The Enchantment

by Betina Krahn

  Aaren stared at the results of the competition she and Jorund had generated. Perhaps it hadn’t been for naught after all, she thought. With a bemused smile, she turned back to the village. When Miri caught up with her and asked where she was going, she declared, “I’ve already done my part. My whole body hurts. I need a good hot sweat . . . and a good hard rub.”

  NOT LONG AFTER Aaren and Miri had left the cook chamber, Marta heard a scream coming from the long hall and went running to investigate. Near the great doors, she spotted the two thrall women whose task it was to clear away the refuse from the morning meal in the hall and to feed the prisoner. They were huddled together, staring at the manacled form of Borger’s captive, who was up on his feet in a crouch, growling at them like a wild animal. When Marta called out to them, they scrambled toward her with wild eyes and ashen faces.

  “He’s mad as a dog,” Una cried, clutching Marta’s arm.

  “Threw his food all over me!” the other wailed, holding up her begrimed kirtle in a trembling fist. “And lunged straight for my throat, he did!”

  Marta scowled at the overturned bucket on the floor nearby and the foul-smelling slurry that had splattered from it. That was his food? “What was in that bucket?”

  “Th’ same food he always gets . . . the hall scraps. Th’ jarl said if he wouldn’t eat it one day, he would have to the next,” thick-featured Una declared with a glower.

  It took Marta a moment to realize they meant the very same food . . . mere scraps and swill to begin with, now slimy and rancid after days of sitting uneaten. She pulled free of the women’s hands and edged warily to where the bucket lay—just beyond the prisoner’s reach. She bent to pick it up, but the smell was so bad she snapped back up and kicked it away instead.

  “Careful!” Una whined. “He’ll bite a hunk out of you if you get too close.”

  “Just like his old sire!” Olga choked out. “They say old Gunnar Haraldson eats babies—”

  The prisoner roared and lunged against his chains, setting the thrall women running, squealing, from the hall. Marta, who stood much closer, was too stunned to scramble out of the way and found herself face-to-face with the crouching hulk. He bared his teeth at her and growled from low in his throat. Her blood stood still in her veins as she faced his battered, filthy form and realized that his light eyes burned as they raked her.

  But it was those fierce gray eyes that also made him seem human. She willed herself to ignore the dirt and dried blood and bruises on his face, forcing herself to see that he was just a man . . . and a warrior, like Aaren. Her gaze fell to the heavy iron shackles that had scraped his wrists and ankles raw. She winced at the sight. He was treated worse than the hall hounds.

  After a long moment she summoned the courage to breathe and move, and headed for the cook chamber. She dished up a huge bowl of the mutton stew she’d been tending since dawn, and snatched up a pitcher of ale and the rest of the morning’s flatbread, to carry it back to the hall. The prisoner was slumped against the wall, in the shadows, but when she returned he stirred and glared at her. She judged where the length of his chains would allow him to reach, then slowly placed the bowl on the floor, stacked the bread on top of it, and nudged it toward him with her foot.

  He snarled and she gasped and stumbled back a step—but only one step—and there she stayed. After a long silence, he slid over on his knees to investigate the food, then glared at her, then at the door, as if demanding that she leave. When she didn’t move, he picked up a piece of the flatbread and threw it at her. She flinched, then straightened, irritated.

  “You’d best save your food for eating, Gunnar’s son . . . unless it is your wish to die like a cow in the straw.” He lunged at her, but this time she knew the limits of his bonds and did not flinch or wince. Burning with frustration, he fell back into a stoop, then his long, muscular frame knotted into a cramped ball. He was half starved and exhausted after five days of captivity, but the look on his face said that no matter how depleted his body was, his spirit would never surrender.

  “You’d better run, wench . . . or I might decide to eat you up,” he ground out, his deep, menacing tones setting her fingertips vibrating.

  She watched the guarded hunger and fatigue in his eyes and felt an odd fullness in her chest. “The stew tastes much better than I would.” She tucked her arms about her waist, feeling bolder, sensing that his threat was a response to Una’s and Olga’s prattle. “And warriors, whatever their clan, do not eat babies . . . or young maids.”

  “Do they not?” he said, his eyes glittering as they roamed over her. “And how would you know about warriors, Tasty Maiden?”

  “My father was a warrior. And my sister is one.”

  “Your sister?” He frowned and sank to his knees again, eyeing her strangely. “Your sister is the battle-maiden . . . the one they call a Valkyr’s daughter?” Marta nodded and saw his eyes darken and drop from her to the stew. “Then I won’t eat you up, Little Morsel. Now, get out of here . . . before I change my mind.”

  Marta felt his eyes return to her as she walked away, and she felt a tumbling in the pit of her stomach. Behind those fiery gray eyes, inside that hunger-weakened form, was a powerful warrior, a jarl’s son, a man of obvious strength and pride. She couldn’t help but wonder what he would look like beneath the dried blood and grime. But it was the remembrance of what Brother Godfrey had said to the small gathering of women in the women’s house last evening—about helping those in need: the poor, the sick, and the prisoner—that set her on a brave and compassionate course.

  After a short time, she returned to the hall with a bucket of water, some linen strips, a pot of clean goose grease, and herbs. The stew, bread, and ale were gone, and the prisoner was seated against the wall with his head lying on his arms, across his upraised knees. At the sound of her footfall, he jerked his head up, his eyes gleaming with feral threat. The sight of her, and the things she held, made him stiffen.

  “I gave you your chance, Valkyr’s daughter. Come no closer,” he warned. “You remind me too well of how tasty little maids are.”

  “I will come closer.” Marta raised her delicate chin and squared her shoulders with a bravado borrowed from her elder sister. “And you will not eat me up.” She glanced at the empty bowl. “You have no room in your belly for me after all that. And if you did eat me, who would bandage your wrists and bring you food tomorrow?”

  She took a step, then another, and flinched when he lunged at her. She was too fear-frozen to avoid him, but after a long, shocked moment, she realized he had not actually attacked her, at least not with his hands. He stood crouched, because of his chains, and raked her with eyes molten with heat. But looks alone, Father Serrick had always said, never killed anyone. When she swallowed her heart back into place, she lowered the bucket to the floor and reached with trembling fingers for one of his big, battered hands.

  To her relief, he did not resist, and soon she was kneeling warily near his sprawled form, washing the grime from his bleeding wrists and ankles. As she mixed the herbs and grease and applied it, she felt his eyes wandering over her hair and face and breasts, and her face heated.

  “Are you really enchanted, Little One?” His voice was much softer, and when she looked up nervously, she saw that his eyes were also softer. The tumbling in her middle settled into a slow, sensuous eddy of warmth.

  “My sisters and I are under Odin’s curse, it is true,” she said, wrapping his wrist with a strip of linen. “But I fear it is my sister Aaren who is cursed most of all. She must fight and fight . . . again and again.”

  “Nej,” he said, raising his fettered hand to touch her sun-bright hair, then stopping it just short of its goal and lowering it. “It is the men of Old Red Beard’s hall who are cursed most . . . to see you and to have you walk among them, knowing that they cannot have you.” His laugh was harsh. “Curse their filthy eyes, they deserve such torture.”

  She was both confused and disturbed by his words. Their gazes met
and held, and his grim smile faded. She glimpsed the naked jumble of pain, frustration, and longing churning in him before he jerked his face away. She finished bandaging his wrists and ankles in breathless silence, then warily thrust the linen rag into his hands and gave the bucket a nudge in his direction.

  “You can do the rest.” She got to her feet and backed away a step, where she paused, feeling suddenly awkward. “W-what is your birth name, son of Gunnar?” Her heart would not beat again until he spoke.

  “It does not matter,” he said, scowling. But after a moment of being pinned squarely beneath her disappointed gaze, he answered. “Leif.” Then he struggled with something inside him and finally said, “And you, little Valkyr’s daughter. What do they call you?”

  “Marta,” she said, smiling and willing him to smile back. He did not. She turned and started for the cook chamber, but stopped as his voice rumbled behind her.

  “Marta.”

  “Yea, Leif Gunnarson?” she said, turning back, her heart feeling as if it were winging from her breast at the sound of her name on his lips. But his face and eyes were dark and fierce once more.

  “Do not come near me again.”

  Marta colored hotly, lowered her head, and hurried out. But once in the cook chamber, she curled her hands into fists and spread her feet in unconscious imitation of Aaren’s most determined stance.

  “I’ll come near whomever I please, Leif Gunnarson. And there is not a thing you can do to stop me.”

  JORUND HAD SPENT the first half of a sleepless night in the loft of the thrall house, having his aching frame warmed and massaged by several nubile young wenches whose busy hands and generous body heat should have pleased him. Instead, their coy ministrations had annoyed him and he was hard-pressed to show enough enthusiasm to keep from hurting the wenches’ feelings. When they finally slept, he extricated himself from their embraces and crawled from the loft to spend the second half of the night in his own little-used sleeping closet, in the long hall. The small, curtained chamber was dark and cold, and his handsome pallet furs were musty from disuse. As he lay there, wide-eyed, his body on edge, he understood too well the reason for his discontent.

  Aaren Serricksdotter rose from the troubled pool of his thoughts like a water nymph: as exquisite and tempting, and as impossible to catch. Her tawny eyes and flame-kissed hair, her hard thighs and soft, jiggling breasts, filled his senses. Muscle by muscle his body contracted until he was aching all over again, swollen with wanting. He could have slaked his flesh-need in any number of pallets, even in the middle of the night, yet that possibility held no allure for him. He was past taking a woman’s body just to vent a troublesome urge. His real need, he knew, was to conquer Aaren Serricksdotter with pleasure. And he would be truly satisfied with nothing less.

  By morning, he had gone over and over their wretched harvest-battle and its aftermath, and realized two important things: There was something soft and vulnerable inside Aaren Serricksdotter . . . and to reach it, he must have her to himself. With others around, she would always swagger and bluster and play at being the warrior. But alone, without her pride to defend, she could soften to his touch, to his word-skill. And he could reach inside her to ignite the womanly passions that lay imprisoned in her warlike shell.

  Alone, he decided firmly. He had to get her alone, somehow.

  The women’s house was quiet that morning when Jorund stuck his head inside the half-open door. In the dim interior, he could make out two feminine forms . . . one lying on a bench in the far corner, the other sitting on the bench beside her. It was his battle-nymph and one of her young sisters—the one Garth was forever laying claim to—who was rubbing oil into her bare back and shoulders. He lifted wistful eyes skyward and murmured a silent thank-you, then slipped inside.

  EIGHT

  JUST AS the battle-maiden’s sister turned to pour more oil on her hands, Jorund clamped a hand over her mouth, startling her, and put a finger to his lips, commanding silence. The flaxen-haired maid stared at him while he gestured that he would take her place, then she glanced between her sister and him uneasily. He gave her his most irresistible smile and she yielded her place and duty to him.

  He settled on the bench beside Aaren, aware that her sister was hovering anxiously by the door. He poured some of the oil into his big hands while his eyes roamed the exotic taper of her back and the tantalizing bulges of the sides of her breasts, where they were pressed against the swath of linen beneath her. She was completely bare from the waist up, and from the waist down was covered only by a pair of deerskin breeches that were noticeably loose . . . probably not tied.

  She wriggled her shoulders drowsily, entreating, “More. Do more.”

  More. The word sent a blast of dry heat through his lungs. He took a deep breath and sent his fingers gliding over the smooth surface of her body, just as he had in his mind the day before. Her skin was silky and soft; pale where the backplate of her armor had lain against her skin, and reddened where her upper shoulders had been exposed to the sun. With light pressure from his big hands, he traced the firm, neatly defined muscles beneath her skin, starting at the small of her back and flaring gently outward to the caps of her shoulders. She was indeed hard and soft to the same touch . . . all latent power and unexplored sensuality, at his very fingertips.

  When he pressed his thumbs together and dragged them up the sides of her spine, a pleasure-filled groan slid from her half-conscious form. He grinned. When he gently kneaded the muscles of her upper back and the tops of her broad shoulders, she mewed, half in pain, half in pleasure. His eyes began to glow. He ran his hands in a long, leisurely caress up her sleek sides, where his fingertips stroked the compressed roundness of her breasts . . . and the rhythm of her breathing changed.

  A tiny shiver proceeded from her shoulders downward and his eyes narrowed. She was coming alert. With his gaze hot on the lashes lying just above her elegant cheekbones, he slid his hands slowly down her sides . . . and straight under her breeches. Then, with only a slight turn of his wrists, he cupped her buttocks and massaged firmly and sinuously.

  This was not a sisterly bit of massage! Aaren realized, surfacing from the netherland of physical release. She tensed and blood flooded into her face and breasts at the outrage being inflicted on her bottom. She wasn’t being kneaded—she was being touched!

  Her eyes flew open and she pushed up and around . . . to find Jorund Borgerson grinning at her.

  “You!” She bashed his hands from her and curled around in a flash to face him. “H-how did you . . .” She fumbled to raise her breeches and jerked at the ties, then suddenly realized she was also bare from the waist up—“Ohhh!”—and scrambled to pull the linen from beneath her knees to clutch against her breasts. By the time she scrambled off the bench and backed away, humiliated heat was sinking all the way down into the tightening tips of her breasts.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “I was just helping to rub the soreness from your . . . body, Serricksdotter.” He advanced a step.

  “In a sow’s eye, you were.” She jolted back. “You—you were touching me—” The sight of him, so big and warm—his eyes darkening with some private pleasure as they skimmed her exposed body—knocked her wits end over end. She was embarrassed and confused, and—she cast a panicky glance around the main chamber—she was completely alone with him. Where on earth was Miri?

  “Of course I touched you, Serricksdotter. That is the only way to rub soreness from a . . . body,” he said smoothly, knowing full well it was the intimacy of his touch that had offended her. He smiled, guessing what was interfering with her formidable wits just now. He advanced again with his slow, stalking sway. “Can it be that you are afraid of being touched, Battle-maiden?”

  “No,” she said, clutching the linen tighter against her breasts.

  “Then perhaps it is me you fear. My presence. My touch.”

  “No!” she said, grasping at the merest wisp of ire. “I do not fear anything or anyone, Joru
nd Borgerson. Least of all you.”

  “Shall we test your truthfulness, Serricksdotter? Shall we see what you fear?” It was the perfect taunt . . . her pride would force her to prove him wrong. He had managed through the subtle shifts of his shoulders to back her toward the wall beside the bedshelves . . . straight into a corner. When her back smacked against the wall, her eyes flew wide and she tightened her grip on her inadequate cover. He planted himself a foot away and reached for her shoulders.

  She had watched him stalk her, knowing she should knee him and run for her blade. But she couldn’t make herself do it. There was something potent stirring in her blood . . . something that seemed more in his control than hers, something that he called forth in her. And—Freya help her!—she wanted to know what it was. There was no other man in the village who made her feel this peculiar swirling in her senses and set her entire body on edge. He knew about women. And just this once, she wanted to learn about women . . . about her own body, about this thing that was rising up hot and formless and powerful within her.

  She saw his hands reaching for her and made no move to stop him. She wasn’t afraid of him . . . or anyone . . . or anything. She wasn’t afraid—

  His hands closed on her shoulders and her knees went weak. Pleasure went trickling through her like a warm spring shower. As he began to massage those aching muscles, she felt her resistance melting. Wonder coiled in her mind as his fingers curled behind her head, kneaded the tense column up the back of her neck, then threaded through her damp hair to stroke her tingling head in slow, expert circles. Slow-hand, the women called him. Now she knew why.