Undercurrent (10 page)

Magnus didn’t seem to mind in the least. He hummed a happy tune, albeit off-key, while stowing wooden crates to form bench-like seats aboard the small sailing vessel. It wouldn’t take long. Ragnar had packed the barest of necessities, and Magnus brought only what fit in his many pouches.

Boots scuffed along the rocky path leading to the tributary. Ragnar slid off his perch and stood, batting his hair forward to cover the scarred side of his face. “Hail, Steinn. I did not expect anyone to see us off.”

Steinn grunted and let the pack he’d hoisted over his shoulder fall to the ground. “I am coming with you.”

Ragnar looked beyond him to see if he jested. Satisfied no others lurked about, he studied Steinn’s expression for any hint of mockery or deceit. Serious blue eyes stared back. “Why?”

The warrior crossed his arms over his broad chest. “You are not able to man a faering, especially should the sea turn rough.”

“
Summer waters rarely stir, and Magnus has the strength of five men. There is more to your reasoning, I think.”

Steinn averted his gaze.

“
I value honesty, Steinn.” Ragnar crossed his own arms, preparing to wait a long time. Truth did not come easy to a Northman accustomed to self-preservation at all costs.

“
Torolf has cast the evil eye on me for speaking up in the assembly.” Steinn’s foot swung back and kicked a spray of gravel, then stilled. His eyes held challenge as he met Ragnar’s gaze. “I fear for my life.”

The veracity of his words raised bumps on Ragnar’s flesh. “You? Fear? You are proven in battle time and again. I have yet to see you run from a fight.”

“
Nor would I, but Torolf will not offer an honorable challenge. I’ve heard it said…” Steinn’s voice lowered to a near whisper. “I’ve heard it said Torolf is a shape shifter. My throat would be ripped out before I could draw my sword, leaving me no chance for Valhalla.”

“
You know my thoughts on Valhalla.”

Steinn shot him a murderous glance. Ragnar shrugged and hoped the smile he put on would break the tension. “I do not deny you your fear but offer a way to be free from it.”

“
It seems you cannot speak without turning the words to your God.”

Ragnar laughed. “Knowing this, are you so sure that you would journey with me?” He hitched his thumb over his shoulder to indicate the incessant humming of the giant behind him. “And Magnus?”

The barest of smiles tugged at the corners of Steinn’s mouth. “I might reconsider.”

“
It is not my intent to turn you away, but I would rest easier if I knew you remained in the village. The women are not safe with Torolf’s men about, and as for Torolf, well, I fear most for Signy.” By the tilt of the warrior’s head, Ragnar sensed he’d captured his interest. “’Tis not with an evil eye but a predator’s that Torolf looks upon her. Would you keep watch over her until Alarik returns?”

“
Oh, hoary head, man!” Steinn kicked at his bag instead of the gravel. “Alarik will not return. He would be a fool to come back.”

“
And I say that he will. Truth will prevail at the next council gathering. I believe Alarik was not the murderer.”

“
Then who is?”

Failure stabbed Ragnar in the gut. He’d examined the storage hut many times over with no result, save for a nagging discouragement that he struggled continually to turn over to God. “I know not. I trust only that God will bring about justice in His own time.”

Steinn shook his head. “You and your religion.”

“
It is all I have”—Ragnar lifted his chin and his voice—“but it is enough. So what will you do?”

Steinn looked past him, past Magnus and the faering, and focused with a troubled brow on some distant point downstream. What demons wrestled in the man’s mind, Ragnar could not guess, but by the jutted lower lip and increased rise and fall of Steinn’s chest, he wagered a fight of some kind played out.

“
Very well. I will stay.” Steinn retrieved the canvas bag at his feet and slung it over his shoulder. “Though I make no promises for the woman’s safety. Or mine.”

“
Daily will I petition God, trusting you and Signy to His care.”

“
Ja.” Steinn marched up the path toward the village, calling over his shoulder as he went. “With Torolf about, I’ll accept even your prayers.”

Ragnar watched Steinn’s retreating form grow smaller, and with it, his confidence. Trust. He prattled on so to Steinn about it, but even after years as a believer, trusting did not come easy. Trusting and praying until his knees wore through every pair of breeches had not yet restored his relationship with his father. Long ago he’d anchored his hope in the truth that Jesu knew exactly how it felt to be so forsaken.

Ja, anchor his hope, though time now to set sail for Engla-lond. He allowed one last look at the sleepy village stretching itself awake with cock’s crow and smoky curls of freshly started fires, then set his face toward the faering. Magnus sat aboard with a chunk of bread cradled in his hands at eye level. Without warning, his big head jutted forward then snapped back. His lips smacked closed and jaws worked furiously, looking very much like an overgrown turtle.

“
Take care, my friend, or we’ll not have supplies enough to last us to Jorvik.”

Magnus startled, and the hunk of bread disappeared into a pouch. He tucked his chin and refused eye contact. “Magnus not eating.”

Ragnar pressed his lips together, refusing to give in to a smile as he cleared the gunwale and set about loosening the mooring ropes.

“
Ragnar?”

“
Ja.” This could prove a very long journey indeed if the big man already started with questions before they’d shoved off. So be it, Lord. Let the “how long’s” begin.

“
Magnus have a bad feeling.”

Ragnar handed him an oar. “You shouldn’t have eaten so much bread at once. You know better—”

“
Not that kind.”

Something hitched in Ragnar’s spirit, and he paused in his labor to give Magnus his full attention. “Then what?”

“
We leave village together, Magnus and Ragnar, but only one will come back.”

He searched the guileless blue eyes of the childlike man. “Which one?”

Magnus frowned.

Alarik stooped to free a small rock from the forest floor, dirt lodging beneath his fingernails. The disturbed ground released a loamy aroma and sent a skinny earthworm wriggling to seek new shelter. He wrapped the worn piece of limestone in the leather cradle of the sling then aimed toward an impossible target—a swarm of hoverflies near the forest’s edge. He swung, released, and didn’t even come close.

Scrubbing his booted toe back and forth, he searched for another stone. Nothing. He’d picked the area clean in his time-killing pursuit.

For the tenth time, he glanced back at the route Cassie had taken. He’d understood well enough that she needed to go make water, though why she must go so far and take so long made no sense. Perfectly good tree trunks and fern coverage grew near enough.

But she’d insisted, and he could almost wish now that she’d remained ignorant of his language.

The past three days she’d talked, or tried to, until he wanted to stop up his ears. Oh, it made for many a hearty laugh with her childish speech—at one point she called him a female badger with pretty teeth. She reminded him of a wee tot who’d discovered words have meaning. Her rudimentary communication had been a humorous distraction at first, but as they drew nearer Jorvik and his nerves twisted tighter, she didn’t seem nearly as amusing.

At last he heard underbrush slapping against skirt fabric. “Alarik?”

He tucked his sling between belt and tunic. “Ja?”

She approached with much to say, his blue cloak draped around her shoulders as if she owned it. Her hands fluttered as she spoke of a helmet. No. A horse, or maybe she hated something. Hard to decipher, and he did not have the patience for it now.

“
Køm.” He hefted his bag and headed the direction of the shadowy cloud of hoverflies. She trod behind, muttering in her foreign tongue, but following nonetheless.

Had it been so when his father took his mother as his thrall? She might have jabbered along this same path, though eastward rather than west, and twenty-five, nay, twenty-six summers ago. Likely not as willing, either. Why this woman accepted her captivity so readily was beyond him. Perhaps she didn’t understand.

She would, soon enough.

The massing insects took on a distinctive and darker form the nearer they drew, as did his thoughts. Mayhap he’d made a mistake in seeking asylum in Jorvik, never having actually met his mother’s kin. He had no doubt he’d recognize them, for it would be as if gazing at his own reflection—he bore the might of his father but the countenance of his mother. They would see him for who he was, Anna’s son, and welcome him as family or turn him away in grudge for the loss of her so many years ago.

Or would they simply kill him as the seed of Hermod the Black?

NINE

Ragnar’s boots slapped against the dock’s weathered gray planks. Jesu be praised that after three and a half days of sailing, a soft place to lay his head this eve awaited. Though he and Magnus achieved admirable time in reaching the Shetland Isles, bedding down on the strakes of the hull had made the nights drag. Before they set sail on the morrow for the Orkneys and then farther to Jorvik, he would revel in the comfort of an inn, even a crude one.

The musty aroma of damp hemp ropes and drying cod greeted him as he left the hollow timbre of wood for a crunchy gravel path. Men with leathered faces mending nets, children chasing an errant pig, and women carrying baskets or babes took no notice of him. He blended in as simply one more worker in the anthill.

Though the sun had hardly begun its descent, bawdy drinking songs rang out through the propped-open door of a public house. He frowned and paused before entering. Perhaps a more restful sleep would be found on the uneven ground near shore.

Determined to at least trade for a hot meal, he stopped just inside the threshold to great whoops and catcalls.

“
Hail, Ragnar!” A squat man lifted a polished drinking horn high into the air. Even in the smoky light, Ragnar recognized him as one of the men who’d sailed with his father.

The man laughed as he tried several times to stand. Each effort resulted in buffeting his large backside against the bench with a thud, making him laugh all the more. “Too late you are to collect the wergild. Eric and I have all but spent it and then some.”

The man raised the horn of ale to his lips, but before he drank, his eyes widened, then rolled back. Eric jumped up from across the table and snatched the brew without spilling a drop before the man’s forehead thunked against oak.

“
Ha, ha, Ragnar. Come. Come.” Eric chugged back a swig before he plunked down on the bench and held out the horn. “I will share with you. Gerlaich was, after all, your father.”

Apprehension sank deep and low in Ragnar’s gut, weighting his feet as he neared Eric. “What are you saying?”

Bloodshot eyes met his. “Gerlaich died a worthy death, and Alarik paid a fair wergild price for taking his life. Sköl, ja?”

Eric shoved the horn in his face, but Ragnar reeled away as if he’d already downed the ale. The walls closed together, and the smell of sweat and spirits roiled the juices in his empty stomach.

Laughter rumbled from Eric. “What do you mourn for most, Ragnar? The loss of the wergild, or the man who took away half your face?”

In reflex, Ragnar reached to bat his hair forward, then shoved past Magnus, who lurked near the door. He stalked out of the suffocating inn and strode all the way to the faering as if Grendel nipped his ankles. Though secured with stout ropes, the vessel nearly capsized as he cleared the gunwale with a leap and hunkered down near the bow.

“
Gerlaich died a worthy death
.”

No, he hadn’t. Witless man! Ragnar slammed a fist against the solid wood, breaking open his knuckles with the force. Whether death came from the tip of a sword or a withering disease, it mattered not what appearance it wore. Death’s form did not determine where one spent eternity.

His eyes stung, and he swiped them with the back of his uninjured hand. Brushing against the ridge of the jagged scar that snaked past his sightless eye reminded him of his father’s painful legacy. A dark pool of grief welled in his soul, but a strange ripple of relief lapped near the edges. Never again would he suffer abuse, verbally or physically, from his father. No more disfiguring words or blows. But the loss of his good looks and self-worth was nothing in comparison to the loss of his father’s soul.

The relief turned into guilt.

Jesu, I tried! I did, but mayhap not enough.

Had it been enough? Nay. Because of him, who knew what terrors his father suffered at this moment. The thought of Gerlaich’s never-ending torment turned his bowels to water. A growl ripped from his throat.

The faering tipped to one side, and a heavy hand soon rested on his head. “Magnus here.”

He ducked from the touch, bristling with raw emotion. This was too much to bear. He stood, and his voice rose as well. “I failed, Magnus. Do you hear me? I failed! I should have spent more time with him. Given him more reason to believe, but now it is too late. My father is lost for always, and it is my fault.”