Edin's embrace

by Nadine Crenshaw

  Whatever, at least he knew she was nearby. He could leave her alone for now. His plan would provide him the time he needed to overtake her. All the time in the world.

  ***

  Inga sat next to the eldest man on the fjord, Finnier Forkbeard, whose head was heavy with grizzled hair, and whose long, full whiskers formed two points. She took no notice of him, however; instead, she watched the spell that was overtaking Thoryn. He was alight with that extraordinary, unreasoning happiness that only one who had suffered similarly could recognize. Happiness like the flame of a lamp, which burns down even as it glows, which is at its brightest the instant before it gutters out.

  Inga was afraid. The thrall-woman was a demon, and what demons love they kill in the end. Her hand came up out of a fold of her gown, clenched, as if she meant to strike someone with her fist —or as if she held something, a dagger mayhap.

  ***

  Thoryn imagined the Saxon watching him all that day, and he took the possibility into account wherever he went and whatever he did. A feast like this was a high-point in the life along the fjord. In the crowded hall, the ale still flowed freely; love blossomed among the young; men reminisced — and sometimes came to blows; heroic stories and exploits were remembered and repeated. Thoryn however, found his mind hurrying on ahead to when it would be over, regarding it and the present moment as an obstruction. Finally the sun threw huge shadows across the valley. He hastened his exhausted guests on their way with host gifts, amulets in the form of Tiny Thor's hammers, which he'd kept Eric No-breeches busy making this past sennight.

  As he was seeing Hagna off, he got word that Hrut Beornwoldsson had taken it into his mind to challenge Jamsgar Copper-eye over the thrall, Juliana. The widow Gunnhild could not afford to lose her only son, but as Snorri told it, the lad would not back down. And everyone knew that Jamsgar loved a fight as much as he loved a woman and would not pass any opportunity to pierce one or the other.

  When Thoryn came upon the three of them, the girl was watching anxiously while the Viking circled around the boy, a gawky youth of fifteen winters. Thoryn said, "Put away your axe, Jamsgar; he's but an excited pup."

  Jamsgar's eyes never left Hrut as he retaliated in a low, savage tone, "The pup boasts like a man, and thinks to fondle my woman like a man, so let him hold an axe like a man. Come on, puppy, let's test your mettle!"

  "Put your axe down, Hrut."

  The boy was growing tall and just starting his first beard and no doubt feeling very dangerous. He bunched his tough body and delivered a rolling, blustering, intolerably bombastic speech: "I know how a Norseman should die, and I mean to go like my father, who was as great a Norseman as ever lived." He added, more boyishly, "Besides, she's not his woman. She's a thrall, anybody's woman."

  "She's my woman, my thrall and my mother's best loom-woman," Thoryn quietly reminded them both, and with those words he drew his own weapon. "Now put down your axes." The two suddenly seemed to regain their wits. Thoryn didn't relent an inch. "Either challenge me for her, Hrut, or go to where your good mother waits to take her leave."

  The boy naturally did the reasonable thing.

  Thoryn turned his head, impaling Juliana with his gaze. She had a new trinket, a slender bronze chain that banded her brow and head. "Thrall," he warned softly, "several things about you displease me, and we will talk of them in detail soon; but right now your presence is a gall to my eyes."

  She took a backward step, then turned and fled.

  Thoryn turned to Jamsgar, who had a look of amused chagrin. Thoryn said, "That girl is trouble."

  The man's copper eyes were alive with light. He pulled his helmet farther down over his nose, as if that could hide his grin. "Aye, but such pleasant trouble, Jarl."

  "I won't have you fighting over her. If you want her so badly, make me an offer for her."

  "What would I do with her if I owned her?"

  "The same thing you do with her now!"

  "Aye, you get my point exactly"

  Any other day Thoryn might have reacted differently, but his night with the Saxon had left him feeling magnanimous. All he could seem to manage in the way of discipline was an ominous voice. "If you're very lucky, Jamsgar Herjulsson, you'll be able to stay out of my sight the rest of this day."

  An hour later, Thoryn and his stallion came across Rolf rescuing a frantically bleating goat kid from a hollow of the stream that watered the valley. The place grew thick with rich grass, which had lured the kid, but also with birch and willows, which had caught its hair and kept it from following its dame >home for the night. The dusk was still; there was a sweet smell of fern, mud, and water reed here. The two men got the kid free, and Rolf tucked it under his arm and started back toward the longhouse on foot, traveling in the wheeltracks of the last carting of the harvest.

  Thoryn, on Dawnfire, started off in a different direction, with the intention of inspecting a field soon to be planted with late rye. His land was farmed with care and hard work. The valley yielded grain and fragrant grass; sheep grazed the fells. This year it had not been necessary to take them up to the saeter for the summer, to fatten there till autumn.

  At the thought of the unused saeter, Thoryn wheeled and cantored back. "Rolf," he said abruptly, "have you ever pleased a woman as well as you were pleased? What I mean is, well, had one, uh, erupt along with you?"

  Rolf seemed thoughtful. "Aye —not often —but now and again. Mostly women are cold as the far northern ice, but, aye, there has been one now and again."

  "So it has been with me." Thoryn's usual way with wenches was either a pretense of gallantry if she was Norse and freeborn, or a more honest disdain if she was not. Neither attitude seemed to make one female more pulsating than the other. Still, he'd considered himself pretty informed on the subject of beddings, but now he found his information inadequate. For the first time he considered that he might actually be ignorant. He said, "I wonder if a man can encourage such a thing. Coming home on Blood Wing, you said something about 'making a woman shudder . . .'?"

  Rolf grunted. "Some do shudder prettily, don't they? Especially when you have the time to dally with them. Still, a man rarely knows the daylight desires of a woman, let alone her night desires. It's enough for a man to give his strength to protect his females. They can't expect more."

  Thoryn felt his patience thinning. "Friend, you're ever-ready with advice when I'm not in need of it. Come, have you no thoughts at all on how a warrior can pleasure an untrained woman?"

  "You're speaking of the Saxon, of course."

  "Aye," he grated. "Whatever I do, I feel like an ogre. Though half my size, she struggles to be let go all the while I'm holding her. Or if she doesn't struggle, and only lies there and whimpers, I feel like an idiot. I know she thinks me a huge, tangle-haired savage, wild and rough and positively bloodthirsty— "

  "It seems she knows you well enough then," Rolf put in, tilting his head teasingly to one side. "Why do you want to give her a false opinion?"

  Thoryn's frustration reached an apex. "Odin, God of War! God of Guile in Action! I should have known better than come to you!"

  Rolf chuckled. "I wish you luck, oath-brother, but I fear some things can't be captured: rainbows . . . reflections in water . . . women's pleasures. I doubt how much a man's will can accomplish along those lines."

  Thoryn was sorry now that he'd ever brought the subject up. Yet he said grimly, "It remains to be seen what my will can accomplish, friend."

  ***

  The fjord lay smooth and undisturbed, the steep fells were silent. Long, boney fingers of mist reached across the star-silvered sky. In the longhouse, the Viking gathered Edin into his arms. She trembled with sick anticipation. But he didn't take her. He pulled her onto her side facing him, so that her head was pillowed on his great shoulder and her palms lay open against his matted chest. His hands idled up and down her back. He seemed encompassed in the landscape of his own thoughts, hardly aware of her, until he said, "In the morning we're going away."r />
  Her heart pounded. Into her head sprang the thought of a slave market. She'd never seen one, yet she could imagine it only too well. "Where?" she asked.

  "My saeter. It's a hut on the upland plateau where we sometimes pasture sheep in the summer. Sometimes, when I was very young, my mother and father and I packed food and went up there for a few days. It made a break in the routine. Up there, in the Kolen, it's quiet and peaceful. I feel a need of quiet and peace just now. And there is something I want you to give me," he added cryptically, "a thing which needs all my attention, and yours, for a time."

  "We're going alone?"

  "Aye, but you will not complain of my company, I think." As he said this, his finger followed the rippling path of her spine down from her neck, making goosebumps rise. At the bottom his callused hand opened and stroked, idly again, with no particular purpose.

  What could he want that needed so much solitude and attention? She had nothing more to give him than what he now took at his will. He'd made her an object, a thing for his use, not a person to be respected. She said, without much hope, "What about my work here?"

  His answer was sharp. "It was never my intention in carrying you away from your precious England to set you to baking wheat cakes and to milking goats. The arrangements are already made. We leave before the first meal tomorrow, before anyone is up to see us off."

  Which made Edin wonder if Inga knew of his plans.

  "You'll ride Rushing One. She's the color of dandelions." His voice became drowsy; he spoke more casually than she'd ever heard him before. "The skald told me today of a king to the east who shods his horse with gold and trims the hooves with gold filigree"

  Edin spoke unguardedly, as well, as she would have spoken to anyone in the old days when she'd been free to be herself: "That undoubtedly makes a fine impression, but it can't be very practical, since gold is not a strong metal."

  "Aye," he answered, tightening his hold on her fractionally, "iron is oft'times the better choice where strength is needed."

  It seemed the middle of the night when next she heard his voice. "It's time, Shieldmaiden." She sighed in her sleep, but couldn't hold on to it, not with him patting her cheek so insistently. "We must be off." Not until he had her completely awake did he swing his long legs out of bed.

  They were dressed and outside long before dawn. A thick, swirling mist covered the valley floor, as fresh as frost. Edin shivered in her purple shawl as the Viking himself quietly saddled their horses. Laag's head appeared briefly in the square opening of the loft above the stables. He was rubbing his eyes and yawning. "Is that you, Master?"

  "Aye, go back to your sheepskin —but don't forget to give my mother my message as I told you."

  "Aye, Master, at first meal. Good trip to you."

  The Viking attached bundles of extra clothing and food to the horses' saddles. He helped Edin mount the smaller yellow horse, Rushing One. As he put his own foot in Dawnfire's intricately carved and inlaid stirrup, she arranged her blue skirts to cover her exposed legs.

  He was dressed in full battle gear — metal war shirt and hammer-crested helmet, his sword in his scabbard and a knife in his belt. His shield hung from his saddle —a new one, emblazoned with a dragonship, since Sweyn had shattered his old one that night in Fair Hope's manorhouse.

  They left the valley and the chilly arms of the summer mist by way of a damp path by the stream's side. The horses' hooves clopped softly along in the mud. It was so quiet Edin thought she could almost hear the worms wriggling their way through the liquified soil. Rushing One was clearly named for what she was not. She was a "fjording," docile, fat, and slow. The Viking claimed she could understand any language provided it was friendly.

  The trail left the stream after a while and began to snake uphill. But then it came back to the water and disappeared beneath a falls. The Viking didn't pause, didn't even seem to give the action of heading his horse right under a waterfall a thought; he and Dawnfire slipped beneath as if this were an everyday occurrence.

  Edin, however, hesitated, and in so doing, her little horse grew tense. The falling water seemed much more forceful than the gentle stream that irrigated the valley. It roared down and splashed and churned among rocks fifty feet below. The space behind it seemed misty and mysterious. Edin tried to look around the smoking fall, but somber evergreens spired and cut off her view of what lay beyond. The Viking was nowhere to be seen. The whole remote and lovely place was wrapped in the noise of the dashing water. Edin sat there trying to control her mount in that colorless, soulless, gloomy hour before the dawn.

  At last the Viking reappeared afoot. Without speaking, he took hold of Rushing One's bridle and led the horse into the misty gap behind the water.

  For a moment Edin was in a place of wonder. The sound of the racing falls echoed on the solid rock above her head and to her right, while to her left was a wall of unsolid silver, a sheet of moving glimmer. She came out on the other side, smiling with the marvel of it. "How beautiful!" she said, shouting a little over the noise of the water. "I was afraid —but really, it's beautiful, isn't it?"

  The Viking looked up at her. His gaze was divided and made fierce-looking by the nosepiece of his helmet. His hand remained on Rushing One's bridle. "Aye," he said, as if he'd never voiced the thought before, "it is a pretty thing."

  He remounted, and their journey continued. The trail wound ever upward. At one place it overlooked the fjord, and the Viking stopped to look down at the Blood Wing anchored in deep water.

  Edin looked down as well. The fog had all but lifted, and in that silvering hour the valley was such a sight that she was moved to words again. "How green and deep the meadows look! And the water —it seems to glow!"

  "Like a fire opal," the Viking murmured, a little reserved, as if trying out a thought to see how it sounded when given voice.

  "Are there really jewels that glow like that?"

  "There are."

  "Fire opals," she murmured.

  They didn't pause for long. Edin was glad he'd given her a pony with good legs and a stout heart, for up and up they went, following his own fast-stepping stallion. Sometimes they were surrounded by evergreen beauty. Sometimes Edin almost gasped with sheer amazement at the open views. The size and beauty of this great land! She'd never seen anything to compare with it. Once, from far below, a child's cries spiraled up, as featherlight as wood smoke. Could it be Arneld? She saw so little of him now. He'd learned to look out for himself here. Unlike her.

  The dense forest thinned out and more and more gave place to bald rock and grassy slopes. When they rode above the timberline altogether, the path led them across an open sloping meadow. They stopped beside a stream for a drink of cold water, then went on.

  At last, toward mid-morning, they climbed onto an undulating high plateau rich with heather, with wild flowers like glints of gold, and grass. Edin sat up in her saddle. The prevailing westerly wind stirred tendrils of her hair around her face as she gazed at peak upon peak disappearing into the distance.

  "This plateau is called a vidda, and those mountains are the Kolen," said the Viking from his Dawnfire. "Kolen means 'keel.' The mountains range like a strong spine down the middle of the land, like the keel of an overturned ship."

  Some of the peaks were snow-topped, but even where there was no snow, the highland was remarkably barren. It was a fierce yet exhilarating landscape. Great bare humps, polished and scored by glaciers, extended as far as Edin's eyes could see.

  Closer to hand was a small, dream-lake ringed by reflections of those far-off mountains. The grass smelled sweet; the sun, golden now, invited them to sit in its warmth. Edin found the pack with their food and took out cheese, bread, sausage, smoked cod and herring, and a skin of buttermilk. She found a robe to spread and placed the meal for the Viking.

  He stood a moment longer looking at the landscape, and she was impressed more than she could have anticipated by the majestic figure he struck, posed elegantly there against those distant
, slatey-blue mountains.

  At last he removed his sword, flung off his helmet and sat down. Edin pretended to be interested in the sights, being used to waiting for whatever was left after the men had eaten their fill in the longhouse. But then she heard "Come." She turned to see his hand held out to her. She drew near, took it, and let herself be drawn down onto the robe beside him.

  She could tell he was in a generous mood; yet she was always nervous in his presence, and the nearer he was the more nervous she felt. He was very near now, and naturally she had little appetite.

  "Here," he said, offering her a slice of sausage from the blade of his belt knife, "make some use of your teeth."

  She tried, but it was hard with him watching her.

  "You must be homesick for your Saxon broths of horse hooves."

  "We don't eat horse's hooves!"

  There was a little quirk at one corner of his mouth. Was he teasing her again? She gestured to his sharp knife. "Does that have a name?"

  "Evil-doer" The quirk spread to the other corner of his mouth.

  "Appropriate, no doubt," she muttered. She looked away, much as she wanted to see his smile. She was more than a little fascinated by the relaxed, teasing side of him, which she was beginning to glimpse now and again. It made her feel odd. She was glad her hair concealed her face. She plucked a tiny alpine flower growing near her hand and brought it close as if to study it.

  "That's called Mountain Queen." His voice was close to her ear. She turned to find him leaning on his arm, his face bent to hers. He was going to kiss her, as she had known for some time.

  He took her mouth gently, very gently. She didn't try to evade him, having learned there was no use in that, and she found herself lulled by that tantalizing gentleness. But as she'd known he meant to kiss her, she knew that now he meant to go on.

  Chapter Sixteen

  The Viking opened Edin's dress and stripped the garment off her. She briefly saw herself naked, except for her laced footwear, in the full light of day; she saw her womanhood with its chevelure of delicate curls, her white breasts and thighs shining in the sunlight. His metal war shin scraped her skin as he laid her back on the robe. He began to caress her, taking his time, taking care.