by Jianne Carlo
He sprinted for his horse, roaring, “To me!”
“Fire!” Konáll shouted. “To Bita Veðr!”
Brökk leaped onto his stallion and kneed the steed into a gallop. Men, women, and children dodged out of his way. Long blue plumes of flames licked from a rise to the east, and his dread soared when he realized the fire’s direction—the crofter’s hut to which he had assigned the women.
He spurred his horse up the hill to the holding. Within moments Konáll and Cardas were alongside.
“To the hut, brother. Cardas will accompany you. I will take the hall.”
“Aye.” Brökk glanced back. Raki and the rest of the men were seven lengths behind and racing furiously to catch them.
“The women are safe, Brökk. Mayhap ’tis an accident. I left the old nurse dousing the hearth.” Konáll yelled and bent low over his steed.
The three warriors crested the hill and separated. Konáll took the left to the great hall while Brökk and Cardas veered right.
Brökk reigned in as he approached the cottage. The alarm he’d kept in check threatened to spiral out of control at the sight that met his eyes. The blaze consumed the entire dwelling. With a resounding crash the thatched roof caved in, and what was left standing of the wooden walls followed.
“Stay your alarm. I smell no burned flesh. I would wager my left stone not a single soul was in that dwelling.” Cardas’s horse pranced impatiently. “Hie you to the hall, Malice Striker. Seek your goddess wife and be assured she is whole and safe. I will remain and investigate.”
Brökk needed no further urging. Blinded by a climbing fear, he whirled the stallion about and bolted for the hall and nigh howled in relief when he saw ’twas intact. He jumped off his mount afore the horse had planted its hooves and sprinted for the kitchens. For he knew at that moment Skatha would have defied him.
The cavernous room teemed with people, spit boys, maids, and older men peeling turnips. Two hulks in a corner hacked at a dismembered boar on a table. At yet another, young girls plucked feathers from a fowl. Nary a single female hostage deigned to inhabit the room.
“Where is my wife?” Brökk bellowed.
Silence fell like a series of heads being axed. All eyes spun to him, first the young girls, then the maids rolling dough, then the spit boys, and then the butchers.
Not a soul answered. Then one soot-faced youth piped, “They all left summat aback, Jarl.”
“Where to?” Brökk growled.
“Dunno, my lord, but your brother went that way.” The thin boy pointed to the stables.
Brökk stalked out of the kitchen.
The fickle wind had changed direction once again and in the distance, he saw the charcoal smoke of the cottage fire had thinned. He prayed Cardas and Raki had all under control. He rounded a bend and broke into a sprint, for Lady Gráinne and Konáll were standing in front of the stables. Both appeared to be ready to lash at each other, and their shouts could be heard even though the breeze gusted their voices away from him.
His heart nigh stopped beating when Lady Gráinne’s face paled whiter than a dove’s breast at something Konáll yelled. He pumped his legs and arms faster and screeched to a halt not ten paces from them. “Where is she?”
Lady Gráinne shuttered her eyes. She swayed slightly, and he knew sheer terror in that instant. “One of the horses appears to be missing.”
Brökk marched forward and grabbed the abbess by the arms. He shook her. “What has a missing horse to do with my wife?”
She opened her eyes and met his gaze full on. She said in a pleasant tone, a marked contrast to his thundered query, “Why, I believe she is riding the animal, Jarl.”
He dropped her arms. Stepped back. Strode forward, grasped her, and shook her again. “Are you mad, woman? She is blind!”
“Methinks your entire holding and perhaps the village below now knows that fact, Jarl.” Lady Gráinne wore an expression of pity and contempt.
“Know you what you are saying, woman?” Brökk stomped a circle around the nun. “My wife is blind. Blind. She cannot ride a horse.”
The abbess smiled and linked her hands at her waist. “Not only can she ride a horse, she frequently gallops o’er fences.”
Brökk choked on his own spit. His temples throbbed. “Gallop? Gallop?”
“Stop shouting, brother.” Konáll shook Brökk until his teeth rattled.
Brökk elbowed his brother out of the way and bore down on the abbess. Heat scaled his neck and face. “Fences?”
“Hedges too. ’Tis a favorite sport of Skatha’s to jump hedges.” Lady Gráinne inspected her trimmed fingernails and then gifted Brökk with a dazzling show of her teeth. She eyed him from boots to his war braids. “Why when Elspeth dared Skatha to jump not only the holly hedge, but the brook running alongside it, she fair salivated. Cleared both too.”
He felt like a wineskin about to explode.
Chapter Six
The mare cantered like a dream. The horse’s smooth, easy gait carried Skatha o’er what she assumed to be a meadow for ’twere no climbs or dips, just a level tilt. The wind played havoc with her long curls, whipping them into a frenzy. She laughed aloud at the sting of her hair on her cheeks.
Alive.
She felt so alive.
Undamaged.
Strong.
On a horse’s bare back, she needed no caution, did not have to mask her feelings, and was the equal of the sighted. ’Twas the most delicious freedom she knew. Mayhap save for the pleasure Brökk had given her, for she flew then too out of her body and into some magikal place.
The sun beat down on her back while the frigid breeze chilled her heated face. The contrast between the two, hot and cold, was sheer exhilaration. She leaned forward. Her nose brushed the mare’s neck as she wound her hands around the animal’s throat and wrapped her legs tighter around the horse’s flanks.
She urged the mare on, and the horse broke into a gallop. They raced the gusting breezes. The animal’s powerful hind legs drove the pace harder, faster, until they were nigh flying across the clearing. Worries and anxieties laid waste by the bracing speed, Skatha’s resentment and fury faded.
She let the horse have its lead for what seemed like an eternity of elation, sighed heavily, and then tugged on the mare’s mane and dug her heels into the animal’s side. The horse slowed to an easy trot. Skatha tugged on the mane again, and when the mare’s pace slackened into a walk, she patted the horse’s withers.
“I smell brine, girl. Are we near the sea?”
A high-pitched whinny was her reply. She grinned and tilted her head back trying to discern if morn still ruled the day or if the sun had begun its decline. ’Twas past noon, she decided, for the warmth no longer came from the east.
She had been gone too long for her absence not to be noticed. Rolling her shoulders to appease the guilt that knotted them together, she hung her head for a moment and tried to block the memories of Brökk’s caresses. Had she been wrong to defy him? Mayhap he would no longer consider her his dire weakness if he knew she rode like her goddess mother, Skaði, the huntress.
Anger, long her ally in surviving amid dire predictions of her demise, came to the rescue. Her temper spiked, and she jerked a fisted hand. “He forbids me. Hah! Does your stallion forbid you a gallop? He forbids me the kitchens. Fool. Lout. Does he think me a simpleton? Does he not realize I am twice, no thrice, more capable than a sighted female? Not once have I e’er cut a finger or thumb. Nor have I e’er suffered a burn. Lady Arianne has burned her fingers time and time again, and she has two working eyes. ’Twas only when she left that bucket at the top of the stairs I was injured…and to this day, I believe she did it a-purpose. Spiteful wench. ’Twas because her royal-husband-to-be said my eyes were pools of magik.”
So engrossed was she in her conversation with the mare, Skatha ne’er heard Brökk’s approach until he lifted her from her horse’s back and settled her sideways on his lap. Afore she could react, his scent enveloped her. She s
ighed. ’Twas time for the reckoning.
“You oft speak with mares, my lady?” His arms held her tight to him.
“Ofttimes they are the only ones who hear what I say.” Why did she not fear him? She knew he must be enraged. No matter. Even if he beat her, the long gallop had been worth the penance.
“You wronged your abbess and your friends with your actions.”
She stiffened. “They knew naught. Nary a word. If you harm them, I will harm you.”
“You threaten your jarl?”
“Nay. Not a threat. A promise.” She was past caring about anything save Lady Gráinne and her friends and nurse.
“Lady Gráinne nigh swooned.”
She twisted around and shook her head. “Nay. She would never. She is made of iron.”
“She feared how I would punish you. ’Twas fear that caused her to sway and pale, but Konáll caught her afore she fell.”
Nay. Dismay and anxiety cramped her belly. What had she done? Her foolish ire had wronged the abbess. Gritting her teeth, she swallowed her pride and temper and asked, striving to banish the anger from her voice, “I beg you to restrict them to the hut when you punish me. ’Twill grieve them to watch me whipped.”
“’Tis not possible.”
Torn between bursting into tears and scratching his face to shreds, Skatha twined her fingers together and bit her lip. Resolved not to utter another word, she straightened her spine and waited.
Leaves rustled on a sudden downdraft, and the moist saltiness in the air coated her cheeks. He reigned in his horse, dismounted, and lifted her down to the ground.
“’Tis not possible because the hut burned to the ground this morn.”
“Burned? Lady Gráinne? Elspeth, Muíríne, Dagrún—” Skatha flinched when Brökk cupped her face.
“Nay. Be not alarmed, wife. Your friends are unharmed and were not near the hut when it happened.” He brushed his lips to her forehead. “Worry not.”
His arms slipped to her waist. He drew her against him and pressed her head to his chest. For a brief moment, she tried to resist the lure of his warmth, the heady soothing scent of him, the need for comfort, but ’twas too much temptation, and she buried her nose in his tunic and inhaled in surrender.
Skatha knew not how long they stood there, not speaking, his hand stroking her spine, and all at once she remembered him speaking of danger. She drew back and craned her neck. “’Twas an accident?”
“Mayhap. We know not.”
“You do not think so. I can hear it in your voice.”
“You can tell truth from lies by a voice?” He tipped her chin and kissed her briefly.
“If I know the person.” She shrugged. “’Tis not a simple task with a stranger, and I am not always right.”
Why had he not shouted and roared his fury? Why did he treat her so gently?
“I have gained a wife who can smell the sun, one who cannot see, but can mount a horse and gallop for ells, and one who can tell truth from falsehood. A wife who disobeys her husband and master, one who foolishly endangers others, and one who behaves as a girl instead of a woman.”
A wife who was his dire weakness.
“Will you grant me the boon I asked?” she said.
“Boon?”
“That Lady Gráinne and the others not bear witness to my whipping?”
“None will witness your whipping.”
A wave of relief had her knees buckling, but she locked them out. “I thank you, sir.”
He gnashed his teeth so hard she heard the grinding.
“The mare?”
“Is tethered to my stallion. How did you mount her?”
Skatha considered inventing a plausible explanation. She had climbed onto the horse from a railing, stood on an upturned bucket, jumped from a tree branch. “She knelt for me.”
His hold on her shoulders firmed. “Do not play me false, wife.”
"I have played you false in two ways, Jarl.” She bent her head. “I understand and speak Norse.”
His fingers bit into her flesh. “Why pretend not to?”
She tried not to shudder at the thunder in his snapped question. “I am blind. I am small. I am female. I sought an advantage. ’Twas foolish and impulsive, and I humbly beg your forgiveness.”
Tears gathered at the corners of her eyes. She hung her head and listened. His breathing no longer rasped and his harsh grip on her gentled.
“Reckless, yes. Foolish, no. ’Tis always good strategy to let your enemy underestimate you. But I am your husband, Skatha, not your foe.”
He nudged her chin, and though the sun’s warm rays played over her face, she shivered. “And the other falsehood?”
“The mare did kneel for me. Mountain cats come to me. A black bear once saved me from falling off a cliff. Animals cleave to me. Lady Gráinne has oft had to defend me from accusations of sorcery.”
“Know you why I am angry?”
“I did not disobey your order. I did not go to the kitchens.” She lifted her chin away from his stroking thumb.
“You put yourself in harm’s way. How was I to know you, a blind woman, could command a horse? I expected to find your broken body ere I raced over my lands looking for you. I have every man under my command searching for you. And I find you here not only unhurt but annoyed with me and quarreling with your mare.” He grabbed her arms and shook her.
“You banned me from the kitchens even after I told you I have been in charge of the Abbey these last three summers. You treat me like a child because I cannot see, but I am a woman full grown.” She stamped her foot. “If Bita Veðr is to be my home, I must take charge of the kitchens and the meals. I must have our people’s respect.”
How she wished for sight at that moment. Did he understand her conundrum?
She yelped when he scooped her up and tossed her over his back. The impact of her stomach meeting his shoulder knocked her breathless and made her dizzy. Disoriented, she reached for a hold, anything, any solid form, and found…his rear.
Beneath her cupped palms the tight muscles bunched and slackened as he strode forward. The tactile carnality at her fingertips filled her senses. All fear and anxiety yielded to a curiosity so overwhelming, so exciting, she became too befuddled to think, to worry.
Fascinated by the high round mounds, she traced a delicious indentation on the side of his flanks and ran a forefinger down the crease between the two cheeks of his bottom. So enthralled was she, Skatha ne’er even noticed he’d halted until he slid her down the front of his body.
At that moment, she would’ve sold her Christian soul to be able to see, to look into his eyes and discover if he played her true or false. If ’twas only seduction for a-purpose, or if he had even the slightest care for her. She kept her head level, refusing to bare her throat by tilting her face to him, too uncert, too wary, too filled with hopeful want to chance rejection.
“Sváss fróðleikr, minn smár köttr,” he muttered before claiming her lips. Sweet magic, my small cat. He had said the words to her afore. A test, she knew, and she struggled to remain in control, but when he bit the tip of her tongue ’twas akin to a thunderbolt striking her head to toe.
Lifting on the tips of her slippered toes, she fisted her hands in his tunic and kissed him back, suckling his tongue, exploring the ridges of his even teeth, testing the softness of his lips.
He broke away from her and began unlacing the front of her cyrtel.
The loss of his warmth made her aware of a brisk ice-tipped wind at her back. The tang of the ocean filled her nostrils. He had brought her to the sea? Confused, wary, aroused, she knew not which way to turn, how to react, what he expected of her.
“Nay, wife. Crease not your brow.” His thumbs smoothed her forehead. The rough callouses skipped sparks o’er her flesh. “What concerns you?”
“I know not where we are.”
He hauled her tight to him and kissed the top of her head. “We are on the south side of the fjord. The village and the great hall
are a crow’s flight to the north. The sea is behind you and a few paces away are a series of shallow, hot pools.”
She frowned and pushed away from him. “Hot pools?”
“Aye. Bita Veðr sports a bounty of such.” He tugged on her laces. “Come, let me play maid for you.”
Heat dusted her throat and face. “The sun still rules the sky, does it not?”
Did he mean to disrobe her in full daylight? Join them together without walls to hide their bedsport?
“Aye.” He slipped the gown from her shoulders.
Cool air met breasts covered only by the thin chemise she wore. “I would ask another boon of you, my lord.”
“Ask and I will grant your wish.”
“I would have the whipping first. I could not bear it if you whipped me after…” She could not say the words.
“There will be no whipping, Skatha. Think you I could caress you so, and then mar your flesh? Nay, berserker I may be, but I am not so cruel. You are chilled. Raise your arms.” She obeyed his command.
He drew the chemise over her head. “Can you swim, wife?”
“Aye. Lawri and I love playing in the waves.” She squeaked when he swept her up and balancing her in his embrace, skimmed her slippers, stockings, and garters off before she knew what he was about.
“The pool is shallow at this end. I am going to lower you into it so you can warm your icy toes and fingers.”
She clung to his tunic. “Are you not joining me?”
“Aye, but I thought to shed my garments first.” He chucked her chin. “Ready?”
Holding her breath, Skatha nodded, but did not release her hold on his clothing even after her toes flexed into soft sand. “Oh. ’Tis warm, nay, hot.”
“Can you stand?”
“Aye.” A familiar aroma teased her nostrils, but the identity of the aroma eluded her.
“Mayhap you could loosen your grip on my tunic?”
Her face flamed, and she opened her fingers immediately. He touched his lips to hers. “I will be but a moment.”
Skatha circled her arms in the water as a beatific smile captured her mouth. Heaven. Bliss. She swam a small circle and then a wider one and another. All the while hot water cocooned her from neck to her now toasty toes.