will keep to myself.” She patted Safira’s shoulder.
Safira’s mouth gaped as she gulped air in fits. She blinked fast, her glassy eyes blank as if the world hazed around her.
“My daughter.” The ebon-haired woman slumped against the doorframe. The man who must be Safira’s father stood behind her, wrapping an arm around her waist to hold her up.
Keen, dark eyes assessed Astrid and Rurik and Safira’s arm with the arrow run through it. “We are not knowledgeable healers but we are able to help.” He glanced at his wife. “At least I can.”
Safira swallowed hard. “I am safe and well, Father. Take care of Mother. You know how she is with the sight of blood.”
His dark-eyed study flicked from Astrid to Rurik. “I will.”
They disappeared from the lintel, and Safira’s uninjured hand fished around the table. “Rurik.”
“I’m here.” He folded her cold, clammy fingers in his.
Sweat
beaded her hairline. More color faded from Safira’s face as if life ebbed with each exhale. Astrid set out a row of jars. She quickly pinched dried bits from one vessel and another and dumped the contents into a wooden cup.
Rurik cursed under his breath. “She’s slipping away! Tell me what to do.”
“Get my thralls back,” she snapped. “I need help.”
“No. I’m not leaving her. Tell me what to do.”
Astrid stirred her tincture in the wooden cup. “It will not be easy to see the woman you love flat on the table. She has lost a lot of blood. Are you sure?”
“Yes.” He bit out the word. “Save her!”
“Safira,” Astrid cooed. “Stay awake, Lady. I need you to drink this.” To Rurik, “Hold her up and see that she drinks as much of this as possible.”
Safira was a rag doll on the table. She whimpered. Her lashes fluttered low, and blood kept seeping from her arm onto the table, her skirts, a trail of it trickling to the floor. Rurik held her up, coaxing her to gulp the liquid. The tincture dribbled out the side of her mouth. Her breathing thinned until her head lolled against his chest.
Astrid set rolls of plain weave linen on the table. “She is out. Now remove the arrow from her arm, and I will staunch the bleeding.”
Rurik was sure she muttered, “And hope she survives.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Two faces peered at her. One was dearly loved and long known to her, the other was a face that filled her dreams.
Dreams of a late-night kiss beside a river...
Dreams of hot touches in a cool forest...
Dreams of ease and conversation with a man whose storm-blue eyes saw deep inside her...
“Rurik.” His name was a dry sound on cracked lips.
“She needs water.” Another voice. Stiff, imperious, and a touch shocked.
Lady Rachel of the House of Alzaud spun away from the bedside. The mother didn’t like her daughter calling for a Viking. Safira would laugh if she could muster the energy, but even the act of opening her eyes was a chore. Firm hands helped her rest higher on plush pillows. Her fingers curled over fine cotton sheets; the luxury had to be her mother’s doing.
“Here.” Rurik set a cup to her lips. She drank it, the water cool on her tongue, and she drank him in.
Dark crescents shadowed the skin under fierce eyes. Rurik was thinner and harsh lines etched the sides of his mouth. His lips parted as if he’d speak but didn’t know what to say. Despite his misery-engrained features, Rurik wore his pagan raider status like a second skin. A new, wide silver arm ring banded his thick bicep. Sun-blond hair was combed severely back and tied at his nape, showing the missing chunk from his left ear. That had to horrify her mother.
“My beautiful Viking wolf,” she murmured.
“What did she say?” Her mother’s voice shot across the room.
“Nothing.” Then, under his breath, “Everything.”
Safira scraped her hand across his beard. “You need a shave, Viking. You’ll scare small children looking like this.”
Calloused fingers grasped hers and kissed the pink tips. Rurik was a strange mixture of relief and anger. He exuded lethal warrior, but his brutish appearance was about more than the missing piece of ear or his scowl. Blue eyes ringed with grey ranged over her, emotions ricocheting in their depths. Eyes revealed much. The harsh slant of Rurik’s mouth revealed more.
“You’ve been asleep for three days.”
“And you look like you ordered me to be healed each of those days.”
An uneven smile was her answer. Her honest Viking. His face was inches from hers, holding nothing back. Fear. Anger. Sadness. Love. Dizzying emotions, all of them. Absorbing them exhausted her.
Her tongue was thick, but she managed, “Vlad?”
“We didn’t find him. But we will,” he said, setting her cup on the bedside table to refill it. “He and his men will pay for what they did.”
Footfalls intruded. “She needs more than water to build up her strength.” Her mother hovered by the bed with another cup in hand. “Your conversation is draining her.”
Her poor mother. This wasn’t easy, not being able to direct one of her children. Lady Rachel Alzaud, wife to the spice merchant of seven kings, was used to telling people what to do and how to do it. But, on this side of the Epte River, she was—what had Astrid said of Frankish highborn women?—ill-prepared for life.
“If she wants me to leave I will.” The Viking stayed firmly in place.
“Here.” Her mother squeezed between him and the wall, offering a steaming cup.
Safira sniffed the air. “Mmmm. Is that Astrid’s rabbit stew?”
“The slave woman who tended your arm brought it. You should eat. You need your strength.”
Safira let go of Rurik’s hand and accepted the cup. Through the steam, she glanced at the door and gave him a speaking look. His face clouded. She’d swear he was...hurt.
Surely, he understood the fragile situation here?
She took her first sip and stared at the far wall. Rurik and her mother could be two creatures vying for the same bone. Conversation didn’t drain her. Boiling emotions did—mostly the barely contained cauldron that was her mother. Much needed saying and, weak or not, she’d just as soon get it over with.
A chair scraped the floor. Rurik stood up, his eyebrows hard slashes over his eyes. “I’ll leave you to your mother’s care.”
As he exited Ademar’s room, sunlight touched the silver arm ring. Was it a sign of his new authority?
The door firmly shut, her mother sighed. “About time he left. That man and the slave woman lurked over you the first night. It was very crowded in here. I thought he was going to plant himself in here again.”
Safira swallowed a mouthful of broth, the herbs and salt coating her tongue. “That man saved my life.”
“Humph!” Her mother sat on the edge of the bed. “By all accounts you saved his life.”
“What?”
“That’s right. Everyone is saying when the arrows were flying, you jumped to cover his back. One of his men, the one with—” Mother waggled her fingers at her head “—a mess of hair and braids said you raised your arm and took an arrow meant for the Viking’s head, the man who was just here.”
The mess of hair and braids. Thorvald. Perhaps now she’d won his friendship. She strained to remember what happened. The screams, the whoosh of arrows. The day was a haze in her mind.
Light brown eyes glossy with tears stared at Safira. “I thought I’d found you only to lose you again.”
“Oh, mother.” She set aside the cup and wrapped weak arms around her mother’s quaking shoulders. “I am safe.”
The embrace was a shift, Safira comforting the woman who had always comforted her. Rachel of Alzaud was a powerful woman. None could dispute that, but the tides had changed. Grief had painted her mother with new strands of grey hair. Her bustling resolve, usually the force of a lioness, seemed more like that of a meek cat. Shoulders had thinned. Fine-grained skin was drawn and pale. When she withdrew from the hug, pain nipped her eyes.
They talked of home and Savta, who was alive and well. Of her brother and his lessons with his tutor. Safira explained what happened the day she was taken from their orchard. Her mother was hungry for details. Safira held nothing back. Convincing the Lombard man to sell her. The loss of Savta’s ring and the lies to Hilda. Her seeress’s lie to Sothram. And the Saxon’s taste for abuse. Surviving by her wits until a plan hatched to strike a bargain with the Forgotten Sons’ leader.
She and her mother held hands. It was good to bask in her mother’s care, but the inevitable question came. Her mother’s head dipped, the gold medallions of her head dress jingling softly. She traced Safira’s fingers with her own.
“And did the Saxon or the Lombardy men...hurt you?”
; “You mean, did they force themselves on me and lay with me?”
Her mother’s lashes dropped low. “Yes.”
“I avoided them with my seeress claim.”
Rachel of Alzaud nodded sagely and slipped off the bed, not meeting her daughter’s gaze. The soles of her shoes scraped the floor as she went to the open shutters. She rested her arm on the frame, her face set to the sun.
“But you and this Viking...”
“His name is Rurik, Mother.”
Lips like Safira’s pinched. “Fine. Rurik. Did you and he...”
“Did I lay with him? Yes. I gave myself to Rurik. Willingly.” She let that sink in before finishing with, “Several times in fact.”
A groan and her mother turned to Safira. Have you gone soft in the head? was plainly writ on her features.
Laughter bubbled up in Safira. The jarl had looked the same way when she’d questioned his judgment in the eldhus after Rurik’s battle with Vlad. Was that what love did? Made a person rise fiercely to defend the one loved? It had changed her view of the world. No doubt it would change how the world viewed her.
“You could have returned with your maidenhood intact?” her mother gasped. “And you chose not to?”
“The choice was mine.” Safira put the half-eaten stew on the bedside table with wobbly hands. She regretted sending Rurik from the room. His presence set the world right.
“I understand the Viking’s rugged appeal. He is...strong, though none too friendly. He looks like he eats small children.”
She laugh-wheezed. “I assure you, he doesn’t.”
“He’s an obvious leader of men when he steps in a room. But you let yourself fall prey to—to muscles,” her mother lamented. “Have you no sense of your purpose? He is a warrior of no account.”
“I love him. It’s as simple as that.”
Those were the wrong words to say. Her mother peppered her with a scathing, “Nothing is that simple, Daughter. Don’t confuse sex with love.”
“The way you confuse love with wealth?”
Her mother paced the room, a froth of indigo silk. The gold headdress clinked and color flooded her cheeks. The storm that was Lady Rachel was building.