“Say it our way.”
Brenna gave Olga her warrior’s look, even growling a little, but Olga was unmoved. She simply waited, her expression impassive.
She was fairly certain she understood the word for hate. “Vihkan.”
“Say what you said. All of it.”
“Ma vihkan…” She had no idea what the word for ‘loom’ was. She had probably heard it, here in the loom room, scores of times, but it wasn’t in her head at all. “Ma vihkan…seda…”
“Kudumismasin.”
Brenna gaped at Olga. How was she supposed to learn a language that could turn a word so simple as ‘loom’ into that?
Before she could continue her tantrum—lately, she had grown adept at throwing tantrums—the babe kicked her sharply at her bladder, and she clutched at her belly. “Oh!”
Olga laid her hands on Brenna’s belly, too. “He moves much today.”
Nodding, Brenna smiled down at her rounded midsection. “More even than usual.”
It had only been a few weeks since she’d felt the first flutters of his movement, but since then, her belly had gotten noticeably larger and her son moved all the time. Even Vali could feel him now.
“I believe it is a son you carry—you cradle him low inside you.” Olga put her arm around Brenna’s waist and led her to the door. “Enough weaving. Let us sit in the kitchen. I will pour you milk and you can learn more food words. If you know those, mayhap you won’t starve.”
“You are not so funny as you think.” Brenna scowled at her friend, who returned it with a wry smirk.
“Funny is what?”
Thinking for a moment as they walked toward the kitchen, Brenna answered, “Veider?”
Olga laughed. “Maybe so, if you meant to say I am not strange. Naljakas is amusing.”
“Your language has too many ways of saying things.”
“That is so we always say what we mean.”
~oOo~
By evening, the babe pulled heavily on Brenna’s back, and she had taken to retiring early, not long after the last meal, leaving Vali to drink and laugh with the other men. She had learned to enjoy the company of others, and even sometimes to join in with their jokes, but she still often found it difficult to be always in the thick of the commotion. All her life, she’d been on the outside edge, and although she had been lonely, that distance had become the thing she understood.
Here, she’d been accepted. Here, she had friends, real friends, people who sought her out and wished to converse with her. People who knew her. It was good. She was happy, for the first time in her life, truly happy. And exhausted. Her moods were sometimes erratic, which they had never been before. Her brain could not keep up with so much energy turned her way.
Olga told her it was the babe, that she would feel steadier and sharper when her son no longer drew on her body so completely. Brenna hoped that was true. She could hear laughter below, and she would have liked to have enjoyed that good humor more, now that she was Brenna and not the God’s-Eye.
She had washed and dressed in her sleeping shift and was unbraiding her hair when the door opened and Vali came in. Usually, she was already abed when he came up; sometimes, he came in smelling strongly of mead and fell to bed, and then into a stupor, with barely an affectionate pat of her shoulder.
He was not drunk tonight, however, and Brenna worried that something was amiss.
“Are you all right? I didn’t think you’d come to bed so early.”
He came to her and laid his big hands over her belly. “You seem pensive tonight. I worry. Are you well?” He rubbed over their son. “Is he?”
His loving attention eased her turbulent mood somewhat. Covering his hands with hers, she answered, “We are well. I’m only…väsinud?”
“That is good! Not that you are weary, but that is the right word.”
“You condescend.” She tried to pull away, but he held her.
“No, my love. I know the language is hard for you. I mean to encourage. I’m pleased that you keep trying. Are you weary because of the child?” He eased his hands around her swell. “It cannot be much longer.”
“Olga thinks two months more at least. She counts from when I first felt him. Two months feels long.”
The babe kicked as if he were agreeing, and Vali grinned and dropped to his knees. “Hello, my son. Be kind to your mother. She makes you a good place to grow strong.” He pressed his mouth to her belly and sucked, drawing the linen of her shift into his mouth.
She laid her hands on his head. “Vali, I would like to ride tomorrow. Not far—only to the village—and not fast. But outdoors, in the air.”
“No, Brenna. It cannot be good for you or him. And the winter has been harsh. You are safe and warm inside the castle.” He stood and led her to a chair near the fire. Although she wanted to stand toe to toe with him and have this matter out, she was glad to sit. He pulled a chair close and sat before her, holding her hands.
She hadn’t given up the fight, however. “Winter is easing. The weather has finally broken. We’ve had no storm in weeks, and today there was thaw. I will be warm. There has been no threat from any quarter. I will be safe. Warm and safe. I must get out in the world and move around. I must, or I’ll go mad.”
“The thaw today means ice tomorrow. And how would you mean to mount a horse in your state?”
“I’m no weakling.”
“I don’t mean that you are weak. I mean that there is a child in your way.”
Done with debating irrelevant points with him, Brenna huffed and sat straight. “I don’t need your warrant, husband. I am a freewoman. All I need do is wait for you to leave on patrol, and then act as I will.”
He dropped her hands and stood abruptly. “No, Brenna. If you make a threat like that, I will put a guard on you.”
She stood, too, much more slowly. “Choose a man you like not much for a guard, then, because he will be sorely injured before the day is out. You cannot govern me.”
“Why would you take such a risk? With our child? With yourself? You are precious, Brenna. Do you not see?”
“I see that I am locked away, pushed off to the looms, when once I had place at your side. I see that you treat me like a vessel for our son, when once you treated me like a warrior and your equal. I see that you do not see that.” To emphasize her point, she struck him in the chest with the flat of her hand.
The anger smoothed from his brow, and he cupped her face in his hand. “I mean to do none of that. I mean only to love you and keep you safe. But you know that the voice belongs with those who do the work, and you know that you cannot—that you are unable—to do the work you once did. You have more important work than that. You also know that it is unsafe, for our child and for you, to mount a horse in the state you are in.”
He was right; she knew he was. She wanted to stomp her foot at him, but he was right. So, with a dejected sigh, she gave up and wended her way back down to the seat of the chair.
“Forgive me. I’ve been in a temper today. I truly do think I’m going mad.”
He sat again as well. “You’re not going mad, my love. I’m assured that this is part of making a child.”
She rolled her eyes. He talked to everyone about her.
He leaned in as if he had a secret for her ears only. “Tord and Sigvalde are taking the sledge to the village tomorrow, bringing supplies. Would a ride on a sledge between two foolish young men suffice to get you out into the world and improve your temper?”
As he spoke, Brenna grinned happily, real relief expanding her chest. She threw her arms around his neck. “Yes! Yes, that would be wonderful! Yes!”
“Still not yet a day without a smile like that. I think I am the one of us with the touch of the gods.”
~oOo~
The day rose clear and cold, and the night’s chill had turned the previous day’s thaw into a glassy shell over all the land. The bright sun in a cloudless sky made stars leap from the sparkling snow into one’s eyes. Beautiful a
nd blinding.
They had lost half the snowpack in that single day, and the river rushed loudly, swollen with the fresh cold water of the melt.
Vali, Leif, and a few of the other men planned to mount their intrepid horses and ride north to patrol the land nearest Prince Toomas’s territory. They had kept up patrols as they could through the winter, and with the weather warming, they meant to be even more vigilant.
Brenna had woken in excellent spirits, buoyed by the prospect of a day spent in the fresh air. Since she’d been a freewoman, she had spent her winters alone in the woods. This winter trapped inside a stone castle, weeks without real daylight or fresh air, amongst a throng of other souls, and with her belly growing large and changing all she knew about her body, herself, and her life, had taxed her mind more even than she’d realized.
After a waking romp, Vali taking her from behind like a beast and making her scream into the furs, they had joined their people to break their fast.
Now, with the horses for the patrol party saddled and the sledge horse harnessed, Vali had Tord and Sigvalde trapped under his great arms and was speaking to them in earnest. Standing near the sledge, Brenna watched, amused. She expected that the smaller, younger men were being threatened with no end of doom should any discomfort befall her during the day.
He clapped them hard on their shoulders, making them both stumble forward, and then turned and came directly to her, his serious scowl still in place.
“Be mindful, shieldmaiden,” he instructed as he reached her and took her hands. “A ride only. Let the pups do their work.”
“I will. I’ll not be reckless with our child, Vali.”
“And yet you would have ridden.”
She let loose an aggravated huff. He had made his point. Again and again. “I shall sit meekly in the sledge like the helpless female you think I am.”
“Good.” He grinned then, and she answered it with a smile. As he brushed his thumb over her cheekbone, he added, “I wish you a happy day, my love. One that brings peace back to your mind. I would that I could join you.”
“Perhaps we can go out another time.”
“Perhaps.”
She knew he was humoring her, and that she likely would not win from him another day like this until after their son was in her arms, but she didn’t mind. She was out of the castle and wouldn’t see its cursed stone walls again until past midday.
He picked her up with his broad hands under her arms and lifted her high, setting her on the seat of the sledge. As she scooted her cumbersome body to the center, he went to the cargo they would pull and came back with a heavy fur.
“I will swoon from overheating,” she complained as he tucked it around her legs.
“If so, you will at least be resting.” He leaned in and kissed her, catching her face in his hands and plunging his tongue deeply, stealing, from her lips and from her mind, any further protests.
She traced the nick in his tongue with her own, as she always did, loving that evidence of their first connection. He groaned and broke away, touching his forehead to hers. “Be safe, little mother. My love.”
“And you. I love you.”
With a press of his lips to her brow, he stepped back, and two pale, anxious raiders came forward to take their places at her sides.
~oOo~
Well cowed by whatever Vali had said to them, Tord and Sigvalde treated Brenna as if she were made of glass, jumping to her aid if she so much as shifted her seat. They were unusually quiet, as well. She had expected to be irritated by their nonstop chatter, but instead she might as well have sat between two posts. Two overly solicitous posts. Despite her normal preference for quiet, Brenna found it awkward to be sitting so near two usually garrulous men who had nothing to say.
The ride to the village was not long; a sledge like this could comfortably make the trip there and back thrice in a day. Brenna decided to pretend she was alone after all. She turned her mind inward, to her thoughts, while she released her body to experience the beauty of the day—the bright sun, the sparkling snow, the brisk cold, and the occasional peep of a bird, the clearest sign yet that the angry winter was stomping off to sulk elsewhere.
Once they got to the village, Tord and Sigvalde became more like themselves. They had friends who were keeping the village and tending most of the animals, and there was a jolly reunion, even though it had only been a week or so since this team had taken over the village. They spent the midday at a cozy fire in a small hut, enjoying skause and bread and mead—and goat’s milk for Brenna, who had not been able to abide mead since the babe. Though all the men around her treated her like they might break her, they japed and laughed around her, and Brenna felt contented. The babe had been quiet in the sledge, but he kicked and rolled while she sat among their friends, as if he, too, were enjoying himself.
After the meal, the men unloaded the supplies. Brenna behaved herself and stayed at the fire until Tord came and told her they were ready to be off. Walking back to the sledge, she felt melancholy. Already her good day was ending.
The ride back, however, was much more amusing. Their time in the village had loosened Tord and Sigvalde’s tongues, and they bantered back and forth, seeming to have forgotten that a woman sat between them in body while they bickered about one who sat between them in spirit.
“She wants more man than you, my friend. She deserves more.”
“And you think you are the one to offer more? I’ve seen your little maggot that shrinks into your belly in the cold.” Sigvalde moved the reins to one hand so that he could hold up his little finger and make it curl down into a nub.
Tord’s only response was a rude gesture. When Brenna chuckled, they both looked surprised and then joined her in laughter.
“You know less than you think about women if you think what’s in your breeches is all that matters,” Brenna offered, smirking.
“Ah, Tord. We have an opportunity here that we’ve nearly missed, to have the God’s-Eye give us wisdom about women.”
Brenna stiffened at the hated name, but she didn’t let it show. It was rare to hear it now, and she knew Sigvalde meant it in jest. So she lifted the brow above her right eye and let him have her God’s-Eye glare.
His eyes flared in real shock, and she regretted her failed attempt to join in the joke. But then an arrow zinged past her and buried itself in Sigvalde’s left eye. He flew backward, out of the sledge, taking the reins with him.
Pulled sharply off course by Sigvalde’s dead body landing on the hard snow, the draft horse screamed and stumbled. As he struggled to keep his hooves under him, another arrow sank into his rump, and he screamed again and went wild.
“Brenna!” Tord caught hold of her arm and tried to shove her down to the floor of the sledge, but she couldn’t hide in a runaway sledge. That would get her killed just as easily as the arrows. She fought against his pushing hands, and then they went slack—he’d been struck, too. A fearsomely thick arrow had come through his chest.
He was alive, though, gasping and sinking to the floor. Brenna grabbed for his still-sheathed sword, fighting the violent heaves of the racing sledge, and drew it free.
Leaning over the front of the sledge, trying to protect her child and stay low in case their attackers still followed, Brenna worked to slice through the hard leather of the harness. Before she could get more than halfway through the first strap, the horse, now with several arrows buried in his flesh, stumbled and fell, and the sledge went over, threatening to flip end over end before landing on its side.
Brenna was thrown clear, landing hard on her back. A great gush of liquid came from her body and soaked her legs. She tried to lift her head to see if it was blood, but her head would not leave the snow.
She couldn’t move at all. Her breath would not come, either. She stared up at the clear blue sky and tried desperately to make her lungs work. They could not be far from the castle. If she could shout, they might even be close enough to hear, on this bright, still day, with the snow h
ard enough to bounce the sound.
Just as she managed to suck in an excruciating breath, a man in armor came into her field of vision. He stared down at her and then aimed an arrow at her head.
Brenna saw him note her condition then, and he faltered, blinking. With the arrow still nocked, he dropped his aim. She tried to think of the words she needed to say. “Please—do not harm my child,” she gasped in her own tongue. “Palun! Laps,” she managed. ‘Please’ and ‘child’: the only Estland words she could remember.
He blinked again. Then a male voice beyond her sight shouted words she couldn’t understand, and the man above her aimed again.
This time, he let loose his arrow.
God's Eye (The Northwomen Sagas #1) Page 14
