Edin's embrace (7 page)

Her heart beat harder when they finally entered one of these many inlets. She heard the Vikings say a word over and over:
fjord
. It seemed to be a long, narrow arm of water betwixt towering mountains whose sides sloped down abruptly from comparatively flat tops hundreds of feet above, over which poured more great falls. The water from one especially high gorge cascaded hundreds of feet down a sheer rockface. Simply looking at it made Edin feel dizzy.

Farther along, several trim farms presented oddly idyllic pictures. One was sited right on the sill of a tributary valley. She glimpsed a field of soft green grass — but she felt a bleak distrust; she doubted that picturesque quality could be genuine.

The dragonships rounded a headland, and there was a trace of flat land with a long stone jetty built out into the water. There was no valley here, and no farm to be seen, yet there were people coming down a path and others who had already gathered under the beetling headland. Almost all of these were as fair as the sun. The women were mostly beautiful, with long golden hair, clear blue eyes, and lovely fair skin. They waved and cheered as the rowing Norsemen eased the ship around the jetty. Two of the warriors were busy unstepping the longship's mast, and another two had furled the sail and were tying it. The ship nosed to a gentle bump against a wooden dock made of boards silvern with age and gleaming with damp. The oars were shipped.

It seemed a renewal of sweet life itself to Edin to step onto that dock and then onto that curve of firm land beneath the cliff; yet it was then that she knew the extent of her weariness. She felt distracted, battered. Her legs felt liquid; even on solid ground she seemed to continue to sway with the sea.

She stayed with her little cluster of people, all of whom were trying to be invisible as they watched the homecoming of the warriors. She was surprised to find that Vikings had wives and children and parents and friends, all seemingly jubilant to have them back.

Several people stopped to speak to the jarl. These greetings took place with a more cautious exuberance, as between people of traditional detachment and reserve. Only one woman truly welcomed him. An older woman. He was preoccupied with overseeing the unloading of the ship, but he turned quickly upon hearing the woman's voice and feeling her tug at his sleeve. She owned an elegant beauty and an apparent gentleness of spirit. Edin saw how his eyes lightened to silver— though they did not really warm — as he looked down at her. He allowed her to touch his cheek. Searing images of terror and ruination passed through Edin's mind, contrasting so starkly with this one sentimental gesture.

Who was this woman who touched the dragon-king so gently? His mother? Gould even such as he have been born of woman? Everywhere the warriors were enjoying bursting smiles and embraces and exchanges of happy chatter. Between the woman and the jarl, however, was silence. Even that one instant when she touched him he kept his face hard, his expression guarded.

Edin had no time to deduct what this meant, for she and her people were herded up the path by a man with callused, earth-stained hands who kept saying, "
Velkommen! Velkommen!
" But he said it in a gloating, insincere way. He had wild black hair and grinned at them the way worms must grin at newly interred corpses.

As Edin passed the jarl, though she didn't look into his bearded face, she was fully aware of his male force, worn like a crackling cloak about him. She imagined his eyes turned that threatening, turbulent grey again.

Though not fettered, the climb was hard for the captives, weakened as they were after so long and fearful a voyage. At the top, Edin stood bent, catching her breath. Tendrils of her hair clung damply to her brow. For the moment all she was aware of was relief at being out of sight of that great, golden-haired Viking for the first time in seven days. But then she put her hand to the small of her back and levered herself upright — and found herself looking down into a barriered but secure landscape, a lovely bowl-shaped valley, sheltered and warm.

Scents greeted her in a rush, the sensual scents of good loam and lush, dew-damp, green pastures and the smoke of wood fires. To the west sat three large buildings forming three sides of a rectangle. The two end buildings were about thirty-by-ten feet. One looked to be a dairy and cow byre; the other must serve as a stable. The longer third building had to be the Vikings' ale-hall. It was low, over eighty feet long, and built of logs. One great tree shaded the U-shaped grassy area before these buildings.

Behind the hall was the midden, the rubbish pit. Scattered in the distance were a few cottages, their thatched roofs plush with vivid green moss. The low slant of the last sliver of sunlight cast long shadows before each of them. Fertile, well-watered fields sloped gently down to the valley floor. Edin watched a black sheepdog fly across one field at a gallop, tidily collecting a flock. /

Behind the valley, fells climbed up to a forest of birches, and higher to a forest of pines, and still higher to mountains steeper than Edin had ever seen before, mountains that were clothed in snow even in this midsummer season.

She'd just spotted a herdsman bringing his goats down through a quiet and empty stretch of meadow-land dotted with birch trees and juniper when she and the others were urged down into the vale toward the longhall. They rounded the byre, and Edin saw a stone dung channel cut down the middle, and neat stalls to accommodate twelve dairy cows. As they passed under the huge shade tree, larks rose up into the bright evening, singing as though they actually adored this place, as if it were a place of fruitful harvests and peace and not of water-borne warriors.

They had to step down to enter the low hall, for the floor had been dug out. Edin paused on the threshold, feeling too young and too weak and too forsaken for whatever lay ahead now. She put her hand on the door, which was covered with designs of great imagination. Blackhair, the man escorting them, gave her a nudge. Unsteady as she was after having been pitched and rolled between wind and wave, she stumbled down into the interior.

She was blinded by the sudden dimness, especially after the glare of the open sky and sea. She looked around, feeling frightened and vulnerable. She was, after all, a female captive in a land full of foreign men.

She took in a deep, trial breath of the strange air. It was air and that was all. It inhaled easily and held no associations — until the smell of hot food hit her. She'd known many more mealtimes than meals since her capture, and had gotten so sick of salt-fish and smoke-dried meat that she hadn't eaten much of what was given to her. The smell of an onion-flavored stew caught her attention now, however, and her very pores flew wide open, thirsting for more.

She blinked and became more used to the light. The interior was one large room of lofty height and great length. The floor consisted of stamped clay and sand on a flagstone base, over which were the usual rushes. The structure appeared to be thick-walled and was warm as a burrow. The roof was supported on rows of posts, and everywhere she looked, elegant animal ornaments were carved into the wood—artwork that was breathtaking with its flamboyant magnificence.

Two lines of tables ranged down the length of the room. In the very center was a long, sunken, stone-lined ember pit, in the near end of which a single, sweet-smelling pine log was burning. A hole in the ceiling allowed the smoke to ascend. Over this fire hung the bubbling stew. Nearby, the kitchen area was well supplied with iron pots, pottery bowls, stone jugs, wooden ladles and the like.

One long side of the room was sectioned off into small compartments. These were open to the hall now, but Edin saw that they could be made private for sleeping by pulling simple cloth curtains. A raised earthen platform along the opposite wall afforded places for the household to sit at their work or for guests to sleep. Two chambers, one at the head of the hall and another at the very end, were fully walled and had doors. Beside the one near the door was a warp-weighted loom.

A few tapestries hung from the ceiling beams; the walls were hung here and there with shields crusted with gold and silver, which glinted in the light of the fire, but the building as a whole had a coarse feel about it. Edin couldn't forget that it was the home of a race that pillaged at will.

Blackhair was going around lighting several huge torches in sconces set in distant posts. When he finished, he lined the captives up to be fed. A thin, pale-faced girl began to dish out stew into wooden bowls.

The Saxons sat at the end of a long table that could have seated forty more. As Edin ate, her glance was drawn to a huge chair which stood directly opposite the longfire. This plainly was the high-seat of the lord of the house. It stood on a low dais which raised it a foot higher than the rude benches bordering the tables. It was flanked by two tall posts completely covered with intricate carvings of sea monsters of some sort, with round heads and hooklike mouths opened to flaunt jagged teeth. It reminded her of the dragon-prowed ship— and of the Viking who had sailed into her life with no mercy or quarter.

She was reaching for a second oatcake when the older woman who had greeted the jarl appeared in the open door. Something about her made Edin feel wary.

The girl who had served them was now bringing each a cup of ale. A change came over her when she detected the presence of her mistress. The woman gave her a cold, intimidating, splinter of a glance. She didn't seem the same sweet-faced woman who had touched the jarl's cheek so tenderly. Obviously she was not a person with just one face for every occasion.

She walked toward the Saxons, who stopped eating. Unlike the others, Edin refused to hunch her shoulders or bow her head in awkward humility. The woman stopped behind her. Edin's hair was still completely free, and she felt the woman was studying it. She turned. The woman was staring at her all right, but she seemed to be looking at the cloak Edin was still wearing. She made a gesture that told Edin to take it off. Edin stood and did so. Then the woman stared at the woolen jerkin.

If this is the jarl's mother,
. Edin reasoned,
then she must recognize these garments; she may very well have made them.
Without being told, Edin removed the jerkin.

But the woman's gaze stayed on her. Her mouth moved slightly. Edin returned her look, until at last the woman grabbed the garments from her and hurried from the hall.

The nested sun still veined the sky with god and rushes of crimson. The deepening purple water of the fjord mirrored the rosy-gold of the sunset as Thoryn stood alone on the dock listening —to the seawater slapping the shoreline, the more distant drop and splash of the waterfalls, and the even farther off murmurous hurry of the streams.

He supposed the voyage had been a success —except for the loss of Ragnarr and Beornwold. The gods distinguished between the dead, between warriors killed in battle who were sent to Valholl as Odin's chosen host, and the unworthy who died in bed and were consigned to Hel. But how was a mere jarl to measure the gain of gold over the loss of life? Or losses of a different sort, such as in the case of Sweyn?

The last of the loot had been carried up to the hall, and Thoryn had seen the
Blood Wing
taken out and moored by a cable around a boulder in deeper water. He now shouldered his sea chest and started the climb he didn't want to stop, but Inga intercepted him. When she saw the bundle in her arms, he felt and odd regret.

"I would speak with you." Her eyes smoldered.

He set the chest down beside the path.

"Why did you bring her?"

"I take it you speak of the maiden."

"Is she that? Still?" She lifted his cloak and jerkin as if they proved otherwise.

"Aye, she is, and will command a good price."

Inga's voice trembled. "As a bed-thrall."

Thoryn moved uneasily. He stared down at the fjord, at the Blood Wing which from up here looked like just a little thimble of a boat. His mother could be fawning in her affection, and altogether too possessive. He never knew what to do with her excessive emotions.

"She looks like . . . like . . . surely you can see!" Her voice scaled upward in pitch. "I don't want her in my home!"

"
Your home?
" He said it quietly, and then was ashamed. Where had he learned this power of frost and silence? "The woman doesn't really look like Mar — "

"Don't say her name to me!"

He hated it when she got wrought up. Speaking soothingly, he said, "The woman is valuable." That open, beautiful, young face, that glorious hair, the gestures and the poise, the voluptuousness beneath the undershift that covered but concealed so little.

Inga had seen all that, too, or she wouldn't have been here accusing him. She said, "Valuable! You didn't bring her home to sell her; you want her for yourself! You'll —" From her throat came the sounds of a little girl locked in a chest, trying to comfort herself. "Don't trust her! She's a demon. She'll tempt you. You'll betray me!"

"I am not my father; but I
am
master here. I
am
the jarl. And if I take a woman for myself—any woman —it is my business, and no betrayal of my mother."

He pulled his helmet off and held it stiffly at his side. The breeze lifted his hair and cooled the sweat on his nape. "The thrall will stay here until I can make a voyage to Hedeby next spring. I'll sell her there for considerable profit, more profit than I can afford to ignore. If that distresses you . . . you must simply make the best of it."

Inga stared up at him but didn't seem to see him. Her face had gone doll-like, expressionless. It was a common enough occurrence. He knew it was his father her eyes beheld. Her memories of Kirkyn were always just under the surface of her mind, ready to rise.

She muttered, "Hedeby is it? Next spring? Not Kaupang? No, because the thrall sparks your lust, and even if she spells your death, you will have her."

Have her. The words sent vipers of flame crawling up his loins. He pushed the sensation away. "Mother!"

No, try a softer tone, coax her out of this.

"Mother, you make too much of it" He laid his hand on her shoulder. She blinked, seeming to wake out of a dream. He said, "Come see the treasure we bring. Two monasteries we sacked, besides a manor house. I have a bolt of cloth for you, woolen cloth embroidered in silver."

Her eyes cleared; she was herself again. "Thoryn . . . oh, Thoryn, I'm sorry."

"No need." He shouldered his chest and started up the path once more. Now she would be fawning. He tried to excuse her; but this had been going on for so long, and he was so sick of the contrary feelings in himself concerning her.

Well, what could he expect? She was a woman. He'd learned to place no great trust in anyone, whether friend or enemy, and least of all in women.

"I'm so, so sorry," she continued behind him. "I don't know what comes over me."

"You work too hard," he said gruffly, puffing under his load and the steepness of the climb. "We had little room for captives, but I brought three women to help you in the longhouse. I trust you'll train them. I'm depending on you to teach them mannerliness and the general rules."

"Her, too?"

He was at the top of the path now and stopped to look down into the valley that was his home. He inhaled slowly and let it out slowly. The sky had lost its color; a rind of white moon hung there now.

"Her, too, Thoryn?" Inga persisted, the fawning tone gone. "Is she to work for her keep through the winter? Is she to learn her place?" Frost clung to the question.

"Aye, especially her. She's spoiled, not used to taking orders. You must be firm with her. Firmness in the beginning is a kindness, especially when a thrall is overly proud and — "

He stopped. A spear of insight warned him he'd said enough. No need for more words on the subject. More and Inga would start looking at him in that half-demented way again. He adjusted his load on his shoulder, creating a little business to smooth his awkwardness. "Is it agreed?" He made his look level and serious, as if the decision were really hers.

***

An immense fire glamourized the air of the longhall. The Vikings had been eating for a long time, feasting on a thin pork stew and copious quantities of the dark ale. The pale serving-thrall, Olga, rushed to and fro, trying to keep the men's drinking horns brimming. Edin and her people sat close together along the wall platform. They each had a bowl of ale, thick, brown, and foaming darkly. Edin sipped hers less than eagerly. Her curiosity struggled with her intense weariness. She was trying to make herself realize that she was truly in this place; wherever it was, whatever it might mean, she was
here
. In the dim light she saw things that were strange to her: Vikings in their lair, big, bluff, and boisterous, gargantuan in appetite and apparently not overburdened with mental ability.

They sat up expectantly as the jarl, sitting in his thronelike chair, wearing rich garments and drinking only wine, began to preside over the division of the plunder.

Dispute after dispute arose over the profusion of golden crucifixes and pyxes and ciboria, the ivory reliquaries, the tapestries of woven silk and books of illuminated vellum set with precious stones. The jarl claimed and got the lion's share of everything, though the others seemed unwilling to give up anything without an argument. Sometimes he made an airy gesture of giving in; more often his voice rasped of iron, and it was the disputer who made the gesture. At length, Edin grumbled to Udith, "Never were there such quarrelsome men. I swear, these Vikings would sit on the beach with the sea rising about them and quibble about who was going to stand first and give the other a hand up —until they both drowned."

Though the arguments could seem bitter, the men toasted the jarl again and again. She realized that from their point of view he'd led them on a spectacularly heroic adventure, one that would never be forgotten; he was a mighty Wreaker of Deeds. It made no difference that from their victims' point of view it was an exercise in thievery and murder that had brought untold misery.

As the quarreling continued, Edin's eyes felt both staring and weighted. She vaguely noted that now it was the middle-aged Kol Thurik speaking around his broken tooth in disagreement with the jarl. Her eyelids were as heavy as lead. But she sat up as Kol strode toward her. It was not her he took by the arm, however, but Lothere. Udith immediately tried to take her husband's other arm, but Edin stayed her.

The carpenter was pulled before the jarl, where the wrangling continued. Finally the jarl, with a frown, nodded, and Kol grinned. The Viking gestured for Lothere to pick up his battered sea chest. It was apparent that he meant to leave and to take Lothere with him.

The carpenter's thin angular face turned to his wife, fearfully, hopelessly, and Udith, who'd been standing with Edin's staying hand on her arm, broke and ran forward. She ran right across the hall and threw her arms about her husband. Lothere put the Viking's chest down to embrace her.

Kol, clearly annoyed, separated the two so forcefully that Udith tripped and fell to the rushes. When Lothere would have helped her, Kol stepped before him. The big Viking moved like a lynx and stood with a look for the smaller Saxon that was nothing if not threatening. Lothere raised his woody hands in a beseeching way and whimpered like a beaten dog.

Edin's heart leapt and took fire inside her. Without thinking of the possible danger, she went directly to the jarl. "Where is he taking Lothere?"

The jarl's gaze narrowed and darkened like a closed-in pewter-grey sky.

"They're married. You can't separate them!"

"Can I not?"

There is a silence that is not really silent but more a chilling diminuendo of all sound. Such settled over the hall now, like a gigantic raven folding its wings. Every eye was on Edin. She felt her half-nakedness; she felt the fire flaring behind her, no doubt outlining her body in its thin shift; she felt herself hopelessly revealed. She also knew that the smoothing of the jarl's expression was no indication of understanding on his part. Indeed, whenever he was most dangerous he also became his most smooth.

Nonetheless, she said, "You must know they will pine for one another. Lothere will try to get back to Udith; Udith will try to reach Lothere. No good will come from it."

The jarl seemed to consider her, his face a mask that could not be read. At last he gestured her aside —saying, however, in an almost caressing tone, "Stay near, Saxon. I'm not finished with you." Then he called in a voice of iron, "Kol Thurik!"

The two spoke in Norse again. Kol shook his head, then looked at Udith, who had gotten to her feet and stood leaning forward, straining toward her husband as if pulled by an invisible leash. In turn, Lothere's mouth was pitifully drawn. The jarl kept talking, Kol kept shaking his head; then the jarl said something in a tone of exasperation. Now Kol nodded, his grin bigger than ever.

The jarl's expression was not nearly so pleased. He turned to Udith and spoke in Saxon: "Your husband belongs to Kol Thurik —and you are to go with him, too."

She rushed forward to Lothere. They embraced with muffled cries, until Lothere remembered their benefactor. He bowed low to the jarl. "Thank you, master!"

"Yes, thank you, master!" Udith echoed —then added to Edin, "and thank you, my lady!"

Kol managed to get them away and soon the ornately carved door closed after them. Edin belatedly realized she'd just seen the last of the only person in the world she might call a friend.

When she turned, she found the jarl's attention on her again. If her heart had been warmed by his benevolence, it was chilled now by his stare. He stared at her until she wanted to scream,
"What?"
All up and down the hall, only eyes moved, darting like excited fish as they followed the development of what looked to be a fearful —and extremely entertaining —confrontation.

In his own time, the jarl said, "I wanted that carpenter, but Kol would have him and nothing but him. It was bad enough to lose him . . . but also the cook I brought to help my mother?"

He sat leaning on one arm, his bearded cheek in his hand, his hard, impassive face totally indifferent, looking at Edin, looking and looking at her. "What disturbs me even more, however, is your insolence. No man disobeys when I command. If I say dance, he dances. Yet you, a mere woman, and a thrall-woman at that, you dare to interrupt when I'm dealing with another Viking. How do you explain that?"

She stood stiff and erect and prideful. "I have a duty to do what I can for my people."

"
Your
people? If you mean those thralls" —he nodded toward the platform—"they're
my
people —as you are mine."

She squared her chin. "I am nobly born. And
free
-born. You may have stolen me, but the say-so of a barbarian does not make me a slave."

She felt giddy with her own temerity. Whatever was she saying? She was getting beyond her depth. But she wouldn't retreat now. Now that she'd started, she wouldn't give this Viking another victory. Of course, he would take it anyway, but she would make him work for it.

He seemed to consider this in silence. Then, in a quiet voice that nonetheless rang with blood and power, he said, "Come forward, Saxon"

Now she regretted her little speech. She took a few barefoot paces over the rush-covered floor toward his chair. The grins around her were more than coarse; they were positively bloodthirsty.

"Closer."

She complied, full of dread, wondering what was behind his indifferent expression.

"You remind me of a bird, always cranking out nonsense. But . . ." He spoke in Norse to his friend Rolf, who was sitting on the nearest bench. The red-haired man left his seat and brought the jarl his sword. Caution entered Edin as he examined the blade. He touched the edges, felt their sharpness, and seemed to note a tiny flaw, a chip. The drawn steel glittered in the flickering firelight.

There was now a vein of threat in his casual tone as he said, "Aye, you chatter without thought. But you aren't a bird. You are nobly born—
free
born, you say. And no slave. Let us test this claim of yours, Saxon."

He stood and stepped down from the dais of his chair, and lifted his longsword suddenly, so that it's lethal point touched her left breast exactly over her heart. She gasped, shivered, but did not move. He kept the point against her breast, and he pushed—just enough to make the tip penetrate her undershift and dent her flesh.