The Enchantment (24 page)

“Fight me, Jorund.” It was half demand, half plea, born of desperation.

“Nej.”
His taut features, his swollen shoulders, and his clenched fists echoed it.

With sobering clarity, she suddenly understood that he also meant
never.
He did not intend to take up a blade and fight her . . . ever.

The enormity of their conflict was wrenchingly clear. He expected her to abandon all honor, all pride, all duty and respect—everything a warrior held dear—for a bit of pleasure with him, because he honestly didn't believe she was a warrior. And even if she could convince him, it still wouldn't matter. He didn't care about his own honor as a warrior, she realized with a half-choked sob. Why should he care about hers?

She scrambled up, jerking at the ties of her breeches, panicked by the tears welling in her eyes and the crushing sensation in her chest. Jorund lurched up, calling her name and reaching for her, but she stumbled back, out of reach. She managed one last look as she turned away, and found him standing with his eyes dark and hollow.

It was some time later that she came to her senses and found herself on the cliffs overlooking the lake Vänern. Her lungs were raw, her face burned, and her eyes felt grainy. She was crying, for the first time in years. She wiped her cheeks with the heels of her palms and drew a great, shuddering breath, trying to regain some control.

The emptiness she had felt inside when Serrick left, and when she'd faced the villagers after her harvest battle, was nothing compared with the cavernous loss she felt now. She wanted Jorund Borgerson and he wanted her. He was the only one who could challenge her and break her wretched enchantment. But he didn't intend to fight her. Not now. Not ever. And that meant this wretched battle of wills between them would rage on . . . each encounter lowering her defenses against him, until, sooner or later, he would batter down her inner walls entirely and she would surrender.

It would be disaster all around. She would be dishonored, her sisters would be disgraced . . . and the gods—wherever they happened to be—would be outraged and vindictive.

As she sat, watching the cold, wind-whipped waves of the water below, a surviving spark of spirit deep within her began to grow, countering the darkness that threatened her heart. She still had her pride, her sense of honor, and the strength of will that had sustained her through training and battles and adversity. She was a warrior . . . used to taking things in hand and demanding her due . . . and it was high time she began to assert herself as one. She couldn't—wouldn't—dishonor herself or allow him to dishonor her by taking her without a proper fight.

She had to try one last time to make him angry enough to pick up a blade and fight her to a standstill.

When she got to her feet, her breeches slid down and she stared at herself in horror. Her tunic was untucked, her breeches were half tied, and—worst—her breastplate was missing! How had she allowed things to go so far? Well, never again, she vowed. He wouldn't take her armor from her breasts . . . until he'd taken her blade from her hand.

Glancing at the lowering sun, she struck off across the field and forest, headed for the bee meadow to retrieve her breastplate. At the entrance to the now deserted nut grove, she spotted movement in the tall grasses near the trees and her senses sprang to alert. A moment later Rika emerged from the thicket, carrying Aaren's breastplate in her mouth, the backplate dragging beside her. Aaren stopped, horror-struck, then lunged at the beast and wrestled her battle garment away from it. One bottom corner of the padded leather frontpiece was thoroughly chewed.

She leveled a fierce glare on the beast, who was panting and watching her eagerly.

“Worthless beast,” she chided softly. “Why is it that you remember you have teeth only around me?”

T
HE NOISE OF
revelry, ale-spirit, and contention drifted out over the quiet commons that evening, penetrating the darkness, echoing through the shadows. Aaren approached the half-open doors of the long hall and paused, listening, steeling herself for the coming confrontation. She had donned her best tunic and her breastplate, plaited her hair into a taut battle-braid, and given her sword a new edge and a bath of oil. Each preparation had salved her stinging pride and bolstered her determination to try one last, desperate gambit to force Jorund's temper to a blade-wielding explosion.

When she spotted Garth Borgerson striding toward the smithy, she called to him and he steered in her direction with a genial greeting. But when she spoke, his face blanked with surprise.

“Does Jorund Borgerson have a long-blade?” she demanded, letting the battle-heat in her blood rise into her gaze.

“Yea, he has a sword. I know it,” Garth answered, his eyes widening as he glimpsed the significance of her question. “It sleeps in his bed closet, with him.”

“Then go and get it, Borger's son, and bring it to the hall,” she said with quiet intensity. “Tonight he will have need of it.”

TWELVE

T
HE WARRIORS
and village men ignored Aaren when she entered the hall and halted before the great hearth, searching the raucous, firelit gathering for her quarry. She spotted him at a table near the high seat and went to the table directly across the hall from him, staring heatedly at the young warriors seated there until they abandoned the table to her.

Something in her manner was different tonight, they realized; something in the rigid carriage of her shoulders, the defiant angle of her chin, and the determined sway of her hips that charged the air around her. They mumbled to one another and shook their heads as they watched her remove her sword and scabbard from her shoulder and lay them conspicuously across the table before her. The intensity and deliberateness of her movements aroused a sense of expectation. When she emptied her ale horn and leveled a searing look on Jorund, across the way, tension mounted throughout the hall.

The noise of clattering tongues and shuffling feet burst on the thickening quiet. Women and thralls and freemen of the village hurried into the hall, red-faced and panting, craning their necks to locate the principles in the coming conflict. Within the space of a few heartbeats, word had been passed through the hall that the battle-maiden had sent Garth Borgerson to fetch Jorund Borgerson's sword. And when Garth strode from the shadows carrying Jorund Borgerson's memorable blade, expectation escalated to excitement.

Garth paused between Jorund and the high seat, holding up the great weapon and raising an eyebrow to Aaren as if asking what he should do with it. Her eyes traveled over the pommel of the handle, which was made of silver and shaped like a snarling wolf's head. It was heavily tarnished, but it was clearly a formidable weapon. She felt a prickle across her shoulders that was some part anticipation and some part dread. Suddenly her mind and heart filled with the fearsome image of Jorund Borgerson, white-eyed and bronzed with blood-fever—in the full grip of battle-fury—swinging that massive blade in great, savage arcs.

She rubbed her damp palms up and down her thighs beneath the tabletop, and her heart beat faster as she shifted her eyes to where Jorund sat, staring at her with a tightly controlled expression. At her curt nod, Garth carried the blade to Jorund, laid it on the planking before him, then stepped back to the group of assembled warriors.

“What is the meaning of this, Serricksdotter?” Old Borger demanded, shoving to the edge of his chair and staring down at her with glowing eyes, like a hawk assessing his prey.

“It is a reminder to the Woman-heart that he has a vow not yet fulfilled,” she declared, rising. She stepped around the table into the clearing before the high seat, then paused and set her fists on her hips. “In this very place, almost this very spot”—she pointed to the floor at her feet—“he swore he would defeat me.” She leveled a fierce look on Jorund. “And I am weary of waiting for the gods to move his sorry arse to fight me.”

“Ho-ho!” Borger hooted at her insult, and a wave of eager laughter spread through the warriors. As her brazen insult was relayed through the crowd, a gasp of outrage wafted through the women.

Jorund felt his ears growing hot and a tide of red surging up his neck into his face. He had been furious with her that afternoon in the meadow, and in the intervening hours his ire had not cooled. Instead, it had fermented into a thick and volatile brew of stinging male pride and sexual hunger . . . which now poured like potent Frankish wine through his veins, dulling his judgment and loosening his control.

As he gazed at that lush, petulant mouth, at the alluring angle of her shoulders and the provocative tilt of her hips, he suffered a disastrously intense recall of the feel and the taste of her. Beneath that hot surge of wanting came anger that she had enjoyed his deft pleasuring yet still clung to her demand that he fight her . . . and to her wretched delusions of being a warrior.

“But I see now why he dreads raising that sword.” Aaren swaggered closer to him, transferring her disdainful gaze to the tarnished sword before him. “It is so foul and corrupted a blade that it would likely snap with the first good blow from mine!”

Gasps and howls of both protest and laughter swirled around them and Jorund's hands gripped the edge of the table. A warrior's blade was counted a part of his very being—dearer and closer to his heart than a woman. A muscle in Jorund's jaw flexed and all watched his gaze lower to the great sword and glide along its tooled leather cradle . . . a look fraught with both protectiveness and loathing.

“And even if his foul blade did not break,” she declared boldly, “I doubt he would have the courage to wield it against me.” She pinned him with half-narrowed eyes. “He flinches whenever that toothless wolf of his yawns!”

Coarse male laughter buffeted Jorund and his arms began to quake, his shoulder muscles knotted, and his legs ached from the tension rising in him. He glared furiously at her, torn between feeling wounded and outraged. He made love to her with his words . . . she made war on him with hers!

She stalked the table where he sat, her fists at her waist, her shoulders back, her long legs weaving their lithe, seductive movements through his senses. He suffered a frantic, fleeting urge to shove to his feet and walk away from her provocations, but could not seem to move. The anger swelling in his veins would not be denied any longer; he could feel it expanding, throbbing, taking him over.

“And even if his nerve didn't fail him,” she declared, pausing before the table, brazenly sinking her gaze like talons into his, “he would never be quick enough to defeat me. There is a reason he is called
Slow-hand.
” She raked visual claws down his broad chest, penetrating to his most proud and sensitive parts. “The more wrought up he gets, the slower he moves.” Her eyes glowed with challenge and her voice dropped to a husky growl.

“And around me, he gets wrought up very easily.”

His eyes went molten at her thinly cloaked scorn of his lovemaking. How dare the witch taunt him publicly with his desire for her! He came to life before their eyes, thrusting to his feet so forcefully that the bench beneath him overturned. His shoulders inflated, his features sharpened, his great fists clenched at his sides. He had literally risen to her baiting. Now, scarcely a breath was taken or let in the hall, as all waited to see what he would do.

“There is an ear-rending noise in this hall,” he proclaimed. “Worse than the screech of owls . . . more grating than the caw of crows . . . as piercing as the scream of kites and eagles.” He moved deliberately around the table, his head up, his eyes weighted with warning. “It is the howl of a
she-wolf
. . . in heat . . . but unmated, unmounted, and unbred!”

A wild clamor broke loose in the hall. He had returned her insult in kind—turning the confrontation into a full-blown
flyting
! It had been a long time since anyone had been challenged to that precarious ritual exchange of insults in Borger's village.

“Tell her, Firstborn!” Old Borger crowed and burst to his feet. “You there—back away! Give them some room!” He swung one brawny hand in a wild arc and suddenly everyone in the hall was on his or her feet, pressing forward, watching the combatants stalking each other . . . waiting for the next volley in that verbal battle.

“Unmounted and unbred by
choice,
Borgerson,” she declared, circling, curling her shoulders slightly forward. “Not from lack of opportunity.”

“Nor from lack of interest,” he retorted. “You crave a mating, She-wolf—I've seen your pantings and writhings—but you wouldn't have the slightest idea what to do with a mate if you got one.” He punched a finger at her. “You cannot love for fighting!”

“And you cannot fight for loving!” she snapped, stung by his vengeful public appraisal of her most tender and private responses.
Pantings
and
writhings!
She jolted forward. “It is a man's duty to take up a blade in all honor and defend himself and his people. But you hide behind the women's skirts—let them defend you whilst you ‘chew charcoal' by the cook hearths and take on women's work—”

“Yea, I help the women—someone must,” he declared, sweeping the men in the crowd with a contemptuous look. “Their lot is hard and thankless in our northern clans. They do the work of
living
. . . the planting and harvesting, the spinning and weaving, the chopping and hauling, the shearing and threshing. They see to the food and raiment and fuel . . . and even shelter. They defy death to bear children and suffer their children's perils and ills as they raise them up. And they teach the young ones to revere and obey their wide-wandering fathers and far-grasping jarls . . . who do naught but the work of
dying.
They wrench mere babes from their mothers' arms and lead them out into an iron-storm, to feed the ravens upon some foreign shore. And for what? For the empty glory of some fat old jarl's deed-fame! Yea, I prefer to live among the women . . . even as I prefer life to death . . . and pleasure to pain!”

As he spoke the women had rushed from all over the hall to collect at his back, murmuring ever louder, echoing his words and complaints. He understood them, he helped them, and now he spoke for them and their difficult lot. Their faces reddened and their eyes flashed with long-leashed resentments as they lent him the support he had so often extended to them.

“You would not have to be told of a woman's plight
, She-wolf,
” he declared above the rising din, “if you were more of a woman yourself!”

“Nej!”
she choked out past the fury collected in her throat. “I am no woman . . . I am a warrior! And if you were a real warrior—
Woman-heart
—you would not have to be told that a warrior's lot is equally hard! A warrior forsakes the comfort of his home and family, never knowing whether he will return or pour the river of his life-blood upon some strange and foreign shore. A warrior lives with pain and hunger and scarcity—sleeping on the cold ground, slogging through swamps, fighting for every morsel of food he gets . . . then sating the eagles with his own flesh when he falls in battle.”

There was a clamor of shouting as the warriors of Borger's
hird
lurched to their feet and hurried to array themselves at her back . . . a display of solidarity with the one who defended them and their difficult lot. They stuck out their grizzled chins and jabbed angry fingers at the women across the way, grumbling and snarling as their male pride was unleashed by her fiery words.

“A warrior protects and defends . . . subdues and claims,” she declared, bolstered by the long-sought support of her fellow warriors. “It is a warrior's daring and might that win honor and substance for his family. The right to good land, a share of raid-spoils, the right to speak and be heard—all are bought with the dew of his wounds!”

Tumult broke out behind her as the warriors gyrated angrily and taunted and hurled long-nursed complaints against the women. Their grievances were answered in kind by the women's high, strident voices. And suddenly it seemed as if a lightning bolt had streaked through the hall, leaving the entire village charged, polarized—male against female; Christian against pagan; battle-maker against peace-weaver.

“Quit your godless warring,” one woman shouted, “and stay at home to plant and reap your own crops—instead of stealing someone else's!” There was a howl of support from the other women.

“You'll take no more of my sons to die far from home on a heathen sword!” declared another.

“You'll not warm my furs again—fill my belly with yet another babe to lose and rue!”

“That will be no loss!” an angry husband countered. “There's scarce one night in a month I can pry those scrawny thighs apart now!”

“You with your holy-words and prattle of love and kindness—where is this
kindness
when your weary warriors return home in desperate need of rest and pleasure?” another charged. “All we hear is the nagging din of old crows.”

“You enjoy the spoils of the raids well enough—silk-grabbers, wine-swillers, silver-snatchers! Where would you get your new brooches, your silk kirtle trims, your green and amber beads—if we did not go a'viking?”

Old Borger was wild with delight. He stood before his great chair with an ale horn clenched in his fingers, his body quivering, his eyes glistening. He loved nothing better than a good brawl, and one was certainly brewing here. . . . The whole blessed village was about to erupt!

“See what you've started, Daughter of Mischief?” Jorund snarled at Aaren, flinging an arm toward the angry faces aligned in factions behind the two of them. The noise and confusion of the flying insults only heightened their conflict. “Are you so thirsty for the dew of wounds? Will nothing less than blood-letting satisfy you?”

“It is not blood I seek, it is honor . . . another thing you know nothing about!” She stalked closer to him, reading in his face his struggle to contain his mounting fury. “You with your shameless word-spinnings and slaverings and pawings—you tried to dishonor me, Woman-heart. You defamed my enchantment and my blade-skill, you abased me before my fellow warriors . . . then slunk about in secret to coax and cozen me with your pleasure-skill. No more, Woman-heart. Fight me! Fulfill your vow this night, or your people will know—as I do—that you never intend to fulfill it!”