Maidensong

by Mia Marlowe

  The great city with its tall walls loomed larger in her imagination, but she was not there yet. She would wring every drop of joy and exquisite torment she could from each day.

  Ornolf had trade agreements with a Slavic tribe at the river’s end. In exchange for hack silver, they furnished a large wagon with a bowed box, designed to haul the Valkyrie overland to the town of Kiev. The price for this service was meticulously weighed out in silver and Ornolf snapped one of the coins with strange Arabic symbols in two to make the scales finally balance.

  Each morning when Bjorn lifted Rika onto her horse for the day’s travel, he slipped her a small piece of wood with his rune carvings from the previous night. Some days, he’d worked on the names of the members of the party, straining to make the sounds appear in proper sequence. Rika noticed that he had yet to get Torvald’s name right. Other times he used the individual letters in their symbolic meanings to send a nonsense message that made her laugh. One morning he surprised her with a horn comb he’d carved, on which he’d inscribed ‘Rika owns this comb.’

  There was never much opportunity for them to have a private conversation, but the runes had become their method of secret communication. Since no one else knew runic writing, it was almost as if they had their own code. This morning when he pressed the wood into her hand, his palm lingered on hers a moment longer than propriety allowed for another man’s bride, but she didn’t pull away.

  As they began their day’s journey, Helge and Torvald rode in the wagon with Uncle Ornolf. She, Bjorn and Jorand rode sturdy horses. When the rest of the party was engaged in conversation, she sneaked a glance at the wood Bjorn had given her.

  ‘Rika owns this heart,’ the inscription proclaimed.

  Tears gathered at the corners of her eyes. A leaden weight settled on her chest. Why was she doing this to herself? She couldn’t have his heart. Didn’t want it, she told herself angrily. His kisses came back to her against her will, and she remembered his mouth on hers, full of wanting and hers on his, accepting and demanding in return. She swayed in the saddle.

  There was no chance for them. None. Gunnar and his threats against Ketil and Bjorn ensured that. So why was she playing the wanton, making eyes at him, laughing with him, torturing them both with what could never be?

  Because it’s all we’ll ever have. Because she was greedy for him and no matter the pain she caused him later, she had to have what little she could of him now.

  When she squeezed her eyes shut to stop the tears, she could almost see Magnus’s reproving face, mouth tight, one wiry brow arched. The old skald hadn’t raised her to be cruel.

  A cut from a sharp blade healed quickest. Bjorn might not see it as kind now, but later, when he forgot her in the arms of another woman, he would recognize the wisdom of her action.

  Rika squared her sagging shoulders and dropped the rune stick so Bjorn could see her do it. When she heard it crack under the wagon wheel behind her, she didn’t even flinch.

  Chapter 21

  The wedding party spent little time in Kiev, even though it was the only sizeable town they’d encountered for weeks. The settlement was laid out in the typical Norse plan with half-timbered paths winding through the narrow lanes, and peopled with tall, fair-haired folk, but Rika still felt out of her element.

  The trappings of home in this faraway place made her feel all the more homesick for the northlands. The town wasn’t perched on the edge of the sea or in the sheltered inlet of a fjord. Instead, Kiev signaled the start of their journey down the river Dnieper, whose reputation for ferocity Rika was beginning to dread.

  There was no space in the Valkyrie for additional trade goods, so Ornolf wasn’t of a mind to linger in the market. And Bjorn had pushed the group to exhaustion each day, driving them to cover more landmiiller than Rika would’ve thought possible. He hadn’t spoken to her or met her eyes since she purposefully dropped his last runic message to her. She supposed she should be grateful.

  Rika climbed into the Valkyrie after Helge.

  “I never thought I’d say this, but I’m happy to be getting back into the boat, so 1 am,” the old midwife announced. “My bony backside has had enough of being jolted along in that wagon. The Valkyrie glides along pretty smooth by comparison.”

  Rika wondered whether the old woman was reconsidering that comment when they pulled back to shore later, above the first cataract. It was called Essoupi, which meant ‘Do not sleep.’ The roar of water made normal conversation impossible. Rika couldn’t imagine anyone would actually be able to fall asleep amid the din.

  The Dnieper narrowed at that point and was clogged with mossy boulders standing midstream like little islands that sent the waters surging and leaping over them. Trying to shoot over the rapids in the center of the river would tear out the bottom of even so light a craft as the Valkyrie, reducing the boat to shattered splinters.

  But if all the cargo was off-loaded first, there was a narrow lane along the high bank where the men could half-float, half-drag the boat without having to portage away from the river. After they passed through the white water, the men would hike back along the riverside path to retrieve the trade goods and carry them down to the waiting Valkyrie.

  Once Rika and Helge were safely ashore with the barrels and fur bales stacked around them, the men stripped and waded back into the water around the vessel.

  “Tie yourself to the boat,” Ornolf shouted. “That way if you slip, you won’t be swept away. The rest of us can hold her till you find your feet. Feel your way over the rocks and we’ll walk her down nice and slow.”

  Bjorn positioned himself at the far down-river side of the craft with Jorand on the bank side. Ornolf and Torvald took stations at each side of the stern. Rika watched as Bjorn strained, his back and arm muscles quivering with effort, to hold the Valkyrie from a headlong plunge down the river. He eased the boat along, waist deep in water, feeling his way over the slippery bottom of the Dnieper.

  If the situation had been less precarious, Rika would’ve enjoyed the way Bjorn’s muscles rippled and flexed under his skin. As it was, the slightest misstep could send them all careening down the rapids to disaster. Rika caught herself holding her breath.

  A high-pitched wail made Rika turn her gaze upstream. A crudely woven basket bobbed in the center of the Dnieper, shooting toward the rapids. A tiny hand shot up from the wickerwork, grasping skyward.

  “Oh, gods!” Her heart lurched. “There’s a child in there!” Without hesitation, Rika jumped into the Dnieper and flailed toward the disappearing basket. The swift current dragged at her and pulled her off her feet, scraping her along the bottom of the river toward the men and the boat.

  She heard Helge’s scream and realized she was surging toward the men. As the river whipped her past, Torvald let go of the Valkyrie and grabbed Rika around the waist. She was sure the other three men holding the boat immediately felt the loss. He struggled to keep his footing, stumbling out of balance with her in his arms.

  “What are you doing?” Torvald bellowed at her, shouting to be heard above the din of the water.

  “There’s a baby,” she gasped. Someone from the Pecheneg settlement upstream must have sent the babe to its death.

  “Let it go,” he yelled and hoisted Rika up onto the bank.

  “Torvald!” Bjorn’s voice traveled over the roar of the water to them. “We can’t hold the Valkyrie much longer.”

  The old man slogged back to his position, the deepening wrinkles across his forehead betraying the agony his gouty foot was sending to him. He reached the Valkyrie and pulled back on her with all his might, groaning with effort. Then Torvald tossed a look over his shoulder at Rika. She winced at the anger in his hard gray eyes.

  What she’d done had endangered them all, but it was for a babe. Someone had abandoned a helpless child to a terrifying and violent death. Why? There could never be an answer that made sense to her. The old hurt inside her smarted afresh. Tears streamed down her cheeks, both for the dead child and
for herself.

  “There, little elf.” Helge squatted beside her and put her thin arms around Rika’s shaking shoulders. “My master’s not really mad at you.”

  “I’m not crying about that.” Rika swiped her nose on her wet sleeve. “It was a child, Helge.” She could hear Bjorn bellowing orders to the others as they worked their way downstream. Now that there were four men on the corners of the Valkyrie, they negotiated the rapids safely, if slowly. She sniffed as she remembered the coldness in Torvald’s voice when he yelled at her. “But he certainly sounded angry.”

  “Men folk are like that sometimes,” Helge said, as they both stood and followed the men’s progress along the footpath overlooking the rapids. “They don’t want us women to know they’re scared, so they hide behind anger. Torvald was afraid for you.”

  “He should have been afraid for that poor child.” Rika hoped she wouldn’t encounter a small corpse farther down the Dnieper where the water ran slower.

  “I know how you feel,” Helge agreed. “No one loves the feel of new babe in her arms more than I do, but think on it for a moment. We’ve got no nurse for a child, no way to feed it. And even if we did manage to save it, you couldn’t very well greet your new husband with some other man’s babe. I don’t care how odd the folk in Miklagard are bound to be, I suspect some things are the same the world over.”

  “Ja,” Rika said sadly. “Some things are the same.” Unwanted babies were exposed to the elements by people of every race and tribe.

  When the men finally pushed through Essoupi, Rika and Helge were waiting to help them tie up the boat. Bjorn hauled the Valkyrie’s prow onto the bank and secured her. Then for the first time in days, he looked directly at Rika.

  “How did you fall in?” He raised his voice to be heard over the cataract. “Are you hurt?”

  “No. And I didn’t fall,” she said. “I jumped.”

  “Why?”

  “There was a basket with . . .” Somehow, she couldn’t bring herself to finish the sentence. The child was surely lost, dashed to bits on the cold granite of Essoupi.

  “Someone sent an unwanted babe down the rapids in a basket, and she tried to catch it before it went,” Torvald answered for her gruffly. “All she did was endanger herself.”

  And us hung unspoken in the air.

  An unwanted babe. Rika could see from his expression that Bjorn immediately understood how this dredged up the ache of her own abandonment.

  “You’re sure you’re not hurt?” he asked her.

  “Just a scrape or two, nothing serious.” A warm trickle of blood snaked its way down her shin from a banged knee. It was nothing compared to the heaviness in her heart.

  That evening around their fire, the mood of the party was subdued. When Jorand asked for a story, Rika declined.

  “Don't fret yourself about the child,” Bjorn said softly. “Its end was quick and there was naught to be done about it. No doubt the Norns decreed it so.”

  “No,” she said vehemently. “I don’t believe that. Not anymore. No trio of fate weavers in Asgard decided that poor babe’s end. Its parents did. They are to blame for its death.”

  “There are a hundred reasons that lead someone to expose a child,” Torvald said flatly. “Poverty, shame, grief—”

  “None of it the child’s fault,” she interrupted.

  “No, of course not,” the old man admitted. “But whatever the reason, at the time, it seems the only sensible course of action. And the decision is almost always made in haste, in desperation, in the kind of madness only sorrow brings.”

  An image of the child’s uplifted hand burned across her eyes. “It was so small, so helpless.”

  “I know you feel for the child, but your pity is misplaced,” Torvald said. “The child feels no more pain, but for the parents, the pain is only beginning.”

  “They deserve to feel pain—if they are capable of it.” Rika narrowed her eyes. “How could you know what they feel?”

  Torvald’s sigh seemed to come from clear down to his toes. “ ‘Tis knowledge bought with bitter experience.”

  No one stirred around the fire. Only the rustle and click of insects and the hunting call of an owl interrupted the silence.

  Torvald dragged a hand over his face and a faraway look filled his eyes. He seemed to have forgotten the group’s presence, lost in his own private Hel. When he continued to speak, his voice was barely a murmur. “A small ghost will dog them each day. Each passing year the questions come. Would she be walking now? How tall would she have been? Would she look like her mother or be cursed to look like me?” Torvald’s eyes fogged over as he seemed to see a phantom child at different stages of growth. “What would it have been like to bear her on my shoulders, to feel her chubby arms around my neck?”

  A small prickle found its way up Rika’s spine as the old man looked at her searchingly.

  “At least I finally know the answer to some of the questions,” Torvald said. “Rika, you are the image of your mother.”

  Chapter 22

  “What?” Rika couldn’t believe what she was hearing. It was unthinkable.

  “You look just like your mother.” Torvald didn’t blink an eyelash. “My wife, Gudrid. You’ve definitely got her way about you. If Helge hadn’t warned me, I might’ve thought I was seeing Gudrid’s ghost that first night I spied you in the great hall of the jarlhof.”

  Rika’s eyes widened.

  “She was a fair, saucy redhead just like you.” Torvald’s voice was firm. “I didn’t need any other confirmation than my own eyes, but Helge knew it was you because of that little hammer. She saw it on Lady Astryd and asked how she came by it.”

  Rika’s hand went instinctively to her throat.

  “It belonged to my Gudrid. I gave it to her at our wedding,” Torvald said as matter-of-factly as if he were discussing the weather or which crops to plant. “A simple little thing. In truth, not worth much, but in all her life, she never took it off.”

  “I put it around your neck myself, so I did, on the day you were born,” Helge added. “I couldn’t bear to see you leave us empty-handed, Little Elf, so I filched it for you.”

  “How can you just sit there and tell me this?” Rika’s belly churned.

  “Because it’s the truth,” Torvald said. “I don’t say it to be cruel. I’m not proud of what I did, and I’ve regretted it every day since.”

  “Your mother died birthing you, you see.” Helge patted Rika on the forearm, trying to ease the sting. “And they loved each other dearly, your mother and the master. When she died, he went fair wild with grief.”

  “That’s no excuse,” Torvald said flatly. “Even then I knew it was wrong. And I bore the guilt of it every day. Then when I saw you at the jarlhof, I knew the gods had blessed me with a second chance.”

  “Just what is it you think you have a second chance at?” Rika’s cheeks burned.

  “To know you,” Torvald said. “To care for you as a father should.”

  “It would seem you’ve had little practice at caring,” Rika fired at him.

  “True enough,” he said. When he met her livid green eyes, he realized that this conversation was not going as he’d hoped.

  Perhaps he should have waited to tell her who he was, but her anger at the baby’s abandonment that morning was only exceeded by his terror when he saw her flailing in the swirling waters of the Dnieper. If he hadn’t managed to snatch her when he did, he might have lost her again and it would have been his own fault both times. Right after he tossed her to the safety of the bank, Torvald had decided to tell her the truth the next chance he got.

  “After you were gone, there was little left in my life to care about,” Torvald said. “For good or ill, my blood flows through your veins. I am your father, whether you will it or no, and it’s finally time for me to start acting like it. I only hope I’m not too late for your forgiveness.”

  No one spoke. Ornolf and Jorand hung on every word batted back and forth. The drama be
ing played out before them was more potent than any story in Rika’s repertoire. Only Bjorn felt the pain and anger emanating from her in scalding waves.

  “Blood is all I ever received from you, and I’ll never ask for more. A man saved me from the water where you sent me to die.” Her voice was brittle as ice. “His name was Magnus Silver-Throat. He was a good man, a brave and gentle man, with a heart big enough to shelter a helpless babe and not think himself anything extraordinary. But Magnus was extraordinary. He was my father, the father of my heart, the only father I’ll ever have.”

  She stood and stalked out of the circle of light to stand by the beached Valkyrie. Bjorn would have followed her, but he was sure she’d push him away as vehemently as she just shoved Torvald.

  There was pain in Torvald’s eyes as the old man watched her go. Suddenly it was clear to Bjorn why the old man had tried to buy Rika’s freedom, even to sacrifice his land holdings for her. It was the reason behind Torvald’s irrational decision to make this trip. He loved Rika as hopelessly as Bjorn did.

  Bjorn flashed Torvald a look of understanding. Torvald had abandoned her as a father. Bjorn had robbed her of Magnus, the only father she’d had. The old man met his gaze. They were bonded somehow in that moment by their love for a woman they had each hurt deeply in their own way.

  And she’d never let either of them forget it.

  Chapter 23

  They passed safely through two more cataracts the same size and ferocity as Essoupi, using the same technique of maneuvering the boat over the rocks by hand. The Valkyrie rode swiftly between the barrages, drawn inexorably by the rapidly falling water as it surged toward the Black Sea.