Soul's Fire (The Northwomen Sagas Book 3)

by Susan Fanetti

  And she made a choice. She didn’t let herself think more of it. She saw what was before her and acted.

  “Let go, Leofric.”

  His eyes flew open, widening despite the tense furrow of his brow.

  She bent forward and began to rock on him again. With her mouth on his, she whispered, “Let go.” When he remained tense, she said it again. “Let go. Let go.”

  Finally convinced, he threw his arms around her, flipped them over, and pounded into her with wild abandon. He completed quickly, with a roar of utter ecstasy and satisfaction, and Astrid almost believed she’d felt his seed fill her.

  What would it mean to her to bear his child? Who would she be?

  As he dropped, exhausted, onto her, she pushed those thoughts away and held him close. This new world required a new self. She would have to find her way and find her strength.

  When he’d gained his breath again, he gathered her close and lifted her onto his knees, setting her over his thighs. Staring up into her eyes, he brushed her hair from her face, and then simply gazed at her.

  There was so much emotion in his eyes—love and relief and hope—that she could almost see her way in their light.

  ~oOo~

  Astrid cocked her head at the small hut with a thatched roof. It was like the houses of the little villages in Mercuria, where the peasants lived, and much like the peasant homes in Estland as well. But it was deep in the wood, all on its own, with no land to farm or animals to raise.

  “This place, it is what?”

  Leofric swung off his grey horse and grinned up at her. “Privacy.”

  She didn’t know that word. “What is that?”

  “We will be alone here.”

  He took the reins of her horse, a smaller bay mare that he called a ‘palfrey,’ and held out his hand. She ignored it and dismounted. He always offered his hand to help her from her horse, and she always ignored it and helped herself. She’d had to learn how to dismount gracefully around skirts—she now had a wardrobe full of dresses with split skirts and leather breeches to wear under them—but now she managed it easily.

  She adjusted the fur-trimmed cape she wore against what they called cold here. They didn’t know cold here.

  “It is a house?”

  “A hunting cabin. A place to be warm and dry when we’re too far from the castle. No servants, no guards, no one but us. Go and see while I put up the horses.”

  There was a small structure at the side of the hut, well back into a copse of trees. Leofric left Astrid at the hut’s door and led the horses back to what must have been a small stable.

  She grabbed the iron hasp and opened the door. It creaked on stiff hinges; it seemed to have been a while since anyone had used this cabin.

  Inside, that became more clearly true. A light film of dust lay over everything, and the air bore a hint of the dank odor of a place left too long without life. But there was a full rack of wood near a deep stone fireplace, and when she pulled the covers from the furnishings, she found them to be cozy and sturdy. Four deep chairs clustered before the fireplace, a bed nestled into a far corner, and a solid table and four chairs stood near the door. An assortment of cooking tools hung on the wall and from the ceiling over the table.

  Not like the castle, with its gilt and brocade, the furnishings of this hut were more humble and more pleasing for it.

  She opened the windows and let light and air in. Leofric’s tolerance for the cold was nothing like her own, so she knew there’d be a fire soon, and he’d want the windows closed, but for now, she smiled as motes of dust danced in the sunbeams stretched over the rough plank floor.

  The door creaked open, and Leofric came in, his expression brilliant with smug pleasure. On the table, he set the panniers holding a meal of wine, bread, and cheese, and then he came to her and hooked his arms around her.

  “Have you looked around?”

  She swiveled her head to and fro and saw, she thought, all the cabin had to offer. “Ja. Is more?”

  He wiggled his brows and let her go. Against one wall was a large chest of heavy, dark wood. She’d taken it for some kind of storage, possibly linens. He went to it and opened it, then reached into its depth. From her vantage, Astrid could only see more dark wood.

  When he stood, he was holding two unstrung recurve bows and two quivers full of neatly fletched arrows.

  He spun to her on his heel, with a flourish, his grin absurdly smug. “If you want meat tonight, we’ll have to hunt it. Can you shoot?”

  Not every word he’d said was one she knew, but over these months, she’d become adept at filling in the blanks and working backward from her understanding of the context to a grasp of the words themselves. He was asking her if she could shoot, and telling her that they were hunting today. Her whole body began to tremble. She went to him and took one of the bows into her shaking hand.

  It was the first time she’d held a weapon since the day she’d killed the guard and stolen his spear.

  “Astrid? If you don’t know, I’ll teach you.”

  “I know.” Peering into the chest, she saw a coil of gut string and a basket of tools and supplies. She gathered it all up and went to the table. Then she sat down, shed her leather gloves, and got to work stringing the bow.

  She would show him how well she knew.

  With that grin on his face like it had frozen there, Leofric joined her and prepared his own bow.

  ~oOo~

  Her cloak was made of deep crimson wool, but her dress was dark green and would make good camouflage, so she left the cloak behind and went into the winter wood. Leofric protested that she would be cold, but she only shook her head and strapped the quiver to her back.

  A bow. Not her weapon of war, but one she had used all her life, even before she’d picked up a shield. Since it had been months, and her body thrummed with excitement and made her hands want to shake, she took a practice shot, aiming at a knot in a tree at about a hundred paces away.

  The arrow struck true, with a thump, and Leofric lifted his eyebrows at her.

  “Mayhap I’ll wait here and make the hearth, and you will bag us our meal.”

  Feeling a happiness that wanted to burst through her skin, Astrid tipped her head at him and smiled. “If you like that.”

  “Mercy!” He laughed and caught her in his arms. “My warrior woman has learned to be coy. No, my love. I wouldn’t miss seeing you bring down a great stag with an angry look and a single arrow.”

  She didn’t know what ‘coy’ meant, or what a ‘stag’ was, but it didn’t matter.

  ~oOo~

  That evening, after a meal of wine, bread, cheese, and venison taken from the buck she’d killed—though Leofric hadn’t even tried, which had made her punch him in the arm—they lay curled together on the floor before the hearth, bare and breathless and basking in an afterglow warmer than the fire itself.

  He’d pulled all the furs and pillows from another chest, and the cushions from the chairs, and made for them a cozy nest. Now, Astrid reclined against his chest, holding one of his arms to her, under her breasts. His other hand combed lazily through her loose hair.

  “Advent begins on Sunday,” he murmured and kissed her head.

  She looked back and up at him. “What is this?”

  “It’s a holy time of preparation. A time of fasting before we celebrate the birth of Christ.”

  “Fasting?”

  “We eat little and revel not at all. I won’t be able to be with you in the nights. My father turns his back often regarding us, but he’ll not ignore that.”

  The king. Though she still hated him and trusted him not at all, Astrid understood his power and her need, so she was learning to be in the same room with him, on those rare occasions when Leofric said she must, and to give him signs of respect, though she had none for him.

  They, in turn, had all learned to keep the bishop away from her. That man, she would not make nice for. That man, she never wanted to think of until the day she could kil
l him. But Leofric had brought up his god, and with his god came the bishop in her mind. She closed her eyes and shoved the image away.

  Leofric had given her this perfect day and night because he had ill news to break with her. She focused on that, understanding that she would be all but alone while Leofric was on his knees in supplication to his god.

  With a sigh, she returned her attention to the fire. “Your god no like life much well.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “He wants you have shame and need always.”

  For a long moment, he was quiet, his breathing deep and his fingers moving through her hair. “Perhaps He does. What are your gods like?”

  He’d never asked before, and the question sent a spike of loneliness through her heart. It was his season of ‘advent,’ but in her world, the solstice was almost upon them, and the season of jul. It was a time of revelry and hope, a sign that the darkest part of winter was coming to a close and the sun would return.

  “Our gods, we not kill and hang on wood. They live. They fight and…festa…feast?” She looked back, and he nodded. “Feast and…knulla.”

  Not knowing the word in his tongue, she slapped her hand between her legs and thrust her hips with a grunt, and he chuckled, comprehending.

  “They love and hate,” she continued. “Make war and peace. They live.”

  “How are they different from us, then?”

  She thought about that, and then shrugged, seeing the simple answer. “They are better.”

  Again, he was quiet, and then his arms snaked tightly around her and pulled her close. “Perhaps they are.”

  ~oOo~

  Leofric’s people celebrated something like jul as well. At the end of their fasting, near the solstice, they feasted, celebrating the birth of their god’s son, who was also their god himself. The same god whose same son hung naked and bleeding on crosses everywhere.

  Astrid found that confusing and perverse, but her own gods did inexplicable things, too, so she set it aside as a strange god’s strange ways.

  Seemingly everyone who wasn’t a servant—or her—was always engaged in prayer and introspection during this ‘advent,’ so she saw Leofric only brief times in each day, and rarely anyone else at all of note, except Elfleda, who made a point to visit every day. In this new room higher in the castle, Astrid had other attendants, and Elfleda came as a visitor, who could sit and talk.

  She’d taken to going out on her own, riding her bay mare into the woods. Leofric said he wished she wouldn’t go alone, but he wouldn’t go with her, so she went. He gave her a dagger to keep at her belt, for safety, and it was the first weapon she could claim as her own in this place.

  She was looking forward to the feast, and the end of this silly fasting season, when they all went several whole days in every week without anything but water, even though the castle larders swelled with plenty. Astrid was required to fast as well, if only for the fact that there was no food or drink prepared on those days.

  Despite her weeks of starvation in the black place, or perhaps because of them, the fasting took its toll on her, and on some mornings, she felt nearly as weak as she had in the dark. As the weeks wore on, she was angered to find herself too tired to ride, and then she did little more than roam the castle halls until that was too tiring, and she went to bed.

  By the morning of the feast, when she was awakened by Leofric sliding naked into bed with her, Astrid was sad, exhausted, and ill.

  He pulled her into his arms and kissed her head. “Elfleda tells me you’ve been unwell.”

  She fussed in his embrace, trying to get the voluminous sleeping gown unwound from her legs—and to hide the shocking fact that tears had surged behind her eyes as he’d wrapped his arms around her. Was she so weak that his mere presence brought her an elation worthy of tears?

  “Tired only. Days too many with no food.” The idea of food didn’t really appeal, however. She shuddered. Saliva filled her mouth, and she swallowed it back, feeling unsettled.

  He chuckled and squeezed her more tightly. “I’m sorry.”

  He didn’t sound sorry, and she huffed.

  “Astrid, Elfleda also tells me you haven’t had your blood during the fast.”

  She’d come from a world of little privacy, where people ate, drank, slept, rutted, everything in company. But she’d never had anyone so deeply involved in her personal rhythms before. Other people here knew as much as she did about the workings of her body. So bizarre it was that people who would cover themselves head to toe and pretend that they didn’t have bodily workings or needs at all would so freely share the results.

  Apparently, her attendants knew her body more than she did—because she hadn’t thought about her blood lately. She’d had it twice since Leofric had been spending inside her, and she’d let the question fade away. And now it was again at the fore.

  Was she with child?

  Her mother was a healer, but not a midwife, and in any case, Astrid hadn’t had the relationship with her to have been taught about such things. As a woman, she’d not had the interest to seek out knowledge about such things. She’d seen childbirth, and it was bloody and full of screaming. But she knew little about what came before, except that a woman’s blood stopped while the child was inside her—and seemingly came out all in one rush with the child.

  Her mouth flooded again, and she spun out of Leofric’s arms. While the room whirled around her, she grabbed the pot from the floor and heaved into it. The day before had been a fast day, so there wasn’t anything but a wad of foam to lose.

  He was behind her, leaning over her, stroking her back, pulling her hair back and holding it. “My love, my love, my love,” he murmured, sprinkling kisses over her shoulders and neck. “My love.”

  She was with child. She would be a mother. Nevermore a shieldmaiden.

  As that truth finally settled with permanence in her heart, the tears that she’d denied earlier surged again. Astrid dropped the pot, laid her head on the bed, and wept.

  ~oOo~

  Later in the day, when she felt stronger and more in control of her yawing emotions, Astrid walked, for the first time, into the great hall. Vastly different from the great halls of Geitland or Karlsa, or any other place of home, this was no long, cozy building filled with people and animals alike. This was vaster even than the hall in the Estland castle, and felt cold and stark to her, despite the great fires and festooned dark greens, and the long tables heaped with rich food and surrounded by fine people in beautiful garments.

  On Leofric’s arm, wearing a new gown of heavy, ruby-red silk, without a leather corset—but yet with her breeches and boots concealed underneath—she kept her spine straight and her head high while a legion of richly clad men and women stood and watched her walk across the front of the hall, up onto a higher part, like a block, where a smaller and much grander table was elaborately dressed. It faced the rest of the hall.

  She could see that many of these people were whispering and trying not to show it. She knew she was a scandal, a source of prurient gossip—the wild creature the king’s son had claimed and tamed. One foreign to all their ways, a savage, an animal, a beast, who’d been tortured in the dungeon and was now wearing silks and rubies and being led to the king’s table on the arm of a prince.

  Her grasp of the language was strong now and grew stronger every day. She knew enough words to understand what was said. So she smiled as Leofric led her to stand behind a chair, and she sought out those faces whose condemnation hadn’t been so well concealed. She made sure to meet their gaze full on and hold it. None could withstand her.

  Music played while they’d entered, a kind of music with no strong beat, played on instruments made of strings that sounded to her like cats crying.

  Eadric stood there already, as did Leofric’s friend Dunstan and his young wife, Winifred. Astrid liked Eadric well enough, and he seemed to accept her. He was patient talking with her and helped her learn some of the language.

  She�
�d met Leofric’s friend and his wife a few times but didn’t know them well. Her impression of Dunstan was good—he was handsome and had a good humor. His wife was simply quiet. Like so many rich women here, she seemed good only at wearing clothes.

  Astrid was not so good at wearing clothes. The bodice of the dress had no give at all, and her arms felt tied nearly to her sides. And her head itched with all the pins.

  Elfleda had insisted on weaving dark leaves and rubies into her hair. She’d thought it silly, and had only conceded because her friend seemed so intent, but now she saw that all the women were dressed in such a way.