by Betina Krahn
“By the heavens . . . they got the lust part right, but forgot all about the battle!”
AS THE NIGHT air cooled his ire, Jorund’s mind settled on the sanity and comfort to be had in woman-scented darkness. But after three long strides across the moonlit clearing, he stopped dead, staring at the looming shape of the modest, steep-roofed women’s house. She was there. He reeled off toward the darkened loft of the thrall house instead, where a jumble of welcoming arms and legs awaited. And again he stopped dead.
He was not of a mood for fur-sport. Just now he had more of a yearning for companionship and talk.
He set a course for the thrall house, after all, though not for the woman-sweetened loft. He crept through the darkened central chamber of the house, around bodies curled on benches and draped over mounds of straw, making his way to a low, wall-hung shelf from which a deafening snore rumbled. He gave the snorer’s shoulder a sound shake.
“Godfrey!” he shouted in a whisper. “Wake up!”
“Huhhh? Whaaat—” A round, tonsured head and fleshy face came lurching up out of the gloom. “W-who—”
“It’s me. Sit up,” Jorund said quietly, nudging the priest to one side and easing onto the creaking planks beside him. Godfrey pushed up unsteadily on one arm, blinked, and peered around them at the darkness.
“It’s the middle of the night,” he moaned groggily. “What is it? What’s happened?”
“You’re about to be drowned. By Borger’s own hands,” Jorund told him.
“Again?” Godfrey’s eyes closed and his arm sagged so that he dropped back onto the pallet. “What did I do this time?” he mumbled. “I haven’t converted any more of his women, I swear.”
“You’ve corrupted me,” Jorund said wryly, sliding his big frame to a comfortable slouch against the rough wall. “Turned me against the gods of Asgard and fighting.”
“I have?” The implications of Jorund’s words and the reason for Borger’s anger at him slowly seeped through Godfrey’s sleep-numbed wits. His eyes flew open and he burrowed out of his patched woolen blanket. “Why, that’s wonderful.” Beaming at the thought, he rubbed his face and wrested his rotund frame about until his back was planted against the wall and his unshod feet dangled over the edge of the wide shelf, copying Jorund’s pose.
“I told him tonight that I don’t believe in Odin . . . or Asgard . . . or enchantments,” Jorund said with an edge to his tone. “You should have heard him. He howled like a scalded hound.”
“I’ll wager he did,” Godfrey crowed, grinning before remembering himself and pulling his unholy pleasure beneath a wistful sigh. “I wish I could have seen it.”
“And he brought up the high seat again,” Jorund said after a pause. Godfrey opened his mouth, but closed it without speaking as he watched the troubling in Jorund’s strong, chiseled face. “He is desperate. My brothers and his warriors sometimes grumble about what would happen if he took a wound.”
“They wish to know what would happen, who would lead them,” Godfrey mused. “Jorund, the high seat carries with it much power, and that power could be used well.”
“Never on his terms,” Jorund said, smacking both fists against his thighs, declaring the subject closed. They sat for several moments in silence, until Jorund’s hands uncurled and his body relaxed once more.
Godfrey suddenly caught a deeper meaning in what he had heard earlier, and turned to Jorund with a hopeful look.
“You don’t believe in Odin and Thor and the other gods of Asgard . . . does this mean you’re ready to be a Christian?”
“Your White Christ has a powerful appeal, my friend. I cannot say I do not believe much of what you’ve revealed to me.” Jorund rubbed his stubbled chin as he studied the sturdy little priest. “But until your Christ allows a man to have more than one woman, he’ll have to be content with my respect, not my soul.”
Godfrey sighed and wagged his head.
“My friend, you have a big and splendid heart. But you are so busy loving all women, you can truly love none of them. Perhaps someday you will find one woman, a special woman, who will satisfy you. And then you will know the deep and wondrous kind of love my Lord intended, and you will glimpse the larger peace that only He can give.”
“Only one woman?” Jorund’s frown melted into a wry wince. “By the Heavens, Godfrey! For a man who preaches love and goodwill, you have a most unholy cruel streak in you.”
THREE
THE NEXT morning, the village lay in silence as Aaren stepped from the women’s house. Ribbons of mist hung over the commons and frost rimmed the grass at her feet. She looked toward the long hall, with its steep-sloping roof and serpentine carvings, and wondered what lay in store for her that day. Resettling the dagger at her waist, she set off for a morning run down the path toward the lake.
The air was cold and clear, invigorating. As she ran along the cliffs above the water, the Sky-Traveler poked his great red eye above the horizon, looking as though he, like Borger’s men, had spent the night in hard drinking. She welcomed his light on her face and the brightening glow of the sky above her and the shore below her. By the time she returned to the village, she felt refreshed, ready to resume the task of wresting a place of honor from the hands of men.
As she strode along the main path, between huts, byres, and animal pens, heads turned and villagers who had not been present in the hall the previous night rubbed their eyes at the sight of her. She smiled at their whispers and curious looks; such responses were a measure of her uniqueness and a promise of the respect she was determined to win. But her pleasure died when she rounded the corner of the women’s house and spotted Miri and Marta standing before a door that was blocked by scowling women. On the ground, between her sisters and the others, lay Aaren’s cloak, her bundle, and her silver-handled sword.
“Miri—Marta—what’s wrong?” But even as she said it, the significance of her things on the ground between the two factions became clear.
“These women say they will not have a warrior sleeping in the women’s house.” Marta rushed to Aaren’s side with a pale, troubled expression.
“They say it is bad luck for a battle-maker to sleep among the peace-weavers in the women’s house,” soft-spoken Miri added.
“They’re afraid their looms will foul and their needles break, and”—Marta’s voice caught in her throat—“your blade will make their milk curdle in their breasts.”
“Only women belong in the women’s house. It has always been so. When a woman among us wants to be with a warrior, she must go to his furs for the night. Ask Inga,” a thick-featured older woman declared, jerking her thumb at a wraith of a woman peering at them from the doorway. “She once brought a warrior across our threshold, took him to her furs, and her child was born without breath.”
“But Aaren is a woman,” Marta insisted. “Like us.”
“Not like us.” A graying, fine-featured woman with an air of authority stepped forward, running a wary eye over Aaren’s breastplate, male leggings, and wristbands. “She dresses like a warrior and wields a blade like a warrior.”
“Because I am a warrior,” Aaren insisted irritably, finding herself caught in an unexpected quandary. She was indeed a warrior, and the shape of her and her sisters’ lives among Borger’s people depended on the honor she could earn as one. But now, as a warrior, she could not stay in the women’s house with her sisters. The anxiety in Miri’s and Marta’s faces pierced her to the core. “But because I am a warrior-maiden, I have the right to sleep by my sisters in the house of women.”
“There are warriors and there are women,” the leader proclaimed their common sentiment. “You must be one or the other.”
“Who are you to declare what I must be?” Aaren advanced on the woman, who drew back a pace before finding her resolve and lifting her chin.
“I am Helga . . . once-wife to Jarl Borger . . . still keeper of his storehouse.” Her work-roughened hand slid to the ring of keys that dangled at her waist, the symbol of he
r authority and of her right to speak.
“I am not a gleaning from Borger’s fields, or a barrel of ale to come under your hand!” Tension grew as thick as peat-smoke between them.
“There’s Jorund!” one of the women behind Helga exclaimed, pointing across the clearing. “Ask him, he’ll know.”
The women called and waved, and when Aaren turned to see who they summoned, she found herself facing the huge flaxen-haired warrior she had seen the night before. She watched his smooth, rolling gait and the easy carriage of his massive shoulders as he approached, and felt an odd prickle up the back of her neck. Him? They called him to settle their dispute?
“What say you, Jorund . . . judge between us fairly,” Helga said as he settled back on one leg to scrutinize the gathering. “You know we do not allow a warrior under our roof. Now this one comes.” She gestured curtly to Aaren and took a step back toward the other women. “What say you? Is this a woman or a warrior?”
Aaren watched his wide, sensual mouth slide into a knowing smile as he turned his gaze on her. “A woman or a warrior,” he mused, in tones as clear as a mountain stream . . . and just as liquid and engulfing. “Hmmm . . . let me see . . .”
Aaren bristled as he leaned first one way, then another, viewing her critically from more than one perspective. Then he stalked slowly around her to view her rear and she wheeled to keep him in her sight.
“What right has he to pass judgment on me?” she demanded, slinging a hot glance over her shoulder at the women, then spearing him with a similar one. The women’s only response was a nervous tittering. He deigned not to answer, either. Instead, he edged closer, as if testing her with his presence.
If she didn’t move away, it would seem she was submitting to his judgment; if she withdrew, it would seem she was retreating from his intense scrutiny. Nothing in her battle training or her limited social experience had prepared her for so personal and disturbing a confrontation.
She felt his eyes wander over her shoulders, breasts, and waist . . . felt them pause speculatively upon her hips. Certain that his hands would soon follow, she braced and made fists, ready to knock him flat if he so much as laid a finger on her.
“Looks like a woman,” he murmured, circling her like a forest cat on the prowl. He lowered his face to her shoulder and moved it up her neck and along the curve of her ear. Then he poised with his nose almost touching the hair at her temple, breathing in deeply.
He was sniffing her! Her nerves began to quiver with something close to outrage.
“Smells like a woman,” he announced in a husky rumble that poured down the side of her neck like sun-warmed honey. While she grappled for mental footing, he dipped to one side and she felt his hand clamp over her buttock and squeeze.
She gave his chest a furious punch—but at the very last moment he jerked away, so that her move met little resistance and jolted her more than him.
“Feels like a woman, too.” He laughed at her anger. “She looks, smells, and feels like a woman.” He shrugged his massive shoulders. “Then she must be a woman. But if you still have doubts, Helga”—he waggled his brows at the leader of the women—“I would be pleased to take her to my furs to sleep.”
The women’s tension dissolved in laughter, and even Miri and Marta were coaxed into a smile by the handsome giant’s bold and easy manner. But their mirth, for all its gentleness, struck Aaren like a broadside from a battle-ax. Her face caught fire as her pride weathered a fierce pounding.
There was a glint in his eye as he turned away that made it seem he had claimed something from her, a small piece of her honor, a bit of her dignity. Suddenly she recognized him as an opponent . . . though an altogether different kind of adversary than Father Serrick had described. This enemy was subtle as a serpent; all knowing smiles and honey-sweet tones and easy, assuming manner. And the threat he posed was far more disturbing than the familiar danger of sinew and blade: He had declared her a woman . . . not a warrior.
“You may sleep in the women’s house, Battle-maiden,” the woman called Helga said, breaking into Aaren’s glowering thoughts. “But you and your blade must sleep in the alcove at the side, where we store things. It is the best we can do.”
Feeling the pull of her sisters’ anxiety, Aaren nodded agreement. The tension eased and the women began to whisper among themselves.
“We are short of hands and the work of harvest now weighs hard upon us. And most of the men are busy celebrating Borger’s great victory,” Helga declared with unmistakable resentment. “Do your sisters have hearth-skill that will earn them their keeping?”
“Miri and Marta are skilled in women’s tasks,” Aaren said determinedly. “They are meant to use their skills in the jarl’s service . . . even as I use my blade.”
“This is Sith,” Helga said, gesturing to the coarse-faced woman who had spoken so boldly against Aaren earlier. “She is the head of the dairy. And these are Kara and Gudrun. They tend Borger’s hearth and o’ersee the cooking and serving in the hall,” she said, waving to two plump, sable-haired women who looked as though they’d sampled more than a bit of their own handiwork. “And that is Bedria, who brews the ale, keeps the bees; and Inga and Moria, who weave and spin.” There she stopped and clasped her hands before her as if containing the urge to say more.
“We spend daylight and squander breath,” she pronounced disapprovingly, then glanced at Aaren. “Moria will show you where to put your possessions.” She led all but a few of the women across the commons and past the long hall toward the fields beyond.
Marta snatched up the bundle of clothes and wrapped her arms around it, and Aaren picked up her sword to carry it back into the women’s house. She paused by the door, glancing back over her shoulder toward the far edge of the clearing where the one they called Jorund had disappeared.
“You’re wrong, Spawn of a Frost Giant,” she muttered under her breath. “I am a warrior. And I shall prove it to you.”
THAT MORNING, MIRI and Marta were given small tasks around the women’s house, and after an awkward bit of just standing about, Aaren escaped to explore the village. Most of the wooden houses were deserted; the women and thralls were out in the fields, beginning the harvest. She walked along the path leading out to the fields and stood watching the grain—precious, wind-ruffled mane-of-the-fields—and the harvesters. The women had raised and tied the hems of their kirtles and the thrall men who worked with them were stripped to the waist and covered with sweat.
How well she knew the labor of harvest, the rhythmic swing of the scythe, the scent of dry grasses. Every autumn she and Serrick and Miri and Marta had reaped their mountain meadows together. A powerful yearning suddenly welled in her and she was tempted to strip off her sword and breastplate and take a place in the row of harvesters. But she recalled Serrick’s caution that a warrior is known by his deeds, and she noted that there were no other warriors in the fields.
Turning away, she felt a disturbing discontent that had to do with the bar that had fallen over the doors of her old life, separating it irrevocably from the new. She wondered if Fair Raven had ever felt such conflicts in her life as a mortal. She had known the grandeur of Valhalla itself, but Serrick said she had taken true pleasure in her life with him and her baby daughter. If only Odin hadn’t demanded her return, she might have stayed long enough to teach her daughter how to wear both a warrior’s shield and a woman’s mantle.
Midmorning, Aaren sat in the autumn sun, on the top of a great rock overlooking Lake Vänern. She had spent time wielding her blade and working her muscles as Serrick had taught her, and now rested. The crunch of stone on stone behind her sent her whirling about with her hand on her dagger. A young lad stood a few paces away, eyeing her warily.
“The jarl . . . he sent me,” the boy said. “Come to th’ hall.” When she picked up her blade, the lad jerked back with widened eyes and scurried back along the rocky path.
Her mind raced ahead of her feet to what awaited her in Borger’s hall. She had a
nticipated the call, imagined it, burned for it. She was eager to get on with her next blade-match, to unleash the tension coiled in her against an opponent, to prove to both the jarl and that great flaxen-haired giant that she possessed a true warrior’s strength and weapon-skill. But for the hundredth time that morning, Marta’s question crept into her mind: How many warriors would she have to defeat before they accorded her a true warrior’s place in the hall?
The massive wooden doors of the hall stood open to the early autumn warmth and the hall was filled with dusky light admitted by the smoke hole above the great hearth. The planking tables and floor were littered with the remains of the pig feast as well as empty bowls and pitchers and fish bones discarded from the morning’s meal. Borger’s men were sprawled over the benches around the walls, wearing squints and scowls, their heads banging like empty ale barrels.
Aaren paused to let her eyes adjust to the dimmer interior of the hall. Her hands clenched at her sides as she surveyed the formidable gathering. A motion to her right caught her eye and she glanced at the man sprawled in the corner, shackled by neck and leg and secured to the wall. A pair of icy gray eyes glared at her through the gloom and a face appeared, strong-featured, muscular, and wearing several days’ growth of beard and who-knew-how-many-days’ layers of grime.
His plight washed over Aaren in that brief instant of contact. There was no fate dreaded more by a Norseman than being held captive in the hall of his enemy. Better to die in battle than to live in chains, Serrick had said. She would never allow herself to be held captive, she vowed as she strode through the hall and stood before the high seat.
“You sent for me, Jarl?”
“I did.” Borger’s voice boomed out over the sudden quiet. He leaned forward with his hands on his knees and his arms bowed out. As he passed a hard gaze over her, his attention caught on the blade she wore strapped against her left shoulder. “What manner of weapon do you wield, Serricksdotter?”
