Loki's Daughters (4 page)

A wry smile formed on his pale lips, seeming to turn both up and down, a sensuous mouth, generously curved, expressive. His intense, masculine beauty tugged at her heart.

She sighed. "Not that you deserve it."

"Perhaps you will take my boots, then?"

He teased her, that was it. Perhaps he expected her to misconstrue his feeble attempt at humor.

"Little good they would do me," she retorted. "I would have to tie the toes about my waist to make them fit. Nay, not the boots, but perhaps that fine linen tunic."

"You would have to mend it."

"Aye, a shame. But it is a fine piece of work." She wondered where a Viking might get such a thing.

"My mother."

"Vikings have mothers? What a surprise. We thought you were hatched in snakes' dens."

"Born like all men. She is a Celt, like you."

From behind her, Arienh heard her sister's haughty sniff, but drawn by her curiosity, Birgit leaned around Arienh and studied the Viking with narrowed eyes. "Pity the Celtic woman who must give birth to the likes of him."

The Viking's eyes crinkled at the corners, and he cocked his head. "I do not think she minded."

"Ha." Birgit wrinkled her nose to emphasize her snarl.

"The breeches must also come off," said Arienh.

His gaze met hers. A wicked grin twisted at the corners of his lips, forming a blatant implication that sent a ripple of fear through her. He fumbled with the cord at his waist, but the wet knot was swollen tight and eluded his still-trembling fingers.

She gulped and shoved the fear deep inside where he could not see it. He was a little too eager. She decided to amend her statement. "So that you may dry off. It will be easier if you lie down."

The man chuckled almost silently as he eased himself down onto the wool pallet. She dug her fingernails into the knot, freeing it one fiber at a time. Then she eased the breeches down past his hips, and she saw why he laughed.

Not possible. He was surely half frozen. But then he was a Viking, and they were legendary for such things.

"I see it is true, what they say about Northmen," she said.

"What?"

"That their lust is unending."

Wickedness danced in his eyes. "True. Will you dry all of me, little Celt?"

"I will help you with your breeches only. You seem well enough recovered. Dry yourself."

"Nay, I cannot." He gave a pathetically helpless sigh.

Arienh grumbled at his arrogance and picked up the rag, for it had to be done. With gentle strokes that belied her pique, she wiped the damp skin on his legs, her eyes carefully avoiding the obvious sign of the man's unwelcome arousal.

"You've missed something." Laughter danced in his eyes.

"Then perhaps it will freeze and fall off."

"Lie down with me."

"Nay." Arienh sprang back.

The massive hand lashed out and captured her arm, and a smile of beguiling sweetness gleamed on his face. "Lie down with me and keep me warm. You are cold too, little Celt. I will not take your blanket and leave you none."

"Nay." Arienh pushed futilely against his grip.

"Don't let him touch you, Arienh. He'll kill you."

"It's not dying I'm worried about at the moment, Birgit," she said, still straining against his surprising strength . "He seems to be healthier than I thought."

A fraudulent snarl rumbled from the Viking, competing with an oddly cajoling smile. "Tell her I won't kill you. Only her."

Despite herself, Arienh chuckled at Birgit's outraged huff. Birgit's hatred of his kind went much deeper than hers, but her sister was right, and the sweetness she saw in his eyes only masked the evil of his race.

"I did not mean you harm," he said.

"You did not?" she retorted with a sneer. "And for what did you chase me down the mountain and half across the valley?"

"Perhaps I meant to take you home with me." The Viking pulled her toward him.

She jerked against his grip. It was like being pinned in the branches of a huge, gnarled tree. "You did not think I might object?"

His lips crinkled upward. "You would like it there."

Did he deliberately provoke her? He was coming close. She set her jaw, determined not to fall into his trap. "You lie. What are you doing here if you do not come to raid?"

"I came for you."

"Ha. Vikings come only to raid. And they do not come alone. It takes more than one man to sail a longship."

"Aye."

"So you are not alone."

"Not right now." With a sharp yank, he wedged her tightly against him, his arm wrapped about her like an iron band. She could only free herself by hurting him where he was wounded, and she couldn't persuade herself to do that unless she must.

And she didn't want to make him mad.

Vikings were strange that way. They had no fear of death, and could summon up inhuman strength when they needed it, in just the way he did now. If he went berserk, as she had seen some do, there would be nothing human about him. She must placate him until he died, for Birgit and Liam would be helpless against him.

 
"Arienh, get away from him."

Get away from him. Just how was she supposed to do that? What she needed was to keep her head about her, not dissolve into uncontrolled panic. But he couldn't keep this up. Sooner or later he must weaken and sleep, and then she could slip away.

His laughing blue eyes suddenly winced, as the ropy muscles of his body stiffened minutely. Then just as quickly she glimpsed his pain as it ducked back and hid once again behind a winsome mask crinkled with lines of laughter.

Her heart wrenched. She melted inside. He was only a man, no different from any other, more like a small boy seeking his mother's love to soothe his pain, yet unable to say so.

Lie with me and keep me warm
, he said with words, yet she knew he could not speak of what he really needed. What man could? Not even Trevor, dying in her arms, had been able to ask of her what she had understood he needed most. Why should a Viking be any different?

Aye, he was going to die. She saw it in his eyes, saw the brutal pain he could not quite disguise behind his brash humor and laughing blue eyes.
Comfort me
, his eyes said.
Care about me, care that I will soon be gone. Be my lost love for me, just for a little while, let me believe I have my love again.

He's a Viking.

He's a man. Just a man.

"He will be gone by morning," she finally replied. "Where's the harm? He can do nothing to me without doing worse to himself."

The man laughed, a short, clipped sound. "It would be a good way to die, but I will not hurt you."

He was teasing. How could he be teasing? He was dying.

What did it hurt her to give him comfort? He was not so beloved of her that she would grieve his passing. Perhaps only a little. Because she was at fault.

Nay, the fault was his, whether or not he meant her harm.

And he did not, she could see now. But he had come to her for help, having nothing left to lose. She should hate him. Rage, rage should be engulfing her, rage for the father and brother slain by his kind, fury for the brother stolen away and enslaved, for the torture Birgit had endured. But she saw only agony, and the loneliness he struggled so valiantly to hide.

She could no more abandon him than she could a dying child. She would hold him close to her until he died, just as she had done her brother. It no longer mattered if he was marauder or simply adventurer. He was simply a man in pain, dying.

She ceased her struggling and lay next to him, surprised that he already seemed warmer than she. Beneath the heavy wool blanket, she laid a hand atop his chest, which he wrapped in his own. A broad, strong hand that could easily crush her bones.

"You should sleep," she said at last.

"Nay," he said with his sweet smile. "I do not want to sleep. I do not want to lose any of what is left. Talk to me, my little Celt."

"Talk about what?"

"Tell me of your family."

"I have none. Only Birgit and Liam. All others are dead, or stolen, taken as slaves." She did not want to talk about them. Most times, she did her best to forget.

"Birgit is your sister. And the boy? Liam? Her son?"

"Aye."

"Where is his father?"

"No one knows. No one cares. Do not talk of it."

"A Northman, then?"

Arienh shook her head in warning and touched a finger to his lips. "No more," she said.

Despite his struggle, the Viking's eyes soon drooped closed and he slept, his good arm locked around her. Arienh lay still, resolving above all not to wake him. Now and then he stirred and moaned, but he did not wake. It would not be long now, she knew. Regret tugged at her.

Arienh also drowsed, yet she could not sleep, for that wild pounding in her heart would not quite be soothed. She wondered if his grip would still be so firm when the time came that she would have trouble dislodging herself.

And just what would she do in the morning with a dead Viking in her home?

***

He could not open his eyes. His body felt as if it floated, then as if he rose from it and looked down where it lay beside the girl whose golden hair sprung loose like newly sheared fleece.

He was within himself once again, and still his eyes would not open. Pain pounded like Thor's hammer inside his head. The throbbing agony of his wound would not cease, and his body preserved the memory of the chilling rain, bone deep, almost as if he still lay in it. The warmth of the fire, the scratchy woolen blanket, even the heat from the girl beside him could not chase
 
away the chill. He did not want to sleep, not when so little time was left, but his eyes would not open.

He stood at the prow of his longship. As his ship raced forth out of the churning sea, Hel waited on the promontory before him, one crooked, craggy finger beckoning. Her face, half black, half blue, leered with a toothless grin. Her table beyond, within the cavern that was the Afterworld, boasted bones, split and marrowless, upon its platters, while her minions, no more than skin over bones themselves, scrapped over them.

Beyond the headland, his mother. Her voice silenced by the screaming wind, she held forth her bronze Celtic cross for him to take. He reached out to her futilely, but Hel drew him nearer, compelling him into her skeletal arms.

Nay.

The girl with fleece-like golden hair called to him, her green eyes beckoning. As his ship plunged out of the sea, he reached for her. From nowhere came the silver flash of the blade, and searing pain. Pain. She turned away.

And Hel's clawlike hands grasped his arms, tugging him downward, down.

Nay.