Edin's embrace (26 page)

"Here now, give me a kiss, pretty lass. Mmm . . . you got nice legs — and what is this?"

Another voice answered, a feminine murmur, a voice Edin recognized: "You know what that is—oh! Blackhair!"

Blackhair! The worm! Edin looked at the byre wall wide-eyed. How could Juliana . . . ?

"Come on, you know you want it again" came Blackhair's muffled chiding. "You got to go back inside in a while."

"But —oh! don't you do it so hard!"

Then came whimpers and the sound of bodies in harsh motion. Edin continued on.

She couldn't blame Juliana for falling so low. The girl only wanted more from life than serving endless horns of buttermilk and ale. They all wanted more than this existence they had, this never-ending labor which gained them no reward, no single moment of satisfaction or happiness, and they were all driven to desperate measures.

She hurried the short distance to the path leading down to the water's edge. Near the dock, she felt a large, immovable hand on her shoulder and turned with a gasp. An old Viking stared down at her fiercely, with grey eyes so colorless she thought at first he must be blind. Her heart vaulted into her throat.

"You're late, girl!"

She pulled tentatively at her shoulder, and after a moment he released her. He had in his free hand a very fine axe, its head decorated with copper in the image of a creature like a bird. Mutely, she held out the bundle Inga had sent her to deliver. He grunted and motioned toward the boat he had ready to go. Edin looked at this slantwise, and the thoughts that went through her head in that instant were multitudinous, and by the end of the instant, she felt the center of her heart harden.

He took everything from me and left me to this end. So be it

Slowly, fatalistically, she turned, presenting her back to the old Viking. She was not surprised when he struck her. What surprised her was the strength of the blow and suddenness of its effect on her.

The
Blood Wing
, with the
Surf Dragon
in tow, entered the mouth of the Dainjerfjord under a cross-grain of wind. The sea birds gave voice to their homecoming. Thoryn had had more time than he'd wanted to think on this trip, and it was Edin who'd filled those thoughts. She'd seemed so distant for so long. But now he was home and Edin was here. A straight road ran ahead of him.

The land on either side of the fjord glittered under the glare of the overcast day. He had to squint to spy the small figure on the lookout point, a dark-headed thrall-child who turned and disappeared, no doubt to spread the word that the longship was home.

The welcoming party was not large. From Thorynsteading there were only thralls to greet the ship. And there was Sweyn, who said, looking at the
Surf Dragon
, "I see the trip was fruitful."

Before Thoryn could comment, Inga came huffing down the path. His eyes scanned behind her, looking for a particularly bright head of hair, amber hair that flashed and hung down nearly to the knees. She wasn't among the welcomers, however. He wondered, but couldn't bring himself to ask his mother outright.

Inga was saying about the
Surf Dragon
, "What do I take for the explanation of this?"

"You will get your explanation, Mother —but where is everyone?" This seemed an ominously uneasy arrival. No one was saying much; there were none of the usual little knots of welcoming conversation.

Sweyn stepped forward. "There's been some trouble." Thoryn sensed a change in him, but he didn't have time to identify it, for Sweyn was saying, "Your Song-singer, Edin, is missing."

Thoryn's whole heaven collapsed. He turned deaf, as surely as if a whole fugue of sound had hit his ears at once.

. . . missing . . . missing . . . missing . . .

A voice in his mind quietly promised: "I may not be here when you return, Viking."

She had deserted him.

Snorri bumped into him under the load of a standing whale-oil lamp of iron and a brass-bound wooden bucket, booty from the
Surf Dragon
which he was carrying up to the longhouse. His nudge seemed to bring Thoryn's emotions suddenly and violently to the surface. He turned on the man and cursed him harshly, too charged with emotion to hold it in.

He swung back to Inga and braced himself, but it was useless. She was looking at him with an expression both stern and maternal. Though he had oft suffered that look, he didn't like it. Not at all. She said, "I sent Fafnir and Eric into the mountains to look for her."

Thoryn's heart was still stopped.

"She ran away again."

Sweyn started to speak, but she cut in, "There is no other way to account for it." She looked at Thoryn with faint censure fused with affection. It was so maternal, that look. "It isn't the first attempt she's made at running away, is it? She was lucky last time. Most likely this time she'll be wolf meat before the sun rises again. She might as well have jumped in the sea and tried to swim home to England."

Sweyn said, "Jarl —"

Thoryn's urge was to shrug him off, but there was an urgency in the Cripple's tone. "Speak!" he said against the searing anguish that clutched his throat.

Sweyn glanced at Inga. There was something in his manner that suggested he wished to exclude her. Thoryn said, "Walk with me up the path"

As soon as they were alone, Sweyn said, "Jarl, I suspect foul play. I have little to base my suspicions on, but — "

"Foul play? I would say so! I would say Loki, malignant Loki, has been at play here."

"I don't think she ran away. I think Inga had her taken away."

Thoryn's eyes narrowed. Sweyn had become taut. The slack was gone, his eyes were clear, the timbre was back in his voice, and twenty years had left his face. "Explain!"

Sweyn told him of seeing Inga lead Edin into her chamber so late last night. Thoryn remembered what he'd called her earlier, "Song-singer," not "the Saxon thrall," not "the witch." After listening, he said to Sweyn, "That may have a perfectly acceptable explanation."

Sweyn's eyes glittered. "Mayhap, since Inga has tried her best to break the girl. She's been put to tasks . . . hay cutting, carrying water for baths — men's work. I myself used her as an axe target, and not a word was said against it."

He went on quickly, "A few days ago, Inga made a trip to visit old Soren. Who knows why? And today, when one of the fishing-thralls reported at the first meal that a boat was missing, Inga quickly shut him up. I talked to the man myself later and sent him around by rowboat to see if Soren was about his place. He got back just a while before you —and Soren is not to be found. His hearthfire is cold. Jarl, it takes less than the ability to read runes to make out that Inga arranged with Soren to seize your woman and take her away. If I were you, and owned a woman like that, I would look into this."

Thoryn stared at him for several heartbeats before he said with massive sarcasm, "I can't help but wonder why you tell me this, Sweyn, or why I should believe any of it. I find it easier to believe you of slander-bearing than concern for the woman you blame for your crippling. You used her for an axe target?"

"It's a long story, Jarl. Let the skalds tell it later; there's no time now. Only know that your Edin challenged me to become a man again, and so I have. And it would be sorry of me now to let her be taken out to sea and drowned by the likes of old Soren Gudbrodsson."

Thoryn paused in indecision only a moment more, then turned and went down the path to where Inga was watching the unloading of the ships. He took her arm, and she turned to him with a look of such sweet, tolerant unhappiness that he almost cried out for mercy. Her eyes were as blue as the sky. She said, "Son, you look hungry. I have just what you need up in the longhouse —bread, honey, yellow butter—"

"Did Soren take her?" His voice was low; he felt icy; he was holding on to his patience and his temper and his sanity for dear life.

Inga didn't dissemble. In fact, a sort of mask came over her face. She'd always been extremely fickle in manner, but this was different. Her blue eyes seemed to fill with the old cumulus of nightmares. "Aye," she said simply, "he's taken her to Hell."

Thoryn was stunned, doubly stunned. It was all true, what Sweyn had said.

Drowned!

It was not until that moment that he knew exactly what Edin meant to him. When he spoke, the words came out slowly: "Then the curse of Hell shall you bear, woman. Your only son curses you forever. I swear this, and swear I will never forsake it."

Inga's face went black, and then . . . she laughed. It was a sound he'd never heard; it was something new beneath the northern sun.

"Let her go," she cackled, "and thank Odin for it! She was a demon. She unmanned you, made you feckless and cowardly. She was slow poison, wanton death. I was duty-bound to get rid of her, just as I —" A wretched pause, as if she were trembling on the edge of saying something far more consequential, and then, again, that laugh.

A bolt of horror ripped through Thoryn. The corners of his jaws bunched against it.

***

All day Soren sat at the tiller bar of the little craft, never saying a word, not even when Edin regained consciousness and picked herself up from the bottom of the boat where he'd tossed her. Not even when she asked him quietly what he meant to do with her.

Like a flying bird, the boat sped on, a bloating wind in its small sail, past shining cliffs, past towering hills, past ranging headlands. She grew tired of sitting on the hard bench. Her head hurt badly from being struck by the hammer of his axe, and now and then she kneaded the sides of her skull to try to pacify its contents. Her stomach felt most delicate and doubtful. Eventually the slip and slide of the horizon sent her to the gunwales. But after that one time, she wretched no more. The hours passed with nothing but the pervasive sound of the sea. She tried not to think about dying; her thoughts along that line were not brave.

At last, as the winterlike sun withered toward the western horizon, Soren nosed the boat into a little cove just inside the mouth of a small, uninhabited fjord. The narrow beach was backed by cliffs of black rock which leaned out into the sea on each end. The old man pulled the boat onto the beach and gestured Edin out. She didn't move far and never took her eyes off him. He reached for his sack of belongings and tossed it on the sand, then was quite open about talking his axe from his belt. As he raised it ready to swing at the level of her neck, her very life quivered within her.

Edin would have lost her head in the next instant except that her young reflexes were faster than the aging Viking’s. She ducked to one side, hearing the whisper of the blade just above her ear.

That made Soren angry, to swing and miss like that. His breath made a snorting sound in his nose. He charged her, axe up and swinging, fully expecting to connect with his victim this time. But she escaped the swing again. Her hours with Sweyn repaid her now.

A third swing came. Her hands were by now circling the reed of her neck, as if she could protect it. Meanwhile, she wasn’t simply standing and waiting to be cut down. She danced fast away from the swinging axe. Soren staggered. He was out of control with rage now, but he was large and strong and his axe was a monster thing; if he ever connected it with any part of her, it would be all over.

Before he could regain his balance, Edin ran —but there was nowhere to go! The beach was walled on all sides by rock, except for the side bounded by the sea. Soren caught her by her hair, which streamed out behind her. She screamed as she went down. He panted and puffed above her, rabid with rage. His insane passion seemed the only thing keeping him upright. She watched as he raised his axe again, gripped the weapon two-handed and lifted it high to his right. He screamed, to gather every ounce of strength left to him. He had every intention of cutting her in two.

Not until the giant axe started down did she move, rolling to his left at the last instant. He'd already committed himself; he couldn't stop the swing. His axe buried itself completely in the sand.

"One moment, I beg you!"

The old man, pulling his axe free, seemed surprised at the sound of her voice. She went on frantically, "I know Inga has put you up to this, but — "

"It's the jarl's orders I carry out."

"The jarl is gone! It's Inga who wants me dead."

"You're a witch, and the jarl doesn't want you around anymore." He lifted the axe again.

"He may not want me around, but he wouldn't order this murder. It's Inga, I tell you!"

"Bah! You would say anything to stay alive."

Truly she was saying anything that came to mind: "Thoryn Kirkynsson is no fool. And no coward. If he wanted me dead, he would do it himself. He wouldn't have me killed by an old man. But why should he want me dead at all? I have value. Men like girls . . . concubines . . . bed-thralls, and-and those who can afford them frequently acquire them. In fact, I have double value now, for I carry a child —the jarl's own child."

She saw Soren's hold loosen on his axe. Reluctantly, he lowered the blade.

"You saw me wretch. That is why —I have the morning sickness women get."

She could see his mind wrestling. The more he thought, the more addled he seemed to become. He took to pacing. As soon as he turned his back on her, she rose and started to back down the beach. Soren turned to see how she'd lengthened the distance between them, and an angry growl came from his throat.

She ran wildly for the boat. He couldn't catch her, yet he managed to shove her, destroying her balance and making her fall. He landed on top of her with a yell of exultation. Now her heart was wild, pounding at an incredible rate, as if to compensate for the eternity of stillness ahead.

But he didn't use his axe again. Instead, he dragged her sobbing and stumbling to where he'd dropped his sack. Holding her with one hand —he was so strong, despite his age! —he found a length of rope. He locked her hands mercilessly behind her back and tied her ankles. He wrapped her cloak about her body next, encasing and trussing her like a sausage.

At length, he lifted her and carried her under one arm. At one end of the beach the black rock formations made a pool. The tide was out for now, and the water was shallow; yet what was there was cold as Soren laid her down in it, and it seeped through her clothes.

"I leave it to the gods to decide your fate, woman. If you can manage to escape before the tide comes in, then you will live." He stood to turn away.

"Please don't do this!"

He looked at her once more, with those frosty, ungenerous eyes. "I leave you to the gods. Your fate is not mine anymore."

***

Thoryn had sailed home from the south, and although there were fjords and coves and innumerable islands where they might have passed by a small boat without seeing it, Thoryn felt old Soren would not have taken that chance unnecessarily. The old man must have taken Edin northward.

When they set out, it was into an opalescent world of dusk. Too soon night fell. The Thunder God showed some mercy, however; the clouds cleared and the stars shone at their full. Thoryn had the
Blood Wings
sail lowered, and he ordered his men to row —slowly, for they were near the shore and had nothing but the stars to light their way. Their voices toned away to mere whisperings, for this was wicked water studded with bald-rock skerries.

He'd brought the
Blood Wing
, despite her fractured ribs and strakes, because he wanted a ship he knew, a ship that followed his will as well as a familiar horse. He maintained a tight-lipped silence while his thoughts ate at him. Thoughts that all had the same center: Edin. Why hadn't he seen his mother's unsoundness before? He'd so long ago lost patience with her that he'd learned to mostly ignore her, and thus he'd left Edin unprotected in her care.

Standing at the steeringboard of his dragonship, with its sail stowed and oars out, half of him thought,
It is silly not to hope
, and the other half felt a dark and brooding pessimism.

Edin lay in the rock pool like a sickly infant left for the sea to smother. She'd quickly become cold, and colder. Now the touch of the sea water was as painful as nails piercing her flesh. Her body shook in spasms, stirring up swirling, muddy sediment in the shallow pool. She stuttered, half in rage, half to keep herself sane, "I want to live ... I want to live ... I want to live!"

But gradually her voice got far away as her battered head grew buoyant and strange. The very bones in her skull seemed to swell with fear. Her flesh ran with terror. Screams rose in her, but she wouldn't let them out.

She heard the spray of the rising ocean as breakers cascaded against the stand of offshore black rock.

Little by little, steamlets of rising water began to make their way into the pool. She felt the tide creep ever higher about her. How long until the regular rhythm of waves broke over the short seaward wall and covered her face?

Looking up, the sky seemed so close that the stars were like some infeasibly bright light straining to break through a pitted black dome. They sparkled, sparkled. . . .

The water in the pool lapped her chin, and Edin twitched to wakefulness. Something within her had cried a warning, bringing her out of the shocked daze she'd slipped into. The water level had risen considerably. It covered her mouth so that she had to lift her chin to breathe. Soon it would quench her. She'd stopped shivering; her muscles and nerves were too numb to react anymore.

She wondered if she could maneuver onto her knees —but what if she fell forward? She would lay face down in the water as totally helpless as a turtle on his back. She decided against trying, and anyway, it didn't seem terribly important anymore. Everything seemed far away now. Was this the end? It wasn't so bad. It was like standing on the threshold of a dream. She even felt warmer, felt a sensation of warmth like a fine embering fire. A silly smile took hold of her and wouldn't let go. She imagined the air smelled of summer, of English roses, warm, sweet, drowsy. . . .

The sea broke over the pool's wall, and fear called Edin back yet again, stark and vivid and primordial. Even now there was something in her that refused defeat. The water churned; the great wave tossed her. She was powerless to fight it. For a moment she was submerged, in a place of almost pure darkness; then, as the wave subsided, she was left lying on her side, her hip wedged against a rock so that her face was above the water. Now all her in-held screams gathered into one scream. She cried out in a voice deep and guttural, unfeminine but determined:
"Vi-i-kinng!
"

Before she could catch her breath, the high tide brought in another dashing wall of sea water. It hit the rocks with splitting force, seethed, and washed over them into the pool.

***

The
Blood Wing
found Soren's small craft floating bottom-up near a rock-fanged skerry. Its bow was staved in, and it was clear what had happened: In the dark, the boat had been tossed against the rocks. There was no sign of the old warrior. Nor of Edin. The crew was silent, waiting for Thoryn to say something. Finally Rolf asked him if they should turn for home. Thoryn's mind was occupied with a vision: Edin's face blank and waxen, her hair floating about her like seaweed, his hand reaching and not quite catching it as she sank away from him.

When Rolf touched him, he came back to life abruptly. "We will proceed."

"Oath-brother, be reasonable."

Thoryn's answer was as cold as the waters of Dainjerfjord in deepest winter: "We proceed, Norsemen."

And so they did, for no man aboard was willing to argue against him, though he heard a word muttered: "Witch!"

They were just passing the mouth of an insignificant fjord when they heard her call, one word in Saxon, hoarse and throaty, then . . . nothing. No man said a word; their oars had stopped motionless in the water. They sat silent, waiting. Thoryn held the steering-oar in a grip that could have broken a man's back. But no other sound came to help them locate her. The sea crashed loudly up the shortened beach of a nearby cove. Thoryn watched it, his eyes straining for a welcome shape, then suddenly he said, "Take her in! Hauk— up on the prow platform! Watch for hidden rocks!"

Hauk leapt forward as ordered, to hang on the neck of the dragon and study their passage intently. It would be unwise to race in and tear their bottom open and so end like Soren Gudbrodsson.

Meanwhile Thoryn waited until the others completed their row, then shouted, "Oars up!" He steered the coasting Blood Wing toward the sloping beach.

There was a crunch as the prow landed. He instantly hoisted the rudder. A wave came in with them, and the ship ran in farther; then, as the wave fell back, the Blood Wing settled into the sand, listing slightly to the left. The men shipped their oars and stacked them in a pile. Then ... a deep hush. Every man turned to watch their jarl still standing alone at the stern.

He tried to pierce the darkness with his eyes. The beach was nearly gone, nearly swamped by the tide. The sand ended in a rock tangle at the base of the nearest bluff. Those splintered fangs of stone probably formed a pool.

"By the gods-!"

He raced the length of the longship, barely touched the prow platform with his feet, and leapt ashore. A breaker burst against his thighs, and he had to wade through its thick foam. He felt as if he were in a boyhood dream, the kind in which he tried to run but his legs seemed weighted. The heavy sea held him pitilessly; he could only move in slow motion, no matter how he wanted to hurry,
hurry!

***

Out of the blackness, Edin caught a glimpse of a ghastly pale face distorted by the water over her eyes. Hands reached for her; she was lifted. She sucked in breath. She was being carried. Arms had her. She was handed up into another pair of arms, then laid down upon a bed of wood. Again that pale face was over her. Death. Death had come for her. He was like a figure of fog. This must be the ship the Vikings believed to be the ferry to the netherworld.

Gradually her vision cleared, and with a shock she found the jarl bending over her, standing between her and that vision of menacing Death. Already he'd unwrapped her sodden cloak; now he was bent to untie her ankles. She thought she felt his hands chaffing her feet; but it was hard to tell, for she was completely numb.

There was nothing wrong with her sense of smell, however, and when his hands went beneath her to free her wrists, he was so close that she could smell the familiar and intimate fragrance of him, so extremely lush and alive; he seemed a miracle of life.

"Viking," she whispered. She could speak barely above her breath. He had to lean his ear near her mouth to hear. "You came home."

"Aye," he said, his voice nearly as soft as hers. He was leaning over her, speaking for her ears alone. "I had to come home when I started to hear your name inside my head. But when I arrived, you were not there to greet me. I won't punish you too severely for that, under the circumstances. Just a small beating. Never say I'm ungenerous." His voice was odd; it didn't seem to belong to him.

He brushed the water from her face, and at the chill feel of her skin, she heard his chest fill with breath. "Shieldmaiden, I will have this dress off you and put you in my sheepskin." While talking, he was busy with a knife, though truly the garment she was wearing was so threadbare as to hardly need a blade to rend it from neck to hem.

He braced her so that she was half-sitting, to pull the garment from beneath her. It was then that she realized she was in the longship that had brought her away from Fair Hope. She was lying on the platform beneath the dragon's head. And more than a dozen Vikings stood looking at her. The jarl had cut open her sodden dress, and she was mercilessly exposed. She flinched back, thinking to cover herself —but her numb arms hung like empty sleeves at her sides.

He commanded, "Oarsmen, face aft!"

For a moment the atmosphere fairly quivered with taut nerves; but then one moved, and next they all obediently turned their backs. Swiftly he stripped her of the soaking gown. She didn't feel the cold night air before he helped her into the sheepskin sleeping bag; she hardly even felt the sleeping bag. She was numb through and through, so numb she could hardly move, and certainly could not shiver.

Once he had her safely stowed, the jarl shouted a staccato of orders. The next wave broke with a roar on the beach and simultaneously the men dug their oars into the sand so that as the surf receded, they backed the
Blood Wing
down the slope. Thus the dragon slithered back into the sea.