For an infinite time, nothing happened except that the room warmed as Igul stoked the fire until it roared. Then the door opened, bringing with it a quick rush of cooler, fresher air, and Åke came to the side of the table her face was turned to. “You will break, Brenna God’s-Eye. You will beg for my mercy.”
She stared back and did not answer. No, she would not. All that was left to her was this. She would not break.
“Leif.”
There was a stunned silence, and in it, Brenna felt a tiny chip in her resolve. If Leif hurt her, she wasn’t certain she could withstand it.
“Åke, no.”
“You would deny me?”
“I would ask you, as one who loves you as a son loves a father, please do not ask this of me. I have chosen you and renewed my oath, but it was you who made the God’s-Eye my friend.”
Another long silence. Brenna focused on breathing, finding her shieldmaiden, the one who knew only fury and not pain.
Åke’s voice broke the tension. “Viger, then. Would you deny me as well?”
“No, Jarl. I serve your will.”
When the first red-hot iron rod was laid across Brenna’s back, just above her shoulder blades, the hot was so hot it almost felt cold, and the pain took a sliver of a moment to assert itself. Then it was completely encompassing, deep and wide, like a vast multitude of beasts clawing and biting their way through her body. She didn’t scream. She didn’t even have to fight the urge to scream. The pain was so enormous that none of the muscles in her body would work, not even those which would have impelled forth a cry.
The room quickly filled with the scent of her cooked flesh. When Viger pulled the rod up, he had let it cool enough that the skin caught and stuck to it.
Another rod was laid just below her shoulder blades. While it sat there, Åke leaned down and stared into Brenna’s eyes. Inside, her mind was shrieking, crying, begging. Her hands clawed at the table legs. But she did not allow her face to tense in any way, or her eyes to drift from his. If there was power in her right eye, she wanted him to know she was using it.
“Again.” He stood up and flicked his hand at Viger.
Viger lifted the second rod and laid down a third. By now, her body was so entirely racked with agony that this third rod had little it could add.
The fifth rod nearly undid her, however. Laid across her hips, just below her waist, it found skin tender enough that it broke through the limit of her pain and found a new place, so beyond comprehension that her mind simply stopped. Though her eyes were open, though she could hear, and smell, and gods, she could feel, inside she knew nothing. Only blackness.
“Enough,” she heard but did not understand.
~oOo~
When next her mind was clear, she was in her hovel again, this time shackled by her wrists to the wall, face-first. She was still without any stitch of clothing, but that was the least of her concerns.
The pain she had known while Viger had laid red-hot iron rods on her back was a distant memory, dwarfed by the pain she felt now, with her arms raised, both bunching and stretching the tortured skin of her back.
“You are strong and willful, Brenna God’s-Eye.” Åke was there. Had he waited and watched while she’d been unconscious? “It made you a valiant shieldmaiden. I was proud of you. I despise that you’ve made me do this. End your suffering now. Renew your oath and serve me. I will bring you into the hall and have your wounds tended as if you were my daughter. Then you can take up the duties you once had. I was not a hard master. Not to you.”
“I will not.” Her voice cracked with weakness, but she fixed her stare.
He sighed and dragged a pointed finger down the open skin and frayed nerves over her spine. A great explosion of pain—yet another new place—made her gasp and twitch, but she refrained from crying out.
“If you will not serve me as I wish, then perhaps I will give you to Calder. He has always liked your look and asked me more than once to give him leave with you. He will be glad to have my ban lifted. He is unfortunately harsh with slave girls, of course.
“I will kill him if he so much as touches me.”
Åke dug into a wound and turned his finger. Brenna could feel the pain stealing away her consciousness.
“Then I think there is breaking left to be done,” Åke said and took his hand away. He turned and left, and Brenna opened her mind to the blackness and let it take her.
~oOo~
She felt the painful soothe of healing paste, and heard herself groan, before she knew she was awake. She opened her eyes and shut her mouth, lest Åke hear her vocalize her torment.
She was prone on the floor of her hovel, but laid on a clean straw mat, and unchained. She tried to lift herself onto her elbows, but the pain was too great, and she was too weak.
“Be still, Brenna.”
“Leif. You are safe?”
He smoothed cool paste over another burn. “I am, but Åke is suspicious, and he is unhappy with my resistance yesterday.”
“Only yesterday?” It seemed as though she had lived a lifetime, or more, since she had been taken from Estland. Each day stretched into years.
“Brenna, please heed me now. There is little more I can do for you if you hold to this folly. I got you these comforts and healing because I argued with Calder that his father might yet risk the gods’ wrath by treating you so ill, and he counseled him. But I doubt Åke’s restraint will last long. He will not hear me on the matter of you any longer. If you are ever to be free and reunited with your husband, then you first must live now. Yield, Brenna.”
The mere idea of giving in to the man who had done this to her, and who had done much more, repelled her. “I cannot, Leif. I cannot be subject to him, no matter what he would do to try to force me.”
“I do not mean that you give up. Yield in deed, not in spirit. What opportunity can you have locked in this hut? If you are in the hall, perhaps you will find a chance to fight. But here, you will not. So tell him that you yield. He will be self-satisfied, and you will reap the benefit of that. He will heal you well and treat you like a pet. And there are people here we might bring to our cause. Let them see what Åke did to the God’s-Eye, beyond the circle of the thing. Then you might find your chance. But burned and weak, hidden away, you will not.”
Even through the shriek of the pain blasting from her back into her mind, Brenna heard the reason in Leif’s words. As Åke tried to break her, even if he failed, he would have weakened her beyond the point of any resistance but death. And that would be a victory for him, as well.
Could she pretend to have yielded? Could she behave before him as if she had been tamed, until she was strong enough to show him her bite? Could she wait for Vali and be strong enough to drive Åke to Hel?
Was she that strong?
Yes. She was.
Vali leaned against the prow of their little boat and stared out at horizon. In every direction, the world was exactly the same: solid dark grey above, and solid, darker grey below. For days, that had been true. The sky lightened in the day, but not enough to discern where the sun illuminated it. In the night, the world was a perfect, limitless, impenetrable black.
With no clues anywhere about the way they were headed, with nothing to see beyond but the same solid wall, one felt almost as if one were spinning while standing still, and standing still while spinning. It made the mind shift restlessly in its moorings.
Vali bent his head and closed his eyes, forcing his mind to make a picture it could focus on. When the vertigo subsided, he kept his eyes closed and his imagination intent on the vision of Brenna in the Estland woods, sitting at the stream bank, on the day they’d first spoken.
In the peace of that image, he could think.
They had been afloat for days—too many days. They should have struck the homeland already. Instead, there was no sound of bird, no sign of land.
They were lost on the open sea, as Orm had predicted. Even strictly rationed, their stores of food and water would
not last beyond a few days longer.
The gods had abandoned them. He would not come for his wife, would not save her, would not see her again in this life.
He thought of the night their son had lived and died. Leif had told him he’d tempted the gods when he’d stood in the storm and called out their cruelty. Perhaps he had.
Leif. Vali’s stomach turned at the thought of the man he’d called friend, whom he’d given his unflinching trust, who had betrayed them all—and Brenna most.
Though Vali understood that he would not be the agent of justice for Leif, he hoped that justice would somehow be had.
He turned and sat on the floor of the boat, resting his back against the stem. Before him sat nine beleaguered and disheartened souls, all of whom knew what he knew: they now merely waited for the sea to take them.
They had lost two of their number to the simple price of the sea: Eha and Anna had both succumbed when the toss of the waves had again and again forced even their meager ration of fresh water from their bellies.
Of those who were left—five raiders and five villagers; two women and eight men—all but Olga were experienced sailors of one kind or another, raiders or fishermen. Olga had struggled like Anna and Eha, but she was resolute and far stronger than her slim frame would suggest, and she rallied just as Vali began to lose hope in the voyage.
The boat was small, and had only three sets of oarlocks. When the sea and air were calm, they moved slowly, and even the raiders were beginning to lose the strength to row. Too small a boat, too few rowers.
Not that it mattered any longer.
In this moment, though, his crew was livelier than they had been, resting and even chatting together. Earlier, Orm had thought he’d caught a glimpse of sun behind the opaque drape of clouds, and, though Vali had not seen it, they had put up the sail in a good wind, hoping they sailed westward. They ran now at a strong clip, straight and true, and that at least had the power of delusion, elevating the spirits of their motley band.
Orm stood and crossed the boat, crouching near Vali. He offered him a water skin. Vali shook his head.
The old man would not be dissuaded. “You have not had your water yet this day. Nor is this the first time you’ve gone without. I see you giving up your ration and know you think it a sacrifice for us. But you are mistaken. You must remain strong, Vali. Any hope is lost should we lose you.”
Hope was already lost, and he knew Orm knew it. But a true warrior fought until he died, hope or no hope. So he nodded and took the skin.
As he let the water drizzle onto his parched tongue, Vali saw the sail drop, from full to dead in an instant. The boat eased to a stop. He handed the skin back to Orm. “Bring the sail down. Now.”
Orm nodded and stood. “SAIL DOWN!” he called as he moved to the center of the boat.
While his crew hurried to furl the sail, Vali stood and turned, searching the blank sky for the storm.
There—in some direction, he knew not which, the inky dark of the sea appeared to leach into the grey sky. As he stood there, he watched it move, bringing night on too soon. And then he smelled it, the churning of rain bringing the salt up into the air like a cloud.
He turned and jumped in to help. They had little time to fix the sail as their shelter. For all the good it would do in their tiny vessel, at the whim of gods who did not care.
~oOo~
Until that day and night, they had been spared Ægir’s drunken wrath; it had been the one mercy that gods had shown them. But with one storm, that mercy was wiped away. Vali and his small crew huddled under the paltry shelter of their sail, which had of necessity been too quickly crafted and dressed. While the wind and rain howled around them and the storm sank its claws into their vessel, Vali knew the true end of his hope.
Cursing his selfishness, he could not help but entertain one last shred of a wish: that he would find Brenna waiting for him in the next world, holding their son. His wish should have been that she would yet live; it was wrong to wish her dead. But in Åke’s ruthless, angry clutches, with no help coming, he believed she would be better off dead.
A wind howled low, through the tunnel of their shelter, and then caught the sail, heaving the boat up, nearly clear of the water. Then the sail was rent from side to side, and they were dropped back into the churn.
Lightning flashed and showed Jakob, who’d stood to try to catch the loose piece of sail, going overboard with a cry.
He was barely a man; he’d had no chance to make his story. Without thinking, Vali followed after him, diving into the frigid water. It was too black, too roiling, too loud for any of his senses to help him find the boy, and yet he dove and rose and swam, closing his mind from its need to see or hear, feeling a sense of clarity in the senseless search.
He no longer knew even where the boat was, but he swam, feeling, with each stroke, each dive, the sea weigh him down more heavily. At least his death would be purposeful and valorous.
Then his hands caught cloth. He pulled and had hold of the slim and solid body of a young man. Jakob. Disoriented and unclear which way was up, he went still and allowed himself to float, hoping that his clothes were not soaked beyond buoyancy.
He felt the direction of his rise and swam that way, holding Jakob in one arm and kicking with all his might. As he broke the surface with a great gasp for air, the rain pummeled him about the face, so hard he almost could not tell the difference between the sea and the air. Then lightning lit up the night and showed him the boat. He swam for it, feeling his muscles—weakened from days with little sustenance or sleep, fighting against the weight of the water—trying to fail, and he turned his mind away from physical matters and set his intent on his mission. This was his way in battle: to become something other than human, something beyond the limits of his body. To be Úlfheðinn.
The night was black again, and he felt Jakob being pulled up from his grasp before he realized that he had reached the boat. Once freed from his burden, Vali felt Ægir, the sea jötunn, tighten his grip around his legs and pull.
He gave in to it, closing his eyes against the black night, bringing up the bright image of his shieldmaiden, on the bank of the stream, frowning down at her reflection. Something in her aspect then had told him everything about the depth of her loneliness and the great capacity of her heart. He thought he had loved her since that day.
He knew he had.
Perhaps she would be waiting for him. If not, then he would wait for her, with their son in his arms.
As his lungs would no longer be denied and sucked in water as if it were air, as consciousness left him, he had the feeling that Ægir grabbed hold of his shoulders and dragged him away.
To Valhalla, he hoped.
~oOo~
He woke choking and vomited sea water over the bottom of the boat. Then his lungs forced him to heave in air in rough gulps. When he had his wits about him, he looked around, but the storm still raged, and he could see nothing until a blast of lightning brought his situation into stark relief. Olga had Jakob’s head in her lap. Orm sat near Vali’s head.
“Does he live?” he asked Olga. His voice sounded strange and harsh in his head, and no one responded, so he knew he had not been loud enough over the storm. He tried again, forcing a shout from his aching throat and chest. “Does he live?!”
In another flash, he saw Olga smiling at him. Such a strange thing, to see a beautiful woman smile in the midst of such angry havoc.
“Yes!” she called back. “You saved him!”
For what? he wondered. He had not thought before he’d jumped. Perhaps it had been a cruel thing he’d done, saving the boy for a harsher death.
As he himself had been saved, apparently. “Who pulled me out?” He asked Orm, who was nearest by.
Another bolt of lightning showed Orm frowning. “No one. None of us could have. We thought we’d lost you, and then you pulled yourself into the boat.”
But that was impossible. Even in the storm, the wale was too far from the surf
ace of the water, and he had been in soaked furs and leathers, exhausted and malnourished.
He thought of that moment of release, feeling Ægir pulling him away.
Perhaps it had not been Ægir taking him, but someone sending him back. One of the gods? Brenna?
Vali did not know. But he believed it to be meaningful. He should have died. He had not been saved by his crew, and he could not have saved himself, not alone.
Even as the storm raged, heaving the small boat over a foaming sea, Vali felt hope rekindle in his chest.
~oOo~
God's Eye (The Northwomen Sagas #1) Page 25
