Heart's Ease (The Northwomen Sagas Book 2) (9 page)

A frown drew over his brow. “You are sorry about what we’ve done?”

She had left him sleeping in her bed before dawn that morning, folded up so that he fit. His arm had been heavy over her, and his body warm behind her, and she had scooted from the bed, careful not to wake him.

Never had she been so sorry to leave her rest.

“No. Never. What we’ve done is special to me, and I hope there is more. But I think…perhaps this is not the time to make it known, the change between us.”

“You said the castle needed something good.”

“The energy, yes. We brought health into this home, and that is good for more than you and me. But the sorrow must make its way. When the grieving is done, that will be the time to share our news.”

They were alone in the stairwell, and, with a quick check to be sure of it, he bent his head and pressed his lips to her throat. Olga moaned almost silently and put her hand on his head.

“I would come to you in private, then. In the quiet hours,” he murmured, his breath and beard tickling her skin.

“
Jah. Oh, jah.
”

He stepped back with a smile and lifted her hand to his lips. “Do not bar your door tonight.”

Then he turned and left her, and Olga stood on the step, shaking.

Vali roared and swept a tense arm across the table, sending cups and candles flying to clatter on the stone floor of the hall. He leapt from his chair, overturning it so that it, too, crashed to the floor.

“I am weary of this talk! I want to ride south! Ivan must pay!”

They had not expected an attack from Prince Ivan in the south. His holding was poor and weak, and the raiders were the stronger force. They’d focused their energies to the north, and Prince Toomas, who controlled a rich holding and a well-appointed army, and had a history of incursions against Vladimir, but even so, they hadn’t expected trouble in the winter. Buried deep in snow, snug in the castle, they’d seen the season itself as the most pressing concern. Though they’d maintained patrols in the north to every extent they could, they’d expected—they still expected—Toomas to march his army on them when the weather would better accommodate the movement of a large force.

They’d all but forgotten Ivan, who had sent a small band of soldiers on foot, creeping into their land like bandits and wreaking havoc.

Now the village was destroyed, almost all of their livestock killed, and they’d lost several good men, villagers and raiders alike.

For Vali, though, this was much more personal. His wife—awake now but suffering badly—had been harmed and his child lost. Leif had real concern that his friend would ride out alone if he didn’t get the result he wanted from this planning meeting.

But his idea was folly.

Leif stood, too, more calmly, at the other end of the table. “You will have no vengeance if we lose, Vali. None of us will. We have lost enough already—if we lose more, we will lose all. The small band you speak of, sneaking into Ivan’s keep, might only be quashed and provoke him to ally with Toomas. And then we’ve lost our best fighters and are left to face united foes. If that happens before the ships arrive, we will be overrun. The snow is deep again. They cannot move on us in force any more than we can move on them. Better we wait for the true thaw and face Ivan head on, before he allies with Toomas.”

Vali roared again, this time slamming his fists on the table before him. “I would act! I would not stand here while he breathes and my son does not!”

“This matter is greater than your own loss, Vali. You and Leif are our leaders here, and you must think of the whole of us.” Orm had spoken, sitting near Vali. His voice had been low and measured, but Vali turned on him as if he’d shouted.

For a tense moment, there was no sound in the room but the breathing of the men, and Astrid, who had sat around the long table to discuss plans for retaliation.

Leif hated the table, on which his son’s head had been perched, resting on a golden tray, when the raiders had first come into the castle. Not once had he sat at this table, or even passed it, without seeing that sight behind his eyes. He would happily have hacked it into pieces and burned it, except that it was the only table in the castle long enough to seat everyone who would be party to their discussions like this—the castle’s own version of a thing.

No one else seemed to think of the table as anything other than a convenient assemblage of lumber. So Leif set aside his personal pain and sat here often, leading meetings, for the good of the group. Vali needed to find that strength in himself as well.

But he would not find it now, it seemed. With a last, baleful glare at Orm and at Leif, Vali turned, kicked his upended chair, and stormed from the room, toward the stairs that would take him up to Brenna.

~oOo~

Thanks to Brenna herself, reason finally prevailed, and Vali was calmed. The day after his display of temper in the hall, he’d come to Leif with an idea Brenna had shared with him: to enlist the aid of Ivan’s subjects, who would make them sufficient number to crush Ivan with little fight. They would face the prince head on, drawing his attention and that of his army toward the front, and they would beset him on all other sides with his own people, from positions he thought he held secure.

Olga had been born on Ivan’s land, and her family—a father and two younger brothers—were Ivan’s subjects still. She had told Leif, one night in her room, as she’d lain naked on his chest, that she had been brought to Vladimir as part of a truce agreement. Not as a slave, precisely, but subject to royal whim nonetheless. Ivan had sent her in a parcel of people to Vladimir as workers in his village, sundering her from her family.

She had been mother to her younger brothers since shortly after the youngest’s birth, when their mother had died of fever. In the years since she had been forced to leave them, she’d seen her brothers only a few times, and her father even fewer.

Vladimir had given her as a gift to one of his officers. It was that man who had most abused her and who had killed her child and her chance to have any other children.

Leif felt some need to see Ivan pay, as well.

Olga had known how a messenger might make his way into Ivan’s sole village and seek the assistance of the people there against their prince. That messenger had come back with good news: the village was eager to stand up with the raiders; the story of the raiders’ defeat of Vladimir and their community with his people had reached their ears. They’d reported back that they were ready and able to fight.

Leif and Vali and the others had made a plan. A good one, Leif thought. One that, if all went well, would allow Olga to be reunited with her family.

When Vali had brought the idea down from his talk with Brenna, with the thought that, should they win, they could bring the people and resources of both holdings together, Leif had immediately seen the chance to give Olga her family.

It wasn’t until hours later, lying with her as she slept, that he understood that doing so would be the end of them. He knew she wouldn’t leave her homeland if her family were with her again.

He hadn’t mentioned the chance to Olga, because he didn’t want to bring her hopes up too soon. Upon recognizing his own looming loss, Leif decided to say nothing to her at all, not until and unless her family returned with them after the battle. What little time he had with her like this, he wanted every bit of it.

And now they were on their way to fight.

Their plan had not included the still-healing Brenna God’s-Eye, yet Vali had just helped her off her golden horse, and she had limped off into the woods, looking pale and damp, as they’d stopped to rest their horses and themselves before they crossed into Ivan’s territory.

In the days between their forming a plan and implementing it, summer had finally begun to push winter away. A true thaw, Leif hoped it would be the last thaw, had finally come, and most of the high snowpack was gone. With the sun and warm air, Brenna had rejoined the world as well.

She was not ready to fight. How could she be? Barely more than two weeks had passed since she’d been hurt. Yet Leif understood why she had insisted, and, seeing the straight set of her shoulders as she walked from their stopping place, he knew that she would be strong in battle. Perhaps she would not be so strong as her peak, but she would be brave and determined, and her legend would grow on this day. Even if they were vanquished, he thought that would be true.

And Vali and Leif would stay at her side and make room for her to have her revenge.

~oOo~

At the head of the forward group, with Brenna and Vali, Leif pulled his shield from his back and brought it forward. He left his sword sheathed. At his side, Brenna did the same. Vali, a berserker who fought with a different style from theirs, had stripped to his bare chest. He carried no shield and wore no armor, but wielded his axes and his body so deftly he had need of nothing else. In this battle particularly, his furious need for justice forged stronger armor around him than any smith could.

They had teams in place ready to attack the castle from all sides when the forward group engaged the soldiers, with the villagers coming over the back wall in droves.

The raiders approached, and the castle gates opened with a reluctant shriek. A unit of soldiers came through on foot, in perfect formation. At their head was a single mounted man—their leader, by the look of him.

He stopped, and the soldiers stopped behind him, all at once. In the Estlander tongue, he said, “I am Captain of the Guard. At the bidding of Prince Ivan, I ask why you have come to our door. You are strangers to him and not welcome here. If you seek parley, elect an agent, and we will escort him in to make arrangements.”

Nearly fluent in the language of this country now, Leif understood every irrelevant word. They did not seek parley. They sought the utter destruction of Ivan and every man who stood between him and them. Leif made the gesture with his hand that they had agreed upon, and from behind him, Knut hurled his spear. It whizzed between Leif and Brenna and hit true, impaling the Captain of the Guard through his throat.

The raiders jumped from their mounts and sent them running to safety, then met the charging soldiers head on. Leif bellowed and swung his sword, slashing the neck of the first solder he met. He threw that body to the side and blocked an attack with his shield.

Their intent was to drive the soldiers back into the castle, to hem them in as the other groups came over the walls. Though the raiders in the single forward group were outmanned by the soldiers, the balance would shift dramatically once all of the fighters were engaged. So they made no shield wall. Instead, they ran full-bore into the soldiers, pushing them back with their heavy shields and blades.

Leif kept a sense of Brenna as he fought, and of Vali, too. He had promised that he would not leave the weakened shieldmaiden unprotected. Without a specific plan to do so, he and Vali moved in tandem, keeping Brenna between them, jumping between her and soldiers’ blades, shielding her from the more exposed edges of the fight.

Leif knew Brenna’s fighting style; he had trained her and fought beside her for years now. She preferred the edges of a scrum, a place that allowed her to move her body freely. But she was not her full self, and the edge put her at a distance from aid. So, working instinctively with her husband, he kept her close, in the midst.

Even in the cacophony of battle, he did not miss her growl of frustration.

Seeing a soldier charge straight for her, Leif shouted and dived before her. He took the point of the blade in his chest and felt it sink between his ribs, but the Estland blades were narrower and lighter than their own, and Leif drove his down and broke the soldier’s in twain. He grunted as the impact drove the point even deeper and shifted it upward, but waited until he had opened the soldier’s belly, his sword slashing through the cracked links of battered mail armor, before he knocked the broken blade from his own chest.

There was no pain, and there wouldn’t be, not in the thick of the fight. His arms were not weakened, nor his heart. So Leif fought on, unimpeded by his injury. When he saw Brenna and Vali argue in the middle of the fray—and then Brenna save Vali from a blow—Leif eased his vigilance over the shieldmaiden. They were doing her more harm than good, and she too, was suffused with the righteous power of battle. She was not weak. Not now.

So Leif turned and fought on.

The smell and splash of blood set afire the lust for it in his belly, and he felt a greater strength swell his muscles. This was what he was born for; this was what he knew. Perhaps his head was cooler and his heart warmer than his jarl or many of his clansmen, but he loved the fight no less for that. The sight of his blade breaking a blow aimed at him, the sight of it cutting through the body of a soldier who meant him ill, the spray and gush of an enemy’s blood over his face and hands, his chest—all of these fed his ravening soul.