Longing For Her Forbidden Viking

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When she was nearly finished, a loud shout interrupted her and made her heart practically leap into her throat. It was a man, but the voice sounded too far away to be from one of the warriors accompanying her. A flurry of activity came from the vicinity of the ship as warriors came to their feet, their boots scraping across the wooden bottom. Ellan hurried to arrange her skirt, her breath coming in short gasps as she braced herself for some sort of attack.

Uncertainty churned in her stomach as she peeked around the tree. A second longship was approaching, coming from upstream, the direction their boat had been heading. This one seemed a bit bigger than the karvi. It was filled with Danes and at least a few Saxon warriors sprinkled in the mix. The man who stood in front was dressed in leathers and chainmail, not the everyday tunics and wool of the men who accompanied her. He was dressed for battle.

He called out again in the Norse tongue and Henrik called back. They spoke some sort of greeting, but there was a sense of urgency in the exchange. The men in the longship had paused in their rowing, but no one made as if they were preparing to disembark. Instead, the leader—a man she recognised as one of Lord Vidar’s trusted men now that they were closer—held his hands cupped around his mouth and called out. Her Norse wasn’t yet conversational, but she understood from the exchange that there had been a battle. Banford had been attacked. There had been casualties. A flurry of back and forth followed, but it was too fast and she couldn’t keep up.

She hurried forward, her feet slipping and sliding down the muddy embankment in her hurry to get to Henrik. He glanced her way in acknowledgment, but was intent on listening to the warrior on the ship. He called out one last time as the men picked up their oars and began to row, obviously in a hurry to get to Alvey. She recognised it as the customary send-off the Danes gave one another. Something about having favourable wind.

‘Please, ask him about Elswyth,’ she urged. ‘Is she hurt?’

Henrik shook his head. Had they known each other better, she had the feeling he would have reached out and touched her shoulder, perhaps even embraced her. Instead, he looked at her with calm and understanding eyes. ‘Your sister is well and uninjured. The casualties were warriors and several Banford men.’

Now that she was assured of Elswyth’s safety, her thoughts turned to Aevir. ‘Casualties?’

He nodded. ‘A handful of warriors were killed and there are several injured.’

Henrik held his shoulders stiffly and there was a strange murmuring going on with the warriors in the ship that she’d been too concerned with Elswyth’s fate to notice a moment ago. It was now that she discerned Henrik’s tight jaw.

‘There’s more. What is it?’ she asked, placing her hand on his forearm.

‘It’s Aevir. He’s been gravely injured.’

‘How injured? What happened to him?’

He shook his head. ‘A gouge on his leg, a head wound, possibly more.’

The world could have tipped out from under her and she wouldn’t have noticed. Aevir’s final words came back to her.

‘I vow to you that I will find your sister. I will bring her home.’

Had she done this? Had he been injured because of his promise to her? What if he didn’t survive? The pain of that thought was too much to contemplate.

To Henrik she said, ‘We have to hurry.’ She needed to see for herself the extent of his injuries.

* * *

The rest of the trip passed in a blur of anxiety for Ellan. Henrik pressed food into her hands, but she didn’t taste it. She kept imagining Aevir lying on the ground, in pain and needing help. Of course he was receiving help from the other Danes and he was probably in better hands than she could provide. Her only experience of nursing was in aiding her siblings through common ailments. The worst injury she had faced was the time she and Elswyth had wrapped Galan’s broken foot. She kept telling herself this, but it did nothing to ease her worry or the incomprehensible feeling that he needed her.

They were forced to stop for a few hours of rest that night. Low clouds had completely obliterated the sliver of the moon, making it too dark to see so that Henrik declared it too unsafe to continue. Ellan bedded down in the bottom of the boat, wrapped in the fur cloak Lady Gwendolyn had loaned her. There was some leftover snow on the ground but, thankfully, it wasn’t actively snowing. Henrik produced another fur from a trunk in the back of the ship and gently draped it over her. She murmured her thanks, but when it did little to make her warm, she began to suspect that the chill she felt came from within.

She didn’t know why Aevir had become so important to her. She only knew that it would be a great tragedy if he was taken from her world.

Chapter Five (#u24867879-b20b-5514-affa-e3124241cd10)

Aevir awoke to the morning of his wedding. His heart leapt in joy and anticipation as he recognised the beginning of the familiar dream. It was one of his favourites, but one he rarely had any more. The sky had been grey for the last few days, but on this day Thor had seen fit to grant them blue skies and a warm wind from the south. A good omen. Aevir murmured a vow of thanks and grinned as it echoed across the valley floor and up the snow-covered peak in the distance.

Hands came from nowhere, patting his back, ruffling his hair as his friends teased him about the coming wedding. He’d known them as a boy, so he accepted the taunts as his due as they all set off across the vale to claim his bride. Though the dream was as vivid as if he were there, he found himself marvelling at how real the thigh-high grasses felt tickling his palm. His dream had never been this intense before, or had it? If this was how the grass felt, perhaps he could feel Sefa again, too. He started running, anxious to reach her.

The group arrived in Sefa’s village almost instantly, another indication that he was dreaming. Melancholy threatened to accompany the thought, but he pushed it aside, content to live in his dream. Though his bride had warned him of the superstition in her village that required the bride to hide from the groom until the ceremony, he was unprepared for the wait. He wanted to see her, to reassure himself that she was as happy to see him as he was to see her. Instead, he was thwarted by her family. It was his duty to meet her extended relatives and face the unasked question burning in their eyes.

How was he—the son of a slave and unacknowledged bastard—deserving of a woman as fair and decent as Sefa? It didn’t matter that he had worked tirelessly since being granted his freedom. That he had earned the coin necessary to pay her bride price. Or even that he had enough left over to provide a small home for her. Deep down where it counted, he still felt unworthy of her, the youngest daughter of a farmer.

His anxiety stayed with him until the moment she appeared at dusk. This was a dream, so she floated over the ground, the air streaming out behind her in rivulets as if she were moving through water. Everyone parted for her and when she was close enough that he could read the joy in her eyes, his unease vanished. The feeling of well-being that was always present between them took its place. His eyes drifted closed as he allowed himself a moment to soak in her presence. He was attuned to her in a way that went beyond vision, beyond words.

Her familiar scent greeted him and he opened his eyes to her smile and her light brown eyes staring into his. ‘Are you ready?’ she whispered.

‘Aye.’ He’d never been as ready for anything as he was ready to become her husband.

Slowly, he reached for her. Dreams of the past had ended at this exact moment, with him never touching her, always denied the feel of her warm skin against his palm. He hoped that this time would be different, that this time she would feel real for him. He decided that if he could touch her and have her be whole, then he would live here with her for ever in his dreams.