by Betina Krahn
“I cannot deny I was eager to see Leif again. And, of course, I hoped I could convince him of your desire for peace.” She turned a stern look on Jorund. “I told you I was not afraid . . . but you didn’t think a mere maid could speak to big, fierce warriors. If you had sent me . . . there might have been peace much sooner.”
“That bears truth,” Leif said, pulling Marta up and onto his lap. “If you had sent her, you would still have your winter grain.” The comment made them all sober, and Leif looked at Marta, then at Jorund. “We had a bountiful harvest, too, my friend. We will have extra grain. Your people need not go hungry this winter.”
“That is well, Leif.” Jorund nodded, thinking on it. “My people will learn that peace between our clans will benefit them.” Then he looked a bit sheepish. “And I have learned that from now on, whenever I talk with an adversary, I shall choose the prettiest maid in the village to be one of my peace-speakers.” Aaren elbowed him in the ribs and he winced and amended it: “Or . . . or perhaps the prettiest warrior . . .” And they laughed.
At Leif’s nod, Jorund finally called for Godfrey and he hurried forward to offer the words of binding for Garth and Miri, and to bless their union. Aaren watched with tears in her eyes, holding both Jorund’s and Marta’s hands.
There were more rounds of toasts and good wishes to the newly wedded: Leif and Marta, and Garth and Miri. Leif watched Garth with his bride and began to chuckle at Garth’s overheated face and quaking frame. He extended his old enemy a surprising bit of mercy.
“Yon sleeping closet . . . on the left . . .” He nodded the direction. “I doubt my brothers will be able to find their way to it tonight, with all the ale they will drink.”
Garth groped for words. Finding none, he seized Leif’s hand instead and gave it a fierce grip. Then he snatched Miri from her seat and ran back through the hall with her, to the first available set of furs.
After several increasingly rowdy toasts, a disturbance broke out at the far end of the hall and Leif leaned across the table to Jorund. “You’re the peace-maker, Brother. You deal with it.” A hot glint entered his eye. “I was just wedded this day, and I have better things to do this night.”
With that he rose and lifted Marta into his arms, carrying her back to his closet.
Leif set Marta on her feet on the platform where his furs were unrolled and kissed her deeply, luxuriating in the warmth of her mouth, in the soft curves of her body. When he pulled back in the dimness, his eyes were thin rings of silver around dark wells of desire and he emitted a low, hungry rumble from deep in his chest. “Remove your garments, Little Morsel,” he said, nuzzling her neck and throat. “My eyes are as hungry for you as my body is. And my clumsy hands might rip your pretty kirtle.”
“Your hands are not clumsy, Leif,” she said quietly, unpinning the brooches on her shoulders to let her wrapped kirtle fall.
“They are tonight, Marta . . . they tremble and shame me with their eagerness.” He ran his hands over her, tracing her hard-tipped breasts and soft, curving hips through the thin linen tunic. “Now the rest . . . I want to see you.” Tenuously, she obeyed, and when she stood before him, naked, her eyes huge and luminous in her heartlike face, he groaned and stripped off his own tunic and pulled her into his arms.
“Now, Little Maiden,” he said with a hungry rasp in his voice, “we’ll see just how tasty you truly are.” He lifted her and bore her back into the furs, covering her with his broad, hard body and devouring her slowly, sensuously from head to toe. By the time he joined their bodies, he knew each of her enticing flavors . . . and murmured a description of them hotly in her ear as he brought her to her first full taste of woman-pleasure.
Afterward, as they rested happily together, she wriggled against his big body and dragged her fingers down the middle of his taut belly. “It was wonderful, Leif. Aaren said it was worth waiting for.” When he grinned lazily at her, she kissed his chest . . . then frowned and licked her lips . . . then licked his chest with her tongue. And suddenly she had a hot gleam in her eye.
“There is something you should know about us Serricksdotters,” she said, sliding her supple young body over his heavily muscled frame, exploring these new sensations of physical desire and excitation.
“And what is that?” he said, sucking in a sharp breath as she wriggled against his most sensitive parts.
“We demand a certain . . . equality . . . from our men.”
“‘Equality’?” Leif laughed softly, until he realized she was deadly serious.
“Yea, equality.” She seized his head between her hands and made slow, tantalizing circuits of his lips with her tongue. “And right now, I want to see how tasty you are.”
After a few moments of allowing her equal exploration of him, he writhed and groaned pleasurably.
“Equality . . . I believe I could grow to like this idea. . . .”
OUT IN THE hall, Jorund and Aaren had managed to enforce the peace on both sets of proud and fractious warriors. The old jarls, however, were another story entirely. As the ale settled hard in their senses, Borger and Gunnar had migrated to opposite ends of the same table, and had begun snapping at each other like two lame old turtles. Jorund grew tired of listening to them and set Godfrey between them to make sure they did not resort to more than verbal combat.
Poor Godfrey was hard-pressed to keep them from coming to blows around him, and finally issued them both a stern lecture on brotherliness and forgiveness, and a few choice words on how “A soft word turneth away wrath.” Then he had the temerity to point to Jorund and Leif—their own sons!—as examples of fortitude, brotherhood, and proper manly conduct. Cagey old Gunnar paused and drew back, evaluating the forceful priest and his surprising persuasiveness.
“So, Borger Fat-beard,” he said scornfully. “You’ve gone soft and Christian . . . keeping a priest around.”
Borger sputtered and growled and glowered . . . staring at his old rival, trying to think of some way to best him. Then his eyes fell on Godfrey and he remembered: that cheek-turning nonsense had apparently worked for Jorund . . . more than once. It couldn’t hurt to give it a try.
“Yea, Old Gunnar,” he said with a duplicitously holy expression. “I believe I may take up this Christian belief, after all. The women love it. And this Christ fellow helped my Jorund tame a fierce she-wolf and strengthened his arm to victory against Leif this very night.” He scratched his beard with taunting thoughtfulness. “Yea . . . I have recently decided to take Christian vows with my Helga. And I believe I am developing a yen to be”—he rolled his eyes, as if searching for the word—“baptized.”
Godfrey strangled on his ale, Borger guessed from the jerking of his shoulders. But it was Gunnar’s shock that Borger vowed to remember to his dying day. He looked like he’d swallowed a hen’s egg whole and got it stuck halfway down. He reddened and clutched his throat and began to flap his arms, then cast frantically about for his walking staff. Borger shook with unholy glee as he sat watching Gunnar run from the “Christian taint.” It was only when he refocused on Godfrey’s glowing, moisture-rimmed eyes that he began to realize he might have put it on a bit too thick.
“Wait until Helga hears!” Godfrey began to gyrate joyfully. “She will be so pleased!”
NIGHT WAS BEGINNING to gather the twinkling stars and tuck them into her cloak, making way for the coming of the Sky-Traveler, when Jorund and Aaren escaped from the hall for a while. He led her to the edge of the village and up onto the earthen wall, well away from the noisy celebration. Pulling her to him, he kissed her again and again, reveling in the vibrant sense of life that surrounded him whenever he slipped into her arms.
“Jorund, I have never been so proud in my life as I was of you this night,” she said, drawing back in his arms, feeling full to bursting with love and happiness. “You proved you could lead your men without a blade. And when you gave Leif his life, you made both your warriors and Leif’s see strength in a new way . . . the way you had made me see it. You show
ed them there must be great strength before there can be great mercy . . . and that even the strongest warriors sometimes need to feel another’s compassion.”
“Is that what I did, Long-legs?” Jorund smiled and kissed her temple. “Your faith in me is nothing short of amazing. It makes me want to live up to it . . . to fulfill your confidence in me. I hope you won’t be disappointed if many of my warriors turn out to be very much the same as they were . . . convinced that might makes right. They still have a great deal to learn about strength and peace.” He chuckled, a low, sweet rumble. “And I am beginning to think I do, too.
“I thought that once it was settled with Leif and Gunnar, it would be settled. But tonight I saw that there are Hakon and Thorkel and Young Svein and Erik still to convince . . . and probably Garth, too, as soon as he can take his mind from Miri. And for every querulous Hakon and doubting Thorkel in our camp, there is undoubtedly one in Leif’s.” He sighed. “I have a feeling my peace-making days have just begun.”
She laughed softly and laid her head on his chest, relishing the warmth he radiated in the cold night air. “Well, you made a wonderful start. Because of you and your courage, Jorund Borgerson, Marta and Miri both have husbands they love . . . the women of both villages will have no more sons to mourn . . . and my babe will grow up knowing what a wise and wonderful father he has.”
“Ummm,” he murmured, kissing her ear, her neck, and nosing his way into the opening of her tunic. “You give me too much credit—” He froze, then thrust her back. “Your babe?” He set her back by the shoulders and looked her up and down. “What babe? Are you with child?”
“I—I don’t . . . I just meant . . . when I have a babe . . . someday,” she said, lowering her head.
“Aaren!” He gave her a gentle shake.
“I . . . well . . .” She swallowed hard and turned her face away when he ducked his head to peer into her eyes. “I told you . . . I don’t know very much about these things.” In the thin moonlight, he couldn’t quite see the heat from her face, but he could feel it.
“It has something to do with your woman’s time. That’s how the women always know; it stops coming. When have you . . . since . . .” His grin grew even broader. “You haven’t! Not since that time in my bathing hut!”
“Jorund!” she said, giving him a shove and trying to turn away. He reeled her back into his arms and pried up her chin. “That doesn’t prove anything,” she protested. “It wasn’t that long ago.”
“No,” he conceded with a wicked grin. “But it’s a wonderful start.” Suddenly his heart was overflowing and he pulled Aaren close. “It’s all a wonderful start! The peace . . . the high seat . . . our loving . . . your sisters’ marriages . . . and now a babe.” He kissed her well and long. “Perhaps I was wrong. Perhaps it did start with an enchantment.”
In the cool red-streaked dawn, as they were returning to the hall, a small, bent figure in a tattered woolen cloak stepped out of the deep shadows near the hall doors . . . straight into their path. Jorund pulled Aaren to the side, to move around the old woman, but she tottered quickly and planted herself full in their path again.
“You’re the one,” the time-withered woman said with a trace of awe, trembling as she pointed a gnarled finger at Aaren. The cloak she was wearing drooped wider, and Aaren and Jorund glimpsed a number of odd amulets hanging around the old woman’s neck. They slowed and Aaren glanced up at Jorund, who wore an expression as puzzled as hers. The old woman squinted faded eyes at Aaren, searching her face, her shoulders, her very body. “Are you the Wild Raven . . . come back to us?”
“Am I what?” Aaren asked, frowning at the old woman’s odd manner. She had never seen a woman so old or so oddly garbed. When the woman made a circular sign in the air with her finger, Aaren’s eyes widened. “Who are you?”
“I am an old one . . . a farseeing woman . . .” The old crone crept closer, staring up at Aaren with a mixture of awe and dread. “Are you the Wild Raven, come back to our village?”
Aaren shook her head, puzzled and growing uneasy at the woman’s strange manner. “What is this Wild Raven you think me to . . .” Then the impact of it struck her. Raven. The word filled her mind and drew all her awareness to focus on that dried husk of a woman.
“The old jarl’s bondswoman . . . the one called Wild Raven. It has been many years, but you have the look of her . . . and the size of her.” The old woman came still closer and reached out a hand to touch Aaren, looking as if she expected Aaren to disappear in a puff of smoke. “She was great and tall like you, with burnished hair like you. And your face . . . it is the same nose and mouth. But perhaps she would be older now . . . unless she was indeed taken to Valhalla.”
At the mention of Valhalla, Aaren was desperate to hear more of this great woman who had borne her face and part of the only name she had for her mother. “I am not the one you seek,” she said, “but you must come with me, old woman, and tell me of this Wild Raven.”
They led the old woman indoors and found her a place by the still-glowing hearth, in the now quiet hall, where most of the warriors were sleeping on benches and tables. They got the woman a cup of ale to wet her throat and settled on a bench before her. Her eyes had never left Aaren, and Jorund sensed that Aaren sought an answer to the riddle of her origin in this old crone’s tale.
“Who are you, old woman?” Jorund asked, feeling Aaren’s hand tight on his arm and seeing the tension in her face. “Are you a volva?”
“Nej.” She shook her head, but there was a glint in her age-faded eyes. “I have not the secret wisdom . . . though I sometimes see things. I nursed the old jarl’s wife, Ida, when she was a babe and was sent here from Jarl Olaf’s village with her when she came to wed Gunnar. It was then I saw her . . . the Wild Raven.”
“She was here? In this village?” Aaren asked, sliding to the edge of the bench so that her knees touched the old woman’s. Her heart was beating like a small, tight drum in her breast.
“Yea . . . Gunnar’s old father, Jarl Harald, stole her on his last raid eastway. She was his bondswoman, and his heart and loins burned for her with a fire like that of the Black Dwarfs’ forge. But her heart was already given to one in her homeland . . . she did not want Old Harald. He garbed her in the finest cloth and set fine shoes upon her feet . . . haltered her neck and wrists with gold, but still she fought him each time he took her. He was a ruthless old bear of a man. . . . He bragged of her fierceness and called her his Wild Raven.”
“What happened to her?” Aaren said.
“She was carried off by Odin . . . to Valhalla.”
Aaren sucked in a sharp breath and her face paled. She somehow knew, beyond all doubt, that the old woman was speaking of her mother. “How do you know she was carried off? Tell me . . . please!”
The old woman sipped her ale and wiped her shrunken mouth. “The harvests were bad . . . there was much hunger. For two years it seemed the gods scowled on this village. The priests who came, the ones who served Odin, looked at the Wild Raven and declared that she was to blame. Odin wanted her for himself, they said . . . and he would withhold the rain and send hard freezes to kill the grain . . . until Old Harald gave her up. Some of the women hated the Wild Raven, for Harald had cast out his old wives from his hall and placed her in their stead. Now they grew angry with Harald and roused their men to demand she be given to Odin to appease him. Harald resisted. But after another hard winter, he handed her over to the priests.”
Jorund watched Aaren, felt the trembling of her hands and the bright pain of discovery in her eyes. He wanted to protect her against whatever these revelations might hold. But she had a right to know. He moved closer and put an arm around her waist, guessing what was to come.
“The priests carried her to the sacred grove in the mountains . . . and there they hanged her, along with others the runes had marked for sacrifice . . . as a gift to Old Odin.”
“They hanged her?” Aaren whispered, her face and heart filled with anguish at the path
the Norns had chosen for the one who gave her birth. She was stolen from her home, held captive, and forced to endure another’s lust for her . . . then finally hanged as a sacrifice to a jealous god at the demand of jealous women. The old woman nodded.
“They hanged her and the others at sunset, as was the custom. And they said Odin came and claimed her in the night . . . for when they went to cut the sacrifices in the morning, she was gone.” The old crone paused again to drink of her ale with a quaking hand. “The priests said Odin was pleased . . . for the harvest the next year was so great that our bins overflowed. But Harald grieved sorely for her and grew so angry that he slew two of the priests. Soon after he was killed in battle and Gunnar became jarl.”
Aaren sat a while in silence, her eyes glistening. “What was she like, this Wild Raven? Did you know her name?”
“Ahhh.” The old woman wiped her faded eyes with a gnarled hand. “She was frightening at first, because of her size. But when Old Harald was out of sight, she had a tender way about her. She saved me from a beating more than once. It was hard for her to learn our ways and our talk, but she spoke to me of her people once. They were rich and her father was a king, she said.” The old woman examined Aaren’s face. “You look much like her.”
“I believe I am her daughter,” Aaren said with a tightness that spoke of deep emotion. She turned to Jorund with tear-rimmed eyes. “I think I have found my mother. Father Serrick said he called my mother Fair Raven. And this Wild Raven was a fierce fighter . . . and I look like her. Then it must have been her plumage my father stole.”
But even as she said it, the sound of it was odd in her ears. Somehow—after the testing of will and limb and heart in the fiery reality of living—talk of plumage and Valkyrs and enchantments seemed like tales spun by a fireside . . . less than real, less than true. The stormy passage her thoughts were making left its turbulence in her face.
Jorund smiled tenderly and ran his hands up her arms to hold her shoulders gently. “Or perhaps it was all of her he stole . . . from the grove where she was sacrificed. In the old days, when they hanged to Odin, the victims sometimes lived—” He halted, not wishing to burden her further with such images. “Aaren.” He took her hands in his and turned her more fully to him.
