by Julia Byrne
He laughed, torn between wry acknowledgement that he had a battle on his hands, and reluctant admiration for her stubbornness. ‘You don’t yield ground easily, do you, little cat. But your studies should have taught you that we Vikings take a different view of death. And we have many Gods to keep us from such a fate as you describe.’
‘Best pray to them,’ suggested Thorolf, overhearing this remark as he approached. ‘I smell rain.’
Yvaine all but collapsed against the side as Rorik’s attention shifted to Thorolf. She wasn’t sure what had happened just then. On the surface, they’d been arguing, but for one fleeting instant she’d felt poised on the brink of discovery, only to have the moment snatched away.
‘More than rain,’ Rorik said. ‘We’re running straight before a storm.’
‘What!’ She jerked upright again. ‘You’ve been standing there, amusing yourself by thwarting me at every turn, when there’s a storm coming? Do something!’
‘Take the styri,’ he ordered Thorolf, and in a sudden change of mood that took her completely by surprise, he swooped, caught her up in his arms and, ignoring her startled squeak of protest, lifted her to his shoulder. ‘Look to the south,’ he advised, grinning up at her. ‘And tell me what you think I should do.’
Yvaine looked, mainly because it was less dangerous than gazing down into those wickedly smiling eyes. She promptly changed her mind when she saw what awaited her gaze.
Black clouds were rolling over the horizon like giants erupting from some violent netherworld. Seething, growling, they advanced with ominous purpose. Every few seconds lightning flickered eerily within the dark roiling bulk, as though the god of thunder was stirring, preparing to wreak havoc on the puny humans below him. In that moment she could well believe that such a being existed. And that, Sea Dragon, once seeming so big and solid, would look like nothing more than a tasty snack.
‘Blessed Saint Mary save us,’ she uttered as Rorik lowered her to the deck. ‘What are we going to do?’
‘You,’ he said, holding her steady against the motion of the ship, ‘are going back to the tent. We’ll do what we always do in these conditions.’
‘Aye.’ Thorolf gave her a wry grin. ‘We have all of two choices, one of which is to leave the sail up and try to outrun it.’
‘Dear God. What’s the other?’
‘Turn and face it,’ Rorik said, glancing southward. ‘If we leave the sail up, it’ll be ripped to shreds while we think that storm is still a mile off. We’ll ride it out. It won’t be the first time.’
She turned her head sharply. ‘For you, maybe, but—’
The rest slid back down her throat as he lowered his head to hers. ‘Don’t worry, sweeting,’ he said, his warm breath caressing her cheek. ‘I’ll never surrender you. Not even to the sea.’
Thorolf coughed politely, and Rorik released her to take the steering oar from his friend. Faint colour was staining his cheekbones, but Yvaine was in no state to take much notice. The promise in his words had been disturbing enough; the deep note of tenderness in his voice shook her to the core.
‘Thorolf will take you back to the tent,’ he said rather curtly. ‘You’ll be safe there for a while.’
‘For a while?’ she echoed, alarmed. But Thorolf seized her arm and urged her back to the prow before she could question further.
‘Don’t give me any trouble,’ he ordered. ‘I’ve got enough to do so I can get back to Rorik. The ship has to be kept steady into the waves and when that storm hits, he’ll see nothing but water flying in all directions. Two pairs of eyes at the steering-oar are better than one.’
Yvaine swallowed her protest and obeyed. Clearly the men knew what they were doing, and would do it better without hindrance. But her patience was sorely tried during an hour in which the wind began to strengthen and the ship to toss.
She and the other women braced themselves against the oak planks, shielding little Eldith as best they could, and endured the worsening conditions in a frightened silence that was broken only once.
‘Thank the saints we’re too scared to be seasick,’ observed Anna with grim humour.
‘Aye,’ muttered Britta. ‘A plague on all ships, I say.’
Yvaine could only nod agreement. She grabbed hold of a crossrib as the ship plunged into another deep trough. Her head banged against the narrowed side of the prow when they hit the next wave.
If the sea got any rougher they would be thrown all over the place. How did the men fare in such storms, exposed in an open ship that cleared the water by a mere three feet? Were they even still alive? She could hear nothing but the keening wind and the growl of approaching thunder.
Visions of an empty ship, its crew swept overboard, danced before her eyes, but before she managed to frighten herself enough to disobey Thorolf and investigate, two men brushed through the curtain, carrying a couple of skin bags. They didn’t waste words. One burly fellow tucked Eldith under his arm. The other wrapped a bag apiece around Anna and Britta and began to hustle the women outside.
‘Wait!’ Yvaine stumbled to her feet. ‘Where are you taking them?’
No one answered her. She took a step forward, only to come up hard against Rorik when he strode into the shelter. He was drenched from head to foot, but he looked reassuringly strong and safe.
‘Oh, thank God,’ she breathed, her hands coming up to grip his tunic. ‘What in heaven’s name is happening?’
Rorik covered her hands with his, bracing his legs to keep his balance.
‘We have to take the tent down before it blows away,’ he said. ‘I’m going to tie you to the mast with the other women. You’ll be safer there.’
‘Tie me…no!’ Terrified memory swept over her. ‘Don’t—’
‘Hush, little one. No one’s going to hurt you this time.’
‘But—’
Rorik’s grip tightened. ‘Yvaine, listen to me. These little hands aren’t strong enough to hold on to something for hours. One good wave would take you over the side.’
His firm tone halted her frightened rush towards panic. He was right. She knew he was right, but the memory of her helplessness when Ceawlin had tied her to the roof pole made her tremble.
‘Trust me, sweeting.’ Rorik wrapped one of the skin bags around her and urged her towards the curtain. ‘I’ll leave your hands free. It won’t be the same as before.’
Yvaine went with him; she had no choice. This was his world, his battlefield. She could do nothing but place her life in his hands.
She braced herself as he reached out to draw back the curtain, only to jerk back in surprise when he halted and swung around to face her. She looked up, her heart starting to race at the intensity in his eyes. He was gazing at her as if fixing her face on his memory for all time.
Then, as her lips parted in startled enquiry, he pulled her against him with sudden fierce urgency and his mouth came down on hers.
Chapter Six
He kissed her as if she was his and they’d been parted forever. Raw hunger overwhelmed her. No gentle tasting, this. He ravished, he plundered.
And she yielded. She could do nothing but cling, while the fierce demand of his mouth sent a sweet, melting weakness flowing through every limb. When the ship slewed sideways, forcing him to break the kiss, she would have fallen if he hadn’t been holding her so tightly.
For one heart-stopping moment his gaze, burning, intense, held hers. Then, without a word, he clamped her to his side and swept her through the curtain into the teeth of the storm.
The tempest engulfed her instantly. Shrieking, howling, the storm raced across the sky like condemned souls fleeing the fires of hell. Already dazed, she would have been helpless without Rorik’s support. The wind and the rough rise and fall of the ship made it almost impossible to stay upright, and she was constantly blinded by the spray that hissed over the side every time Sea Dragon ploughed into the enormous waves.
Bent almost double, they reached the centre of the ship and she saw that the ma
st had been lowered. Dim figures crouched beneath it. Rorik tucked her close to the other women and secured her by lashing a rope about her waist and tying it to the solid wood.
‘Stay beneath the mast as much as possible,’ he yelled.
‘And here, take this.’
He closed her fingers around a metal object. Yvaine peered at it through the gloom. Thor’s hammer. But when she held it upright the two-headed amulet became a cross.
‘Hold it so if you wish,’ he said. ‘Perhaps you’d better pray to that Christian God of yours. We’re going to need all the help we can get.’
She looked up, seized by a sudden wrenching sense of urgency. Lightning exploded around them as the wind whipped his hair across his face. The very air seemed to crackle with the force and power of the storm. In the brilliant light his eyes blazed, silver fires burning. His mouth was set hard, the planes of his face as fiercely primitive as the elements themselves.
This was how she would remember him always, she thought. Fighting the raging forces of sea and sky to keep them alive.
He touched her cheek gently, and was gone.
Yvaine crouched in the darkness, feeling as if she’d taken a direct hit from that lightning bolt. As if in that split second she’d been rendered open, accepting, bared to her very soul—and filled with a calm, clear knowledge.
Then the fury of the storm swept over her, wrenching her back. She tried to make herself as small as possible, pressing against the solid wood at her back as though she could become part of it. The mast and the oiled skin bag kept most of the water off her, but the hissing of the sea below the hull sounded vicious and terrifyingly close. Planks shifted and groaned beneath her. She vaguely recalled hearing that the flexibility of Norse ships kept them from breaking up in rough weather, but the memory slipped through her mind and was gone.
The bone-jarring thud as they landed in a trough and the whoosh as the ship lifted into the next wave had her senses reeling. The noise was ear-splitting. Wind howled. Lightning cracked. And one explosion of thunder scarcely faded to a rumble before another tore the sky asunder.
She tried to pray but her brain wouldn’t co-operate. She began to wonder if God would feel inclined to help forty heathens battle the storm for the sake of keeping four Christians from a watery grave. She hoped so, because she wasn’t ready to die just yet. She wanted the adventure to continue. She wanted—
Her mind blanked. Lightning wasn’t responsible this time; when thought finally returned, the storm raged in a realm so far distant she scarcely noticed it.
What did she want? To know what it was like to lie with Rorik? Did she want more than kisses, more than his arms holding her as if he’d never let her go—when he’d taken her for no other reason than desire?
And yet…somewhere deep inside, that knowledge thrilled her. Like his smile, it tantalised, lured, seduced. And as if it had been waiting only for this moment, when with danger all around, her defences lay shattered, an insidious little question crept into her mind.
Would it be so wrong? To yield. Just once. To know what it was like to be desired for herself? It wasn’t as if she’d be surrendering to a mindless brute. There were depths to Rorik that drew her. And why should she cling to her virtue? She’d done her duty; she was a widow. And since she’d rather be swept over the side than have another husband foisted upon her, who would know or care?
A torrent of water cascading over the mast jolted her brutally back to the present. They could all be swept over the side. Before she worried about any future, both she and Rorik had to survive the storm. And his danger was far greater than hers.
The knowledge wrenched an involuntary cry from her. She raised her head, trying to see through the darkness and the driving spray. It was impossible. She could only picture Rorik in her mind, standing by the steering oar, without shelter or protection, pitting his strength against the wild sea.
Hunkering down against the elements, Yvaine began to pray in earnest.
There hadn’t been a breath of wind all morning. After the violence of the storm the utter stillness was shocking. The sail hung limply. The bright pennants drooped from the motionless wind-vane.
Despite bailing water half the night, the crew had been rowing in rotating shifts since a grey dawn had broken over the becalmed sea. They said little. There was none of the usual jesting or tales of other voyages. What comments there were came from Othar and his friends, and had an edge to them.
Rorik scowled at the overcast sky. He was going to have to speak to his brother. He knew tempers were short. Lack of sleep and the eerie stillness had everyone edgy, but Othar’s grumbling only added to the air of tension that hung over the ship.
He glanced at Yvaine as she sat on his sea-chest talking to Thorolf—who was supposed to be navigating. The other women sat against the bulkhead, the child between them. The fact that they were there in the stern, in full view, while the tent was drying, probably wasn’t helping matters, but after the storm, he’d wanted Yvaine close.
Not that it had done him much good. She’d scarcely spoken to him all morning, although she seemed to be showing an inordinate amount of interest in navigation. And Thorolf wasn’t discouraging her.
Rorik grimaced. Gods! Unsatisfied desire must be playing tricks with his mind. He’d trust Thorolf with his life.
‘How’s our course?’ he asked as his friend picked up a yellowish stone. Aye, concentrate on steering. It was more productive than fantasies of the golden-eyed sorceress beside him clinging to him as she’d done last night when he’d plundered that soft, sweet mouth.
‘Steady to the north-east.’
‘How do you know without the sun?’ Yvaine asked, peering curiously at the stone.
Thorolf handed it to her. ‘See how the crystal changes to blue when held to the east. ’Tis the light from the sun. Even though we can’t see it on a cloudy morning like this, the sunstone tells us we’re going in the right direction.’
‘Aye, but I’d like to go there a lot faster,’ Rorik muttered.
His low growl sent a shiver of awareness through Yvaine. She hoped he hadn’t noticed. For some reason, she’d expected the shocking thoughts she’d entertained during the storm to dissipate with the coming of dawn. After all, she’d been terrified for her life last night; rational thought could hardly be expected under the circumstances.
But the cold light of day was proving disturbingly ineffectual. The tantalising notion of surrender still whispered, siren-like, in her head. And when she told herself that danger and dependency had overturned her wits, images started tumbling through her mind. Images of Rorik’s broad shoulders blocking out the moonlight when he’d knelt above her on the beach. The leashed power in the hard body pinning her to the sand. A mouth that could gently coax, or take with a fierceness that shattered every notion of resistance until she wanted nothing more than to surrender.
Madness. It had to be. Her mind was playing tricks with her, tempting her to submit because she had no choice. And yet there were always choices. She could fight; retreat into frozen martyrdom; even seize the ultimate escape offered by death itself.
As if that was going to happen, she thought with ironic self-mockery. If someone like Ketil had captured her, she wouldn’t hesitate, but…
She looked up at Rorik and felt something soften deep inside her. No, death wasn’t an option. Right now she doubted she’d even fight him. He was strong and hard, aye, but he was also human. He looked dead tired.
‘Have you had any sleep?’ she asked softly, and immediately felt heat flood her cheeks. She was indeed mad. Sweetness and understanding were not part of any plan to win her freedom.
The grim lines about his mouth eased. ‘I will as soon as the wind comes up and I can set a course for sailing,’ he said. ‘Then it shouldn’t be too long before we sight Jutland.’
‘You always were an optimist,’ Thorolf observed, peering at the sunstone.
Yvaine glanced at him. ‘Are we far from land?’
&
nbsp; ‘You may well ask,’ he replied gloomily. ‘Odin’s ravens might know. I don’t.’
‘You said something like that once before,’ she cried, remembering. ‘I thought I was dreaming, or out of my mind, but you meant Hugin and Mugin, didn’t you.’
‘Thought and Memory,’ murmured Rorik. ‘I see you’ve heard of them, lady. They fly over the world every day and return at night to tell Odin all that has happened. Thus, he knows everything.’
‘So does our Christian God,’ she pointed out before she could stop herself. ‘Without the help of any ravens.’
Rorik’s eyes narrowed.
‘Speaking of gods, I pray to Thor myself,’ Thorolf said hastily. ‘He’s the most popular. Then there’s Freyr, who looks after the crops; Loki, the troublemaker; Aegir, God of the Sea, whose daughters are the waves—temperamental like all women. But you should invoke Freyja, lady.’ He leaned over and indicated Rorik’s amulet which Yvaine had looped around her neck so she wouldn’t lose it. ‘Thor doesn’t suit you.’
She quickly removed the silver hammer and thrust it at Rorik. He took it, capturing her hand in the process.
Thorolf picked up the crystal again and turned aside to show it to the other women. Somehow his action gave Yvaine the impression he was giving them some privacy.
‘Thorolf’s right,’ Rorik murmured, stroking his thumb across the backs of her fingers ‘Freyja is the goddess for you.’
‘Oh?’ She swallowed. The feel of his calloused thumb was doing strange things to her heartbeat. She tried to pull her hand free, without success. ‘Why is that?’
‘Well, for one thing, she’s always attended by cats, and your fylgja is definitely a cat.’
‘F…fylgja?’ His thumb moved to the inside of her wrist; she felt her pulse jump along with her voice. ‘Oh, aye…an animal spirit.’
‘The animal spirit that accompanies you everywhere,’ he elaborated. ‘But Freyja is also the Goddess of Love.’
She made a sound that could have meant anything. Under his thumb, Rorik felt her pulse trip, then start to race, and had to steel herself against the urge to tighten his grip. He wished he could see her eyes, but Yvaine kept her lashes lowered, her face slightly averted. She didn’t seem afraid of him; more torn, as though she hovered on the brink of some unseen precipice.
