The Viking's Captive

by Ingrid Hahn

  “We’ll all die.” The panic ringing in her words shot pain to the center of his chest. What she said was true.

  As he stared into her eyes, a sort of peace cooled his agitation. If this was the last time he’d see her, he’d go to his death remembering how it felt to see in her face that she cared for him. He covered her hand with his and gently pulled away. “You can’t ask me to walk away from this.”

  “I can. And I do.”

  But he kept walking. He’d have to trust she’d be safe with her people. Safe enough for now, at any rate. Storming back to the beach, Thorvald found Ozrik. “Seems we’re to fight again.”

  “Let them come.” Ozrik sneered, his gaze never leaving the warriors jumping out of their ships and walking through the white-capped waves. “I’m ready.”

  Thorvald scanned the men. There was no time to prepare. No time to paint their faces or work themselves into a frenzy.

  Like Ozrik, they were ready. Days of sailing had left them ragged, but fire burned behind their eyes. Their weapons were raised, their shields were up. As the jarl’s hired men stalked closer, they began to shout. The sound resonated through the land—seemed to call down the gods from farthest reaches of earth and sky.

  “If they’re half so eager for this fight as I am…” Thorvald gripped the handle of his sword and drew the blade out slowly, his body’s awareness of the sharp metal blade increasing with every breath he took. “We’ll give them a good fight.”

  His companion nodded. “And earn our places in Valhalla.”

  Thorvald chanced a glance backward. She was already gone, the vulnerable members of her people having vanished behind the wall of bare trunks.

  His stomach was hollow. What she said was true. If he and his men died, it was only a matter of time before the jarl and his hired warriors…

  A thick lump formed in Thorvald’s throat. They might all be dead before the sun set. The victor would leave no enemy alive, and right now, the numbers were not in their favor. Even with the local men, there weren’t enough of them.

  He fought the images away and remembered the look on her face. Thorvald raised his sword and shouted. “We’ll paint the shore red with their blood.”

  Chapter Fifty-Three

  Trapped

  She might have stood upon the land of her birth, but home had ceased to be a place. Home could only be where Thorvald was.

  The morning the boats had arrived, when she’d dropped the eggs and ran to the princess, she’d scoffed at the idea of the hand of God working in the world. She’d wished for weapons and strong men to use them.

  Perversely, she had her wish, and still felt helpless enough to pray for a miracle.

  Everyone who could possibly squeeze inside the chapel did so. It wasn’t meant to hold all of them—the church was in the village, but that was too far away. People spilled outside. They stood packed shoulder to shoulder. There were too many to kneel properly. Some bowed their heads while others raised their faces to heaven. The din of the room was like the drone of an insect swarm. People prayed, whispering and chanting, their lips moving, their eyes half closed. Soft light slanted in from the windows, the furthest thing possible from the horrors that were playing out this very moment on the beach beyond.

  The smell of the room was an assault on Alodie’s senses. Like most everything else on this strange morning of her return, it was familiar and foreign in equal measure. It was one more jarring reminder of how far she was from him.

  From somewhere beyond came the sound of battle.

  How many ditches would be dug before the sun set? How many bodies would be flung into them?

  Alodie tried to press the morose thoughts away, but images of fresh pits wouldn’t relent. And bodies. So many bodies, limbs drooping and slack as they were tossed into the earth, all faceless and nameless…except for one.

  She gasped for air.

  The priests were pushing through the people, hearing confessions and offering absolution. When it came to her turn, her tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth. The number of sins weighting her soul stood like a leaning tower about to tumble in a breath of wind.

  She stared into the priest’s face. Heavy jowls hung from the sides of his face and a sheen of perspiration gave his pale skin a sickly impression.

  But was she sorry? She’d wanted Thorvald’s hands upon her. She’d wanted to touch him intimately. She’d wanted his mouth upon her and his cock inside of her. How could she feign being sorry? The man before her might offer her absolution, but would it be a farce? God knew all.

  The priest gave her a kindly nod. “What is it, my child?”

  The stout wife of one of the men who tended the king’s stables standing nearby jostled Alodie. “Speak up or forfeit your turn. There are others here who want to meet God when the Norsemen come to slit our throats.”

  With a flash from the imagery inspired by the other woman’s gruff statement, Alodie dredged up the first thing that wasn’t her decision to lie with Thorvald. “I cut a man with a knife.”

  The priest’s eyes widened. He leaned ever so slightly forward. “Whatever for?”

  “So he wouldn’t…” She couldn’t bring herself to state the reason, mouth opening to speak, but closing again. It was too much. The forced marriage. The revelation that the jarl might have played any part in bringing her soul into the world. The pain he’d inflicted on her mother and the suffering she’d endured as a result for the short remainder of her life.

  He seemed to understand. “I hardly think the stain will be upon your soul if you were acting to preserve your maidenly grace, my child.”

  Alodie’s gaze fell and heat flooded her cheeks. Why did she have to be the way she was? Why did she have to want what she shouldn’t? Why did it have to be Thorvald for whom she felt such things?

  And why hadn’t she agreed to stay with him? If they had never set sail, he wouldn’t be in danger now.

  Then again, the mere fact that he and his men were here gave the people who lived here their one and only hope. The jarl would have come regardless. Without Thorvald, the fight would have been shorter. Death would have come sooner. This way, with time to be absolved of their sins, their souls would be saved.

  Was hers too far gone? She gave the priest one last desperate look, baring herself as far as she dared. Wading into the waters of whether or not she was truly sorry for her transgressions was murky enough, but she needed to unburden some of what she bore. “I am guilty of lies, envy, bad temper, insults, arrogance, and…impurities. Pray forgive me, Father.”

  He said his words and moved on to the next person.

  Alodie let herself be swallowed into the crush, waiting. It was only a matter of time.

  And she would never see him again.

  Her lungs started aching. Breath wouldn’t draw into her lungs. She pulled at the air and pulled again, but it was like a cinch had wound its way around her rib cage. Desperation ran icy talons over her spine.

  Air. She needed air. Oh, God. Air.

  Skin prickling, lips going bizarrely cold, Alodie began to push and shove her way out of the stinking mass of bodies around her. The world began to blur. Somewhere in the distant recesses, she recognized her mother tongue, but the sounds were no more than that—sounds. Unintelligible and meaningless.

  She pushed and jostled, sometimes managing to move forward only to be shoved back again.

  The door remained as far away as ever. Somewhere out there was Thorvald. She had to see him one last time. But no matter how she struggled, the bodies were packed too tightly to maneuver. People moved only for the priests to make their way through, hearing confessions and offering prayers.

  A watery shimmer washed over her vision and something spilled a hot trail down her cheek. Her throat closed. She wasn’t going to make it. The more she pushed, the tighter the wall of people seemed to become. Her pulse began to
pound in her ears.

  Without warning, a hand reached out and yanked her through. She stumbled along, mute.

  Outside, she blinked, clearing her vision. The figure who’d dragged her out came into focus. It was an older woman—the mother of the blacksmith’s wife. Her face was shaped differently than her daughter’s, and of course she wore the years upon her face, but she and Oslafa had nearly identical hazel eyes. “Are you well?”

  “I’m— I don’t know.” Finally able to breathe again, Alodie gulped in great, greedy lungfuls of air. The pounding in her head began to fade. “Why aren’t you with your family?”

  The older woman softened. “What you did for them the last time, getting them to safety…I prayed for you every day since you left. You sacrificed yourself for us, didn’t you?”

  In truth, no. She’d thought about it, but hadn’t been given the chance. “Forgive me, I can’t…I must go.”

  A puzzled expression flitted over the other woman’s face, but Alodie didn’t have time to share the details. She turned to leave, only to be pulled back again.

  “You don’t mean to go there, do you?”

  “I must.” Alodie tried to tug away. “Please, you don’t understand.”

  “You’ll die. They’ll kill you as soon as look you.”

  To think Alodie had once shared the woman’s terror. Now the only thing that struck fear in her heart was the thought of not seeing Thorvald one last time.

  She broke free and ran toward the beach where not very long ago she’d fled when they’d first appeared on the shore, Thorvald himself at the prow of one of the ships.

  The only question was, would she get there in time to tell him she loved him?

  The sight on the beach was the thing of nightmares.

  Except for one thing. Thorvald still stood. He loomed over the jarl himself. She struggled to make sense of what she was seeing. He raised his axe. Instinctively, she shrank into herself.

  Their eyes met. The world hung on that moment as if it might never move again. The wind picked up and played with the loose ends of her hair.

  Then Thorvald lowered his arm—gently, without swinging, without striking. Maybe she screamed. She didn’t know. There was so much noise. Clatter. Grunts. The ocean continuing to turn, despite what played out here. Shrieks of agony as men died. If she’d let out a cry, the clamor swallowed it.

  The important thing was, he did not make the kill.

  That’s when she knew she didn’t need to tell him. He already knew.

  And he loved her, too.

  Chapter Fifty-Four

  One Last Time

  Catching Alodie’s stare, the trance-like state that allowed Thorvald to do battle shattered. The weapon that moments ago had been an extension of his arm now hung by his side, nothing more than the cold, earthly element from which it’d been fashioned.

  The jarl was on his knees before him, doubled over with the effort of coughing and sputtering. His hair hung limp in greasy strands and his front teeth had been knocked from his mouth. Blood so dark it was nearly black masked his face, like the true measure of the man was finally being revealed.

  And Thorvald hadn’t killed him. He could have. But he didn’t. And wouldn’t.

  All those winters imagining a moment like this one, he’d thought nothing would feel as satisfying as the jarl’s death. He’d imagined standing by his cousin as Sigurd delivered the final blow that would rid Thorvald of his bindings forever, his whole being echoing with freedom at last.

  Leaving him alive to die disgraced and alone should have been far sweeter.

  Somehow, it wasn’t. Because this wasn’t what he wanted. Only Alodie. Peace. Quiet. A warm fire, a full belly, ornery goats, and happy, mischievous children with rosy cheeks and their mother’s eyes.

  It all seemed far away.

  Hopeless, really.

  He tried to inhale, but the air seemed thin and…odd. It was difficult to get enough of it.

  Words came sifting back into Thorvald’s head, like grains of sand falling through the cracks of fingers, telling him who he was, what he wanted, and what he was fighting for. The information crept in the way mist curled over an open field and a hush fell like a woolen blanket over the world.

  He combed his gaze over the battlefield. Bodies lay strewn about at various angles, bloodied and brutalized, eyes staring vacantly ahead toward nothing, in whatever direction they’d fallen. The sight soured his stomach.

  In the sky above, the birds flew as if underwater, wings beating with strange slowness, each movement deliberate. Blood trickled down Thorvald’s forehead, a drop gathering and hanging from his brow for what seemed an eternity. When it fell, it defied everything he understood of how the world worked. Slowly…slowly…to land on his cheek, like a pin-prick.

  Then, behind him, the waves of the ocean hit the shore with a crash. The illusion shattered.

  He startled. The world seemed to somehow snap all around him. Like an arrow being let loose and the string of the bow twanging. All at once he was being shot back into an existence he didn’t know he’d been trying to leave. He inhaled a gasp of air and shook himself, taking new measure of his surroundings.

  He realized the jarl was making a sound. Talking? Thorvald narrowed his eyes to focus. No, wheezing. He looked up at Thorvald. “Why are you doing this?” Coughing again, blood spattered from his lips. “I gave you everything. I protected you.”

  The princess—no, Alodie…she was looking on. With her gaze on him and his gaze on the jarl, Thorvald found something in his depths he didn’t know he possessed. Mercy. Forgiveness. Or, at least—he shouldn’t get ahead of himself—the wish to extract revenge was gone.

  Was it? He probed his thoughts, muddled and cloudy though they were in the jumble of confusion after fighting—somewhat like his tongue had done in his mouth when he was a child and lost his milk teeth. Completely absent…surprisingly so.

  He turned his head this way and that. There was no escape from the carnage. And he wanted no part of it. What a foolish waste. They’d need to dig graves for those who’d woken this morning not knowing this sunrise would be their last. Was it the greed of men that brought them to such passes? Was it inescapable in their nature that their thirst for gold and blood would bring them here again and again?

  “Stop,” he bellowed, the sound scratching his dry throat. “Stop!”

  Those who were nearest halted first, lowering their weapons and spreading the message to the warriors farther away.

  Thorvald stumbled as he tried to walk, his legs only able to support his weight through force of will. His heart thumped against his chest like the fist of an angry father upon the door of a good-for-nothing who’d absconded with his daughter.

  He made his way toward her until he stood in front of her, trying to keep himself from swaying. She was the reason he’d fought like he’d never fought before. If he’d died, he’d have gone down knowing nothing else would stop him from seeing her again.

  “We won.” His voice was rough from want of a cool drink. He wiped his sleeve across the blood and sweat and grit upon his brow. Though he was standing still, he teetered a little. “It’s over.”

  She gave a slight nod, her hair whipping about her face. “I know.”

  Thorvald’s body sang with the triumph of being alive. The morning shone upon the world, new and golden. The trees had never been greener. The water never bluer. The surface had never shimmered with such jewel-like beauty.

  He collapsed at her feet.

  …

  By the side of the stream where she and Ozrik had rested Thorvald’s limp body, she rang the excess water out of a bit of cloth and began wiping his face clean. His head rested in her lap.

  Clouds had gathered above and a rain began to fall, so lightly that the droplets were a mere dusting over the earth.

  “He fought hard
er than any of us. He’s the reason we triumphed today.”

  Alodie couldn’t look at Ozrik. If she did, she might burst into tears, and there was no time to lose to weeping.

  They’d assessed Thorvald for wounds, cleaning the superficial cuts and scrapes as they went, but found nothing that appeared fatal. No gouges or stab wounds. Why wouldn’t he wake? A man of his physical abilities and stamina couldn’t simply die of exhaustion.

  Could he?

  Back at the beach, the living were preparing to care for today’s dead. Thorvald wasn’t among those they would bury, but he wasn’t among the living, either. He existed somewhere in the in-between. Which side would he choose?

  Alodie crossed herself, folded her hands before her heart, and bowed her head in supplication. “I now know why You allowed me to be stolen away by these people.”

  Her eyes had been well and truly opened. First she had to see past her own detrimental blindness. These raiders weren’t demons. They were people—as varied and individual as any in her own community. The jarl was hateful and selfish. Birna and Ozrik were very much not so. Hrolf was young with so much to learn about the world. And Thorvald…

  Thorvald.

  Alodie swallowed, holding back a wave of emotion pushing to escape from her in weeping and wailing.

  He was the second reason the Lord had allowed her to be taken. Love. It wasn’t a neat and tidy and easy love. He’d taken her. He was a pagan. There was a part of her that even now didn’t want to forgive him for what he’d done to her by handing her over to his jarl.

  But it was love. As real as God’s love. Just as complicated and simple as His.

  People could change. She had. And life wasn’t lived in the past, but in the present—holding on to the hope of a future enduring life’s struggles and the fight for survival with this man by her side.

  If God would allow it.

  “Please. Please.” She struggled to control her thoughts long enough to find a prayer—any prayer—that would be good enough, strong enough.