The patrol was uneventful, as usual, with no sign of any incursion from Toomas’s men. The day was fine, a bright, clear day, the cold enough to keep the snow from turning into soup as it had been the day before, but not so frigid that riding was dangerous or even uncomfortable. Not for the likes of them.
Vali was in good humor. Brenna’s spirits had been lighter that morning than in weeks as she anticipated an outing to the village, and, although he could not help but send his thoughts her way throughout the day, he was glad he’d been able to offer her a solution to her restlessness. He hoped she and the babe were well. Before they had left, he had impressed upon Tord and Sigvalde the necessity of his family’s health for their own.
In the afternoon, as the sun began to sink low toward the earth and bring the heavier cold of evening, Vali, Leif, and the others rode through the castle gate. Immediately, he noticed with some mild surprise that the sledge wasn’t on the grounds. The supply run to the village should have returned before them. Perhaps they’d been back so long that the sledge had already been stowed.
As Vali dismounted, Leif said, “Vali.” Only that. Vali turned in the direction of his friend’s nod and saw Orm coming out of the main castle doors, walking directly to them, his expression serious. Three other men walked behind him, armed and dressed for riding.
Something was wrong.
“We’re preparing to send a party out just now,” the old man reported as he stood before Vali and Leif. He lifted his eyes to Vali’s. “The sledge has not returned.”
Without waiting for another word, Vali leapt back into the saddle, as did Leif and the others. He turned his horse and kicked him into a gallop at once. He heard the hooves of other riders’ horses following, but he paid them no mind. They would follow or not, but he was going for his wife.
They came across Tord first, just as they left sight of the castle, and Vali tasted the copper of battle rage at the sight of his clansman and what it meant for Brenna.
Tord reeled through the snow, dragging his sword, leaving a red ribbon of blood behind him. He had an arrow through his chest, and when he saw them, he collapsed sidelong into the snow.
Vali jumped from his mount and ran to the young man. “What happened?! Where is she?!” he demanded as he dropped to his knees and grabbed Tord’s shoulder.”
Tord groaned and spat blood. Gasping, forcing the words from his mouth, he answered, “Beset. Need…help. She’s…she…the tree. Halfway tree…covered her.”
A pine tree with a massive base marked the midway point of the journey to and from the village.
“Does she live?! Tord, does she live?” His mind flashed him a vision of his wife lying dead in the snow, sinking into a pool of her own blood, taking their child away with her. Leaving him. His stomach rolled. Without meaning to, but unable to help himself, he shook Tord’s shoulder, and the boy gave a weak scream. Leif, kneeling at Vali’s side, laid a steadying hand on his arm but said nothing.
“Yes…when I…left. Hurt but alive. Can’t move. Sigvalde…Valhalla.” As Vali shot back to his feet, Tord waved his hand feebly. “Not…Toomas. Flag…the other.” Tord closed his eyes and said no more.
Ivan. The one they had discounted as too small and weak to fight them, especially in the winter. They had turned their attention and their resources to the obvious threat from the north, the nearer, stronger, richer, better-provisioned prince, and they had left their southern flank exposed. Indeed, lately they had rarely mentioned Ivan in their planning at all.
None of the raiders who stayed in Estland were real planners. The leaders among them were leaders during battle, not before it. They executed the plans of other men. Of them all, Brenna had been the most insightful strategist, the best planner. She might well have seen what they had missed, but they had closed her out of their discussions because she was with child.
And their blindness had put her in harm’s way. Her and the child she carried.
Vali had no time to let that irony sicken him. He nodded and ran back to his horse. As he mounted, he heard Leif tell the others, “They didn’t move on the castle. They might have beset the village. Sten, get Tord to Olga. Orm, take the others to the village. Be ready to fight. I go with Vali.”
Vali didn’t wait. He mounted his horse and he rode.
~oOo~
At the dying horse and the overturned sledge, Vali dropped to the ground, barely taking the time to slow his horse, and ran past the wreckage. He found Brenna, motionless under the fur he’d settled over her legs that morning, lying just beyond the halfway tree.
He dived to his knees as he reached her and pulled back the fur. She was curled on her side, and she flinched hard as he laid his hands on her. Her eyes opened and looked wildly around.
Relief warred with worry. She was alive. She was alive. But in the waning light of the day, he could see that her color was wrong—she was pale and blue—and she had been lying long in the snow.
“Vali?”
“I’m here, my love. I’m here.”
“Help me. The babe. Something’s wrong.”
The fur moved, sliding down Brenna’s body, and Vali looked up to see Leif pulling it away.
Brenna was lying in melting snow stained red with blood. Her hangerock was stiff with the cold and stained dark as well. There was an arrow embedded in the ground not far from her head, but Vali could discern no wound.
The babe. The blood was their child. Just then, Brenna tightened into a coil and cried out in pain. The sound was weak but still agonizing, and it went on for an eternity. The specter of his brave, stoic shieldmaiden in pain so intense that she would scream made Vali’s stomach roll again.
Then she stopped, gasping in a stilted breath, and another, and another. Her body relaxed slightly.
“Something wrong is happening.” In her tone, he heard her pleading for his help.
“We have to get her to Olga.” Leif had crouched down with them.
“Brenna, can you not stand?”
She shook her head. “My chest. Something is wrong in my chest. But the babe. Something wrong is happening to him. I think he’s coming. But it’s not his time.”
Vali realized then that she didn’t know about the blood. “I’ll get you to Olga.” He slid his hands under her body. When he lifted her, she screamed again, feebly, as if the effort of the scream hurt her more, and a thin trail of blood seeped from the corner of her mouth.
As he stood with his wife in his arms, he met Leif’s eyes, and they both, having the same idea, turned to the sledge. No. To right it would take too much time, and to free the harness from the dying—no, dead—horse would take longer. He would have to ride back to the castle with Brenna in his arms.
“I’m sorry, my love. I think I will cause you more pain to get you home.”
She shook her head. “No matter. I need Olga. She will fix it.”
Leif took her in his arms while Vali mounted. As he leaned down to lift her into his arms again, she made that frail, long scream, her body pulling inward. Leif held her until, again, it eased.
When Vali could again cradle her against his chest, she had swooned.
Leif mounted, and they turned back and raced to the castle.
~oOo~
Olga met him on the castle grounds. She was covered in blood already—Tord’s, Vali guessed—but she ran up to him as he handed Brenna to Jaan and jumped from his horse.
“To bed! Right away!” Olga’s command brooked no argument.
Taking his wife back, Vali nodded and hurried inside. Olga followed, calling out to the women in the Estland tongue. Too focused on Brenna to translate, Vali nonetheless understood that she was calling for supplies and giving instructions.
Once in their chamber, Vali laid Brenna down. She had not woken again on the ride, although a few times more, her body had clenched, becoming like stone in his hold. When he had eased her from his arms, he crouched at the side of their bed and stroked her hair back from her forehead. She was so cold, and her color
had the dusky blue of death. But she breathed. He could hear her. He could see the small bubbles of it in the pink froth at the corner of her mouth.
The women were undressing her, pulling off her boots and underclothes. Olga came and wedged herself between Vali and Brenna.
She pulled her hand back and slapped his wife. Hard. Then she did it again. Vali leapt to his feet and grabbed the small woman by the back of her dress. He yanked her back and pushed her against the wall. “What do you do?! She is hurt enough already!”
“Your child is coming. If she doesn’t wake and help him, you will lose them both.”
He stared down at her, a mix of unfamiliar emotions churning his blood. The most potent of them, the one that weakened his legs, was fear. “It’s too soon.”
“It is.” Olga nodded, her brown eyes fixed firmly on him, and he heard the words she was not speaking. His son would not survive. It was Brenna she was trying to save. “Let me go, Vali.”
He let her go.
She stood straight and went immediately to his wife’s side. Without facing him again, she said, “Now go. This room at this time is no place for a man.”
“I’ll not leave them.” He put all the resolve he had into those words. He would not be moved from this room.
At that she did turn, and she let those eyes bore into him again. “Very well. Then be useful. She stirs. Come keep her with us.”
Vali needed no further exhortation. He nodded and went to his knees at the side of the bed, catching Brenna’s cold, slack hand in his. Her eyelids fluttered, and a spasm of pain crossed her brow.
“Be with me, shieldmaiden. You are brave and strong. Open your eyes.”
She did, and her head flopped in his direction. “Something’s wrong,” she whispered, her tongue pushing pink froth onto her lips. “Wrong.”
“Brenna.” Olga was at his side. “When you feel the pain, do not fight what your body wants. Vali will help you. So will I.”
“Olga. It’s wrong.”
Her voice was so weak, so thready, it was as if she spoke already from beyond this world. Her eyelids fluttered closed again, and Vali clutched her hand. “Brenna! Stay!”
She cried out—that weak, kittenish cry that conveyed so much helpless, hopeless pain—and Olga said, “Vali, lift her to sit up. Now.”
He did so, sliding his arm under her back, but when he pushed her upward, she screamed again. “It hurts her!”
“It all hurts her. Ignore that and help her. Brenna! Brenna, heed me. Bear down. Heed your body and bear down.”
She did. Her body contracted, her brow pulled tight, and she made a harrowing wail. Olga, with an expression of perfect, serious focus, put her hands far up Brenna’s skirts.
Then Brenna went completely slack, and Olga sighed and shook her head. When she pulled back, her hands and arms were bloody.
Brenna’s blood. Or their child’s.
“Vali, please. It is too late for anything but this way. She must help. Wake her.”
He gazed on his wife, so weak in his arms. He was losing her. But he would not, could not strike her. So he put his mouth to her ear and spoke to her.
“Brenna, stay with me. Be strong. Fight, shieldmaiden. Find your fury and your fire and come back. Please.” He clutched her sword hand and lifted it. “Raise your sword and fight this. No pain can best the God’s-Eye. Odin’s own shieldmaiden. This will not be what lays you low.”
While he spoke, an explosion of thunder rocked the stone walls, and lightning lit the cracks through the narrow windows, shuttered against the cold.
“The gods have seen us, Brenna. Thor has answered. Come now, and do your part.”
She woke with a start and a cry, and she bore down. Olga leaned in again. Vali felt mad with the need to take her pain away. A need he could not meet.
As before, when her body eased, Brenna went under. Her head dropped back, and she fell slack in his arms. But this time, Olga didn’t pull away, and two of the other women leaned in as well. They were busy under his wife’s skirts, between her legs.
He heard a faint sound, like the cry of a mouse.
“Ta hingab,” one of the women, Anna, muttered to Olga.
“He breathes?” Vali laid Brenna down gently and stood up. “He is born? He lives?”
Still working, Olga made a sharp motion with one arm and nodded to Anna, who lifted a bloody bundle from between Brenna’s legs.
Then Olga turned sad eyes on Vali. “He lives. Vali, he will not for long. He is too small and was not done being made. But for these moments, yes, you have a son. There is no shame in turning from this pain. Anna will tend him well until his end.”
He did not know the customs of Olga’s people in matters such as this, but he knew those of his own, of Brenna’s. A child like this, born wrongly or too soon, would be killed or taken out into the woods and left to die. Their world was a harsh one and had no quarter for frailty or deformity.
But that pain Olga had spoken of was his son. His firstborn child, who was alive. He would not turn from him. “No. Bring him to me.”
“Vali…”
He held out his hands. “Bring him.”
Olga nodded to Anna, who, with evident fear, carried the bundle of bloody linens to Vali and set it in his hands. The cord that had bound mother and child together dangled from the bundle, a knot of wool tied around its end.
It was no more than if Anna had laid only the cloths themselves in his hands, so light was his child, who fit easily across his two palms. The bundle moved, and Vali brought it to his chest, cradling it in a way he had not known he knew.
So small. He pulled the cloth back and saw a tiny, perfect face and a tiny, perfect hand. His skin seemed translucent; even in the light of the torches and candles, Vali could see the threads of veins across the back of that wee hand, and over the lids of his closed eyes.
The little face screwed up, and his son made another of those mouse-like cries. At the same time, thunder and lightning shook the sky. Thunder and lightning in winter was rare indeed. A man born on such a night would have his story told. Perhaps it was a sign that, small though he was, his son would thrive.
“Thor is with us tonight, my son. You will be called Thorvaldr.”
Vali could feel Olga’s eyes on him. He met them and saw her concern. He did not care. His son was alive in his arms and would be named.
“He is called Thorvaldr.”
Olga gave him a gentle smile and a nod, then went back to her work. The women still tended to Brenna, who had not woken again. Her color had gone very grey, and her jaw had slackened so that her mouth was open.
“Olga…”
“She has lost a great deal of blood, Vali, and her ribs are…murtud?”
It was unusual these days for Olga to have a failure of language. Vali didn’t know the word she meant, either.
She huffed. “They are injured. This is why she bleeds from her mouth. Bringing the babe did that no help. She must have time to replenish her blood so that she can heal. We will do what we can. If your gods are with you, perhaps they will help her.”
Vali held his son and watched the women work to save his wife. He wanted to be near her, but there was no room now for him at her bedside. He didn’t know what to do. His heart was cracking apart inside his chest.
He could lose them both on this night. He likely would.
No. They were not alone. They were Brenna God’s-Eye and Vali Storm-Wolf, beloved of the gods, and they had brought forth a son.
Thor, he began silently. I entreat you. Save my family.
Thorvaldr, his son, made another of those tiny cries, this one weaker than the others. Vali turned his attention to the feather-light bundle and pulled the linens back a bit more. A frail chest, showing each minute filament of rib, throbbed with shallow heaves. As he watched, the pace of his son’s labored breaths slowed.
And then stopped.
He stared at that little chest for long moments, willing it to move again, but it did not. The ti
ny hand lay inert. The son he and Brenna had made together had left them already. His eyes burning and blurring, Vali turned to Brenna, but he couldn’t see her through the women tending her.
Would he now lose her, as well?
“Brenna.” It was only a whisper, but he couldn’t hold it back. “Please.”
Lightning struck again, a violent crack of light that brought the thunder of Thor’s hammer down at the very same time and left a burning in the air.
“WHAT?” Vali shouted, startling the women. “WHAT DO YOU WANT OF ME?”
Without thinking, he ran to the door and tore it open. Still holding his child in his arms, wrapped in that bundle of cloths soaked in his mother’s blood, Vali ran through the corridor, down the dark stairs, through the castle, out the heavy main doors, and into the night.
God's Eye (The Northwomen Sagas #1) Page 15
