The Enchantment (3 page)

Borger was the first to recover and he could manage but one word.

“Ale!”

TWO

B
ORGER
'
S HALL
and houses lay in a circle around a wide clearing, bounded by fields on one side, forest on two others, and the great lake, Vänern, on the fourth. Newer huts and houses had been built just outside that main clearing and along the path down to the lake. But the women's house still sat, as it always had, directly across the common ground from the long hall.

Serrick led his daughters across the moon-drenched clearing to the door and paused outside.

“The older women and all unmarried freewomen live here,” he said in a voice that betrayed the strain of so much talking. “They will show you what needs to be done . . . most of them work in Borger's hall and fields. When you go in, find an empty place on the floor and make your pallets quietly. You have your things?” When his younger daughters lifted the bundles in their hands and nodded, Serrick sighed. “Miri. Marta.”

In the moonlight their eyes glistened and their chins quivered. He placed his gnarled hands on their cheeks and stroked tenderly. “Gentle ones, you must be strong. You have learned well the ways of women, for having so poor a teacher. You will have many children about your hearth someday. You must tell them of Serrick, your father. And of your mother, Fair Leone of the Swans. My heart will be proud when I join Leone in Odin's great Valhalla and tell her that her daughters are fair and good and wise.”

“Father—” Marta started to speak, but his fingers on her lips stopped her. Still, he could not stop her from throwing her arms around his neck and hugging him fiercely. Miri did the same, tears rolling down her cheeks. After a long moment, he set them back and whispered, “Go.” They opened the door and slipped inside.

“Come, let us speak, Daughter.” He caught Aaren by the arm and pulled her into the moon-shadow of a nearby tree. Removing his wide hat, he looked up into her face. “I have felt the foul goddess Hel's cold, dark finger beckoning me,” he said in a dry whisper. “I am not long for mortal realms. That is why I have brought you here . . . why I have given you to Old Red Beard.”

Aaren had known for some time that he would bring them here . . . and why. She nodded, searching the old man's countenance in the dim light. His eyes bulged strangely, and as the night breeze tugged open the neck of his cloak, she glimpsed the large, wattling growth on his neck.

Only two summers ago, he had been a hale and vigorous man. Then last harvest she had seen the lump, and over the months she had watched it grow . . . seen it drawing strength and substance from him while he grew steadily more feeble and wasted. His face was now gaunt, his eyes protruded, and his flesh hung on his bones. Pain was etched in his features and evident in his every movement.

“It is up to you now, to see the enchantment through in all honor.” His gnarled hands fastened fiercely on her wrists. “You are strong and clever, my daughter. You must be valiant, as well, for they will test you. But know, Aaren, that you have victory-luck ordained by Odin himself. A warrior can have no finer gift. Be true in your heart, be true to your honor, and you will triumph.” He released one of her wrists to clasp the upper part of her right arm. It flexed under his touch, becoming hard, smooth, like finely polished birch, and he stroked it with a gentleness she had not experienced from him in a long time.

“Your arm must win for you a seat and a place of honor in Red Beard's hall . . . and must win for your sisters the right to good and honorable marriages. They have no silver, no possessions, no rank in Borger's hall, and their beauty will make them prey to the lusts of men. Your sword-skill must be their protection, even as it earns you honor among warriors.” He paused and wagged his head. “Old Borger has given his word and he is one to guard it, for the sake of his fame. But beware. He is a lusty old goat, brawling and quarrelsome. He will seek to make some use of you for his own ends.”

Aaren nodded, her throat constricting, her fists clenched. These were final words. Hard words. Parting words.

“I will be strong.”

The huskiness in her voice caused him to look up at her again. Grief surged in her at the pain in his face, and she fought a stinging sensation in her eyes. She glanced down at the sword that only that morning had reappeared at his side. She knew it meant he was going to the wolves, to die with a blade in his hand. Serrick feared nothing on earth except to die quietly on a bed of straw and forfeit Valhalla.

“They will come for you soon and you must be prepared,” he said, clasping both her wrists once more in the strength-blessing of one warrior to another. His eyes shone with a terrible light. “May Odin fight on your right and Thor on your left. And may I greet you in Valhalla one day.”

Aaren ached to put her arms around the old man, as her sisters had done, but forced herself to return his tight grip on her wrists instead. When he released her, he donned his hat and with lagging steps turned toward the edge of the village.

“Father!” Aaren jolted two steps after him. He halted, then turned to look at her with the pain of parting visible in his face. “Tell me . . . my mother's name.”

For a long moment, Old Serrick stared at his daughter. In all the years since Aaren's birth, he had not once spoken that name to her. It was too painful, even for a warrior. But now she asked, and there would never be another chance to tell her. He gazed at her, so tall and strong and proud, a true warrior. But there was still the woman-softness hidden away inside her . . . and she faced a hard path. Would it weaken her to know it? Would she feel more a woman and less a warrior to be connected by the magic of a name to the bold, spirited creature who had given her birth?

“I have told you . . . she had dark hair and fair skin . . . was tall and strong, like you. She was a valiant Valkyr who had carried many a fallen warrior into Valhalla. And yet, one of her greatest pleasures was holding the woman-child she had set upon my knee.”

“She did not leave you of her own will,” Aaren prompted, finding both comfort and disappointment in the familiarity of those words.

“
Nej.
Living so long as a mortal, she came to love it. But Odin sent other Valkyrs to reclaim her one summer. And Freya had Idun cast a spell of forgetting over her so that she would not pine for her mortal life.”

He had told her all of this before. It was never enough.

“But her name . . .” Aaren's eyes burned as if stung by nettles. “My sisters have Leone,” she whispered. “Will you not give me a mother, too?”

Swaying branches overhead cast wavering shadows over the old warrior so that he seemed to shimmer, as if already losing substance and connection with the mortal world. In that long silence Aaren felt him withdrawing, and experienced a new and devastating loneliness. He had always been there, as father, master, guide. But from now on, there would be just her, alone, against all odds. And she asked to have the name of the woman under whose heart she had lain . . . a name to connect her with another being, with all beings, in the way of birth and life.

“I called her only . . . my Fair Raven. You will see her in Valhalla.” Old Serrick dropped his head and turned away, moving with a labored gait toward the beckoning forest.

Aaren stood, watching until he disappeared from sight, feeling hollow inside, uncertain in a way that was utterly foreign to her. For one brief moment, she longed to run into the forest with him, to wield her blade beside his against the familiar danger of fang and claw, instead of against the unknown threat of arm and blade. As quickly as that urge welled inside her, she named it—
fear
—and purged it with a sense of horror.

She was a warrior, sired by a warrior, daughter of a Valkyr. It was only the shock of Serrick's leaving that caused her to have such desperate and unworthy thoughts. She had not understood how alone she would feel without the old man beside her. He had not given her the name she asked for, but he had given her
Fair Raven.
It would have to be enough.

Her gaze flew to the dark blur that even now was disappearing into the gloom of the forest and into the shade of memory.

“I will remember you always, Father Serrick.” And each time it would be with a pain in her heart.

Sometime later, she came to her senses in the blue-silver moonlight and looked around at the dark shapes of the huts and houses, feeling the flow of the night around her and the closing of the past behind her. With that sense of finality came an unexpected sense of beginning . . . the opening of new realms of experience.

She was chosen—destined—by the unusual circumstances of her making, to live outside the normal course and flow of mortal life. She had heard the story of the enchantment for as long as she could remember. Now the time had come for her to fulfill her destiny among men. Her warrior's pride and her confidence in her own strength and skill welled in the core of her. She had sisters to protect, a place to win in the society of warriors, a life to claim among the people of this village.

Her gaze settled on the great hall across the clearing. The sights and smells of Borger's hall were unlike anything she'd experienced. Her senses flooded once again with the smells of soured ale, grease and ashes, torch smoke, and the sharp, vinegary tang of male sweat.

She thought of the men's faces . . . the coarse features and hot, probing eyes set in rough, sun-leathered skin. She thought of their bodies, of the sinewy muscularity and latent menace of their sprawled frames. She was not accustomed to men: their great size, their powerful voices, the heat that radiated from them, the force of their manner. She had felt their eyes upon her like hands, probing, testing her. And she knew Serrick was right; they would come for her soon.

Turning back to the women's house, she lifted her cloth bundle and stepped into darkness, which bore the familiar and reassuring scent of women.

A
CROSS THE CLEARING,
the great hall was awash in both ale and speculation. Borger huddled in his great chair, glaring at his contentious sons and warriors, who were gathered around him, drinking and arguing themselves into exhaustion.

“I let so much blood on Gunnar's field, the stream will run red till the twilight of the gods!” Young Garth Borgerson proclaimed, smacking his chest. It was an exaggeration, all knew, but in the clans of the Norsemen, a well-crafted boast inspired almost as much admiration as a deed itself. He stalked before his father's high seat and braced his feet apart to steady himself. “I deserve a woman of my own . . . and I claim that little wench garbed in green. By Thor's Right Arm—did you ever see such hair?” He paused and swayed, his eyes losing focus. “Like golden sunlight gathered 'round her face . . . so fair . . .”

“Yea—give Garth her hair,” came a drunken rejoinder from Hakon Freeholder, “and give the rest of her to me!” The short, flat-faced warrior made a series of pelvic thrusts and laughter erupted all around.

“Just one night with the blue-eyed nymphs, Jarl,” came another drink-roughened voice. “I'm not a greedy man . . . I'll leave 'em well-stretched and eager for the rest of you!”

“Yea, Jarl, give them the soft, pale ones!” Thorkel the Ever-ready shoved forward and jerked a thumb toward his chest. “And give me the big, fiery one . . . that battle-maiden. I'll soon have her begging for a taste of my
blade
!”

“Have you ever seen such a woman?” another howled. “Flanks and legs like a highbred mare, beggin' to be ridden! And damn near big enough to ride double!”

Borger felt their laughter buffeting him in great hot waves generated by competitive male pride and sexual heat. Never in his long, eventful life had he faced such a dilemma: what to do with three beautiful women, whose pleasures were forbidden to him personally, but whose fate had been placed squarely in his hands. Well, mostly in his hands. There was the little matter of an enchantment to deal with.