by Joanna Bell
"I just want to see my friend!" I replied. "I miss her. There are things I need to discuss with her that I cannot discuss with anyone else. Besides, she's married to Jarl Eirik and is the mother of his child. Do you think she has a nefarious plot, too?"
"I've never met her," Ragnar said. "So I can't speak to her plots. Do you feel that, Emma? Do you feel the way the wind changes?"
I lifted my head up, then, and focused my senses outwards. The Viking was right, the wind had picked up.
"Look," he said, pointing out to sea, "look at the tops of the waves – do you see the way the foam blows backwards at the peak?"
I followed the direction of his finger with my gaze and saw what he was describing, the mist blowing back even as the waves drove forward. "Does it mean something?"
"It means bad weather," Ragnar replied, concerned. "A storm – it will be here before night falls. We have food to last us, but we didn't expect a winter like this in the Kingdom of the East Angles. I'll have the fire-pits stocked high with firewood and the roundhouses lashed to the ground-posts, but it feels bad. Do you feel it right now, in the air?"
Once again I tried to divine the information it seemed Ragnar was receiving from the wind much more clearly than I was.
"I don't know," I told him. "I don't think so. It just feels really... windy."
"Come," he said, standing and reaching for my hand. "You distract me, Emma – perhaps Fiske is right about you?"
As we began to make our way back into the camp I tried to ask the Jarl what he meant by that, but the wind was blowing too hard, I don't think he heard me.
11
Ragnar
By sundown, the camp was as prepared as it was going to be for a windy, snowy night – or nights, depending on how long the weather lasted. Bad weather is never welcome, but it was particularly unwelcome at that time. My people weren't in the land of the East Angles for pigs and pretty women alone. We had been, in times past – the Angles were poorly defended, and their lands relatively rich in resources – but there had been talk amongst the great Jarls that perhaps it would soon be time to move beyond raids to conquest. That's why I was where I was, with my warriors and the people needed to support us. It's why Jarl Eirik was where he was, and why others still were on their way or already setting up camps. It was time to talk, to plan our next moves, to make decisions. Until we killed or subdued the King of the East Angles, our rough camps were no more than children's games.
Not that there was too much time to think of the future when the winds picked up and the snow became like grit against any exposed flesh. I instructed the people to hunker down, to bring enough firewood for three nights into their roundhouses, to block the spaces in their dwellings with snow, ice, straw, animal dung, leaves – anything that could be found. I brought the warriors, along with my personal advisors, servants, and the most useful of the thralls into the feasting hall, where the three fire-pits (one at each end and one in the center) burned high and bright.
It is my task to keep up not only my own spirits but those of my people. To this end, and as the winter howled outside, I began a round of storytelling, recollections from the warriors of victories over our enemies, tales of men's foolishness love and lust, and games of chance. Darker evening ale was drunk and thick chunks of dried bread with salted butter that had been softened in great wooden bowls placed next to the fire were passed around. It seemed to work – the warriors and the people in the hall laughed and ate and gave each other love-eyes over the tops of their horn cups. The only one who seemed ill at ease was myself.
Arva came to me as I stood by one of the fires, watching the flames dance as if in a stupor.
"You must drink, Jarl," she said to me, handing me a cup of ale. "The people are safe from the storm in the feasting hall and in their roundhouses, why do you stand by the fire with the worried face of an old woman?"
I laughed heartily at the 'old woman' comment – Arva did like to poke at me, although always with affection and respect.
"You read things into me that are not there," I told her, taking a swig of the dark ale. "I stand by the fire to warm myself, Arva – nothing more."
Arva was small, even for a woman. When I looked down, all I saw was the top of her blonde head. The height difference made her hard to read sometimes, when seeing her face would have been useful.
"Come join us then, Jarl. The hall is warm, the people wish to hear a story from you. Unless there is something other than the fire that keeps you from us?"
Arva was hinting at something. She knew it, and I knew it. I was also pretty sure I knew what it was. But the prisoner's longhouse had been tied down securely, their fire built up – although not as high as the fires in the hall – and they had their woolen tunics and the warmth from each other's bodies. Emma – the one I won't make an effort to pretend wasn't highest on my mind – had the fur I had given her.
But Arva was right. I was worrying, and worrying is always a waste of life. I turned back towards the table where warriors, women, children, advisors and favored thralls all sat together, their eyes shining with the feeling of being safe and protected from the cold wind that shrieked outside.
"Will you tell us a story, Jarl?" A small child asked, clutching at my hand as I walked by.
The girl's mother admonished her at once, pulling her hand away and warning her against speaking so forwardly to the Jarl.
But it was a special night, an unusual night, and so I knelt down to the child's level and looked into her dark eyes. "What kind of story would you like, little one? The story of the time your Jarl conquered a Lord's estate with only a single man killed? Or the story of the time he got caught in a cow's field when he was a boy, and the cows chased him around and around until he needed to be rescued by his mother?"
"The cows!" The little girl laughed. "Tell us about the cows chasing you, Jarl!"
And so I told them the story of the cows chasing me, only slightly embellished for effect, and peals of laughter rang out in the feasting hall. And after I told the children that they should never show fear to a cow, lest the animal assume it has the superior position, other people told stories of their own, until the hour and the ale did its work and they began to drift off, curled up close to each other around the fire-pits.
Only one person did not sleep. Only one of our lot sat in front of the fire again, listening to the wind as if it whispered portents of the future.
"Sleep," Arva said, coming up silently behind me. She had been sleeping a moment before and her voice was slow with it. "Everyone else is asleep, Jarl. Even the prisoners will be dreaming now, in their longhouse. They're warm, we brought them a mountain of firewood. She is warm."
I looked up sharply, but then couldn't be bothered to deny what Arva implied – that my concern was for Emma in particular, rather than anything – or anyone – else. She knew what was on my mind as well as I did.
"The people sleep," Arva continued, "and now I will sleep again, too. But I can bring you a girl, if you wish it. One of the prettier thralls, perhaps? Borgir's daughters have had their eyes on you all night – do you prefer the blonde or the red-haired of the two?"
Borgir was one of my men, older but still able enough to fight. I'd come to know his daughters when I was almost out of my second ten years, before I became Jarl. They had provided amusement of the kind pretty young women provide a warrior, but both had been more trouble than they were worth, following me around the village endlessly and weeping childish tears when I chose not to marry either of them. It was Borgir's wife who had insisted on her – and her daughters' – presence in one of the small, early settlements in the Kingdom of the East Angles. I would have preferred they stayed back but Borgir himself would have taken it as an insult, and so I suffered their presence.
"I'd sooner have you protect me from those two as bring them to me," I answered Arva quietly. "Go to sleep, there's no need for you to be up with me."
"Are you sure, Jarl?"
I nodded and Arva ret
reated, leaving me alone by the fire once again. As the thralls were all asleep, I built it up again myself when it started to wane, and watched as the flames bent under the drafts that came whistling in through the cracks in the log walls.
Did I imagine it or did the wind grow even more fearsome? The wooden doors were flimsy, not built to last, and as the gale knocked them against each other a small drift of snow built up on the ground just inside the hall. A knot in my stomach tore at me, not allowing me to sleep. If there was snow where I was, next to the fire, how much was there in the prisoner's dwelling? Was that fierce little foreigner cold? Did the other captives turn her away when she tried to lie close to them for warmth, knowing her to be my object?
I stood up eventually, accepting that there would be no sleep for me until I knew Emma was warm and unafraid. The hall was a bedchamber then, warm bodies piled happily together, the sounds of snoring rumbling through the air. I slipped out the doors, latching them shut behind me, and ducked my head into the cold blast that greeted me outside. All around the camp drifts of snow had built up on the northwestern sides of the structures, some almost reaching the roofs. The wind picked its way beneath my dressings and I hurried my steps to the longhouse, not eager to spend any more time outside than necessary.
The moment I stepped inside I saw it – the fire that had almost died away entirely, the lack of any more firewood, and the shivering knots of humans wrapped around each other, trying to keep warm. It wasn't supposed to be so, I had instructed the captives to be given enough wood to last the night. In the morning, I would have Fiske deal with whoever was responsible. As it was, I made my way back to the feasting hall and brought a huge armful of wood back to the longhouse, a third of which I lay on the glowing orange embers. The flames grew again and I used the flickering light they cast to look around.
Sure enough, there she was, on the outside of the circle of people that lay around the fire-pit. A flash of anger raced through my chest at the thought of anyone pushing her away, of punishing her for drawing my attention. I went to her and bent down, leaning in close.
"Emma," I whispered. "Emma."
There was no response. And when I ungloved my hand to touch her cheek, I knew why. Her skin was as cold almost as ice, her breathing so slow as to be almost imperceptible.
"No," I said, loud enough to cause a few heads to lift. "No! Emma!"
I picked her up, then, and threw her cold body over my shoulder before racing back to the feasting hall. Inside, I carried her to the fire and knelt in front of it, holding her on my lap. The fur, where it was near her mouth, was stiff with the frost from her breath. And still, she was not awake.
Forget asking Fiske to do it – I was going to find the person responsible for this myself, and see to it that they never made such a mistake again.
I untied the leather ties of the fur and peeled it off, pressing my fingers into the chilly, pale flesh of Emma's neck. Her heartbeat sang there under her skin, and a wave of relief washed over me. But it was not just relief. It was a sudden sense of Emma herself – her mind, her life, both imbued with a preciousness I did not recall having felt for a woman before. Nothing could be allowed to happen to her, no harm could be allowed to come to her. I took her face in one hand and bent close, whispering her name.
"Wake up, Emma. Wake up my little cold one, wake up. Emma, Emma, Emma."
I hadn't even felt her come back to herself when I pulled away briefly and saw that her eyes, dark with – with what? fear? – stared up into mine.
She shook, which was a welcome sign – when the cold is so much a person starts stops shivering, that's when the time to worry is. So I welcomed her shiverings, and her impossibly perfect teeth clattering against each other.
"The captives were to be given enough firewood," I whispered, guiltier than I'd ever felt in my life, and somehow desperate for her forgiveness. "It was not my intention that you freeze! In the morning I will –"
Emma was trying to speak but her lips were slow with the chill. "Th- thank you," she said. "Thank you, Jarl."
Her gratefulness only made me feel guiltier.
"The prisoners were supposed to have been given enough firewood to –"
"I know," Emma nodded, because I was repeating myself. "I know."
Why did it matter so much to me that one foreign girl didn't think I was the kind of man to let his prisoners starve or freeze? It had never mattered before, even as I tried to be the kind of Jarl my father brought me up to be – stern and even at times harsh, but fair with it, loving and merciful where it was warranted. And now, all of a sudden on a stormy night in the feasting hall, it did matter.
Not wanting to continue talking, when the last thing Emma needed was more words, I pulled her arms out from under her tunic and pressed her hands between mine, rubbing them very gently because I know how painful a rough touch on frostbitten flesh is.
I held her hands up to the fire, still rubbing, and she watched me for a little while, before turning to look me in the eye.
"Why do you look at me in that way?" I asked, when she said nothing.
"You're being so gentle," she smiled. "I didn't think. I didn't –"
Before Emma, I had only heard other men tell of the effect a woman's smile – or the particular way she speaks his name, or reaches for his hand when she fears danger – can have. Before Emma, I thought they spoke of lust when they told me of these things. Lust was there – so present I found myself having to shift my body to find some comfort – but it was infused now with something new, something I didn't remember ever having felt for any of those girls I tumbled in the furs with. Again the sense of preciousness was there, as if Emma, filled with her own kind of womanly fire, was somehow as fragile and vulnerable as a lamb.
"You looked at me like that on the beach today," she whispered, slightly lifting one of her hands and giving the distinct impression of wanting to touch my face before letting it fall limp at her side again. "That look, the one you've got in your eyes right now. What does it mean?"
I looked down at her, safe in my arms, her soft, full lips parted ever so slightly. The feeling that comes from being with a woman was there, existing almost paradoxically alongside the more noble, protective ones. I wanted Emma to be warm, comfortable. But that mouth of hers asked for a reaction, and the building, insistent need to invade grew thick in my loins. It was a hunger like a starving man has for food, the ache to bend down, push my tongue into her mouth, my hands up under her dressings, to keep going, to take.
Still, I had enough sense to know she must have known what my 'look' meant. Emma was no naive cowherd's daughter. I bent down closer, close enough to feel her soft breath on my face – the sweetest kind of torment – and brushed my lips lightly against her cheek. She moved when I did that, arching her neck, turning her cheek up to me, asking for more.
"You don't have to ask what my look meant, Emma," I chided her gently, again bending down – to her neck this time – but refusing to give her what I know she wanted.
"I –" she said, intending to throw another verbal challenge my way and then finding her own words dissolving into a sigh. Her fingers found their way to the back of my neck, and then buried themselves in my hair, and she pulled me in closer, tighter. It was too much, a platter piled high with the juiciest berries offered to a man whose belly aches with hunger. I opened my mouth against Emma's neck and kissed her. I kissed her until her body arched up to mine and her limbs fell open, inviting me, begging me.
When my mouth found hers and she opened her lips for my tongue, so I could taste how badly she needed me, the force of desire was so strong it was as if I couldn't breathe. I found the bottom of her tunic and desperately pushed the layers of dressings aside, seeking her warm flesh.
Emma made a sound when my hand closed around one of her soft breasts. And even as I find it difficult to recall the sound, the reaction it drew out of me stays in my mind.
"Voss, Emma," I whispered sharply, pulling her up to a sitting position so I
could hurriedly rid her of the wool and linens that thwarted me to the point almost of rage.
And then she was naked – as soft and flawless as a fawn – on my lap, and two hands were no longer enough. I grasped her hip and pulled her closer, groaning when she pushed her body down against me, right where I needed it. Like the starving man presented with berries, I gorged myself. And Emma offered herself up for my consumption, stroking my cheek and pulling my head into her when I took her nipples into my mouth, one after the other until they stood up stiff and glistening in the firelight.
"Jarl," she gasped, and listening to her try to keep her voice down just made me wilder. "Ragnar. Oh my –"
There was no time for slowness. Neither of us had it in us to take any more time. When Emma reached for my leathers, unable to free the part of me she needed, I helped her out.
"Is this –" she panted, stopping momentarily at the place where my body most needed her, right over my throbbing, aching manhood. "Ragnar – we're – everyone else is –"
"I'm the Jarl," I reminded her, out of breath and almost out of my mind with need. "The people understand their Jarl is a man, with the needs of a man. They – Emma, they –"
Before I could finish, she lowered herself, reaching her hand down between our bodies to guide me into her soft, warm slickness until my breath stopped in my throat and I near bit my tongue in half with the urge to let go.
Emma's expression changed as we joined – I watched it melt into a look of animal indulgence, her lips pulling away from her upper teeth and her breath coming in quick, short bursts. She began to move against me at once, working her body up and down, closing her eyes with pleasure every time I filled her again, until my eyes near rolled in my head with the effort of holding myself back.
I leaned back a little, so I could fully take her in with my eyes when I felt the first sweet, agonizing little tightenings around me. She bit her lips trying to be quiet and then, almost at the moment of release, actually clapped her hand over her own mouth.
