Maidensong (3 page)

She swiped away her tears. Her lips flattened into a hard line, along with her resolve. Her dream of being recognized as a skald in her own right suddenly seemed a small matter indeed. But seeing justice done
to the man responsible for her father’s death was the best reason she could think of to keep breathing.

The setting sun slid beyond the curve of the water.
Before the brief twilight deepened into the short Scan
dinavian spring night, Bjorn ordered the flotilla to pull
up as close to the land as the sailors dared. The cliffs
were too steep to beach the armada for the night.

Bjorn grappled with the heavy anchor stone and
heaved it overboard. “Break out the
nattmal,
Jorand,” he said to the flaxen-haired youngest man on board.

As Jorand passed out the spartan meal of flat barley
bread, dried fish and wrinkled cloudberries, Bjorn stepped around the crew to check on his captives.

“Hold up your hands and I’ll free you to eat,” he said to Rika.

Scowling, she lifted her hands to him, but said noth
ing. “What? No cutting remarks?” Bjorn cocked his
head at her. “Out of insults already, I see. You must not be much
of a skald after all.” He ignored Rika’s uplifted wrists
and freed Ketil’s hands instead.

“Anything I might say would stir your wrath, Bjorn
the Hero, vanquisher of defenseless women and un
armed old men.” Rika’s tone was smooth as butter,
making her words all the more biting. “However, if it
pleases the great jarl’s brother,
I’ll
compose a saga
about his restoration of livestock to be remembered for the ages. You’ll be known as Bjorn the Boar-bringer, savior of lost pigs everywhere.”

When a couple of his crew chuckled, he silenced them with a frown.

She slid her gaze toward the sailors, who had erased
the grins from their faces. “Ah! I see it is not only
bound captives who must be careful with their mouths
around you."

“Seems you’re giving no heed to yours, girl.” Bjorn knelt beside her and lowered his voice. “I don’t know
why I should bother explaining it to you, but this was
a matter of honor. What a man has, he must hold. If he
won’t protect what’s his, he deserves to lose it. We
couldn’t let the raid on our farmsteads stand. More
would be lost than livestock the next time.”

“Ja,”
she answered, dry-eyed and staring, the image of her father face down in the straw swimming before her. "More was definitely lost."

Bjorn seemed to see the same grotesque vision. “It’s
a sad day that sees Magnus Silver-Throat dead, if that’s
indeed who he was. But you know as well as I that it’s
something that couldn't be undone. We all wear our fates around our necks like you wear that little hammer.”

He reached out a broad finger to stroke the amber pendant nestled in the slight indentation at the base of her throat. When she shrank from his touch, he pulled back his hand.

“The way of Magnus’s death was decided long ago,” Bjorn said. “It just happened that one of my men delivered it to him.”

Rika narrowed her eyes to slits. “And for that, I’ll never forgive you.”

“I’m not asking you to,” Bjorn said. “I’m only trying
to untie your hands so you can eat in comfort.” He worked the knot free and pulled off her bonds.

“I’m surprised you trouble to feed us.” Rika rubbed her tingling wrists.

“If you’re weak or sickly, you’re of no use to the jarl.
You’ll find I look out for all of my brother’s interests,” Bjorn said. “But perhaps I should warn you that Gun
nar’s not as tolerant a man as I. If you irritate me, I’ll
just bind your mouth.”

“What?” Rika's eyes flashed. “Will the mighty
jarl
carve out my tongue and eat it with his herring and
turnips for
nattmal?"

“No. Something much worse than that.” Bjorn handed her a generous portion of fish, bread and
berries. “He’ll set the Dragon of Sogna on you. His
wife, the Lady Astryd.”

This time, Bjorn’s crew laughed heartily and loud.

*
  
*
  
*

“No!” Ketil thrashed beside her in the dark. She wrapped her arms around him, trying to quiet him be
fore he roused the wrath of any of the raiders snoring
in their
hudfats,
the leather two-man sleeping sacks.

“Hush now, Ketil,” she whispered. “It’s just a
dreyma.”

Ketil subsided into soft sobs, his great body still shuddering. “Don’t let it happen.”

She bit her lower
lip,
thinking he spoke of Magnus's
death and imagined it only a dream. “Some things
can’t be helped,” she said softly. “Father is gone, and
we can’t change it."

He pulled back from her, blinking. “I know that. I just don’t want you to go, too. They’re trying to send you far away to a big, big city with a wall where the
sun burns so hot. And they won’t let me go with you.”

“It’s only a dream.” She pressed her palms against
both of his cheeks. “No one will separate us, brother. I won’t let them.”

Even as she promised, she wondered whether she’d
be able to keep her word. A thrall had no say in where she was sent, but Rika had no intention of remaining a
slave. Almost in reflex, she put a hand to the amber hammer at her throat. If she’d been destined for servi
tude, surely Thor wouldn’t have allowed Magnus to
save her from the icy water as an infant.

Magnus had always been Odin’s man. But even
though the stoic All-Father was a favorite of skalds,
Rika could never warm to him. From her birth, she’d
belonged to Thor, whose passions burned white-hot
and dissipated like fading lightning. Of all the gods in
the Nordic pantheon, the Thunderer was the least
capricious and cruel to his devotees, and judged most
likely to save them in a tight spot.

This certainly qualified as a tight spot.

A fresh wind stirred the sea, sending its chilly breath
rippling over them. Ketil shivered beside her. “I’m cold.”

“Here you are.” Rika pulled the green wool cape from her shoulders and tucked it around her brother.
It wasn’t big enough for the two of them.

“Go back to sleep, Ketil.” She crossed her arms over
her chest, hugging herself against the wind. In a short while, his deep, even breathing told Rika that Ketil
had slipped back into his childish slumber.

Ketil’s nightmare troubled her more than she wanted to admit. Magnus had been devoted to truth-
telling above all else, so he was never evasive about how she’d come to be his daughter. He told Rika that
one of Ketil’s dreams had led them to the precise spot
where she’d been abandoned on the ice. Her brother
hadn’t had another episode of prescience since then,
so Rika discounted the tale as the fancies of a doting
father with a vivid imagination. Now with Ketil’s
dreyma
of a looming separation, she wondered.

The moon rose, cold and distant, over the steep cliffs and crashing surf. The silvery light was just bright enough for Rika to make out Bjorn the Black in his leather sleeping sack by the steering oar. The man’s eyes flashed at her, fiery and threatening, like the feral predator she knew him to be. When he stood and
walked toward her carrying his
hudfat,
her shivering
had nothing to do with the wind.

“Get in.” He stepped into the bag and held it open for her.

She glared up at him. “I’ll tie loom stones around
my neck and drown myself before I become your bed-
slave.”

“Don’t worry. I don’t intend to rut you,” Bjorn said. “
Not in a bobbing longship with two dozen other men
around.”

When she still didn’t budge, his lips twitched, whether with irritation or amusement, Rika couldn’t be sure.

“Rape isn’t to my taste,” he explained. “I prefer my
women willing and a good bit cleaner than you are at
the moment, little she-wolf.” He stroked a patch of dried mud from her cheek.

It was spring, but the breeze sliding over her felt
more like winter’s icy breath. Rika didn't want him to see her quiver, but she couldn’t help herself.

“There’s no profit to you to spite me in this,” he
said. “I only want to see you warm, I swear it.”

Her chattering teeth decided the matter and she
climbed into the supple leather sack with the black
Viking. The
hudfat
was designed for sharing bodily
warmth so she stopped shivering in only a few moments. The big man seemed to radiate as much heat as
a roaring central fire in a longhouse.

Earlier, he’d removed his mail shirt and the blood
stained tunic beneath
it,
leaving him smelling only of
fresh sea air, tinged with honest male sweat. It was a strangely comforting combination. Even though he was her enemy, his warmth made Rika drowsy. She settled back against his chest as she sank toward exhausted sleep.

“Why did you do that?” his voice rumbled in her ear.

Every hair on her body stood at full attention. She
should’ve known better than to trust him enough to climb into the
hudfat
with him..

“I was cold. You promised only to warm me,” she
reminded him. “Nothing else could lure me into your bed.”

He snorted. “There are those who could assure you that my bed is not such an odious fate, but that’s not
what I meant.” Bjorn jerked his head toward Ketil. “I know you were cold. Why did you give him your cloak?”

“He’s my brother,” Rika answered simply. “We share everything. That’s what families do.”

“Very touching.” His voice was hard. “But not very practical when there’s only one cloak.”

She turned to look at him. The lines and planes of
his face were as stony as the granite cliffs they shel
tered under. “Wouldn’t you share a cloak with your
brother?”

Bjorn’s dark eyes flickered down at her and then
back up to scan the sea again. “No. My
brother would just take the cloak."

By midmorning, the small fleet turned inland up a wa
terway Magnus’s
little
troupe had never visited.
Sogne
fjord.
Rika had sailed past the wide inlet dotted with
rocky islands numerous times, but for some reason, Magnus always made an excuse not to swing into this
particular fjord. Her hope of finding someone who’d
heard her father perform sank like an anchor stone.

They stopped at settlements along the steep sides of
the inlet to drop off a cow here, a pair of pigs there.
Rika couldn’t help noticing that many of the
karls’
farmsteads had a neglected air.

A roof was caved in at one place, part of the longhouse open to the sky, with nothing being done to right the situation. Several plots of land that by rights
should have been sprouting barley had yet to be sown
with grain.

This was more than the ravages of a raid a month
gone. Something caused a rot in the spirits of the in
habitants of the fjord, leaving them careless with their
holdings.

Perhaps Magnus had been right to avoid Sogna.

Sognefjord seemed to go on forever, winding its way
into the heart of the land. Rika was forced to spend another two nights sharing a
hudfat
with the hard-headed, hard-bodied leader of the raid.

She’d never slept so closely entwined with anyone,
let alone a strange man. His warmth was a blessing,
but she stiffened, prickling with apprehension, each
time his body shifted. She wasn’t able to fully relax
until exhaustion drained her. What irritated her most
was the fear that she might begin to enjoy his breath on her nape or the feel of his hand, heavy on her waist.

The wind died as they traveled farther from the open sea, and Bjorn ordered the mast down and the
oars out. With each heaving stroke, Rika’s heart flut
tered. Whatever was wrong with Sognefjord waited for her at the end of the voyage.

She glanced at Bjorn. He stood at the steering oar,
his dark hair streaming in the wind, his eyes narrowed to slits against the glare of sun on the water. His arms
bulged with the strain of keeping the longship within the correct channel to avoid submerged rocks.

Rika frowned at him, puzzled. From his cryptic re
mark two nights ago, she judged there was no love
lost between Bjorn and his brother, the
jarl
. Yet by
raiding in the name of Sogna, he did his brother’s bid
ding at the hazard of his own life and those of his crew. Why?