The Enchantment (34 page)

He moved, thrusting slowly and gently against her tender center, devastating her senses and coaxing an answering motion in her hips. She arched and strained, uttering a deep, resonant sound that was half pleasure, half anguish.

He heard both the eagerness and the fear in her cry, but his passion-steeped wits were slow to understand their full meaning. He roused to take her face between his hands and gaze into her luminous eyes. “Aaren, love, don't be afraid . . . I won't hurt you . . . I'll never hurt you.” He joined their mouths again, and his hands slid to the sides of her breastplate and began to work the leather ties free.

Afraid . . . don't be afraid
—drummed in her heart.
Fight . . . you must fight
—echoed in her mind. The dissonance between them grew, becoming like a battle-roar in her head, in her very blood. And suddenly she could not bear it—the wanting, the fear, the division in her deepest, most vital longings.

She grabbed his hand and held it still as she pushed up onto her arm and stared down at him. Then with one swift, excruciating movement, she peeled her damp body from his and slid to the floor on her feet. Before he could draw a shocked breath to call her name, she had thrown the door back and darted outside. As she ran for the lodge, the pain in her innermost heart spilled out through her eyes. She felt her way through the door and wiped at tears to see to her sleeping shelf.

Both her furs and her blade were gone and she whirled, frantic. She spotted the furs on Jorund's shelf and turned toward the corner. There they were . . . a stark omen she now understood: her blade and Jorund's resting together, leaning against the wall,
waiting.
She snatched them up and ducked back outside.

Three strides brought her face-to-face with Jorund. He had run from the bathing house and now stood barring her way, bare-chested and trembling. His great arms were bulging, and his hands were clenched. The moisture and heat rolling from his huge body made it seem that he steamed in the cold air. And when he saw her standing there with a sword in each hand, his eyes went molten.

“What in Godfrey's Hell do you think you're doing?” he demanded. “Put those cursed things down!” She hesitated for one moment, then complied, tossing his sword at his feet and unsheathing her blade in a single practiced stroke, slinging the scabbard aside.

“I'm doing what I must. Do you want me, Jorund?” she demanded past the tears clogging her throat.

“Curse you, Aaren—you know that I do!” he roared, understanding now the strange tenor of desperation in her lovemaking. His whole frame began to quake.

“Then fight for me!” she cried. “I cannot surrender to you, Jorund, without it. I have lived too long as a warrior, I cannot just turn my back on the code I have spent my life learning and upholding. I could not face your father or your people ever again—I would have no place among them if I did not honor and defend my enchantment. It is as sacred to me as your way is to you.” He roared a groan, shaking an impotent fist at the sky, then leveled a look of anguished fury on her.

“Don't do this to me, Aaren!”

“I wouldn't—if there were any other way,” she shouted brokenly. “Don't you see? I cannot live without you anymore, Jorund. But neither can I live without honor.” Tears streamed down her cheeks.

“
Nej
—I cannot fight you!” He stumbled closer, stopping just short of the blade at his feet, recoiling from it. “You know what happens to me when I fight. By the Merciful God”—he choked—“if we fight, I'll kill you!”

“
Nej
—you will not! I have the victory-luck from Odin himself. You will not harm me!”

“Dammit, Aaren—there is no such thing as
victory-luck
—and no Odin to grant it to you! Don't you see—Asgard and hammers and rainbows, it's all tales and twisted nonsense told to make men eager to kill and to die in some fat jarl's service.”

How could she make him understand if he did not even believe— She seized a wisp of memory, something Brother Godfrey had said. Jorund believed in the White Christ and in that young god's curious weapon. She clasped the handle of her blade to her breast, her eyes shining. And she prayed she would get it right.

“Then if you do not believe in your people's gods, believe in your own. You will not harm me, Jorund. For your god's heart-weapon will steady your arm . . . and stay it, when need be.”

He stared at her, his eyes burning, torment etched into every line of his face and frame. “What do you mean? What ‘heart-weapon'?” And the pained longing he glimpsed in her glowing amber eyes cut him to the very quick.

“Love,” she answered, her voice thick with feeling. “You do love me, Jorund . . . don't you?”

He felt as if someone had taken a war-hammer to his heart. His entire body contracted, straining against the swell of anguish in his chest. He could scarcely get his breath. She was standing there with tears streaming down her face, putting her life in his hands . . . trusting that his love for her would counter the madness that invaded his blood. After a long moment, he managed to thaw his frozen throat.

“I do,” he said. “God knows, I do love you.”

A radiant smile burst on her face, lighting her whole countenance. She wiped away the last of her tears . . . and raised her blade.

“Then fight me, Jorund.” She took two steps back. “Pick up your blade . . . and let your White Christ shield your heart and mine with his Love.”

He made a low, agonized groan and turned away. He stood with his broad back to her, trembling and choked with fear . . . hating her for forcing him to this . . . loving her for her courage and her boundless faith in him . . . in his love. He was roused beyond bearing: angry at fate, at his conniving old father, at himself . . .

He wheeled and knelt, stretching his big hand out . . . seizing the horn grip of his tarnished silver-handled blade. The metal sang as he drew it from its cradle. Then he pushed to his feet and kissed its cold, killing steel, lifting it skyward.

“I call on you, Merciful Christ,” he ground out from the bottom of his soul, “to guide my arm. And if you spare her life . . . I swear, you will have mine in its place.”

He turned to the love shining in her eyes, swung his wolf-blade in a great arc above his head—then brought it crashing down on her.

She met his blow with an upward cut of her blade and steel rang on blood-tempered steel. The shock radiated through her arms and jarred her heart to a raw, familiar cadence, spurring senses to battle alert. She wheeled her blade and returned the blow, watching his face, intent on the nuance of his paling eyes. Again the iron sang, each tone ringing free and clear before it thinned and faded on the cold mountain air. She leaped to the offensive and suddenly the meadow was filled with the strident clang of blade-battle . . . the radiant sun and cold, naked trees the only witnesses to the song of triumph or of tragedy unfolding.

She braced and lunged, swinging, and caught his blade tip as he jolted aside. With another lunge and swing, she caught the back side of his blade and knocked it upward . . . a bit too easily. Her mind raced as she pressed the attack and watched him falling back into the meadow, parrying her blows only in defense . . . returning none of them. He was holding back; she could see the strain of containment in his face and almost felt the power trapped and bulging in his massive arms. She recognized his strategy: wear her down and move in late, to take her with as little force as necessary. Her first impulse was anger that he would demean her blade-skill so. But reason soon tempered pride; it was his way of protecting them both. She was torn between accepting his restraint and coaxing him to give himself fully to the fight—to face his inner beast and conquer it, even as he conquered her.

“Do not be afraid to strike me, Jorund!” she called out, planting her feet and swinging from the waist, ripping her blade forcefully up the edge of his, producing a grating sound. “I am a warrior—I can defend myself!” Again, she lunged, swinging broadly and rolling the edge of the arc back upon itself—reversing to immediately engage his blade again. And again he met and deflected her well-aimed cut without launching his own attack.

The old motions, the feel of the blade in his grip, the sound of blades meeting . . . it was all so chillingly familiar, so cursedly easy to slide back into. Jorund felt the old heat trickling into his blood and fastened his eyes on Aaren's face, willing himself to see her, to never let her eyes leave his sight.
Aaren,
his own voice chanted in his head,
this is Aaren . . . my Aaren.

She could feel the battle-heat rising closer to his surface; there was an extra tremor of force in his blade as he met her blows. The familiar battle-burn was beginning in her lungs and spreading into her blood, as well. Digging her heels into the dried grasses, she coiled and released her shoulders and sliced a singing arc through the air, landing a blow near his sword hilt, visibly jarring his arms.

“Do not fear it, Jorund. You give it power over you,” she called, charging in again and again. “Look at me!” She grasped for something to make his mind reach past the present battle. “Think of the future . . . of the wine you promised me . . . I will drink that wine, Jorund. And think of the soft furs . . . and long nights by the fire . . . of the pleasures you have promised me . . . of children we will make . . .”

“Aaren,” he gritted out, desperate to hold on to her words, which were slowly being drowned out by the roar of his own blood in his head. He felt his control slipping and returned her swing, down-cutting savagely so that he grounded their blades for a moment.

They stood with sword points crossed, panting, hot-eyed. Sweat glistened on his bronzed shoulders and trickled down his corded neck, his light hair glowed golden in the sunlight, and his body heat reached for her the way his weapon would not. Anguish rose into his eyes—and she knew he was on the verge of retreating from both the fight and her. Her arms trembled, her legs suffered a surge of weakness as raw, searing need for him slammed through her frame. She couldn't let him stop—she would lose him!

“If you want me, Borgerson, I am yours. Come and take me,” she declared with all the smoldering sexual heat she could summon. Then she ripped her blade aloft and brought it crashing down on him.

He reacted instinctively, jerking his blade up to meet her blow. The shock of the hit and the blast of heat from her unshielded desires seared his senses. His perception fragmented and he suddenly saw her as parts instead of a whole—smooth, powerful arms lashing . . . legs coiled, then exploding like white-hot embers . . . shoulders and body flexing, supple as a mountain cat's . . . long hair whipping about her like living flame. And her face . . . exotic, heat-polished, filled with a startling blend of battle-lust and female heat. Passion roared through him, pushing his response to the very limits of his control.

He battled on two fronts: against her blade and against his own violently erupting passions. The conflict raging inside him slowed his reflexes for one fraction of an instant . . . long enough for the tip of her blade to dart in. He wrenched his shoulders back, but it caught the edge of his upper arm, laying a gash across it.

Stinging pain lashed through him, narrowing his consciousness further, and the red running toward his elbow suddenly exploded in his vision, consuming his whole awareness. The battle-beast straining inside him broke free and with a great, pained roar he raised his blade and charged her full-out.

Aaren had no time to register the horror of her act or concern for the wound she had dealt him. His massive blade came crashing down on hers a heartbeat later, dragging her braced arms and sword down with it. She scarcely had time to pull away before he aimed a sidelong slash at her, narrowly missing her thigh. Her whole consciousness sprang to reflexive action and quickened battle-timing . . . propelling her to the very edge of that stark boundary between life and death. Her senses now raced, anticipating as much as perceiving, and her lithe, powerful frame braced to receive blows, then again to deal them out. Soon her arms ached and her back muscles burned from the pounding, unrelenting force and the constant whirling, jarring motions needed to withstand it.

For the first time in her experience, Aaren faced an opponent her equal. His size lent massive force to his blows, and again and again she felt her sword rattle in her grip as his mighty blade connected with its edge and all but ripped it from her hands. But for all his size and strength, he still moved like a great hunting cat: legs crouching, then erupting; shoulders flexing gracefully; arms striking like a seasoned whip. He was both beautiful and terrifying . . . and he was bent on sinking his blade into her flesh. It took every bit of agility she possessed to escape his savage cuts and all her strength to deal him countering blows.

She gritted her teeth as he battered her back into the trees. Gradually, defensively, her senses pared away all excess stimulation and constricted around the stark essentials of him. She began to see only the movement of his eyes, the angles of his body, and the whirling arcs of his blade.

They fought on into the early afternoon, going on raw nerve, senses dulled to all but the other's presence and the struggle being waged between them. She sensed more than saw his tiring, as the pounding force of his blows slackened and the pace of his assault slowed. But his reserves of energy were greater than hers, and as she struggled to mount one last offensive—trying again to wrench his blade from his grip—her strength began to fail. Her responses slowed dangerously as he drove her back through the forest.

Her lungs were raw, her heart felt as if it would burst from her chest, and an ominous leaden feeling was creeping down her limbs. She tried to rally, feeling for the first time the brush of death's cold breath upon her face. But even mortal danger could not pull strength from limbs long spent. Her agile feet began to falter, leaving her more and more vulnerable. With her power ebbing and her reserves gone, she sensed the end was near and in her deepest heart she called to the White Christ . . . begging that presence . . . entreating without words.