Heart's Ease (The Northwomen Sagas Book 2) (27 page)

“I don’t wish you to go.”

A deep, slow breath gave him a moment to compose himself. It would be untrue to say that he felt no anger in this situation, that there wasn’t something in him that wanted to shake her and shout at her and
force
her to see what was true.

Frustration coursed through him; perhaps he had not been calm enough to return to her after all. But clearly, he’d been away too long as it was.

“I went only to the hall. I told you, I will not leave Karlsa without you. Even if you will not have me, I will not leave. I will love and protect you and our child all my remaining days.”

“But you lead Geitland. You must return.”

“If you will not come with me to my home, then it is my home no longer.”

She curled forward, to his chest, and Leif sat on her bed and shifted her onto his lap so he could hold her well.

~oOo~

Ulv was eager to begin the journey back to Geitland. They had traveled weeks to get to Karlsa and now had been in the town for a full month and nearly half of another. The plague had cleared, and it was safe for them to be among people beyond the borders of the town again.

Moreover, in the past few days, winter’s grip had begun to loosen as well. The sun was brighter and lingered longer. Snow and ice thinned.

Olga was fully recovered, but she remained guarded. She would not come with him.

Leif and Vali stood with the young man on the pier. They all three studied the gentle undulation of a calm sea, the sun sparkling over its pale grey surface.

The time was coming when Leif would have to send Ulv home with word that the seat of the jarl was vacant.

Vali was nearly as unhappy about that decision as Leif himself was. Karlsa needed to lean on the strong shoulder of its southern brother while it recovered, and Leif’s choice to stay with Olga would put that support in jeopardy. The wrong victor in a fight for the seat in Geitland could well put Karlsa at even greater risk.

The two men had discussed all this in great depth, but Vali hadn’t tried to change Leif’s mind. He understood, but he was deeply worried. Leif worried, too, but he would not again make a choice that put another above Olga. She’d been right that Brenna and Vali had been his first concern in Estland; they would not come first now, even if that meant the further suffering of an entire town—a town which included Olga as well.

He felt that conflict keenly, but his vow not to leave without her was one he held more sacred than any other.

“If you wait another few days, a week,” Vali offered, “the sea will welcome a ship. You will make Geitland in days rather than weeks and be ahead of your plan.”

“We have no ship,” Ulv grumbled. “And we must be off.”

“We have the karve you offered us, Leif, when we last sailed from Geitland. When we are sure the tidewater will not slush, we can float it and send you back with the men to row it. Those men can remain with you for the summer. As we discussed.”

Ulv turned and regarded both jarls. “Discussed?”

Ulv didn’t know that Leif might not be returning to Geitland, and Leif was not yet ready to tell him so. In any case, the karve, which Leif had forgotten about, bought him time, and if that time was not sufficient, perhaps Ulv returning with a score or so of Karlsa raiders would bolster Astrid’s claim to the seat Leif will have given up. “We will bring raiders from Karlsa with us on southern raids this year. Their share of the plunder will help them bring Karlsa back so that we can have our western raid next summer.”

Ulv was quiet, scanning the sea.

Leif was yet jarl, and he had tired of the conversation. “You stayed when I gave you leave to go, Ulv. Now you stay until I do so again.” He did not often assert such authority, but his tolerance for the censure of a twenty-year-old pup had ebbed.

The younger man’s expression shifted from surprise to resistance to discomfiture within the space of a heartbeat or two. “As you wish. You are my jarl.”

Yes, he was. For now.

~oOo~

Frida was with Olga again, and Leif no longer stayed in the house. He now slept in the great hall, but he would need to take up a house elsewhere in town soon, if he were staying permanently in Karlsa. He wasn’t ready to make that commitment to such a decision yet. He still held out hope. Dwindling hope.

Despite no longer staying with her, Leif visited Olga every day. He helped where he could, and they spoke comfortably with each other. He’d stopped pushing her on the point of her trust of him. She would, or she would not, and if he didn’t know by the time he could no longer put off Ulv, then he would give up his seat. The decision had been made. Only the timing remained a question.

After taking his leave of Vali and Ulv at the pier, Leif walked to Olga’s house. She and Frida were at work, sitting together at the table, preparing the ingredients for some kind of concoction.

When he came in, Olga gave him a sharp, suspicious look and sent Frida from the house. Shocked, Leif simply stood there while Frida scurried off. The girl gave him a sidelong glance, also suspicious, as she passed him at the door.

“What is wrong?” he asked when they were alone.

“I saw you at the pier with Vali and the other.”

“Ulv.”

Her terse nod indicated that she didn’t care who he was. “You are leaving.”

“What?”

“You were planning your return to Geitland.
Jah
?”

The anger that simmered low at the base of his mind flared to a flame, and Leif stepped to the table and swept the makings Olga had been working on off to the floor. She leapt up from her seat and stepped back, dark eyes huge with shock.

“No, I am not leaving. I have told you again and again that I will not leave you. If you will not come with me to Geitland, then I will give Geitland up and remain here. I mean to do this whether you will have me or not.
I love you
! What’s more,
you carry my child
! You think always of your own losses. What of mine? I have buried seven children! Do you think I would turn my back on this one?”

Overcome with months of building anger, Leif slammed his fists on the table, then was still, leaning over, his knuckles digging into the scarred wood, his breath heavy, his hair swinging at the sides of his face. “I will not leave without you. I have sacrificed again and again for those I love. And I will sacrifice now. If you don’t want me, so be it. But you will not raise my child without me. I will stand between you both and more suffering. At any cost to me.”

He looked up into her stunned, beautiful face, flush with health again at last, and now with emotion as well. “
I am not leaving without you
.”

He left her house without giving her the slightest chance to respond.

~oOo~

Leif had every intention of sitting against the wall in the hall and drinking mead until the cup fell from his hand. He stormed from Olga’s house and started immediately on that plan, doing all he could not to think. Too much rage had flooded his mind for thinking to be anything but destructive.

The people in the hall cast their eyes sidelong at him but did not disturb him. The serving girl who filled his cup did so as quickly as she could. His body must have been showing exactly the state of his heart and soul.

So he drank faster.

He was staring into the amber liquid of only his third cup when a pale red hangerock came into the corner of his sight. He looked up into Frida’s pretty, nervous face.

When he only stared up at her, she made a nervous little cough—not illness, just a gesture—and said, “She sends for you.”

He laughed bitterly. “I am otherwise occupied.” He’d told Olga he wouldn’t leave Karlsa without her. Well, here he sat in Karlsa, and he was not inclined to be summoned.

Frida dipped her head and turned away. After two steps, though, she turned back. “I think you should come.” She didn’t tarry to see if he would answer.

~oOo~

He followed so soon after Frida left that she had not even made it back to Olga’s house yet. When she went in and turned to close the door, he was only strides behind her. She smiled and stepped back out, walking away without a word.

Leif went in through the still-open door. Olga stood near the fire. She had changed her clothes and wore a hangerock he hadn’t seen before, one with delicate stitching across the top, like the stitching that had been common among the women’s clothes in Estland.

And she had taken her hair from its braid. It flowed over her shoulders and to her waist in long, lovely waves. He couldn’t help but stare.

Remembering why he was back in this room, he blinked and said, “You sent for me.”

“Forgive me.”

He blinked again. “What?”

“Forgive me.” She came toward him, carefully, as if she feared he might bite. “You have asked me for forgiveness many times. Now I ask you. Please forgive me.”

Reaching him, she laid her hands on his chest. He realized that he had not donned his fur before he’d left the hall.

He was confused and wary, and he picked her hands up and held them away. “I don’t understand.”

She let her head fall forward and didn’t look at him as she next spoke. “You spoke the truth earlier. I have not thought of what you lost. I was trapped in my own sorrow and blamed you, and I never tried to see more than what I already saw. I am sorry.”

Leif let go of her hands and held her face instead. Relieved that he hadn’t had more time with the mead, he turned her head up so that he could see into her eyes. “What are you saying?”

She blushed, the pink rising prettily in her cheeks. “You are right. I love you. Very much.” Her hands went to her belly. “We have a child coming. I know what I want, but I have been too afraid to embrace it. I have lost my way, and I have not tried to find it. But a new life comes into the world soon, a new chance for us both, and our child will need a guide. I need to find my way again. I see now that I will not find it without you.”

“Olga, say it plainly. Please.”

She swallowed hard before she spoke again. “I love you, and I have been wrong. If you will have me, I will wed you and go with you to Geitland as your wife. We will raise our child as a family.”

Relief and love drew his cheeks wide in a grin, but he had one more question: “Do you trust me?”

She brought her hands up and cupped them around his face. “Trust is a choice. I see that now. Yes. I trust you. I choose it. I choose you.”

Leif could scarcely believe his ears. Months and months and months he had been snared in a trap of futile need and poisonous regret, and she seemed now to have freed him. I hadn’t been easy, it had been anything but easy, and yet now that it was here—what he wanted, all he wanted—he struggled to believe the truth of it. “Olga, I…”

Before he could find the words to complete his thought, she asked, “Will you forgive me?”

Words continuing to fail him, Leif pulled her into his arms and answered her with a kiss.

They were to have two weddings: one in Karlsa, within days of Olga agreeing to be married, and another in Geitland, where they would make their sacrifices to their gods and Leif would give her a sword. She remembered the fuss about swords when Vali and Brenna had been married.

Here in Karlsa, where dwelt the last few of her own people, they would have the binding ritual that was her heritage. None of the men had known the words, but Vali had offered to learn them from Olga, and he would say them over her and Leif. Leif had bound Vali and Brenna, so it seemed only right that Vali would bind them.

Leif was eager to return to his home, and Olga had made him wait so long already that she hardly felt that she could delay him further. She was leaving yet another home, this one still full of people she cared about, but she’d finally come to understand that her true home, her future, was with Leif. She was with child, a miracle of the earth or a gift bestowed by Leif’s gods, she knew not which, but she was grateful. She was blessed. That child would know the love of a good father, and she would know the love of a good man.

She trusted him again because she had taken her will and her spirit into her hands and decided to turn away from fear and pain. Always before in her life she had known to let go of what could not be controlled and to take hold of what could. She had forgotten that and let life’s storms knock her loose of her moorings, and as she’d cast about, lost, she had dragged others along with her.

It had taken Leif’s steadfast resolve to release all else important to him and cleave to her, and his angry accusation that she had thought of nothing but herself, for Olga to see that fuller truth. In her pain, she’d turned inward and seen nothing but the inside of her own darkening soul.

When she had seen that much, as she’d stood and stared at the door Leif had slammed behind him in his anger and haste to be quit of her, she’d pulled her courage up from its dusty, disused corner of her heart and agreed to marry, choosing to trust him before her fear had truly abated.

Now, mere days later, the first day of true thaw, she stood and let Frida comb her hair while Dagmar fussed with her dress and Brenna sat with Solveig on her lap and watched, amused.

She was wearing her hair loose because Leif liked it best that way, but she felt as though she would be going out half-dressed, with no braid or any fixing. The gown she wore was simple; there had been little time for anything else, and her belly had grown enough that only something loose would truly do. It was yet too cold, to her, for anything filmy or delicate, so she wore a plain, pale blue woolen shift with long, wide sleeves and colorful stitching—she had stitched it herself in the few days she’d had to do so—across the bodice. The neckline—speaking of half-dressed—dipped lower than she had anticipated; her breasts had filled out, too. Dagmar was fretting with a lace at the back that would draw the shift snug across her chest, leaving the fabric to flow down, over her belly to the ground.

In her world, a bride and her party would have all dressed in white, a color of unity and balance, but in this world, there was no especial meaning to the color of a bride’s dress. Olga, of this world now, had chosen the blue simply for the calm it gave her to look on it.

“I will freeze,” she complained. They would be married at the shore, and while winter had passed, its back could still be seen on the path.

“I think you will not.” Brenna smiled and seemed to exchange a look with her mother. Since Dagmar was behind Olga, she couldn’t see what that was about.

“There,” chirped Frida as she arranged Olga’s hair over her shoulders. “You need one thing, and you’ll be perfect.”

A sharp knock at the door interrupted the women, and Vali opened it slightly and peeked in. Olga smiled at his uncharacteristic shyness.

“Do I disturb?”

“No,” Brenna said and stood, shifting her daughter to her hip. “You come at the perfect time. Olga fears she will be too cold to wed our friend.”

Vali stepped fully in, and Olga saw that he had a fur draped over his arms. A fur of a color so pale it was nearly pure white. Olga knew of only one animal in this world who might bear a fur like it, and it was a rare thing indeed. A white wolf.

He walked right to her, and the women stepped back as if they’d practiced. Only she, it seemed, was surprised by Vali’s presence or the thing in his arms. He stopped directly before her; Olga had to crane her neck to see his face smiling down at her.

Taking the fur in his hands, he swept it around her and laid it over her shoulders. “You are a friend of my heart, Olga, and I will miss you every day. You and I have been through much together. You wed a good man. I think Brenna is right that he is a great man, and he will protect you and your child and love you true. But I put the pelt of a great white wolf over your shoulders to remind you that you always have the loving protection of the Storm-Wolf as well.” Finished with his beautiful speech, he kissed her forehead and stepped back.

Olga wondered if Vali knew the great significance of a white wolf in her world. A white wolf was thought to embody all elemental knowledge. It was the epitome of wisdom and understanding. Of balance. And now she was wrapped in it, protected by it.

She lifted the fur to her face and began to cry. When Vali pulled her into his arms, she wept freely all the tears she had.

~oOo~

They stood at the shore, surrounded by the whole town of Karlsa, such as it was now. Leif wore a rich blue woolen tunic and gleaming dark breeches. His hair flowed in the breeze. Frida had presented Olga with a wreath made of dried barley, and she wore it over her loose mane.

When Olga walked toward Leif and Vali, with Jaan and Georg behind her, his expression was serious. She had expected him to be smiling, and she knew a thrill of anxiety that something was wrong, but she pushed it away. As she came near, he held out his hand and, when she took it, gently pulled her close. Then he brought her fingers to his lips and kissed them, lingering so long, his eyes closed, that Olga knew all was well.

Vali cleared his throat, and Leif finally lifted his head and brought Olga’s hand down.

“We come together,” the Jarl of Karlsa began, “to see two people bound fast. Because Olga is far from the home that she once knew, and because Leif is far from his home as well, today is the beginning of their rituals. We stand in the presence of the gods today and welcome them to join us, but Leif and Olga will give them their proper honor in Geitland, where their ritual will be completed.”

At last Leif smiled, and Olga returned it, squeezing his hand. And Vali brought forth cords of braided white and golden silk and held them out in his two hands. He spoke the words she had told him.

“Air is breath, weightless and irresistible. Love does not hold back. Fire is heat, passion and light. Love delights in desire. Water is emotion, still and stormy. Love is deep with feeling. And earth is bounty, nourishment and nest. Love is home.”

He lifted their joined hands. “Will you honor and respect each other, give trust and keep it?”

Leif stared hard into Olga’s eyes. She stared back. The most important question between them was the first, and she knew that she would have to answer first. “I will.”

Leif nodded. “And I.”

Vali looped a cord around their hands. “And so the binding is made. Will you share each other’s pain and seek to ease it?”

Together, they answered, “I will.”

Vali looped another cord. “And so the binding is made. Will you…” He paused, and Olga glanced at him. She saw him struggle to remember the words, but just as she was about to mutter them at him, he smiled at her. “Will you share your burdens each with the other so that your spirits will grow strong together?”

“We will,” Olga and Leif answered, smiling.

Another cord bound them. “And so the binding is made. Will you seek your happiness together and keep each other’s hearts in joy and ease?”

“We will.”

Vali tied all the cords together in an intricate kind of sailor’s knot. “Leif and Olga, you are now bound together, life and spirit. May your love be as vast and eternal as the night sky and your faith in each other as steady as the earth on which we stand. Good tidings to you, my friends.”

~oOo~

The celebration of their union was the first joyful event in Karlsa since the night of the winter solstice—a night that had augured long weeks of suffering and death. So the town cleaved to the day, feting Olga and Leif well into the deep dark hours.

Olga had been near death only a few weeks before, and by the time Leif and she were able to free themselves from the revels, sneaking out while no one noticed, she was weary in every bone and sinew.

But it was the night of their wedding, and they had not coupled since that strange, painful, powerful night that he’d come to her and they’d made the child inside her. She wanted to feel him again, this time with nothing but love. Open and true and eternal.

Warm glow seeped through the closed shutters of her house as they approached, and Olga sighed to herself, thinking that Frida was there. But when they went in, they found it empty. Frida, seemingly with the help of others, had stoked the fire to cheerful warmth, and dozens of candles—far more than she possessed—lit up every corner of both rooms. The goats and chickens, which a healthy neighbor had taken to tend while she was ill, and had returned only the week before, were gone again.

She and Leif were truly alone on their wedding night, and Olga no longer felt tired. She smiled up at her new husband and laughed when he wiggled his blonde brows at her.

“Would we hurt the babe?”

Normally, she would have laughed at such a question. Many men had asked, as if they thought their spear so impressive it could reach deep into a woman’s womb and disturb a child growing there, and her answer was always the same. It could not—and she knew that Leif knew that. He was no novice father. However, they were not well matched in size, and his sex was well matched to him. They had always had to accommodate for that. He would not hurt the babe, but he could hurt her—he had hurt her—when she was not with child, and she thought, were they not careful, he could hurt her more now.

“Not the babe, no,” she answered.

His brows drew down in a worried scowl. “Then we will only sleep. It is enough.”

She took his hands and placed them around her waist. “No, it is not enough. I only ask that you be careful, as you always have been.”

“Not always,” he murmured, combing the fingers of one hand through her hair, all the way to its end. “I am sorry for that.”

“We needn’t speak of that. I sought it out, and I’m not sorry. But I’m glad we’re in another place now.”

He bent and kissed her lightly. “
Ma armastan sind.
”

“No.” When his brows went up in surprise and he opened his mouth to protest, she put her hand, just her fingertips, over his lips. “Say it in your words. They are my words, too, now. I love you.”

“Don’t give up your words, Olga. You have lost enough. Keep hold of your heritage.”