Chapter Twenty
The evening forest was a peaceful place for a kill. Ellisif crouched beside him, shrouded by ferns. The back of her hand swiped enemy blood off her cheek.
“That is the last of the men we will find.”
Rurik’s knee pressed cool, damp soil. “Does Longsword accept that fact? He seems especially focused on hunting the enemy.”
“It’s all he thinks about. Will would make a deal with Hel if it gave him the land he wants.” She gathered ax and shield. “I will talk to Ademar. He will listen to his brother.” Ellisif stood up and stretched. “I need a day in Ademar’s sauna to sweat out this grime.”
An owl cooed overhead, its orange-yellow eyes peering through leaves above. Ellisif sauntered off, ferns swaying in her wake. Rurik rose from his crouch and walked to the heart of the camp. Seven days they had been gone from Rouen. The enemy had scattered like rats in underbrush. Careful tracking and backtracking yielded the dozen they’d caught.
Ademar dropped a dead man in the camp. Bodies lined up. Twelve of them. Only three were Queen Annick’s men. Iron-framed basinet helmets filled out with leather. Teardrop-shaped shields the size of a man’s torso crafted from wood and reinforced with iron cross straps. Most were equipped with spears and axes, few with swords.
Soren dropped a saddle beside the body. “Jarl. Have you seen these? The saddle belonged to the Breton men. The others were on foot.”
Longsword held a torch over the dead men. He toed the metal foot hold hanging off the saddle.
“Her man called these stirrups. That’s how her warriors throw spears with such accuracy. They stand while they ride.” The jarl’s mouth was a bitter line. “We should’ve destroyed her long ago.”
Ademar crouched beside the saddle, holding up the iron half circles to the firelight. “Ivar can equip our saddles with these...stirrups.”
Rurik joined their study of the ironwork. “I have seen a version of them before. Eastern tribes, the Avar and Sarmatians, use them as toe holds to mount their horses, but I have not seen them stand and ride.”
The jarl measured the width of the Breton stirrups with his finger. He dropped the metal and scanned the line-up of dead men...the best for assessing the enemy. It was how Longsword measured his foe.
“Look at them,” Longsword snarled. “We’ve spent seven days chasing beggars.” He tipped the torch over two poorly dressed men, the toes of their bare, calloused feet spread wide. “These men have the look of runaway slaves...bowed backs, burn scars on their hands. Probably ran away from salt mines.”
Ademar snorted. “Even serving the southern bitch is better than slavery in a mine.”
“We need to make Rouen a better choice.” Longsword checked the boots of one shod dead man.
Bjorn held his torch over a Queen’s man. He dropped to one knee and pulled rounded iron headwear off the man’s head. “A coolus helmet...of the Chamavi, a Germanic tribe. What are they doing this far south?”
“I have heard of remnant pagans refusing to bend a knee to the White Christ.” Ademar bent low over another dead man wearing ripped plaid. “This one is a Celt. A poor one at that with these holes in his clothes.”
“We are harried by poor, ill-equipped men. Look at this!” Longsword held up a warped knife he’d taken from the dead man’s boot. “I need more warriors to hold the southern forest.”
“You have men ready to serve you.” Rurik nudged his chin at Bjorn, shadowed by Thorfinn and Gunnar. “You have only to ask them.”
The jarl flung the knife to the ground. It landed blade first in a puddle of blood.
Land came by blood and force.
A chill scratched his skin. He wiped the back of his neck, the unearthly truth not leaving him alone. Each fighter stretched before him sought something greater. Had the Breton queen promised them land and wealth? Did they fight because they hated Vikings?
Or was their death required by the gods?
Glancing across the row of dead men, Bjorn’s gaze snared his. Knowing glinted in the son of Vellefold’s eyes.
In the camp, men prepared to bed down for the night. Housekarls unrolled their hudfats. Exhausted by seven days of chasing men in the forest had taken its toll. Supplies had dwindled. None had time to hunt food because they hunted men. Bats flew overhead. Dozens of them darkened the night sky filtering through the trees. Bjorn watched them fly deeper into the southern forest.
“Do you think the gods demanded their sacrifice? Like Leif’s death?”
“Leif was not a sacrifice,” he bit out under his breath.
“Then what was his death?”
“A mistake I will live with for the rest of my life.” He paused, staring into the fire. “I should never have let him go alone.”
Because the Sons worked in twos or threes. Leif had pressed Rurik, impatient to collect their wages from the vizier and not wait for Erik’s return. The loss hung over Rurik’s head. By his command, Erik was in Rouen, watching over Safira.
“Much is beyond our control. The gods will do what they will.” Bjorn’s voice was fervent and low. “Do not blame yourself for Leif’s death. The Forgotten Sons live by the sword. Our death will come by it too.”
“What if this chance for land is a gift from the gods for something else? Something better?” He waved a hand at the camp where Gunnar, Thorfinn, and Thorvald bedded down. “For all the Sons?”
“Then it is on your shoulders to lead the way and fight for us...as it has always been.”
Staring at the fire, vivid amber eyes danced before him. Safira. She challenged him. Enlivened him. She warmed his body with soul-aching gentleness. But Longsword was determined. The holding would come by battling his father, and by marriage to a Viking woman.
“I cannot have the land and Safira.”
“Why not?”
“She is the daughter of a wealthy Paris spice merchant, and Longsword requires that I wed a Viking woman.”
Bjorn whistled quietly under his breath.
Rurik watched Longsword deep in conversation with Soren. “By accident of birth, I must fight a man who should never have been a father yet he is mine, and I fight to keep a woman who should have been born a Viking.”
“There are no accidents of birth. You are the seed of a tough Rus Viking. When your seed grows, you will be a different man to your sons.”
His seed. His sons and daughters...for a woman as strong as his Paris maid would bear amazing daughters. His hand fisted hard enough it shook at his side. Need for Safira howled inside him. She should be the one to carry his seed. Moths danced around the campfire, the smoke light, but in it he pictured Safira laughing. Safira swollen with child. Safira stroking his hair and whispering in quiet times with her head on his pillow.
“The gods have never made life easy for you,” Bjorn said. “If there is a man worthy of the challenges ahead, it is you.”
“But my deception...about the holding.”
Bjorn’s weary-eyed gaze struck Rurik. “One mistake does not break our bond. Nothing will.”
Relief washed over him. Bjorn’s assurance was a gift he didn’t deserve, but he would take it. Men fought for fame, for land, for wealth. Lauded goals, but nothing compared to deeper, unseen treasures. Brotherhood made the Sons stand shoulder to shoulder in the grit of battle, fighting as much for the goal as to keep each other alive.
Did these hollow-eyed men stretched out on the forest floor ever feel the same?
Blood smeared the faces of low-born warriors no different than him. Did they once strive for a better place in life? Or long for an unattainable woman?
“Look at those men. They are like us when we were in Birka.”
“Except we are alive,” Bjorn said.
The son of Vellefold balanced him. The same as Safira...fire to his ice. And she waited for him in Rouen. The yawn for her grew inside him. His feet shifted on the forest floor. He glanced north, seeing thick trees.
“I have to get back to Rouen.”
“Longsword wants to examine these men in daylight. He won’t leave until he’s done that in the morning.”
The jarl’s attention to detail set him apart from other leaders. He wasn’t like fat kings who let lower order fighters report what they saw. He raised his sword in battle and walked through bloodied fields, reading the enemy, dead or alive. Their clothes. The contents of their pockets. The state of their weaponry. If they wore shoes or appeared to be well-fed. The Viking leader took no detail for granted when learning of his foes.
“He doesn’t need me for that. We’re less than half a day’s ride from Rouen.” His heart thumped against his breast bone. “I need to leave now.” He checked Bjorn. “You will see the men safely back to Rouen?”
Bjorn’s smile was wide. “I will.”
Balancing the needs of his men against the need to be with one woman was new territory. Rurik reached for Bjorn. They clasped arms. Arm brace alongside arm brace. Dirt of this new land mingled with the blood of their enemies on leather and skin. They lived to fight another day as brothers.
Rurik strode across the camp. “Jarl. I need to return to Rouen.”
“We will. Tomorrow.” Longsword’s brows snapped to a hard line. “After I check these men in sunlight.”
“I need to leave now.” Rurik motioned to the Sons around the campfire. “My men will stay and return with you tomorrow.”
Steely light flickered in the jarl’s eyes. Sounds of men settling in for the night rustled around them. Fire glinted on shield bosses of housekarls taking their place in the camp’s perimeter. The night watch was in place. A Son would not be part of it.
“You return for a certain woman.” Longsword’s voice was quiet. In it was an edge of reprimand...and caution. “It’s never wise for men like us to let a woman hold sway over our coming and going.”
“It is my choice.”
Longsword rested his hand on the axe tied to his hip. “You mean Safira is your choice.”
Rurik’s jaw worked. He wasn’t asking to leave nor was he asking permission to keep Safira. These facts were threads in this new arrangement. Both were men of might. Both needed the other for what they wanted. Land. Power. Loyalty. This was the braid binding them. That truth reflected in the jarl’s face.
“Then you must live by it,” the jarl said. “Go. I truly hope she is worth the discomfort of your long midnight ride.”
* * *
Hours later, Rurik cracked open the chamber door of Ademar’s old lodgings. A sliver of moonlight shined on mussed bed furs. He set a hand over his heart, expelling the breath he’d held since pushing aside the leather curtain to enter the hallway.
Safira was safe.
He would settle this between them and let her know...what?
That he lusted hotly for her? That he craved her way of seeing the world and her conversation?
He walked across the room, his cautious footsteps creaking on plank floors. Leaning his bags against the wall, he brushed against a blue tunic with yellow stitching. He fingered the cloth hanging from a peg. The tunic he’d wear when bending a knee before the jarl to give his var. Had Safira cleaned it for him? He smiled, picturing her hands working needle and thread to mend it.
He would express his gratitude with his hands on her body.
Water trickled down his spine. He’d splashed off dirt and blood at a rain barrel by the barn after passing his war horse to a sleepy thrall. Carefully, he unbuckled his sword and let it slip off his back with a quiet thunk on the floor. The bed squeaked. A leg stirred under a white linen sheet... The hush of silk and a woman sat up in the shadowed corner.
“Rurik of Birka. What brings you to my bed?” a husky feminine voice asked.
“Who are you?” He sped across the room and yanked the shutters wide open. “Where is Safira?”