Maidensong Read online

  They disembarked and marched up to the longhouse, trailing Bjorn the Black and his crew. As they climbed the steep path up from the water, she held Ketil’s hand to steady her pounding heart. She forced herself to smile up at her brother. It helped quell the dizzying sensation of being totally powerless for the first time in her life.

  “Welcome home, Brother.” Once inside the longhouse, a raucous voice boomed toward them. It wasn’t as low or as resonant as Bjorn’s, but it filled the space.

  Rika scanned the long hall. It’d been freshly scrubbed for spring with new rushes strewn about the stone floor. Light shafted in through the smoke holes spaced at intervals along the spine of the high roof. Earthen benches lined the sides of the hall, but instead of situating the jarl’s seat in the middle, near the central fire, Bjorn's brother was ensconced in an ornate chair flanked by pillars on a dais at the far end. Rika recognized the deviation as a Frankish influence in the design of the great hall. Raised seating—even for nobility—was not typical in a Norse jarlhof.

  Fires burned at the many hearths and a carcass roasted over each one, tended by a young girl with a basting gourd. After days of dried fish and flatbread, the savory aroma made Rika's mouth water. The Jarl of Sogna must set quite a table to attract and keep the host of fighting men in the yard.

  A serving girl approached Bjorn with a long drinking horn brimming with golden mead. He lifted the horn toward the dais in salute and then drained the entire contents in one long swallow,

  “You need to find a larger horn, Brother.” Bjorn swiped his mouth with his forearm.

  Bjorn’s crew guffawed and congratulated each other on the drinking prowess of their leader. Rika stood quietly, a combination of irritation and dread curling her lip as she waited to see what it was she needed protection from.

  Other than him, of course.

  “You had a successful raid?” Gunnar asked.

  “We retrieved every head that was taken from us.” Bjorn glanced at Rika. “And picked up a few other things as well.”

  The whole crew marched the length of the hall until they came before the jarl’s great carved chair. Entwined serpents writhed in bas-relief up the pillars on each side of the jarl. Rika noticed the same double-serpent motif embossed on the shields hanging on the walls. The Jarl of Sogna’s device, no doubt.

  At first glance, Rika thought the two brothers couldn’t be more different. Gunnar’s coloring—white-blond hair and pale gray eyes—marked him as the exact opposite of Bjorn the Black. But when she looked more closely, Rika saw a resemblance in the brothers’ strong features. But while Bjorn’s mouth was full-lipped and smacked of sensuality, Gunnar’s thin one had a cruel twist to it.

  Jorand dropped the bale of cloth he’d balanced on his broad shoulders. Another member of Bjorn’s crew spilled out the contents of a leather bag. Pewter house ware, silver brooches and armbands, along with a goodly quantity of hack silver clattered to the stone floor. Another bag filled with carved amber was eased to the ground. Six fur bales joined the rest of the spoils. The jarl’s eyes glinted with calculating avarice.

  “And new thralls, I see.” Gunnar’s gaze slid over Rika and Ketil and the handful of other unfortunates Bjorn and his men had captured. His pale eyes returned to Rika and his tongue flicked out to wet his bottom lip as he studied her from head to toe. “You’ve done well, little brother.”

  The slight twitch of Bjorn’s shoulders told Rika he didn’t much care for that appellation.

  “How shall I reward you?” Gunnar asked.

  “I’ll take those two for my own.” Bjorn pointed at Rika and Ketil. “For my men, we’ll take half the spoils here.”

  “Agreed. None of the livestock?” Gunnar asked.

  “We returned the livestock to the karls they belonged to on the way in,” Bjorn explained. “They were stolen property and couldn’t be counted as spoils.”

  A muscle ticked in Gunnar’s left cheek. “I’ll be the judge of that in the future.” His gaze flitted back to Rika. “Now that I think on it, your reward seems over-generous. You can have one thrall.”

  Bjorn looked at Rika and Ketil as if considering which of them would profit him most. “Then, I'll take the girl.” He arched a brow at her. “I’ve need of a bed warmer.”

  “You can have that anytime just by crooking your finger at the serving girls,” Gunnar said.

  “Not in my house, you won’t.” A woman’s voice came from behind them. The group of men parted to allow the jarl’s wife to enter the circle. “Some here may wish to forget it, but this is a respectable jarlhof.” Rika shifted uneasily as the woman, who could only be the dragon Bjorn had mentioned, skewered her husband with a sizzling glare.

  Lady Astryd was dressed in a kirtle and tunic of rich blue and yellow. Her honey-blond hair fell in heavy braids to her thickening waist, and her head was covered discretely with a fine kerchief. The keys of her office dangled from the gilt chain above her distended belly. The woman’s complexion glowed with her pregnancy. At least something in Sogna was fruitful, Rika thought.

  Astryd stopped in front of Rika and gazed at her mud-spattered clothes. “My girls are cleaner than this one, I’ll grant you,” she said, turning to give Rika her back. “Why don’t you just let her work for me, and your brother will find you a wife to warm your bed,” she said to Bjorn. “There are plenty of houses that wish to ally themselves with Sogna, even through a second son.”

  “When I’m ready for a wife, I’ll find one myself.” Bjorn folded his arms across his chest. “Besides, I’ve grown attached to the muddy little thing.” His crew chuckled. “My men and I risked ourselves and our ships in the service of Sogna. Shall it be said that such a simple request was denied?”

  Rika glanced from the jarl to his wife. An undercurrent of frustration and rage crackled between the noble couple. Astryd seemed to follow her husband’s gaze, and her face hardened as she caught the look the jarl cast toward Rika. The matter was decided.

  “Very well, you shall have her by night, Bjorn,” Astryd said. “But there’s no reason why she can't work for me by day. Come along, all of you,” she ordered the entire group of thralls. “No one eats here unless they earn their bread with hard labor.”

  She clamped a firm grip on Rika’s wrist and dragged her from the hall. When Rika cast a glance back over her shoulder at Bjorn, an infuriating smile was on his lips.

  Jorand was wrong, she guessed. Bjorn the Black didn’t like her at all. He certainly hadn’t lifted a finger to save her from the Dragon of Sogna.

  “My lady, please stop.” Rika trotted to keep up with Astryd’s swinging strides. “There’s been a mistake, a terrible miscarriage of justice, which I’m sure you’ll set right.”

  When they burst out of the longhouse into the mid-morning sunlight, Astryd wheeled around to face Rika, hands fisted on her hips. “What are you babbling about?”

  “Just that there’s been a misunderstanding.” Rika gulped a quick breath. “My brother and I were taken because your men thought we belonged to the settlement at Hordaland. We don’t, you see. We are traveling skalds, and as such, we aren’t subject to capture and enthrallment.”

  Astryd cocked a pale eyebrow at Ketil, her cold gaze sweeping over the young man’s pleasant, vacant expression. “Oh, ja, I can see that your brother is much in demand, no doubt. Recite for us, you great towering slug,” she ordered.

  Ketil’s half-smile changed to panic and he backed several steps away. “I don’t ... no, it’s not me. Rika’s the skald. Father always said so.”

  “Very well.” Astryd turned back to Rika, crisscrossing her arms over her chest. “Let’s hear the skald. What shall it be, I wonder? Thor and the Frost Giants? Freya and the Brisingamen necklace, perhaps? That’s one I understand quite well, being overly fond of jewelry, myself.”

  She eyed the silver brooches holding up Rika’s kyrtle. The craftsmanship was finer and the design more subtle than the gaudy ones at her own broad shoulders. Astryd circled Rika, running a j
eweled finger over the fine quality of the cloth beneath the caked mud. Rika froze like a hare that sees the shadow of a hawk hovering overhead.

  “No,” Astryd decided. “How about something easy? Let’s have a bit from the Havamal.”

  Inwardly, Rika groaned, but she straightened her spine and took her stance. Breathe, she ordered herself. At first, no words tickled her tongue, and then, like water pouring over a precipice, they all came at once.

  “A flame leaps to another. Fire kindles fire. A man listens, thus he learns,” she rattled off all in one breath. “The shy . . . stay shallow.” Rika’s voice trailed away. Her eyes flitted from left to right, but no more of the sayings of Odin appeared in her mind.

  Astryd’s lip curled. “Not your finest moment, was it?”

  “Please, you don’t understand. I’m a very fine skald. I know all the sagas, truly I do.” Even to her own ears, Rika didn’t sound very convincing. “I’ve been working on the Havamal, but I just don’t know it all yet.”

  Was that Magnus’s gentle laughter she heard in the back of her mind?

  “I believe you are a very clever girl with a quick tongue and possibly a decent memory.” Astryd squinted at her in frank appraisal. “But you’re no skald. No doubt you’ve heard one or two and thought to imitate them to avoid thralldom. But if you were truly a student of the Havamal, you’d know that there’s nothing you can do to change your fate.” Astryd’s blond brows knit together. “All you can do is meet it with courage.”

  The lady’s eyes gleamed when she saw the amber hammer at Rika’s throat. The hammer was simple but elegant, and Astryd’s pursed lips told Rika she thought it far too fine for the neck of a slave.

  “You can start by giving me that little bauble you’re wearing,” the Dragon of Sogna said. “Thralls have no possessions of their own, you know.”

  Rika bit her lip as she slipped the thin leather strip over her head and placed the hammer in Astryd’s waiting palm.

  The Lady of Sogna directed her attention to the whole group of new thralls. “Take off your clothes, all of you. You’re no doubt infested with lice and fleas.” Astryd turned to the serving girl who’d brought the horn of mead to Bjorn. “Evja, burn their clothes and get them all something more fitting to their new station.”

  So this is how it starts, Rika thought. In order to remake them into slaves, they first had to strip away who they were. She slipped her garments over her head, determined it would not matter to her. In her mind, she would clothe herself with the dignity of her art. Her bare skin didn’t quite get the message though, as gooseflesh rippled over her despite the sunshine.

  After Ketil pulled his tunic over his head, Astryd took the garment from him and ran the fine fabric through her fingers. It was soft and supple as water compared to the stiff linen she herself wore.

  “Save the clothing of these two.” Astryd ordered her serving girl as she pointed to Rika and Ketil. “I may find a use for their garments, after a thorough cleaning, of course.”

  Rika’s cheeks burned. The men at swordplay looked on and jeered, as she and the rest of the thralls were paraded, still naked, to the ironworker. A circle of ugly gray metal was bolted around her neck, a dismal replacement for the little amber hammer.

  At least now if I decide to drown myself, I won’t need loom stones. Rika had already cheated the waves once. She wondered whether giving herself to the sea constituted meeting her fate with courage, but then she thought of Ketil. No matter what happened, she couldn’t choose to take the water, for his sake.

  Evja gave them all shapeless garments of coarse undyed wool. Though Rika was grateful to cover her nakedness, the rough cloth chafed against her skin and rubbed her nipples raw.

  Then Astryd reappeared with her shears. She seemed to take perverse delight in snipping off Rika’s waist-length hair in uneven chunks, hacking and sawing at her thick tresses. Magnus had never allowed anyone to cut her hair. It shimmered like a sunset rain, he always said. As the long locks fell to earth, Rika squeezed her eyes shut, willing herself to remember Magnus brushing her hair when she was little. He always smoothed out the snarls she got into. How she wished he were there to smooth her out of this one.

  She ran a stunned hand over her shorn head. Her father would be heartsick if he could see her now. Relieved of its weight, her remaining hair curled snugly around her ears and across her forehead.

  Then Astryd sent Ketil to work felling trees with a group of other male thralls. Rika was tasked with scrubbing privies. The harsh soap, a combination of lye mixed with ash and fat, reddened her hands and made her eyes burn. After she finished that chore, Astryd ordered Rika to join another group of women who were processing yarn by dragging it through a shallow vat of cow urine.

  As Magnus’s daughter, she’d never so much as assisted with meal preparation before. Her days had been filled with practicing the countless tales her father never tired of teaching her. She mastered the secret art of runes and could carve them with skill in wood or stone. The lilting tunes she coaxed from her little bone flute were admired in many a hall.

  But now, she was only a drudge. And Astryd seemed intent on foisting all the worst jobs of the household on her during her first day of servitude. She caught the woman glaring at her more than once, but Rika schooled her features into a bland mask. If the Lady of Sogna thought to break her spirit with drudgery, Rika was determined Astryd would fail. She would not allow the Dragon to see the pain in her blistered palms.

  Or her blistered heart.

  Besides, she knew the real villain wasn’t Astryd. Oh, the Lady of Sogna was unpleasant and bossy, but she wasn’t the one to blame for Rika’s misery.

  That honor belonged to the man who’d dropped her into Astryd’s grasping clutches. That toad-eating, louse-bitten, unfeeling waste of skin—Bjorn the Black.

  Chapter 3

  Rika clamped a hand over her mouth, not believing her eyes. The Dragon of Sogna had dressed for nattmal in Rika’s fawn-colored tunic. It’d been scrubbed clean, but every seam in the fine garment bulged. Perhaps the heir to Sogna growing in her belly was to blame, but Rika thought Astryd looked like too much sausage meat stuffed into too small a bladder.

  The lady stopped in front of her. “You have something to say?”

  “No, my lady.” Rika forced the smirk from her face. “Except . . . that color suits you.” She guessed the Lady of Sogna must be desperate indeed if she thought dressing in Rika’s clothing would turn her husband’s wandering eye back to her. Rika could almost pity Astryd, if not for her shorn head and throbbing hands. But Magnus had always said desperate people are dangerous people and the Lady of Sogna was clearly desperate for her husband’s attention. Rika expelled all the air from her lungs in relief when Astryd moved on.

  She sent Ketil into the great hall with Surt, a thrall he’d worked with all day. Slaves were allowed to eat after the fighting men had been served, but Rika couldn’t think of food. All she wanted was to wash the reek of privies and cow urine from her tired body. She decided there’d be no better time to sneak into the steam bath than when everyone else was feasting in the long main hall.

  After slipping into the bathhouse and lighting the fire to warm the stones, she stripped off the scratchy tunic. Rika scrubbed it while the room filled with heat. She might have to put it back on damp, but at least it would be clean.

  When the stones for the steam bath were hot enough, she poured a dipperful of pine-oil water on them, releasing a soothing cloud of steam. She kept adding water till the small room was filled with milky-white moisture. Then she felt her way to the smooth wooden benches.

  Every pore in her body opened. When she was covered with a glistening sheen, she fingered along the wall and found the birch switches left there. Rika used one to scrape off the sweat and dirt. She was ready to dash into the next room where a cool bath barrel waited for her to rinse in, when she heard the stamp of booted feet at the threshold. She skittered back up the benches, climbing into the farthest corner.


  “Someone has started the bath for us already.”

  Rika recognized Bjorn’s rumbling bass through the pine-scented cloud. Another dipper of water hissed on the heated stones. She pulled her knees to her chest and made herself as small as possible, trusting the thick steam to hide her.

  “That’s the story of my life, little brother. Everything is always handed to the Jarl of Sogna on a new trencher.”

  Rika heard the swish of clothing being peeled from the two men’s bodies, the scrape of leather boots toed off against the stone floor. She made out hazy flesh-toned forms and realized they’d see her too, if they happened to glance her way. She could only hope they wouldn’t notice her if she kept still.

  “Come now, little brother. Don’t be surly. Jealousy doesn't become you.”

  “Jealousy isn’t what I’m feeling right now, but if you want the truth, the title of jarl doesn’t become you much either, Gunnar.” If Rika had to guess, she’d have said she heard barely bridled anger in Bjorn’s even tone.

  “That’s a bit more candid than I’m used to.” Gunnar’s laugh didn’t convince her that he found Bjorn’s remark funny.

  “I expect it is. When I’m gone, you allow no one near you who’ll dare tell you the truth.” Bjorn’s voice sounded closer now. The stair-stepping benches sagged with the weight of the men as they settled on the lowest level. At least, Thor be thanked, they’d turned their backs to her.

  “You’ve filled our father’s hall with mercenaries who’ll say anything you want for the privilege of sitting at your table,” Bjorn accused.

  “Indeed I have.”

  “To what end?” Rika heard frustration in Bjorn’s voice. “I wasn’t gone that long on the walrus hunt, no more than a couple of months, but I come home to find the whole fjord miserable over your horde of men. What good are they? They didn’t even fend off the raid last month. My crew cleaned up the mess for you. Again.”

  “We weren’t here when the raiders came,” Gunnar explained. “You see, little brother, if you want to be a leader of men, you must realize that they need some play as well as work. I’d taken the men inland to hunt. Besides, the raiders only hit the outer farmsteads. They didn’t dare come all the way in to Sogna. No harm done.”