The Viking’s Sacrifice (9 page)

Rowena nodded uncertainly. “All right. It could be done. But you’d best not be long. It’s a fearful risk. I can watch while you go. If either of them wake, well…” A blush crept up Rowena’s neck. “I can keep them from being too interested in where you are, for a time. One of the other girls snuck out once or twice. There’s a young thrall up at Agnar’s she’s sweet on.” She looked round at the warrior. He lay fast asleep, his snores a gentle counterpoint to their conversation. “Go now, while it’s still early, and be back as soon as you can. They’ll be up at dawn, mark my words, but dawn’s late coming this time of year. Go through the byre, take the door there so you won’t wake him. And may God watch over you and send us salvation.”

“God is always watching us.” Wilda touched Rowena’s shoulder in thanks. “And salvation will be ours, in the end.” Though she didn’t think she believed that anymore.

Sigdir had taken the cloak Toki had made for her, but Rowena helped her find another and she wrapped herself in it before she crept through the byre, past the warm cows picking at wisps of hay. She sneaked the door open as quietly as she could and crept out into the crisp, hard air of winter. Toki’s hut was up the valley. She’d seen him riding down from it. Right on the outskirts of the spread-out village, but she could get there and back in time. She had to.

She ran. She’d always run, everywhere, when she was a child, run for the sheer joy of feeling the sand between her toes on the beach, the rustle and swish of corn or cool, dappled grass. Now she ran because she didn’t know what else to do, because it all pressed in, enough to crush her head with it. God had cursed her for helping a heathen, for helping the boy Einar, and this was a taste of the hell he had planned for her. A slow, cold hell that would freeze her solid. Snow slipped under her feet and she staggered to one knee, but righted herself quickly.

Before she had always run
to
something, but now her only thought was
from.
Away from slavery by another name, away from the spectre in her head of her quiet, cold marriage to a good man who was only a different kind of slaver. Away from Sigdir and his icy eyes, and his plan, a different kind of marriage. Away from being good, and pious, and doing what she was told because it was sensible and practical. She wanted to run till her cold heart burst and she could fall down dead, if that was the only way.

The hut was farther than it looked, and while a path had been cleared in snow that came up to her thighs, more was falling. It seemed that snow always fell here. It had hardly stopped since she’d arrived, as though the land itself wanted her icebound.

By the time she reached Toki’s hut, she was frozen, down to her bones. Even so, she hesitated by the door, afraid now to open it. Yet she had nowhere else to turn, no one else to ask for help, and she needed help. God had sent him to her, sent Toki to save her. God had sent him that one night when her childhood was cruelly murdered, and God had sent him now, when she needed him again. It would be a sin not to take what God had sent to help her in her hour of need. She pushed the door open.

Toki sat by the low fire wrapped in an old seal-fur, wretched in his heart. He’d lost his chance to keep Wilda away from Bausi, to keep her from saying what she’d seen and speak the words that would kill him and Gudrun, and Wilda too. Yet that wasn’t the burn in his chest, or only part of it.

She was Sigdir’s, and he wanted her to be his. Not as a master and thrall, but as a man and a woman. Yet now he wouldn’t even be able to see her. That had made the time since she’d come, since fear had began to claw his belly, bearable. To sit at Agnar’s house with her there, watch her. He wanted just that, if that was all he could have. To watch her smooth movements, the tilt of her head in the firelight, the set of her mouth when she spoke. Her slow smile when she looked at him.

He thought back to the raid, to the day he could hardly bear to recall. Her little fox-face watching them, of how wild and untameable she’d looked. Yet someone had tamed her, or maybe broken her. Her movements were smooth, yes, graceful. But there was a sense of something restrained, chained up about her. He wanted to unchain her, wanted to see again the wild face, see her run across the beach, free of all the care that seemed to sit on her shoulders. There must be something he could do, some way, but he couldn’t think of it, of how to get round Bausi and Sigdir and his own chains.

A blast of frigid air made him start and Einar snorted in his stall. The door opened and a bundled-up figure came in. He pulled himself to his feet when the cloak came off, thinking he must be asleep. He must be, because it was Wilda.

She stood shaking in the doorway, her lips twisting and her eyes red with tears she hadn’t cried. He couldn’t think what to do for long moments and they stood and watched each other until Einar snorted again and brought Toki’s notice away from her.

He shut the door and pointed to the one bench, suddenly ashamed for the meanness of his hut, for the little he had and that mostly rags. She perched on one end of the bench, her hands twisting together as though she was working herself up to something. He couldn’t think why she was here, how she’d got away. Why she’d come to him.

Wilda stared at the flames of the low fire and took a deep breath before she looked up at him. Something seemed to break inside her, the smooth grace gone, the elegance forgotten. Suddenly she was there again, the girl from long ago, hiding on a beach, hair wild and face wilder. She spoke, a rough, impassioned outpouring of words he had no hope of understanding. He shook his head, trying to convey his confusion, and she leaped to her feet again and grasped at his hands, a plea for something.

She stared at him in a way that made him want to pull away, to wrap himself in a cloak and not be seen. But the touch of her hands on his—he couldn’t pull away. It had been long and long since he’d had the comfort of a touch that was kind, that wasn’t a push or a shove or a hit. Just a touch, and he’d not remembered what he’d been denied until now.

She took a deep, halting breath, gathering herself maybe. “Sigdir.”

Thor’s blood—had Sigdir…? Toki looked her over carefully, her face, her arms, but saw no further hurt, no sign Sigdir had harmed her beyond the bruise and cut he’d made before. That didn’t mean he hadn’t done any more, but Toki had no way to ask that she’d understand.

She slid her hands from his and pointed to the ring on her left hand, a plain gold band. A wedding ring. She tried to say something else, but he couldn’t make it out through her accent.

“Went necht,” it sounded like. Finally she managed to get the sounds right and he realised it was “Winter Nights.”

Toki recalled what Sigdir had said—a surprise for Winter Nights. A wedding ring. He was going to marry Wilda at Winter Nights. No negotiations to go through, no bride price to pay. But to marry a thrall—why would he, when he need not? Marriage was to ally families together, no more or less, and as Bausi’s brother and only heir as yet he could find a fine family to forge with. What had Wilda or her family got that Sigdir wanted?

Wilda tried to hide the tears that gathered, attempted a smile, and everything else fled before him. Sigdir and Gudrun were lost to Bausi and his wyrd. The whole village was lost to it, he saw it now, through Wilda’s eyes. Toki had done nothing for too long, had kept his silence and his actions to himself. Now he had to do something, or Wilda would end like all of Sigdir’s thralls—thin, dispirited, broken. That the curse would find him too if he left didn’t matter. All that mattered was Wilda.

Her fingers trembled against his and he looked down at her, at the wide-spaced eyes, the finely crafted mouth that quivered now.

“Wilda run,” she said.

If only that were possible. There was no running, not now. Not till spring, maybe not even then. He’d thought and thought and could see no way around it, not ’round the rune-curse, or Sigdir’s hold on Wilda. If she ran, he would chase her and all would come undone. Yet first was Wilda. Always first in his thoughts now.

“Please, Einar. Wilda run.”

He turned away at that. He hadn’t been Einar for a long time. He was Toki, and while he might dream of courage, might feel the burn of it in him, he couldn’t act. His courage lay only in bearing what he must, in silence. He couldn’t help her, no matter how much he wanted, needed to get her away, for both their sakes.

“Toki, I’m Toki.” Toki he’d been for too long, with not even the courage to acknowledge his own name.

Her soft hand on his cheek turned him back, seemed to burn him with kindness and comfort. Her eyes held him, her voice firm. “Einar.”

He tried to shake his head, to deny it, deny he was who she thought him, a warrior or brave. She stopped the shake with a kiss, firm and warm.

He pulled away with a start, a flush creeping up his neck. She shouldn’t. She was worth better, much better than him, or Sigdir or any man he could think of. She deserved a king, a prince, someone to keep her safe and shower her with fine things. Not him, not a man with nothing, not even the courage to kiss her back. He turned his back on her, on the way she was looking at him as if he was any kind of man, like a warrior and a man of Thor, a man of iron. She had to leave. If Sigdir found she’d been here—no, that wasn’t why. She looked at him as though she believed his dreams, the ones where he was tall and strong and brave.

She began to talk again, but he couldn’t understand her. Her hand pulled at his arm, but he ignored it, refused to meet her gaze. It wasn’t him she wanted. She wanted his help, that was what the kiss was for. And he couldn’t give it, so he wouldn’t take her kiss, or anything else she offered, wouldn’t take advantage of her need. Wouldn’t dishonour Sigdir’s future bride, no thrall at all he saw now, the collar gone from her neck, but still he could see it on her soul. He wouldn’t be like his brothers. If nothing else, he would not do that. He opened the door for her but couldn’t look her in the eye.

Wilda stared at Einar’s back. And he
was
Einar, not Toki, not a simpleton, not mute. It was in the way he looked at her, a shadow behind his eyes. Einar was still in there, waiting to come out.

She wasn’t sure what had possessed her to kiss him. Maybe because she saw the same things in those shadows as were in her own heart. Because who she appeared to be was not her. Something had snapped inside, so hard she would have sworn she heard it. She didn’t want to be Lady Wilda anymore, she never had. She had done everything she’d been asked, had walked with grace, had spun and sewn and woven when she would have rather been running, out on the beach, down among the orchards. She had let them hem her in, had wanted to be hemmed in maybe. She had let herself die, let herself be blown along with a cold heart, and now, now something about him was bringing her back to life.

Just in time for her to be married off to a brute. This was a fool’s errand, a false hope, that a man who refused to speak, who was treated as badly as any thrall, could help, and yet it had been her only hope, one now cruelly dashed. He
couldn’t
help her, she’d known that from the way his face clouded when she asked, the way he looked away as though ashamed.

That was what had made her snap—that it was hopeless, useless, that all the lessons she’d been taught in how to be a lady were for nought because she had to marry a heathen, a barbarian, had to bear his children and let him take Bayen’s lands and could do nothing to prevent it. That, and how Einar denied even his own name in favour of being called simpleton.

She didn’t know what had happened to him to make it so, only that she couldn’t bear it, couldn’t bear that the man who’d saved her life, who’d shown her kindness in a land of barbarians, whose every action seemed to her one of quiet courage, taking what everyone threw at him, was reduced to this. She didn’t even think of him as heathen anymore, he was only Einar. And she knew it was a sin, against her faith in God, but she didn’t care. If kissing him was a sin, she didn’t want to be virtuous. If no one could help her, and she knew now that no one could, then by God, she was going to make sure she had one night first.

Soon she’d be married to Sigdir, in a heathen’s bed. If she was going to bed one, she didn’t want him to be the first, because she’d found a good, kind man and she wanted him to know it. She wanted to throw away every last shackle, every last restraint, just for once, for one night. The lady they’d made her hadn’t helped, so she was going to be herself instead. Damn “practical” and “reliable.”

Snow and icy air swirled in through the doorway, and she shut the door with a bang.

“Einar, look at me.”

Still he wouldn’t, seemed only able to stare at the floor. Her hand found his again, the roughened skin prickling on her fingers like fire. The tingle of it travelled up her arm, through her chest. She knew now why she’d kissed him, not for any of those reasons. Because she wanted to, because of the way he looked at her, the thought behind his eyes, the way his touch caused such a thrill in her belly. She stood on tiptoe and kissed him again, let herself linger in it as she never had before, kissed him as she’d never kissed anyone before. Because she wanted to, because it made her heart thud and her ears ring.

He pulled away again, and her lips ached to kiss his, to kiss around the strong cheekbones, over his wide dark eyes with their shadow behind. To kiss down and round, discover the strength of him under his shirt, make his brilliant smile light up his face like sunrise on snow. Now she’d let it out, she couldn’t put it back in. But the way he stood, hunched against the blows of his life, burned her, made her want to cry bitter tears for him.

His eyes found hers, and he looked at her at last, but she didn’t see what she expected. Men lusted, she knew that, and that’s what she’d expected to see, lust or passion or something like it, not this hesitancy or the deep flush creeping up his neck as though he was embarrassed.

How long had he lived here alone? In the meanest hut, far on the edge of the village. How long had they been calling him simpleton or worse, cutting him apart from them? How long had it been since he’d been with a woman, if he’d been with one at all? That was when all was laid bare for her to see, when she remembered her wedding night and her nerves.