by Josie Litton
She managed a wobbly smile as the tears threatened to spill down her cheeks. Never could she remember a gift meaning so much to her. “Thank you,” she said with simple sincerity.
It did not escape Wolf's notice that his wife cared more for the lute—the best of its kind to be had but still only a lute—than she had for the ermine cloak fit for an empress. That, too, pleased him. “Perhaps you will play for me later.”
“Whenever you wish,” she said, and raised herself on tiptoe to brush her lips against his.
They arrived late in hall after that, but at least they got there. All things considered, Wolf counted that a victory. He forgot it quickly, though, when the sight of Dragon's empty seat reminded him of problems yet to be solved. Cymbra saw his concern and touched his hand gently.
“He woke this afternoon and had some broth before going back to sleep,” she said as Wolf pulled out her chair for her. “That is really best for him right now.”
She did not add that the broth contained a sprinkling of herbs from her medicine chest guaranteed to assure Dragon would sleep untroubled by pain. She saw no reason to bore her husband with such details. The grateful look he gave her as he took his own seat convinced her she was right.
His even more obvious surprise and pleasure when the meal began furthered her confidence. Not that he didn't give the pike in cream sauce a suspicious look when it was set before him, but after a single bite any doubt he had vanished. The well-seasoned pork, rounds of herbed bread, peas in butter and wild mint, and delicately flavored squab that followed even brought a smile of approval from Olaf the one-eyed, who had been conspicuously absent from the hall of late, wisely preferring to prepare his own food until the crisis of the women was past.
That it was behind them was confirmed as uncharacteristic silence descended over the timbered hall. The usual cacophony of conversation, laughter, and insults was stilled while people ate … and ate and ate. At length, when there was scarcely a bone left to gnaw, a round of hearty belches and a burst of cheers acknowledged Cymbra's culinary success.
She welcomed it with a sigh of relief and relaxed for the first time since entering the hall, only to stiffen a little when she caught her husband studying her assessingly The look on his face bewildered her. “What?”
“I'm just wondering if it was really your beauty that made Hawk hide you away or if he feared he'd never get his men to leave any table you provisioned long enough to fight.”
His smile deepened until he was actually laughing. “I can just imagine his warriors waddling into battle waving haunches of goose or hurling a pie or two at their enemies. If nothing else, they'd certainly have the advantage of surprise.”
That absurd image made Cymbra smile in turn, yet the very mention of her brother and battle sent a dark ripple over her pleasure. It was on the tip of her tongue to say something to Wolf about his threat to kill Hawk, but she couldn't bring herself to do it. The accord between them was still so new, and she feared somehow still fragile, that she preferred to let the matter lie.
Besides, she really didn't believe there was any chance that her husband and her brother would fight. Hadn't Wolf said that his first choice was an alliance with Hawk? She had only to convince her brother that she was happily, willingly married and all would be well.
Wolf watched the flicker of emotion behind his wife's lovely eyes and silently cursed himself for a fool. Why, in the midst of such harmony, had he reminded her of the shadow that lay over them? Granted, the matter was on his mind, but that was no reason to speak of it to her, even indirectly.
The problem was that she distracted him so easily, there were times when he hardly recognized himself. And he didn't care for that at all.
Still, it was difficult to nurture any resentment in the aftermath of the best meal he'd ever eaten, and even more difficult later, when his lovely wife, clad only in her glorious chestnut hair, sat beside him on their bed and played him to sleep with the lute whose giving had brought her to happy tears.
BY MIDMORNING THE FOLLOWING DAY, CYMBRA WAS close to tears again but for a far different reason. She had decided that Dragon Hakonson was the worst patient she'd ever encountered and she was on the verge of telling him so.
“If you do not do as I say,” she enunciated slowly and clearly, “you will never fully recover. You will have to live with the results of this injury for the rest of your life.”
His dark brows drawn together, his heavily muscled arms crossed stubbornly over his massive chest, the Dragon glared at her. “And what's wrong with that? It's how it should be.”
Cymbra prayed for calm even as she glared back. “That may be the stupidest thing I've ever heard. I'm not sure, maybe it's only the second or third stupidest, but I think it really does have a chance at being first.”
He started to speak, cut himself off, and stared at the wall, pointedly ignoring her.
“Fine,” she said, “have it your way, but I'm not leaving. My husband has told me to see what can be done for you and that's exactly what I will do.”
When he still refused to acknowledge her, Cymbra took hold of the fur throw covering the lower half of his body and gave it a good, sharp tug. Had Dragon's reflexes not still been so swift, she would have had him bare as a babe.
“By Odin, woman!” he roared. “Have you no decency at all?”
Pleased to get any reaction from him other than sullen silence, Cymbra settled for lifting the edge of the fur far enough to expose the ugly puckered scar on his left thigh.
“I am a healer,” she informed him as she poked at the long red welt. “If your modesty is offended, I apologize, but you really need not be embarrassed around me.” She gave him a confident smile. “Perhaps it would help to just think of me as a man.”
Behind her, Ulfrich had a sudden need to clear his throat. He coughed so heartily that Cymbra decided to fix him an infusion of black currant and comfrey. He sounded as though he needed it.
Dragon was looking at her most peculiarly. She supposed he was struck by her good sense.
“There now, you see,” she said, “it's as I thought. The wound has healed on the surface but there is deep scarring below. The muscles and tendons are badly knotted. They must be exercised slowly and patiently to restore their vigor.”
She frowned. “I don't wish to be critical, but whoever treated this wound did a very bad job of it.”
“I thought the same,” Ulfrich declared. He peered over her shoulder, recovered from his coughing fit but sounding rather hoarse. “Frankly, my lord, a blind man could have done better.”
Dragon grimaced. “Since the care was my own and I was in rather a hurry to get it done, I don't think you should be so critical.”
“Your own?” Cymbra was horrified. “There was no one to help you? How could such a thing have happened?”
He sighed, resigned to having to tell her the story. “I stopped in Jutland on my way back from Byzantium. Outside the market at Hedeby, I was jumped by half-a-dozen Danes. I killed them, of course, but not before one of them did this.” He gestured to his leg.
“You killed all of them?” Cymbra asked, her eyes widening.
“They were brigands only not warriors,” he said, accounting it no great thing. “Were it not for a patch of mud I slipped on, none of them would have landed a blow.”
“Where were your men?” Ulfrich asked. Unlike Cymbra, he was not surprised by the Dragon's fighting prowess.
“I was alone, having just visited a … friend.”
Ulfrich chuckled. “Is it possible this friend had a husband who didn't take kindly to your presence?”
“I suppose,” Dragon admitted matter-of-factly. “I didn't pause to ask the scum who hired them.”
Cymbra schooled herself to take no notice of his frankness. She did spare a moment's thought for the sheer determination and courage it must have taken to treat such a wound alone. Had he not been able to stanch the bleeding, he would likely have died. She suspected he knew that but would never
acknowledge it.
“Very well,” she said briskly. “Tomorrow you will begin a regimen of baths, massage, and exercises. In addition, I will give you a tonic to drink thrice daily. If all goes well, within a fortnight you will be able to return to the training field but only for limited periods.”
She smiled at him reassuringly. “I will explain all this to Wolf so that when you do return, he will know better than to overstrain you and set back your recovery.”
A look passed between warrior and wise man. Ulfrich opened his mouth to speak, but Dragon forestalled him.
“Brew your tonic and if it isn't too vile, I'll drink it. But as for the rest—” He shrugged shoulders as broad as Wolf's own. “The fever is gone. I return to the field tomorrow, and if I get a whiff that my brother thinks me an invalid, he'll be the one whose wounds need tending.”
Cymbra heard him out, smiled sweetly, and said, “The fever will return again and again until this wound has healed properly. If that happens often enough, you will be left impotent.”
Dragon's jaw dropped. He stared at her. “That is not true.” He looked to Ulfrich for confirmation. “It isn't, is it?”
“Alas, my lord, I am not the healer the Lady Cymbra is and have not her knowledge. Besides, how many men have survived a wound such as this to discover what the consequences of it might or might not be?”
“Of course,” Cymbra interjected, “perhaps you don't really care. Perhaps prowess on the training field is more important to you than prowess in—”
“That's enough!” the Dragon roared. He was actually blushing, a sight that delighted Cymbra although she was not about to show it. “I cannot believe my brother married so bold a woman! You were supposed to be a sweet, gentle, docile maiden, not some termagant fit to ride with the Norns!”
“Who,” Cymbra asked although she suspected she wouldn't like the answer, “are the Norns?”
“The Weird Sisters,” Ulfrich explained kindly. As she continued to regard him inquiringly, he warmed to the topic. “They ride through the sky in blood-flecked armor, their wild steeds dripping hailstorms from their distended nostrils. Over battlefields, the She-graspers of Spears sound their mighty horns, shoot rays of light from their javelins, and select those warriors who will live or die.”
Cymbra nodded. “Oh, those Norns.” To Dragon, she said, “Consider me such if you will but it changes nothing. In a fortnight, you can be free of pain. By winter, you can be fully recovered. If—and only if—you do as I say.”
“You would be well advised to do so,” a cheerful voice pronounced from the lodge door. With an apologetic smile, Brother Joseph stepped within. “I hope you won't mind my coming by, Lord Dragon, but I found the bloodroot Lady Cymbra wanted and—”
“That's wonderful!” she exclaimed. “Wherever was it? You must show me the place.”
“I will and gladly, lady,” the priest assured her. To Dragon, he said, “The Lady Cymbra was kind enough to make a poultice that has immensely eased the aches in my joints. You really can put great store in her cures.”
“How nice,” Dragon muttered.
“What kind of poultice?” Ulfrich inquired.
“Oat, pansy, rue, and rosemary,” Cymbra said. “It is necessary to first boil the oat to a good consistency, guarding against allowing it to become too mushy—”
Wolf entered just then, in time to see the two holy men listening intently to his wife while his brother lay in the bed and rolled his eyes heavenward. He had come, he told himself, merely to see how Dragon fared. Not because he had noticed his wife's woman near the kitchens and realized that Cymbra was alone with the man who had lured countless women into beds, hay ricks, and who knew where else.
The man was his brother and Cymbra his wife. He trusted them both. He just didn't like the idea of them being alone together and disliked even more feeling that way.
Now he felt a perfect fool. First, they weren't even alone, and second, Dragon looked far more inclined to strangle than to seduce her. That cheered Wolf immensely. “You seem in good hands,” he announced.
“I'm never marrying,” Dragon growled. He shot a pointed look at Cymbra. “Wives get above themselves far too quickly. A man might as well put a ring through his nose.”
Wolf chuckled, feeling better and better. He wasn't sure how she had done it, but his sweet, gentle wife seemed to have the situation well in control. “So you'll be back on the field tomorrow?” he asked.
In the dead silence that followed, Cymbra took a step forward. She tipped her chin up until he thought her slender neck would snap, glared at him, and said, “I think I'll make a tonic for you, too. One with plenty of thyme in it to clear the head.”
By which he deduced that Dragon would be a while yet recovering.
SHE'S THE KEYSTONE OF A SAXON PLOT. ALFREDS AT the bottom of it. He's sitting over there in Wessex right now laughing himself sick.”
Wolf raised his head from the bench where he was lying naked and sweat-soaked and glanced at his brother. “I thought of that. If she really were, they'd have tricked the Danes into taking her.”
Dragon groaned. He bestirred himself enough to toss another ladleful of water onto the heated stones, then flopped back down on his own bench and let the steam of the sauna engulf him.
This day had been his first back on the training field after a fortnight of torture at the direction of his sister-in-law. He'd been stretched, kneaded, pummeled, twisted, and goaded through a battery of exercises that made him speak longingly of the cheerful carnage of battle and the relative mercy of a swift death.
Even Wolf, inured though he was to the harshness of life, had to wonder at the devilish torments devised by his lovely wife. And yet, though it would choke Dragon to admit it, his leg was stronger. Wolf had confirmed that for himself in just the last few hours.
He scratched his chest lazily and stretched out farther on the bench. The wood was cool against his back and buttocks, at least in comparison to the intense heat of the sweat lodge. “You'd have more strength if you refrained from bedding a wench every night.”
Dragon scowled through the pine-scented mist. “I'm just making sure, that's all.”
“Sure?” Wolf peered at his brother and laughed. “You're joking. Since when have you needed to make sure?”
“Since your darling wife told me I'd be impotent if I didn't do as she said.”
Wolf sat bolt upright, staring at Dragon in disbelief. “She didn't!”
“She damn well did. Smiled as sweetly as you please, and suggested I cared more about prowess on the training field than prowess in bed.”
“Cymbra said that?” He was incredulous. Surely his brother had misunderstood. Cymbra, who was still shy about telling him what she liked, who would only whisper it to him, her lovely face flaming and her eyes unable to meet his. Cymbra, speak so bluntly and not to him but to another man? Cymbra?
Dragon grinned, pleased to have gotten back a bit of his own. “You tell her I said so and I'll come after you with an ax, but the fact is she's at least as smart as she is beautiful.”
“That's a truly frightening thought,” Wolf said and meant it.
There was nothing much to do after that except beat each other with birch branches and run naked into the icy river. In that same spirit of male conviviality, it was only sensible then to retire to the timbered hall, summon the skald and a vat of ale, and while the night away in drink and song.
“How long has it been since we got drunk together?” Wolf wondered aloud some unknowable time later. They were sitting on the ground in front of the hall, although he couldn't quite remember when they'd moved out there. The moon had set and the sky was a sea of stars, split almost in half by the vast silver river along which the gods rode to glorious battle.
“Too damn long,” Dragon replied. “Ought to do this regularly. Good Vikings get drunk.” He thought for a moment, then added, “And pillage. We're supposed to do a lot of pillaging. People expect it.”
Wolf nodded, ponderin
g that as he might a childhood memory. “Times are changing.”
“Perish the thought!”
“No, it's true, they are. Look right here with us.” He waved an arm to encompass the hill fort and the town beyond. “How much pillaging do we actually do? I mean really? We fight when we have to—and we do it too damn much thanks to the bloody Danes and Saxons. But we're traders, brother. We make an honest profit—”
Dragon laughed. “A damn big honest profit.”
“Nothing wrong with that but it's still trading. And there are other changes, too. You think Brother Joseph stays here because he likes the climate?”
“What's wrong with the climate?”
“Nothing, I'm just using it as an example. He's here 'cause people are listening to him. Hell, sometimes I listen to him.”
“You do? Really? What's he say?”
Wolf frowned, wanting to get it right even if it didn't make much sense. “He says we're supposed to love each other.”
Dragon mulled that over. He was silent for a while, drinking, then remembered what they'd been talking about. “He doesn't mean everybody, does he? Couldn't mean that.”
Wolf started to shake his head, decided that wasn't a good idea, and shrugged. “I think he does.”
His brother blinked at him owlishly. “Why?”
More thinking, then, “Something 'bout being the children of God and him sending his son to die for us.”
“Sacrifice.” Dragon nodded. This was something he could understand. “You don't allow those here anymore, do you?”
Wolf hesitated. Images slipped through his mind, stories his father had told him of men and sometimes even women and children sacrificed to the Aesir, the great gods. Nine times nine, they were hanged from the branches of trees, their blood soaking the ground for nine days. Sacrifice was still an accepted part of life but it was slowly dying out, replaced by a sense of—what? Other possibilities? Other hopes?
