by Betina Krahn
In the hall, they found Thorkel sulking, Jorund missing, and Borger and his men up to their snouts in ale, yet again.
They exchanged horrified looks and ran straight to the women’s house. Once inside, the sight of Aaren’s angry, sweat-slicked frame and wild, tangled hair caused them to press warily along the wall, as far from her as they could get. Collecting into a tense, silent knot, they traded prodding looks that somehow elected Gudrun Hearth-tender to speak for them.
“It is true, then, Battle-maiden? You will fight Jorund?” The hearth-tender’s voice wavered slightly.
“It is true. I will fight the one they call Jorund Woman-heart,” Aaren said. “Though there will be little honor in defeating one with no warrior-pride and no battle-fire in his blood. May Borger’s bile burn like hot coals in his belly for yoking me to such a one.” She ground her teeth at the frowns and harried looks her declaration caused. They were clearly horrified by the thought of her—a female who slept in their house—blade-fighting.
A number of others crowded through the doorway, pausing at the sight of her, then sliding off along the wall. The far side of the chamber was suddenly filled with women wearing up-tucked skirts and anxious expressions. The confirmation was whispered from one to another, and their heads bobbed like grain in the wind as the news was passed. One by one, they turned to her in distress.
“H-have you ever killed a man, Serricksdotter?” one asked in a tortured whisper.
“Nej, I have never slain a man in battle,” she declared, flushing hot at the admission. Their tense shoulders relaxed and faces smoothed noticeably at her response.
“Then . . . have you ever maimed?” another choked out, shrinking behind the others’ shoulders when Aaren turned a simmering look upon her.
“Cut off any parts, she means.” Thick-featured Sith took up the question bluntly. “You ever cut off any parts?”
“My share,” she proclaimed, telling herself that hanks of hair and an occasional scrape of skin qualified as “parts.” Their eyes widened and some reached nervously for another’s hands.
“Arms or legs—hands or feet—which?” a woman with frizzed red hair demanded.
“None of those,” Aaren ground out through clenched jaws, adding defensively: “yet.” Their pleasure at learning she had wreaked so little havoc with her blade gored her already embattled warrior’s pride. “But perhaps Jorund Woman-heart will be the first.”
“Oh no!” Inga exclaimed above a general intake of air. “Don’t start with the Breath-stealer!”
“Pray not!” the usually dignified Helga cried, her face draining of color. “He needs all his parts, Serricksdotter.”
“How would our Honey-hunter swing a scythe or cast a fishing net or carve a comb . . . or help rob my bees . . . without his hands?” Bedria the Bee-woman asked.
“How could Gentle-rider mount a horse or hunt or wrestle or give the children a ride on his shoulders without his strong legs?” Kara Hearth-tender spoke up next, giving her stout thigh a thump.
“How would Slow-hand lift things for us or train our hawks or shear our sheep?” said a dark-eyed thrall woman with a dark blue swelling about one eye and at the corner of her lip. She lowered her face and voice. “And how would he send angry husbands packing . . . without his big arms?”
“And his face—which pleasures our eyes so—you cannot mar that with a blade,” another insisted.
“And his broad back that carries our burdens . . . his big body that warms our furs . . . you must spare them, Battle-maiden. Winters are too long and cold as it is!” another cried.
“And Breath-stealer’s eyes, which speak without words . . .”
“And his mouth, which stirs such tempests in a woman’s flesh . . .”
Aaren lurched back a step, then another, stunned by the nature of their pleading. They weren’t outraged at the thought of her fighting, she realized. They were horrified by the prospect of her injuring Jorund. He was such a blade-shy weakling that the village women felt they had to plead for him and protect him! The realization that she was bound to such a man, especially in a matter of honor, set her blood roaring anew.
“Odin himself decreed my fate,” she snapped, finding herself backing toward the door as they pressed closer. “And the jarl has decreed my opponent. I did not choose to fight him.” She halted and searched the pained and pleading expressions turned upon her. “But I will be more than pleased to add his name to the roll of warriors I have defeated. Your Breath-stealer will have to watch out for his own wretched hide!”
She snatched up her blade, ducked out the door, and headed for the forest. Desperate to spend the steam pent up in her quaking frame, she spotted a foot-worn path through the trees and began to run along it. Spurred by their pleas, she stretched out her strain-cramped legs and expelled a blast of tension with each panting breath.
She ran until her legs wobbled, her lungs felt raw, and the voices of the women faded in her head. Then she halted and retraced her steps, setting one foot before the other until all that was left in her senses was the soft blur of golden light and the feel of the autumn breeze caressing her skin.
After a time, she emerged from the trees into a grassy field that ended some distance away in a jagged line of gray-blue. With numbing weariness spreading up her legs, she stumbled toward the edge of the cliff and fell . . .
. . . onto a thick hummock of grasses near the cliff’s edge and into a restoring sleep.
JORUND HAD BURST from the side door of the long hall and stretched his long legs along the well-worn path, intending to retrace his steps toward the fields and the harvest work he had abandoned. But he could scarcely mind his course or his feet; his blood and his pride were both stuffed to overflowing with Aaren Serricksdotter.
She was everything and nothing that he had come to expect in a woman: beautiful yet intimidating, alluring yet fearsome, startlingly warlike yet womanly in a way he’d never experienced before. The size of her was a novelty, the shape of her was enticement, and the strength and brazen spirit of her were a pure challenge . . . especially to a man who knew women well. And no man in the clans of the northmen knew women better than Jorund Borgerson.
By the time he had earned fifteen summers, he had already discovered the secret of womanhood: that there was a unique riddle at the core of every woman which held the key to her deepest passions. Once solved, that puzzle yielded up a woman’s responses and loyalties to the man who had dared solve it.
But in this Aaren Serricksdotter he glimpsed not one but a whole maze of tantalizing mysteries. How had she acquired such weapon-skill? How could both “woman” and “blade-fighter” exist together within one tempting skin? What manner of fire burned in her heart of hearts? And what manner of longings lay hidden within her well-shielded breast? The boldness and brilliance of her fighting were undeniable. But twice now, when he pressed close and his probing gaze began to penetrate her, she had wavered, then bristled like a cornered hedgehog. There was a hint of uncertainty in the way she faced him and a trace of surprise in her anger at the provocative, physical way he confronted her. . . .
“Jorund!”
He raised his head and found himself standing with his fists clenched and his chest heaving . . . in the middle of the path that led down to the sandy stretch of shore where the fishing boats were beached and Borger’s longships were moored. He glanced around, surprised to find himself so far from his original destination. Godfrey was barreling down the path after him with his cassock raised about his pudgy knees and his sandaled feet splatting against the packed earth. The portly Saxon priest jolted to a halt, staggered, and sucked in three wheezing breaths before he could speak.
“I heard . . . you’re going to fight . . . the maiden . . .” he gasped out, clasping his chest.
Maiden. The word shot through Jorund’s mind like a lightning bolt. The first of her mysteries was instantly solved; that odd tenuousness in her . . . it was virgin. Battle-maiden. He flashed a lusty smile as the thought sen
t a hot surge through his already aching loins. Despite her size and skill, she was still a young woman . . . one who had never known a man. In any contest between them, he would have that edge.
“Pray, say you will not do so dishonorable a thing—you cannot fight a woman!”
“Have you ever known me to hurt a woman, Godfrey?” Jorund said, propping his large hands at his waist and leveling a penetrating look at the earnest cleric.
“I . . . well . . . n-no.” Godfrey’s round shoulders sagged. “But I heard that your father decreed that you must fight her, and that you declared you would.” He tucked both his chins and gazed at Jorund from beneath a crinkled brow. “And that . . . she called you a coward.” Jorund’s usually genial face darkened.
“A true injury, my friend. One for which she will pay dearly,” he said, narrowing his eyes, “in both homage and honey. And there is only one blade which can wring such tribute from a woman.” He grinned with a wicked tilt as his gaze dropped to the bulge of his swollen male flesh, straining against his breeches.
Godfrey’s gaze caught on Jorund’s and was dragged downward with it, then rebounded up as he reddened and clapped a hand to his forehead. After seven years as a thrall-slave in Borger’s village, the little priest was still sometimes shocked by the Norsemen’s casual, often blatant displays of sexuality. “Jorund—I despair of you!”
Jorund laughed. “Despair? I would have thought you would be pleased to hear that the only blood she will shed shall be from that wound peculiar to maids becoming women.” Godfrey’s mouth thinned and Jorund chuckled. “Such a wound is a pleasure both to inflict and to receive, my god-fearing friend. Tell me now, does that not admirably fulfill your requirement of ‘loving one’s enemies’?”
The priest flicked a woeful glance heavenward, muttering, “Stop your ears, Lord.” He jerked back his chin and gave an annoyed tug at the stout rope that bounded his middle. “You cannot use one of our Lord’s commandments as an excuse to break another.”
“Then your Lord should be more sensible in his expectations: have people love friends and hate enemies and forget this stuff about turning the other cheek and doing good to those who abuse you. It only confuses people.”
“You’re not confused!” Godfrey’s brow furrowed in accusation.
“Fortunately not . . . at least not when it comes to loving the female half of mankind.” His eyes twinkled as he lowered both his head and his voice. “I’m going to defeat her, my flesh-shy friend, and before the first snow flies. And I’ll have her . . . on her back . . . in my furs . . . long, dangerous legs and all.”
A flame-hot vision seared through his senses . . . long, sleek, exotically tapered legs . . . powerful, agile, exquisitely treacherous legs. He shuddered and expelled a harsh, passion-singed breath. He hadn’t experienced such reckless and impulsive arousal since he was a lad who had just discovered the pleasures of taking women to furs. It was unnerving.
A heartbeat later he wheeled and strode back up the path toward the fields, intending to spend the heat in his blood with the physical strain of wielding a scythe. “Come, my well-fed friend,” he ordered, waving the priest along after him. “We’ve grain to harvest. And, as your White Christ would say: The laborers are few.”
Godfrey stood a moment studying Jorund’s back, considering his unsettled expression and the rigid set of his big body as he turned away. He’d never seen such a look on his master before. Pleasure had always been an easy thing for Jorund, never more than a smile or a wink away . . . far too easy, to the little priest’s way of thinking. He pondered the uncharacteristic intensity of Jorund’s manner and Jorund’s vow to take his pleasure of the fierce maiden who had dared to call him a coward. His ruddy face creased with a decidedly impious grin.
“You may indeed have her by snowfall, my big lusty friend. But I believe she already has you.”
SOME TIME LATER, when the sun was beginning to lower in the sky, Aaren started awake and found herself staring into a pair of wide blue eyes beneath a shock of sand-colored hair. She lurched up, unleashing a flurry of squeals and screams that sent her fumbling for her blade in confusion. But before her steel cleared the scabbard, she realized that the creatures she’d put to flight were children, and slid her blade back into its oiled leather cradle.
The children fled a few paces, then when they realized she wasn’t pursuing them, halted a safe distance away to stare at her. All of them had huge, pristine blue eyes, which seemed almost out of place in their rounded, dirt-smudged faces . . . and reminded her of other little faces from long ago. She smiled. Recognizing the tallest one as the young lad who had summoned her to the hall that morning, she addressed him.
“Did you come to fetch me?” The warmth in her middle flowed into her voice, but he drew back a step, chewing his lip, and the others huddled together at his back, looking like frightened goslings. They skittered back as she shoved to her feet, and raced off down the path toward the village.
“Wait, don’t—” She jogged a few steps after them, then halted, feeling clumsy and chagrined at having frightened them. They were mere children, probably curious about this recent addition to their village and easily frightened by things that were different in their world. Her shoulders sagged. It would probably take them all some time to get used to the sight of her and to her unusual place in Borger’s hall . . . that is, when she finally gained a place in his hall.
The incidents that had followed her morning’s victory reared in her thoughts again: Borger’s cursed proclamation, her confrontation with that craven-hearted giant, and the unthinkable pleading of the women on his behalf. How had things gotten so tangled in so short a time? If only she could talk with . . . Serrick nudged into her mind and she felt a strange, yawning emptiness.
“What shall I do, Father Serrick?” she whispered softly, running her fingertips over the silver knob that formed the pommel of her blade.
When she looked up, she saw the Sky-Traveler lowering toward the rim of distant mountains and wondered if that great golden light was even now steering her father across the rainbow bridge of Asgard to a reunion with Fair Leone in the Allfather’s hall . . . and perhaps with his Fair Raven, as well. She heard the old man speaking to her out of the burning brightness . . . or perhaps the cooler mists of memory.
Fight, my daughter, he whispered, his rasping voice raising gooseflesh across her shoulders. You must fight for what you want. And be valiant . . . for they will test you.
Her senses were suddenly alive. Was that it? The crafty old jarl was testing her will to fight and her honor in upholding the enchantment by pairing her with a woman-hearted opponent? Then fight was exactly what she must do. And the sooner the better.
She took a deep breath and rolled her shoulders, filled with a renewed sense of purpose. Setting off at an easy pace, she soon covered the distance to the center of the village. The women’s house was empty except for Inga and Sith, the plainspoken dairywoman. Miri and Marta, she learned, had been assigned tasks at the jarl’s small hearth.
“Cookin’,” Sith declared flatly, pointing the way across the commons.
The great raised hearth in the long hall was used primarily for light and heat, and for the celebration of important festivals. Most of the daily cooking was done at another, smaller hearth located in a chamber attached to the long hall by a stone passage. Aaren slipped through the doorway and stood for a moment, searching the hazy chamber. A large smoke hole in the roof admitted light and permitted the thick peat-smoke and the smells of parched grain and roasting meat to escape. One wall was lined with shelves containing crocks, pitchers, and bowls; one was lined with wooden barrels and crocks of salted fish and curing winter-cabbage, and a third was hung with griddle-irons, skimmers, ladles, and tongs used in cooking. In the center, built upon a wheel of low, flat stones, was a fire overhung by iron spits and ringed by large soapstone crocks and iron kettles. Around that fire, swaying and bending in the smoky, dull-glowing heat, she glimpsed two familiar figures.
“Aaren!” Marta straightened from turning meat on a spit, and Miri looked up from where she knelt, wrapping meat in cabbage leaves, and scrambled to her feet. “There you are! We were beginning to worry.”
“I went for a run. You needn’t fear for me.” As Marta and Miri hurried to greet her, she noted that they wore their old kirtles and had forsaken their fine tunics with the pleated sleeves and carved brooches. “They have you tending hearth?” She scowled and brushed a smudge of ashes from Miri’s cheek.
“Kara and Gudrun went to the fields with the others. They needed help and we have good hearth-skill,” Miri explained, glancing at Marta, who took it up.
“We must prove our worth, too, Aaren,” she whispered softly. Aaren studied their heat-polished faces and luminous eyes, and sighed.
“So you do.” Of habit, she tucked a stray wisp of Marta’s golden hair back into one of the thick braids tied in coils behind her ears.
Marta smiled and her eyes picked up a spark from the glowing hearth. “There is so much to learn and to try here in the jarl’s village. The women speak of new patterns for weaving, dyes we’ve never seen, and cloth and rich gold-trimmed garments brought from over the sea in the longships. And you should see—and taste—the herbs and spicemeats the jarl has brought back from his voyages. Come—” She pulled Aaren toward the heavily laden shelves and craned her neck to peer around the small wood chests and crocks. “There is a spice here like small black balls . . . when it’s crushed it burns your tongue and tickles your nose.”
As they passed the hearth, two women wearing neck rings that marked them as thralls paused in their labors to stare dully at Aaren. Wiping their hands on the cloths tied about their waists, they mumbled that they had ale to fetch from the cool-house and the day’s churning to collect from the dairy. They gave Aaren a pointedly wide berth.
