by Mia Marlowe
They joined hands, fingers entwined as their bodies moved together, heart on heart, skin on skin. Slowly at first, then with gathering urgency, they surged into each other, like two turbulent rivers meeting at a wild fork, colliding and bruising, straining to become one. The line between pleasure and pain blurred, but all that mattered was the need.
Rika had no memory of cresting Aeifor’s falls, but Bjorn felt the eerie sensation of time repeating itself as they hovered at the edge, and then plunged together in spasms of ecstasy. All sense of themselves burned away in a blast of fiery rending, their spirits shattered and stripped away.
When it was over, one shining new being shivered between them. The soul they now shared.
Chapter 26
The warm sunlight teased Rika’s eyes open. Something heavy pinned her to the ground. It took her a moment to realize that it was Bjorn. Before sinking into exhausted oblivion, he’d hooked a leg over her thigh and draped one long arm across her chest. His hand still cradled one of her breasts, claiming it possessively. Her nipple hardened in response to the nearness of his fingers.
Every joint in her body felt loose, as though she’d been stretched out on a Frankish rack. The bruise on her cheek ached and when she put a tentative hand to it, she winced. The tender skin was pulled taut. No doubt when she tried to move, she’d find other hurts, but for now it didn’t matter.
She was alive.
And more joyously alive than she’d ever been in her entire life. Feeling anything at all was a gift beyond measure. She’d not complain over a few aches.
Rika eased herself away from Bjorn, taking care not to wake him. She gingerly walked down to the water’s edge and waded into the shallow eddy. The water was deliciously cool. She slid in up to her chin and let the river caress her.
A songbird trilled overhead, his mating call both piercing and sweet. The air around her was alive with the fresh scent of growing greenery.
How was it she’d never really paid attention to her senses before? Too wrapped up in stories and sagas, in the lives of gods and heroes, she supposed, to actually get involved with the real business of living.
No matter what happened now, she’d remember this day till she died. It was the day she came fully to life.
Please, gods, help me to remember it through the troubled times ahead.
“Ho there, elf-maiden,” Bjorn called to her.
She turned lazily in the water to see him sitting up, grinning at her. She ached to plant a kiss on that devastating dimple in his cheek. Her heart skipped like a spring lamb.
“Are you hungry?” he asked.
Now that he mentioned it, the juices in her stomach began to swirl. “Ja.” She rose dripping from the water, delighting in the sun kissing her bare skin.
His eyes darkened as she walked toward him. He wanted her again. A surge of joy flooded through her as she knelt to kiss him. Perhaps he’d show her how to love him this time. Was it possible for her to give him delight with her mouth as he’d given her? An ocean of possibilities, a saga of epic proportions, delicious ways of loving this man surged in her imagination. She felt slightly light-headed. Rika slid her hands over his chest, feather-light across the deep purpling bruise on his shoulder, and then down to rake her nails across his flat belly. She loved the feel of his skin, smooth and warm with the hardened muscles just beneath the surface.
“Food first, my love.” He snatched up her hand and pressed a kiss into her palm. “We need to keep up our strength. I’ll set a snare, but for now, we’ll make do with a bit of foraging.”
He stood and stretched, his naked body glorious in the full sun, though Rika noted the mottled bruising on his legs and arms. Large indigo splotches marred one shoulder. The wild ride down Aeifor had branded him across the broad spread of his back. She knew by the ache of her skin that she was similarly marked.
Bjorn took her hand and led her to some nearby bushes, heavy with late berries the birds hadn’t yet found. The fruit was drowsily sweet, but occasionally she found one whose tart flavor made her mouth water and her lips pucker. She and Bjorn made a game of finding the best offerings and popping them into each other’s mouths.
Bjorn licked the juice from her fingers, sucking each one slowly. Her gut clenched with desire. How could he make such a simple action so erotic?
“You are desperately wicked,” she said.
“It’s good that you recognize that right from the start,” he said, his eyes blazing at her. “That way in the winters to come you won’t be shocked at the decadent little bed games I teach you.”
The winters to come. If only it were possible. What joy she and this man would give to each other in a lifetime of loving. Part of her yearned to keep silent, to let this idyllic moment linger as long as it could. The part of her that remembered Magnus’s strictures about truth-telling knew she could not.
She squared her shoulders and felt the pain in her joints afresh. “In the winters to come,” she said evenly, “I will be the wife of Farouk-Azziz.”
“That’s foolishness.” He popped a berry into his mouth, grimacing at its sourness.
“No, it’s the truth.” Her voice was flat.
A prickle of unease ruffled his brow. “In case it’s escaped your notice, my love, you’re not exactly bridal material anymore. You are no longer a maiden, thank the gods.”
“There are ways around that.” She remembered overhearing the whispered panic of one young bride at the Danish court. An old midwife had advised the young woman insert a small blood-filled bladder just before coming to the bridal bed. Honor was satisfied, and the bridegroom none the wiser.
“I love you, Rika, and I believe you love me.” Bjorn’s face was pale and drawn. “There has to be a way for us.”
“No, Bjorn. I will always love you, but we have no future together.” Tears trembled on her lashes. “I gave my word.”
“So did I, but by bedding you I’ve broken my vow of fealty to Gunnar. Once I would’ve faced a snake pit rather than renege on my oath of loyalty, but that was before I fell under your spell.” He looked at her questioningly. “Gunnar told me you’d bewitched me. Was he right?”
“Of course not,” she protested. “I practice no seid craft.”
“Yet our love is so strong it feels like magic,” he said. “In truth, I care not, if only you stay with me, Rika. My honor is gone, but it’s a small matter now.”
Ketil’s trusting face rose in her mind. “I’m sorry. This is how it must be.”
“No, I won’t believe you mean to continue with this farce of a marriage to the Arab.” Then the light of an idea burst over his features. “We’re dead. Ornolf will never suspect we survived Aeifor. I hardly believe it myself. We need never return to the North. No one will ever know differently.”
“No, Bjorn.” She placed a hand on his forearm. “No matter what, I must go on to Miklagard.”
She saw his jaw clench. A small muscle worked beneath the skin of his cheek. When he turned to glare at her, Rika looked into the dark eyes of a stranger, a violent stranger. Somehow in the weeks she’d spent in his company, she’d forgotten that dead expression she’d first seen on his rugged face. It was back. He bared his teeth at her in a predator’s smile.
“No one will have you but me.”
He crushed her to his chest and savaged her mouth. She whimpered, but he seemed not to notice. His fingers clutched at her, her bruises making his ungentle touch even more brutal. She cried out, in pain and shock. Even in the heat of passion he’d never hurt her like that. Never with intent to harm.
She struggled and managed to slip out of his grasp. She bolted away, not sure where she could run, but he overtook her in a few steps. Bjorn stumbled and he pulled her down on top of him. He rolled, pinning her beneath him.
“Bjorn, please.”
He seemed not to hear her. He wedged a knee between her thighs and forced her legs apart.
“No one but me,” Bjorn said fiercely. His erection pressed against her inner t
high.
“Don’t do this,” she cried. If he took her in anger, pounding into her with rage pumping thought him, he’d punish her more thoroughly than all the stones of Aeifor. “Don’t make me hate you.”
He stopped.
The feral light in his eye dimmed and he saw her clearly. Saw the tears coursing down her bruised cheek. Saw her swollen lips. Worst of all, saw fear in her eyes.
“Oh, gods, Rika.” He pulled back with a shuddering sob. Bjorn rolled off her and turned away. His shoulders heaved. “Forgive me.”
Stiff and sore, she sat up. Rika reached out to touch him, to offer him comfort, but her hand shook so badly, she pulled back. Fear curled uncertainly beside longing. Magnus had warned her of the volatile power of inn matki munr, the mighty passion. When she begged Bjorn to love her, she never expected this all-consuming ferocity.
“Why?” he asked. “Why do you kill me by finger-lengths?”
Only her submission to Gunnar’s will guaranteed her brother’s safety. The threat to Ketil and Bjorn still weighed on her, but nothing short of the whole truth would serve now.
“If I don’t marry the Arab, your brother will send Ketil to Uppsala to be sacrificed in the sacred grove next summer. And Gunnar warned me that if I told you of it, he’d arrange ‘an accident’ for you as well.”
Bjorn turned to face her. “That’s all?”
“Isn’t it enough?"
He sat up. “Do you think me so powerless? I can surely steal Ketil away to safety. You of all people should know that I’m a good raider.”
“But I want to protect you as well as Ketil. Even if you knew what accident Gunnar planned for you, you couldn’t be vigilant forever. He would only need to be lucky once. But there’s another reason I didn’t tell you as well. It was for your honor’s sake that I kept silent.”
“My honor?”
“Oh, love, don’t you see?” She ventured a hand on his forearm and he covered it quickly with his, as if he feared she’d pull it away. “If we flee north and take Ketil away, it will be known that you have broken your fealty to Gunnar. You would be outlawed. Banished at best, drowned in a bog at worst. You’d be damned to Niflheim in the next world for oath-breaking and you could never return home in this one.”
“I’ll never return to Sognefjord anyway,” he said bitterly.
“You must.” The tip of her nose reddened and a single tear slid over her cheekbone. “For my sake. If I continue to Miklagard, as far as the world knows, your oath is still intact. The only way I can bear marriage to the Arab is if I know that you are there in Sognefjord, caring for the land and the people of the fjord, watching out for Ketil, living in honor, and I hope, with joy.”
Her lips twitched uncertainly. Her chin quivered and he saw how she strained to hold back the tears. It was a losing battle. They fell just the same.
He opened his arms to her and was grateful beyond words when she came to them. Gently, he held her and let her cry, knowing as he did that the tears were for both of them.
Damn tomorrow, he thought savagely. For the moment, holding her was enough.
Chapter 27
Bjorn snared a small coney that morning and its carcass now roasted on an improvised spit over their small flame. Grease drippings hissed in the fire, sending a savory aroma into the air. Days had stretched to more than a week as they waited on the island for Ornolf and the rest of the party to complete the arduous portage around Aeifor.
In that time, the lovers hadn’t suffered any lack. Bjorn fished in the shallows with a makeshift spear and snared small, unwary prey. Rika dug for tubers and gathered other edible plants. The river that nearly killed them when they ventured into its angry cataract now provided for them well.
And they had ‘drunk deeply from the horn of love.’ Rika smiled, thinking of the poetic euphemism she’d used so often in the telling of a maidensong. She’d never guessed the horn of love was so intoxicating a brew.
By tacit agreement, they spoke no more of the future. They laughed and played in the shallows like children, then loved each other furiously with the guilty desperation of those who know their time is short. Sometimes they joined with heart-stopping tenderness and sometimes they took each other with the ferocity of mating wolves. Tomorrow didn’t exist. All that mattered was the eternal now.
The rumble of Aeifor was constant, but Rika had learned to ignore it. When an odd scraping sound bounced off the tall pines around them, her ears pricked to it immediately.
“What is that?” she asked.
“Sounds like the Valkyrie’s hull,” Bjorn said. “To make this portage, they’ve had to lay down logs in front of the prow and shove the boat over them.” He demonstrated the action, sliding one palm over the other. “When they reach the end of the row of trunks, they go back and drag up the ones they’ve already hauled the boat over and lay them down in front. It’s like building a plank road before you while pulling it up behind you as you go. It’s a slow business and they’ve had to travel at least six miiller that way. Short-handed, too,” he added guiltily. “But it sounds like they’re near the river now.”
“Oh.” Her heart turned to stone in her chest. “When will they get here?”
“Soon, my love.” His face suddenly became grave. “Rika, what if there is a child?”
She blinked. Truly, it was something she hadn’t considered. But if a child hadn’t been conceived on the island, it wasn’t from lack of trying. Still, she had to go forward with the arranged marriage. Nothing Bjorn said convinced her there was any other recourse. It was the only way to ensure the safety of her brother and the man she loved more than breathing. She forced a smile.
“If I bear your child, it will be like a gift to me, Bjorn.” For just a moment, she imagined the dark-haired, dark-eyed baby he might have planted inside her. “Is it not often said that the first child can come at any time, while the second always takes nine months?”
“This is no light matter.” He clasped her hand urgently. “If you bear a pale-skinned child too early, the Arab will send you back to Gunnar without a nose. They are a pitiless people in this regard.”
She blanched and then counted the weeks backward in her mind. Fortunately, her cycle had always been regular as the tide. “How long till we reach Miklagard?”
“Another three days down the Dnieper, then ten days to sail across the Black Sea to the Golden Horn,” he said. “With fair weather, two weeks, no more.”
“If there is a child, I should know by then,” she said.
“Then promise me this.” Bjorn planted a soft kiss on the inside of her wrist. “If there is a child, you will tell me. The world is bigger than you can imagine. There is yet time for us to run to a corner so remote we will never be found.”
“But, my heart, you would be without honor. The North would be barred against you forever.” Rika already accepted that she would never see the fjords again, and the knowledge lay like an anchor stone in her belly. She didn’t want Bjorn to feel the same rootlessness, the same dull ache. “Sognefjord and your people, the land, everything you care about... it would all be lost to you. How can I let you sacrifice your oath for me?”
“I was willing to follow you into the river. Doesn’t that give you an idea how little all those things mean to me when weighed against losing you?” The scrape of the Valkyrie’s hull was nearer now. Ornolf’s voice echoed off the trees, bellowing orders.
“And what of my brother?”
What of me? What of us? Bjorn wanted to shake her, wanted to rail at her, but he knew it was a losing argument. She was convinced this was the only path through the snare Gunnar had set for her, and her resolve was set in stone. Whether these few days of loving her were a gift from the gods or a curse to bedevil him for the rest of his life he wasn’t sure. But he would take this woman on whatever terms she gave him.
“One way or another, I will not let Ketil go to the trees of Uppsala,” he promised. “Now upon our love, Rika, swear to me that you will tell me if there is
a babe. It must change everything if you bear a child of mine.”
“I swear it. I will tell you when I know.”
“Then with everything I am, I pray that we have made a new little life together.” Bjorn kissed her softly. He stood and walked wearily to the side of island closest to the noise of the approaching Valkyrie. He cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted to his uncle.
“I pray so, too,” Rika whispered behind him.
Chapter 28
The wonder of finding Rika and Bjorn alive was almost more than the rest of the party could accept. Even though Ornolf saw what looked like his nephew on the island and heard his voice, he suspected at first that he was being visited by the ghosts of Bjorn and the skald. Once the pair swam across the Dnieper to join the travelers, it took a few days for even Jorand not to flinch each time his captain laid a hand on his shoulder, as if he feared that it was Bjorn’s shade, not the man himself, come to drag Jorand back to Hel with him.
Torvald was just thankful to see Rika again, whether it was really her or not, even though she still treated him coolly. Only Helge professed not to be surprised.
“After all,” the old woman said, “this isn’t the first time she’s cheated the water.”
Helge knew Rika and Bjorn were real enough, but she did notice that her young mistress and the jarl’s brother were much changed toward each other since their ride down Aeifor. Unlike the earlier part of the trip when she often caught them making calf’s eyes across the fire, now Rika and Bjorn studiously avoided each other.
Just as well, the old woman thought. Nothing good could come of wanting what a body couldn’t have.
Bjorn had told Rika about the great city of Miklagard, but nothing prepared her for her first sight of the capital of the Byzantine Empire. He'd told her of the Hagia Sophia, Church of Holy Wisdom, with its amazing dome, but she never really believed such a marvel could exist.
