Heart's Ease (The Northwomen Sagas Book 2) (21 page)

Brenna opened her mouth to speak, but Vali stood. “Holmfrid will show you to a house nearby. It’s small, but warm and well-appointed.”

“Thank you.” He turned and left.

~oOo~

Leif was angry. He lay alone in this borrowed bed and stewed in real rage. In the time since everything had fallen into chaos, he had known many emotions, but anger had not been among them. Now it was almost all he felt.

He wanted to bash Vali’s scowling face until it turned inside out. The Storm-Wolf had glared at him as if he thought Leif meant to take his wife and child, as if Åke’s vengeful spirit had possessed him and put everything Vali had at risk again.

And there the Jarl of Karlsa sat, beloved of his people, at home with his wife and child. He had likely returned to Karlsa a hero. He would have died in Estland had it not been for Leif. They all would have.

Leif had had to scrape for every bit of respect he had earned as a jarl. He had turned on his own jarl, and he’d had to prove his worth and his honor again and again. And he was alone. He had given up the deepest love he’d ever known.

Yet Vali would not forgive him.

Enough, then. Enough of begging forgiveness. Enough of attempting to prove his friendship. Enough of it all. If Vali would so easily throw away a friend such as he, then he was not worthy of the gift.

The only person to whom he still owed atonement would not even bear his presence on the same soil.

Leif tossed the fur back and stood. The fire pit glowed dimly red with the embers of a dying fire, but he needed no more light. He had grown used to the dark; he seemed always to be living under shadow. Even home, where Geitland was strong and prosperous and they had just completed a successful season of raids, his chest felt full of black void. The ache of his wound still vexed him somewhat, but it wasn’t that. It was so much deeper.

He was without love, without children, without brothers. Those for whom he felt most deeply were far away, in space and in spirit. The friendships he had left were not enough to fill the emptiness.

A dog howled, and Leif went to the door of the borrowed house and opened it. The night was bright with a full moon, but nothing but, somewhere, that howling hound stirred.

Somewhere in this town, Olga lay sleeping. He had been in Karlsa for hours, but he had yet to catch even a glimpse of her. She did not want to see him.

But Brenna was right. He could not allow Toke’s unfortunate death to be her last memory of him. He had to speak with her, if only to let her revile him. He had to tell her he loved her. That he had loved her truly and that he always would.

It was deep in the night. Even were she to want to see him, now would not be the time.

He went back inside and put on a light woolen tunic against the cool of a night pressing against a new winter. He pulled on his boots. And he went out into the moonlight to see if he could find her house.

~oOo~

Not far from the hall, he found a house with a little garden in the yard, and an empty animal pen. On the door hung a braid of dried herbs. Certain he had found what he’d sought, he pounded on the door.

It swung open within seconds, and Olga stood there, the dim light of a candle glowing behind her. She was dressed. She had not been sleeping after all.

She wore the clothes of the women of his people now: a pale hangerock and an underdress. Her dark hair was woven into braids. She was more beautiful than even he remembered, so beautiful it stole his breath.

And for the first time in more than a year, she was close enough to touch.

The cool shine of the moon met the warm glow of the candle and made her seem unreal, like a specter in the night. But he could see her eyes, large and dark and round with surprise.

“Olga.” His voice came with no more force than a lost breath. His chest, his heart, pained him too much to push sound from it. “Olga.”

“No,” she gasped and pushed the door closed.

Without thinking, Leif threw his hand up and barred her from getting to the latch. “Please. Olga, please.”

She pushed, and he pushed back, harder, and she released the door and stepped quickly backward, almost running. He stepped into her house and closed the door.

The room was dim, with only that one candle and a guttering fire to brighten it. Leif could just see that she was standing at a long table against the wall. He gave her that distance and didn’t move.

“I’m sorry to come to you so late, but I couldn’t stay away any longer. Olga, I’ve missed you so.”

“I don’t want you here.” He heard the fear and fury in her words. “I don’t want you here.”

Her fear of him was tearing him apart. “I won’t stay, then. I needed to see you and know you were well. I need to tell you that I love you. I need to beg your forgiveness. I would never mean to harm you. You are precious to me.”

With a sudden move and a metallic scrape, Olga charged at him and stopped just before him. She held a small knife; it glinted red in the glow of the fire. “I will bury this in your heart before I listen to another of your lies.” Her voice shook, but she lifted the knife in both her small hands and held it up before her face, at the level of his heart.

The sad anger that had beset Leif and kept him sleepless surged again, and before he’d made a choice to do it, he had closed her hands in both of his. They both held that sharp little knife now. Leif pulled and brought it to his chest.

Shocked, Olga resisted, but her strength had never been in her body, and Leif barely struggled to overpower her.

“Stop,” she gasped, but he ignored her.

He pulled, forcing the blade to his chest, then through his tunic. When the point pierced his skin, when Olga was whimpering with her frantic resistance, he stopped, but he didn’t back the blade off or release her hands.

“We might as well push it all the way in, my love. There is nothing inside me now but hollow space. My heart died when I lost you.”

He pushed, and the blade entered his chest, and he felt the dull pain of it. There was no wash or leak of blood; the scars there were too thick, and the metal had not yet gone through them.

Now Olga was fighting him hard, flailing her body around the hands he held firmly, trying to free herself from him and this thing he was doing. He pushed again, until he finally felt the warm ooze of blood.

“STOP! STOP!
PALUN
!
EI
!
EI
!
EI
!” She was loud enough that Leif thought it likely someone would soon come to her aid.

And then she collapsed. Her knees gave out, and she dropped to the ground, the pressure of her suddenly-slack body jerking the knife in his chest and at last doing real damage, causing real pain. Leif released her, and she finished her fall, curling into a sobbing heap on the floor.

He yanked the blade from his chest and tossed it to the far side of the room.

Trapped in the vortex of agony that was her memory of the day the village had been overrun and her brothers had died, Olga was lost to the present around her. She coiled her body as tightly as she could, her arms over her head and her hands pulling at her braids.

She could feel her blade pushing into Kalju’s thin chest, sliding past his ribs, piercing his heart. She could feel it now because she had felt it then. The air seemed as hot and acrid now as it had then, when fire turned her young brother’s skin to black tallow. She could taste on the back of her throat the stench of fire and blood and cooked flesh that had hung over the village like a fog. She could see Anton’s blood flowing from his open throat like water from the mouth of a stream.

“Olga.” With the deep rumble of that voice she’d once loved, that she yet loved, she felt the heavy, warm press of Leif’s hand on her shoulder. “I ache with your pain. Please forgive me.”

She had been prepared for a late visitor on this night. The smith’s wife was great with child and had shown signs earlier in the day that her time was nigh. So when the heavy beat of a fist came to her door so late, it had not been in her mind that she would open it and find her golden giant there, filling the space.

The first reaction of her heart upon seeing his handsome face was not the hatred that she had expected. Instead she’d felt the flutter and throb of love that she’d always felt in his presence, and that powerful thrill of a happiness now unknown to her had made the black hate, when it came fast on the heels of the love, hurt all the more.

All the day, she had stayed in her house with her shutters closed, seeing only those who’d come to her, hoping that she might somehow avoid Leif’s presence. As the day had gone on and he hadn’t sought her out, and as the bustle of the town ignored her, she’d come to believe that she would achieve her aim and be left alone.

Yet he was here, he had caught her unawares, and he had forced her to stab him. Now, she was snared in a nightmare of memory and confusion in her heart and her mind, and all she knew was that the warm weight of his touch, the gentle love she felt in it, was like to tear her into shreds.

She screamed and knocked him away, then scrambled backward as far as she could get, only stopping when her back hit the little table at her bedside and rattled the dark lantern atop it.

The goats bleated crankily in their pen in the corner, and the hens fluffed their feathers in protest of the noise.

It was darker here; the only candle she’d had lit sat on the table at the front of the house, and all her shutters were closed. When Leif followed her, all she could really see was a mountain of shadow coming toward her. She might almost have believed that she were dreaming, caught in the jaws of one of the terrors that fed on her sleep, but the mountain crouched before and said her name again.

Then he said, in the mother tongue she so rarely heard any longer, “
Ma armastan sind
.
Ma igasten sind.
Palun, Olga. Sa oled mu päike, tähed, kuu
. My sun, stars, and moon, and my earth and air as well. My life and breath. Olga, please. I love you. I miss you. Talk with me. Whatever I must do to make things right between us, I will do it.”

“The man with the scar through his left eye.” She was surprised that her voice was steady, as much as that she had spoken at all and had found that, of all things, to say.

She couldn’t make out Leif’s face, but she heard the uncertainty in his tone. “Who?”

“Your jarl’s man. A scar in his scalp that crosses through his left eye and into his cheek.”

“Geir. I don’t understand. He died in the fighting when Vali came to Geitland.”

Now that she had begun to speak, Olga found a calm focus. She wanted him to know everything he had done, everything he had allowed, every way that he had abandoned her. Why she could never forgive him.

“Good. While you were betraying us all, helping your jarl destroy people who thought you a friend,
Geir
was in the kitchen. With me.”

Leif sat down hard, and the floor shook. “What did he do?”

The shocked menace in his low voice didn’t move her at all. She rolled onto her knees and leaned close so she could snarl the answer right in his face. “He did what men like him, like
you
, always do. You storm and slash and pillage and destroy. You take. You rape.”

“Olga.” His naked pain lanced through her name, but she didn’t care. Her anger was in full flower now, and she was
glad
he’d sought her out, forced this on her. She wanted him to know
everything
. She slammed her hands to his chest, and he grunted.

“When we few who were left tried to rebuild a home, Toomas beset us and destroyed it all.”

“I know. I know Anton and Kalju died. I have no words to express my regret, my love.” He reached for her again, but she swatted him away again.

“
Ei
! Do not call me that! Do you know how they died? Anton fought like a warrior, even though he wanted nothing of war. A soldier slashed his throat open, right in front of me.”

“Gods,” Leif muttered.

“And Kalju! Another soldier set him afire. His skin oozed and crackled. He was in such pain, more pain than I had ken to ease.
I
killed him. I sank my own knife into my brother’s chest because I had no other way to save him. I killed him. I killed him! I killed him! I KILLED HIM!”

She was screaming, and at some point she had started lashing out, hitting his head and chest. He sat there and let her, until she grabbed hold of his tunic—it was wet; why was it wet?—and hung there, on her knees, her back bowing, her head nearly in his lap. “I killed him. His skin melted like wax, and he couldn’t even scream for the pain, and I killed him.”

When his arms went around her, she needed them. She let him gather her up and set her in his lap. So long since she had felt his touch, had taken ease from his love. Their time together had been brief, but her life had been materially changed by it.
She
had been changed—by his love, and by the loss of it.

So long since she had felt safe. She craved even this corruption of what they’d had, even this double-edged blade of love and hate.

When he spoke, his voice shook with emotion, with pain and regret, and Olga was, this time, moved. “I am more sorry than I have words. I cannot give any of that back to you. I would atone, but I don’t know how. I can only swear that what I did was not a betrayal. Always you have had my love, always my good faith. If I had not acted as I did, if I had done what Vali thinks I should have, and we had fought Åke in Estland, we would all of us be dead—those who died
and
those who lived. I did what I did to save you.”

“No. You did not,” she sighed, allowing her head to rest on his shoulder, too tired and despondent to fight any longer.

He turned his head, and she knew he was staring down at her, though the room was yet too dark to see him, even so close. “I swear to you, Olga. I did.”

And this was perhaps the greatest pain of all, the wound that remained raw and festering and would not allow the other wounds to heal. “No. You did it to save Vali and Brenna. You gave no thought to what might happen to me. You had already left me. You left me before your jarl dismounted on the castle grounds.”

The long stretch of silence that followed her words told Olga that she was right. She had been far from his thoughts on that horrible night.

“No,” he finally whispered. “Olga, I have never left you. Not in spirit. I thought you would be safe.”

All she could do was sigh. After months and months, more than a year, of anger and heartbreak growing roots in her soul and choking her spirit, Olga found that the twisted growth had died. Now, she felt no hate or fury. Only fatigue.

And love, she felt love. But it was a different sort. She didn’t understand it, but its power came from a new place and shone not nearly as brightly as it had before.

“Tell me you love me, Leif.” He had told her, but she needed to hear it again, now, even if she had no understanding of its worth.

She felt his surprise in the quick tension of his arms. “I do. You are dearer to me than anything, anyone else. I love you with my whole heart.”

“The heart you said is dead?”

“Olga. Please. What can I do?”

There was nothing that could repair the damage that had been done between them, nothing that could assuage her losses or restore her balance. But there was something that she needed in this particular moment. One thing that she craved, that could, for a time, give her respite from the darkness.

“Take me.”

If he had been surprised when she’d asked him to tell her he loved her, he was shocked now. His body went rigid, unyielding as stone. “Olga?”

She sat up in his arms and grabbed handfuls of his hair. Holding his head thusly, she stared into eyes she could barely see but knew better than any other, better than her own. “Take me. All we had before was crushed under the weight of what you did. All I ever had that was mine and good was you, and all that remains is dust. I need something more of you, or what’s left of me will die. Take me.
Take me
. Please.”

She kissed him. When he flinched back, she tightened her fists and pulled, holding him to her. A moment hung suspended between them—their mouths joined but neither of them moving. It wasn’t enough, it wasn’t nearly enough, but it was so much more than she had felt in so long that Olga thought her heart would break her chest with its violent beating.

And then Leif gave in.

His arms clamped around her like iron bands, and his hands dug into her hair, tearing at her braids as his mouth opened wide and his tongue plunged past her lips and teeth. The force of him was something Olga hadn’t known before, and she was glad. This was new.

She pulled savagely at his hair and bit down on the fullness of his bottom lip. He made a wild, animal sound in his chest and yanked her head back by her braid. She could almost see him, see the jeweled blue glint of his eyes; dawn must have been nigh.

His chest heaved against hers. She wanted these clothes away, wanted to feel the warmth of his skin on hers, wanted to feel warm and safe, even if it were only an illusion, a dream to break apart in the rays of the dawn.

Clutching at his tunic, she tried to pull it up, to pull it free, but he knocked her hands away, his hands hitting hers so hard they stung, and yanked instead at the brooches that closed the straps on her hangerock.

In an effort to seem less strange to her new people, she had taken the custom of their dress, and once she’d grown used to it, she’d found it preferable to the garb of her homeland. More convenient to this place, though plainer. She had taken to showing some of the women the styles of decorative stitching that her mother had taught her long ago.

As for the hair, she had always worn hers in a braid, so it had not been so much to change the style.

Leif tossed the brooches away, and Olga heard them clatter across the floorboards. Then he tore at the side lacings until the hangerock was a loose puddle at her waist and only the linen underdress separated her from his touch. Rather than pull it, too, loose, Leif grabbed her head in his big hands and slammed his mouth over hers again.