Edin's embrace

by Nadine Crenshaw

  Sparks rained from the length of their longswords. Thoryn pressed to the reaches of the Dane's strength and skill—-but did not press beyond. Far sustained a cut to his neck —but did not lose his head. He snarled a curse and tried to surge forward, hammering for Thoryn's skull. Thoryn was defter, however; his longsword leaped, caught Far's blow, and turned it.

  It was a thing that went against the grain to hold back, yet hold back he did. The Dane hacked at him from the left and then the right. Thoryn took each blow with Raunija; sparks spat over his forearms. And then came a moment that seemed right. He let his longsword be caught. Raunija held the light; she glowed evilly as Far's blade struck more fire off her. Then Thoryn let his heel step back off the spread cloak.

  There was an unbelieving silence among the men. Without speaking, without giving any hint of how much this forfeit cost him, Thoryn swung onto his horse and rode for town.

  By nightfall, word of the event was sown all through Olaf's house. Olaf himself was in a fury when he came to Thoryn's chamber. "Far Reginn has asked for Hanne."

  Thoryn knew what was not being said. His uncle wanted a landed jarl for a son-in-law, but there was a matter of honor involved now, Thoryn's and Far's —and Hanne's as well, since her visit to Thoryn's bed, however unwilling, was whispered about everywhere. Thoryn's open admission of that placed Olaf in a cleft stick. And Olaf was not a man who liked cleft sticks. Just now he was radiating a barely tethered, ruthless power. There was something primary and dangerous about him, a hint of what he must have been in his youth.

  "Thoryn, by Odin, they say that raw boy belted you! What is the truth?"

  Thoryn had to unclench his jaw to speak. He forced the words out against vast aversion: "Far struck, and I stepped off the cloak."

  Olaf raged silently. "I don't believe it! There's more to this than meets the eye and ear. But if I don't give her to one of you now, there will be thunder."

  "Aye." Thoryn felt his pride stinging. "Well, the oath I made was that if Far won the challenge I would sail home alone."

  Olaf's rage went cold. "I could demand that you wed her —you told one and all that you took her to your bed."

  "It was the impulse of the moment, Uncle. You have my word that as far as I know the girl is still a maiden. The Dane believes that or he wouldn't have asked for her."

  "Aye. But I swear I would not give her to him if ... I can't believe he bested you, Thoryn! Is this the man they say makes the earth shake, the one they call the Hammer of Dainjerfjord? The Dane is a fine swordsman, mayhap my best, but he doesn't have your lack of mercy."

  ***

  Thoryn avoided seeing anyone else until the Blood Wing was ready to sail. Then, as he was packing the last of his belongings into his sea chest, a knock came at his door. It was Hanne. When he said nothing, she came in and shut the door behind her.

  "This is not wise," he said shortly.

  "I know. But I had to tell you —thank you, Thoryn Kirkynsson."

  She was fairer than ever he'd seen her. She was radiant. He squinted down at her a moment and couldn't help giving her a faint smile.

  Her responding smile was brilliant. Suddenly she went up on her tiptoes and pecked his lips with her own. "Cousin, you must find someone to love you."

  He backed away to look at her down his bearded cheeks.

  She hesitated, then said all in a rush, "You should, Thoryn! But first you must learn to be less fierce! If I weren't half-frightened of you most of the time, I would have liked to speak with you. I've oft thought I would like to be your friend."

  He said nothing. He saw her eyes searching his, as if for some sign.

  ***

  It was a day of swift clouds when Inga drove her horse-drawn cart along the cunning zigzag of indented sheep paths to Soren Gudbrodsson's hut. Soren had once sailed with Kirkyn on his raiding expeditions, until the old man received an injury to his head. That was long ago. Now he lived alone. He often sat for hours beside the fjord, stroking his old dented helmet with his gnarled hands. Thoryn let him stay on a corner of the steading, knowing he had nowhere else to go.

  When Inga knocked on the door of his one-room hut, he opened it with a really dreadful expression on his face. For an instant she was alarmed, but then said, "It is Inga Thorsdaughter, Kirkyn's wife."

  "Kirkyn's . . . ? Inga! Come in, come in!" He bowed as low as his stiff old frame would allow as he backed into the hut. He was of large build, even in his old age, and still strong and muscular; but he seemed more befuddled than Inga had expected. His voice was gruff, and his beard was threaded with grey and in need of care. His eyes were as colorless as a blindman's. But really, none of that mattered; indeed, it all served Inga's purpose well.

  "I am honored" he was muttering, "honored."

  He offered her a stool near the little fire. From there she took in the dark room. It smelled of dung, for a cow lowed at the back end. The hut had been built with his own hands, out of rocks and turf and driftwood. Brown swamp reeds made the thatch for the roof. It was a rough home, with drafts coming up beneath the door. A weak fire burned in the stone-lined pit, and a thin broth bubbled beneath the lid of an iron pot. She saw he'd been greasing a pair of ancient leather leggings by the hearth.

  "How do you fare, Soren?" She was aware of a little pulse in her cheek, ticking.

  He smiled doggishly and shrugged. "I have no longship, no crewmates — but I have a home and a fire and food. I do well enough."

  "Well enough to refuse to embark on one last adventure for your jarl? I grasp your sadness and your burden, Soren. Your talents have not given you the patience or the experience for niggling country life. You must die a hero or else die unsung."

  He straightened his old back as if to say, I may be a feeble-minded old man, ignored by my kin, scolded by cooks and thrall-girls, but Norse fires still burn in Soren Gudbrodsson!

  "Here is the thing, then," Inga said. "The jarl has a cold foreign witch working spells beneath his roof . . "

  He listened attentively, his eyes unmoving. When she was done, he was silent for a moment. The fire made soft, taffetalike sounds; the broth bubbled. He said, "And this is what the jarl wants done?"

  "He sent me to ask it of you. The ties of kinship impose fearful demands, even on a woman."

  "Aye. Well then, what else can I do? If I have to kill, I will kill, and if I have to die, I will die well, laughing at death. After all, I owe the jarl. He's a good man. Once we swept through a place, there was little left, not enough for a mouse to eat. It was he himself who carried me out of that burning Christ-church in the Orkney's when I got that head wound. You should have seen the stains on his arms that day, as if he'd been picking blackberries!"

  "That was Kirkyn," Inga said. A draft seemed to creep under the door and chill her back. "Kirkyn is dead. I am a widow woman and my son Thoryn is jarl now."

  "Thoryn? Oh, aye, young Thoryn!"

  "Are you sure you understand what is to be done?"

  "Aye." Clasping his big hands together and resting his elbows on his knees, he repeated it back to her.

  "You feel you're strong enough?" she asked.

  He seemed to look at his hands. "I used to be the best wild-horse trainer on the fjord. And quick as a cat with a broad-axe." His eyes opened, bright with incipient tears. His poor mouth quivered.

  "I remember," she said.

  "Then you know what this means to me. One last deed." He suddenly threw back his rough head and guffawed. "Ha! An adventure!" His bravado vanished under her stare and stony silence, and he finished more soberly, "I will do as the jarl says, Inga Thorsdaughter."

  That burst of laughter more than anything else satisfied her that she'd chosen well. Dazed and grey as this main had become, there was still enough iron in him for her purposes. She left him some cheeses and cold smoked trout to build up his strength a little, then went out into the grey, dry afternoon. The fjord was as slate as the clouds. Lightning flickered low on the horizon, as though armies were locked in battle far
to the east. She would have to hurry her cart horse if she wanted to get back to the longhouse before nightfall.

  ***

  Standing at the single, huge rudder-oar to the right of the Blood Wings raised stern lypting, Thoryn wore a thick frieze cloak and a catskin cap. His dandy clothes were put away in his sea chest. If it hadn't been for his sword's golden handle, no one could have told he was a sea lord.

  He looked at the water, which rippled like the back of a dusky, slowly swimming serpent, but his mind saw something else entirely: hair like a sheaf of amber wheat stirred by the wind. He felt a yearning to caress that wheaten spill. . . .

  He shook himself and came awake to the sea again. The dream was sweet, but he had to mind his steering. They were sailing along a serrated stretch of coastline where there were known to be nests of marauders. Every fjord was the private principality of some self-styled sea king, living well by preying on the lucrative trade that tried to sail past his lair.

  Nonetheless, only a moment later his mind was off dreaming again: When she saw him coming home, would she pick up her skirts and rush down the sea path to meet him? No. And that was all right. Much of her charm was her reserve, because it challenged him to break it down. He had in his chest the promised bronze mirror, and also a new pouch filled with large beads of amber, which he planned to use to weaken that reserve of hers, granting her no mercy or quarter, as soon as he had her alone. The thought made the blood sparkle in his veins.

  A drifting gull screamed. The Blood Wing loped along through the inner leads between the shielding skjaegard and the coast, her prow-head snarling as always on her carved hull. Rolf came to sit on the lypting near Thoryn's feet. His rusty beard swayed as the sea breeze toyed with it. At length he said, "We've had an uncommonly good run so far."

  "The winds have been good, right out of the wide mouth of Freya, praise her."

  Rolf inhaled deeply. "A true Norseman can live a week on one breath of salt air."

  Hauk Haakonsson called from his sea chest, "Then a true Norseman is a fool, for there is nothing so desirable as a good pork stew, and barley bread spread with butter, and a flagon of well-brewed beer to wash it down. By the gods, this dried fish tastes like gritty driftwood." They had as a matter of course eaten their fill of their fresh supplies as soon as they'd left Kaupang, and were now down to their preserved rations.

  Across from Hauk, Jamsgar Copper-eye lolled on his sea chest and pretended to polish his gold arm ring as he said, "You're both as simple as Lapplanders. A real Norseman knows the most desirable thing on earth is a warm woman undressing in haste. Did I tell you about the one who invited me into her chamber in Kaupang? Swanhilde was her name. She lived in Coopersgate, the street of the woodworkers, where her husband had a little business. She had enormous pale eyes and a forlorn smile. Aye, now there was one who undressed in haste, brothers, and no sooner had she done so than I seized her and tossed her onto her bed."

  He looked around him, eyes agleam, to see if he'd captured everyone's attention yet. He had, and so went on. "Aye, she lay there, not daring to look me in the face, but watching my hands undoing my belt."

  The massy necklace that Hauk was wearing glimmered as he stirred restlessly. "And then?"

  "And then I got over her and rubbed my naked chest on her splendid breasts."

  "And then — ?" Hauk half-moaned, half-laughed, wrinkling the bridge of his high, hooked nose. They had all been aboard ship, without women, for well over a sennight.

  "Her face turned up to mine, I lowered my lips to hers."

  More moans and laughter, from others besides Hauk now. Lief the Tremendous shouted from the other end of the ship, "You're a bawdy devil, Copper-eye! Get to it and tell us the good parts!"

  "The good parts, hmm, let me see —this was no smash-and-grab assault, you know." He frowned like a man trying to seize the tail of a memory to drag it into the open. "Well, eventually she did dare to take a cautious hold of Victory Giver."

  "Victory Giver! What's that?"

  "My stiff-stander, of course."

  A shout of laughter. "You can't name that!"

  "Brothers, do you want to hear the story or not?"

  "Tell the story," Leif grumbled, impatiently waving the others to silence. "'She took hold of Victory Giver. .'"

  "Aye, she did, and gave a strange half-cry, a sort of overwrought laugh, you know, naturally fearing its great size. Don't laugh, brothers, I actually felt the fear flash through her; I felt it make her weak. It terrified her into silence. And not being one to waste my chances, I rapidly spread her knees, opening the road to the earthly paradise of men.

  "She knew this was not a Norseman to refuse or argue with. She was utterly silent as my fingers opened the way for my entry. Friends — " he paused— "she was ready, luscious, oozing the soft moisture of a woman with voluptuous wants and urgings. A glow of excitement was in her face. I was now pushing forward, touching the entrance to her. At that first contact, she quivered with fear even as she campaigned to relax her body for me.

  "Then suddenly she flinched away. If I were a smaller man, and if my fierce desires hadn't been so fiercely goaded, she may well have flung me off.

  Startled, I looked up to see her husband. He gave out a yell from the doorway that would shrink a cedar pole to the length of a rye sprout!"

  The groans were painful to hear. Even Thoryn smiled, though he kept his eyes fixed on the distant horizon.

  "Brothers, he had a massive form —a Norway elk wouldn't go up against a man that size! Being a cooper, he was all covered with wood shavings and chips, and he had a lathe-turned bowl in one hand and the spoon-gouge he'd been using to make it in his other hand —a nasty-looking tool that"

  Asmund Wartooth hooted, "What did you do, Copper-eye, roll onto your back and bare your breast to the stroke of Chance?"

  Harold Rignivaler cried, "I know! You told him you were her long-lost brother just escaped from captivity by the Christians."

  "I considered that, Harold, but didn't think he would believe it, not with her full sex gaping, with its rosy folds throbbing and clasping, and my organ erect, its tip already glossy with her moisture. So, thinking fast, I asked him if I might buy that pretty little bowl. For a moment, his face remained colored with rage, but then —you know how these town-bred Norse are —the man asked me how much I was thinking of offering. Let me tell you I bargained brilliantly; silver-tongued Loki could do no more than I did."

  Hauk moaned painfully. When the hoots of disappointment died down, Kol Thurik shook his long head so that his grey plaits moved on his chest. He said, "All you young beards can think about is women, and when you win one, you burst with pride, like a cock on a dung heap. But women are dangerous. Their hearts are tailored on a turning wheel. They can melt a tough Norseman's spirit, make him into a charcoal chewer, a half-man who stays at home like a good little boy. And that is not the way to get to Asgard."

  Thoryn felt pricklings across his neck.

  Kol waved his hand at Jamsgar. "Don't waste our time with any more of that babble."

  "Babble? You make light of a solemn matter, Kol Thurik. Personally, I have a prejudice against being caught with my trousers down by a man with a spoon-gouge in his hand. It was not a moment to wave aside lightly. When I have an hour to spare, I think I'll challenge you for that insult."

  From above them, still keeping watch on the surrounding sea, Thoryn said, "If you featherheads start anything now, I'll toss you both overboard and let you swim home."

  Jamsgar replied flippantly, "Didn't you hear? I can walk and breathe under water. As can Starkad. Both of us visited a school in Kaupang run by-a Finland witch fresh out of her cave. We paid good silver to learn the trick."

  Was Thoryn only imagining it, or was the Copper-eye showing disrespect? Thoryn couldn't tell anymore. His "defeat" by the Black Dane had left him with a mantle of gall so weighty that he was having trouble gauging others' reactions to the thing.

  Jamsgar turned back to Kol. "I'm not a f
ool you know."

  "You should be more cautious."

  "But not overly cautious."

  "But above all cautious with another man's wife."

  Hauk put in, "Don't argue with a fool, Kol."

  "Are you calling me a fool, Hauk Haakonsson?" Jamsgar asked.

  Norsemen could keep this sort of exchange going for hours at a stretch. They could get drunk on words —or burst into anger at any moment. It all depended upon their mood.

  But what was their mood? For once Thoryn couldn't tell. The trip had been successful, but their jarl had been bested by a man many of them felt they might have shortened by a head's height themselves.

  Thoryn did upon occasion lose a game or contest, of course. But never before had he let an opponent triumph over him. He felt their rankling, unspoken questions: Did he step off the cloak —or was he forced off it? Is he losing his might? Is he still the best man to lead us?

  While his mind was thus occupied, he saw, without first comprehending, the enemy. A pirate ship came rowing forth from where it had been lying in wait behind an island. It swooped out of the sea haze now, full of marauders.

  "Ship ahead!"

  The Blood Wing came instantly alive.

  The pirate ship was already dropping sail to row into battle. Thoryn hastily maneuvered the Blood Wing fighting against the powerful currents of the inner leads. While Ottar Magnusson and Rolf made to unstep the mast and clear the deck for action, Lief the Tremendous yelled in great alarm, "No, Thoryn, turn us about! We can outrun them!"

  "Strike that sail!" Thoryn's voice sliced out. "Never shall men traveling with me think of flight."

  "Do you realize how much silver I have? We all have profits. We can't risk a brush with so great a ship!"

  Those words had the impact of another public defeat on Thoryn. The pirate vessel was indeed larger, but the Blood Wing was a thoroughbred warship, a ship for heroes, for warriors, not cowards. He said, "My father never fled from a battle, and until the gods dispose of my life, I shall never flee from one either! Rolf!" he snapped out, "if Leif opens his mouth once more, stick a blade through his teeth."