Loki's Daughters (3 page)

But horror snatched her back. He was a Viking. How could she pity the vermin? Arienh jumped to her feet and fled across the field.

Once again inside her cottage with the door securely barred, she breathed again, long, precious breaths. She kicked off her soggy boots, pulled on an old brown kirtle, and sat next to Liam by the hearth, wrapped in her blanket.

She squeezed her eyes closed and still she could see the Viking's eyes, agony interlaced with entreaty. Stunningly blue as bright skies that had darkened like a summer storm, they watched her hungrily, as if they were everywhere, following every move she made.

Nay, she could not kill him. How could she have thought she could? His eyes would torment her forever.

Drawing back the rawhide that covered the cottage window, she searched the night's moonless darkness as it deepened with the growing ferocity of the storm. Icy, wind-driven rain slammed past at a vicious slant. She could see nothing, not the Viking, nor the scattered stones of the field where he lay. But she knew without seeing it that the stream rose and spilled over its banks, lapped at his feet. Covered his body.

He's going to drown.

She should not care. He was a Viking. Her father's blood was on his hands. Yet... Arienh was drowning in his pain.

"Come away from there, Arienh. You can do nothing."

"It's so horribly cold out there, Birgit. No one should have to die like that."

"It's not your fault. You don't go about pillaging and murdering. In any event, he would have killed you."

Her eyes strained against the darkness, and she shivered at the chill blast of wind whistling through the tiny window slit. In her mind, she saw the frigid mud congealed in the Viking's hair and oozing down his cheeks, sliding into those incredible blue eyes.

"Aye, I know. But he isn't dead."

"Then go back and kill him."

"I can't."

"He's a Viking. The kind that killed our father. They destroy everything they touch. They don't deserve to live."

"Perhaps not. But they don't deserve to die this way."

"If any do, a Viking does."

He's going to drown
.

"But not of my doing. I can't leave him like that." Arienh yanked on her wet boots and threw her damp shawl over her shoulders.

"Come back!" Birgit shouted. "Don't go, Arienh!"

 
Arienh shoved up the bolt and yanked open the door. Fierce wind slammed her backward, stopping her breath in her throat. Tightening the shawl around her body, she struggled out into pellets of sleet, across the field. With each step, the mud nearly sucked her boots from her feet.

The spot that compelled her, where the Viking lay, seemed to be as far off as the next valley, but she struggled on against the screeching wind until once again she stood beside the swollen stream.

The Viking was gone.

Buffeted by the howling wind, a shrill scream pierced the storm.

Birgit!

CHAPTER TWO

The Viking had reached the cottage. But how?

Arienh whirled into the flailing wind and tore across the field, summoning up long-faded strength, whispering urgent prayers. How? The man had not even been able to rise to his feet, much less cross a muddy field.

Memories of bloodied corpses of family and friends slashed apart by godless Vikings rose up like gorge. If he harmed Liam or Birgit, she would flay him alive, and cut off little pieces...

She ran faster, faster, slipping, falling, rising to run again. Gasping, she reached the door and shoved, praying he had not thrown the bolt. It yielded to her weight.

Behind the open hearth, the Viking crouched, using the fire like a shield. A dagger flashed in his shaking hand. Brown mud caked his hair and trickled down his forehead, into his eyes in rivulets, and the soft leather of his jerkin and breeches alternately sagged and clung to his skin. Fierce shivers convulsed his body. His eyes, hard and dark like a wounded badger, dared her to attack, yet in an odd way, entreated her.

What did he want? Warmth?

She glanced at Birgit, whose pale green eyes flashed both fire and fear as she huddled Liam behind her in the corner by her raised bed."

"Go to the door, Birgit. Take Liam and go."

"And leave you here? Nay."

Of course she wouldn't. Birgit could not find her way in this dismal night, nor would she ever desert her sister.

"Tell Liam to go." Keeping Birgit and Liam safely behind her, she fixed her gaze on the Viking.

"Nay," said Birgit, her voice icy calm. "There could be more of them out there. Don't go near him, Arienh."

"He's just cold, can't you see?"

"Cold? He'll kill you."

"Then you would be dead already. Nay, he's dying and he knows it. He just wants to be warm." Arienh sidled to her raised bed and pulled off its woolen blanket.

"You don't think he wants revenge? Don't be a fool."

Arienh knew what she must do, and something in the knowledge of it eased her fear. He might kill her, but Viking or not, she could not leave him to die so cold. Yet she must also protect Birgit and Liam. If she could just get him calmed and warm, he might die quietly, but as he was now, he was far too dangerous.

His knife flashed, hard iron reflecting the fire. She flinched in spite of herself. Dangerous eyes studied her, then glanced beyond her shoulder at Birgit and back to Arienh. He leaned forward and set the knife down by the hearth, giving a grim nod of submission.

With her toe, Arienh pushed the knife out of his reach. As she held out the heavy wool blanket, he snatched it and with one hand tugged it over his shoulders.

Arienh flinched, her heart leaping into her throat. She tamped down the fear that quickened again with each sudden move he made.

"We must get you dry," she said calmly. "All the blankets we have cannot help if you are wet. Birgit, bring some rags and Papa's old tunic."

"You are not going to give him Papa's tunic."

"Papa doesn't need it. Hurry, please."

"You have taken leave of your senses, Arienh."

"Just do as I ask."

Beneath the raised bed that had once belonged to her parents, Arienh had stored all the things that had once belonged to a large family, in the bleak hope that the cottage would someday ring again with voices. She pulled out the pallet stuffed with wool which had been her bed less than a year before. Unrolling the mat, she showed the Viking that she meant it for his use.

Birgit approached, a loathing sneer flaring her nostrils, and dropped the pile of rags and the old linen tunic to the dirt floor beside Arienh.

Kneeling before the man, Arienh raised a rag to his face. At her touch, his wariness softened to wistful sadness. Did he think of a love lost forever? Perhaps there was a sweetheart, a wife, whom he thought never to see again. Then his hungry longing gave way to a sigh and the wisp of a smile.

She dabbed at his cheek. "How did you get here?" she asked.

"Crawled."

"Why?"

Pain flashed across his eyes. "You know."

She did. It was not death, but cold that was unbearable.

"He’s addled, Arienh," said Birgit. "Beware."

Arienh ignored her. With gentle strokes, she wiped the mud and water from his face and hair, and away from the swollen knot on the side of his head. Blood came off on the rag, old blood, dark and crusted, along with new, bright red and fresh.

"Let me see it," she said in a low tone.

For a brief moment, he returned a frown of pain, but then quietly tilted the side of his head in her direction. She laced her fingers through his dark, wet hair, assessing the hard knot and the broken skin over it. Well, at least his skull was not cracked.

She had not noticed the darkness of his hair before. As wet as it was, she could not be sure, but it looked even darker than Mildread's brown braids. It seemed unusual for one of his kind, as did the shadow of a dark beard that bristled on his cheek. et in his brilliant blue eyes and enormous, raw-boned body, his Viking blood was unquestionable.

"Your clothes must come off," she said.

"Arienh!"

"Be still, Birgit. Take off your jerkin," she told him.

"Nay."

"You must."

"I cannot raise my arm," he said. The Celtic words sounded strange, coming from his foreign tongue.

Of course. Raising his arm would put an unbearable strain on the wound in his gut. "Then lift the one arm from the sleeve. I will help you with the other."

The sleeves were loose, but the wet leather clung to him as she pulled it free of his right arm, then worked the jerkin over his head and down past the left arm. Beneath it lay a blood-soaked linen tunic, with interlaced embroidery in bright yellow and red, The soaked fabric almost transparent against his skin. She lifted it carefully, baring his chest.

He was breathtaking, both in his rugged immensity and form, his body broad-shouldered and lean, with muscles rippling like mountain ridges and sculpted valleys. Even sitting hunched over by her fire, he was intimidating.

She dried frigid skin, quickly covering him again with the woolen blanket. The hard shivers that coursed through his body eased as his skin lost its bluish tinge. As she dabbed gingerly about the wound, he winced but made no sound. It was bad. It must have bled heavily, but now a trickle oozed from the wound, diluted to pale pink by the water from his jerkin.

Through the gaping hole she could see corded tissue the color of raw meat, with a slash cleanly cut in it. Beyond that, she could not tell. Perhaps the blow had not penetrated into his vital organs, but that was unlikely. She knew little about such things, only that people did not normally survive gut wounds.

He would not live. He knew it, and she knew it. Their eyes met with the knowledge.

Guiltily, she looked away. "Best to leave it alone," she said.

Gently, Arienh drew her father's tunic over the Viking's head and onto his arms, then lifted the blanket back into place over his shoulders. A hint of a smile curled at one side of his mouth, and the dark fringe of lashes around his blue eyes merged with a crinkle of lines at their corners, lines that said he was a man who laughed hard and often. She had to work to break away from his fascinating gaze.

Arienh turned to his boots, and unbound and pulled each one off, along with the woolen hose. She dried his feet as she had his body, gently, thoroughly, and massaged the puffed and wrinkled skin to warm them.

"Bury me in my clothes, little Celt."

Startled at the deep voice, she glanced again at the blue eyes and once more caught her breath at their brilliance. A shiver coursed over her, feeling like the summer's first warm breeze against skin too long chilled by winter.

Arienh readjusted her composure to renew the strange battle of words. "It is hard enough to get them off. And you want me to put them back on?"