Beyond a Darkened Shore

by Jessica Leake

  I went rigid as stone when Leif moved closer to me, and I was painfully aware my backside was now flush against his front. “Is it all right to take the reins?” Leif asked. “Or will he unseat us both this time?”

  “Take them,” I said through gritted teeth. I was positioned too close to Sleipnir’s neck for me to hold them comfortably.

  A low rumble of a chuckle vibrated through my back. “You cannot remain so stiff. Relax, or this will be a painful ride all the way to Dyflin.”

  He pressed his heels to Sleipnir’s sides, and the stallion surged forward, throwing me against the Northman’s chest.

  “How can I relax when you are pressed so intimately against me?” I said, my tone sharp with embarrassment.

  “There is a broadsword between us.” Amusement was clear in his voice. “If you would like, you could hand it to me for safekeeping. Then we will both be more comfortable.”

  I snorted. “I will not part with it. You’ll have to find your own weapon.”

  “I am weapon enough.”

  He guided Sleipnir away from the coast and into the green hills beyond. Fog rolled in from the sea and blanketed the land, until it became difficult to see much farther than a horse length in front of us. Still, he kept Sleipnir at a grueling pace.

  “You needn’t run him until he is blown,” I snapped eventually. The lack of control was torturous.

  “We’ve lost enough time already.”

  The fog thickened, lowering the temperature until I shivered. The sun had been shining not long ago, and even in this land with its capricious weather, it was almost unnatural to have such thick fog. I wanted to turn and look back at the kingdom I was rapidly leaving, but I resisted the urge. I would only get an eyeful of Northman chest for my effort anyway.

  Besides, I had made my decision.

  There would be no going back now.

  Leif was silent, save for his quiet breathing, as Sleipnir cantered over hills of green. After a time, I allowed my body to relax, though I still kept as far from the Northman as I could. I was pressed uncomfortably against Sleipnir’s withers, each stride bruising my inner thighs.

  The sound of fresh water, a creek cutting through the hills, drew our attention. Leif slowed Sleipnir to a trot and guided him toward it.

  The silvery-blue water gurgled over the rocks, invitingly fresh. I scanned the shores for any signs of river spirits guarding the river. Leif dismounted and strode toward the water brazenly, without a hint of caution. I shook my head in disgust.

  He knelt down and washed both arms in the water before drinking his fill. When nothing attacked him, I dismounted and walked over to the water, alert for any signs of mischief.

  Sleipnir’s ears turned this way and that, but even he dipped his head to the water for a drink. I cupped my hands and scooped handfuls of the water, enjoying the coolness on my tongue. I drank until I could drink no more. When I stood again, I found Leif watching me.

  He strode toward me and I backed away, sinking into a defensive pose. A smile touched his lips. “Why would I choose now to harm you?” he asked. “I only wish to help you back onto your horse.”

  I didn’t know what he intended, but I knew I didn’t trust him. “I can manage it well enough myself.”

  I watched him until he shrugged and moved away. I had turned toward Sleipnir to mount when I felt the broadsword being pulled free from its sheath on my back. With an angry hiss, I whirled on Leif. In one smooth motion, I drew the dagger beneath my cloak.

  He held up his hand and my sword in a gesture of peace. “You were bruising yourself against the horse’s bones to keep from touching me. This sword kept me from moving closer so that we might both be comfortable. It’s best that I carry it.”

  His casual disregard for my judgment filled me with such anger that my hands shook. “Is this how you would treat your men? Divesting them of their weapons, ordering them about like dogs?”

  He smiled. “But you are not a man.”

  I glared. “I am the warrior who agreed to aid you in your quest. The one whose abilities you need, and yet you treat me like . . .” I struggled to remember the insult he had used earlier. “A meyja.”

  “If this is your only means of defense”—he gestured toward my sword at his back—“then you aren’t the warrior I believed you to be.”

  I stared at the hilt, just visible over his shoulder. I’d honed my skills with a sword, but my true means of defense was my ability to control the mind of another. I gritted my teeth at the realization that he’d pinpointed the truth: though I had an otherworldly ability, I was still limited by my fighting ability. I had taken advantage of the terrain when I fought Leif, but there was no doubt he was more skilled.

  I raised my chin until I was staring into his glacier-blue eyes. “Ask, then,” I said. “Ask if you may carry my sword for me.”

  “I do not ask,” he said. “I take.”

  “You take from your enemies; you ask of your allies. I am your ally. Treat me as such, or it’ll be you who will walk all the way to Dubhlinn.”

  “Dyflin,” he corrected, and my eyes narrowed to slits.

  He drew himself up to his full height, which made him tower over me, but I caught a hint of respect in his eyes. “Please allow me to carry your sword for you, milady,” he said, in a voice as gruff as stone.

  I smiled and dipped my head. “As you wish.”

  After returning my dagger to its hiding place, I pulled myself astride Sleipnir. Leif settled in behind me, and without the solid presence of the sword between us, I could feel his every breath against my back.

  While Sleipnir walked on, Leif drew in his breath as though he would say something, but then let it out again. Finally, he said, “I could help you hone your skills with a blade—if you’d be willing.”

  It occurred to me that I should feel insulted by his insinuation, but it was his hesitancy to suggest it that kept my indignation at bay. “You found my swordplay so terrible, then?” I asked with a self-deprecating laugh.

  “Not terrible by any means, but I can tell it isn’t your weapon of choice.” I could hear the grin in his voice when he added, “Though of course I had no idea your mind was your weapon.”

  I thought of our brief clash of swords. “You were holding yourself back when you fought me,” I said, almost to myself. It only confirmed what I had suspected during the battle.

  He grunted in answer.

  “Why?”

  He was silent for so long I finally risked a glance at him. “You spared my brother’s life. I saw that you were young and beautiful, and I couldn’t bring myself to end your life.” His eyes burned into mine, and I couldn’t look away. I felt the spread of a flush born of surprise and something else . . . something that stirred within and filled me with warmth. “And then you bashed me over the head with a stone.”

  His rumbling laughter vibrated through me as I broke his gaze and urged Sleipnir into a smooth canter.

  I willed myself to stop blushing like a maiden.

  7

  The sun had dipped low on the horizon by the time Leif slowed Sleipnir to a walk. Though it disturbed me to admit it, there were many times when I’d been lulled by Sleipnir’s smooth gait, and had relaxed against Leif’s chest . . . only to awake each time with a start, forcing my spine as straight as a sword. Leif never commented on it, despite the obvious chance to mock me.

  With his endurance at its limit, Sleipnir’s chest was heavily lathered with sweat. I leaned forward and patted his neck, whispering to him that we would soon stop. As though God-sent, a river snaked through the rock, beckoning us with its cool waters.

  “We will make camp here, near the river,” Leif said.

  I gazed out over the vast landscape, interspersed with boulders and thick copses of trees. Anything could be hiding just out of our sight, and the water was a prime location for dangerous creatures. Stopping briefly to refresh ourselves was one thing; making camp was another. We’d been lucky before. We might not be lucky again
.

  “We risk the notice of things better left alone if we sleep near the river,” I said, still warily scanning the area. “We should sleep with the rocks to our backs, so we’ll know what is lurking nearby.”

  Leif scoffed and dismounted. He held out his arms to me to help me down, but I ignored him and dismounted on my own. Free of his burdens at last, Sleipnir shook himself and walked down to the water’s edge.

  “Éirinn has many dangers,” I said. “We’ll live longer if we’re cautious.”

  His light eyebrows rose. “You think the northern lands are free from creatures who wish us harm?”

  “It doesn’t matter. What matters are the creatures of this land.”

  I was on the verge of throwing up my hands and telling him he could make camp wherever he damn well pleased, but instead of continuing to argue, he strode away from the shore, back toward several boulders at the foot of a hill. He started on a fire, his broad hands making quick work of the difficult task. I joined Sleipnir at the water’s edge to hide my satisfaction that he had listened to me for once.

  The river water was once again cold and refreshing, and as I cleaned myself of the dust from our travels, it occurred to me that I would soon be required to bed down for the night. With a Northman.

  Well, it wouldn’t be the first time I’d slept with my hand wrapped around my dagger.

  “I’ll hunt us hare to eat tonight,” Leif said, coming up behind me with surprisingly light footsteps. He unstrapped my sword from his back and handed it to me. “So you won’t be unarmed,” he said in response to my questioning look.

  “How will you catch anything without a weapon?” Not that a broadsword was particularly helpful in catching a hare, but it was better than bare hands.

  He grinned, a flash of teeth really. “I have other means.”

  Too tired to contemplate how he thought he would chase down and kill a hare with his bare hands, I nodded and made myself comfortable by the fire. We still had bread and cheese, so we wouldn’t starve tonight. I watched him as he followed the river farther south, struck by how agile he was despite his large size, like a lion instead of a man.

  Sleipnir grazed on the long green grass by the river’s edge, and I relaxed against the cool stone. Alone with my thoughts, a sort of melancholy homesickness descended upon me. My mother and sisters were surely home by now, and a knife’s twist of pain began in my stomach. My absence would undoubtedly worry them, and though my regret over such a thing was palpable, I had to remind myself I had no other choice. Had they spoken to Áthair? What would Máthair say when she learned what I’d done? I winced as I imagined her reaction—disgust? Fear? Worse was how my sisters might react. Would they tell them the truth? That I’d attacked our father and been exiled?

  I forced such thoughts from my head. I knew I would do everything exactly the same if given another chance. My flesh still crawled with what the Morrigan had shown me. There could be no doubt it would come to pass, and if forming an alliance with my enemy was the only way to stop it, then I would make my bed beside him.

  But my father . . . Áthair’s anger and disappointment would be as terrible as dragon’s fire when he discovered that I had joined forces with our enemy. Even if I was successful in driving giants out of Éirinn, I wasn’t sure that would change the way my father saw me: as a monster instead of a daughter. In my mind, I saw my family side by side, their blond hair, light eyes, and heart-shaped faces seeming to say that the possibility I was a changeling was not so difficult to believe after all.

  “I leave for only a few minutes,” Leif said, returning with a brace of rabbits, “and you look as though you may cry. Did you think I had abandoned you?”

  “If only,” I said, my eyes narrowed at his smirk. Unperturbed by my acidic tone, he sat down across from me and pulled out a small blade to skin the rabbits. “Where did you get the knife?”

  He continued skinning the rabbit, but he spared me a moment’s glance. “I’ve had it all along,” he said. “Your men didn’t search me well enough. Useless as those chains.” A flash of teeth. “You didn’t really think they’d hold me, did you?”

  I had, actually, but of course I’d never admit that. My hand tightened on the grip of my sword when I thought about how easily he had escaped. His profile was to me, his nose as straight as a blade, his entire face as though it was chiseled from the rock itself, though his lips were surprisingly full. He was beautiful, a dangerous beauty, and again I thought of my earlier comparison to a lion. “If the chains were so ineffective, then why didn’t you leave sooner?”

  He quickly and efficiently finished skinning one rabbit and moved on to the next. “I wanted to hear what you had to say. And,” he added with a grin, “if you’ll recall, I had recently suffered a blow to my head.”

  He could have left at any time. A flush of embarrassment sneaked up my neck. “I could have killed you instead,” I snapped, “though I suppose you would have liked that better, since you Northmen are all so eager to die.”

  “Not just die,” Leif corrected. “Die in battle.”

  I scoffed. “Either way, you’d be dead.”

  He slid the rabbits onto two sticks and held them over the fire. “Would you have me explain to you about our afterworld, then? About Valhalla’s golden halls overflowing with ale and mead—where we can fight all day and feast all night.”

  “How is that any different from what you do on earth?”

  Amusement touched the edges of his mouth. “Because in Valhalla, we will never tire or grow old.”

  I shifted my gaze from the fire to his face. “And just how old are you? You can’t be much older than I am.”

  He turned the rabbits expertly over the flames. “Old enough to have earned the right to sail my own longship, to lead my own men.” I shook my head over his cryptic answer, but then he added, “I have seen eighteen years.”

  As I’d thought, only a year older than I was. But as I had learned long ago: power aged you. “Will you tell me more of the enemy we face?”

  “That depends. How much do you know of our gods?”

  “Nothing.” Though that wasn’t entirely true. I knew a little; it was hard not to, when the Northmen had infiltrated so many of our cities, intermarrying with my own people, bringing their strange gods with them. I knew that Odin was the father of the gods, and the god of war. His most famous son was Thor, the thunder god. “You said the giants wanted to overthrow the gods. Why do they want to do that?”

  “The gods and jötnar may be descended from the same being, but they’ve been in a struggle against each other over control of the realms since the beginning of time. The jötnar are gluttons of all: gold, women, power, flesh. More than anything, they desire control over mankind—to be worshipped as the gods have been. Because of this, the gods banished them to their own realm: Jötunheimr. The jötnar have forever tried to break free of their realm, but we’ve always trusted the gods to keep them in check. Until the most powerful of them, led by Fenris, escaped.”

  My father would have immediately dismissed everything Leif had said as heretical pagan nonsense, and part of me wanted to do the same, but there was a powerful ring of truth in his words. They raised the hair on the back of my neck.

  “Why would men join with such monsters?”

  “Because the men are drawn to the same thing as the jötnar. Promises of riches and power. In exchange for men helping them conquer the lands of both the Celtic gods and the Norse, they will defeat the gods, who have already become weak since the Christian God has spread throughout our lands. Not having to answer to our gods is a tempting proposition for many who are tired of bloody sacrifices that have gone unanswered by the gods.”

  Weak. The Morrigan certainly hadn’t seemed weak when she was holding me captive in my own tub. But then, she was also working through me . . . and possibly through Leif. Was it because she didn’t have the power to stop the jötnar on her own? It made me think of what the Morrigan had said before—that the old gods of É
irinn had grown weak and unable to interfere in the mortal realm. It was hard to believe, but the Morrigan was also a war goddess. She would have destroyed the giants already had she the power to do so.

  “Have you seen these giants?”

  His gaze shifted to mine briefly. “I have seen evidence of them, and talk of them has spread throughout the north.”

  “Must be strong evidence for you to take on such a quest.”

  “As strong as a crow’s vision,” he said with a smirk.

  I looked away—I didn’t want to be reminded of that horrible vision. “What I saw was terrible enough to make me join with you, it’s true.” I glanced back at him. “What evidence did you find?”

  A muscle in his jaw flexed—perhaps at the memory of them. “Not long ago I encountered a Norse village that had been reduced to splinters. There were no bodies to burn; only pools of blood were left. Like a herd of swine had been slaughtered—in some places, the blood dripped from the roof. My men and I found footprints, ten times the size of a normal man’s, covering the village. It was clear to us what had happened—that the jötnar had escaped Jötunheimr. When we consulted with the seer, the warnings of our gods were passed along to us: that Fenris planned to overthrow them and take over Midgard.”

  A vein in my forehead pounded along with my heart. I had seen the destruction the jötnar were capable of in the Morrigan’s vision, but it was still hard to accept. There were those in my own clan who whispered of the old gods, but my clan had long since converted to Christianity. To believe in them branded me a heretic, and yet I could not argue against the Morrigan’s existence.

  “Why kill all those people?”

  “In truth, I believed they were killing mortals for the same reason we kill livestock: to eat. But the seer thinks otherwise.”

  He paused to hand me one of the rabbits, and I only picked at it though I was famished. “The seer believes it’s not so simple as that?”

  “She has said that the jötnar have grown tired of their exiled existence,” Leif said, tearing into his own rabbit with no shortage of appetite.