Free Edin's embrace by Nadine Crenshaw Page A

with—"
    "You give me much helpful counsel, friend, none of it worth a horse's cast shoe." He glanced pointedly at Rolf's crotch. "I see your body has outgrown your brain again."
    Rolf laughed. "When a man has been as long from a woman as I have, even a hole in a water keg seems inviting. I've been eyeing the younger men aboard for the past week. Now I have something better to eye."
    Thoryn snorted and looked away, out to the sea. "The woman doesn't tempt me half as much as does the idea of eight half-marks of pure gold. Besides, my father took a Saxon thrall to his bed, and later regretted it, as I recall."
    Rolf was wise enough to let that pass. A moment slipped by. He stepped away to pull on a line of the striped sail, then came back and placed a hand on Thoryn's shoulder. "Beornwold is nearly gone. Hark to his gasping; he can hardly put one breath after another."
    Thoryn nodded, keeping his eyes from where the dying Viking lay sprawled. Instead, he looked up at the bellying sail. "And what of my berserk?"
    "That one will live —and live to cause you grief."
    Thoryn lowered his eyes to the sea again, avoiding any glance at Sweyn, who was muttering from the corner of his spittle-flecked mouth. Thoryn should have killed him rather than condemned him to a life of uselessness.
    That woman!
    He said, "It must be in Odin's heart for Sweyn to cause me grief, for he has certainly done so often enough. Him with his berserk ways, stamping himself into fury, biting his shield rim, going around bellowing in the coldest air without a stitch on. He's made many a virtuoso performance of speed and brawn and complete brainlessness."
    "He's fought for you without fear."
    "He's fought for a leader of rank and means in return for good pieces of gold and the promise of meat in his belly all the winter long. True, he has no fear, but he has no care, either. Mayhap, when we reach home, I'll give him enough blood-money to buy a small steading and a few cattle, and be rid of him."
    Mayhap, he thought privately, being his own steading master would give a cripple enough self-respect to make his life as worthwhile as it had been when he was a proper-shaped man. Thoryn felt he owed him that much, having made him useless as a warrior.
    Rolf again moved to adjust one of the intricate system of clue lines that enabled them to reef the large sail. When he was finished he said, in a considering tone, "I would ask you a question, Thoryn Kirkynsson."
    "Ask on, Rolf Kali, provided you don't want to know where the winds come from, or where the tides start, or what makes the moon round. I don't know those things."
    "Why did you do it; why did you spare him? Beornwold will die only once, but you've condemned the Berserk to die daily. What did the woman say to you?"
    A cold serpent twisted in Thoryn's vitals. He cast a glance at the Saxon —
    — and met her eyes. They emptied his lungs. They were enough to fell a forest, to move a field, to drain a lake. The whole world could be dismantled and dropped into those green eyes, to sink without a trace.
    By Odin, she was a woman to tempt a man!
    Don't think of that.
    He struggled to find his wits again, to achieve a semblance of solemnity. "Sweyn broke his oath to me; he disobeyed my order."
    "I didn't ask why you challenged him—"
    So easily did Rolf put that aside! He had no conception of the will Thoryn must summon up to get himself through such fierce and bloody tests of dominance.
    " —I asked why, when once you bested him, you didn't finish it?"
    "She said 'please' " he answered shortly.
    Rolf frowned, unsatisfied.
    "What's that look now? Say what's in your mind, without fear or favor"
    "It makes no sense, Thoryn. She pleaded because she's a woman and can never understand that a lame fighting man is worthless to himself and everyone else. Or that giving and taking death well are two of the things a proud man does. Sweyn Elendsson lived by the axe and reckoned to die by it."
    Thoryn grew irritated. "Call me