Heart's Ease (The Northwomen Sagas Book 2) (10 page)

Here on the field of battle, Leif found the balance Olga talked so much about, the correction in his life against the many losses he had suffered. Here was his power over a fickle fate. Here he made the choice to live or die, to kill or be killed, to be victor or vanquished.

He would live, and not be vanquished. So he bellowed his warrior’s shout and fought on.

~oOo~

Leif surveyed the scene of their victory.

Prince Ivan had hidden in the bowels of his paltry castle, but now his blood soaked the straw in the middle of the grounds. All of the soldiers were dead as well.

They had lost eleven of their own villagers and two raiders. The toll among Ivan’s villagers, less trained and prepared, was greater, but Leif did not yet know exactly how many had been lost.

Around him, people sorted through the dead and wounded, and Leif tried to make a count of the bodies of the villagers. He saw two young men, both with dark hair, crouched beside the body of a man with iron grey hair. The broken shaft of an arrow rose from the dead man’s chest. He had fallen early, then; their archers had taken out Ivan’s in the first rush. He must have been one of the first villagers over the wall. Brave, then, and a leader in the village.

He went to the young men—boys, really, beardless and skinny. And short. The older of the two stood and pulled the younger up and behind him as Leif advanced. Two sets of dark brown eyes looked up at him, one set wary and the other simply stunned.

“I mean you no harm. Are you Anton?” he asked the older boy, who didn’t answer, but seemed surprised that Leif knew their tongue. He tried again. “I am friend to Olga, and I seek her family.”

The younger fought his brother’s grip and came forward. “Olga? Is she here?”

Leif thought he had his answer. The body at his feet, then, was likely their father. Olga’s father. His heart grew heavy. Crouching before the smaller of these small boys, he said, “You are Kalju?”

The boy nodded. “Is Olga here?”

“She is not. She is safe away, but I would bring you to her.” He turned his attention to Anton. “I am Leif, her friend.”

Anton gave him a reluctant nod, still suspicious, then gestured to the body. “Our father.”

“I am sorry. I would bring him with us, and you may be with your sister to send him on in your fashion.”

“No. This is his home. He should go into the earth among the sacred trees he knew.”

Leif did not have their trust and couldn’t argue such a point, so he nodded and prepared to do what he could to help them bury their father.

Again, he wondered what the future held for Olga. And for him.

~oOo~

Leif paid little mind to his wound until they had returned to their castle and he had retired to his room, well into the night. There, he pulled off his boots and stripped to his breeches, setting aside his damaged leather chestpiece and wincing as his tunic, which had become stuck to the wound, pulled free, taking the first of the healing with it.

His chest and side were red with dried blood, but the wound itself was not so bad. It was the length of his first finger, and split wide enough for him to see the meat of his muscle, but the bleeding had, until he’d torn his tunic away, stopped.

The gash crossed through an old scar that had been a far more serious hurt, one which might well have ended his life. At the time of that wounding, he had been seeking Valhalla with more reckless vigor than usual. And yet he lived.

He went to his washbowl and soaked a linen cloth. He would have liked a bath, but the trouble for one seemed too great. So he made do with the bowl and the cloth. As he wiped the dried blood from his skin, he thought of the scene when they’d come into the castle grounds. Before he could get to Olga, Brenna had presented her brothers to her. She had gathered them up, sobbing.

Never before had he seen Olga cry.

He had gone back to his work: caring for his horse, ensuring that weapons and gear were tended to. Olga had made her brothers comfortable and sent her women to tasks in the castle, then gotten to her business of healing the wounded. He had not seen much of her since.

His wound was seeping fresh blood again, so, once he was clean enough, he folded a linen and pressed it over his heart, then sat down in his chair by the fire.

In the time since he and Olga had first coupled, he’d spent only one night in this room. It was much more comfortable than hers, with a bed he could stretch his legs in, but it felt lonely and cold now, even with the fire well fed.

The door behind him opened, though there had been no knock. Leif turned and looked around the chair. Olga closed the door and came toward him. The hour was late, and she was dressed only in her sleeping gown and a woolen shawl. Her lovely hair was loose, the waves cascading over her elfin body.

She was beautiful. Always so beautiful.

He stood. She had never come to him here, this way. They had agreed to keep the privacy of her small chamber, tucked away near the kitchen. Several raiders had their rooms along this corridor, and she would likely be seen, if she hadn’t already been.

“Olga.”

As he’d stood, he’d dropped his hand from his chest, and now she frowned at the wound. “You’re hurt.” She came and laid her hand on him, her fingers pressing lightly just beneath the cut.

He resisted the impulse to wince at the discomfort of her examining fingers on his damaged flesh. “Not so much.”

“It should be treated. I will fetch some healing paste.”

She turned, but he caught her arm—so lithe and frail-seeming in his clumsy hand—and pulled her around again. She was here, and he didn’t want her away from him. He wouldn’t have her for much longer.

“No. I’m well enough.”

“Leif…”

“You’re here, and I want you to stay.”

She smiled then and relented. “Let me bind it, then, at the least.”

At his nod of concession, she pushed him to sit again and then went to a chest and brought linens to his chair.

As she folded and looped and wrapped, making a pad over the wound and crossing linens over his chest to hold it, she asked, “Why did you not come to me tonight?”

“I thought you would be with your brothers. They are well?”

“
Jah
. Sleeping. They were exhausted, but unhurt. Thank you for bringing them to me.”

Not all of her family had come to her. “I’m sorry about your father.”

She paused and met his eyes. The quiet contentment that had brimmed in them receded a bit, and sadness filled the space. “As am I. But I know he was happier to leave in this way than he would have been to simply fade. He was lonely without my mother.” Leif sighed, and Olga’s brow wrinkled in concern. “You do have pain.”

He understood then that Olga had not thought about their future. She was caught in the happiness of having her brothers with her, of Leif and her friends returning victorious, and not even the death of her father much dampened that bliss.

It hadn’t yet occurred to her that her brothers would change her intent to leave her home and go with him, that they two would be separated from each other, likely forever.

Or perhaps they wouldn’t. Her brothers could join them, Leif realized. He would do what he could to bring them back to Geitland, too. They were small and skinny, young men of full age who looked like boys, but he had learned well not to underestimate the strength of the Estland spirit. Kalju was Einar’s age. They might not make raiders, but they could learn craft or trade. Or he could give them farmland to work. If they would agree, he would bring them all.

Åke would allow it, he was sure; he had never asked the jarl for personal consideration before. A case could be made that he was due a favor or two.

Leif’s heart lightened. As Olga finished her ministrations, he caught her hand and pressed her knuckles to his lips. “No. No pain. Only need.”

Taking his meaning, she cast a cocked brow at his bandaged chest. “Too much effort will make you bleed again.”

He grinned. “Then it would seem the effort must be yours.”

The firelight danced in her eyes as she closed her fingers around his and stepped back, urging him to stand. He did, dwarfing her. There was no physical force she could have exerted that could have moved him if he resisted her at all, but he willingly followed her pull and let her lead him to the bed.

At the side of the bed, she dropped his hand and took hold of the tie of his breeches, pulling the lacings loose and pushing the leather from his hips. She crouched at his feet, and he stepped out of the legs and kicked the breeches away.

They had undressed each other before, but this was the first time she had taken complete control and he had remained passive. Leif found the vision of her, at his feet but in control, achingly enticing.

She trailed her long, lithe fingers over his bruised legs. Fighting as he had today, he’d taken several shield bashes to his hips, and he’d driven his own shield into his thigh to block a blow that he’d nearly seen too late.

“These don’t pain you?” she asked as her fingertips made the dark-red skin prickle and twitch.

“An ache I know well. Not of consequence.” The greater ache was in his sex. He throbbed before her.

She looked up. “There is so much strength in you.”

“And in you. Olga—come up.”

Instead, she smiled and took hold of him. He groaned at the touch of her soft—they were soft; how could they be so soft when she worked so hard, had been through so much?—hands, and his hips rocked forward as her curled palms slid up and down his length.

Then she kissed his tip. She had never done so before, and he had never asked. He treated her with care always, letting her tell him what she wanted, what she was comfortable with. He’d never asked for details about what had been done to her, by her husband or any other man, and he didn’t feel he needed to. He had seen enough in his life to know, as Olga so often said, the way of things.

When she sucked lightly at his end, sensation sliced through him as if on the point of a blade. He jerked and groaned her name, and this time she stood. Leif mourned the loss as she left his sex and pressed her hands on his belly. At that urging, he took a step back and, finding the bed against his legs, he sat.

She pushed her body between his legs and bent her head to kiss him, her hands taking firm hold of his face, her fingers curling into his beard and pulling lightly. Her hair fell all around them, curtaining them in darkness, and filling the intimate space inside with her scent.

He hooked his hands around her thighs and returned her kiss, letting her small but limber tongue lead their dance. His heart pounded, making his ears ring and his wound ache.

The scent of her, the taste of her, the feel of her.

Oh, how he loved her.

He had loved his wife. Not when they were wedded, but Åke had made the match well, and they might have fallen in love anyway, given the chance. Married before they knew much of each other, just after they’d both been considered of age, they grew quickly to fondness. Love caught in that tinder, and Leif had been a happy young man indeed by the time Toril was round with their first child.

His love with Toril had been a quiet thing at first, a friendship above all else. They had learned to be married, and to be grown, together, and a powerful bond formed in that place. She had been a strong woman of their people. A good wife, a good mother, a good helpmeet. Then they’d begun to lose their children, and his love for his wife, and hers for him, had become something else. The losses turned her, weakened her, and their love had then been made of her needing him and him attempting to be what she needed. He’d turned his own grief inward to make strength in himself to see Toril through hers.