God's Eye (The Northwomen Sagas #1) (15 page)

And Vali a farmer. Love Brenna as he did, willing as he was to see her happy at any cost, the thought of living the balance of his days as a farmer unsettled Vali’s heart. Would he be able to make a good home for his family in that way? Would he be contented in his own heart?

They had told no one of their plan to stay, and Vali felt sure that it was news better left unsaid. Not all of the raiders had fully embraced their amity with the villagers, and Leif was right—their friendship balanced on the narrow point of the alliance between two jarls a sea away, two jarls who had warred often. To know that two of their great warriors planned to give up their home could well cause trouble. Right now, in the quiet within this savage winter, the only thing in strife was nature itself. They were at peace; they had friends, a home. His shieldmaiden had found a home, and he would not risk it while he could avoid doing so.

The strife would come. They would need to fight for the life she wanted, the home they had found together. They both knew it, so it didn’t need to be said. Not now, not yet.

Vali finished his mead and set his cup away. He stood and laid his hand on Leif’s shoulder. “I will see you in the morning. My friend.”

Leif nodded, still staring into the fire, and Vali went up to bed.

He missed his wife.

“Bring the heddle tighter, or the weave won’t be smooth.” Olga put her hand under Brenna’s and pushed up, encouraging her to do as she’d suggested.

Brenna knew how to weave. She’d been taught, at least, years before. But she loathed it. Nothing in all the worlds was more boring than standing at a loom moving strands of wool together. Her attention wandered within minutes, and then she had a knotty rag that no one would want to wear.

Woman’s work was dreary stuff. She didn’t mind cooking; that could be made to be interesting—it was even physical at times—and she felt pride when the people she’d fed enjoyed what she’d prepared. But cleaning and weaving? Most days, she’d have happily taken her sword to the loom.

It would be better when the winter was over, and she and Vali could begin to plan their new life. When she had her own home to make and land to work, and a new babe to raise. Now, trapped inside the gloomy walls of the castle, cleaning and cooking—and weaving—for a herd of ungrateful men, Brenna was out of temper quite often.

But she wanted to be good at these things. She knew that her days as a shieldmaiden were interrupted, if not finished. It would be years before she could leave her child and sail away, and she would not wish war on her home so that she might fight near it. She had married, and her husband had planted his seed. Now she was a wife; soon she would be a mother. She wanted to make her name as proudly in those pursuits as she had made it battle.

She could not, however, pretend that her new work was as interesting as her old.

The worst of it was that she had been closed off from discussions and planning—about patrols, about repairs, about preparations for the summer. No one had begrudged her her place as a leader among the raiders as long as her belly had been flat, but as soon as the babe had made himself known, Leif, Orm, all the men—even Vali—had stopped making a seat for her at their talks.

When she’d confronted her husband about it, he had been sympathetic—and unmovable. Her job, as he saw it, was to grow their child. Her attentions should be there, he said, and on learning the language of the place she wished to settle. The concerns of the castle and the village were no longer hers. The people who could do that work should have the say.

And she’d had no strong rebuttal. She’d been relegated to the kitchen and the loom room.

While they worked, Olga and she practiced the Estland tongue, and Olga assured her that she was improving. Brenna didn’t believe it, however. When Olga asked her to translate a word, she could usually do it, but when she tried to understand the Estland women around her, she still caught only half of their meaning. At best.

Her mind did not want to know more words than it already knew. Her parents had spoken often of their fear when she was small, because she had not spoken any word until she’d had four years. It had lent credence to people’s belief in her strangeness. Perhaps, though, she simply was stupid in this way.

She shoved at the heddle in a fit of pique. “I hate this loom!”

“Say it our way.”

Brenna gave Olga her warrior’s look, even growling a little, but Olga was unmoved. She simply waited, her expression impassive.

She was fairly certain she understood the word for hate. “
Vihkan.”

“Say what you said. All of it.”

“
Ma vihkan
…” She had no idea what the word for ‘loom’ was. She had probably heard it, here in the loom room, scores of times, but it wasn’t in her head at all. “
Ma vihkan…seda…
”

“
Kudumismasin
.”

Brenna gaped at Olga. How was she supposed to learn a language that could turn a word so simple as ‘loom’ into that?

Before she could continue her tantrum—lately, she had grown adept at throwing tantrums—the babe kicked her sharply at her bladder, and she clutched at her belly. “Oh!”

Olga laid her hands on Brenna’s belly, too. “He moves much today.”

Nodding, Brenna smiled down at her rounded midsection. “More even than usual.”

It had only been a few weeks since she’d felt the first flutters of his movement, but since then, her belly had gotten noticeably larger and her son moved all the time. Even Vali could feel him now.

“I believe it
is
a son you carry—you cradle him low inside you.” Olga put her arm around Brenna’s waist and led her to the door. “Enough weaving. Let us sit in the kitchen. I will pour you milk and you can learn more food words. If you know those, mayhap you won’t starve.”

“You are not so funny as you think.” Brenna scowled at her friend, who returned it with a wry smirk.

“Funny is what?”

Thinking for a moment as they walked toward the kitchen, Brenna answered, “
Veider
?”

Olga laughed. “Maybe so, if you meant to say I am not strange.
Naljakas
is amusing.”

“Your language has too many ways of saying things.”

“That is so we always say what we mean.”

~oOo~

By evening, the babe pulled heavily on Brenna’s back, and she had taken to retiring early, not long after the last meal, leaving Vali to drink and laugh with the other men. She had learned to enjoy the company of others, and even sometimes to join in with their jokes, but she still often found it difficult to be always in the thick of the commotion. All her life, she’d been on the outside edge, and although she had been lonely, that distance had become the thing she understood.

Here, she’d been accepted. Here, she had friends, real friends, people who sought her out and wished to converse with her. People who knew her. It was good. She was happy, for the first time in her life, truly happy. And exhausted. Her moods were sometimes erratic, which they had never been before. Her brain could not keep up with so much energy turned her way.

Olga told her it was the babe, that she would feel steadier and sharper when her son no longer drew on her body so completely. Brenna hoped that was true. She could hear laughter below, and she would have liked to have enjoyed that good humor more, now that she was Brenna and not the God’s-Eye.

She had washed and dressed in her sleeping shift and was unbraiding her hair when the door opened and Vali came in. Usually, she was already abed when he came up; sometimes, he came in smelling strongly of mead and fell to bed, and then into a stupor, with barely an affectionate pat of her shoulder.

He was not drunk tonight, however, and Brenna worried that something was amiss.

“Are you all right? I didn’t think you’d come to bed so early.”

He came to her and laid his big hands over her belly. “You seem pensive tonight. I worry. Are you well?” He rubbed over their son. “Is he?”

His loving attention eased her turbulent mood somewhat. Covering his hands with hers, she answered, “We are well. I’m only…
väsinud
?”

“That is good! Not that you are weary, but that is the right word.”

“You condescend.” She tried to pull away, but he held her.

“No, my love. I know the language is hard for you. I mean to encourage. I’m pleased that you keep trying. Are you weary because of the child?” He eased his hands around her swell. “It cannot be much longer.”

“Olga thinks two months more at least. She counts from when I first felt him. Two months feels long.”

The babe kicked as if he were agreeing, and Vali grinned and dropped to his knees. “Hello, my son. Be kind to your mother. She makes you a good place to grow strong.” He pressed his mouth to her belly and sucked, drawing the linen of her shift into his mouth.

She laid her hands on his head. “Vali, I would like to ride tomorrow. Not far—only to the village—and not fast. But outdoors, in the air.”

“No, Brenna. It cannot be good for you or him. And the winter has been harsh. You are safe and warm inside the castle.” He stood and led her to a chair near the fire. Although she wanted to stand toe to toe with him and have this matter out, she was glad to sit. He pulled a chair close and sat before her, holding her hands.

She hadn’t given up the fight, however. “Winter is easing. The weather has finally broken. We’ve had no storm in weeks, and today there was thaw. I will be warm. There has been no threat from any quarter. I will be safe. Warm and safe. I must get out in the world and move around. I must, or I’ll go mad.”

“The thaw today means ice tomorrow. And how would you mean to mount a horse in your state?”

“I’m no weakling.”

“I don’t mean that you are weak. I mean that there is a child in your way.”

Done with debating irrelevant points with him, Brenna huffed and sat straight. “I don’t need your warrant, husband. I am a freewoman. All I need do is wait for you to leave on patrol, and then act as I will.”

He dropped her hands and stood abruptly. “No, Brenna. If you make a threat like that, I will put a guard on you.”

She stood, too, much more slowly. “Choose a man you like not much for a guard, then, because he will be sorely injured before the day is out. You cannot govern me.”

“Why would you take such a risk? With our child? With yourself? You are precious, Brenna. Do you not see?”

“I see that I am locked away, pushed off to the looms, when once I had place at your side. I see that you treat me like a vessel for our son, when once you treated me like a warrior and your equal. I see that
you
do not see
that
.” To emphasize her point, she struck him in the chest with the flat of her hand.

The anger smoothed from his brow, and he cupped her face in his hand. “I mean to do none of that. I mean only to love you and keep you safe. But you know that the voice belongs with those who do the work, and you know that you cannot—that you are
unable
—to do the work you once did. You have more important work than that. You also know that it is unsafe, for our child and for you, to mount a horse in the state you are in.”

He was right; she knew he was. She wanted to stomp her foot at him, but he was right. So, with a dejected sigh, she gave up and wended her way back down to the seat of the chair.

“Forgive me. I’ve been in a temper today. I truly do think I’m going mad.”

He sat again as well. “You’re not going mad, my love. I’m assured that this is part of making a child.”

She rolled her eyes. He talked to everyone about her.

He leaned in as if he had a secret for her ears only. “Tord and Sigvalde are taking the sledge to the village tomorrow, bringing supplies. Would a ride on a sledge between two foolish young men suffice to get you out into the world and improve your temper?”

As he spoke, Brenna grinned happily, real relief expanding her chest. She threw her arms around his neck. “Yes! Yes, that would be wonderful! Yes!”