Edin's embrace (22 page)

She shook her head sadly. "I bumped into a door." She knew he wouldn't believe that, but she couldn't tell him the shameful truth. She'd had enough of shame. More than enough of shame.

Inga was ladling out the night's cabbage soup for the thralls when Edin went into the longhouse. She was last in line and so got mostly broth in her bowl. She sat bowed over it, too tired to eat, while Inga threatened Juliana with a beating: "He has no business here except that you encourage him. He's an idle, devilish boy —and you're a slut!"

They had to be discussing Hrut Beornwoldsson.

Juliana gave her mistress a meek answer and looked down humbly enough until she was dismissed, freeing Inga to turn her temper on Edin. She said in her hardest tone, "Come on, now, stop your pretending. Olga is waiting to clean up and there you sit, hanging your head as if you're half-dead."

Edin dipped her slice of dry black barley bread into the thin broth. It hurt her cheekbone to eat.

The night beside the brooding forested slopes of Dainjerfjord was damp and cold. Over Thorynsteading a great silence had fallen. The hall was quiet. Scents of woodsmoke and roasted mutton hung heavily in the air. Edin walked toward her bed while the two Vikings sat finishing a chess game. Her movements were wooden, guarding against pain, but she kept her back straight and managed not to wince or grimace as she passed them.

In her sheepskin, she listened without hearing as Erik heckled Fafnir. She spread her hand over her bruised cheek. With luck, it would be less painful tomorrow. She was glad she had no mirror; she'd rather not see herself just now.

Exhausted as she was, sleep didn't come. She wondered if Sweyn was still sitting up over his ale cup as usual. She'd insulted him, knowing full well that a Viking wouldn't put up with cuts of any kind, especially not from a thrall. But he'd goaded her to it, hoping for an excuse to hurt her.

How could he blame her for his lameness? It was, as her captors would say, "a rune hard to read." Was it only that he was mean-minded and vicious? Or could it be that he felt as disoriented as she did, without any clear sense of himself anymore, and that he was frightened?

Sweyn the Berserk had probably thought of nothing but looting villages and possessing females. He'd no doubt regarded it as a most profitable, a most exciting, way of life. But now, what was it like to be Sweyn the Cripple? What did a man seemingly made out of pure pugnacity and love for glory— mingled with a more fundamental relish for plunder — do when he could no longer participate in the far and bloody raids of his comrades, when his jarl sailed off without him, when it seemed his very gods had turned against him? What did he feel when he was faced with his weaker and more cowardly side and found it soft and squeamish?

For the first time Edin considered Sweyn the Main —and discovered that she had much in common with him. For instance, both, in the despairing, heardess flicker of those few hours at Fair Hope Manor, had lost their identities. She supposed that for a long time afterward his mind, like hers, had moved sluggishly. He must have been as dazed and shocked as she'd been. And now they were both trying to find a way to survive as people they had never thought to be.

And both of them were dependent in this upon the jarl, clinging to him as to an island in a stormy ocean, hoping he could in some way fulfill them, restore them, make them whole again. The same man who had cut them down was their only hope — that great blond barbarian!

He'd taken everything from Edin, yet her heart had somehow twisted itself to love him. The fact of her love kept splintering her picture of him like a rock thrown on a sheet of water. How could she love such a man? She didn't know. But the knowledge kept coming at her with an overwhelming jolt. She'd lost her heart to a Viking along with everything else. And she knew she would never fall back from that love, never try, never wish to, even though he kept her a slave all her days, even though he made her children into his own image, so that she would both love and despise them as much as she loved and despised him. And the conflict would continue to twist her heart until one day . . . might she too be capable of stabbing a man in his sleep?

Sweyn shook his long thick mane. He thought he was the last man up. He preferred it when he was alone in the hall. When the others were about, he took no part in their talk, but kept his head lowered, kept his eyes on his plate or his cup, kept his face blank.

Suddenly a voice came from behind him. "So, Sweyn, you fight daringly against a thrall-girl."

He turned to see Fafnir Danrsson. "The witch insulted me. I taught her a lesson."

"She belongs to the jarl, to whom I'm sworn. It would ill-befit a warrior to have to take a cripple into the woods and put him down like an old thrall not worth his keep. Don't teach the girl any more lessons, Sweyn."

Sweyn turned back to his ale cup, laughing. He took a draught and gained courage to answer Fafnir back, but when he turned, the man was gone. Sweyn turned back to his cup with an uprush of feeling, the misery of unexpected and unbroken loneliness. For an instant, a fraction of an instant, his stern expression cracked.

***

Another sennight and a day passed. Yesterday Blackhair had made Edin carry the water for the baths again. She was getting stronger, yet the work he and Inga put her to was hard. Today the recurring nausea was bothering her again, and she stirred her first-meal porridge listlessly. She studied the other thralls eating their oatmeal and wondered how soon it would be before she looked as hard and stringy as they did, before her face took on that beggared and inward expression so many of them wore?

Had the serfs of Fair Hope been so dispirited? Though that old life was growing more and more distant, she didn't think so. There had been laughter. As their mistress, she'd felt affection from them, not this fear Inga commanded.

She looked about her at the hall. Inga was strict and worked herself and everyone for long hours, yet as a housekeeper, she lacked a knack for creating comfort. For instance, the rushes on the floor had needed changing since Edin's arrival. Beneath the tables they were thin, and the underlayer of sand had been scuffed away so that often tired feet rested directly on the hard, cold underfloor of stone. The food they all ate was filling and nourishing, yet it was monotonous —cabbage soup, meat stew, porridge— and mostly tasteless, for Inga had no sense of the use of flavorsome herbs. And how much more satisfactory would things run if the thralls were made happier, given praise when their work was well done, rewarded with honest appreciation, and coaxed more with kindness than with threats?

She was the last to leave the table but for Sweyn and Fafnir Danrsson. Fafnir was carving a piece of wood into an animal head. He was respected as something of an artist with wood. As Edin got up wearily, Sweyn called her name. "Clear my bowl away," he said.

Inga had just gone to the dairy. The kitchen thralls were already clearing the table, but Sweyn wanted to humiliate her again. Taking into account her nausea and low spirits, she didn't consider refusing worthwhile.

She gathered his porridge bowl and milk cup and the scattered shells of his boiled egg. He lifted up his useless arm and thumped it on the board. She cleaned around it until he said, "Look at me!" Her eyes lighted on his yellow hair, avoiding his face. "I used to be a warrior, woman —you may remember. Shall I ever sail over the foam and shake an axe with this hand again, do you think?"

She studied the way his food and drink had stained the untrimmed fringe of his mustache, and finally said, "If you ever lift a horn spoon with it, it will be a miracle. It looks to me, Cripple, as if your axe days are over."

The words fell into the high shadowy room as stones fall into a bottomless lake, sinking without a ripple. He seemed stunned; his smile shifted a few notches. Olga giggled nervously. The fire crackled. Sweyn's blue eyes burned dully with the reflected glow of the blaze. Edin turned away before he could gather his wits, before the muscles of his jaw could knot and he could decide to retaliate.

She grabbed her cloak and went out, giving a good margin to Eric, who was axe-throwing on the green. He'd set up a cord, tied it tight between two sticks, stepped back ten paces, and now was aiming his axe to try to sever the cord in the center.

Fafnir came out a moment after Edin and was hailed to compete with Eric. Edin soon realized that he was following her, however. He caught up with her in the byre-yard and seized her arm to stop her.

His long face was knotted like a club. He said hotly, "You have the gall of the gods themselves. That was no way to answer a warrior. First you put a dagger into Ragnarr's throat, and now a knitting needle into Sweyn's heart."

"Mayhap you should do the same!" she answered back —unwisely, for she didn't know Fafnir well and couldn't say how he would react. He always seemed friendly enough to others of his kind. She'd heard that he'd had a wife and children in his youth, but that they'd died in a fire. Nonetheless, he was a Viking, raised in the cruel North; she could see the bone handle of his little bright-edged carving knife protruding from his belt, and for all she knew, she could be doomed this instant.

Her answer to him —as unpremeditated as the one she'd given Sweyn —seemed to startle him, and she took advantage of his hesitation.

"You all treat him as if he can do nothing now." Her voice was so tight it broke. "He has another arm, does he not —and blood beating through his veins? He's not dead, is he? But none of you encourage him. You all make him feel he stopped living the night he lost his axe arm."

"He broke his oath to the jarl."

"For which the jarl punished him severely. But you take it upon yourselves to go on punishing him —and I don't for a minute believe it's for oath breaking. It's because he's become something you all know you could become, too. A cripple. You silently blame him for reminding you that next time it could be you who comes home with no arm or no hand or no foot. So you push him to the end of the bench, and —far worse than anything else —you show him contempt."

Fafnir's mouth dropped open. No doubt he was used to thralls replying to him with a mere nod or shake of the head. He seemed shocked to the point of stammering. "Well . . . what would you have us do, wench? Challenge him?"

"
Yes! Challenge
him! Make him use the good arm he has. I once knew of a boy who as a babe fell into a fire that withered his right arm, but by the turn of the next year he could use the left amazingly. He was a Saxon, however; there's every chance a mere Viking couldn't do as well."

"Have a caution, thrall."

She felt her heart give a quick beat, felt her whole body tense with a wish to be gone, yet she continued. "You Norse have a saying: 'Be a friend to your friends and a foe to your foes.' But sometimes it needs to look as if one is being a foe in order to be a friend."

He watched her from beneath lowered eyelids. "He has no place here anymore. He eats the jarl's meat, yet he can never be a warrior again."

"It looks that way; his strength seems to have deserted him, the way he walks around with his head down and his back sagging. His mind acts as though it's slept through a season and can't quite decide what's changed. But then, it's hard to say what a man can do. With so many warriors, does Dainjerfjord really need another? There must be other occupations of honor."

He looked skeptical. "For a cripple?"

"A lame man can sit a horse. A man without hands can herd goats. A deaf man can build a house. Only a corpse is completely useless." She could feel her anger tightening her throat again. "At the feast I saw a widow with a son on the brink of manhood, a son she can't manage. Every other day he's down here trying to lift Juliana's skirts. And Juliana's skirts being so easily lifted, the boy is bound to be in for trouble when Jamsgar Copper-eye returns. He thinks of the girl as his own, you know. There's already been thunder between them over her. A boy like that needs a man's guidance, and no doubt Gunnhild's steading needs work."

"Beornwold's widow," he said thoughtfully, at the same time watching her from beneath the protection of those motionless, lowered eyelids. "Freyahof is in disrepair. Hmmm. . . . It's good for a boy to have a man to guide him. So you think Sweyn should work for Gunnhild?"

Edin shrugged. "Her or someone like her. It seems you Vikings have an uncommon number of widows struggling to survive in your land." She stood with her hands quiet at her sides now. "Tell me, what was the Cripple doing when you came out here after me?"

"He'd thrown himself down on his sheepskin again and lay staring at the wall."

She nodded; this was Sweyn's usual way of passing his days, by slumbering off his drunkenness of the night before in his little cell of a chamber. "He needs to see more daylight," she said. "His skin is grave-pale. A friend would get him out of the hall —even if he had to infuriate him to do it."

The man turned his head half away, though his sapphire-grey eyes remained on her. There came and went a fleeting, almost imperceptible smile on his lips. "Do you manage the jarl this way?"

A cold fist clutched at her queasy stomach and squeezed it hard. "The jarl is managed by no one."

Fafnir and Eric began to prick and goad the Cripple to do something about himself. Nothing changed until toward the end of the next sennight. There came a day of such heat that the two Vikings said they were going down to the fjord to swim. Fafnir asked Sweyn if he would join them. "You used to be able to swim across the fjord and back."

Sweyn's look was ugly. He watched his former companions leave the hall with eyes that seemed to promise retribution.

As Edin stepped out of the longhouse after the first meal, the heat closed like a sweaty palm around her. The light was brilliant. Squinting, she saw Sweyn directing Laag, the stable thrall, in setting a pine log into the ground in the stackyard. When Laag was finished, the log stump stood at man height.

At first Sweyn only looked at it, and wiped his nose on his sleeve, then he went into the longhouse. Edin was working nearby and so saw him reappear in a few minutes with his war shirt and battle-axe. He seemed to droop under the weight of his old trappings, and held his flashing axehead awkwardly in his left hand. In a desultory fashion, he began to take little chips out of the stump. Gradually he took more interest in what he was about, his swings becoming harder, until at last he was hacking the stump, aiming his strokes at this angle and that. Sometimes his weaker left wrist twisted, and the flat of his blade hit the stump. And being lopsided, sometimes he stumbled —and then his eyes glittered and he cursed.

After an hour he gave up in a fury and strode toward the longhouse.

But in another hour he was back.

Within a few days he was able to put some force in the arm that had played little with weapons before. Edin often watched him from some point out of sight.

When he finally seemed able to swing the heavy blade in a true arc, without losing his balance, he took Arneld away from his shepherding duties. Curious, Edin watched through a crack in the byre wall as he handed the boy a stout blackthorn staff like the one he himself was holding. "Swing it at me," he commanded the boy.

Arneld looked up at him with a trained smile.

"Do it!"

Arneld swung, and Sweyn parried the blow. This went on until the boy began to stagger. Impatient, Sweyn pushed him so hard he fell. That night Arneld walked slowly, as if his body had become glassy and fragile.

Sweyn was weary as well. His eyes at the evening meal were filled with a dead sparkle, like that of a slaughtered bull's. Yet the next day, as dawn came stealing through a steady late summer rain, he drove Arneld out to the stackyard again, despite the weather.

At first, many of the boy's blows struck Sweyn's shoulders. The man's face became an insane scowl of effort and concentration. Edin was afraid; the Cripple was so red-tempered. But after a while, try as the boy would, he couldn't touch the Viking.

This lesson learned, Sweyn sent the thrall-boy back to his shepherding. That was when Edin learned her spying hadn't gone unnoticed. Sweyn caught her behind a corner of the longhouse and backed her against the wall ominously, so that her view of the valley was completely obstructed by his wide body. He said, "You're so interested in my doings, witch, it's time you took a part in them." He took her arm and pulled her to his exercise area. He handed her Arneld's blackthorn staff —while he took up his axe. "Strike me, up, down, anywhere. Well? Go on!"

She swallowed; her gaze caught on the silver inlays and the glinting edge of his huge battle-axe. "I dare not."

He grinned sourly. "Afraid? Of Sweyn the Cripple? Of Sweyn the Bench-ender?" The grin faded. "If you don't do as I say, I'll take off my belt and beat courage into your hide."

She thought he meant it. His heavy belt had an iron buckle. Lifting the staff, she took a half-hearted swing at him.

He moved away easily, with a calm that was almost serenity. She saw at once that he'd regained a certain grace in his movements. "Harder!" he growled.

She let the staffs end rest on the ground. "Why are you doing this?"

"To get the nimbleness back in my legs. I've lain around too long. Isn't that what you told Fafnir Longbeard?"

She should have known her words would come back to haunt her. She said, "No. I told him you ought to find useful work." He was glaring at her. "Very well —at least you've made up your mind not to drink yourself to death." And she swung the staff with all her might.

Blackhair had never spared her from the hardest labor in the fields, and she'd been growing stronger. The first crack she gave Sweyn caught him by surprise on the shin and made him wince and go to his knee. He clutched his axe handle with his good left hand and screwed up his face so horribly that she was terrified. She rushed in, hovered, stepped back, then cried, "You told me to do it! I was only doing what you told me!"

He schooled his face before he looked up. What she heard was not what she'd expected: "A good Viking leg-sweep, that one! But you won't get another one in on me."

"Please! I don't want to do this!"

"Why not? Because you bear me so much affection?"

"Because I don't like to see anyone hurt!"

He grinned unpleasantly. "Then, you were born into the wrong world, song-singer. Now stop squawking like a parrot. You've been told what to do —do it!"

The next day he had her at it again. And the next. Then came the day she swiped low for his knees, and he, judging his moment like a hawk, brought down his axe so fast it was only a sparkle in the sunlight. Her hands went numb with the shiver of the blow. Most of the stout blackthorn staff fell at her feet. She stared at the splintered end mutely: It was severed not more than five inches from her grip.

When she straightened, he put on an evil smile and gave his axe an idle swing, as if to admire the glimmer of its bright silver inlays. He said, "I believe I need a new partner. I'm not ready for Fafnir or Eric yet, but mayhap I'll ride over tomorrow and see if Beornwold's boy, Hrut, can swing a staff any better than you can."

"And mayhap you should ask Gunnhild if she could use some firewood. That would be a better use for that axe."

He pulled the weapon in protectively. "You don't use a good war axe like this one on firewood"

"Then find another axe."

He lowered his head. "You're telling a Norseman what to do, thrall? Don't you have work?" He brandished the axe and shouted, "Be gone!"

That night, he was not in the hall for the last meal. When Edin finished her broth and her slice of coarse bread and left the board to make her way to her sheepskin, Fafnir, and then Eric, looked up at her from their chessboard. So direct were their gazes, she faltered and finally stopped. Fafnir raised his ale cup silently, tipped his head in approval, and then drank.

***

The sea was not the flat, monotonous plain it seemed from the shore. It was various and interesting, full of moving hills and veering, dimpled valleys. The light and color changed from green to purple to blue to silver and back again. Sounds filled Thoryn's ear: the low drone of the wind in the
Blood Wing
's rigging, the crack and whisper of the sail, the whir of the water under the bow, the shrill, sweet mewing of the trailing seabirds. This was the sea Norsemen loved like a second home. And on this particular voyage no one was aboard the
Blood Wing
who didn't want to be there. They were all good mates sailing a fine, proud ship.

Thoryn felt the sheer physical quickening of it. He thrilled to the vibration of the oar strokes, the lines thrumming in the wind, the whole ship undulating like a serpent. By no means was it easy being a Norseman. Sometimes a Viking rowed till his shoulders cracked; sometimes sea spray froze his beard; sometimes the ship bucked and corkscrewed.

Yet always there was this physical quickening, this sense of being a master of the elements.

The trade route down the protected coast to the summer market had given Norway its name: the great North Way. It ran more than fifteen hundred miles from the White Sea in the northwest to Kaupang, the country's main market town, in the southeast. The journey from Dainjerfjord required one and a half sennights, more or less. To a mariner who knew the waters, it was mostly free of natural hazards.

Thoryn sailed the
Blood Wing
with confidence between the thousands of small skerries so thickly clustered they formed a breakwater, always keeping the jagged coast of the mainland in sight. The precipitous coastal cliffs were cleaved by scores of deep-water fjords which offered shelter from storm and concealment from pirates when necessary.

But this trip had been uneventful. With her sharp keel, the
Blood Wing
ploughed the foaming deep and sailed a swift course between the skerries and the headlands. For a few days they had traveled under a sky full of anvil-headed thunderclouds, but had felt very little rain. And of pirates they had seen nothing.

Now Thoryn could see Kaupang's turf-walled booths and larger buildings in the distance. The town was undefended, had no earthwork ramparts, nor even a wooden stockade. It looked solid and strong, however. Located in the Tjolling district, it stood adjacent to the prosperous region of Vestfold, where there were warm valleys of lush farmland, uplands carpeted in dew-drenched forests, and lakes that swelled fishermen's hearts. The port was small, with its own protected harbor on the shores of Viksfjord, which cut into the land off the larger Larviksfjord. It was densely inhabited and an extremely prosperous and busy place all through the summer months.

The weather here on the east coast was not so prone to clouds as it was on the west. Today was as clear as spring; the sky seemed swollen and aching with light.

Well before entering the harbor, Thoryn had ordered his men to hang their shields over the sides of the longship, alternating the colors, blue and red. For special occasions like this, he kept aboard a spare dress sail made of velvetlike
pell
lined with brilliant silk. It wasn't practical for the open sea, but it made a fine display. His banner flew from the mast, gaily colored and embroidered with his emblem, Thor's hammer.

He felt the
Blood Wing
made a fine sight going in, with her bright sail taut, her sides shedding smothers of white foam and green water, her taunting gilt dragonhead rearing proudly, flashing her ruby eyes.

Starkad Herjulsson was soon beside himself with gawking at the glittering menagerie of longships anchored in the harbor. Most were caparisoned with wealth, rank, and might. Kaupang was not only a distribution center for all kinds of goods going in all directions, it was a point of assembly for merchants sailing south to Hedeby or proceeding by way of Oresund to the Baltic. Ships waited here to find others to sail with them as a safeguard against piracy.

Starkad rhapsodized over one vessel after another. This one had lions molded in gold, that one had a golden bird weathervane on the topmast to indicate the direction of the wind, and yet another one was covered with carvings close-clenched and complicated, as convoluted as the syntax of skaldic verse.

Hauk Haakonsson was more interested in the tented booths they could now see stretching along the shore. He swore he could smell "cauldron snakes" sausages spiced with herbs and garlic. Jamsgar claimed he could smell the local ale which was made chiefly from bog-myrtle with apples and cranberries.

It took the
Blood Wing
a while to find a place to nudge her prow up to a stone jetty along the seafront. In the presence of a small clutch of onlookers, Thoryn gave thanks to the gods for their grace in granting the seapaths safe for their ocean journey.

He too was dressed for show. He had on his father's horned bronze ceremonial helmet and was bearing his new shield emblazoned with a dragonship. His cloak was held by a silver brooch decorated with a motif of twining tendrils.

The town swarmed with life. The bustle began at the water's edge as men waded or put out boats to load and unload ships. The packed settlement was composed of irregular clusters of buildings. The backbone of trade therein was iron processing, bronze casting, cloth, soapstone utensils, and the manufacture of jewelry from rock crystal, glass, and that marvelous substance amber, the transparent, fossilized resin of pines that had died eons before and were covered by water. The sea washed ashore big chunks that fetched premium prices. Men and women alike loved the golden play of candleflame on a string of amber drops. And when rubbed, the stones took on a seemingly magical magnetic charge.

None of the crew of the
Blood Wing
was to see much of the marketplace today. Thoryn required them to accompany him along the "streets" between the houses —actually exceptionally cramped pathways, often no more than a yard wide. They tramped past merchants with fine-balanced scales, past handsome displays of Rhineland pottery and glassware, past high-quality woolen cloth from Frisia, and past several lofted, winged dwellings, to the steps leading up to the oaken door of his Uncle Olaf Haldanr's town house.

Once admitted, they entered the feast-hall with a clatter of trappings and mail shirts and marched across the floor strewn with rushes, around the stone-lined hearth, to where a man who had seen fifty or more winters sat on his great chair like a proper Norwegian sea-king. "Uncle," Thoryn said formally, "I come to deliver greetings from Dainjerfjord, past the far sea's swell."

Olaf, all gold to his chin, where his short, wolfs-hair-grey beard began, rested his arms on the chair and smiled faintly. "How is your mother, nephew?"

"Well."

"Good, good."

There was a stir behind Thoryn just then. He didn't turn until Olaf said, "It has been a year since your last visit, but you must remember my daughter Hanne? Eh?"

Thoryn didn't miss the craftiness in that last syllable.

The girl's step was gliding rather than springing; her round face was full of prettiness, but lacked animation. She wore a pink gown, and there were pink blossoms threaded in her long yellow hair. She couldn't be more than fifteen. Though her body showed new signs of curves beneath her costly gown, her hands were still the short, pudgy-fingered hands of a girl.