Maidensong

by Mia Marlowe

  Bjorn narrowed his eyes and studied the chessboard. Treachery? Why would he dream about that? Then suddenly he saw an opening on the game board. She’d left her king exposed. He whipped his queen out and moved her into position.

  Bjorn leaned back, triumphant. “Check and mate.”

  Chapter 13

  “Parry and thrust,” Ornolf bellowed as the blades rang with the force of their meeting. Bjorn backed across the compound, his body balanced and loose. If the wound in his thigh troubled him, no one could tell from his deft movements.

  “Now turn and upward thrust,” Ornolf yelled.

  Bjorn whirled and jabbed his sword point back under his arm toward his uncle. It was fortunate that the seasoned warrior knew the thrust was coming and jumped out of the way.

  “Ja, that’s it.” Ornolf swiped the perspiration from his gleaming pate.

  “Ingenious.” Bjorn turned back around and clamped a hand on his uncle’s shoulder. “First you distract your enemy by showing him your unprotected back and then he meets your sword tip with his gut. The Arabs must be a cunning race.”

  “That they are.” Ornolf panted with the exertion of showing Bjorn the new sword tricks he’d picked up in the south.

  Farouk-Azziz, Ornolf’s Arab trading partner, was also an accomplished fighter, as merchants frequently had to be in a land where caravans were considered easy pickings by the desert bandits. The Arab enjoyed mock sparring with Ornolf, who matched him for age if not for size. Northmen towered over the populace where ever they roamed. Still, the dark little man was cunning with his long curved blade and generous enough of spirit to share his knowledge with his large Nordic friend.

  “Always remember you must to turn back quickly to defend against a last blow,” Uncle Ornolf said. “A dying man can kill you just as easily as a healthy one.”

  “Little brother!” Bjorn heard Gunnar calling him from across the yard.

  “Thank you, Uncle. I’ll remember.” As he and Ornolf ambled toward Gunnar, Bjorn cast about for a safe subject of conversation with his brother. Bjorn had no intention of apologizing for his defense of Rika, even to the jarl, so they’d effectively ignored each other for weeks. “How is my pretty little niece today?”

  Gunnar’s face screwed into a scowl that suggested he’d just swallowed bad herring. “Probably puking and soiling every cloth within her range. I suppose she’ll be useful in about thirteen years when I can marry her off, but for now I’m keeping my distance.” He was still furious that Astryd had presented him with a girl-child. “And besides, she looks like a gnome.”

  “All babies look like that at first,” Bjorn said charitably. “Rika says little Dagmar will be more comely with time.” And with hair, he thought, less charitably.

  “Rika, ja,” Gunnar said. “You’ve hit upon the very thing I wanted to talk to you about.” He put a brotherly arm around Bjorn’s shoulders and led him away from the yard where the fighting men were taking their exercise.

  “What about her?” Bjorn asked suspiciously, his hands balled into fists. He wasn’t yet ready to discuss her with Gunnar. He could still see Rika’s wild eyes and hear his brother’s voice hoarse with lust.

  “Is it true what I’ve heard? She refuses to bed you?” Gunnar lowered his voice.

  “Where did you hear that?”

  “Never mind. A jarl has ways of knowing things,” Gunnar said. “Is she still a maiden?”

  Bjorn was tempted to lie. It was none of Gunnar’s business, but he’d never kept anything from his brother. He saw no reason to start now. Bjorn’s shoulders sagged. “Ja, she is.”

  “What’s wrong with you, little brother?”

  “Just because I won’t force a woman doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with me.” Bjorn shook off Gunnar’s arm. “I don’t see you leading Astryd around by the nose.”

  “A wife is another matter entirely, trust me on that.” Gunnar sighed. “Now a thrall, her wishes shouldn’t concern you particularly.”

  “But they do,” Bjorn admitted. “In truth, brother, I would marry her.”

  “Marry? Now it’s certain that Rika is not just a gifted storyteller, but a sorceress as well,” Gunnar said, clearly alarmed. “We know almost nothing about her. She could easily be a practitioner of seid craft.” He made the sign against evil as he mentioned that most malicious of dark arts.

  “That’s ridiculous,” Bjorn said. “Magic can’t account for me wanting to wed her.”

  “She’s bewitched you with some runic spell. How can you even think of making her your wife?” Gunnar shook his head. “She’s a thrall and your bed-slave. That woman is meant for one thing only—your pleasure, and believe me when I tell you that marriage is not conducive to a man’s pleasure.”

  “It’s like to be my only hope.” Bjorn grinned wryly.

  “But consider what you do to the house of Sogna, to marry so far beneath you? By Loki’s hairy toes, she’s a thrall, little brother.”

  “Only because I made her so,” Bjorn said. “Actually, I never met a woman who believes herself so far above me.” An image of Rika in the bathhouse, naked and defiant, brought a smile to his lips. “She may just be right in that.”

  “Hmm. Do you know what I think?” Gunnar slid his tongue over his teeth. “I think you should free her.”

  “Free her?” Bjorn backed a step away. “Then I’d lose her entirely.”

  “I don’t think so. I’ve seen her watching you when she thinks you don’t see. There’s a look on her face that I wish a woman would cast toward me.”

  Bjorn glared at his brother. Did the jarl still wish Rika would look his way? He suspected Gunnar thought the fiery redhead would easily be worth Astryd’s ire. Yet Gunnar’s words gave him hope. Rika held herself aloof from him, but did she secretly want him?

  “You think she’d have me if she were free?” The tone of his voice was pathetically hopeful, even to his own ears. Bjorn winced at his words.

  “Ja,” Gunnar assured him. “If she were a free woman, she’d fall into your arms like a ripe plum. It seems to me that she only withholds herself now because she chafes under the iron collar. As a skald, she’s a proud woman. She’s like a fine kestrel that needs to fly free, but will be happy enough to settle back on your wrist of her own choice.”

  First Torvald and now his own brother. Bjorn had been told that Rika needed to be free by no less than two men. Three, if he counted the counsel of his own heart.

  “You’re right, Gunnar,” he said. “I’ll free her tonight after nattmal.”

  * * *

  “Tell it again, Rika,” Ketil urged as he lugged most of the weight of the large bucket they toted between them.

  Rika smiled at him and launched into her second telling of ‘Ketil the Bold.’ She’d known since childhood that Magnus and Ketil had found her on an ice floe. But to amuse her brother, she’d dreamed up an elaborate story about the event. In Rika’s tale, Ketil was no longer just a young simpleton. He was a foreign prince, who wrestled her from the coils of Jormungand, that vile serpent whose body encircles the earth’s seas. In Rika’s tale, he was Ketil the Bold.

  Actually, Ketil’s true story was much like hers. He too had been abandoned at birth, a fate that befell most infants whose vacant expression betrayed a faulty mind. Magnus had saved Ketil from a wolf pack just outside of Trondheim and always said he’d rescued the kindest soul Odin ever sent to Midgard.

  As Rika told Ketil the fanciful story in which he played such a heroic role, she couldn’t help wondering how she’d come to be adrift on the ice. Why had she been expelled? It was a hurt, a small keening ache, which never quite went away.

  Yet, when she smiled up into her brother’s beaming face, the ache retreated in the warmth of his unabashed love. Somehow, Bjorn had arranged for her to spend more time each day with Ketil, which delighted them both.

  Ketil was doing surprisingly well. Surt had taken him under his wing and her brother’s good-natured sweetness had won him easy acceptance among th
e other slaves of the house. Ketil’s needs were few: kind words, plenty of food and a warm place to sleep. Since Ketil had difficulty making decisions anyway, he wasn’t the least troubled by taking orders all day, as long as no one barked at him or scolded. He seemed genuinely happy.

  “Rika, I would speak with you,” Gunnar called from behind them.

  “Go on into the house with the bucket, Ketil,” she said quietly. Unease ruffled through her whenever she heard the jarl’s voice, especially when Bjorn wasn’t around.

  Ketil squinted at Gunnar for a moment and then heaved the bucket up. “Be careful. He’s got bad eyes,” her brother whispered before he turned to go.

  She bit her lip, pondering Ketil’s warning. Before that moment, she’d never heard him say a disparaging word about anyone.

  Rika waited for the Jarl of Sogna to come to her, her hands folded demurely before her. “I have duties, my lord, that require my presence elsewhere, so I trust this will be brief.”

  Gunnar laughed. “What delightful impudence! You are indeed an ornament to my court.” He circled around her, taking his time, as though measuring her. Satisfied, he stopped before her.

  Rika knew he was trying to fluster her with his bold stare, so she returned his gaze coolly. They were in a public place. She had no need to fear him, she tried to assure herself. But just the same, she couldn’t suppress a wish that Bjorn would appear suddenly around the corner.

  “You want it brief? Very well,” Gunnar said. “Brief it shall be. That large ox you were with just now is your brother, isn’t he?”

  “Ja.” Her lips pressed into a tight line. It hurt her heart for anyone to demean Ketil. She wondered sometimes how people could look at her brother and not see his good soul, shining pure and clean through his childish eyes. “He is my brother.”

  “Very close, are you?”

  “I’m all he has in the world, and he is all I have,” Rika said simply.

  “Good. I like close families.”

  “I’m glad to have gratified you, my lord, and now if you’ll excuse me.” She turned to go, but he snaked out a hand and grabbed her arm.

  “Oh, no, you don’t.” Gunnar’s voice was sharp-edged. Her brief flare of alarm seemed to excite him. “We’re not finished yet.” He pulled her close and she felt his sudden arousal, pressed lewdly against her hip. “I need to send a bride to my trading partner in Miklagard.”

  “I fail to see what that has to do with me.” She wrenched herself away from him, rubbing her arm where his grasping fingers raised angry red marks on her pale skin.

  “I intend to send you.”

  A nervous smile fluttered on her lips. “It’s not wise to marry a woman off without her permission. Have you forgotten the tale of Botilla, whose family saw her wed without her consent, not once, but five times? All five marriages ended in maiming, murder or divorce,” she recounted airily, trying to keep the mood light. Surely the jarl must be attempting some grim jest.

  “Still, I will see you sent to Farouk-Azziz in Miklagard,” Gunnar said with certainty.

  “That would be rather difficult to do since I belong to your brother.” When he circled her now, she turned with him to keep him in sight.

  “But if you were free?”

  “Then it would be even more difficult for you to bend me to your wishes, my lord,” she said through a clenched jaw.

  “I think not. Not as long as your brother belongs to me.” A crooked smile stretched Gunnar’s features unpleasantly.

  “What are you saying?”

  “Just that if you do not my will, then I have no choice but to send your brother—Ketil, is that his name?—your brother Ketil to Uppsala when the year for sacrifice comes again.” He tapped his temple thoughtfully. “Why, that’s just next summer, isn’t it?”

  Eight years ago, she and Magnus and Ketil, along with most of the Northern population, converged on the Sacred Grove. For nine days, people traded, drank and brokered marriages. And at night they worshipped Odin in the dark, leafy bower of giants next to the temple. The mighty boughs strained under the weight of hanged victims of all sorts, horses, goats, fowl, and men.

  Rage quivered impotently inside her. “How can you demand this of me when you know it is not in my power to grant it? I can’t wed of my own choice as long as I am your brother’s slave.”

  “So you’re saying that if you were free, you would consent to the marriage?” Gunnar asked.

  “Ja, I would,” she said, her heart pounding. “To save my brother, not to please you.”

  "I have your word, then.” Gunnar all but pounced on her. “If you were free, you would willingly go to wed my trading partner in the south?”

  “But I am not free.”

  “Humor me for a moment,” Gunnar said. “If you were free?”

  “Ja, you have my word,” she said warily. What was the jarl playing at? It was a moot point as long as she wore the collar. For the first time since it was bolted on her neck, its weight comforted her. “If I also have yours.”

  “What?”

  “Your word to spare my brother, of course,” she said. “My consent would depend on your promise to keep Ketil safe.”

  “Of course,” he said quickly.

  “If I went, then Ketil must come with me. Otherwise, how could I be sure you would keep your word?”

  “How dare you doubt the oath of Sogna?” Gunnar’s eyes narrowed to glittering slits. “If you were a man, you’d be dead now. I’ll swear on any god you care to name. May Astryd never bear me a son if I break this bargain.”

  Neither of them said any more for the space of several heartbeats.

  “But I belong to Bjorn. I am not free, and therefore this conversation is meaningless,” she said, trying not to let him see how he’d panicked her. She knew now how the coney who escaped a lunge from the hawk felt; a piercing scream, a flash of feathers, and the scrape of sharp talons missing her by a hair's breadth. She controlled her tremble only with effort. “If you will excuse me, my lord, I have work to do.”

  She turned and strode away from him. Once she told Bjorn about Gunnar’s threat toward Ketil, he’d know what to do.

  “One last thing, Rika.” Gunnar’s voice curled around her ear and she froze. “A word of this conversation to Bjorn could seriously harm the health of your brother. I will see Ketil sent to the Grove, I swear it. And as for my brother—”

  She whirled back to face him.

  “Bjorn has shown himself to be accident-prone of late. Should you feel the need to prattle to him about this, I fear another bit of bad luck might come his way. In fact, I’m sure of it. An accident is easily arranged for a price and I’m a very wealthy man. He’d not be likely to recover next time.”

  Gunnar walked toward her as he spoke, not stopping till he was nose to nose with her. Rika resisted the urge to step back.

  “Not a word,” he hissed. “Not ever. I have ears and eyes all over Sogna, so don’t think for one moment you could deceive me. Do you understand?”

  She nodded, not trusting her voice to speak, as Gunnar shouldered past her into the longhouse.

  Chapter 14

  Bjorn bristled with nervous energy. He laid his plans with the same care he’d devote to besieging a city. Everything was in place for his assault on Rika's heart.

  He hadn’t been this excited since the day he took the Sea-Snake out for her first cruise. That was a watershed in his life. He was finally a man, in command of his own vessel, his own crew, and his own life.

  Tonight would be another marker of sorts. The night he willingly surrendered his life to a woman.

  Back in Hordaland, he’d been intrigued by her face and form and amused by her plucky courage in a tight spot. He thought she’d be a good diversion for a few weeks. He hadn’t expected to need her so. He hadn’t counted on falling in love with the soul and the wit, the woman behind those captivating green eyes.

  As the drinking and eating wound down after nattmal, the men started chanting for Rika to begin
her saga for the night. After dusty hours of hard work, it was the high point of their day, as much anticipated as a draught of sweet mead or a rich haunch of venison.

  When she started to stand, Bjorn stopped her with a hand on her arm. He rose to his feet instead and raised his palms to silence the rowdy crowd.

  “I don’t have Rika Magnusdottir’s gift for words, but I wish to speak,” he said, his deep voice filling the hall easily. “She has been my thrall for the short space of a season now and never was a master less deserving.”

  A couple of the men shouted their ribald agreement and Bjorn smiled good-naturedly. In the far corner of the room, Torvald leaned back and steepled his long-fingered hands before him. He nodded in approval, as if sensing what was coming.

  “I captured her in the raid of Hordaland, and in the time since then, she has captured me.” He smiled down at her, his dark eyes soft and inviting.

  Rika’s jaw sagged. What was Bjorn doing? At the edge of her vision, she saw Gunnar, his cruel face alight with triumph. She had the sinking feeling that she was caught, like the unsuspecting fly that stumbles into a soft web and doesn’t realize its danger till it feels the weight of the spider approaching. Without her conscious volition, one of her hands went to the metal ring at her throat, and trembled.

  “That is why I am setting her free tonight,” Bjorn shouted and motioned for the smith to come forward with his tools. A cheer roared up from the men in the hall.

  “Bjorn, no,” she pleaded, but he didn’t seem to hear her over the din.

  The ironworker directed her to lay her head on the table while he placed his chisel at the nut holding her collar fast. The resounding strike rang in her ears, followed by another round of cheers. The weight of iron lifted from her neck, leaving her feeling naked, and so light she feared she might float away. Her vision wavered uncertainly, and she forced herself to take a deep breath.

  Bjorn caught both her hands and raised her to her feet. “Rika Magnusdottir, I give you back yourself.” He grazed her cheek with his knuckle, wiping away the tear that trailed down it. Bjorn raised one of her hands and kissed it.