by Betina Krahn
“Wha-at—” He caught his balance and shoved the furry menace aside. “Nej—Rika!” he commanded furiously, seizing the animal by the neck and wrestling her to a halt. “I was only kissing her!” he declared. “Go lie down—here!” He picked up the stick Rika had dropped at his feet and threw it again. “Go chew on that.”
He turned back to Aaren and pulled her into his arms again. “She doesn’t understand kissing. It must look to her like we’re biting each other.”
“Kis-sing? What is kis-sing?” she whispered, letting the soft sibilant sound roll over her tongue.
“This.” He demonstrated, clasping her against him and gliding his mouth over hers in lazy, silken circles.
“A mouth-meeting is called a kiss?” she whispered breathlessly.
He laughed, staring down into her liquid amber eyes. “The Franks name it that. I learned it on one of the first raids. . . . You like it, this mouth-meeting with me?” When her tongue flicked over her bottom lip, he lowered his head and fulfilled that wordless and irresistible request for more.
Their bodies blended, curve to hollow, mound to valley, plane to plane. He swirled her tongue with his, taking the kiss deeper, drinking in the lush heat of her response. After a long, bone-melting minute, he slid his mouth from hers and whispered softly.
“Now, isn’t this better than fighting me?”
His throaty words lodged in her mind, refusing to be swept away in the tide of passion he was drawing from her. Better than fighting him? Ummm. Much better. This was warm and tender and so achingly soft. She much preferred a mouth-meeting with him to a blade—
Her drowning wits suddenly broke the surface of that treacherous, engulfing stream of thought. She preferred kissing him to fighting him? The idea shocked her. What was happening to her? What was she doing . . . in his arms, her mouth opened to him, reveling in the way his body undulated against hers? She was surrendering again, that’s what—both to him and to her own volatile desire for pleasure!
She shoved him back forcefully, breaking his embrace, and he staggered, his passion-weighted eyes flying open. She saw no more as she bolted for the camp, but behind her she heard his shock turning to anger.
“Aaren—come back! Dammit, Serricksdotter—come back here!”
He ran after her, dodging snags and forest undergrowth, his face bronzed with anger and his blood hot with need. But at the edge of the camp, he jolted to a stop. She was already striding into the fire circle, being greeted by Garth and several others, who cast glances toward him and smirked, as if intuiting that something had happened between them. He turned to his pallet to give the visible evidence of his passions time to subside, and busied himself with cleaning his boning knife. He was furious. He had an overwhelming urge to treat her like the warrior she claimed to be and trounce her bodily . . . or take a blade to her!
His hands trembled as he drew an oiled cloth over the edge of his knife, and, once raised, the temptation to take up a blade rose inside him like a dark, shapeless specter . . . formed of his thwarted longings for her woman’s body and the long-denied habit of violence that his early life had imbedded in his very sinew. The clamor of old battles echoed in his hungry core, and the dim, surflike roar of battle-lust surged in his blood . . . seductive sounds, growing louder, calling to him out of memory, like a siren song. Power . . . satisfaction . . . honor . . . fame. . . . Just take up a blade—be your father’s son.
Fight. All you have to do is fight.
He raked a look toward the fire, where she was settling on a log next to Garth and Erik, feeling deeply disturbed by those old, resurgent impulses . . . and by new impulses he had never associated with a woman before. She somehow brought out the aggressive-male side of him, conjured in him the desire to best and subdue and possess her. Worse yet, he seemed to enjoy those feelings and the edge they lent to his carnal desires: the possibility of total abandon in sensuality, instead of his long-practiced self-control . . .
As he sat watching Aaren, a familiar four-legged form lumbered out of the trees nearby. Rika sniffed, then lowered her head and started toward him. But as she passed Aaren’s sleeping place, she halted in her tracks and trotted over to nose around Aaren’s rolled fleece. Jorund called softly to her and she broke off her investigation to trot toward him. Again she stopped halfway and swung her head toward Aaren. Despite Jorund’s gentle coaxing and repeated calls, the wolf lowered her head and followed her nose to where Aaren was seated on a log near the fire.
Jorund growled and unrolled his sleeping fleece with a furious jerk. It wasn’t enough that Aaren stole his peace of mind and his love of pleasure . . . now she was taking his wolf, as well!
THE KNOWLEDGE THAT she preferred kissing to fighting weighted Aaren’s spirits as she sat by the fire, staring into the flames. What kind of attitude was that for a warrior to have? And adding to her burden was the unholy panic she had felt earlier when she thought Jorund was being hurt. There was no use denying it further; the truth was so painfully obvious. She wanted Jorund Borgerson . . . wanted the magic in his hands and his mouth . . . wanted his touches, his kisses, his silky, enthralling word-webs. She wanted to experience with him the pleasures of her woman’s body, wanted to learn what it was to wrap her legs around him . . . to have him wedge himself between her thighs . . .
But for her to experience such things, she realized, she would have to get him to fight her. The full reality of what she was seeking began to seep through to her. To have the victory she had vowed to claim from him, she would have to swing her lethally honed blade at him; at his handsome head, strong shoulders, and pleasurable hands. She would have to fill his lightning-blue eyes with rage and anger, directed at her, and she would have to try with all her might to deal him a wound.
Her heart stopped. Wounding Jorund.
For the first time in her life, her enchantment felt like a curse.
She had always borne a fierce pride in her special status . . . Valkyr’s daughter and enchanted warrior. She had felt favored, gifted with things not granted to ordinary women. But now she began to see her enchantment as the divine vengeance it was meant to be. How cruel of the gods to make Aaren and her sisters pay for their father’s offense. There seemed no justice in that. But then, she thought bitterly, one didn’t look to the gods of Asgard for justice. They only involved themselves in the affairs of mortals when they wanted something: to relieve boredom, to play a trick on one of their fellow gods, or to slake their lusts.
She thought of little round Godfrey, who spoke of his strange, colorless god with affection, and talked openly of things like sharing and peace and kindness. And she began to wonder . . . about the grinding lot of the warrior, with its constant wear of competition and fighting . . . about the softer parts of her nature that she had locked away . . . and about the quiet joys she had forfeited when she was forced to join the world of men. Suddenly, a god who valued kindness and loving and wanted peace among mortals seemed much more reasonable than the volatile, capricious gods who gloried in conflict and valued fighting and ferocity and hard vengeance.
Moments later her thoughts were in turmoil again. These dangerous musings . . . was this how Jorund had become a cheek-turner? She rubbed her temples and scowled as she stared into the yellow-gold flames.
A booming voice from across the campfire penetrated her thoughts and she looked up.
“Look what’s come into camp,” Hakon Freeholder declared, slinging a sneer across the fire toward Aaren. Her muscles contracted defensively, but before she could respond, a great shaggy form jumped across the log beside her and stood panting, gazing at her. “It’s that toothless old she-wolf of Jorund’s,” he declared, heaving a pork bone at Rika, who dodged.
“Worthless piece of worm-fodder,” another growled, picking up a small rock and hitting her on the haunch. She skittered back, lowered her head, and growled. “Go on, you flea-bait! You got no fangs left to bite anybody. Jorund pulled ’em all out.”
Aaren shoved to her feet and stepped
in front of the wolf. “Leave the animal alone, Freeholder. She’s done nothing to you.”
She gave the wolf’s fur a determined ruffling that was as much for the Freeholder’s benefit as Rika’s, then turned away toward her pallet. As she collapsed onto her bed of pine boughs, scowling, she heard the words over and over in her head: “. . . got no fangs left . . .”
Rika suddenly loomed above her in the dimness, tawny eyes glowing, tongue lolling. She had followed her new source of affection and now nosed Aaren’s leg, then licked her arm, insisting on more attention. Aaren swallowed her trepidation and pushed up onto one elbow, giving the she-wolf’s ears a good scratching. Face-to-face with Rika, staring into her gaping jaws, Aaren saw that she did indeed have fangs . . . very large, very wicked-looking fangs. It was a moment before she understood what Borger’s men had meant: to them, a wolf that wouldn’t use its fangs was the same as toothless. Rika had been tamed . . . and they had nothing but contempt for that which had lost the will to fight. Aaren shivered. It was a hard standard. But then, they were hard men.
She wrapped up in her blanket and turned on her side, away from the sight of Jorund rising from his pallet and moving toward the fire, his movements short and irritable and his handsome face as dark as the night-forest around them. When Rika nudged and wriggled and trampled a place onto the pine boughs beside her, claiming a share of the pallet, Aaren was grateful for the warmth and company.
The next morning Aaren found the contents of her leather hunting bag strewn over the ground near her pallet, and Rika lying nearby still chewing on the tasty leather of the bag’s strap.
“Get out of here, you worthless piece of flea-bait!”
The other warriors looked over to find the wolf cowering with her ears back and Aaren looming over her, red-faced and glowering. They laughed as Aaren made a lunge for her and she went scrambling for the trees.
“Still eager to defend that bag of bones, Serricksdotter?” the Freeholder called out.
Rika followed her everywhere she went that day, sidling closer and closer, looking as dejected as it was possible for a wolf to look. Bit by bit, the sight of her flattened ears and the white moons around her drooping eyes worked on Aaren’s anger. By evening, when Rika crawled toward her pallet, Aaren sighed and grudgingly gave her a pat.
“I suppose we she-wolves ought to stick together.”
ELEVEN
THE HUNTING party arrived back in Borger’s village the next day, and their good hunt-luck became an excuse for celebration . . . among the men. The women watched the ale being trundled out in the hall yet again and called an immediate halt to their own labors for the rest of the day. But instead of sitting in a dank, gloomy hall, drinking themselves into oblivion, they chose to pack up their food and their children and trek out to the nearby nut grove, to enjoy what might prove to be the last of the Autumn Month sun.
Aaren watched the men swaggering off to the hall, relieved to be rid of their rough company for a while, and scowled at that unsettling thought. When Miri and Marta insisted she come with them, she agreed and soon found herself trailing a noisy throng, carrying a woven birch basket filled with sour apples, curds, and a sample of the bee-woman’s finest mead.
After eating, they lay propped on their elbows on a cloth spread on the dried grasses between the mostly bare hazel trees. Miri glanced at Marta over Aaren’s head, scowled, and bobbed her head insistently, prodding her sister to speak.
“Aaren, when do you think . . . you will fight Jorund?” Marta asked in a timid voice.
“Only the gods know.” She sighed, staring up at the clouds overhead. “And they’re not saying.”
“Well . . .” Miri halted and Aaren looked at her. Miri was biting her upper lip the way she always did when she was unsure of herself. “What do you think would happen if one of us . . . if we happened to . . .”
“If one of us . . . tried to go to the furs with a man before you were defeated?” Marta finished for her in a rush. Aaren sat bolt upright, her eyes widening on Miri’s and Marta’s reddening faces.
“It would be a disaster!” she declared, horrified. “How could you even think of such a thing—defying the gods, shaming Father Serrick, dishonoring yourselves and our enchantment in the eyes of Old Red Beard’s entire clan? Look what Odin did to our father just for claiming something that was rightfully his. Imagine what he would do to someone who defied his enchantment!”
“Oh, we would never do such a thing,” Marta insisted frantically, scowling at Miri, who nodded. “We just . . . wondered.” After a moment’s uneasy silence, Miri spoke.
“And we wondered . . .” She swallowed hard and made herself say it. “What it would be like to . . . Aaren, you were with Jorund Borgerson once . . . naked, with his mouth on yours. What did it feel like? Was it as nice as the women say?”
Aaren felt her face catch fire. Torn between stalking off and staying to scold them for speaking of such things . . . she hesitated just long enough for both urges to pass. Her sisters were young women now, and they were comely enough to catch the eyes and the interest of men. And as she searched their expectant faces, she realized that they were eager to learn the ways of women with men and anxious to get on with their lives. Her shoulders sagged. They probably wanted Jorund Borgerson to defeat her.
She grasped her knees with whitened fingers and her heart began to hammer in her breast as it struck her: She wanted Jorund Borgerson to defeat her, too!
Defeat. She had always understood, in a dim way, that sooner or later she would be defeated. Serrick had always spoken to Miri and Marta of husbands and children and home-hearths, and for them to be mated and to bear children, she would have to be overcome in battle. But Serrick had never once spoken to her of when it might occur, or of what life would be like for her when she was defeated. How strange that she understood full well what her defeat would mean for her little sisters . . . but had no idea what it would mean for herself.
After she was defeated, what sort of place would she have in Borger’s band and in the village? Would defeat at a woman-heart’s hands demean her in the jarl’s and his warriors’ eyes? Would finding woman-pleasure mean losing some of the warrior-heart in her? What would she be? A warrior still? A woman?
She had no answers. All she had was a growing tangle of desires that were harder to suppress with each tantalizing, infuriating encounter she had with Jorund Borgerson.
“Yes,” she said softly, staring into a vision that only she could see. “It is nice. A mouth-meeting is called a ‘kiss.’ And if it’s done properly, the feeling reaches down into your body and makes you want to . . .” She halted, shocked by the sound of her own words, and came back to the present to find Miri and Marta staring eagerly at her. “Is there someone who makes your thoughts wander into such pleasure-paths?” she asked, scowling. Miri flushed and lowered her eyes.
“Garth Borgerson . . . speaks to me often and he smiles at me.”
Aaren turned to Marta, who shrugged as if to deny there was anyone special in her thoughts.
“I see.” Aaren got to her feet and let out a disgusted sigh. “Well, you will just have to pray that Jorund Woman-heart becomes Jorund Warrior-heart someday soon. And that he’s as good with a blade as he is with a—” She had almost said kiss. Blushing violently, she turned on her heel and strode off, over a carpet of fallen yellow leaves.
The nut grove meandered along a streambed, and as Aaren followed it she came to a small meadow, rimmed by trees and covered with the dried stubble of harvested clover. Several children were playing a ring game, laughing and repeating a singsong chant as they wove in and out of one anothers’ hands. As she stood watching, a dim memory slipped out through a crack in her inner fortress . . . a similar game she had played with her sisters in the days when she was still just a little girl. The past and present began to mingle in her thoughts and for a moment she relaxed her guard and let them wash through her.
The wind ruffling her hair . . . bare toes sliding through cool gra
ss . . . the sound of girlish laughter, hers and her sisters . . . movement in wide-swinging circles and free, galloping loops . . . instead of the intensely focused lines and constricted, explosive points of battle training . . .
Moments later, something startled the children. They broke their circles and squealed and clustered together like frightened ducklings. Aaren’s battle-honed senses searched the far side of the meadow. A wolf! Scouring the nearby trees for signs of others and spotting none, she ran out into the clearing to face the lone beast, praying it was the one she’d recently come to know.
“Rika! Rika!” When the wolf halted, sniffed in her direction, then raced toward her, most of the children ran from the meadow screaming. But two girls were caught between her and the wolf, and they turned in blind panic and ran straight into her. She scooped them up in her arms and braced . . . as the animal slowed to a trot and threw itself joyfully against her legs, nearly knocking her down in a forceful bid for affection. She expelled the breath she was holding and shoved her chin above the little arms clamped around her neck.
“Go away, Rika. Shame on you—frightening little children.” She gave the wolf a shove with her foot. “See there, it is only old Rika, Jorund’s wolf. Nothing to be afraid of. I have you now . . . you are safe.” They were all but strangling her, and she just managed to get out: “Come now . . . let me see your faces.”
It took some coaxing, but they finally released her neck and sat back in her arms. Their faces were tear-streaked and their noses needed wiping. She gave them a reassuring smile and sank to her knees, lowering them to her lap. When Rika trotted over to investigate, the children squealed and threw themselves on Aaren’s neck again and she had to scold poor Rika and send her away once more. The wolf padded off with her tail dragging and flopped down in some tall grass across the way.
“Here now.” She settled the warm little bodies onto her lap and wiped their tears away. “It is good to be careful of wolves. They are not usually friendly. But you mustn’t be afraid, either. A wolf can tell when you’re afraid and he’ll chase you, even if his belly is full—just to watch you run. So when you are older, you must move slowly and find a tall tree and climb it. But for now . . . you’re safest with your mothers and the other children . . . or with me.”
