Bjorn took her hand and led her to some nearby bushes, heavy with late berries the birds hadn’t yet
found. The fruit was drowsily sweet, but occasionally she found one whose tart flavor made her mouth water
and her lips pucker. She and Bjorn made a game of
finding the best offerings and popping them into each
other’s mouths.
Bjorn licked the juice from her fingers, sucking each
one slowly. Her gut clenched with desire. How could he make such a simple action so erotic?
“You are desperately wicked,” she said.
“It’s good that you recognize that right from the start,” he said, his eyes blazing at her. “That way in the winters to come you won’t be shocked at the decadent little bed games I teach you.”
The winters to come.
If only it were possible. What
joy she and this man would give to each other in a life
time of loving. Part of her yearned to keep silent, to let
this idyllic moment linger as long as it could. The part
of her that remembered Magnus’s strictures about
truth-telling knew she could not.
She squared her shoulders and felt the pain in her
joints afresh. “In the winters to come,” she said evenly, “I will be the wife of Farouk-Azziz.”
“That’s foolishness.” He popped a berry into his mouth, grimacing at its sourness.
“No, it’s the truth.” Her voice was flat.
A prickle of unease ruffled his brow. “In case it’s escaped your notice, my love, you’re not exactly bridal material anymore. You are no longer a maiden, thank the gods.”
“There are ways around that.” She remembered
overhearing the whispered panic of one young bride at the Danish court. An old midwife had advised the young woman insert a small blood-filled bladder just
before coming to the bridal bed. Honor was satisfied,
and the bridegroom none the wiser.
“I love you, Rika, and I believe you love me.” Bjorn’s
face was pale and drawn. “There has to be a way for us
.”
“No, Bjorn. I will always love you, but we have no
future together.” Tears trembled on her lashes. “I gave my word.”
“So did I, but by bedding you I’ve broken my vow of
fealty to Gunnar. Once I would’ve faced a snake pit
rather than renege on my oath of loyalty, but that was before I fell under your spell.” He looked at her ques
tioningly. “Gunnar told me you’d bewitched me. Was he right?”
“Of course not,” she protested. “I practice no
seid
craft.”
“Yet our love is so strong it feels like magic,” he said. “In truth, I care not, if only you stay with me,
Rika. My honor is gone, but it’s a small matter now.”
Ketil’s trusting face rose in her mind. “I’m sorry. This is how it must be.”
“No, I won’t believe you mean to continue with this farce of a marriage to the Arab.” Then the
light of an idea burst over his features. “We’re dead.
Ornolf will never suspect we survived Aeifor. I hardly
believe it myself. We need never return to the North.
No one will ever know differently.”
“No, Bjorn.” She placed a hand on his forearm. “No
matter what, I must go on to Miklagard.”
She saw his jaw clench. A small muscle worked be
neath the skin of his cheek. When he turned to glare at
her, Rika looked into the dark eyes of a stranger, a violent stranger. Somehow in the weeks she’d spent in his
company, she’d forgotten that dead expression she’d
first seen on his rugged face. It was back. He bared his
teeth at her in a predator’s smile.
“No one will have you but me.”
He crushed her to his chest and savaged her mouth.
She whimpered, but he seemed not to notice. His fin
gers clutched at her, her bruises making his ungentle
touch even more brutal. She cried out, in pain and
shock. Even in the heat of passion he’d never hurt her like that. Never with intent to harm.
She struggled and managed to slip out of his grasp.
She bolted away, not sure where she could run, but he
overtook her in a few steps. Bjorn stumbled and he
pulled her down on top of him. He rolled, pinning her beneath him.
“Bjorn, please.”
He seemed not to hear her. He wedged a knee be
tween her thighs and forced her legs apart.
“No one but me,” Bjorn said fiercely. His
erection pressed against her inner thigh.
“Don’t do this,” she cried. If he took her in anger, pounding into her with rage pumping thought him, he’d punish her more thoroughly than all the stones of Aeifor. “
Don’t make me hate you.”
He stopped.
The feral light in his eye dimmed and he saw her
clearly. Saw the tears coursing down her bruised
cheek. Saw her swollen lips. Worst of all, saw fear
in her eyes.
“Oh, gods, Rika.” He pulled back with a shuddering sob. Bjorn rolled off her and turned away. His shoulders heaved. “Forgive me.”
Stiff and sore, she sat up. Rika reached out to touch
him, to offer him comfort, but her hand shook so
badly, she pulled back. Fear curled uncertainly beside
longing. Magnus had warned her of the volatile power
of
inn matki munr,
the mighty passion. When she
begged Bjorn to love her, she never expected this all-
consuming ferocity.
“Why?” he asked. “Why do you kill me by finger-lengths?”
Only her submission to Gunnar’s will guaranteed
her brother’s safety. T
he threat to Ketil and Bjorn still
weighed on her, but nothing short of the whole truth
would serve now.
“If I don’t marry the Arab, your brother will send
Ketil to Uppsala to be sacrificed in the sacred grove
next summer. And Gunnar warned me that if I told you of
it, he’d arrange ‘an accident’ for you as well.”
Bjorn turned to face her. “That’s all?”
“I
sn’t it enough?"
He sat up. “Do you think
me so powerless? I can surely steal Ketil away to
safety. You of all people should know that I’m a good
raider.”
“But I want to protect you as well as Ketil. Even if
you knew what accident Gunnar planned for you, you couldn’t be vigi
lant forever. He would only need to be lucky once. But there’s another reason I didn’t tell you as well.
I
t was for your honor’s sake that I kept silent.”
“My honor?”
“Oh, love, don’t you see?” She ventured a hand on
his forearm and he covered it quickly with his, as if he
feared she’d pull it away. “If we flee north and take
Ketil away, it will be known that you have broken your
fealty to Gunnar. You would be outlawed. Banished at
best, drowned in a bog at worst. You’d be damned to
Niflheim in the next world for oath-breaking and you could never return home in this one.”
“I’ll never return to Sognefjord anyway,” he said bitterly.
“You must.” The
tip
of her nose reddened
and a single tear slid over her cheekbone. “For my
sake. If I continue to Miklagard, as far as the world
knows, your oath is
still
intact. The only way I can
bear marriage to the Arab is if I know that you are
there in Sognefjord, caring for the land and the people
of the fjord, watching out for Ketil, living in honor, and I hope, with joy.”
Her lips twitched uncertainly. Her chin quivered and
he saw how she strained to hold back the tears. It was a losing battle. They fell just the same.
He opened his arms to her and was grateful beyond
words when she came to them. Gently, he held her and
let her cry, knowing as he did that the tears were for
both of them.
Damn tomorrow,
he thought savagely. For the moment, holding her was enough.
Bjorn snared a small coney that morning and its carcass now roasted on an improvised spit
over their small flame. Grease drippings hissed in the
fire, sending a savory aroma into the air. Days had stretched to more than a week as they waited on the is
land for Ornolf and the rest of the party to complete
the arduous portage around Aeifor.
In that time, the lovers hadn’t suffered any lack. Bjorn fished in the shallows with a makeshift spear and snared small, unwary prey. Rika dug for tubers
and gathered other edible plants. The river that nearly
killed them when they ventured into its angry cataract
now provided for them well.
And they had ‘drunk deeply from the horn of
love.’ Rika smiled, thinking of the poetic euphemism
she’d used so often in the telling of a maidensong.
She’d never guessed the horn of love was so intoxi
cating a brew.
By tacit agreement, they spoke no more of the fu
ture. They laughed and played in the shallows like chil
dren, then loved each other furiously with the guilty desperation of those who know their time is short.
Sometimes they joined with heart-stopping tenderness
and sometimes they took each other with the ferocity
of mating wolves. Tomorrow didn’t exist. All that mat
tered was the eternal now.
The rumble of Aeifor was constant, but Rika had
learned to ignore it. When an odd scraping sound bounced off the tall pines around them, her ears pricked to it immediately.
“What is that?” she asked.
“Sounds like the
Valkyrie’s
hull,” Bjorn said. “To make this portage, they’ve had to lay down logs in front of the prow and shove the boat over them.” He demonstrated the action, sliding one palm over the other. “When they reach the end of the row of trunks, they go back and drag up the ones they’ve already
hauled the boat over and lay them down in front. It’s like building a plank road before you while pulling it
up behind you as you go. It’s a slow business and
they’ve had to travel at least six
miiller
that way. Short-
handed, too,” he added guiltily. “But it sounds like
they’re near the river now.”
“Oh.” Her heart turned to stone in her chest. “When will they get here?”
“Soon, my love.” His face suddenly
became grave. “Rika, what if there is a child?”
She blinked. Truly, it was something she hadn’t considered. But if a child hadn’t been conceived on the island, it wasn’t from lack of trying. Still, she had to go forward with the arranged marriage. Nothing Bjorn said convinced her there was any other recourse. It was the only way to ensure the safety of her brother and the man she loved more than breathing. She forced a smile.
“If I bear your child, it will be like a gift to me,
Bjorn.” For just a moment, she imagined the dark-
haired, dark-eyed baby he might have planted inside
her. “Is it not often said that the first child can come at
any time, while the second always takes nine months?”
“This is no light matter.” He clasped her hand urgently. “If you bear a pale-skinned child too early,
the Arab will send you back to Gunnar without a nose.
They are a pitiless people in this regard.”
She blanched and then counted the weeks backward
in her mind. Fortunately, her cycle had always been reg
ular as the tide. “How long
till
we reach Miklagard?”
“Another three days down the Dnieper, then ten days to sail across the Black Sea to the Golden Horn,”
he said. “With fair weather, two weeks, no more.”
“If there is a child, I should know by then,” she said.
“Then promise me this.” Bjorn planted a soft kiss on
the inside of her wrist. “If there is a child, you will tell me. The world is bigger than you can imagine. There is
yet time for us to run to a corner so remote we will
never be found.”
“But, my heart, you would be without honor. The
North would be barred against you forever.” Rika al
ready accepted that she would never see the fjords
again, and the knowledge lay like an anchor stone in
her belly. She didn’t want Bjorn to feel the same root
lessness, the same dull ache. “Sognefjord and your
people, the land, everything you care about... it
would all be lost to you. How can I let you sacrifice
your oath for me?”
“I was willing to follow you into the river. Doesn’t
that give you an idea how
little
all those things mean to
me when weighed against losing you?” The scrape of
the
Valkyrie’s
hull was nearer now. Ornolf’s voice echoed off the trees,
bellowing orders.
“And what of my brother?”