Maidensong

by Mia Marlowe

  When the trencher was empty, Bjorn wiped his mouth on his sleeve. “Did you get enough to eat? Is there anything else you’d like? Some honeyed fruit?”

  “If you meant to show me favor in this, you failed miserably,” Rika said, her jaw clenched. “When I was a little girl, I watched a man try to gentle a kestrel he’d captured by hand-feeding it. Now I know how that hawk felt.”

  Bjorn shook his head. “You’ve missed my purpose entirely. I want to assure you that you will lack nothing with me. I will treat you well.” He tipped back the horn and drained the last of the ale. “I had not thought of it, but now that you mention it, that is the best way to tame a wild hawk. So, how did the man fare with the kestrel?”

  “The bird bit his thumb off.” One russet eyebrow arched. The hint of a smile played about her lips.

  Bjorn’s laugh started in his belly, rumbling and deep.

  * * *

  For a blink, Rika was tempted to laugh with him. He seemed not to take himself too seriously and she appreciated that in a man. But then she remembered that he considered himself her master, and that was something she took very seriously indeed. She wouldn’t banter with Bjorn the Black or even be pleasant if she could help it.

  From the corner of her eye, Rika noticed Lady Astryd’s face growing redder by the moment. She was obviously piqued that Rika was sitting at the main table, even though it was only in the role of a servant.

  “Husband,” Astryd said, her voice forced and loud. “Did you know that our hall has been graced with the presence of a renowned skald? Come, Rika.” Her sly smile would have melted butter. “Give us a bit of the Havamal like you did for me earlier today.”

  Gunnar looked at Rika expectantly. A skald in residence added to the reputation of any hall. “Is this true, little brother? Have you taken a skald captive?”

  Bjorn leaned back on his bench and gave Rika a questioning look. “That’s what she claims, but I’ve yet to hear her recite. Judging from my own experience, I’d have to say she’s more scold than skald.”

  Rika frowned at him, but he just smiled back at her, clearly enjoying her discomfort.

  Astryd’s blue eyes went dark. “Show us your gift, girl,” the jarl’s wife urged, running her finger along the thin leather at her neck where the amber hammer rested. It was a not-so-subtle reminder to Rika that she had nothing the Lady of Sogna could not take from her. “Something from the Havamal, if you please.”

  Panicked, Rika looked at Bjorn. The smile left his lips and he reached out to stroke her arm.

  “Your choice,” he said in a husky whisper. “I won’t make you perform if you don’t want to. Not ever. Say the word and I’ll end this.”

  Rika squeezed her eyes shut. Why the Havamal? Why couldn't that horrible woman ask for anything else but that? She couldn’t turn down a request to recite, but they’d never believe she was a skald now. She drew a deep breath, taking the air in all the way down to her hip bones just as Magnus had taught her. It cleared her mind and helped her focus.

  Then she heard him inside her head.

  Chapter 5

  It was Magnus’s voice, rolling and clear, declaiming the most dramatic piece of the sayings of Odin in full force. Then, just as clearly in her mind she heard Magnus repeat the advice he’d given her hundreds of times: ‘Rika, you must believe that you have power over everyone within the sound of your voice.’

  She could do it. She had to.

  In a fluid motion, Rika stood. She lifted one arm in a gesture that suggested she had tapped into a powerful source from above. The other she outstretched toward the crowded hall. She waited. She knew she was just a thrall in a shabby, ill-fitting garment, but in her mind, she saw herself robed in silk and gorgeously arrayed in a fabulous multihued cape.

  The skaldic gift—Magnus had always assured her she had it. Being a skald was more than possessing a prodigious memory and a pleasant voice for recitation with skill. The best of the Nordic bards were also blessed with the ability to crystallize an image and send it to their listeners so that it formed in their minds as well. If she could only trust herself enough, open herself enough, her audience would see what she saw and she would feel what they feel. It was time, she decided, to see if the mantle of Magnus Silver-Throat had indeed passed to her.

  Whether the men in the hall saw her as she imagined herself, she couldn’t say, but one by one the raucous voices fell silent.

  “Hear, O People of Sogna!” Her voice, low and musical, filled the great hall with a power that surprised even her. She inhaled deeply and went on. “I know an ash tree, whose outstretched limbs and deep roots pass through all the nine worlds, and Yggdrasil is its name.”

  A low murmur rippled through the hall. She’d struck a chord by starting with the unifying Life of the World Tree, the life that binds all the spheres together.

  “Come with me, and we will journey along the mighty branches of the World Tree to far-off lands,” she urged. Almost to a man, her audience leaned forward.

  “We start in Asgard, that holiest place, home of the gods and of Valhalla, hope of every valiant heart, where the brave may ever live in joy.” She caressed the words and thought she sensed the pulse of her audience ticking upward. “The All-Father joins us there. Odin, the One-Eyed, the wisest of all. He marches beside us, desirous of bearing us company on our journey through the nine worlds, for he has an appointment, a grim task ahead of him.”

  Brilliant as a lightning bolt and sharp as a blade, she felt the connection. Beyond the bond of a performer and her audience, the mystic umbilical bridged between them. Rika felt a delicious shiver tickle down their spines, and if any in the hall were still eating, they laid their knives on the benches, the better to listen.

  “Next we fare to Aelfham, where all manner of pleasure abounds and the Fair Folk who dwell there are gilded with light. But human hearts can only bear so much exquisite joy. Our stay must be brief, but as we leave that enchanted world, the ethereal music of the Light Elves echoes in our ears.” Rika's voice floated over the hall, dulcet-toned and airy. From the corner of her eye, she saw Gunnar’s jaw sag with desire.

  “Odin urges us to haste as we stop in Vanaheim, home of the All-Father’s brother-god, Frey. Mighty god of strangled sacrifice, Frey, the Horned One, knows that all life springs from death, just as a seed must die before the abundance of harvest can ever be.”

  Solemn nods greeted this pronouncement.

  “The branches of Yggdrasil take us to the fiery edge of Muspel, first of all worlds, but we dare not enter that bright, hot place. The border is guarded by one with a flaming sword, who waits for the dreadful day when he is loosed to burn the whole world with fire unending.”

  Rika scanned the sea of rapt faces. Did they feel the heat and smell the sulfur belching from that white-hot sphere of molten rock?

  “The thick trunk of Yggdrasil runs through the beautiful realm of Midgard, this very Middle Earth, the homely land of all the races of men,” Rika said simply, as her audience relaxed a bit with the familiar. “Midgard, where the lives of mortals run their course and each man’s mettle is tried by his fate.”

  Rika lowered her arms and shifted her stance as the mood of her tale took a darker turn.

  “Odin warns us past the land of Utgard, hidden high in the sky-mountains, where giants and trolls burrow in foul caves bestrewn with the bones of unwary men. We shun the evil world of Svartaelfham, home of the maggot-bitten Dark Elves. And let us not wander into Hel, that cold hall reserved for the dead by sickness and old age. The welcome there is Scarcity and the dish served at nattmal is Hunger.”

  She pursed her lips, and slanted her eyes at her audience. “For tonight, Odin has doings in Niflheim, where ice-bonds lock the limbs and all lust is stilled in nothingness.”

  Cold fire flashed in her eyes as she thrust her hands toward them. “Hear the sayings of Odin as he hung upon the World Tree, Yggdrasil’s frozen root in the dark domain of eternal winter. Hear the words of the Wise One as he plunde
red Niflheim to bring us mortals the secret of runes. I give you," she paused, "the Havamal."

  Every eye in the hall was trained upon her, transported to the misty realm of Niflheim, that accursed place of ice and shadows.

  “On the windswept Tree, did I hang for nine nights.”

  She started softly, wringing every drop of meaning from each syllable, each percussive consonant and sibilance. Rika’s lips moved, but the crowd seemed to hear Odin, the All-Father describing his own sacrifice in order to bring the secret of runes to his people.

  “With spear was I pierced

  And offered to Odin

  Myself to myself

  On that Tree

  Whose roots

  No man can know.”

  Her voice grew stronger, rasping with agony, the tension in her arms showing how the frigid bonds had held the Wise One fast.

  “No bread was I given. No drink from the horn.”

  Her audience shifted in their seats guiltily. Every full belly in the hall churned at the thought of Odin’s hunger and thirst.

  “Into the depths I peered…”

  Rika’s eyes widened in terror. She seemed to actually see Niflheim and the runic symbols etched on icy slabs before her, enshrouded with ghostly phantoms of mist. She heard several gasps around the hall as her listeners caught the same horrific image.

  “The runes, I grasped ...”

  She clutched at the invisible lettering, her voice edged with hysteria.

  “Screaming, did I grasp them—”

  She jerked violently and stutter-stepped backward half a pace, as if toppling from a branch on the World Tree in that icy realm far away.

  “And then to Midgard bearing treasure for men, did I tumble back.”

  She whisked her audience with her along the gnarled trunk of Yggdrasil, back to warmth and light in one blinding moment. Rika finished in a whisper that circled the hall and echoed off the hardened leather shields hanging on the walls.

  Silence hovered over the hall so potent that no one wanted to break the spell. Rika had taken them on a dizzying sojourn through the nine worlds, to Niflheim and back, and her listeners could scarcely draw a breath.

  “By all the gods,” Bjorn swore softly. “Rika, you are a skald.”

  She turned to Bjorn and gave him the first real smile that had graced her lips since she’d discovered Magnus face down in the straw.

  “Rika, Rika.” Jorand started the chant and a couple of the nearby fighting men joined in. The cry was taken up around the hall, accompanied by scores of fists pounding on the benches. “Rika, Rika.”

  She raised her hand to silence them before starting on the Saga of Sigurd. The joy of her art sang in her veins, flooding her with power and charging her body with so much energy, it seemed to flash from her fingertips as she gestured.

  Bjorn leaned forward, the better to watch her face. He’d never seen the like. And to think he’d believed he could take this woman captive. As he listened to her weave another spell with words, he realized that he was the one who was in real danger of being captured.

  Chapter 6

  He was drowning. Again and again, the waves closed over his head, dragging him down. He gulped for air, but got a mouthful of brackish water instead. Yanking off the mail shirt, he kicked back to the surface. The tips of his fingers bumped something solid. Ice. Panic rose like bile in the back of his throat.

  Bubbles escaped his lips and skittered along the underside of the ice sheet, seeking a way to the world of light and air. He followed them; searching for the opening he must have slipped through. The freezing water stung his eyes. He pounded the ice with his fist, but it was too thick.

  His lungs burned, screaming for oxygen. They threatened to burst out of his chest, red and pulsing like a gory blood-eagle. He’d seen done it once, a man’s lungs ripped through his ribs and spread out like spongy wings across his dying back. A vicious death reserved for the vicious crime of patricide. Now he knew what it felt like.

  He began to sink, his sodden clothing pulling him into oblivion. The frigid water slowed his movements and lack of air disconnected his mind from his flailing limbs. He was bound for Hel, with no chance of Valhalla. An ignominious death by drowning would not lure the Valkyries to bear him to glory. His eyes closed as he stopped struggling and accepted his fate.

  Suddenly, he twirled in the water and he snapped open his eyes to see what had disturbed the current around him. A flash of green scales and cold, reptilian eyes swished by him. Jormungand, the World Serpent. The monster turned in the dark water and headed straight for him, gigantic maw gaping, ridged with a thousand flesh-tearing teeth.

  He used the last bit of air in his lungs to scream.

  * * *

  The strangled cry woke Rika from a deep sleep, and in the dark, it took her a moment to remember where she was. Bjorn the Black’s bed. But surely the piteous sound she’d heard couldn’t have come from that beast.

  “No!” He thrashed about, tearing through the furs and blankets that made up his bedding. One of his hands found her at the far edge and pulled her in close.

  Rika realized he was still asleep and she shook him with no gentleness at all. “Wake up,” she said sharply. “You’re dreaming.”

  Bjorn jerked, chest heaving, holding her as tightly as if she were a life rope. He inhaled deeply. Rika felt his heart galloping in his chest.

  There was nothing amorous in his embrace, so Rika didn’t struggle. His body shuddered once. The fearsome raider was more like a small, frightened boy now, and she wondered what phantasmal image could’ve reduced him to this weakened state.

  “A dream,” he repeated. “It was just a dream.”

  “Do you want to tell me about it?”

  “No,” he said with force. “I don’t need to relive it again.”

  She felt his barely suppressed tremble and, for just a moment, she pitied him. “Sometimes, when Ketil has a bad dream, it helps him to tell me about it,” she rasped.

  “That’s all I need,” Bjorn muttered. “Now you rank me with a half-wit.”

  Rika pulled away from him and sat up. “My brother is a kind and gentle person, a pure spirit who wouldn’t hurt anyone. The day hasn’t dawned when you’re good enough to be ‘ranked’ with him.” Her voice had a raw edge to it.

  “I suspect you don’t like me. You’ve been subtle about it, but it’s beginning to sink in.” He sounded weary. “What’s the matter with your voice?”

  “It’s just tired. I’ve never told so many tales in one night before, but they wouldn’t let me stop.”

  She had recited for hours, sagas and eddas one after the other, the long room alternately ringing with laughter or gone silent with hushed expectancy. Bjorn must have seen her sway on her feet from exhaustion because he’d finally stopped the storytelling by lifting her over his shoulder and carrying her bottom first out of the great hall.

  Once they were in the privacy of his small room, she’d protested that she wouldn’t stay with him. She’d be no man’s bed-slave. He pointed out that her only other recourse as a thrall was to sleep in the main hall with all of Gunnar’s retainers. When she realized that her choice was fighting off fifty men or just one, Bjorn won the argument.

  “A drink would help,” she said, massaging the soft skin at her throat. Rika pushed back the bedclothes and started to get up, feeling her way.

  “I don’t think that’s such a good idea.” Bjorn swung his long legs over the side. Rika heard him grope for his fire-steel, flint and tinder. He struck a spark and lit the wick of a small clay lamp. The faint light glowed on his face as he turned back to her. “Not dressed as you are now, anyway.”

  The scratchy tunic Astryd had forced on her made her skin miserable, so he’d given her one of his own. It was soft and spacious, and even though the cloth retained a bit of his scent, she was grateful to have it. But it hung only to her mid-thigh. Rika caught him eyeing her bare calves, so she pulled her long legs up under the fabric and hugged her k
nees to her chest. Bjorn was right. If she ventured into the hall where the men were sleeping dressed like this, no one would believe her if she cried rape.

  “I’ll fetch you some ale,” Bjorn offered as he tugged up his leggings. He took the lamp to light his way and slipped out of the small room.

  Huddled in the dark, she tried to puzzle out this bewildering man. Bjorn was a contradiction with feet. He was gruff and tender, fearsome and frightened, swaggering bully and willing servant. How was she to make sense of someone who blew so hot and cold? She never knew from one moment to the next which face he’d present to her. He made her feel strangely off-balance.

  It was easy for her to hate the hardened warrior. The small frightened boy was something else altogether.

  He came back with a long horn, brimming with the dark liquid that Rika thought tasted like warm bread.

  “Oh, you’ve brought far too much,” she protested. There was a small clay night jar in the corner of his room, but she couldn’t bring herself to use it, and a trip to the privy was out for the same reason that she couldn’t get her own ale. She’d have to wait till morning.

  “Drink what you can, and I’ll finish the rest. Maybe the ale will help me sleep.” He held the horn out to her. “Please gods, a sleep without dreams,” he said under his breath.

  She took a small sip and let the familiar bite of the ale steal down her throat. It soothed her inflamed vocal cords and warmed her belly.

  “Thank you. That helps.” She sipped once more and handed the horn back to him.

  He took a large gulp, his dark eyes never leaving hers. “We’re both wide awake,” he said, lifting the horn slightly. “We need to finish this before I can lay it down. How shall we pass the time, I wonder?” He arched a brow at her as he sipped the ale this time.