Edin's embrace (20 page)

"Somehow I doubt that," he muttered.

The ale flowed, and conversation became easier and easier, until at last the jarl bent a little so his lips were close to Edin's ear. "You may go to my chamber now. Don't tarry along your way."

She did as he said, but just before she reached the door, Inga loomed up before her. Edin felt the woman's boiling pride. "Soon," she warned, "I'll think of a way to get rid of you, but until that day I am content to wait."

A mild, moist dark came over the steading. Fat spit from the meat roasting over the blazing logs in the long fire. Thoryn couldn't show his black mood. He'd paid out a lot of gold — and a lot of pride — this day. He'd been taken up like a boy before his own
Thing
; he'd had his manifest and passionate interest in a thrall discussed publicly; and his dame had shown her oddity yet again. All this he had to bear with a smile. Humility was not to his taste; in fact, his mouth was foul with it.

He glanced sidelong at Inga. She was waving away Olga's offered tray of wild apples and nuts. His eyes narrowed, as if by making his vision as slim as a knife blade he might see into her mind. What kind of woman would keep the bloody shirt in which her husband had been slain?

Don't!

Instinctively, he knew not to probe too deeply into the heart and the inner life of his mother Inga Thorsdaughter. There were some things in this world that could knock even a strapping Norse chieftain off his feet.

As the meal progressed, the longtables became spattered with spilled beer and milky curds of cheese. Ottar Magnusson and one of Kol Thurik's sons, a boy of eighteen winters with silky golden hair, were doing their best to make it hard for Juliana to clean up around them. So far it was only the usual play.

At last Inga rose from her place and went to her chamber. At the door she flung a look of misery and penitence at Thoryn, and made a placating gesture, then she went in.

The hour crept toward midnight. Thoryn lingered with his uninvited guests. Jamsgar and Starkad tried to coax him into talk. He saw the hard excitement in their faces; they were pleased by the news that he was taking the
Blood Wing
to Kaupang. Hauk, too. He toasted, "Here is to being off, to salt in the nostril!"

At the edge of Thoryn's attention he saw that the arch of young Juliana's eyebrows and the slant of her glances were suggesting that she was now available. It wasn't too long before she was "accidentally" tripped by Ottar. She fell to the rushes with a flurry of skirts — which Ottar and the silky-haired Thurik boy managed to lift even higher as they pretended to help her rise. Thoryn would ordinarily have said, "Find some other amusement" but tonight he said nothing. He felt mayhap it was time for Juliana to get what she was asking for. He even felt a sudden violent temptation to command it: Rape her! He'd never seen a woman rise after servicing several Norsemen in succession who seemed inclined to repeat the experience. Meanwhile, Juliana wriggled and giggled and showed her thighs —while nearer to Thoryn, Jamsgar's face flushed dark with blood. Against the pressure of his coppery glare, the girl finally straightened herself.

The gathering continued to toast one another and share rough jokes until they got drunk enough not to notice when Thoryn's full attention receded. He stared at the flaming birch logs in the firepit. His anger was for all women —his mother, Juliana, the Saxon . . . aye, that one too.

The muscles in his jaw set. He felt a need for violence. Better for her if he had a raid to face tonight, or a sword fight with an enemy who would really like to kill him, or a storm at sea with his steering oar broken. Better for her if he had almost anything to face but her. For, he told himself, he preferred not to harm her. After all, she barely stood as high as his shoulder. Yet he was angry. He'd been humbled on her account. And secretly he feared there might be some truth in the notion that she was ruling him from his own bed. The wench was doing her best to make him a different man. She made him feel like a villain, a scavenger, a vulture who made his living off others' weaknesses. She spit the word
Viking
at him and made him feel uneasy with what he was. How dare she?

How dare she!

While the others drank on, he sat turning and turning his cup in his hands, glaring more and more blackly into the fire. Singing started up, then died down. At last men began to drift off to their beds or the sheepskins they'd brought. Thoryn decided he would not be the last one left at the board. Was he a coward, afraid to face a mere woman? By the gods, he would go to his bed and shape his bed-thrall in his arms and stable his steed in her as was his right! And just let her try to make him feel he'd ever done her or anyone else wrong! Just let her try. He'd teach her a pleasant lesson. She thought of him as a dragon; well, it was time, beyond time, for him to show her his red fangs!

He stood and fixed his gaze squarely on his chamber door. Stepping off the dais, he began to place each boot firmly as he walked toward the end of the hall.

Edin heard him come into the chamber. She lay very still, pretending sleep. She'd left the lamp burning and now heard him cross the rushes until he stood right over her. It took every ounce of will she possessed to keep her eyes closed, and for no reason she could fathom, she began to experience the acrid taste of fear.

Suddenly he ripped the covers from her. Her eyes opened to find him looming over her, his face a mask of fury. She flinched away. A sudden gust of temper seemed to overpower him, and he reached down, seizing her waist. She struck out at him in mindless self-defense.

It did less than no good: It hurt. It hurt her hands, for he was still wearing his battle shirt. Pulling against his grip was worse than useless, too, since it caused him to grasp her tighter.

The face and body he showed her belonged to a stranger, a warrior. The hands on her were not the firm-but-gentle hands that had in the past coaxed her to surrender. These hands had no intention of coaxing, and this stranger cared not at all if she surrendered. Here was the dragon that lived in him, a beast simply looking for a victim.

He fell on her. She glimpsed the glittering hardness in his eyes as she put her hands up to protect herself and locked her ankles. His mouth twisted caustically. He caught her beating fists and stretched her arms over her head. Holding her wrists hard against the headboard, he lay full-length on her, crushing her until she couldn't breathe. Finding her mouth, he took it, forced her teeth apart and thrust his tongue into her.

After an eternity, he lifted his head an inch to stare down into her face. Carefully, trying to keep her fear under control, she squeaked, "I can't breathe."

He lifted just enough for her to fill her lungs. Her breasts felt bruised by the metal mesh of his shirt. He said with cold purpose, "Open yourself."

Looking up at him, she was terrified, rapt.

"I said, open yourself. Woman, you'll either bend to my will or I'll break you with it; but either way you'll learn to obey me!"

"What have I done? Why-"

His head started down again. Once more the consolidated walls of his weight mashed her into the mattress. She squirmed in mindless panic, scraping her ribs and her belly against the metal of him. She shoved hard against his chest with her own chest and strained backward with her head, struggling to free her wrists. Now his legs forced hers apart. His boots scraped her shins as he wedged his foot, and then his whole leg, between hers. In another instant she was quartered. She tried to think of some way to stop him. He had no right to do this to her. He had no right!

Taking both her wrists into his right hand, he fumbled between his stomach and hers with his left. "Daughter of Loki," he muttered, nipping at her throat with his teeth.

Her head began to spin. "Barbarian," she whispered.

He raised his head enough to snarl down at her, "You attack with words. There are more merciful weapons, but as my mother says, you spurn to fight me with those."

"I would if I knew half the arts of violence you know."

He hunched his hips, and she discovered that he had opened his clothes. His manhood was brought to the mark. She cried out. It was dreadful. Suddenly, losing control, she sobbed, "Please, my lord, not in anger!"

Instantly his left palm covered her mouth. His shaggy blond head, his fine, bearded face, leaned over her almost casually. "Master —call me Master while you still can. Catch me now while I'm still in the mood to strike cleanly."

Crying behind his hand, terrified, the sinews of her arms and thighs almost parted with his stretching, she nonetheless shook her head.

"You will! This is a Norse land. The sea round it is a Norse sea.
I am a Norseman —and you are my thrall." Bitterness crept into his tone. "I made the mistake of treating you to a softer kind of life. I let you think I'd lost some of my toughness and fire. But I'm a Norseman, long accustomed to asserting my will by force, in my home as well as abroad."

She didn't understand. Why was he so furious?

"Why do you think I brought you to my chamber in the first place? For one reason." He nudged forward; she felt him slide into her an inch. "For one reason and one reason alone: because I'm sometimes in need of a female body."

She was helpless before the remorseless, bleak creed and history of the man. She came back to her first feeling that he and all his kind were benighted. In his eyes she was no more than a creature to be used.

But in the back of her mind, she wondered: What was this really about?

"You should never have been so beautiful," he sneered as if in answer. "It set me to craving you from the first."

Her eyes were fixed on his, his on hers.

"Will you call me Master?"

With her mouth covered by his big palm, she could only use her eyes to defy him.

"Who do you think you are! When you came here you didn't even have shoes!"

Now she tried to speak behind his hand. To her surprise, he lifted it. "How do you do it?" she asked, her voice suddenly calm. She saw him pause, and pressed on while she had the chance. "How do you change like this?"

He didn't answer.

Her heartbeat was strong and rapid. She hardly had breath enough to speak, yet speak she did. "How do you become this way? Who are you really, Thoryn Kirkynsson? I long for the powers of a witch they claim for me: I would become a swallow and dip beside you and study you when you think you're alone."

"At the moment you need only know I am a man who desires you and has you spread beneath him and in another moment will have you."

She grappled with her fear and, with a huge effort of will, shook her head. "It's no good, my lord; you've shown me too much of yourself. You're a Viking, yes, but you aren't a cruel man. You put on this cruelty in the same way you put on your war shirt. You decide what part is required of you, and then you play it."

"You think so?" he said in that voice of his that could be both so soft and so dangerous. An arch smile played over his lips.

Edin was afraid, yet she forced herself to relax beneath the Viking. It was no easy thing. When one feared pain, it was no easy thing not to stiffen against it. Her body cried,
Clench! Strain!
But she didn’t. She even tilted her thighs and hips, teasing him. "Come, come into me. You need me, and I’m here for you."

He kept her wrists pinched tightly in his hand as he sank into her abruptly. For a moment she regretted her foolishness. Alarm pounded in her throat and temples, behind her eyes. He was not a small man, not altogether nor in any of his parts. And she was not a large woman. Racked-out beneath him as she was, her body was utterly his. A fact he took full advantage of. She was the pool he plumbed to its farthest depths, the vessel into which he poured the wine of his desire. Yet after his first hard thrusts, after he saw that she was not straining away from him, his grip on her wrists slackened, and she found she could pull them free. She used that freedom to embrace him.

"Deeper," she said.

"Quiet!"

"I-I claim my due, Viking!"

"Keep quiet!"

"I won’t let you cheat me of my due."

He went at her with his powerful springing muscles coiled and his feet braced against the footboard of the bed. He thrust deeply. He thrust and withdrew with such energy she had to wrap her legs around him to keep from being shoved upward in the bed. There was no longer any call to tell her to be quiet. How could she speak? Behind her eyelids she saw a swiftly winging shape. A mist seemed to fill the room, like the smokey exhalations of a mighty dragon. It wreathed her like veils, enveloped her in its flexures and cloaked all else beneath its diaphanous covering. She felt him pause, felt him quake. His arms dug beneath her to mash her even harder against him. His legs moved convulsively as if he would walk all the way into the heart of her. "Valkyrie!" he cried, his voice breaking.

"Yes," she murmured into his ear, "taking you to Asgard, the home of the gods."

He lay exhausted. After a moment she said faintly, "My lord, you're so heavy."

He groaned, but rolled, pulling her with him. She felt the blood rush back into her heart; it hammered violently.

He leaned away to inspect the imprints his shirt had left on her breasts. "Some of those will still be there come morning."

"No one will see them."

"I will"

"You need not look."

"I think I will."

His big hand, so superbly strong, came between them to cup a breast soothingly. "Did I take you, Shieldmaiden, or did you take me?" His eyes were still as bare as weather-washed stone.

She felt for the first time the elation of sexual triumph as a hectic flush flooded her cheeks. "Take you?" She smiled softly and with a tremulous hand smoothed his tumbled hair off his forehead. "When I am but a woman, a mere bed-thrall? How could I take a mighty Viking jarl?" "Aye, that is the question."

Awakened in alarm from some dream, Thoryn turned for safety to richly recollected enjoyments. The bright half-moon outside threw a rectangle of light through the uncovered window. Edin was asleep, and he took the opportunity to study her, lying there naked, her hair to her waist. As he'd predicted, she was marked by the violence of his assault. Gently he began to cross her abused breasts with those fine tresses that gleamed in the moonlight on her marbled skin.

This is the most perfect moment of my life.

The thought slid into his mind with no accompanying warning. It came simply, the truth put into words. A delicious secret.

His idle play with her hair gradually awakened her, as he'd meant it to do. He fully expected her to recoil into the mattress. He'd used her sorely, caused her pain. She barely opened her eyes, just enough for him to be sure she knew it was him who was toying with her. And then a feeling he'd seldom —no, never —known swelled in him, for seeing him, she smiled sleepily and opened her arms.

He held his breath. The unanticipated shock was such that he froze, trying to cling to this exceptional moment. He could not remember ever feeling like weeping for gladness before. He moved into her embrace —and felt cleansed. Cleansed of self-contempt, of self-doubt. She moved herself under him, adjusted her position, and drew him into her. He slid in cautiously, ready to stop at her first wince. She didn't wince; she was uninjured. He wanted to weep again, with relief. Once he was totally encompassed by her silken flesh, he didn't move. He couldn't believe he hadn't hurt her; she was so tender, and he'd gone at her so brutally. Instead, he lay reveling in the sensations of knowing he was welcome within her . . . and in another sensation which he hardly knew how to define.

Holding himself well on his elbows, his big hands moved through her hair, stroking the silky strands. What was it, this emotion she radiated and surrounded him with? It formed a circle around them, containing them such as he'd never been contained before. It felt so . . .
safe
. This was the woman they said would trap him. Let her, if only she would hold him safe like this forever.

***

In the week that followed the jarl's announcement of a voyage, a spirit of adventure filled the air of the steading, along with a frenzy of activity. He was busy most of each day victualling and outfitting his ship. Starkad Herjulsson spent much of his time working in the water, tarring and testing the dragonship. Pots of boiling tar out-stank racks of drying salmon at the fjordside, women sailmakers sat day after day with crossed legs and plying fingers, and the backs of men bowed beneath heavy casks of butter, cheese, and duck eggs in brine.

With all that was going on, Edin seldom encountered the jarl during the day. When she did, always she lowered her head a little, out of deference —or was it a new shyness? He was in demand everywhere; everyone had a question for him, or something for him to inspect, but she had the satisfaction of knowing that a certain small, quick, crooked smile was hers alone.

Thus the days passed quickly. Then there were only two nights left, and then, in an eye's blink, just one.

The blue smoke from the longhouse fire rose into the summer night. From the hail came the sound of rude laughter and the high wailing of a bone flute. In the jarl's chamber, Edin's cheek was pressed hard against her lord's bare chest, as if to partake of the very heat and life in him. His arms were around her, holding her gently and somewhat tenaciously. She felt a crushing need to weep, though the time for tears was long past for her. When pain was profound enough, nothing soothed it. And this man, with his muscled torso and strong loins, had brought her so much profound pain.

Earlier he'd called Inga to him in the crowded hall and said aloud so that the men and thralls should all hear, "Mark well: I go to Kaupang on the morrow. Since Inga Thorsdaughter is my mother, it is in her care that I leave the steading. Her authority is absolute until I return."

"
When
will you return?" Edin asked him now, feeling that even to ask was in some way to plead.

"It's hard to say. I don't know how long my business will take me. And there's always the sea to consider, the possibility of storms —and pirates."

"I'll pray to Aegir for you."

"The God of the Sea? Why not to your own god?"

"I don't think he would stoop to help you, you're so wicked."

"He doesn't help the wolves that snuffle outside his sheep pens, eh?" She felt him laugh silently, felt his lips kiss the top of her head. "I'll bring you back a present. A mirror of burnished silver."

Things had changed between them.
He
had changed. Whenever they had a moment alone, even when he didn't seem to particularly desire her, he often took hold of her, her arm, or her shoulder, casually as it were. She sensed that he was as lonely and destitute inside as she often felt, and that he found some ease in touching her.

Just now he said, "It grows late; yet you are so full of sweet mysteries, I feel I must explore you one last time before I leave."

She lifted her head and gave him a look of censure. "You are such a strange mixture of good and evil. I'm sure it's wrong, the things you do to me."

"You are, are you?"

"I used to imagine Vikings back in England"

"And what did you imagine, Shieldmaiden?"

"Roving scarecrows with scraggly fur strapped haphazardly around them."

"And what did you think when you first saw me?"

"Much worse, you were much worse. I thought: Here is a man of iron in whose judgement I count for absolutely nothing —at least nothing good. I was frightened, and rightfully so, for I believe the core of your conscience is missing."

He was silent for a moment, and she thought she'd offended him; but then he said, "But I was governed by desire in the end."

She smiled briefly, bitterly. "Not so. You desire me; but —I've been studying your people, and the classes are as carefully organized here as in England. And the number of classes is three. There are the unfree, the free, and the rulers. I am unfree; you are a ruler. And in the end, you are, as you warned me once, a man who sees what needs to be done and does it." Her eyes did not evade his.

His muscled arms caught her and turned her onto her back. His strength fired her. He said, "I swear that I'll never set you aside."

She wondered how far she should take her habit of frankness. "But someday, mayhap sooner than you think, you'll need to marry, to beget strong Viking sons and comely Viking daughters. Named children."

He drew himself up, let her go, turned onto his back, and stared up at the low ceiling. "As you say, I'll do what I must."

"I'm not blaming you," she whispered. "But I would ask a boon." Her heart thudded. There was risk here. "When you bring home a wife — "

"
If
I bring home a wife."

"
If
you do, will you choose me a husband and let me make what home I can for him? I would like to have children. There are men along the fjord — "

He turned to her quickly. His harsh laugh rang. "Thrall-men? They are below you!"

She licked her lips and looked up at him unflinchingly. "I fear they are not."

His face went cold. He gave her a hard, humorless smile. "You have someone in mind —to plant the seeds of these children deep inside you?"

"Don't be angry. It's only that you're going away, and I have no way to know what my fate will be while you're gone, or even after you return. You may find you're indifferent to me"

He let the silence grow uncomfortable before saying, "You aren't without value, you know, even without your maidenhead. I could still sell you for a goodly profit in any market"

"I wouldn't dare ask you not to do that except I feel you harbor some affection for me; you've shown me some kindness."

"Some!" He looked cruel. "I've
favored
you. Given you gifts! Fed you tidbits and sweet yellow wine! And now I find I've nourished a snake."

"Please try to understand! It isn't that I'm ungrateful; it's only that I need to feel
safe
."

Inga had already made hints that if, in the jarl's absence, Edin presumed an inch above her place, she would feel the whip. She didn't tell him this, she still had some pride left. But her voice dropped to a mere breath. "I desperately need to feel safe."

His jaw visibly unclenched. "You're safe with me." His voice was almost tender. "I've sworn never to set you aside, haven't I? I will grant you a boon, not the one you asked, which is preposterous, but this:

The children I give you will be free. Your sons will grow up to use axes and shields, to practice sword-swinging and swimming, to sail the seas."

"Vikings?" she said, disbelieving. "No! I would rather they did dirty work, carried burdens, lugged firewood, dunged fields — anything rather than be Vikings!"

He eyed her narrowly. "They will be proud Norsemen, their father's sons. And your daughters will be the wives of Norsemen, with their own households to manage. They will carry keys and hold purse strings; they will provide food for their families, and clothing, while their men must be gone."

"No." She lay motionless, stupefied with astonishment and suffering, with an agony that was simple but deep.

"Aye." He drove the agony deeper still, speaking almost tenderly, as if he were granting her a great honor. "And as you see them grow, you'll know I was right to gift them with pride. But you, Shieldmaiden"—his tone roughened —"you have too much pride already. Forget this foolish idea —marry you to a thrall! You'll always be mine. You'll lay with no man ever but me, and mother no children but mine"

***

The sun was just coming over the tops of the mountains, silvering the dew. Edin stood on the lookout bluff over the cobalt blue fjord. She reached outside her cloak to shade her face against the dawn's level rays.

Below her floated the
Blood Wing
her gunwales deep in the water, for she was unnaturally laden with reindeer hides, bearskins, otterskins, wool, whalebone and whale oil, sea ivory, falcons and hawks, two sixty-ell marine cables, one made from walrus hide, the other from sealskin, herrings, salt, twelve rough-finished axe handles threaded on a stave of pine, ten measures of bird feathers for pillows, all for selling in the Kaupang market. Also aboard were dried meat, barley bread, casks of ale and cheese and fish and such for the crew.

Inga was standing on the dock as the jarl supervised the last minute preparations. She looked small beside her splendid son. Now and again she said something, made a suggestion or admonished him about this or that, as mothers will. Edin could almost imagine her words:
Have you got your woolen shirt on, son? The winds are bitter around the coast, and it would be too bad for you to take a cold.

He answered her with the barest trace of a smile.

The air was full of noise and excitement. Tall, good-looking men with rugged features, dressed in brilliant-hued tunics, and women with pinched expressions lined the shore to say good-bye to their sons and lovers. Puckish boys, mostly knees and knuckles and scabs, raced about, too full of excitement to stay still. Young Hrut Beornwoldsson stood stiff, the down on his chin still not thick enough to cover the resentment and envy on his face. His look was so telling that even Edin could feel the pounding in his throat, the readiness of his body for action, for hurrying off. He wanted to be a man so badly.