Edin's embrace (30 page)

What
would
he say? From what Edin knew, a Viking expected his legitimate wife to be esteemed and respected, for in his absence she must serve as his representative. Evidently others wondered as well. The gathering was so ablaze with light and finery that Ottar's folly was like a sudden gust of wind fluttering the leaves of a sunlit autumn birch. He stood shifting from one foot to the other on his bench, as if only now realizing the possible offense of his words. His face changed, colored oddly; an ashyness glimmered through the weathering.

Edin took a pitcher from Olga as the thrall passed by her, and moved toward Thoryn, as if to top his cup. She murmured, "He meant no harm, my lord. He is merely over-merry with drink."

Thoryn accepted the refill of his cup from her, raised it, and took a slow, deep draught. At last he said, "What say I, Ottar Magnusson? This: I wager you a half-mark of silver against that chess set of yours, the one carved out of walrus ivory, that my lady's belly will be round as a cabbage by the time the Yule season arrives."

Edin stirred uncomfortably.

"Careful, Ottar," Rolf called, "our jarl is called the Hammer, not the Drooper!"

This occasioned a new round of boisterous jest and laughter and, of course, refreshment. Food was served again. Thoryn shouted, "Come! I challenge all comers to an eating competition!" No more need be said. The gathering swarmed to the tables where they began to eat like mastodons, some laughing and conversing as they ate, others silently absorbing themselves in dedicated gluttony.

***

Juliana sighed yet again. Inga snapped at her, "What is wrong with you, girl! You've been doing that for two days!"

Juliana looked at her mistress with sudden spite. "It's just that they're all having a grand time at the longhouse."

Inga's blue eyes focused on her with new attention. "What do you mean?"

Juliana wanted to smile. She was learning how to goad her hateful mistress. "Well . . ."

"What?"

"I only know what Fafnir said when he brought the supplies."

"What?"

"He said the jarl was taking a wife."

Inga's voice was low. "Who . . . who would he . . . ?"

Juliana swallowed. The woman's look was more than she'd bargained for. "Edin," she said a little timorously.

Inga stood in the sudden dead silence, stood so quietly it was as if Juliana were dreaming it. And then she laughed, an insane giggle. Fear became a living thing, feeding on Juliana from inside, pushing mewling sounds out of her throat.

***

Edin was passing among the banqueting guests. She still felt shy of these Vikings, yet she could not shirk her duty as hostess. She asked Starkad, "What did the fortune teller say to you?"

Beside him, Jamsgar grumbled, "No man may see his future or mark his fate. His life is in ghostly hands beyond his reach."

"Why, Jamsgar," Edin chided, "how morbid you are."

"Don't pay any attention to him," Starkad said. "He can't find anyone to take that little Juliana's place." He laughed at his brother's grimace. Wiping down his red beard with the back of his hand before he looked back up at Edin, he said, "The crowbones said I would earn the nickname
Scafhogg
, Smoothing Stroke, whatever that means."

"I can tell you what it means, little brother," snorted Jamsgar beside him. Both of them grinned as Edin turned away with a blush.

By the time the meal was over, the weather had cleared, and Hauk Haakonsson offered to take on Eric No-breeches at foot-racing. Eric said he would prefer a drinking contest, but finally consented to the race instead. The jarl went out with the others, but shortly came back. Edin had slipped into their chamber to tidy her hair, and that was where he found her. She turned, arms raised to her head, eyebrows lifted in question.

"I only came for a bracing drink."

"I'll get-"

He stopped her as she started around him. "You have what I came for." He took her into his arms and with his hands held the back of her head, tipping it to his mouth.

When he raised his lips from hers, it was to say, "Ottar prizes his ivory chess set. When he has to give it to me, he will remember not to let his eyes wander where they shouldn't, or to speak of my wife's 'succulence.' "

Edin found herself vaguely delighted with the jealousy she heard in his voice. But then realized what the bet had been about. He knew. She should say something, but didn't, couldn't. He seemed to wait. Gradually his face changed, and he looked at her as though she'd betrayed him. He said cruelly, "You know you have no other home than this one now."

"Not since you Vikings made a visitation with fire on the home I knew before."

"If you were a man, I would take out
Raunija
and hold a blade discussion with you to settle this dispute."

"But I'm not a man, so you must find another method, Viking."

"Aye, Saxon!"

It was late that afternoon when every pot and tray was finally emptied, every bone gnawed and the marrow sucked, and the Vikings, their ladies and children, their favorites and folk, at last wiped their chins and cleaned their greasy fingers and went home. The jarl was down at the dock seeing the last boat off while Edin stood waving from the lookout point above. The fjord glittered like molten silver in the fading light. It was cool, and she'd worn a new dark-green cloak edged with white fur. As she turned it rustled.

The steading was crowded with sunset shadows. Arneld was calling the dogs to gather the sheep. The jarl was right; this was her home now. She looked over her shoulder at him. His profile was dark against the fjord which glimmered like elf silver behind him. He was her husband.

Out in the water bided the two dragon ships, the
Blood Wing
and the captured
Surf Dragon
. These were her enemies.

Upon her pillow that moonlit night was yet another fur-wrapped package. "My lord," she said, a little mutinously, for she still remembered he'd forced this marriage on her, "you must stop showering gifts on me or I shall own all your wealth."

"And by your hurry to unwrap that I see you are foolishly unwilling to impoverish me. You're still more Saxon than Norse."

Inside the fur she found such a thing as to take all mutiny from her mind, however, for there were eleven beautifully wrought amber beads.

He took her into his arms with that sense of power and ease he could exude with every movement. "What was that prayer you used to offer up in your Wessex kirks against me?"

Even as she tipped her head back for his kiss, she murmured, "I still offer it. 'Deliver me,' I pray, 'from this Norseman.' "

His lips lowered to hers, and his tongue passed into her mouth and probed profoundly. When he lifted his mouth away, he said smoothly, "I think you lie. Do you want me to let you go just now? If you say yes, I will — I swear it."

She looked up at him helplessly. His eyes were like mothy clouds, with hardly more color than smoke in a sunny noon. He'd made her his wife, a freed woman, yet her body and her heart were still held in bondage to him. "You are a demon, Viking. I wish I could make you my thrall for just one day."

He smiled down at her and laughed softly. "I grant you your wish —but for a night, not a day. Tonight I will be your bed-thrall."

At first she thought to demur, but then the idea caught her. She would take him at his word.

She began to undress him, a thing she'd never done before. He watched her hands unbuckle his sword belt, unbutton his tunic, unwind his leggings, and unlace his trousers. When he was naked, she stood back a step. Slowly she raised her hand, letting it reach toward him almost as though it had its own purpose, its own intent. He stood motionless. Her hand hovered. The sensitive tip of her middle finger touched his upper arm. His muscles clenched. She murmured, both hands now going high to caress his chest and shoulders in one smoothing stroke. "Get onto the bed, thrall, and wait for me there."

He stretched out on the bed to smooth his beard and watch her undress herself. She did so slowly, though she felt a rush of fire through her whole body, something more violent than anything she'd felt before. It was the essence of power replacing the blood in her veins. She couldn't help trembling as she loosed the long and thick rope of her hair which had been wound about her head. His eyes narrowed as she let the heavy waves spread around her.

When she joined him, she unleashed a long-denied desire to touch him at her own pace, to trail her fingers over him languorously, to hold him as she would. She was aware of a certain dominion over him which she'd never used. She used it now, to run her palms over his mighty shoulders, to smooth them over his broad chest, stopping to lightly pinch his flat nipples into tiny points. She lay half over him, reveling in the feel of his hard body beneath her.

"Strands like rays of amber sunlight." He'd taken a piece of her hair between his fingers. "What is your name, Mistress?" In his voice was an amused pretense of meekness. "I've never met such as you before, and I would know who takes me."

"My name is Edin. You will remember me before I'm through with you, thrall." As she spoke, she sat up and tangled her fingers in the short crisp hair of his loins. "Do you like this?" she asked softly.

"Aye." His hands came up, but did no more than bracket her breasts. His touch was like mead. Her hair dangled over his shoulders and amused face. "As you can see, I am ready to serve you."

She looked down. "Well then." She put her hand on him intimately, possessively. All amusement faded from his expression as she leaned above him, inclined into him, and bent her head over him. "Shall I be the dragon now?" she murmured, her lips so close to him she could feel the heat of his flesh. "Shall I?"

Now the sea birds, the ducks, grouse, puffins, and warblers began to leave for warmer places. All along the fjord, drying racks became familiar sights, where cod was cured for several weeks. The window hole in the bedchamber was covered with a thin hide to keep the new chill out. One night, after loving Edin, Thoryn told her, "I sent Hauk out today to invite a few men to the hall tomorrow."

"Why?" she murmured, almost asleep in his arms.

"There are some matters that need discussing."

She accepted that. He was the jarl; she supposed it must be usual for him to meet with his people.

The men arrived in time for the first meal the next day. There was the normal gossip over the food, but as Edin rose to help clear the tables, Kol Thurik said, "What did you have on your mind, Jarl?"

Edin tried to seem as if she weren’t taking much notice, yet when she saw her husband unconsciously take on that stature of heroism and powerful deeds that seemed to make him the kind of man other men were eager to die for, her attention was caught. "I have many things on my mind, friend," he said. "Adventure, danger—"

Herjul the Stout hooted, "Thank the gods!"

"The first thing I have in mind is to build a new ship, the best, most commanding ship ever made in the North. A knorr. And Herjul's son Starkad will be my shipwright."

"Why do we need a new ship, Jarl?" Jamsgar asked.

Starkad's irritation was immediate and waxed as erubescent as his beard. "Are you trying to axe me out of a job, brother?"

"Of course not —but we already have the
Blood Wing
and the
Surf Dragon
"

"For what I have in mind," Thoryn said, "we will need a third ship, a cargo vessel."

"Where do you want to go, then, to need a full fleet?" Kol prompted.

"Everywhere there is to go, to dare everything there is to dare. I have a yen to see Muslim minarets rising high, to visit cities wherein every exotic vice men know is nurtured. It's said that the orb of the world is riven by many fjords. Well, I propose to visit one far from Dainjerfjord."

Edin stood stricken, her housework forgotten. The men gathered closer around Thoryn. Taking a quick consensus of their faces, Edin saw in each an insatiable wanderlust and felt in herself the sting of panic.

"There are markets in the East that can be spectacularly exploited if I read the thing correctly. Furs are wanted, as well as hides, cables, sea-ivory, and down, and these we possess, or can obtain, in abundance"

"Are you saying we should take to the seas in search of
Miklagardur
?" Leif the Tremendous scoffed. "Bah! Mayhap it's time for Thoyrn Kirkynsson to trim his hair and take his ease."

Ignoring him, Fafnir Danrsson asked, "How do we get there?"

Elaborately casual, Thoryn said, "We need only set a course across the Baltic to the Gulf of Finland. From there, the twisting Neva River will carry our ships forty-three miles through reefs and rapids to Lake Ladoga in north Russia. Some seventy streams feed the lake, but by far the most distinguished is the Volkhov River, leading south to Lake Ilmen and to the fortified trading market of Novgorod.

"From there, we row. The waterway is too swift and too cramped to maneuver by sail. Farther south, up the River Lovat, we'll arrive at a point where we drag our vessels on logs a short distance overland. Thus we'll reach the source of the great Dnieper River, winding fourteen hundred miles to the Black Sea, along the coast of which well make our way to Constantinople —
Miklagardur
, the Great City."

Gasps had been heard through this; faces grew open-mouthed. Edin swayed on her feet.

"The journey will be desperately difficult, make no mistake," he continued calmly, "especially below Kiev, where the Dnieper turns south through granite ravines and a series of brutal cataracts. In the middle are sheer high rocks. The river, dashing against them, causes a loud and terrifying tumult." He scanned the faces watching him so attentively, and added dryly, "Any Norseman afraid of loud noises had best stay behind."

"How do you know all this, Jarl?" asked Magnus Fairhair.

"I met a merchant in Kaupang, a traveler from far places, a man of great inquisitiveness of the doings and dwellings of strange folk in strange lands —a Muslim who had many dinars and dirhims. He told me all this and much more."

Edin felt faint. Her heart was throbbing. Such a journey would take years, mayhap a lifetime.

Thoryn was speaking on: "For some time I've considered the Middle Sea —in the light of glory as well as profit."

And what of his wife, sea-tossed from her homeland to this far coast where she had no one but him? Had she been considered?

"I for one am a man whose heart is that of an explorer—"

"As is mine!" Hrut Beornwoldsson, who had just arrived to visit Sweyn, stepped forward. "I'll go with you, Jarl. I'm fifteen winters now and should be reckoned a full man. I'm sick of staying up at night to help gravid cows drop their calves!"

The older Norsemen hid their smiles at this boy who was wearing his father's outsized war shirt and helmet. But Jamsgar said, "You're just a puppy too witless to keep silent in the presence of your betters."

Hrut's hand fell to is axe haft, and at the same time he surged forward. He was stopped by Magnus and his son Ottar. Thoryn said, "Hrut, you think you are man enough?"

Deflected from his thoughts of challenge, he answered in a voice vibrant with daring and adventure. "I'll prove my valor as soon as I get the chance."

The older men's smiles were not so well hidden now. In fact, Jamsgar was staring with open derision. "The boy thinks because he can get his hand up a thrall-girl's skirt he can get his spear in a pirate's heart."

Hrut's prominent cheekbones flushed angrily. "You mock me, Copper-eye?" Magnus and Ottar renewed their hold on him.

"What? Would I mock Hrut the Juicehead?"

Thoryn said to Jamsgar, "A crime in words is the worst crime. The tongue injures more than a blade." To Hrut he said, "I will be watching you this winter. What I see will influence whether or not I think you are as manly as you say." It was not a promise, but not a rejection either.

Jamsgar would have said more, but Leif shouted, "By Odin, God of the Winds, Rider of the Eight-hoofed Horse, God of Battle —this is crazy! You're getting excited about a tale told by a greasy merchant, whose knowledge of ships probably goes no farther than the price of rope and sails. What have we to do with some Muslim heathen?"

Ottar Magnusson, forgetting Hrut, shouted back, "Mayhap you'd best stay behind then, Leif, with those afraid of loud noises."

The big man flushed and glowered. "What he's proposing—" He swung his heavy face back to Thoryn. "You're asking us to become mere traders."

"The man who is a trader has to challenge many perils," Thoryn answered, "sometimes at sea and sometimes in alien lands, and nearly always among heathen races."

Rolf, scratching his rusty bearded chin thoughtfully, said, "I've always wondered why the good gods made the world so strange and diverse if it was not to be seen."

Leif adjusted his big paunch like a sackful of apples. "Bah! You talk like boys with moonlight in your eyes."

Thoryn's patience came to an end. "Better than to talk like a droning old man. I am not the sort to tackle an enterprise like this lightly. But to each his own earning of fame. If you choose not to go, I will hold no grudge —but if you try to undermine me in this, Leif, you will see how resolved I am . . . and may find yourself sorry."

By the time the discussion was over, the longhouse was covered with a quilted pearl fog. The visiting Vikings went out into it like men disappearing into a magic realm. Edin turned from the heavy carven door, leaving Thoryn to shut it as she made her way quickly to their chamber. There were some things that couldn't be borne in public.

She was not able to grieve alone for long, however, for he soon followed after her. "Edin!" he hissed like a blaze.

She'd thrown herself on the bed and raised her head slowly.

"You're angry! Why? You want me to stop raiding. My only alternative is to become a trader."

She searched the urgent emotion in his eyes. And even as she did so, abruptly he took hold of himself with an almost visible clench of will. The look of self-doubt vanished, and with it vanished her hope. She said quietly, "I think we are doomed, you and I."

He crossed to the bed and caught her in his arms. He felt her belly with his hard hands. "How can you say that, mother of my sons."

She tried to wrench away. "I hate you," she cried. "You're going away— who knows when you'll be back, if ever? I hate you, do you hear me!"

His head reared back. He went stiff and dropped his arms from her. Taking her chance, she slipped away, to the opposite side of the bed, where she sat with her back to him him. She felt him rise off the mattress. A moment passed, another, and another. All at once she turned to him, all her love ready to make itself plain. "Thoryn, I didn't mean—!"

But he was gone.

***

Thoryn slept poorly. He couldn't forget that his mother was alive and ranting about "something left undone." He should have killed her. The man he'd been before he'd sailed to England last spring, before he'd been captured by his own thrall, would have killed his father's murderess without hesitation. Such a crime demanded revenge. Even if it meant a son raising his sword against his mother. But what would gentle Edin think of him then? If she thought she hated him now, what kind of revulsion would he see in her eyes if she knew he'd killed his own mother? And so the days marched on, and he took no action except to keep Inga in exile.

The autumn passed, and the world took one last deep breath before the dive, and then, as it must, winter came on. Bitter was the wind that for three days came from the south, giving no quarter, scrubbing until the mountain peaks looked near and stark. Clouds came up and were driven eastward. It rained heavily. Then the rainfall turned whitish as snowflakes mingled with it. Soon it was just snow. The wind stilled. There was silence, the intense, frigid silence of the north. The temperature fell, so that the snow couldn't quite dissolve but lay covering the valley like a threadbare, white garment.

The next day a pale grey sky hung overhead; by noon it decayed into flakes and began to fall soundlessly, continuously, that day and the next and the next. The pines showed black on the mountainsides; the snow rounded over and built up; a reflected brightness came from it, a milky gleam.

Edin, a southernwoman and unused to such weather, seemed apprehensive. It was Thoryn's instinct to comfort her, but the chill outside the longhouse was no fiercer than that inside. For a sennight he forbore to touch her —then he woke from a pleasant dream one night to find it was no dream, that he really was caressing her, and she, in her sleep, was responding.

"Shieldmaiden," he murmured. She woke and rose into his arms in the dark, mutely, passionately. He saw that she'd been waiting for him to take her, that she wanted him to open her and move into her and make her cry out.

And yet in the morning he took the precaution to reinstate the winter between them. He was not a man to take unnecessary risks. Though he'd married her to assure himself of the happiness of her, that summery shore seemed far away now, a mere line, a thin lavender bruise dividing the water and the air of his life.

The snow became a nuisance. Trails had to be shoveled, and the shoveled snow formed frozen barriers creating snow-halls so narrow that people had to walk in single file, and if you encountered any one. . . .

Every pillar and post wore its white cap. The heights lay suffocated. Thoryn's sworn-men grew red and lusty. They donned gay-colored winter caps to shovel the longhouse roof or to drag logs down from the forest in sleds. Their blue eyes shone in the snowlight like ice.

The nights became intensely cold. The thralls lay quietly in their beds. In Thoryn's bedchamber, soft jerking movements began to pulse in Edin's belly. She had yet to speak one word of the child to him. Though he willfully placed his hand over her swelling abdomen, he felt as outcast as Inga did from her rightful place; he felt as forcibly removed as Edin did from her Fair Hope; he felt the exile's choking ardor for home.

It was clear to him that though Edin persisted in her silence, the baby was overwhelmingly important to her. She often stopped as she walked, to check her body's feel of it, and only when reassured, walked on. That kept his hope alive, even if her internal absorption made him feel further excluded. He wondered what was going on within her, how it felt to have a living being in her belly. Was she frightened? He felt curiously ignorant and innocent — and shut out. But surely when the babe was born, before he had to leave her. ...

His notice of her now was more intense than ever. He saw how she began to chide his men —men whose lives were fraught with incident and exploit, who drained each day like a cup to its dregs —how she gently scolded them to curb their voices and leave certain coarse words out of their talk, and to treat the thralls better. "After all, Rolf Kali, you are so strong, I would think you'd have no need to taunt someone as unoffending and defenseless as poor Snorri. The more superior the man, the less need he has to wound those lower than him." Her eyes, which were very green, stayed on Rolf a little longer before she gave him a smile. And amazingly that subtle flattery worked: Rolf stopped.

When the pelts came into their prime, Thoryn encouraged every man along the fjord to harvest as many as he could for the coming journey. They went out on their long skis, taking with them sledges which they brought back bale-heaped and full of gorgeousness.

He also reminded them in their outings to keep a lookout for an oak tree tall and straight enough to become the keel of the new ship. The keel had to be carved from one piece of wood, and the size of the knorr would depend on the size of the oak available.

Hrut Beornwoldsson came one day along the narrow, high-walled paths of snow to the door of the longhouse. With ice on his shoulders and frost on his eyelids and his face all chapped and blue, he claimed, "Jarl, I've found the perfect tree for your longship."