Soul's Fire (The Northwomen Sagas Book 3) Read online

  Behind her, the crunch of pebbles told of someone encroaching on her quiet moment, and she cast her eyes over her shoulder. Leif approached, alone. She offered no word of greeting but watched as he neared. He offered no word, either, and sat on the log beside her.

  She went back to honing her blade. Leif looked out over the Geitland harbor, and for long minutes, they were simply quiet.

  “You are vexed,” he offered eventually.

  “I’m not.”

  He didn’t reply, but his chuckle served as rejoinder enough.

  Though she had no need to be the last to speak, or the first, Astrid was not one to hold her tongue when speaking would serve her better. So she set her stone on its leather pouch, she laid her axe across her thighs, and she turned to her jarl. Her friend.

  “I am tired of quiet. I need a fight.”

  “We sail in days, Astrid. A fight is coming. If this will be like our other western raids, the spoils will be magnificent.”

  “I care not about the spoils. We have enough already. We have too much, and it has made us less. We have grown soft here.”

  “We were not so soft that we were overtaken in the winter.”

  “But we were soft enough that a chieftain with no story thought he might try.”

  Leif sighed and turned back to contemplate the water. “What would you have me do, Astrid? We raid to bring health and wealth to our people. Would you call our successes failures instead?”

  He was right, of course. People wanted this prosperity. This was what they had striven for, and it would be lunacy for Astrid to wish away her people’s plenty so that she would not be bored. But it was much more than her own agitation.

  “No. You are a great jarl, Leif. You have made Geitland great. We are all warmed in your light. But being warmed by you, the fires in people’s own bellies have gone out. Well-fed warriors have no hunger. Without the will to kill, they will be killed.”

  “You think we’re not battle-ready?”

  “I think our warriors are well trained. I believe the gods sent the chieftain and his clan to us as a spark, to remind us that we aren’t invulnerable and that we must be ready to fight. But are we? Some of us, yes. The core of us. But I fear that core will be ringed by the fallen bodies of those who fought without hunger.”

  “Would you have us stay home?”

  “No. If we have need of nothing else, we have need of that lesson. But I would tell you to prepare to take many losses.”

  Astrid had returned her attention to her axe as she’d spoken, drawing a finger along the honed edge until she bled. She didn’t turn to Leif, but she could feel his eyes on her.

  “You are my strong right hand, Astrid. I esteem you as a great friend and a mighty warrior. And I know you’re not so cold as you pretend. You would not sit here ready to sacrifice your clanspeople, your fellow warriors, for a lesson. But I think you know, in your heart, that you’re wrong. We conscript no raiders. They come of their own will. Any who would volunteer for this raid would do so with fire in their bellies, even if those bellies are full of meat as well. And any shieldmaiden you would send forth will be fierce and bold as the best of the men. We are ready. We will be bold, and we will bring glory home.”

  He had said the thing that she truly feared, the thing she knew was at the heart of her disquiet. Now she turned to Leif and faced his dark blue eyes. “There was a time, before Vali and I carried that first great golden shield home to you, before Geitland was so powerful, before you were so powerful, when you spoke of honor, not glory. It was Åke who sought glory. Are you not better than he?”

  Before Leif could answer, Astrid picked up her weapon and her stone and left him sitting alone at the edge of his empire.

  ~oOo~

  In the hall, Astrid found Ulv. He was sitting amongst other men of an age, deep into their mead. She strode up, pushed herself between him and another man, and grabbed the horn from his hand, draining it. She had a need tonight to stop thinking. What she wanted instead was a drunken rut.

  Ulv smiled up at her and didn’t complain that she’d taken his drink. When she held it out, he hailed a servant girl to fill it full again.

  She had been harsh in her words to Leif. He was not like Åke. In Åke’s hall, the servant girls had been slaves, and the men had had free rein to take what they wanted from them. Though the full holding of Geitland still kept people in thrall, the town itself did not. Leif had freed his own slaves before he’d wed Olga. Once they were wed, Olga had campaigned hard, in her soft way, with the Geitlanders against keeping slaves. In the town, she had prevailed, but the farmers and people of the villages had been intractable.

  Of his own accord, without his wife’s guiding force, Leif had banned the raping of women and the harming of children and oldsters during raids. That had been an edict, not a consensus, and it had not gone down smoothly among warriors trained under Åke’s lax eye, men who believed that it was as much a warrior’s right to bury his sword of flesh into a vanquished body as to bury his sword of iron or steel.

  There had been some harsh corrections of men who would not heed. Leif didn’t make his sole word into law often, but when he did, he didn’t countenance disobedience.

  His only other edict was that any slaves that were taken might only be able-bodied and hearty men and women. Children could not be held in thrall. Neither could they, or the old or infirm, be slaughtered.

  If their raids had not been so wildly prosperous, Astrid thought Leif might well have met an early challenge for his seat. But they had been. He had brought them great wealth and honor, and there were few grumblings now among men who had no thralls to force to their will.

  Because freewomen could not be forced. A man who forced a freewoman, who treated her ill in any way, would know the wrath of the woman and the town behind her.

  Astrid marveled at the women in the places they raided—weak and useless, the lot of them. Especially the women of Anglia, who were frail and limp, who cowered and wept when she and her clan came. Faced with a foe brandishing a blade, they didn’t fight. They dropped to their knees and slammed their palms together. They turned their eyes up to the sky or the ceiling, and they spouted gibberish to their strange dead god, whose naked corpse they hung on their walls.

  Those women could not know how lucky they were that Leif Olavsson and Vali Storm-Wolf led the raids that leveled their homes. Any other jarl would have taken far more from them. Any other jarl would have taken everything.

  They could only have been luckier if they had lived in a world that expected them to fight and be their own strength.

  After another horn of mead, Astrid pushed Ulv’s hands to his sides and straddled him. His eyes flared wide, and his hands found her hips.

  “You’re hard for me, Ulv Åkesson.”

  He nodded, but he frowned. “I am. But I would you would not call me that.”

  He disliked that she so often drew notice to his lineage. But she would not forget who his father had been. “Is it not your name?”

  “You know how I feel to be son to a man such as he. I would it were not my name.”

  “Then earn for yourself another. The Storm-Wolf wasn’t born as such. He earned his name. He is another who wanted no connection to his past.” She opened his breeches and found his sex, hot and thick. Their friends had continued to drink and talk and laugh, ignoring them. It was nothing for their people to couple in company. They did everything in company.

  He groaned. “Still your mouth, woman.” Fussing at her lacings, he threw his hands out in frustration. “Why will you not wear a hangerock? I would be deep inside you if I could get to you.”

  With a single exception—when Vali had wed Brenna in Estland—Astrid had not worn a gown since she had first picked up a sword. As Ulv well knew.

  She bit his ear. “Grab a fur and carry me outside. The night is warm. We can be under the stars and I’ll let you have me like a beast.”

  He groaned and stood up, taking her with him. She worked his
sex while he shambled to the door, reaching down to take up a fur along the way.

  When he laid the fur down on a soft patch on the berm near the pier and dropped with her down onto it, Astrid flipped hard, putting him on his back with a grunt. She would take him in like a beast, but first she would make him beg for it.

  This was better. It did not warm her or soften her—Leif was wrong; she was exactly as cold as she seemed—but it satisfied her. And that was enough.

  Leofric drew back his bow, sighted on the buck before him. He took the breath that would lock his aim. At the precise moment that he loosed the arrow, Dunstan whistled at his side.

  The buck jolted at the sound, and the arrow that would have taken him in the eye buried itself in a tree instead.

  Pulling another arrow from his quiver, Leofric nocked it, drew, and turned in the saddle, sighting his grinning friend. “I should kill you for that. A man who cheats has no honor, and a man with no honor has no claim to breath.”

  Without the slightest sign that he feared for his life, Dunstan shrugged. “Not cheating, Your Grace. Conserving. I only mean to be sure there are beasts left to be hunted.” With a loaded lift of his eyebrow, he turned away from the arrow pointed at his face, to the gamekeeper behind them, his heavy horse pulling a litter with three bucks already. Two of which were Leofric’s.

  The Duke of Orenshire, second son of King Eadric of Mercuria, unnocked his arrow and returned it to the quiver. “I suppose greed doesn’t do. And I’ve bested you in any case. Shall we return to the castle, then?”

  At Dunstan’s wry nod of agreement, Leofric slung his bow and turned his horse. With the gamekeeper following at a respectful distance, the Duke and the Earl of Tarrin began the hour’s ride home.

  ~oOo~

  Leofric laughed at his friend’s moaning. “Well, she’s a comely lass, at the least. And I suppose you’re not an ogre.”

  In truth, Dunstan was renowned in the kingdom for his personal beauty. The young ladies of the court threw themselves at his feet even before their noble parents could heave them at him. He was considered more of a catch than Leofric himself was. Dunstan’s parents had finally negotiated a match with the Duchess of Avalia. Though his intended was very young, it was an excellent match for him, and a fine one for her as well.

  “She’s frail and pious, and she’ll spend all her time on her knees—and I don’t mean at my feet.”

  “That, my friend, is what kitchen wenches are for. And certain ladies in waiting.”

  Both men laughed, but Dunstan was not yet finished with his complaint. “I don’t see how you’ve escaped the wedding noose for so long. You’ve near thirty years!”

  “It’s the blessing of the second son. My father’s attention is on my brother.”

  Dunstan shuddered. “My sympathy is with the prince.”

  The crown prince, Eadric, son of Eadric, had married and buried three women. The first, a match of love as well as politics, had died in childbirth and taken the child, a son, with her. The second had lived for nearly two years before she’d taken a fever. She hadn’t been seeded in that time. The third had choked to death at the wedding feast.

  A legend, more like a superstition, had risen up around Leofric’s older brother, and finding a likely match for a fourth wife had proved difficult, even though he was heir to the throne. Noblemen thought their daughters might be better matched with men of perhaps slightly lower standing with a higher chance that their daughters would live.

  Three years had passed since the last princess’s death. Their father was consumed by the mission to get his eldest son married and producing an heir.

  The king had not much interest in Leofric’s fate on that point. His second son was not pious enough, or serious enough, or anything enough to warrant much attention, except to increase his urgency in getting Eadric an heir. Once Eadric had issue, Leofric was half sure he himself could wed one of the kitchen wenches and his father would barely notice, so long as she’d been baptized.

  He had no intention of marrying a kitchen wench, or any other wench, for that matter. He would have to eventually, he had no doubt. But so long as he could dodge duty’s long claws, he meant to remain his own man and rut where he wished to rut.

  Dunstan fell into a morose silence as he contemplated his eventual fate at the altar, and the men rode quietly through the woods for a long spell.

  They weren’t yet in sight of the castle walls when a flurry of activity—quick and gone—caught Leofric’s attention, and he pulled up his horse. Dunstan stopped as well.

  Leofric took his bow and nocked an arrow, but before he could draw, he heard a small sound that he recognized at once. With a glance at Dunstan, who shook his head and rolled his eyes, Leofric put away his weapon and dismounted. He heard Dunstan send the gamekeeper on and then dismount as well.

  He sneaked into the brush, picking his way carefully, until he came upon the clump of flowering shrub at which he’d placed the sound. Reaching over, he grabbed hold of coarse wool and pulled.

  As he lifted her from the ground, the girl squealed and then giggled—a muted version of that giggle was the sound he’d heard.

  She was filthy, dressed in tattered peasant’s rags, her long, honey brown hair snarled and festooned with leaves and bits of twigs. Leofric set her on her feet, and she grinned up at him.

  “Dreda,” he scolded his sister. “Someday, Father will act on his threats, and you’ll live out the rest of your childhood locked in the tower.”

  Dreda was much younger than her brothers; she hadn’t yet seen her tenth year. She’d been born late in their mother’s life—too late. Her birth had been the end of the queen.

  Their father had named her for the mother she’d never known, and he doted on her almost as if the spirit of his beloved had entered their daughter. She was indulged shamelessly by all the men in her life—and she was wild and intractable because of it.

  But she was a delight to them all, and none had the will to see any emotion in her eyes but joy. So her predilection for slipping the attention of her governess and escaping the castle’s protection had gone largely uncorrected, except for the threat that she’d be locked away in a tower—and for her governess’s fretful certainty that some day her own head would be lost.

  Leofric scanned the woods around them and saw no other sign of life. “Are you this far from the castle entirely alone?”

  “No one would come with me this far.” Once free of the castle, she played with some of the peasant children, none of whom were, it seemed, as intrepid as she.

  “Does it never occur to you that the caution of others might do you, as well?”

  “You’re out this far.”

  He crouched down and picked the twigs from her hair. “I am a man grown, I’m armed, and I’m not alone.”

  “If you would take me with you, then. I’d be good, I promise.”

  Brushing the dirt from her nose, Leofric stood and lifted his sister into his arms. “A hunt is no place for a fine lady such as yourself. And where did you get these rags?”

  Under the dirt, her cheeks pinked. “They were on a line. I wanted to be harder to find.”

  His admiration for her sneaky mind was tempered by surprise. “You stole them? You stole from a peasant?” He put as much censure as he could muster into his words.

  And saw it all strike its target. She blinked, and then recovered. “I left my dress and shoes! They’re worth much more than these! The shoes have pearls!”

  With a great, dramatic sigh, Leofric conveyed his disappointment as he carried Dreda back to his horse. Dunstan, who’d held their horse’s reins, forced the grin from his face and bowed as if he were at court. “Your Grace.”

  “Lord Tarrin,” Dreda answered, trying and failing to sound regal. In that moment, she was simply a little girl who’d been caught misbehaving.

  Leofric set his sister on his saddle and mounted behind her. By the time he was settled, he could no longer withstand the sad looks, so when she fus
sed about being placed sidesaddle, like a proper lady, he relented and lifted her so she could sit astride.

  He put his arm around her and held her close, and when she asked to run, he kicked his horse to its fastest stride. She laughed, her mussed hair flying in his face, and he held her more tightly and laughed with her.

  ~oOo~

  At the castle, Leofric left Dunstan to hand off the horses while he whisked Dreda in through a service door and delivered her to her frantic governess.