by Delle Jacobs
With a clipped nod of her head to drive her point home, Mildread walked away from the sheepfold to the muddy path that led down toward the river. Arienh noted Mildread had made no mention of doing the task herself. Mildread had always been good at knowing what others should do.
Arienh turned back to the cottage. Ahead of her, Liam's bright hair gleamed like polished brass in the sunshine as he bounded through the door and ran to his mother.
"Mama, I saw it– The Viking ship! It had a big red sail, and it was going down the river to the sea."
Arienh, directly behind the boy, nodded. "You were right," she told the Viking grimly, for she knew what it must mean to him to be left behind. "They have gone. We watched them sail away."
***
For two days, the Viking lay on her raised bed where she had moved him, with a fever raging through him. He mumbled strange things in his foreign tongue, threw off the blankets, tossed like waves pounding the sea cliffs in a storm. He called her name, begged her not to let him go.
Then he slept, so quietly, so still that she returned again and again to his side to reassure herself he still breathed.
Now and then, she got a few spoonfuls of water or broth past his lips. Sometimes he took enough of the willow bark tea that the fever seemed to subside. Then it would rise again.
For nearly a day now, the fever had seemed not quite so fiery hot. Yet it had continued, and he was running out of strength to fight. She could do nothing.
"Perhaps I should not have stitched it."
"Why?" Birgit asked her. "How could it have harmed him? You can see the wound heals, despite the fever. How can you care, Arienh? If he dies, he dies. You have one less burden."
Arienh shrugged and mopped beads of sweat from the Viking's brow with a dampened rag. "But he did so much better before. I should have left it alone, as I first meant to do."
"You blame yourself too much. That he has lived at all is beyond belief. He improves even now, despite my prayers."
She understood Birgit's hatred, but her own rage mingled with a memory from long ago, of a scrawny, ragged boy who had come with the Vikings, yet had hidden her away from his own kind.
It had happened too fast for her to remember much. When the horde had poured into their village, she had been too far away to escape to the cavern, so she ran up into the hills. While her attention was on the hulking Viking chasing her, the boy surprised her. She glimpsed only his light hair and a flash of blue eyes as he pushed her into a small hole hidden by boulders. With a quick, hard hiss to hush her, surely a sound understood in any language, he ran off, luring the marauder away. Her pursuer never found her.
Though this man's hair was far darker, his Viking eyes reminded her of the scrawny lad. She could not give him up until he breathed his last. She could never care for his sort, but she owed him that much.
"I will watch him," said Birgit. A strange flatness tinged her voice. Yet her pale eyes reflected the concern she felt for her exhausted sister. "Take Liam with you to the paddock."
"It is not your duty."
"You must tend the new lambs. I will watch the Viking."
"And give him the willow bark?"
"Perhaps I will do it better than you. Go. You have been inside too long, and so has Liam."
Arienh bit her lip, but it was best. She needed to walk in the sunshine. "Come, Liam, let us see to the lambs."
The bright sunlight stung her eyes as Arienh stepped outside the door, Liam's hand in hers. Clean air swept into her lungs, as delicious as fresh red meat.
Birgit was right, Arienh did need a distraction for a while from her obsession with the Viking's wound and her own guilt, for though her fear might excuse her, it was still her doing that he was wounded. And she couldn't get over the feeling that his wound would not have festered if she hadn't stitched it. The wound was healing and the fever was not as intense, but he was so weak that soon he would not have the strength to continue his struggle.
Mildread and Elli stood by the path, waiting. Arienh shooed Liam off to the paddock.
"Well, is he gone yet?" asked Mildread, with balled fists planted firmly on her hips. Elli placed hers exactly the same way.
"Nay, he lingers."
"You must kill him, Arienh," said Elli. Grim hatred gleamed like ice in her eyes, as cold as Mildread's brown eyes were furiously hot. "His kind are vermin."
Irritation flared in her. Every day they had said this, and she was weary of it. "Well, he is lying in there on the bed, helpless as a new kitten, Elli. If you want him dead, you may go do it yourself. Here, I will loan you my knife."
Elli's eyebrows shot upward.
"Not you? Mildread, then? Here, it is not so hard. Just hold it thus and stab downwards. He may find the strength to fight back and kill you, but I doubt it."
"You should never have let him live, Arienh," said Mildread. "It is your fault, and you should end it."
Arienh smiled with narrowed eyes. "But I chose not to do that. If you want it otherwise, you must change it yourselves."
Mildread spun away angrily and strode down the path. Elli followed, glancing back with a frown.
She could not blame them. Elli could not forget her father's death. Mildread's husband had been crippled in a raid and eventually died of the melancholy, leaving her to raise two daughters alone. And none of them would forgive what had been done to Birgit. But like herself, neither Mildread nor Elli could raise a blade to the Viking.
Arienh forced her thoughts away from them, back to her task, for she had too much to do as it was. Since the flood, the pasture beyond the untilled fields had begun to green, sprouts popping up faster than the flock could nibble them away. She counted the lambs, grateful that none had been lost. Some of them had better survive, for after this hard winter, there was not a single ram left in the valley.
Liam trotted beside her like a herd dog, prattling eager questions about the lambs, about how much they had grown since their winter births. Arienh picked up a lamb to show him how to inspect hooves and bodies for sores or disease.
The sudden blare of Mildread's horn sliced through the air. Her heart lurched and she nearly dropped the tiny lamb she held as she scanned the valley's lower end.
Running women screamed and fled up the valley toward the cavern in the hill beyond. Others, too far from the cavern, scattered up the nearest slopes that lined the valley's outlet.
Vikings. Vikings afoot, a score or more of them.
Yet no hideous howls for blood, no racing hordes in pursuit, not even weapons raised for the slaughter. The marauders strode up the valley as if they owned it, their metal clanging, leather squealing, feet tromping-the sounds of a moving army.
From the day the Viking had appeared, she had feared this. His people had come for him.
CHAPTER FOUR
"Go to the house, Liam. Do what your mother says."
"Without you? Not to the cavern?"
"Go without me. Now."
Liam's bright curls shimmered in the quick turn before he ran. Her heart lurched. She would do anything to protect him.
They did not come as Vikings usually came, a screaming rush of berserkers. They merely walked, a brisk, purposeful pace, as if they knew exactly what they planned to do. And there were enough of them that, whatever they planned, they would do it.
How much did they know? Had they been watching from the high hills that surrounded the valley, as she suspected her Viking had been doing the day she encountered him?
Only she stood between them and her family. Gulping down her fear, Arienh strode to the sheepfold, climbed the ladder, and removed the sword from its hiding place in the thatch. She threw the long belt over her shoulder, but still the immense scabbard almost dragged the ground.
The Vikings stopped on the far bank of the stream when one man signaled to the others. He bounded effortlessly over the stepping stones and stood, stance set wide, barely a man's length away from her. Arienh squared her shoulders and glared directly up into the man
's bright blue eyes.
Eyes like her Viking's.
This Viking was the tallest man she had ever seen, and stocky as a great oak, even larger than the man inside her cottage. His flowing, straw-colored beard and hair decorated with braids, and the evil sparkle in his eyes gave him a look of maturity, yet she guessed he was quite young, perhaps only a short time into his manhood.
The man pointed to the weapon that dangled from her waist. "That is my brother's sword."
"Is it? It seems to be mine now."
"Where did you get it?"
"Perhaps I took it from your brother."
Blue eyes scrutinized her. "We do not come to harm you, girl. We have come for him. Is he dead? If he is dead, show me where his body is, so we may take it away, for his mother mourns him. I will pay you."
"We have no use for your geld, Viking."
"What will you have, then? I will give you whatever you ask."
Did he mean what he said? Did he think she would trust him? A Viking? What would he think, or do, once he learned she was the cause of his brother's injury? If he should change his mind, she could only hope he would limit his vengeance to her.
"Leave us in peace, Viking."
"Aye, we will do that. I seek only my brother's body. I will give you a reward for that, be there only a little of him left. What will you ask, girl?"
"A plow," she said. She stifled a gasp. Why had she asked anything at all?
The Viking's bright eyes glowed with shrewdness as he quickly assessed both her and the unplowed fields behind her. She felt stripped bare, all the way to her thoughts.
"A plow? You have none?"
"It is broken."
"And oxen, too? I see none."
She chewed at her lip. The man who lay inside the cottage had been too weak to come out and discover how near to extinction her people were. But this one was accumulating the evidence rapidly.
"They are sickly. It would not hurt." Sickly unto death, but she dared not say.
"A team then, too. Where is he? Have you buried him?"
"You mourn too soon. He is not dead yet. You may come with me, but leave the others where they are."
Arienh turned her back to the marauder and his band of villains across the stream. With deliberate, manlike strides she walked up the narrow path, keeping her ears attuned to the heavy footfalls and creaking leather behind her. She pressed downward on the sword's hilt to lever the tip of the scabbard over the stones in the path.
The man maintained a discreet distance behind her of about the length of two men, his pace almost exactly matching hers. Although she knew he could capture her in the space of three big strides if he chose, she held her shoulders square and her head high, pretending that fact was beneath her notice. Boldly, she strode up to her cottage.
"Birgit, unbar the door," she called.
But when the door swung open, it was her Viking who stood, gasping and feverish, clasping the door frame for support. Anxiously she sought out Birgit and Liam, and saw them unharmed.
"Ronan." shouted the huge blond man as he rushed past her and wrapped his big arms around her Viking.
"Aye, Egil, I knew you'd come."
"'Tis a fever you've got."
"And a wound."
"He must lie down," said Arienh.
Ronan. A Celtic name. She had never asked him his name, for she had assumed he would die.
Ronan's legs buckled as the bigger man shifted his arm to support him. "Aye, she's right, Ronan. You must get back to the bed."
The tenderness between them was like an odd parody of a mother and child. Before, she had never even thought of Vikings even as speaking creatures. Then, to find two who seemed possessed of intelligence, kindness, and tenderness toward each other? But they would love their own kind, wouldn't they? Or perhaps there was enough Celtic blood in them to make them human. Her Viking had said his mother was a Celt.
Wrapped in their own concerns, speaking their heathen tongue, the two men seemed to have forgotten the Celts around them. But there were more of their kind down by the stream, and who knew what they might do, once they had accomplished their ends? Arienh flashed a wary look at Birgit and nodded her head toward the door. They left the two men alone in the cottage.
"While they are occupied," she said to her sister, "and while the other marauders wait so patiently across the stream, join the others in the cave."
"I'll not leave you."
"This is different, Birgit. I cannot tell if they mean to trick us or not. But even if they do, they might leave me in peace if there is only me."
"Nay."
"If I must defend you and Liam, too, I will surely die. Go."
Birgit glared. Setting her jaw, she whirled around, snatched Liam's hand, and set out toward the cavern.
***
Egil had come. Ronan had known he would, for his brother was the most dependable man in the world.
"What have you done, brother?" Egil asked, carefully easing Ronan into the bed as he spoke. "I have never seen you so weak."
"A gut wound."
"I told you not to come alone."
Egil lifted the Celtic tunic to study the wound, then lowered it as if he saw nothing to fear. But Ronan knew his younger brother well, and was not fooled. He was still fevered and far from recovered. Perhaps would not at all, and Egil would know it.
"Nay, it was the best way," Ronan said. "This is it, Egil. This is the valley."
Egil's eyes lit, mirroring his own excitement. "And the girl?"
"Aye, the same. I told you she would be a beauty."
"Aye, she is, and the flame-haired one, too. Save that one for me."
"You're the fool, then, Egil," Ronan said with a puny laugh. "She hates us."
"They all do at first, brother."
"She, more than most."
Egil gave a low, assessing hum. "The boy is hers. A Northman's child, you think?"
"Aye. They will not talk of it."
"A boy needs a father."
Ronan could see the speculation in his brother's eyes. He would be hard to discourage. But to his mind, the strange-eyed Birgit was unworthy of his brother. "She has an evil tongue. She is not worth it."
"We shall see. This place-there are no men here, Ronan. Perhaps it is even better than you hoped."
"None? I saw none, either, but I thought they must be away."
"None. The women are struggling with men's work. Most of the fields are unplowed. The girl said their plow is broken, and I suspect her cattle are dead, but she would not say it."
"Aye. It must be so."
Egil's eyes slanted suspiciously at him. "But if there are no men, then who stabbed you?"
He groaned. He had known it would come to this. But he had never been able to hide anything from Egil.
"The girl."
"The girl. You let a girl stab you?"
"I did not know she had a knife. I did not think of her as an enemy."
Egil laughed. "You thought she'd welcome you with open arms? A Celt?"
If he lived to have great-grandchildren, he'd never live this down. "Don't blame her, Egil. I startled her, and myself. It was sort of accidental."
"Accidental. Well, whatever the cause, she has kept you alive. Now we must be sure you stay that way."
"Have you brought everyone?"
"In the estuary. I have only to give the signal."
"Do it, then. But say nothing to these women."
Egil nodded solemnly. His hand went once again to Ronan's forehead. "Your fever cools, I think. It must be that I have come."
"It is the willow bark. Your beloved Birgit just forced it on me. Go, now."
"Aye. And may Freyr watch over you."
"Don't let mother hear you say that."
Egil flipped his eyebrows wickedly. But Ronan knew his brother would be cautious. He would not tease their Christian mother with their pagan gods. Not too much.
***
Arienh stood in the sunshine, feeling as if she cou
ld absorb from it the strength and courage she needed. It flowed into her, penetrating deeply, as if it reached all the way to her bones. She had not felt such warmth since the leaves had left the trees the previous fall. The tip of the heavy Viking sword rested on a flat stone, and she leaned her weight against it.
From where she stood vigil, she could see in all directions, from the door of the cottage where the big Viking remained with his brother to the group of restless raiders by the river. She scanned the low hills about the valley and the cavern where the other villagers waited. If the big Viking betrayed his promise, at least the others would be safe.
The door creaked open on its leather hinges, and the big Viking called Egil ducked his head to pass. His arms swung easily at his side, almost a contradiction to his purposeful stride toward her. Arienh folded her arms, waiting.
The Viking fixed narrow, assessing eyes on her. "He says you stabbed him."
"Aye."
The Viking's bushy yellow eyebrows raised in pointed arches. "He is a skilled warrior. How did you do it?"
"I stabbed. He fell." She met his gaze like swords clashing.
"Then why do you tend him?"
"It was his idea, I think."
"You lie. He would have died without your help."
"Perhaps. It was a very cold storm and I do not wish anyone ill. We only wish to be left alone, so please go."
"He cannot go yet. I will stay with him, and send the others for the plow I promised you."
"Nay. We do not want you."
"Doubtless, but he is my brother and I cannot leave him. You would not leave your sister."
"My sister would never invade another's land."
A hint of glee flickered on his solemn eyes. "That empty cottage," he said, pointing down the hill. "Is it usable? I could take him there."
"Nay, the thatch leaks badly. It would take too much time to patch it."
The Viking's blue eyes gleamed, and the corners of his mouth danced. He raised an arm and beckoned the restless men near the stream. The Vikings raised a whoop, dashed across the water and up the hill.
