God's Eye (The Northwomen Sagas #1) (17 page)

Then Brenna went completely slack, and Olga sighed and shook her head. When she pulled back, her hands and arms were bloody.

Brenna’s blood. Or their child’s.

“Vali, please. It is too late for anything but this way. She must help. Wake her.”

He gazed on his wife, so weak in his arms. He was losing her. But he would not,
could
not strike her. So he put his mouth to her ear and spoke to her.

“Brenna, stay with me. Be strong. Fight, shieldmaiden. Find your fury and your fire and come back. Please.” He clutched her sword hand and lifted it. “Raise your sword and fight this. No pain can best the God’s-Eye. Odin’s own shieldmaiden. This will not be what lays you low.”

While he spoke, an explosion of thunder rocked the stone walls, and lightning lit the cracks through the narrow windows, shuttered against the cold.

“The gods have seen us, Brenna. Thor has answered. Come now, and do your part.”

She woke with a start and a cry, and she bore down. Olga leaned in again. Vali felt mad with the need to take her pain away. A need he could not meet.

As before, when her body eased, Brenna went under. Her head dropped back, and she fell slack in his arms. But this time, Olga didn’t pull away, and two of the other women leaned in as well. They were busy under his wife’s skirts, between her legs.

He heard a faint sound, like the cry of a mouse.

“
Ta hingab
,” one of the women, Anna, muttered to Olga.

“He breathes?” Vali laid Brenna down gently and stood up. “He is born? He lives?”

Still working, Olga made a sharp motion with one arm and nodded to Anna, who lifted a bloody bundle from between Brenna’s legs.

Then Olga turned sad eyes on Vali. “He lives. Vali, he will not for long. He is too small and was not done being made. But for these moments, yes, you have a son. There is no shame in turning from this pain. Anna will tend him well until his end.”

He did not know the customs of Olga’s people in matters such as this, but he knew those of his own, of Brenna’s. A child like this, born wrongly or too soon, would be killed or taken out into the woods and left to die. Their world was a harsh one and had no quarter for frailty or deformity.

But that
pain
Olga had spoken of was his son. His firstborn child, who was alive. He would not turn from him. “No. Bring him to me.”

“Vali…”

He held out his hands. “Bring him.”

Olga nodded to Anna, who, with evident fear, carried the bundle of bloody linens to Vali and set it in his hands. The cord that had bound mother and child together dangled from the bundle, a knot of wool tied around its end.

It was no more than if Anna had laid only the cloths themselves in his hands, so light was his child, who fit easily across his two palms. The bundle moved, and Vali brought it to his chest, cradling it in a way he had not known he knew.

So small. He pulled the cloth back and saw a tiny, perfect face and a tiny, perfect hand. His skin seemed translucent; even in the light of the torches and candles, Vali could see the threads of veins across the back of that wee hand, and over the lids of his closed eyes.

The little face screwed up, and his son made another of those mouse-like cries. At the same time, thunder and lightning shook the sky. Thunder and lightning in winter was rare indeed. A man born on such a night would have his story told. Perhaps it was a sign that, small though he was, his son would thrive.

“Thor is with us tonight, my son. You will be called Thorvaldr.”

Vali could feel Olga’s eyes on him. He met them and saw her concern. He did not care. His son was alive in his arms and would be named.

“He is called Thorvaldr.”

Olga gave him a gentle smile and a nod, then went back to her work. The women still tended to Brenna, who had not woken again. Her color had gone very grey, and her jaw had slackened so that her mouth was open.

“Olga…”

“She has lost a great deal of blood, Vali, and her ribs are…
murtud
?”

It was unusual these days for Olga to have a failure of language. Vali didn’t know the word she meant, either.

She huffed. “They are injured. This is why she bleeds from her mouth. Bringing the babe did that no help. She must have time to replenish her blood so that she can heal. We will do what we can. If your gods are with you, perhaps they will help her.”

Vali held his son and watched the women work to save his wife. He wanted to be near her, but there was no room now for him at her bedside. He didn’t know what to do. His heart was cracking apart inside his chest.

He could lose them both on this night. He likely would.

No. They were not alone. They were Brenna God’s-Eye and Vali Storm-Wolf, beloved of the gods, and they had brought forth a son.

Thor
, he began silently.
I entreat you. Save my family.

Thorvaldr, his son, made another of those tiny cries, this one weaker than the others. Vali turned his attention to the feather-light bundle and pulled the linens back a bit more. A frail chest, showing each minute filament of rib, throbbed with shallow heaves. As he watched, the pace of his son’s labored breaths slowed.

And then stopped.

He stared at that little chest for long moments, willing it to move again, but it did not. The tiny hand lay inert. The son he and Brenna had made together had left them already. His eyes burning and blurring, Vali turned to Brenna, but he couldn’t see her through the women tending her.

Would he now lose her, as well?

“Brenna.” It was only a whisper, but he couldn’t hold it back. “Please.”

Lightning struck again, a violent crack of light that brought the thunder of Thor’s hammer down at the very same time and left a burning in the air.

“WHAT?” Vali shouted, startling the women. “WHAT DO YOU WANT OF ME?”

Without thinking, he ran to the door and tore it open. Still holding his child in his arms, wrapped in that bundle of cloths soaked in his mother’s blood, Vali ran through the corridor, down the dark stairs, through the castle, out the heavy main doors, and into the night.

Snow was falling heavily, in sheets of flakes so large they made the night opaque. The wind blustered from the north and drove the snow toward the south.

Into that storm, Vali ran out to the center of the castle grounds. He pulled the linens away and let them fall to the snow at his feet. Then he raised his arms and held the naked body of his son over his head, toward the stormy sky. “HE IS THORVALDR, AND HE IS YOURS. YOU HAVE TAKEN HIM ALREADY. WHAT MORE WOULD YOU HAVE OF ME? WHAT GREATER SACRIFICE WOULD YOU HAVE THAN MY CHILD? WOULD YOU TAKE MY LOVE AS WELL? BETTER YOU TAKE MY HEART FROM MY CHEST!”

He felt a hand on his back, and he pulled his son to his chest and whirled around with a vicious growl. Leif stood there, stalwart.

“Vali, my good friend. My brother. You tempt the gods.”

“I care not! Let them do what they will!”

“Your woman yet lives. You mean to give up before she has?”

With no answer to that, Vali stood and stared, his chest heaving with each angry gasp of icy, snowy air.

Leif held out his hands. “Let me take your son. I will see to it that he is treated with care until you are ready to say goodbye.”

Vali pulled away. “Brenna will want him.”

“No. It will cause her more pain, when she struggles already with so much. Of this I know. She awaited a child she could nourish. And she is in no state now to say goodbye. Your attention should be with her.”

Leif lifted his hands again, and this time Vali set his son in them. He bent and picked up the linens from the snow, and he covered his son’s body.

Then he walked back into the castle, through the crowd that had amassed behind him, and went to keep a vigil at his wife’s side.

He knew not what he would do if it was a deathbed he went to.

~oOo~

Snow fell for two full days and three nights, burying the castle again. The dawn broke bright on the third morning, and it was the first time the sun had shone since the morning Brenna had taken a sledge ride to the village and their lives had broken apart.

And still she had not woken.

Tord was dead; he had not lived through that first night, but he had told them what he could before he could say no more. Sigvalde was dead. The men who had attacked the sledge had been part of a band of Prince Ivan’s soldiers. They had overrun the village, killing the five men there and all the livestock. Orm and his men had come upon the aftermath. Two of the men who’d been in the village had lived long enough to tell them the story.

They had been fortunate. The harsh winter had brought all of the villagers into the castle, and the women and children and most of the men still lived there—all but the team whose rotation it had been to tend the bulk of the livestock.

The winter had saved most of the villagers, and the latest storm, which had brought fresh snow above Vali’s knees and drifts up to the second windows, had saved the castle from attack while it was distracted by its losses.

But the storm had ended, and the sun shone again. When Brenna came back to him, Vali would go off and seek the vengeance that his soul demanded.

That morning, while Olga opened the shutters to bring in sunshine and a moment of cold, clean air, Brenna finally opened her eyes and kept them open.

Lying at her side after his own short and fitful sleep had ended, Vali watched her, stroking her fair hair. He saw her come to wakefulness and take a deeper breath. She cut it off with a small grunt of pain and then turned her head and really focused on him.

“My love. My love.” He leaned over and kissed her cheek. “How do you feel?”

“I ache,” she croaked. She gave him a smile and pushed her hand downward, over her belly, in a gesture that had become habit in the weeks that their son had swelled her.

He watched her true awakening play over her face, and his heart broke yet more.

“Vali? Where? Is he…?” Her voice was rough and unsubstantial, and yet the panic in it cut like a blade.

Olga had come to the side of the bed and was pouring water into a cup. Vali ignored her and kept his focus on his wife.

“He lived for a time, but he was too fine for this world. Thor came and took him away to live among the gods.”

She made a face, turbulent with anger and sorrow, and then, in a blink, her expression went blank, and she turned away. Olga offered her a drink, but she didn’t heed her.

Vali understood what she was doing, and he would have none of it. He could not survive her cold remove, not now. Not ever again. He reached and took her chin in his hand, forcing her back to face him. “No, Brenna. Do not turn away. We share this loss, and we will share the healing. I cannot lose you, too. I have been sad and lonely and…and afraid. Stay with me. Stay. Please stay.” He slid his hand from her chin to her neck and leaned in close, resting his forehead on hers. “Please stay.”

She didn’t speak, but she lifted her hand from her empty belly and laid it over his hand.

And that was enough to let him know that he hadn’t lost her.

“I named him Thorvaldr.”

A stifled sob left her injured chest, and she nodded.