Magnus

by Joanna Bell

  But before the blow landed, another suddenly stopped it, lifting my sword away from Asger's neck with such force that I almost dropped it. It was my father, the Jarl. And when our eyes met I saw his were wet with tears of rage.

  "Think what you do," he gasped, shocked to see what had been about to happen. "Magnus! Think what you do – this is your brother! This is your future Jarl!"

  Lord Eldred, who had appeared at some point during the proceedings, stepped forward to bid my father take his remaining men and leave.

  "It is only out of respect to your son that I don't have you killed," he added. "Go now, before I change my mind. GO!"

  Asger stumbled towards the gate, but he could not contain himself, even then. He turned around to face me once again, and to issue another threat.

  "Keep her close," he said, eying Heather. "Wherever you go, keep her close. Not that it will save her in the end, brother. Not that it will keep me from offering her to my men when I return for you with more Northern warriors. Not that it will keep me from taking her until she bleeds, and then throwing her body in –"

  It seemed to happen slowly. In my memory afterwards, it was as if I could remember each moment in isolation. The sound of my blade moving through the air, and the faint glint, from one of the fires that was still not out glimmering along its edge. My father stopping abruptly and the turning, his mouth opening into a scream – although I do not remember the sound of screaming – as Asger fell to his knees, blood spilling out of his mouth and his eyes looking up at me, filled with confusion even then.

  I drove my sword in deep, bellowing the whole time, and then put my foot on my brother's chest to withdraw it.

  He was dead before he hit the ground.

  The Jarl's first son was dead, killed by the second, and the Angles stood poised to kill the Jarl himself, and his few remaining men. I held one arm up to stop them – a final mercy to my mother, so that she would not spend the rest of her years alone.

  I knew that my father was finished. He knew it, too. He was as finished as he would have been had the Angles poked him full of holes with their swords. His shoulders slumped as he looked down at Asger's body, and then up at me with that same confused expression that Asger himself had given me just moments before.

  "It didn't have to be this way," he said, looking up again, his cheeks shiny with tears and other men's blood. "Magnus, it didn't have –"

  "You're right." I proclaimed, as one of the warriors began to drag Asger's body away, to take it back to the ship and then home to Apvik, where it would be burned on a pyre as all the villagers stood around it and pretended that a great man had been lost. "It did not have to be this way, Father!"

  We held each other's gaze for a brief moment, I knowing that it would be the last time I would look upon my father, and he knowing that it would be the last time he would look upon his one remaining son.

  The emotion gathered in my chest, making me pant with it, as my father and his beaten men left through the gates – but I did not weep. It was not sadness I felt but something else. It was the last words I had spoken to him, the weight of their truth. It did not have to be that way. But it was. Memories from my childhood danced through my mind, spats with Asger, moments where I could see that my father knew the character of each of his sons. And still he chose the one he must have known – he had to have known – would inevitably lead him to the day where he walked, shoulders bent low with grief, through a gate in a foreign land with the body of that very son carried behind.

  "Have the woodcutters bring the wood," Lord Eldred said quietly to one of his men, when my father and the warriors carrying Asger's body were out of sight. "And have the builders replace this gate by nightfall tomorrow – and somebody dig a pit outside the walls for the bodies of the Northmen."

  The usual boisterousness of victory was nowhere that day, as the light of the dawn began to creep through the trees. The Angles understood what they had just seen, and they wished to show me respect.

  "Bring ale from the stores," Eldred added, after placing his hand briefly on my shoulder and looking me in the eyes. "We'll drink to our victory this evening."

  And then he was gone, and the rest of the Angles were busied with the tasks he had set them, including the one who was still holding Heather.

  She rushed to me when he let go, and I fell to my knees, reaching blindly for her, burying my face in her belly.

  "Magnus," she whispered, kneeling in front of me and drawing my face against her neck, holding me tight. "Magnus, oh, Magnus. My love, my love. Magnus."

  It was only then that I wept.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Heather

  Something changed in me the day I watched Magnus kill his own brother. Something got harder, older. I became more a woman of the Kingdom of the East Angles and less a girl from Los Angeles, who did not even have it in her, at twenty-two, to stand up to her tyrant mother. Of course the step was one of many on a new path, and not definitive, but for all the rest of my life I remembered the feeling, that day, of having to put my own shock aside, of having to steel myself against the temptation to fall apart.

  It was Magnus who made me feel those things. When I took him in my arms in the bloody earth by the front gate, I felt how much he needed me. I knew that it was on me to be his strength in the coming period of his reckoning with what he had just done. I didn't give in because I couldn't. I didn't give in because he needed me not to give in.

  Instead, after stroking his hair and kissing him and crooning words of softness and useless comfort into his ears until his heavy breaths began to calm, I led him to the healer and sat beside him, holding his hand and kissing it every now and again as she applied various ointments and herbal potions to the wound on his arm.

  It made me feel guilty, the fact that I was almost thankful for the injury – although at the time I did not understand that even a simple cut could often be deadly in my new home. It gave me – it gave us – something to focus on, something to look at and comment on and tend to. Something that wasn't Asger's death. Later that morning, as we lay quietly in our hut, he looked up at me.

  "I thought I knew," he whispered, running his fingers along the rough hem of my tunic. "I thought I knew I wasn't going home again. But now I think I did not know – not truly. It is final in my heart now, girl. I will never see Apvik again. I will never see my mother again. She will go to her next life hating me."

  And I couldn't even argue with him because what use would it have been, trying to convince an intelligent man that his parents would not hate him for killing their firstborn son and heir? We both knew that there was perhaps nothing so effective on earth that a person could do to make you hate them than killing their child – even if the one wielding the blade was also their child.

  "I'm not sorry," he added a few moments later, nestling his head into my neck and clinging tightly to me. "I'm not happy, either, do not misunderstand me. But it is a wonder Asger lived as long as he did, and everyone must know that were he not the Jarl's son he probably would not have seen his coming of age day."

  "What is a coming of age day?" I asked, because I did not know what to do other than to take my cues from Magnus himself – and he seemed to want to talk.

  "It is the day of a man's ten and sixth birthday. It is often sooner for the girls, and on the occasion of their first blood – but for the boys it is always that birthday. We spend the night before it outside the village with the gothi, and drink a tea that induces visions and wisdom. When we return to the village a fight is staged with the boys who came of age before the last winter. No one gets hurt – it is just ritual. But my brother was lucky to make it so far, with how skillfully he courted people's disdain. Do you know when he was not yet ten winters he stole our father's sword – the Jarl's sword – and tried to take a swing at one of our highest warriors? And for what? For scolding him when he stole a bowl of butter from their table. Fortunately for Lodvig, Asger could barely lift the blade with which he meant to launch
his attack. Any other boy in Apvik – including me – who had done such a thing would have been whipped."

  "And what happened to Asger?"

  "Nothing, girl. Oh, my mother and father made a big show of telling him off in front of Lodvig and his wife, but when they got him home – nothing. He was warned not to do it again. But Asger was never the type to learn a lesson by words alone."

  "Sounds like me," I said, thinking of the bag of barley and the rats and intending my comment to be light. But Magnus pushed himself up on his arms and shook his head.

  "No!" He replied. "No you are nothing like him, girl. Do not say such things."

  We stayed in the hut for a long time, undisturbed by Brona or anyone else who wished us to help with the day's work. It must have been Lord Eldred's doing, to allow Magnus some time alone after the events of the previous night.

  Into the afternoon I stroked the Northman's cheek and brushed his hair off his face and tended gently to him. It hadn't even been a month since I'd made the fateful decision to reach out of the undergrowth and pull him into my hiding spot, but already it felt much longer. It would not have been the same, I knew, if I'd met him back in Los Angeles, or River Falls. Back home we would maybe have exchanged phone numbers, met up at the bowling alley for a date or gone to a concert. I smiled as he lay with his head against my thigh, trying to picture Magnus at a bowling alley. He probably would have been good at it – he was good at everything.

  "What do you think of?" He asked, seeing that I was lost in thought.

  "Luck," I replied softly. "How some people have it, and other people don't."

  "And who do you think has luck?"

  "I think your parents did not have it," I replied. "The way you describe your brother, and the things I know of you – they must have seen it, right? The must have seen that even though he was older, you were better at everything? Why didn't they decide to make you the next Jarl, after your dad?"

  "It doesn't work like that. It is not a Jarl's choice who is the next Jarl. It is not always his oldest son, either – if there is another warrior who stands out in battle and in leadership, the people can refuse the current Jarl's oldest son. But my father was respected – he was a good Jarl, he kept the people well and safe. And so they did not want to oppose him when he wished his eldest son to take over. It was changing recently, some of the people had begun to murmur that the maturing that my father felt so sure would take place in Asger had not come to be. But if it hadn't been him it would not have been me – my father would not have allowed such an obvious condemnation of his firstborn. No, it would have been someone else, someone unrelated."

  We fell into a conversation about the society of the North, and then about the gothis Magnus had mentioned – they were religious figures, priests. And then we dozed off in the warm hut, only to be awoken by a voice at the door that afternoon.

  Magnus was already awake, his body stiff and alert and only relaxing when he realized it was just one of the Angles.

  "There will be a feast –"

  "Open the door, boy!" Magnus replied. "No one is going to bite you!"

  Slowly, the door opened and a child leaned in. "There will be a feast this evening," he told us, eying Magnus with wary awe. "Lord Eldred sent me to invite you – and the woman. Come to the hall at sundown."

  "Aye, at sundown," Magnus replied. "Tell Lord Eldred we'll be there."

  After the kid scuttled away I looked up at my Northman – because the quiet hours we had just spent together had solidified his transition, in my mind, from 'the' Northman to 'my' Northman – and smiled.

  "'The woman.' Did you hear that? How old was that child – six? And I'm 'the woman?' It makes me sound like livestock. Like property."

  "It is the Angles' way," he replied. "They put so much stock in marriage – perhaps I will have to make you my wife so you can get some respect from the Angle children? As it is now, yes, you are my property."

  I turned away, grinning because I knew he was trying to provoke a reaction in me. "I'm not your property, Magnus. I think you are my property!"

  "Is it so?" He laughed, pulling me easily across his lap and smacking my ass. "Are you sure?" He spanked me again. "Are you, girl? Why do you let me get away with such things if it is I who is your property?" Another spank.

  I giggled and tried to get away, but he held me fast. And then we both seemed to remember the events of the previous night at the same time and Magnus' hand fell still on my rump. I stayed where I was, laying across his thighs on my belly, sensing a sudden change in the air. And then he was pushing my tunic up over my hips, and his hands were no longer playful.

  I already knew he was strong. I knew it when he did things like pulling me across his lap with no effort at all, even as I used all my strength to try to struggle away, laughing. I knew it when I saw him carrying heavy logs to our hut to be chopped into firewood – logs I would not be able to move an inch, even if I tried. What I did not know was just how gentle he had been with me when we made love. He had seemed so abandoned, so eager to toss me onto my back or lift me up in the air and wrap my legs around his hips that I hadn't realized how much he'd been holding back.

  That afternoon, when he put me on all fours and my knees sank roughly into the dirt floor in our hut, I got my real first taste of the true depth of strength lurking in Magnus' thickly muscled body.

  He apologized at once, when he heard me whimper in what was mostly surprise, but I turned and look back over my shoulder, catching his eye. He needed me. All I wanted was to give him what he needed.

  "No," I said softly. "No, it's OK. It's –"

  My words dissolved into a loud gasp as he tore his leathers from his waist and buried himself inside me. His hands were tight on my hips, his fingers sunk into my flesh, and he was jerking me hard back against him.

  I don't remember being conscious of whether or not it hurt to be gripped so hard. I don't really remember being conscious of anything except Magnus and the ragged breaths that were coming from his throat – breaths which I could not truly tell from sobs.

  "Heather," he breathed, bending his body, so much bigger than mine, down over me until my shoulders rested on the earth. "Heather, Heather..."

  There was nothing and no one who could help him except me. I knew that's what he was telling me, as he took what he needed from my body. And being taken like that – in a way I had once thought I would never be comfortable with – was so sweet and so perfect. The healer, I understood, could apply her unguents. The lord, who invited us to feast with him that night, could apply words of thanks, of respect. And I too could also do those things.

  But alongside those human responses, those social instincts, were other, darker, deeper wounds that needed to be tended to. And for those wounds, only I would do. Only my body would heal him.

  It happened quickly. And there was something darkly intoxicating about being needed like that, with such urgency. I felt like a paper boat suddenly placed in a rushing river, carried along on the swirling, driving currents of Magnus' lust until my own fingers were curling into the dirt and my own breaths were coming fast and shallow.

  "Magnus," I half-whispered, half-gasped as he swept me along and drew me up towards a peak I wanted more than anything. "Magnus!"

  "Yes," he breathed into my ear, yanking my hair out of the way so he could kiss my neck. "Yes, girl."

  And when he was so close he was already drawing in those deep, long breaths before the moment of release, I came so hard and so suddenly that it almost felt like a shattering, like my whole body exploding into shards of nothing but sensation.

  Magnus held me together. His hands gripped my hips even tighter and he pulled me back, holding me there and groaning loudly as I tightened around him over and over. And then he slid one hand up to the back of my neck and pushed me down as he started to come.

  It was, when he was finished, almost as if a spell had been broken. He took his hand off my neck and looked at it as if he wasn't quite sure what it had been
doing.

  "Voss!" He cried, when I rolled over onto my back and we both saw the bright pink marks on my hips where he'd held me. "Voss, girl – look what I've done! Look what –"

  "Magnus," I cut him off, taking his face in my hands and looking him in the eyes. "Magnus."

  "Heather, I did not mean to hurt you – I did not –"

  "Magnus!"

  "What?"

  I knelt beside him as his warm seed ran down one of my thighs and kissed him. "You didn't hurt me. I'm not hurt. I wanted it like that – I wanted to give you what you needed."

  My words sunk in. He looked back at me, his breath still coming heavy, and I saw that he was suddenly struggling with emotion.

  "It's OK," I told him, pulling him once again into my arms, overwhelmed with compassion. "It's OK, it's –"

  "I killed him. I killed Asger. My brother – I killed my –"

  The times would come, in the days and months and years ahead of us, when Magnus would take on my sadness. When he would hold me through the night as I sobbed and raged at the blows life was going to deliver to me. But that time, in the hut within the walls of the Haesting estate, it was my job to take, my job to absorb all of the things and all of the emotions he couldn't deal with alone.

  And there was no point in denying what had happened.

  "I know," I said, trying and failing to wrap my arms around those impossibly broad shoulders as they shook with grief. "I know, Magnus. I know."

  That night, at sundown, we walked together into the lord's hall, where the business of the estate took place, and found it set with tables. A trio of musicians sat close to the fire, playing instruments I did not recognize and sending their raucous, buzzing tunes out beyond the stone walls.

  Magnus and I were led to one of the tables close to the lord's table, where we could watch other guests entering and being taken to their seats. We were both completely drained, our hearts spent and our bellies empty. If someone had told me, back in my old life, that there were people who saw fit to invite a man to a feast less than a day after watching him kill his own brother, I would not have thought it at all appropriate. But there, in Lord Eldred's hall with our bellies growling and Magnus' heart aching, it felt right.