Euthalia stared at her, the bread going tasteless in her mouth.
CHAPTER FOUR
The entire village had turned out, and to Euthalia’s unskilled eye, they seemed to be dressed in finer array than before. Everywhere the clothing was bright with color and trimmed with embroidery or fur. The men’s cheeks were freshly shaved, and slightly reddened skin around the eyebrows showed where both men and women had subjected themselves to the same plucking Euthalia had undergone that morning.
They cheered when they saw her, whooping and clapping, and she felt very self-conscious. What did they expect of her? Had Birna meant her death?
The crowd surrounded her loosely and walked toward the edge of the village, where a newly-built house waited, conspicuous with its raw unweathered wood and the younger, greener grass on its roof. A shallow pit, long and wide like the base of another house which had not been built, lay to one side. Two men were leading a brown horse across the field toward them.
An old man came toward her, bent with years and work, and she saw by his close-cropped hair and the rounded iron collar about his neck that he was a thrall, kept for light work or charity in his old age. He nodded toward her several times and worked his mouth around a language rusty with disuse. “Wife,” he said in her own tongue, his voice high with age. “Wife. Bride. You are the bride.”
She remembered the words of the helmeted man, the man with the dragon’s voice, accepting her father’s offer of her. Her father had argued he had promised her a husband, and the helmeted man had agreed to fulfill his promise despite Tikhomir’s cowardly bargain. Euthalia had not believed him then nor at any time during the journey. But had he spoken the truth? Was she to be properly wed, instead of given as a slave?
“A bride to whom?” she asked the old man. “Where is my husband?”
“Bride,” he repeated, obviously pleased that he remembered the word. “To the dragon.”
She started at him, certain she had not heard him correctly. Or perhaps he had not remembered the word, as it was obviously long years since he had spoken his native tongue. “No, who is my husband? The man with the helmet, where is he?”
He nodded. “The dragon,” he repeated. “You are the bride. A sacrifice bride, to the dragon.”
An agonized bellow interrupted him, and she looked up as a man finished drawing a knife across the throat of the horse in the shallow pit. Two other men held it by the ears as it bled, eyes wide, until it went to its knees. The crowd cheered.
Euthalia’s heart froze and her breath stopped in her throat. A sacrifice bride.
The horse dropped to the ground and rolled partly to one side, tongue lolling. Several men stepped forward and began to butcher it, blood running freely over the ground.
Euthalia bent and vomited onto the grass.
The old man took her shoulder, leaning upon her as much as steadying her. “No, no,” he said, “you go in. Sacrifice, big honor. He comes tonight. Not man. Dragon’s bride.”
Euthalia pushed at him, her heart racing. “No, stop,” she breathed. “Not me. Not that. I will be a slave, but don’t do that.”
The villagers closed about her, speaking rapidly in excited tones, and they pressed her toward the house. She saw several of them carried torches, and she realized they would burn her within the new wooden house. “No!” she screamed. “No!”
But she could not escape them, for in each direction she turned she was pushed back, and as she grabbed at the edges of the door to hold herself back they pressed together against her, still cheerily arguing in words she could not understand, and she shouted protest as she fell through the doorway. The wooden door, with the clever wooden latch she had admired, closed solidly behind her.
There were no windows. Some light crept through the high parts of the roof, where the woven wattle abutted the thatching, but the interior was only dimly visible. She could make out a table, and two chairs, and a long chest, and two shelves upon the wall lined with objects she could not quite see. Along one wall was a raised sleeping surface, with painted sliding panels to enclose it for warmth in the winter. Now the door stood open, and she could see a pile of sheepskins.
It was a very lifelike grave, if it were a grave. But she had heard that the great men of the North were sent to death with all the possessions they might need in the next life, and so the completeness only frightened her further.
The torches were not set to the house. Instead she heard singing, and then the crackling of fire, but at a safe distance. They were roasting the horse, she decided, feasting upon her death.
Or maybe, if they had not killed her yet, maybe she was not to die. Maybe she really was a bride, and she had been put here to await her new husband, a man so dangerous and so respected in battle that he was called the Dragon, and the old slave had not had the words to explain a sobriquet.
She tried the door, hoping they had gone far enough and were distracted enough, but it was barred from without. She was trapped within the little house, helpless. She could only wait.
The dragon came at night.
Euthalia had sat long in the dark, her knees hugged close to her chest, wrapped in the bearskin the helmeted man had given her on the boat. She sat on the trunk pushed against the wall; she could not bear to sit upon the bed. Once in a while she looked at it and then looked away.
Was the dragon a figurative name for a dreadful man, a warrior feared above all others? Or was it a literal monster she awaited? Would she be raped or devoured? It was hard, not speaking a language. She could not even know what she should fear.
Birna had not seemed to worry for her, and she had even seemed happy as she prepared Euthalia for her bridal day. But that did not mean safety; Euthalia had seen people happily sacrifice animals, even precious ones, without grief or reservation. How much more should a dragon’s prize be offered willingly?
And then there was a sound outside, a subtle sound which could have meant nothing on its own, but Euthalia knew, she knew, that he had come and now stood outside the door.
Warrior or beast? Man or monster?
She was seized with the sudden terror that she would scream when the door opened, and if it were a monster a scream would incite it, and if it were a man a scream would infuriate him, and so she pressed a handful of the fox-edged cape into her mouth as the wooden latch lifted.
The door swung open.
Euthalia made a tiny whimpering sound into the cape and squeezed her eyes shut. Instantly she could not stand her helplessness and opened her eyes again. But it did her no more good to look than to not—the moonless night offered no aid to her eyes, and as the door swung shut she could only get a sense of a bulk before it. He was tall and broad, if a man.
She could hear breathing. It was not her own; she was holding her breath, she realized. She swallowed and forced herself to speak. Her voice was unsteady. “Welcome, husband. I am the dragon’s bride.” If a man, would he even understand her?
“What are you called?”
Relief ran through her like water at hearing words so plainly spoken. For a moment she could hardly answer. “My name is Euthalia.”
“Euthalia.” He tested the foreign word, trying it, tasting it. After a moment, he seemed to approve it. “Euthalia. My bride.”
She was so grateful to find he was human that she thought suddenly she might be able to bear what would come next. They said it was not unpleasant, if not done by force, and could even be agreeable, if the man took care to please his woman as well. She giggled a little with nervous confusion and embarrassment at her own inconsistency.
“Why do you laugh?” came the voice. It was a deep voice, and powerful, as if even the helmeted man had been only a child and had grown at last to full manhood.
She shook her head, embarrassed further. She had the uncomfortable impression that he could see her despite the darkness. “I do not laugh at you, of course, I only—I was so afraid, and now I am so relieved you are human.”
There was a shifting in the darkne
ss, and the pressure of the air about her changed as he leaned closer, lowering his head near hers. “Why do you think I am human?”
Euthalia froze, unable to speak, unable to move, unable to think of anything but the powerful voice and all her terrors of the dragon. Arms—or claws, or something—grasped her about the bearskin, cocooning her like a child, and then there was a brilliant prismatic burst of light, just for an instant, and she screamed without hesitation or shame.
CHAPTER FIVE
The light faded, so quickly that she might have imagined it but for the aftermarks in her eyes, and the man—not a man—set her down again on the trunk. “Euthalia,” he said again, still working his mouth about the name. “I will come to you this day’s night.”
Then he turned again to the door and went out into the starlight too pale to illuminate him.
For a long moment Euthalia sat still, clutching herself beneath the bearskin, shivering beyond any cold in the mild night. He had come. He had done—something. There had been a bright light, no, a collision of many bright lights of all colors, and then nothing.
What if it had not been nothing? It felt as if only an instant had passed, but what if she had been dazed or unaware?
But no, she felt nothing in her relevant parts, and she had always heard it was painful at first even if the man were not a monster. And her fine wool and linen clothing was unshifted, and the bearskin undisturbed, and there was no reason he would rewrap her so carefully. No, she had not been touched. Not yet.
For a long time she sat on the chest, and at last the pounding of her heart slowed and her muscles ceased quivering and she began to feel exhausted from her fear. Whatever was to have happened this night, it seemed to have happened. She looked at the sleeping niche, thick with sheepskins and sheltered by the sliding door. He had said he would come the next night, which meant she had nothing to fear from the bed this night.
She uncurled herself from her place on the trunk, limbs stiff and protesting, and went to the bed. The sheepskins were delightfully soft and comforting after her terror. She nestled into them and slept.
She woke as the sunlight slipped into the sleeping niche via a chink in the external wall, where a knot had worked loose of its board. She had not closed the sliding door, not ready yet to be closed in, and she could see sunlight slanting through the main room of the house, dust motes dancing in its light. It was morning, and she was alive and whole.
She rose and straightened her clothing. Who would be waiting for her outside? What would they want of her? The dragon or whatever he might be had not seemed particularly displeased with her, but he had not taken her as a husband took his bride, and perhaps that would upset the people who had needed her as a sacrifice. What would she say to them, if the old thrall could translate?
But she needed to find a privy, and she was thirsty after her long vigil in the night, and there was nothing to be gained by delay. So she opened the door—unlocked—shaded her eyes against the light, and went out into the day.
Everything was the same, and yet everything was different. She hesitated on the threshold, frowning uncertainly. Her house was where it had been, yes, and there was the stream where it had been. It was not far to the dark longhouse. But the other houses were larger, slightly taller it seemed, though she had nothing but memory for comparison.
There should be people active and visible, even so early in the morning. No hours of daylight were to be wasted, especially not in the north. But she saw no one.
She went a few steps out on to the packed grass, worn with traffic, and turned in a circle. Had the village emptied overnight? Why would they abandon their homes, and where had they gone?
“Euthalia!” called a voice, and she spun toward it. “Good morning, Euthalia! Have you had your breakfast yet?”
It was Birna, smiling and coming toward her with a large basket. Euthalia realized she had spoken fluently, rather than the choppy, awkward speech of people trying to work around a very few shared words, and in Euthalia’s own language, and without a trace of accent. “Birna! You have deceived me!”
“What?” Birna looked surprised and faintly hurt.
“You speak my language perfectly! Why did you pretend you did not?”
Birna blinked and then shook her head with a chuckle. “No, my dear, not I. It is rather you who speaks my language perfectly. Or perhaps both of us are speaking another language not our own. In any case, you are in a place where language is the least of the barriers among men.”
Euthalia hesitated, considered. No, she was speaking just as she had all her life, without the weight of recalling and mimicking unfamiliar words. Birna was speaking nonsense. Or rather, she was speaking perfectly well, which had to be nonsense.
“Where is everyone?” she asked.
“You will see them later,” Birna answered. “They will be interested to see you.”
Euthalia was puzzled by this. “But they have all seen me already, at the feast and the ceremony.”
“No, those were the villagers in Aros. You have not met those who live here.”
Euthalia gestured at the houses around them. “Aros is the village? Then this is Aros. Who else lives here, but the villagers?”
Birna laughed again, and it was infuriating. “No, this is not Aros.”
Euthalia wanted to fly at her and throttle her. “What do you mean? Speak sense! How can this not be Aros? I stayed in this house and this village and—”
“Not this village,” interrupted Birna. “And not this house, not exactly. You were carried here last night.”
The burst of multi-colored light—the instant of prismatic disorientation—had that been it? What had happened?
“He carried you here last night,” Birna was saying. “The house was made for you in Aros, so that he would know where to find you among all the others of Aros and he would take the right woman. You are his bride now. And I have been sent to serve you here.”
“Been sent?” Euthalia repeated. “You were not carried?”
Birna tipped her chin up and pulled upward on the skin of her neck, separating a broad gash which ran dark across her throat. Euthalia gasped and recoiled.
Birna dropped the skin and shook her head. “No worries, my dear, the pain is past now. Mere men and women cannot leave Midgard without death. You, on the other hand, you are different now. You are the bride of a god.”
Euthalia’s knees slipped from beneath her and she sat down hard on the packed grass. “The bride of a….”
Birna bent and smiled, her flesh slipping forward to conceal the line on her throat. “Come, my dear. It will all become easier when you’ve had breakfast and walked about a bit.” She uncovered the basket and withdrew a smaller container with berries and a few nuts. “Eat these.”
Epli. It was one of the few words Euthalia had acquired, a word for small fruits and nuts. It had seemed odd to her, a single word to refer to what she had always called different things, but now when she tried consciously to think of the raiders’ word, it felt perfectly natural, as if she had used it all her life.
“Eat,” Birna prompted, and she did.
Euthalia sat on the trunk, the bearskin wrapped about her again. She stared at the door and watched it fade into darkness as the last of the twilight left the sky. He would come, and soon, and she did not know what she thought of that.
It was easier, a little, to believe that her new husband was not a man, was not a human, was not an ordinary husband. That is, it was not a simple thing to believe, but if she could convince herself of that, then believing that Birna had died to follow her out of Midgard, or whatever it was she had called the human world, the real world, and believing that the village of Aros had not been emptied but had been left behind, and believing that her father had sold her and his warriors to the river pirates, all became just a little bit easier.
But it did not give her more confidence to face the night and her strange husband’s coming. She was not sure that being opened and taken by a god sh
ould be more pleasant or less frightening than by a man. She had still never seen this husband, and that did not inspire an ease of mind. If he cared for her, if he were not monstrous, why would he come only by night?
But what choice did she have? If Birna told the truth, and as bizarre as it sounded Euthalia could find no evidence to dispute it, then she could not flee. She had left the world of men behind, and even if she fled the empty village she could not go home or to any other refuge. But she was no worse off than most women, and better than many others, so she would wait for her new husband to arrive and she would make the best of this unanticipated union.
When the wooden latch on the door rose, Euthalia turned to face the entrance, eyes straining in the dark. But she could see nothing, and again she had only a sense of a large figure entering.
“Good evening, Euthalia,” he said in his powerful, dark voice.
She swallowed. “Good evening, husband,” she said.
“May I sit beside you?”
It was his house, and his trunk, and his sacrifice of a bride, but it was kind of him to ask. “Yes, of course.”
He sat beside her, not quite touching the hair of the bearskin about her, and she wondered whether the trunk were large enough to accommodate him, for it was not an enormous trunk and he seemed a big man. But he sat without appearing unbalanced or awkward, and she worried that sliding to the end of the trunk would appear more rude avoidance than politely making space.
“Euthalia,” he said. “What sort of name is that?”
“It is a Greek name,” she said. “I am a Greek, or my mother is. My father is Slavic. Though it seems I have learned your own language since coming here last night.”
His voice gained the warm hint of a smile. “There are no languages where love or gods are concerned,” he said. “Love should not be limited by nations’ boundaries or tribal tongues, and gods know all that humans mean to say, no matter how they say it.”
“That seems very profound,” she said. “The great philosophers would have loved to debate that.”
The Songweaver's Vow Page 3
