Heart's Ease (The Northwomen Sagas Book 2) (5 page)

As for home, Calder would return victorious, and Snorri’s fiercest warrior and strongest voice would not be there to dispute the credit. If
Åke had some other plan, some dark purpose, then Vali’s absence at home would weaken Snorri and further Åke’s cause.

Leif was sorry for that; it sat hard on his shoulders to think that oaths had been made in bad faith, but he had made no such bad oath. He was sworn to
Åke, and his allegiance rested in Geitland.

The God’s-Eye walked away without a word, headed toward the healer’s tent again. Leif watched her for a moment and then turned his attention to Calder’s tent. Brenna God’s-Eye was right. It could be only him to make Calder see that his position was still strong.

Leif could not foresee, and he could not control, what consequences might fall from these choices. He was neither a seer nor a leader. He was only a warrior and a friend.

~oOo~

After two days and four trips, the raiders had taken from the castle all the bounty the ships could carry back, even with their load lightened by about thirty who had volunteered to stay for the winter.

The camp was struck, and raiders carried gear and chests of precious metals and jewels back to the shore. Calder stood by the black ring that had been their central fire and surveyed the work. With a slow, satisfied nod, he turned to Knut. “You and Viger—kill the captives.” Knut nodded and turned to find Viger.

“Hold!” Leif spoke, strongly, before he’d thought, and Calder gave him a narrow look.

With the camp struck, they had a clear line of sight to the pen. The healing woman—her name was Olga, he had learned—had been returned to her fellows that morning and bound again as they’d begun their preparations to leave this site. Leif did not think any woman had been beset that day; there had been too much to do to take such a distraction.

He hoped that was true. He should have paid closer attention. Now, though, he had to answer Calder and explain why he’d contravened his order in that way.

“The healer. She knows our language. She can be a help to us at the castle.”

Calder smirked. “You like her look, my friend?”

Leif didn’t answer, and Calder’s smirk grew into smugness.

“Fine.” He waved at Knut. “Bring my friend’s pet to him. Kill the rest.”

~oOo~

He would have wished Olga brought to him first, but Viger and Knut had a different idea.

When Viger handed the end of the rope tether to Leif, Olga was spattered with the blood of her friends, and those deep brown eyes were round with fear and shock.

“I am sorry,” he said as he cut her bonds. “I would have spared you that if I could.”

“Is—is way of things,” she answered, her silky voice shaking. When her hands were free, she rubbed her wrists. “I not free. This right?”

Never before had he thought long about the plight of the slave. Slaves were the vanquished; their freedom was simply another thing that they had lost. But he felt a pang of compunction now.

“No, not free. We will bring you to the castle. We need you to ease our way with your people. And Sven is returning home, so we might have use of your healing. So we cannot let you go. But I would leave you unbound if you will stay without the rope. You understand?”

With her face turned up, she studied him, her eyes scanning back and forth over his. “You can keep men away?”

“I can.” And he would. He felt an investment in this small woman, a protective urge. He knew not from where it came, but it was strong.

“Your word is good?” she asked, her eyes narrowing.

“It is.” That was true as well. He did not make promises lightly, even to a slave, and he bore their consequences willingly. His word was the most valuable thing he had.

“Then no rope.”

~oOo~

Strong though he was, Vali barely made it to the castle. Mere moments after they’d entered the hall, while Leif was still standing with his eyes closed, battling the memory of his son’s head dressed like a meal, the mighty Storm-Wolf crashed to the stone floor, unconscious. Brenna God’s-Eye took two quick steps toward him and then pulled up as if she had surprised herself.

When they pulled his fur from him, they saw that his back was soaked in fresh blood; he had reopened at least part of his wound.

Leif found Olga’s eyes. “We have need of your healing before we will have need of your words, it seems.”

She crouched at Vali’s side and pulled up his sopping tunic. Examining his back, she spoke a long string of words Leif did not understand, and then she sighed and looked up at him. “Get him to bed. I find”—she said something else in her own language and sighed again—“things I need.”

Leif nodded and turned to the raiders. “Let us get our friend into one of these royal beds.”

It took four of them to carry the big man up a winding stone staircase, trying not to bend his back, but they found him a bed and got him into it.

~oOo~

Later, after Olga had tended to Vali, and Leif had spoken with him, Leif found the God’s-Eye in the stable, combing her fingers through the lush, creamy mane of the mare she seemed to favor. Leif had long known her to prefer the company of animals—any animal, from the goats and fowl that ran loose in the Geitland hall to a magnificent beast such as this mare.

She glanced up briefly as he came to her side, but she didn’t speak. She rarely did except in necessity.

“He is awake and asking for you.”

No response or reaction.

“You are important to him, I think.”

At that, she scoffed quietly.

“You are not?” Leif didn’t believe that. It was obvious to any who cared to see it. Too obvious, he thought.

Brenna God’s-Eye paused and looked up at him, her eyes meeting his. Like any other of their people, Leif felt the urge to drop his eyes. He did not fear her or her eye, but there was something unreal in it, something so intense that he felt as if she were seeing too much of him when she looked him dead on.

He meant to hold her gaze, but he blinked, and then she broke away. “He seems to want something of me, but I don’t understand.”

Leif fought back a smile. He knew the God’s-Eye to be naïve in many things—most things, in fact, that didn’t have to do with war and battle. It was said that she might steal the will, and even the soul, of any man who coupled with her, and he doubted any had ever tried.

If he read Vali right, then it seemed the Storm-Wolf thought to try. Despite his concerns, Leif hoped he was successful. This brave, lonely woman deserved to know some happiness.

But there were serious concerns to be managed if there were a strong bond between these legends.

“Be careful, Brenna God’s-Eye. Know where your allegiance lies and keep true to it.”

She frowned at him. “Now I don’t understand you, either.”

“Forgive me,” he chuckled. “Go and see him. If there is nothing you want of him, then tell him so. If there is something, tell him that. But know your heart and your mind. Every choice carries its own burden.”

“I like it better when no one talks to me,” she grumbled and turned back to her horse.

Often of a morning, when Olga came to awareness and opened her eyes, finding herself nested in a cozy bed in the shelter of the castle proper, she felt a heady disorientation. At the hands of the monsters from the sea, she had found herself in a position of unfamiliar power and comfort.

The same men and women who had killed every inhabitant and visitor of the fishing village, except her, who had enslaved and beaten and raped her and the few other women they had not simply murdered on sight, who had seemed to leave oceans of blood and mountains of bodies everywhere they went—those same monsters had, within a mere few weeks of inhabiting the castle, improved Olga’s life and the life of all of the people who’d survived their claiming.

It was as if they’d sent the monsters back to the sea on their strange dragon ships and left the human beings behind.

They had opened Prince Vladimir’s stores to the villagers. People who had lived whole lives with the barest enough now knew plenty. The savages in bloodied leather had proved themselves more noble than any titled gentleman in gold chains and brocade.

Olga was no longer a slave; Leif and the others had freed her within days of moving to the castle and had left her to her own choice. Leif had asked her to stay and take charge of the running of the castle, and to ask other villagers to stay on and work for them as well.

He had
asked
her to stay. No person with power over her had ever sought her opinion or preference before.

When she’d said that she had never had the charge of something so great as a whole castle before, he’d laughed and said that neither had he nor any of his fellows. They would all be learning together, he’d said, his blue eyes alight.

She had agreed. Now they treated her as their equal, and she found that running a castle for people who knew nothing of them, and thus had few expectations, was not such difficult duty. Her work amounted to making sure that people were fed and comfortable. It was not so different from her healing—identifying a need and meeting it.

Their need of her as translator was harder work. Her mind whirled all the day, trying to keep two languages close at hand every moment, translating in both directions and trying to teach the raiders’ language to those of her people who wished to communicate on their own.

They did not all share the same accent. Sometimes, the words they said sounded little like the words she knew, and her brain scrambled all the harder to make sense.

Of the raiders, so far, Leif was the only who wanted to know her language. He sought her out often to take a lesson. Those meetings were the best part of Olga’s day.

Her own facility with the raiders’ tongue had grown quickly with so much use, so that she hardly had to pause to find a word she wanted, though she still struggled to make the sentences flow gracefully. Sometimes words came at her very quickly, in both languages, and sorting through that cacophony made her head ache.

Sitting at the massive table in the main hall of the castle now, with Leif, and Vali, and Brenna, and several others of the raiders, and villagers, too, Olga clenched her hands in her lap. These meetings were among her hardest duties. Much rested on her making sense among people who could not understand each other. It was one thing when they were discussing the village and making plans for supplies or simply meeting to learn about this place. Today, though, three scouts the raiders had sent out—Tord, Sigvalde, and Viger—were reporting on the threat presented by the two princes whose lands bounded these.

If Olga misunderstood what was said, or if she used a wrong word to translate it, she might cause a war. She felt that responsibility like a leaden weight pressing on the back of her neck.

“The farthest is a hard day’s ride northeast,” Viger said. “A blue flag with a white beast.”

Olga knew that flag to be the colors of Prince Toomas, the most powerful of the princes. He and Vladimir, who had been his equal in strength, had fought many times, moving the boundary between them back and forth. She translated what Viger had said to the villagers at her sides, focusing especially on Jaan. Although he was young, he was smart and perceptive. None of the villagers knew much of war but how to die in it, but Jaan noticed things others didn’t bother to see.

Jaan nodded and turned to the men. He was trying to learn the raiders’ language. “Toomas,” he said to Leif, who was the leader of them all. He put up his fists as if to fight. “He…” Jaan faltered and turned to Olga. In their own tongue, he said to her, “I don’t know how to tell them that Toomas is dangerous. In Mirkandi, we stay clear of his men—soldiers and villagers alike. They’d kill us coldly.”

Olga nodded and turned to Leif and the others. She wasn’t completely sure, either, but she tried. “Toomas make much war here. Jaan say in town men know to be…” She paused, seeking the way to describe the men’s wariness. “Apart them?” That wasn’t right enough, so she pantomimed a separation, drawing her hands away from each other.

Brenna nodded first, understanding. “He was Vladimir’s foe?”

Such a strange thing for a woman to be sitting at a table like this. Olga understood her own place; she was the only among them who could hope to bridge the language gap for them all. But Brenna and another woman like her, another
shieldmaiden
, Astrid, sat here as if their opinions about matters of war and defense were relevant. More than that, they were wanted.

Olga was getting used to this interesting parity, but Jaan was still surprised that a woman had spoken. He turned to Leif, as if he could not bring himself to discuss such a matter with a woman, no matter her place among the others.

“Yes. No…friend here.” He darted a glance at Olga, who smiled. He’d said it well enough.

“That is not encouraging,” Vali said. “He wants this land and is likely to be ready to make war.”

“The castle was not busy.” It was the first time Sigvalde had spoken at this meeting. “There was no war making there—but it was already snowing. If they plan an attack, it won’t be until summer.”

“And the other? Ivan?” Leif seemed to be thinking hard. Olga had noticed that when a thought took him over, he ran his hand over his beard. A flick of a thought entered her head, an image only: her own hand smoothing over that golden fur, while his eyes stared down at her. Her belly twitched, and she blinked, forcing herself to focus on the words she must interpret.

Just then, Jaan nudged her, and she whispered a translation of what Sigvalde had said, as well as she remembered it.

“Straight south,” Sigvalde answered. “The land is small and weak. We could take it, too. This Toomas is the danger.”

Olga’s heart skittered in her chest. She had been born on Ivan’s land. Her family—her father and two younger brothers—still lived there. Since she had been taken from them, she had seen them only once or, rarely, twice a year, but her love for them had never dwindled. The boys, Anton and Kalju, were young men now, sixteen and fourteen years. Ivan would make them fight for him.

She had seen what war looked like for these raiders. She did not wish to see her own blood in a memory like that.

“Please,” she said, seeking out Leif’s eyes. They met and held hers. Around her, she could sense that everyone else’s eyes were on her, too. “Will you make war south?”

Jaan nudged her again; this time, too intent on Leif’s answer herself, she ignored him.

With a glance, Leif surveyed the raiders around him, then shook his head. “No. Sigvalde’s meaning is that Prince Ivan is not a danger. The winter has our attention, and we will make ourselves strong here.”

Relief suffused her, and she smiled, her eyes nearly filling with tears. Leif cocked his head at her, but he did not ask, and Olga dropped her head and worked to control her emotions.

~oOo~

“This is a wonderful country.” Leif smiled at her. “How would I say that?”

They sat on the ground, at the top of a low hill overlooking her village. Winter was nearly upon them; the fields were fallow, and most of the leaves had fallen from the trees that would shed them, but on this day the air was warm and the sun golden. Perhaps one of the last of the warm days. All the signs pointed toward a harsh winter, bitter and long.

Weeks had passed since Leif had assured her that they would make no war her brothers would have to fight. Brenna God’s-Eye and Vali Storm-Wolf had claimed their bond and would be wedded within the week. Olga’s heart had warmed to see them grow close.

“
Eesti on imeline maa
,” she answered Leif’s question.

He repeated it, but lost a syllable in the middle.

“
Eem-ah-leen-ah
,” she corrected.

“
Imeline
,” he pronounced properly. “
Eesti on imeline maa.
”

“
Jah. Hea.
”

He beamed at her praise like a young boy. Then he turned back to the view, and Olga studied his profile. Her first thought of him—in that life before, when he’d stood in the doorway of Johanna’s hut and saved them, for the moment, from Knut, a man she now knew and did not fear—was that he was a golden giant. Still, it was her first thought upon seeing him, but now it meant more than his size or fair coloring. To her, Leif seemed to have a glow about him, a brightness, even though he seemed often shrouded in something dark—that pain she’d once witnessed in the camp. He pushed it away, but sometimes it crept over his shoulders and dimmed him.

He was a kind man and a good one. Not all the raiders were; though she had found her place among them, as had the other villagers, some of the men were rough and resented that there were no longer slaves left to their whim. But Leif and Vali—and Brenna, too—were quick and firm in their leadership, and the women who wished to be left alone were.

Olga wished to be left alone. For the most part.

“
Kas Sulle meeldis siin?
”

He focused on her again. “
Kas Sa saaksid seda korrata?
”

He’d asked her to repeat her question. “
Kas Sulle meeldis siin?
”

“
Anna andeks. Ma ei saa aru.
”

In excellent syntax and accent, he’d asked her to repeat herself, then apologized and told her he didn’t understand. They were questions he had learned and that he used often, but his accent and flow had improved much. “But that is good! All that is good. I asked if you like it here:
Kas Sulle meeldis siin
.”

“Ah.
Jah. Ma olen…rahulik?
” He lifted an uncertain eyebrow, and she nodded.

“Peaceful? Yes.
Rahulik
.”

“
Ma olen rahulik siin,
” he repeated the full sentence. He was peaceful here. Serene.

“And you are not at peace at your home?”

Leif let out a long, slow breath, his eyes never leaving hers. In his own language, he said, “I am a warrior, Olga. We do not know peace. We know loss.”