Ragnar

by Joanna Bell

  And then she was mine. I held her face to my neck, so my flesh could absorb her little shrieks of ecstasy, and with my other hand I locked her body down against mine and let the feeling of her softness pulsing around me pull the same bliss back out of me.

  "Emma," I said, hearing the low, rough tone in my own voice. "Emma –"

  My fingers dug deeper into her flesh as the wave crested and crashed over me. With both hands I held Emma down, groaning loud and rocking myself up, deeper and deeper, as the white emptiness of pure sensation exploded through me.

  I kept her there until I was finished. It felt like forever that time, the well of myself never quite empty, the pleasure playing out like a rock skipped endlessly across the sea. And when I was sated we looked at each other and I saw in her eyes that she was, in that moment, truly mine.

  We slept immediately, barely having the will to build the fire again before collapsing in each other's arms beside it, wrapped haphazardly in furs and wool and linen.

  12

  Ragnar

  In the morning, which came too soon for my liking, I woke as everyone else did and sat on a chair next to the fire watching my people blink themselves awake and cock their heads to the side, listening for the strength of the wind as Emma slept curled on a fur next to the fire.

  Arva walked by me on her way to check the situation outside, her eyes glazed with sleep.

  "I see you changed your mind about company, Jarl," she said, smiling.

  I smiled back. "Just helping to keep the captives warm, Arva."

  "And one in particular, I see," she replied, leaning in. "I can't quite see her face but I think my guess would be correct. I see from your face that I needn't ask if she's pleased you. Shall we meet soon?"

  I always met with Arva and Fiske in the mornings, often as we ate breakfast and drank ale. But that morning, I was not yet ready to leave the cocoon of warmth in the feasting hall. "Have Kiarr bring my breakfast to my roundhouse," I told her. "I'll take my ale and fish with this one, and I'll see you and Fiske afterwards."

  Arva grinned. "As you wish it, Jarl."

  Emma stirred as Arva left, roused by our conversation. I looked down, feeling a sensation almost like my heart collapsing inwards on itself as she rubbed her eyes and I watched her expression go from one of confusion to recognition to, when she looked up at me, happy contentment.

  "No mead has ever had that effect," I told her gently.

  "What do you mean?" She asked, reaching up for me.

  I took her hand and held it close to my chest. "Even after a night by the fire your hands are cold, girl. And what I mean about the mead is that it feels that way to watch you wake up – like I'm loosened by honey mead or dark ale – but the effect is actually stronger watching you."

  We stayed where we were for a moment, gazing into each other's eyes. But the day beckoned and as much as I wanted to spend it entirely in my roundhouse with my juicy Emma-berry, I knew it was impossible. "Come," I told her, moving to help her to her feet. "We can take breakfast in my –"

  She shrieked and crouched back down to the floor, grabbing dressings and furs to hold cover herself.

  "Is it a draft?" I asked, confused – the fires in the feasting hall really did have the place quite warm.

  But Emma shook her head quickly and widened her eyes at me like I was missing something obvious. "There are people in here!" She whispered. "I – I don't have any clothes on! They'll see me."

  Emma was right, there were still a few people in the feasting hall, mostly the teenage sons and daughters of some of the higher, older warriors, wasting time in the warmth before they had to go back to their daily tasks. I didn't see why my foreign girl wore such a horrified look on her face, though.

  "Aye, there are people. What is it you –" and then I stopped because I saw what was happening. Emma was embarrassed, self-conscious. "You wish to conceal your nakedness?" I asked, surprised and not a little baffled. "Why? Do you think the people see the way you curl up in my arms – and the way you gaze at me this morning – and don't guess what we did as they slept? What half of them did themselves during the night?"

  I reached for her hand again, trying to pull her to her feet but she pulled herself away and threw her linen under-dress on over her head quickly, bending her body so no one would be able to see much before the dress fell over it.

  "Of all the people," I said as we dressed in earnest, before heading to my roundhouse for breakfast, "who I could expect to feel shame at their bodies, you are the very last."

  "Well it looks like you're all a bunch of hippies here," Emma replied, "but it's not like that where I come from. Where I come from you would actually be in a lot of trouble for having no clothes on in front of –"

  "Hippies?" I asked, unfamiliar with the word. "Is this your word for the people of the north?"

  She laughed heartily at that and took my hand as we walked, allowing me to move her behind my body slightly so I could protect her from the still-strong winds. "No, Ragnar," she giggled. "Hippies and Northmen are definitely not the same thing."

  I wasn't sure what Emma found so worthy of mirth but I enjoyed hearing it all the same. We took breakfast – dried fish, dark bread and butter and ale – in my roundhouse and at one point she caught me watching her perhaps a little too intently.

  "What?" She asked. "Why are you watching me eat? I hate it when people watch me eat!"

  "Who else watches you eat?" I asked. "Give me their names so I can have them killed! I watch you eat because something odd has come over me, Emma. I believe I might be getting more satisfaction from watching you eat your bread, than I do from eating my own."

  She looked at me pointedly, as if trying to tell if I was toying with her or not, and then swallowed another mouthful of ale. The stirring under my leathers, which had been there since we woke up, quickened at the sight of her lips on the edge of the cup.

  "Don't tell Fiske that," Emma warned, having discerned Fiske's natural suspicion levels from the short interaction with him the previous day.

  "Oh I don't think I'll tell Fiske," I said, reaching out and sliding one hand under her dressings, up over the smooth muscle of her calf and then bending it under her thigh at the knee, not stopping. "But something tells me he knows it already."

  I exhaled heavily at the sensation of Emma's wetness on my fingers, and slipped two of them into her. It was just what I needed after the urgency of the previous night – the time to take it so slowly she would lose herself in desire, and plead with me to give her what she needed.

  "Jarl Ragnar?"

  Kiarr. He stood at the entrance to my roundhouse with the leather door-flap pulled aside, allowing the cold air to rush in. I also saw him noticing that my hand was under Emma's dressings. He didn't leave, though – Kiarr had been told to attend to me after my breakfast, and that's what he was going to do.

  "Voss, Kiarr!" I swore, reluctantly taking my hand away from the girl whose eyes were already shining with the urges I was going to satisfy. "Can't you see I'm busy? Come back later, when –"

  "When, Jarl? When shall I come back?" He asked, unmoved. I got to my feet, ready to shove him back outside myself, when another appeared behind him. Fiske.

  "We must speak, Jarl. A messenger from Jarl Eirik, another entreaty to meet with you – and this one more urgent than the last."

  And then, turning the situation from one which I truly felt might lead to me launching a few of my own people straight into the sea into one in which I couldn't help but laugh helplessly and shake my head, a third person appeared, one of the young female thralls. She pushed her way in between Fiske and Kiarr and popped out between them, holding her head respectfully low.

  "What is it?" I sighed, seeing that I wasn't going to get the time to quench the heat of my lust in the lake of Emma's body that morning.

  "Inga wonders if you will send the prisoner again, Jarl. She says she needs her to help with the vegetables for the –"

  "You tell Inga that the next time she
sends a thrall to ask me a favor, and after disgracing herself in front of me yesterday, she's going to get thrown into the stew-pot herself!" I barked, sending the thrall fleeing back to the cooking-pits.

  "I don't need you now, Kiarr," I told the servant, not quite keeping the exasperation out of my voice. "Go away, I'll call for you when I need you. And you, Fiske, come in. Where is Arva?"

  "She'll be with us soon, Jarl," Fiske replied, coming into the roundhouse and glancing, very briefly, in Emma's direction. Fiske knew not to question me, or to behave in a disrespectful manner around me, but he was a man of rules and routines and even in that fleeting glance I could see his displeasure.

  "She has business with Jarl Eirik," I told him, not wanting to send Emma away, even if it was just back to the feasting hall to spend the day in warmth before I could see her again. "She can be here."

  Soon Arva arrived and before the sun peeped out of the racing clouds at the highest point of the day, a plan had been forged. We were to head north the next morning – myself and near half of the warriors. Families and advisors would stay behind, and the second half of the warriors to hold the camp, should any of the East Angles get foolish ideas in their heads. Emma from the southeast, across the sea, would not be staying behind. The truth is I would have brought her along anyway, even if anyone had objected, but I can't say I didn't try to impress upon Fiske, Arva and my men that the foreign girl with the strange words and the skin like fresh spring milk was, in some vague but real way, necessary to me.

  13

  Emma

  After the night spent in the feasting hall in Jarl Ragnar's strong arms, I barely left his side. It wasn't something he appeared eager to hide, either, and he seemed if anything slightly confused by my timidity in 'going public.' He didn't know that where I came from, a single night spent together was virtually meaningless, and that it certainly didn't indicate some kind of relationship had begun. Even after the Jarl seemed to take me on as, in some important way, his, I anticipated the moment he would go cold, find a new girl, develop a sudden need to engage in activities that didn't involve me.

  It didn't happen. I didn't have to beg and plead to be allowed to join Ragnar and his men on their trip north, because he told me he wanted me next to him.

  "Why do you have that look in your eyes?" He asked, as we stood in the bow of a Viking ship as it cut through the dark sea on its way north. "You've had it for a day now, ever since last morning when we woke together in the feasting hall."

  "What look?" I asked, smiling because it seemed impossible not to smile around Ragnar, especially as he cuddled me against his huge, fur-cloaked body to protect me from the cold.

  "Like you're surprised," he replied, leaning in close to kiss my cheeks. "You have it now, girl, still. What surprises you so much?"

  I looked east towards the land as it raced past us. It was eerie – the trees and grasses, the beach formations so familiar and yet, without the markers of civilization – buildings, boats, cars, towns – so alien. I did not quite want to tell Ragnar why I had such a surprised look on my face, because it was – well, it was embarrassing. I wasn't raised to feel guilt or shame over my sexual encounters – and I didn't. But I also wasn't ever truly told about the emotional consequences of living in a place and time where some men felt no compunction about sleeping with you and never calling again. It had happened twice since I started at Grand Northeastern, and both times I told myself to chalk it up to inexperience, that it was just something that happened to a lot of young women. Both times I ignored my own sadness, and the poignant little deflation in my heart when the hoped-for text message asking to see me again never came. I felt ashamed, like a stronger person wouldn't have let it get to them. But I did feel it, and being with Ragnar was only underlining how sweet it was to be with someone who seemed just as interested in being with me, even if I did have my clothes on.

  "I don't know," I lied, pushing my uncomfortable thoughts away. "Maybe I'm just happy?"

  I was happy. So happy I felt guilty every time I thought of home, and of my family – which was often. What right did I have to be enjoying myself with Jarl Ragnar while the people who cared about me suffered? I'm trying to get back to them, I told myself. Paige will know what to do. She'll know how to get back to the tree.

  We sailed through the day and into the cold, clear night when the stars shone over our heads as bright and multitudinous as I'd ever seen them. The men took turns sailing the ship in groups of four and the rest of us, Jarl Ragnar and I included, huddled under furs on the open deck, trying to sleep. It wasn't even too cold, as long as you didn't roll away from your companions in your sleep, as a few of the men did, before waking to find the sea mist frozen white into their eyebrows and beards.

  Almost a full day after our leaving, after sailing with what Ragnar described as a 'godswind' at our backs, we arrived in a bay much like the one we'd left behind. On the beach, two guards dressed in the furs and leathers of the Vikings stood waiting for us. A shiver of hope ran through my belly – was this place Paige's home? Was I about to see my friend again?

  Our party brought casks of ale and slabs of cured pork as gifts, all of which took some time to unload. Halfway through the task, I looked up to the beach and saw a new man standing with his guards, waiting for us. I couldn't quite make out his face yet but he had to be Jarl Eirik. Imposingly built – like Ragnar – and dressed in finer clothing than the two young warriors, he made his way down to the water's edge to help carry the goods we had for him.

  I'd noticed that same instinct – the willingness to get involved in the day-to-day running of camp and the direct communication with those lower down on the ladder of the hierarchy – in Ragnar. You'd never catch a modern CEO having dinner with his security guards the way Ragnar ate with his men, but apart from a marked dislike for Inga in the cooking pits, he seemed entirely at ease with his people, regardless of their rank. Was it simply Viking custom that their leaders felt a duty to maintain a certain level of closeness to the lives and work of those below them? If it was, I admired it greatly.

  Jarl Ragnar's party – including myself – stood back a few feet when it came time for the Jarls to greet each other. They regarded each other with a kind of respectful solemnity for a few moments, and then they broke into smiles and hugged each other tightly.

  "Look at us," Jarl Eirik commented, "across the sea like our fathers, when it seems only yesterday we spent the days of our boyhood together, as green as saplings. I miss those days, old friend. I miss you."

  Ragnar hugged him again, and clapped him on the back. "Aye, Eirik. It turns out our mothers were right – the days pass as swift as arrows, and responsibilities crowd around us. I hear you have a son, now? I'll be glad to meet the boy, and tell him stories of who his father was before he was a great Jarl."

  "You honor me, friend. Yes, I have a son, and –"

  Eirik broke off at that point, because as he was speaking he'd been looking around at Ragnar's people – and his eyes had just alighted on me. Ragnar noticed it at once and turned to look at me, and then back at his friend.

  "Have you become traditional in your old age?" He asked, laughing. "Do you think it unseemly to bring a woman not my wife to meet another –"

  "No," Eirik shook his head, starting towards me across the sand with a look of great interest on his face. "No, it's not that. It's – Ragnar, who is this woman?"

  People were interested now, as they – and I – took note of Jarl Eirik's strange reaction to me. I felt the attention focusing on me as he approached, and I hoped I had not angered him in some way.

  "She is my companion, Eirik," Ragnar replied, pulling me to his side. There was a whiff of tension in the air then, one of two strong, young bucks meeting in a forest. At the moment all was curiosity, but everyone involved – including the bucks themselves – felt the possibility of a clash. Ragnar's body, presenting as at-ease, felt stiff next to me. He was ready to move, if necessary – ready to fight. "Is there something about h
er that offends you? She, too, seeks an old friend –"

  But Eirik wasn't listening, he was staring. Right at me.

  "Where are you from?" He asked, in a voice that did not sound hostile. "I'm sorry, girl, but you remind me very much of someone –"

  "Of your wife?" I asked, picking up on who it was Eirik was referring to and once again feeling a surging hope in my heart. If I reminded him of his wife, his wife was almost certainly Paige. No one else in this place, not even the highest ranking Vikings – had the blemish-free bodies or straight teeth of a modern person. No one except Paige Renner.

  "Yes," he replied, looking confused. "Yes, of my wife."

  He walked around me, examining me with his eyes but not touching me. "I ask again, girl, where are you –"

  "Southeast. Across the sea. Another land." Ragnar spoke. "She does not name the land, or the people, but anyone can see she speaks the truth."

  Eirik chuckled at that comment, diffusing what was left of the undercurrent of tension swirling around us. "Ah yes. These cagey foreign women – my wife too is inexplicably reluctant to speak in any precise way of her homeland. Paige is –"

  Jarl Eirik stopped short at that point because, upon hearing the name of my friend spoken aloud and receiving confirmation that she was in fact at that very camp, I promptly burst into tears. Both Jarls turned to me, their eyebrows raised in surprise, as I gulped and hand-waved and did everything I could to stop bawling.

  "What is it?" Ragnar asked, bending close so only I could hear his words. "What's wrong, Emma? What upsets you?"

  "Nothing!" I sniveled, laughing through my tears before getting them under control. "I'm not upset – I'm happy. Jarl Eirik, Paige is my friend. I have missed her very much, and I need to speak to her. Until this moment I didn't know for certain she was here."