Loki's Daughters (9 page)

Arienh smiled, relieved. Now if she could just get the brothers to behave themselves. But from what she'd already seen of them, she had about as much chance of that as she did of setting those dead ducks back to flying.

She watched the two men raise eyebrows at each other as the women passed through the cottage door. Birgit, for once not glaring at the strangers, busied herself with slicing up the last of the roots for cooking. Arienh lifted two wooden buckets and opened the door. A sudden flash of lightning startled her.

"I'll go," said Egil, and she was more than glad to let him.

Liam pulled at his mother's skirts. "Mama, can I go?"

"Nay."

"He can help me." But Egil, faced down by the icy green fury in Birgit's eyes, grimaced and went out the door alone. Arienh laughed to herself. Perhaps not even a fierce Viking was a match for a mother’s protective ire.

Liam's face screwed up into a pout. It had been a long time since he had been around men. She hoped his curiosity would not grow too great, yet how could it not? Liam could not be separated from his insatiable lust for knowledge. One more reason she hoped the Vikings would be gone soon.

Egil returned along with the storm, with rumbling thunder behind him, and rivulets running down his hair and into his soaked jerkin. He yanked off the garment, then the smock beneath it, whooshing it over the wet tangles of his hair.

The dark Viking spoke to his brother in the nonsense sounds of their heathen tongue. The big man chuckled, glanced at Birgit, then strutted to his brother's side, where they continued their alien conversation.

He was an attractive man, though not so much as his brother. She doubted even Birgit would deny that. Across a powerful muscular chest, a fleece of golden, springy curls spread. His damp leather breeches clung tightly to his thighs, tightly enough that when he turned she understood immediately the nature of the men's joke. The man was visibly aroused, and it was Birgit who had his attention. Arienh's grip tightened on the knife.

She flashed a glare at Ronan, and the grin vanished from his face. He tossed to his brother her father’s old woolen tunic that he had been wearing, along with more of the gibberish they spoke between them. Egil nodded and pulled the shirt over his damp torso, concealing his offending member.

Liam, his bright eyes shining wide with fear, stepped in front of the yellow-haired man, his fists in tight little balls as he tried to stand tall and look the man in the eyes. Arienh edged closer, prepared to snatch him away.

"Are you a Viking?" the boy demanded in a squeaky voice.

Bemused, Egil put his hands to his hips. "I'm a Northman, Liam, not a Viking."

"'Tis the same," said Birgit. "Come back here, Liam."

The boy stood his ground, eyes flashing.

"Nay, 'tis not," said Egil. "I am no marauder, nor have I ever been. But my folk come from the North."

"Blood will tell," said Birgit. "He is a Viking."

"I won't let you hurt my Mama."

Solemnly, the man squatted down to Liam's level, placing his large hand on the boy's shoulder. "I am glad you will not, Liam. You are a brave lad, and you will make a fine man someday. And you must always protect your mother. But I give you my word, I will never harm her, nor you, nor your aunt."

"You promise?"

"I do."

"Oh. What do you do in your longship, then?"

"Sometimes we fish."

Arienh noticed the table no longer wobbled. She carved thin slices off the ham hock and laid them out on the board as if she had ham to cut every day.

Gentleness lit the blond one’s eyes, as if he had a liking for the boy. "The ship belongs to my brother, Ronan," Egil added. "He built it himself, and has taken it to many places in the world to trade. Some of the fine things he has brought with us. He has a fur from a great white bear of the Far North."

"Really?"
 
Liam asked, suddenly eager.

"Aye. They are giants, those great white bears. Ronan has real glass, too, made into fine jugs. Have you ever seen glass?"

Liam shook his head.

"Then he must show it to you, for you have helped to take such good care of him."

"Mama, can I please?"

Birgit glared. "They are not staying, Liam. Come away from them. Now."

Liam's eyes flashed to his mother and back to the blond Viking, assessing his chance for defiance. He didn't move.

"Did you go, too?" he asked.

"Nay. I have always lived on the Green Isle, until now. Do as your mother says."

A long pout settled on Liam's face as he returned to his mother's side. Arienh knew what the boy was thinking, for he was at an age to test his mother. These men had openly ignored the demands of the two women, and perhaps he hoped they might support him in doing the same.

With the fever gone, the darker Viking regained his appetite. By the hour, his skin took on a healthier color, and his eyes lost their feverish look. He no longer shook from weakness as he sat, propped against the wall, bantering quietly with his brother in their harsh tongue.

Arienh hid her irritation at their foreign words, and tried to ignore them altogether, yet her eyes homed back to the man who had been her obsession as he hovered so close to death. Again and again her gaze tangled with his, as if he never looked away. She did, often, quickly.

Soon, she slid into the bed beside Birgit and prayed the men would take the hint. She prayed for more than that.

Egil banked the fire and joined his brother in the bed where Arienh usually slept.

For hours, Arienh pretended to sleep, rigid, still, beside her sister.

The storm no longer roared. Its rage had torn at the thatch for most of the night and whipped back that thin rawhide that draped over the cottage's only window. Arienh had twice risen to check the dark Viking for fever and found none. But a simmering darkness in his eyes replaced his usual affable smile. As she touched his brow, he raised his hand to caress across her cheek. She jerked back out of his reach, and hurried back to lie down beside Birgit.

The blond one avoided her gaze, but several times she caught him watching Birgit. And Birgit did nothing but watch the Vikings. Twice had Egil risen to stir and bank the fire, then lay down beside his brother. Each time, he had not taken his eyes off Birgit.

Once more he stood, and this time jerked off the Celtic woolen tunic Ronan had tossed to him hours before, baring his broad chest. Birgit stiffened. Then with a smoldering flash in his eyes, he pulled on his own tunic
 
and the leather jerkin. He knelt and bound his boots about his thick calves.

"There is a pot beneath the bed," said Birgit, in a calm voice that belied her tension.

"Nay," said the blond Viking with tightness in his voice. "Come and bolt the door behind me."

Arienh watched her sister rise and edge toward the door. The Viking's eyes seemed to bore into the woman's flesh, as if he meant to grab Birgit and make off with her into the night.

Birgit set her jaw and faced the man boldly. "I suppose you will want me to get up again and let you in."

"Nay. Bolt it." He jerked it shut behind him. The latch clicked.

Birgit slammed the bolt into its slots and dashed back to the bed. Even without touching her, Arienh could feel the tension in her sister, taut as a bowstring.

Birgit would be reliving her horror. For that was what Egil was doing to her, whether he meant it or not. With Ronan, it had not been so bad, for he had been dying, and was not much of a threat. And Ronan had paid little attention to Birgit. But Egil was a different story. He was huge and blond, yellow-blond, with great waves of hair and braids, and piercing blue eyes, just like the man who had come in the raid six years ago, the one who had caught Birgit by the hair and thrown her to the ground. The one who had clubbed her against the rock, leaving her for dead, leaving her to go blind.

Be they as innocent as the Virgin, the Vikings had to go.

CHAPTER SIX

She heard geese.

They had no geese.

Arienh sat up abruptly in her bed, shaking her head to dispel the sleep. Birgit stood in the open door, jaw tight, glaring, as Ronan yanked on his jerkin and rushed out past her into the bright sunlight.

Shouting. Squeals and squawks, the whinny of horses. Not a battle, nor invasion. Well, maybe an invasion. It was much like the sound made earlier by the arrival of Egil's warriors, but with the addition of animals. Arienh leaped from the bed and grabbed her shawl.

"Damn them," said Birgit softly.

The dark-haired Viking hobbled down the path toward the narrow mouth of the valley where three great Viking ships, one magnificently graceful longship and two broad
knarrs
were pulled ashore. Just as Ronan's gait began to falter, several more of his kind rushed up to surround him, shouting, to support him and slap him on the back. The last time she had seen so many Viking
 
ships, her father had been killed, and she and the others had barely escaped into the cavern.

"A raid?" Birgit asked with characteristic cynicism.

"Hardly. Unless they've trained their sheep to do their raiding for them." The second of the
knarrs
was heeled over onto its side to let a flock of sheep with black faces and oddly scraggly long wool descend upon the valley's new grass. Enough sheep that the valley would quickly become brown mud again.

There really were geese. Geese honked and strutted, and challenged little black and white dogs. A small herd of horses, shorter and shaggier than the sort Arienh knew, were herded and staked. Cattle. Enough for food, enough for the plow. Not that she expected the Viking to remember his promise.

Arienh released a disgusted huff. "I believe you were right, Birgit. They have come to take our valley. No wonder the Viking sped out the door as fast as he could. I would have stabbed him again if he'd stayed."

"If I hadn't done it first," grumbled Birgit. "What do you see, Arienh?"

Arienh always wondered just how much Birgit could recognize of a distant drama such as this. Sometimes Birgit was simply good at fooling people, often could piece together movement and sound, and other clues, enough to know what went on.

"They are all men," Arienh said. "Nay, I see one woman."

The woman with arms around her Viking, with hair even darker than Ronan's, small, barely half his size, and almost hidden by the man's embrace.

"I suppose it is too late to head for the cavern. Do you think the others have gone?"

"Aye. Did you not hear their screams?"

Arienh shook her head. Had she slept so soundly that she had not noticed? "They seem to be ignoring us. We could still go."

Hardly a muscle moved in Birgit's rigid face. "Why? They are not like the others, Arienh. If they have come to stay, then we cannot hide long enough to save ourselves. And if they bring their sheep, they do not mean to go away. If they want to kill us, it matters little if they do it now or later."

Arienh's strategy had always been not to give up, even when she could see no solution. Many times in the past, that determination to live just a little longer, even one more moment, had sustained her when she might have been killed. Even that one time when a Viking had chased her up the hill, and she had no hope of escape. Yet she had been saved by one of their own kind. One never knew what the next moment might bring.