Heart's Ease (The Northwomen Sagas Book 2) (18 page)

“Never. I will kill you for a traitor and display
your
head at the pier for all to see, and then I will reclaim all that my father fought so hard to gain.”

He lunged, and Leif swung his sword to block the attack. The meeting of their blades rang out in the quieting day. They both swung free, the metal glinting as it arced through the sky, and then Calder charged again straightaway, coming in from the side and forcing Leif to turn into the block.

Leif saw his opponent’s strategy then: they were on the narrow pier, and Calder had just forced him sidelong, rendering his shield too unwieldy to be effective and making it difficult to take more than one stride directly forward or back without coming to the edge and overbalancing into the water. If he fell, the fight wouldn’t be over, but it would give Calder the distinct advantage, as Leif would be forced to charge up onto the shore—just as Calder’s men had done.

When Calder came in with the blow meant to overbalance him, Leif ducked low and moved into it, under it, throwing up his shield just as Calder’s arm was at the midpoint of its path.

His shield bashed his former friend’s hand. He heard bones crack, and Calder’s sword flew free and splashed into the water.

Leif spun and stood, now at the end of the pier, with the steady shore at his back. The men who had been fighting and were now victorious, seeing Leif and Calder and recognizing their clash as single combat between two well-matched warriors, formed a loose ring; Leif felt more than saw it.

Favoring his dominant hand, Calder threw his shield away and pulled his axe from its ring.

Leif dropped his shield as well. His fight for Geitland had been lopsided on both occasions, but this battle between two men who had loved each other as brothers all their lives would not be.

“COME!” Calder roared and brandished his axe.

Leif shook his head. This was his seat now. He was no raider, no usurper. He would not attack on his own soil.

“I am Jarl of Geitland. This seat is mine to defend. If you would yield and swear to me, I would gladly accept your fealty, Calder Åkesson.” Without taking his eyes from Calder, he raised his voice and added, “The same is true for any who landed here today sworn to Åke Ivarsson. Yield and swear your oath, and live. Keep loyal to the defeated coward whose skull rests on that pike, and die.”

What came from Calder then was an almost womanly scream, as it came from a throat twisted with rage. His axe was high over his head, and Leif moved to block it high with his sword, but Calder changed his arc at the last moment, and the block missed. As Leif spun, the axe sliced across his chest, and he promptly felt the warm flow of blood down his skin, under his boiled leather chestpiece.

The cut was deep but not immediately mortal; Leif knew it at once, even as he faltered from the force of the blow. He spun just in time to block Calder’s next attack, and sword and axe locked together. Caught in a bitterly intimate embrace, the men stared at each other.

“I loved you,” Calder gritted as he tried to push the axe into Leif’s throat.

“And I you.”

Leif knew the rush of blood down his chest was enough to be a danger to him very soon. He called up all of his strength at once and shoved Calder back. Calder barely stumbled, but in that brief breath of time, Leif caught his sword in both hands and swung. He felt his chest gape open between the press of his arms.

Calder’s head went flying from his shoulders, and in the moments that his body remained upright without it, a bright fountain of blood surged into the air and rained onto Leif and the already sodden earth.

“NO!” came a shout from the crowd, and Leif turned to the sound. Eivind, now Åke’s eldest surviving son, had been driven to his knees, and Astrid had her axe against the side of his throat. Furious grief masked his face.

Exhausted, badly wounded, and awash in his friend’s blood, Leif walked up the berm and stood before another friend. The warriors around them made way.

“Swear to me, Eivind Åkesson. I bear you no ill will. I know you saw your father clearly, and you know the way of things”—his erratic heart stuttered as Olga’s words came from his mouth. “What I did was for the good of our home. Swear to me, and I will bring you into my hall as an advisor.”

“My mother? My brothers and sisters?” Eivind’s mother, whom he shared with Calder and Ulv, was dead. But he had been small when Åke took Hilde to wife and had called her mother as long as he could speak. As had Ulv.

“She lives. She and Turid and the children. We provisioned them and sent them away to make their lives. Swear fealty to me, and go out to find them.”

Eivind spat in his face.

Without wiping the spittle away, he met Astrid’s eyes and nodded. With one blow, silently but for the sing of her axe, she took his head.

Even wearier now, Leif then turned to Ulv, who was already staring directly at him, his eyes wide, but his head steady, showing no other sign of fear. The youngest of Åke’s grown sons, Ulv didn’t yet have twenty years, and he had never been an enthusiastic raider. He was quiet and gentle, and a disappointment to his father. But he was no coward.

Before Leif could ask him to swear, Ulv said, “You didn’t kill them? Mother and the children? And Turid?” Turid was also Åke’s wife, taken when Hilde gave him only daughters. She was near Ulv’s own age.

“It is as the jarl says,” Astrid answered. “They live.” She looked—she was—highly displeased with that fact. It had always been Åke’s way to kill anyone connected to his enemies, irrespective of age or sex. He’d called it a guard against the future. Astrid agreed.

Leif smiled. “A friend told me that if we kill everyone who might someday be an enemy, we will have no one left to be our friend. I think that is good wisdom. So no, we did not kill two women and their small children.”

Ulv struggled in Bjarke’s hold. Leif nodded, and Bjarke released him. Immediately, Ulv stood and raised the arm around which was wrapped the thickly plaited gold of his arm ring.

“On my arm ring, my life, my sword, and my honor, before the gods, I swear my undying allegiance to you, Leif Olavsson, Jarl of Geitland.”

Leif glanced at Bjarke. “His sword?”

After a moment’s hesitation, Bjarke produced Ulv’s sword and handed it to Leif, still coated with the blood of those Ulv had killed or wounded in this battle. He handed it back to its owner. Around them, Leif’s men and women stirred suspiciously, but Ulv only wiped the blade on his breeches and sheathed it.

“I am glad to have your sword at my back, Ulv.”

Ulv bowed his head.

“Come,” Leif called to all as he set his hand on Ulv’s shoulder. “Let us honor the dead of this battle.”

He took a step forward, toward his friends and clansmen—and that was the last thing he knew.

~oOo~

“You take many more wounds to the chest and you’ll not need leathers. The scars will be too thick for a blade to cut through.” Without the slightest hint of gentleness, Birte, Geitland’s healer, slapped her paste over the wide track of sewing across Leif’s chest. “You’d think the gods are trying to get to your heart, as many times as men have carved at it.”

He grunted as she laid a linen over the paste and pressed down. “And yet it still beats.”

“Hmpf. You should keep your shield up. I saw what you did. You had him, and you threw your shield down. Stupid men with their stupid ideas about honor. The victory was yours before he opened your chest, but you had to make a fair fight. You might
both
have died of your honor. What good is a dead jarl?”

He tapped his chest lightly, above the edge of the linen. “Thump, thump, Birte. Not dead yet.”

Astrid stepped into the room but stopped when she saw that Leif lay naked on his bed. Birte had washed him as well as changed his dressing. “Are you finished?” the shieldmaiden asked.

The healer finished wrapping Leif’s chest and then pulled a fur over his legs. As she collected her materials, she said, “He needs rest. He thinks he’s strong again, but see the pallor of his skin. Don’t tax him, daughter.” She turned on her patient. “And you! You stay in bed. I will be back in the afternoon.”

Astrid nodded to her mother as Birte left Leif’s quarters. Then she came and scowled down at the bed. Leif knew the look to be her version of concern.

Leif smiled. “I am well.”

She scoffed. “You are white as the snow. You are not well.”

No, he was not. His chest felt like fire, and he could barely keep his head steady. Calder’s axe had cut deep, scoring bone, and he had lost a great quantity of blood. “Then I will rest until I am.”

She crossed her arms in a display of impatience. “Those of Karlsa are eager to return to their home.”

He had been insensible more than a day, the blood loss making his memories of that time like dimly remembered dreams. Two days had passed since then, and he was only now able to sit upright and hold a coherent conversation. “Then they should be off. But I would see our friends before they go.” He would be sorry to see Bjarke and Harald leave; he had only just won their trust back. He assumed that Hans and Georg would go north as well; they were of Estland, and the only others of their people were in Karlsa. Jaan. Jakob. And Olga.

Olga. She was so close, but it mattered not.

“Do you not wish to travel there as well? Olga is there. And you should bring the news of this victory to Vali yourself. It would go far to rebuild his trust.”

He could not go to Karlsa. His friends had told him about the aftermath of Åke’s sacking of the castle—in which Leif had played a principal role. He had believed Olga and her family, her people, safe because a peace had been in place with Prince Toomas.

If he’d had even a bit more time to think, he would have seen the folly in that belief.
Of
course
Toomas, a warlike prince in any event, would have leapt at the opportunity to overrun lands defended by such a depleted force. Taking that holding meant full control of the entire western half of Estland and more. Soon, Toomas would be able to crown himself king of all Estland.

Now, because of what Åke had done, what Leif had helped him do, Olga’s brothers and virtually all of her people were dead, and her home was burned.

Had she been standing in the room with them, yet she would have been too far from him to reach. No, he couldn’t go to Karlsa. He couldn’t hurt her again, and he knew the mere sight of him would hurt her.

He cared to share none of that with the glowering shieldmaiden standing over him. He sighed, holding back a grunt of pain at the stretch in his chest. “As you have noted, I’m not yet well, and they are eager. They should sail and bring the story of this battle with them. I’ll see my friends in the north later, when Geitland and I are both recovered from our trials.”

Astrid cocked her disapproving blonde eyebrow at him and then left him to his several pains and discomforts—most of them settled in and around his heart.

“Crush two blossoms—only two!—and mix it into the dough.” Olga handed a small bundle of dried flowers to a thin young woman with wide, wary eyes. “It will calm him as it fills his belly.” As the woman tucked the herbs into her hangerock, Olga added, “Go to Vali, Elfa. He would not let this stand.”

She reached out to touch the woman’s bruised cheek, but Elfa pulled her head away. “I cannot. It would humiliate him and cause him trouble in trade. He is not a bad man. Only quickly out of temper.”

Olga sighed and nodded toward the now-hidden bundle. She understood all too well, though she disagreed that the man in question was not bad. “That will settle him.” She looked Elfa in the eyes. “More than two blossoms can be dangerous. Six would be very dangerous.”

Elfa dropped her eyes. “Thank you, Olga. I will bring payment when he is next away.”

“Well enough,
kullake
. Well enough.”

When Elfa left, Olga closed the door against the harsh winter wind and turned back to her worktable, where she was preparing the ingredients for a new batch of traveler’s tea. She shooed a chicken from the table and found a new egg in her bowl of dried mustard greens.

Her house, bigger than ever she’d had before but smaller than many in Karlsa, was packed to the rafters after months of living here in the north. Under Vali’s high regard, she’d taken Sven’s place as the town healer. In her homeland, she’d been paid, when she had been paid, mainly in meals and supplies. Here, where people were more prosperous, she was paid in goods and, rarely, in bits of actual silver.

She had a small purse full of hacksilver. She didn’t understand its use or its value, but she had it, and it apparently made her fortunate.

On several occasions, she had been paid in animals. She had four chickens and three small goatlings. Payment for setting the smith’s son’s leg had been made in the form of a small pen to keep the animals during the day, but in the way of these people, the animals spent their nights in the house. It was crowded.

“Did you tell Elfa how to kill Ole?”

She had. Never before had she done such a thing, but now she had no qualms at all.

Without turning to the sound of her apprentice’s young voice, Olga answered, “I told her how much would be dangerous to use.”

“But why? It is known that Ole beats her. Now she knows how to kill him quietly.”

Frida came and stood at her side. The girl had celebrated her thirteenth year a few weeks before and already she was showing signs of being an accomplished healer. She had been working under Sven, her uncle, before the fateful raid. Her mother, Sven’s sister, had been deeply suspicious of the foreigner who’d been given Sven’s house, and it had taken some many weeks before she had allowed Frida even to speak to Olga.

But now, Olga had an apprentice and a sweet young girl to look after. She was glad, because Jakob had moved to the shipbuilder’s house as his training had advanced, and she’d had a spell of black loneliness in her solitude. Frida had five younger siblings, so her mother had not been so averse to letting her move into the healer’s house, once she decided that Olga wouldn’t corrupt her away from the gods.

That was the hardest part about becoming a member of this community. These people believed fervently, aggressively in their hard-drinking, hard-fighting, jealous, vengeful, self-indulgent gods. They believed that they lived high above them—that they
lived
, that they breathed and bled—and yet somehow cared about the people here, and intervened on their behalf, or on another’s. They killed animals, bathing in their blood, as sacrifices to these flawed gods. And she had heard of rituals in which they killed people as well—their own most beloved, even.

She didn’t believe in these things, and it was known that she did not. It made her a curiosity and a project. People were always asking her questions or telling her stories. It made her different, but no one seemed hostile for that reason. She thought that if she worshipped a different god, perhaps they would not be so amiable in their curiosity. But because she worshipped nothing and respected everything, she was seen as merely ignorant. And teachable.

Olga had come to understand the idea of godly reverence. Sometimes, she thought she might like to believe that there was someone else, or a whole race of someone elses, who might have a hand in her life, who might be placated or angered and thus provide a reason or a purpose for the way of things.

But she did not believe. The only hands in her life, or any life, were human hands. She didn’t even believe in the balance any longer. One must make one’s way, no matter how the sea surged.

She set the pestle in the mortar and turned to Frida. “I told her because it’s knowledge she needs. Whether she needs it to be sure to keep the amount safe or for another purpose is not for us to say. It is up to Elfa to decide the course of her life.”

“And of Ole’s.”

Olga smoothed her hand over the girl’s flowing red hair. In Karlsa, people gave a kind of reverential space, a bit of fear, to those with red hair, even their own clanspeople. She had heard it said here that those with the sunset in their locks had been touched by magic.

“You are wise beyond your years, young Frida, but there is more to healing than salves and teas and stitches. A healer’s calling is to give ease to those in need. What I gave Elfa today is control, in a life that has none. There is ease in that. Whatever she chooses, it will be her choice. And Ole has made his course, as well. His choices brought Elfa to us.”

The girl searched Olga’s eyes. Then she nodded, and the women returned to their work.

~oOo~

Olga opened the window and let the sunshine in. The air was still brittle with the cold of winter, but the sun was shining for the first time in ages, and she stood in the cold fresh air and closed her eyes, enjoying the light of the sun, though it came without much warmth.

Still, it was the sun, and the winters here were much without it. At her feet, the hens collected in the sunbeam she’d let in and fussed irascibly. They, too, had grown weary of being cooped up in the dark. She opened the door and shooed them into her little yard, where she would plant her herbs once the ground grew soft enough to take a hoe.

Jakob walked up with a warm smile. The boy, now fifteen, had grown broad and strong in the service of the shipbuilder, and a new growth of beard scattered over his cheek and chin. Though he lived with Amund, Jakob came to visit often.

She tipped her head now to accept his kiss on her cheek. Before he did or said anything else in the way of a greeting, Jakob asked, “Might I speak with you?”

“There is trouble?”

“No.” He smiled. “Not trouble. But news, and questions.”

She pulled him inside and closed the door. “Sit. Talk.”

They sat together at the table, and Jakob fidgeted with the sewing she had left there. Before he could undo her work, she huffed and took it from him. “What news, Jakob?”

“I…I would like to…to wed Frida.”

Surprise wasn’t among the emotions Olga felt. Since Frida had come to live with her, she and Jakob had developed a friendship. Though Olga had seen no evidence of more than that, she needn’t tax her mind to believe two handsome young people, coming into their age and already friends, would want more.

“Does Frida know this?” She smiled when Jakob blushed dark.

“Of course. I have spoken to Amund as well, and he would have her with us. But I want your good wish, too.”

Olga slid her hand under his wrist and lifted his arm. He now wore a metal band, gold and silver twisted together. Vali had given it to him at the last thing, marking Jakob’s manhood and his welcome into the community. Jakob had then sworn on this ‘arm ring’ his loyalty and love for Vali.

“This makes you a man, yes? You need only Vali’s good wish, and Frida’s. Mine is of no importance.”

He seemed hurt by her response and pulled his arm free. “It’s important to me. Do you withhold it?”

“Frida is young, Jakob, and not yet finished with her training.”

“She has had her blood.”

Olga lifted her eyebrows at that. She, of course, knew that, but it surprised her that Jakob was so much in the girl’s intimate confidence that he knew it, too. “Have you and she…?”

Jakob’s brow compressed in a dramatic grimace. “That is not for you.” Then he blushed again and added, “But no.”

Putting her hand over his, she gave it a warm squeeze. “You are a fine, strong young man with a good head and a clear future. If it pleases you and Frida both to be wed, then you have my good wish. I will miss her very much, but in this life you grab the good there is and hold it as long as you may.”

Jakob grinned and sat back, relieved. “She will still be your apprentice, if you’ll have her. Amund has no need of her to work for him, and he sees value in her healing. When we are wed, she will live with me, but come to you every day, if you wish. She would want it.”

“You and she have discussed much.”

“Yes. I want her to be happy.”

Her heart aching with sorrow and pleasure both, Olga stood and embraced the young man who had come to mean so much to her. “Then she shall be.”

~oOo~

On an early summer day, with a warm breeze frolicking through the town, traders from afar moored in Karlsa.

Olga and Frida had stood in the yard and watched as the men stood armed and ready, while the strange ship approached. Olga’s body had been rigid with memory of the last time strangers had approached the shore of her home, and she had clutched the hilt of the knife she wore on her belt. Frida had only the little clips she wore on hers, but she was not so worried. She had lived in Karlsa all her life, and in Karlsa, danger from the sea always had come in ships like their own. She had expected this strange vessel to be what it was: a traveling market.

Once the ship had moored, Vali, Orm, and Bjarke had gone out to meet the leader. Now, the heart of the town bustled with life and color, and Olga had never seen such wondrous wares in all her life.

And the men on the ship! She had never seen their like before, with skin of so many different earthen colors, from the dark dusk of mud after hard rain to burnished bronze and gold. Only a scant few were the pale of stone or moon that she knew like her own.

Almost all were black-haired and heavily bearded, and many wore beads and jewels and gold. Many were short, by Karlsa standards, but the leader and his second were tall and burly.

None was so big and broad as Vali, however, and Olga saw them often stare sidelong at the giant jarl, as if they didn’t quite trust him to be peaceable.

So many different kinds of men could only have hailed from many different kinds of places. Olga thought of her brother, Mihkel, and his life spent adventuring. The few times he’d made it home, he had come by land—no such wondrous vessels as this had ever landed on Vladimir’s desolate shores—but he had been darker and rougher than the young man who’d struck out in the middle of the night those years before. His stories had been always about the people and places and things he’d seen and never about the things he’d done.