by Betina Krahn
“It was all bloody, Borgerson,” she said with a wince. “And you wear your only other garment on your hands.” She glanced at the wound-bindings she had fashioned from his spare tunic. “It was either burn the thing and watch you go naked . . . or wash it and spare myself the constant sight of your—” She pursed her lips, scowling. But she didn’t need to finish for him to know that she found the sight of his bare body disturbing or for him to guess the reason why. When she looked up, he was grinning.
“That was most helpful of you, Long-legs.” He rubbed his chest slowly and watched as her widening eyes followed his bandaged hand, then darted away.
She shifted the things she was holding and flushed. “I . . . owed you a debt, Borgerson,” she said, avoiding his gaze. “You may have saved my life.” When he said nothing, but continued to stare at her, her color deepened. “You probably saved my life.” When he still said nothing, she frowned and cast a wary glance at him. “Very well—you did save my life. And I am . . . grateful.”
He broke into an irresistibly mischievous smile.
“Just how grateful are you, Long-legs? Thank-filled enough to prepare something to eat? I am ravenous.” He held up his hand-bindings. “I will have trouble doing hearth-work with these.”
She raised her chin and studied him through narrowed eyes, deciding. “I suppose I could do the hearth-work.” When she saw the pleasure her offer produced in him, she jammed her fists on her hips and glowered, admonishing: “But—it is only what one warrior would do for another who was injured.”
Setting the ale skin and drinking horn on the side of the hearth, she set about preparing something to eat. Jorund ambled over to his sleeping shelf and lowered his aching body stiffly onto his furs, watching her movements, bemused by her new tractability. She wouldn’t cook for him as a woman . . . but she would as a fellow warrior. He wasn’t sure, but he thought it was probably progress.
How much progress, he would have been delighted to know. In the terrifying fury of a few violent moments, Aaren’s whole notion of Jorund Borgerson was changed. He was a fighter, she had learned . . . a man of courage and strength, a man whose heart did not quail at personal danger, a man who would spend his own blood protecting others. And that new vision had inflicted grave damage on her inner defenses. It had taken her desire for him from the realm of the impossible to the possible, and had freed the hope and the longings she tried to isolate within her.
She located a soapstone crock in the storage box and set it into the coals, then stood chewing the inner corner of her mouth.
“There is salt pork and dried beans and barley in the box,” he said, smiling wryly. “If you put a bit of water in the crock and add the beans and a bit of salt . . . then cut up the pork . . .”
“I know what to do, Borgerson.” She bristled as she turned back to the storage box, and her curt motions said she was both aware and annoyed that he was watching her every movement.
When the crock was bubbling, she returned to the provisions for flour and oil and the flat stone griddle. She carried them to the hearth, setting the griddle into the edge of the coals, and knelt beside them, trying not to reveal her indecision.
“For the bread, you take a double handful of the flour to a single handful of water . . . put it into the bowl . . .” His voice sallied forth from the shelf again.
“I can make flatbread, Borgerson,” she declared tautly, without looking at him. She poured oil onto the bowl, then onto the heating stone. “I’m not a thick-wit.” But for some reason she was behaving like one, she realized. Preparing food was a simple life-task and the meal would be hers as well as his. But in the villages, hearth-tending was known to be woman-work and her desire for the food to be tasty and pleasing seemed to be a particularly womanly sort of feeling. Despite her bluster about doing it as one warrior for another . . . it had the curious feel of a woman doing it for a man . . . of her doing it for her man. It was yet more evidence of her growing feeling for him and of the changes in her innermost heart.
The softening of her resolve was devastating to her, but she could not shrink from him again and live with herself. She understood all too clearly that it took more courage to stay and face him and the unknown, unexplored part of her than it took to leave.
When the food was prepared, Jorund ate with relish and rolled his eyes appreciatively. Later that night, when he insisted on giving her part of his furs for warmth, she did not refuse. They passed the night on opposite sides of the fire . . . but no longer on opposite sides of understanding.
The next day, Aaren threw herself into the tasks of providing food and care for him while the scratches on his hands and arms healed. She cut wood with an axe, carried out the old ashes, and laid a new fire. She hunted for meat and took a young buck, which she cleaned and dressed, and hung to cure. Then she prepared a stew of meat, leeks, and dried peas in the soapstone crock, and she ground barley and precious wheat together to make flour. And it seemed that whenever she looked up from her tasks, Jorund’s eyes were on her.
“You make fine bread,” he teased, soaking up the last of his stew with bread. “Where does a battle-maiden learn to do woman-work so well?”
She felt the red rising into her cheeks, as it often did of late, and leaned back against the stones near the hearth, shifting her bowl awkwardly in her hands. “From Father Serrick. He knew many things.” She sighed and glanced across the fire at him, feeling a need to tell him more and unsure if it was wise to do so. In the end, she surrendered to the combined force of his irresistible interest and her own need to reach out to him.
“We lived high in the mountains and had only one another. When there are only four of you there is no such thing as men’s work and women’s work . . . there is only work, which is needed to survive. I had no choice but to learn ways that belong to both men and women.”
Jorund felt a sweet ache spreading in his chest as he studied her solemn face. Those few words had explained more about her than she knew.
“You were forced to learn both. And I chose to learn both,” he said quietly. When her eyes met his across the fire, they were filled with wonder at his observation. “What a curious pair we make.”
They sat for a long moment, looking into each other’s eyes. His words somehow gave substance to the bond that had grown between them from that first moment in the circle of torchlight, outside the women’s house. Their size, their passions, their single-mindedness . . . they did indeed make a pair. But such an odd pair: one fierce and one gentle; one proud and fiery, and the other even-tempered to a fault; one with a warrior’s view of life and the other with a woman’s. Longing, uncertainty, pleasure, pain . . . each read a tangle of feelings in the other’s eyes. And long-checked desire threatened to erupt between them.
Aaren broke that disturbing visual connection and set her bowl aside, starting for the door. The sound of her name made her pause and look back. He was smiling, back to his old, teasing self as he raised his bandaged hands.
“Give me a few more days and I’ll make bread for you.”
She ducked outside and when the door was shut behind her, her eyes began to sting. She knew she had to get away for a while.
WHEN JORUND WENT to look for her later, he found her gone . . . along with his bow and quiver of arrows and one of the horses. His first reaction was that she had left him again, but on second thought, he wasn’t so sure. He groaned, staring at his battered hands, then jolted into the shed for his horse, determined to ride out after her no matter how difficult it might prove. But before he got a halter over his horse’s head, he glimpsed her emerging from the trees, leading her mount. As he ran down the slope from the shed, he recognized the cargo slung across her horse: three fresh wolf skins. He stared at her wind-blushed cheeks, then at the savage bounty she carried, and his jaw went slack.
“You went back after them?” he said. “After the pelts?”
“Of course,” she answered with a wary look. “I guessed that the cold would have kept them wel
l, if the kites and great mountain cats had not yet found them. And there they were, just waiting to be skinned and cured. I decided you should have a prize to show for your effort, Borgerson.” Her eyes twinkled. “Think how the children’s eyes will widen when they see the pelts and hear the tale of your great wolf-slaying.”
“And just how would they hear such a tale?” he said, crossing his bandaged arms over his chest and looking bewildered as she led the horse past him and untied the skins, dumping them onto the woodpile at the side of the lodge.
“Well, I thought I would do the telling . . . unless you insist on doing it yourself.” She cocked a teasing look at him as she spread them out. “After all, you got to kill all three of the wolves.” She sniffed with a mock-injured air. “A bit greedy of you, I thought . . . snatching all the glory for yourself. You might have saved that last one for me. I would have done the same for you.” She laughed at his astonishment and set about stretching the first pelt upon the side of the lodge, to prepare it for scraping.
He stood watching her, speechless. She had almost been savaged and eaten by wolves; he had risked life and limb to save her . . . now she was already calculating how to make the most of such a harrowing adventure around the winter hearths once they returned to the village!
She baffled him. She hunted and blade-fought and brandished her pride like a warrior. She valued fighting and honor, the protecting of womenfolk and children, and the sacredness of a vow . . . just like a warrior. Her words struck him square between the eyes: She would have done the same for him. And he knew in the depths of his marrow, it was no boast. She would have withstood a wolf attack, would have risked her life to save his. In fact, she had tried to do it . . . that day in the forest with Rika!
She was a warrior! It poured through him like molten iron: a warrior with all the courage and skill, all the honor and pride a warrior could possess.
The realization stunned him, as did the fact that it was so obvious . . . and had been from the beginning, if he had but opened his stubborn male mind to it. A flush of chagrin rose up his neck, then into his ears and face. Every crass, demeaning remark, each low, sexual taunt he had ever flung at her now came stinging back to him, piercing his inflated male pride. He had seen her as a desirable body, a curiosity, a conquest, then finally as a person. But until this moment, he had not seen all of her. Nor, he realized, had he wanted to.
She was a warrior and a woman. Was it possible for her to have two hearts within her breast? He strolled toward the pole shed, then turned back to watch her with a massive ache in his chest, which was spreading into his loins. He wanted them both, woman and warrior. And deep in his heart he sensed that in some way he needed them both, as well.
At the front of one stall in the shed, he fished the hay out of the stone manger and felt clumsily around in the bottom for a handhold in the stone. A moment later he replaced the stone slab and carried two swords out into the cold sun and around the slope to the spot where Aaren worked at scraping the wolf pelts.
“Aaren.” He waited for her to turn to him, then held out her blade to her, across his bandaged hands. She started at the sight, then looked up at him and wiped her hands on a skin before reaching for it. “I thought perhaps you should have it . . . for protection.” He smiled with a bittersweet edge as he indicated his wounds. “I will not be ready to fight wolves again for a while. You may have to do it next time.”
Aaren folded her blade to her breast and smiled up at him with shining eyes. She wasn’t entirely sure what the return of her blade signified between them, but it seemed that he was acknowledging her skill with a blade . . . and her right to wield one. As she turned back to her work, she felt a new sense of hope.
It was only much later, after dark, in the firelit lodge that night, that she glimpsed his own sword resting on its point in the far corner, and recalled that he had been carrying it when he gave her back her blade. The sight of it, with its great, snarling wolf head, sent an inexplicable chill through her and she glanced at the shelf where her own blade lay sleeping among the blue-silver fox furs. Her heart slowed, then lurched to beat much faster.
She had her sword; he had his. The presence of both blades within the same lodge now seemed an unsettling portent.
For the next two days, Aaren provided food and care for Jorund, tending the hearth and changing the bindings on his wounds, which were healing quickly. He was openly warm and teasing with her, complimenting her hearth-skill and her tanning-craft, and admiring her resourcefulness in augmenting their supplies with gatherings of roots and pine nuts and a few dried berries she located in an old briar patch near the meadow. Her customary response to his praise, which he heard so often he began to repeat with her, was: “It is only what one warrior would do for another.” But even as she answered with warriorlike bluster, she blushed in a decidedly girlish fashion and could scarcely meet his gaze.
The new pleasure she took in doing “womanly things” for him and the delight she took in his teasing admiration preyed on her pride. But she could not resist exploring this tantalizing new side of herself. She found herself watching his movements, looking for a chance to be his hands, seeking a way to place her body near his so that she might explore the contrast in their shapes and discover more of what it was like to be a woman in relation to a man. And she privately savored those quiet moments in the mornings and evenings when she unwrapped his hands and cleaned and inspected his wounds, or helped him tie on his boots or strap on his belt. Each small task deepened the intimacy between them and made it all the harder for her to lie in her chilled, solitary furs at night, knowing that his generous, pleasurable heat lay only a few steps away.
On the fourth morning after the wolf-slaying, Jorund was restive and eager to reclaim his mobility. He insisted Aaren remove the bindings on his hands and he flexed them and pronounced them healed enough to withstand a climb up to the cliffs overlooking the valley.
“I am not so sure, Jorund,” she said, shaking her head. “There has been no festering—you were lucky there. But if you reopen one of them . . .”
He grinned and leaned close to her ear with a tempting rumble. “Then you must come with me . . . and make sure I behave.”
Thus, he led her on a climb up the steep slopes that led to the top of the cliffs far above the meadow. They moved slowly, testing each foothold, pausing frequently to catch their breaths. Once they reached the top, Aaren knew why he had been so eager to come. The view was breathtaking. Mountaintops, some craggy and some worn smooth, stretched around them into a blue-shrouded distance that seemed to blend with the sky-vault itself. Below them spread a richly textured cloak of dark green, fawn brown, and birch gold. And above them, seeming close enough to snatch from the deep sky-pool, were wispy clouds shaped like the tails of the mares the Valkyrs were known to ride.
“It is beautiful,” she breathed, turning from one vista to another, drinking it in with all her senses.
“Yea, it is that,” he said, delighted by the wonder in her eyes. “This is the place I come when I want to set my mind at sea . . . to voyage through dreams and memories.”
She looked at him with puzzlement and he laughed, turning her shoulders and pointing her toward the golden Sky-Traveler, who had only just begun his day’s journey. “Look there . . . where Norsemen have ‘traveled eastway.’ Such lands lie there—a distance of many months of sailing—which would dazzle your eyes with riches, tickle your tongue with new tastes, and delight your skin with strange textures. After sailing up rivers and carrying the long ships over a number of great falls, you come to Byzantium . . . a land of swarthy people with dark eyes and unending summer. The men know the secrets of gold-working and silk-weaving, and live in great, soaring halls covered inside and out with brightly colored glass and beads and stones. They ride swift horses and worship one god and fight like demons . . . and they have many wives, who all wear rings in their ears, chains of golden coins at their throats, and jewels in their bellies.”
Aaren’s
eyes widened as his words conjured pictures in her mind and she clasped his arm, insisting, “You have seen such things?”
“I have,” he said, smiling, glancing at her hand on his arm. “I have sailed on a number of . . . voyages.”
“The women truly have jewels in their bellies?” She slid her other hand speculatively down her abdomen and searched his face for some sign he was teasing her.
“I saw them.” He nodded. “Their scribes write in strange runes and their traders deal in spices—Borger brought a number of their spicemeats back with him, though they are seldom used. The women wear silk and dance wildly to the music of drums and harps and pipes. And they—” He halted and grew a wicked grin. “They are fascinated by men with light hair and eyes.”
She released his arm with a good-natured shove. “No doubt you speak from experience.”
He laughed and wrapped an arm around her shoulder, turning her a quarter turn so that she faced another distant vista. “And this is the southway for trading and raiding. After a dozen sailing days, you come first to the lands of the Danes.” He made a face. “More quarrelsome than Borger, they are. Short of stature and dark-eyed and treacherous. But they make a special wheel of curds that is a delight to the tongue.” He bent closer to her face and extended a hand to sweep the distance away and bring images closer to her mind.
“Then with more sailing you come to the land of the Franks. Christians, mostly. The sun lingers long in their land and in the warmth they grow berries called ‘grapes’ and make the juice into wine. And they grow much wheat and barley and have whole fields full of apples and plums.” Their noses were almost touching. “Have you ever tasted a plum?” When she shook her head, tantalized by his nearness, he explained: “They are round and sweet, like honey-soaked apples. Have you ever tasted wine?” She answered with another shake of the head and a sigh. “When we get back to the village, I will see that you do. Old Borger has a taste for wine and often strikes bargains with the coastal traders for it.”
