Chapter Fifteen
It seemed that she would never learn her way around the keep. However, she never stayed lost for long, because invariably she would come across someone who would cheerfully ask where she was trying to go. Her early decisions had paid off. Wilma was fattening them all up nicely. Dortha began new batches of ale every day and soon, they had plenty. She would need to make room in her larder. Settling into her place for a midday meal, she asked Jonis, “I have five barrels of undrinkable ale. I’d like the space in my pantry. Can you send some big boys to move them for me?”
A grin spread over her handsome husband’s face. “I can do better than that!”
Before she could ask him what he meant, he was up and loping toward some of the resident knights. Jonis turned and said in a voice that carried, “Bundle up and gather on the wall in ten minutes!”
Hanne dashed to find wraps for Sera and Benny and herself. Lilja was tucked into her cradle, just as well since it would be too cold outside for the wee babe. Hanne stood by the inner door and as young boys came bustling through, she made sure they had mittens and hats on. The children were agog, and Hanne had no idea what her husband had planned. Just as the dame made it out onto the wall, holding Benny’s thickly mittened hand, she heard her husband’s voice. “Snow Force! What’s the first rule of surviving near the pinnacle?”
“Stay dry!” came the answer from the young crowd. Jonis and some of the other knights were on the top rampart. Hanne glanced up to see them hoist a barrel up over their heads. Were they going to douse the entire population of the keep with the undrinkable ale? Hanne gave a shriek along with her young charges. The ale froze almost instantly. It never reached the wall in its liquid state, hanging in a frozen crystalline cloud emerging from the barrels. “And that,” called Jonis, “is why!” Jonis threw the entire barrel far enough over them that they safely watched the shards explode out of the barrels and crash off the wall like frozen fireworks.
If Hanne had harbored any doubts about just how cold it was at the top of the world, she didn’t anymore. The laughing children hustled inside. “Boys! Boys!” Hanne didn’t have the voice of a general like the paladin did; she had to work to be heard. “Hang your warm things up! Do not lose your mittens or hats! My ladies are busy enough without replacing everyone’s woolens!” She was quite sure that no one had heard her when a sharp whistle pierced the air.
“Gentlemen!” Sir Armund had a bellow that while used rarely, could not be ignored. “Your dame has asked you to be responsible for your things! See that you are!”
A happy chorus of “Yes, sir!” echoed through the keep as boys dashed to hang their things up and then get to their next lesson. Armund seemed pleased by the object lesson as he hurried to prepare for his next class.
“See how clever I am?” Jonis asked as he planted a hurried kiss on his wife’s cheek. “Trust me, they won’t ever forget that!”
She shook her head in mock dismay. “A fine one to be molding young souls, you ninny hammer.”
He glanced around the suddenly empty hall and landed a sharp smack on his bride’s bottom. “There’s more where that came from, young lady.” The dragon peered from underneath her husband’s collar and gave her a haughty nod. She had no doubt that if the dragon could speak, he would be saying, “Take that!” She could not stop smiling as she went to make sure her own children had put their mittens away.
A mighty crash from outside the keep shattered the sweet moment. Even Jonis jumped at the tremendous clatter from outside. “Go,” he ordered, in a voice that brooked no argument. He pointed deeper into the building. Hanne hurried into the main hall. She could hear doors slamming shut as all the classrooms were closed.
“Pssst, dame…” Wilma was whispering from the kitchen. Hanne was relieved when Wilma opened the door wider and she could see Agnes and the children. She ran to them and as soon as she passed the threshold, the other women barricaded the door.
“How do we know if everyone is accounted for?” she asked.
Several women answered at once, which made it hard for Hanne to keep track. She gathered that each classroom would be locked by the knight who taught in it. They made sure that every boy was safe. The women and younger children were to secure themselves in the cellar. The cacophony of excited voices had kept Hanne form noticing that they were indeed moving toward the stairs. Dortha secured the door by sliding a metal bar across it. At the base of the stairs, an iron portcullis was lowered and secured. Getting to the vulnerable at Pinnacle Keep would be no easy task. The congregation settled near the laundry room, since it was much warmer than the rest of the cellar.
“Not too close now,” warned Dortha. Hanne placed herself where she could prevent Benny or a crawling Lilja from getting near the boilers. The women looked around awkwardly as they wondered what was going on upstairs.
Hanne decided to ease the tension. “Do you know that I grew up thinking that the wooly mammoths were a legend?”
Her audience gave a volley of laughter. One of the teenaged girls held up a tentative hand. “Can I ask a question about life,” she pointed downward and whispered, “down there?”
Now it was Hanne’s turn to laugh. “Ingrid, I come from the Southlands, not the bowels of hell.”
Ingrid continued, “Do you really have summer all of the time?”
Hanne shook her head. “No, not all the time but we only have a few months of deep snow each year.” This was clearly shocking to her new friends.
“Is it true that you have foxes that are orange?” Wilma timidly asked, only to be roundly laughed at by the others.
“Orange? What sort of foolishness is that? Everyone knows that foxes are white,” hooted Miri.
Hanne smiled. “Actually we do; they aren’t bright orange like a carrot, but definitely sort of…” she looked around and her eye was caught by Ingrid’s flaming red hair, “sort of like Ingrid’s glorious locks.” Now it was her turn to ask a question. “How will we know when it’s time to go upstairs?”
“The cauldron will tell us,” Miri assured her.
Seeing Hanne’s baffled expression, Agnes added, “It’s just better to let you see.” At that moment a boiling cloud of bubbles appeared around the upper lip of the copper, hung precariously for a moment and then vanished back down into the depths without a drop spilling. This was their notice that all was well in the keep. Hanne was going to have to keep a journal, she decided, to keep track of all the absolutely impossible things that had become her every day.
A much happier group ascended the stairs, laughing and teasing. Hanne was relieved to see Jonis. He leapt onto the top of the main table so that he could be seen by everyone. “We’re fine. This unusual weather must have caused some shifting of the wall. The portcullis just dropped. We’re lucky it happened once we were all inside.”
Hanne noted the relief on everyone’s faces at their paladin’s words. Only Armund did not seem convinced. Before Hanne could approach him to speak to him, he had turned and called, “Novices, to me! We have lessons to resume,” over his shoulder and hurried back to his classroom.
Lessons picked up right almost where they had left off. The school part of the keep functioned like a well-oiled machine. The novices arrived at the age of nine. They were expected to be skilled readers and to understand basic math. The children who lived in the keep with their families, however, needed to be educated too. Once they were old enough, they would join the novices for some lessons: reading, math, history. The novices also had an extensive schedule of lessons specific to them: the history of the Snow Force, the moral code of the Snow Force, battle strategy and, of course, arms and sparring.
* * *
A few days later, Hanne found herself hesitating outside of a small warm room. Dortha, she of the perfect ale, sat cross-legged on a mammoth skin rug. She had several small children clustered around her. Dortha was gentle and encouraging as the sweet little daughter of the blacksmith carefully sounded out a sentence. It was a tender scene and Hanne could well imagine Sera, Benny, and Lilja cradled on Dortha’s lap following along with the story. She was beginning to be able to envision a future here. Briskly she shook herself out of her reverie. She had no time to wax sentimental; she needed to make sure the fabric was ready to be cut into britches for some very fast growing eleven-year-olds.
She turned to get back to her work and bumped into Sir Armund. He had been carrying a rather large stack of leather-bound books, garnished with an unsteady haystack of bound scrolls. Her clumsiness had sent them skittering all over the corridor. Hanne helped pick them up. The largest book had a rich green cover and bore the words, The History of the North Wall and its Magical Properties by Armund, Knight of Pinnacle Keep, Snow Force general.
She helped him restack his books. “You wrote the history of the wall?”
“I may be an old coot, but I know a thing or two about our sacred home.” Hanne had not thought that he knew of his reputation. She could swear that the stones on the floor suddenly seemed to be more orderly, as if they were standing up straight in response to the praise. “Could you teach me? There is so much that I don’t know.”
The elderly knight flushed from her praise. “Absolutely, you could join my class, or if it’s easier for you, come see me in the evenings.”
“I will,” she promised.
Looking back over his shoulder at her, he said, “The keep has long had need of you. I’m glad you are here.”
* * *
As the weather turned colder than Hanne could imagine weather ever being, she headed to the largest wardrobe to find extra blankets for everyone. Opening the enormous chest of blankets, Hanne was deluged with a cloud of fleeing moths. The blankets had not been packed with lavender and she was horrified to find them riddled with holes. There was not one blanket that didn’t show the work of the moths. She had need of these blankets. Repairing all of them would be a monumental task. Storing them this way was plainly stupid. Her mood soured. She briefly considered using them anyway, but thought back to the Keeper’s guide. No half measures; the care of this keep and its inhabitants was her mission on earth. Even if she wasn’t trying to live up to the Keeper’s code, it was essential to make sure that no moth eggs were alive in the blankets. The last thing she needed was all of the wool in the keep infested. Damnation, she thought. Fetching the blankets was supposed to be a quick errand, not a task that was going to take days. Vexed, she stomped to the kitchen and stuck her head in through a door. “I need everyone who possibly can to come help me wash and mend these nearly ruined blankets. They all need to be taken to the laundry,” she snapped.
“We have a laundry chute,” Miri said.
This was not incorrect, but it infuriated the already stressed dame. “I know we have a damn laundry chute, what I don’t know is who put these blankets away like this! How stupid can you be?”
Her fury propelled her back to the pile of blankets where the moths alighted. She kept up her bitter diatribe while she gathered up as many blankets as she could carry. “I don’t know how you didn’t all end up starved and naked without me! I bet the mothers of these boys assumed they would be taken care of. I just cannot believe the incompetence.” Her voice was loud and her tone was strident. She could hear how harsh she sounded. This did not stop her. “Stupid, stupid, stupid,” she muttered under her breath. Several women timidly followed her and they gathered the woolens and staggered to the laundry chute. Stuffing the expansive blankets down the chute was no easy task. As they all headed down to the laundry to begin the process of salvaging the blankets, Hanne noticed Miri give a little sniff. She had made the poor girl cry. While the washing tubs filled with soapy water, Hanne thought about the best way to repair the blankets. She decided using wool roving was their fastest option. Each blanket was laid out on a table and small amounts of wool were pressed into the holes and then soap was briskly rubbed over it until the wool felted. It worked well and was certainly faster than sewing them and then washing them. Still, it took the ladies much of the afternoon to get the first batch of blankets washed and repaired. Miri gave a shy quick curtsy in front of Hanne. “I have strung clotheslines up in the kitchen and the fires are roaring.”
“Thank you. I am very sorry I raised my voice at you.”
Miri gave a grateful little smile, and hurried to the comfort of the group. No one was meeting the dame’s eyes. Hanne felt awful.
By the time they had wrung out the blankets and lugged the wet woolens to the kitchen to hang on the clotheslines, Hanne was bedraggled and her dress was wet. Her heart was heavy; she had absolutely not behaved like a dame should. The walk back to her apartment to get a dry dress on was a long one. On the way back to the kitchen, she ran into her husband. “Hello, my snowbird,” he said happily.
It was all Hanne could do to not burst into tears. “We felted the mothy blankets, but I was horrible to Miri…” she began.
“Slow down, start at the beginning,” he said.
Hanne did. “The worst part is Miri has to forgive me, since I am her dame, but I don’t really deserve it.”
A stern smile played at the paladin’s lips. “You called one of our women stupid?”
Miserably, Hanne nodded her head. Jonis looked down the hall. Taking her hand, he led her into a nook off of the hall. He was standing behind her and he breathed into her hair, “Bend over and put your hands on the wall.”
She did so nervously. “Someone might see,” she whispered.
“Do as you are told, wife.”
His left hand gathered up her skirts and with his right hand he applied five hard swats to the roundest part of her bottom. It hurt, and she gasped. She was still very afraid of anyone seeing them, but she knew better than to try to squirm away from Jonis. He sensed her determination to take her punishment. “Good girl,” he breathed. Sliding one hand in front of her belly, he used the other to give her six more ferocious spanks. Smoothing her skirts down, he whispered, “You will go apologize to your ladies and ask their forgiveness, and then this matter is closed.”
She leaned back against him, bottom smarting, heart grateful.
She found Miri in the hall with an armful of pillows. “While we wait for the blankets to dry, we can put the smaller boys two to a bed. That way they can share blankets.”
“That’s very clever, Miri. Listen, it was not all right for me to speak to you like that. I was wrong, please forgive me.”
Miri’s lip trembled as a tear spilled from her eyes. “It was my fault. I didn’t realize I was putting them away for so long. I should have gone back and checked them when I realized summer was actually here.”
“No, you did a wonderful job even putting them away. When I was your age, I would have left them in piles all around the keep.” She gave the girl a hug. “I am so lucky you are here. Together we will make sure they are safely put away next year.”
Hanne apologized to all of the women individually. It took her a while, but they each deserved it. She thanked them for dropping everything to help with the blankets. Wilma had managed to make a pot of stew and rounded the meal out with bread, cheese, and apples. That would have to do for supper. The kitchen festooned with dripping wool blankets had slowed down her culinary finesse. Hanne took a deep sniff. Gesturing to the maze of blankets, she sighed. “My favorite smell—wet sheep!” Everyone laughed; the dame had been forgiven.
* * *
The snow had begun to fall and showed no sign of ever stopping. Hanne found that her hands were never idle, but she did find meaning in her work. Birgit had been correct, it was not an easy life, but it was a rich life. The new family settled into a pleasant routine, after the evening meal, the students retired to their dorms to study. Hanne and Jonis would sit in their chairs in front of their own fire. Sera still had no interest in her new stepmother, but she was entranced by Lilja and delighted in rocking the cradle and handing the baby small toys. Benny was usually determined to help Hanne with her knitting, and invariably rendered her wool nearly unusable. His handsome father would lure him away with some toy soldiers and Hanne would reward the paladin with a grateful smile. The muscle-bound gilded warrior would help her change the children for bed, and Hanne would wonder that those strong hands could be so tender. After kneeling in front of the fire to say their prayers, all three children would be happily tucked in with Agnes to spend a night in warm slumber. Together the paladin and his dame would visit each dorm to wish the boys a good night’s rest. With the youngest boys they would pause at each bunk bed and make sure its residents were tightly tucked in. Jonis knew each of the boys very well, and he seemed to know exactly when to be firm and when to be compassionate. She had noticed that for the youngest boys he would leave the doors on their beds cracked so that they would not be entirely in the dark.
The teenaged boys would be sprawled around their room, playing cards or reading. They seemed to recognize Jonis’ step and would spring to attention. “Snow Force!” he would bellow.
“Sir,” they would cry in unison.
“Don’t stay up too late,” their paladin would chuckle. The couple held hands as they walked back to their apartment, warmly wishing anyone they saw a good night.
There was never any missing the man’s strength, but something about his gentleness with the boys he was raising made her long for his hands on her body.
She locked the door behind them. This was more a piece of theater than a necessity; no one dare barge in. Jonis was clearly pleased about it. “Best get this fire banked, so we can get to bed,” he said. While he stirred the fire, she dropped to her knees in front of him, without ever removing her eyes from his handsome face.
“That’s my girl,” he whispered.
She longed to please him. She wanted to suck him so deeply that she could feel him deep in her chest. While his hands unpinned her hair, she unlaced his breeches. His cock sprang to attention. Running her tongue along the ridged underside of him, she moaned with desire. She slid her hand between his thighs, cupping his balls. His strong fingers clenched in her hair, but he didn’t force himself deeper. He let her control the depth until she could take all of him into her mouth. She sucked him harder and harder, shocked at how fierce her desire for him had become. Her tongue swirled around the head of his cock, savoring its velvety softness.
He whispered her name over and over. She enjoyed his groans of pleasure. Teasing him with her mouth gave her a sort of power she reveled in. Before she could drive him over the edge, he slid a hand under her chin and helped her rise to her feet.
“Bend over for me,” he growled. He led her to her chair. She placed her hands on its seat, very aware of her vulnerable bottom pointing sky high. He was so much taller than she that he had to grip her hips and lift her off of the floor to slam into her. Hanne panicked and tried to wrench herself away so that her feet were on the floor. “Do not struggle against me, put your hands back on the chair,” he ordered. She ceased fighting him, allowing him to lift her hips and without preamble slam into her feminine depths.
Instinctively she used her hands to balance herself, although Jonis was entirely supporting her. Hanne relaxed into his strength, confident that he wouldn’t drop her and she gave herself over to the pleasure of being taken by him. He reached around her and stroked her pearl while she ground against him. The explosion began somewhere under her ribs and the sparks flew throughout her body, seeping into her womanhood and ebbing with her ragged breath. Hanne felt a wonder she had never known as her husband climaxed as she did. He kissed the back of her neck, clearly delighted that he was able to bring her so much pleasure. She would have thanked him, but she couldn’t find breath to form the words. On the wall that protected the kingdom from the ice age, her heart began to thaw.