Chapter Six
Soren
“Why did you call me away, nephew?” Brynhild joined me on the pier after seeing Freya to her cottage, where I remained perplexed by what I saw. “Did you not want me to see to Freya’s needs and prepare her for what was to come? Prepare her for stories of your youth that might soon greet her ears?”
Though Brynhild batted me away, prideful in her later years, I still helped her into a newly built boat that had yet to set sail and pointed out a crack in the wood at the front.
While not an integral piece that should not affect the vessel’s sailing abilities, I found it alarming, if not chilling, in its own way.
“Is that not the very crack that formed on the boat that carried Freya to our shores when I was a boy?” I frowned at her. “The very crack that formed as she battled illness?”
“It certainly seems it,” Brynhild murmured, equally awed.
She ran her fingers along strong, durable wood that should not crack like this.
Wood she knew well from an oak tree she had hand-selected herself.
“I neither possess the gifts of your mother nor of she who will soon be your wife, but I would say this is a sign.” She looked to the horizon, then to me. “One of a divide to come once more.”
“’Tis not what I want to hear.” I frowned. “Not if it means to divide me and Freya yet again.” Biting back emotion, I shook my head. “Not as it nearly did before. As it would have if not for my mother, may she forever dine by Odin’s side in Valhalla.”
“And I don’t doubt she will because she was the greatest warrior,” she said softly, resting a comforting hand on my arm. “One who fought battles you and I would never be capable of fighting, saving countless, not with a blade but with the gift that lay in her healing touch.”
“Ja,” I murmured, missing her but proud of her. “I’m sorry that I called you away from Freya’s side on such an eve, but ’twas important you see this. Important that I knew this boat would be safe above all others.”
“’Twill be,” my aunt assured. “This crack is about prophecy rather than safety.”
“Yet are they not often intertwined?” I reminded.
“When it comes to Freya, ja, but you need not fear that this boat will sink.” She rested her hand on the hull. “’Tis a strong ship built for an equally strong shield-maiden.” Curious, she slid me a look. “Might she someday soon hold a shield once again as she should?”
I had noticed Freya didn’t end up taking anything from the trunks of weapons on our ship earlier, and could only hope it meant she didn’t feel threatened.
“Aye, my aunt, she shall soon have another shield in hand if she wishes it,” I promised, helping her back onto the dock despite her trying to bat me away again.
Whether she liked it or not, her old bones needed assistance.
Especially on such a cold, damp day. “’Twill not be the shield it should be, but ’twill be a shield. ”
When she looked at me in question as we headed back to the village, I told her of everything that had happened among the Helvig tribe. Specifically, with Freya’s father, Bj?rn.
“’Tis a shame he went down such a path when once he let his daughters shine,” she said in contemplation. “Yet you think it all out of fear for their safety? That he smothers them now rather than letting them be the strong daughters he raised them to be?”
“Make no mistake, they still are.” I urged her to take my arm, not surprised when she waved me away once more and stuck to it this time. “But ja, in my opinion, he does not want them fighting but breeding, of the mind it will keep them safe.”
“And what of the daughter he sent off to the wilds of Scotland?” she wondered with a knit brow. “Is she safe, given she is the youngest and, if I recall correctly, the least brazen of the three?”
“From what I heard, Astrid fares well enough and wields words as efficiently as she wields a blade these days,” I replied. “She’s skilled at the various dialects of the Scots, English, and Norse alike, so she is much valued.”
“So, she has become a peacekeeper?” Brynhild exclaimed.
“During such trying times, when last I heard, we Norse barely hold claim to the land of the Scots nowadays?” She shook her head.
“That doesn’t sound like something a father would approve of when he’s so determined his daughters forfeit their shields for strong sons. ”
“Nay,” I agreed. “But that’s what I heard.” Eyeing her pained gait and wanting her to rest, I looked at her in question. “Join me for an ale?”
“Nay, I will go ready myself for such an important eve.” She stopped and looked at me with all the fondness my own mother once did.
“An eve you have long awaited, and I couldn’t be happier for you.
This is meant to be in ways my sister saw long ago.
” She pressed her hand to my heart. “That you felt long ago, and now the gods have delivered you to each other as it always should have been.”
“Thank you, Aunt.” I rested my hand over hers, fearful to feel hope and happiness after seeing the crack on the boat. Yet the moment had arrived, so I set aside my trepidation for now. “I look forward to a night of celebration.”
Passing Freya’s cottage soon after, I wasn’t surprised to see Sten standing guard outside her door.
Even though I longed to go inside where she prepared for our nuptials, I held back and sighed, thinking about the promise I’d made not to lie with her tonight and make her my wife in every sense of the word.
Granted, I had every intention of seducing her because I felt her reaction to me when we were close, yet still.
It wasn’t the same as knowing with certainty I would have her at long last this very eve.
Even so, she would become my wife soon and sleep within my lodge.
It would be inappropriate for her to sleep elsewhere.
I had not figured out the finer points of how that would work, but I put those thoughts from my mind for now and focused on preparing myself so that I might lay my eyes on her once more.
It may seem like a small thing, but for me, seeing her, merely being near her, was all I truly wanted. Craved.
After bathing and dressing, I went to one of the trunks carried in earlier and pulled out her prized shield and blade, wishing I could return them to her tonight.
They were hers and should be with her, but alas, I had promised Bj?rn and would keep my word, so I saw them carefully stored elsewhere in my lodge.
Somewhere they would not readily taunt her in hopes that she liked what I would replace them with.
Then, after grabbing a shield, sheathing a family blade, and pocketing a ring that meant a great deal to me, I made my way to the shore and joined Ivar, who stood stoically amid celebrations already underway.
Drums beat and flutes tootled a merry jig, as people chatted, danced, and sang.
Adorned with flowers, bones, talismans, and other trinkets for our matrimony, and backdropped by a glittering moonlit sea, an archway flanked by torches awaited me and Freya.
I could see my mother’s shield placed behind it as I had requested.
“Must you look so dire, old friend?” I said to Ivar, grinning. After accepting a horn of ale, I smiled at my people as they smiled at me, happy to welcome the bear into our den, for it was Freya Helvig, and she was a legend in these parts.
“I will look any which way I want,” Ivar grunted, forced to accept a horn of ale too when I furrowed my brow at him and told him he’d better. “And I will do so until she proves her worth.”
Though tempted to remind him that her worth was renowned beyond these walls and more so within them once she became my wife, I knew better than to have the same old argument with him.
Not when he cast blame on her she knew nothing about, and didn’t deserve.
To his mind, she’d not only laid a curse on our tribe long ago when she and her ship brought illness and death, but rejected me years later when I suspected, knew, that it had much more to do with her father, Bj?rn.
“Might you at least share a horn of ale with me with less of a scowl, for are we not good friends?” I implored. “And is this not a night for me to find happiness even if not in a fashion with which you approve?”
It seemed my question shook him from his brooding because we did indeed end up sharing a horn and speaking not of my desire for Freya and all she would bring to our tribe, but of village happenings in my absence.
While always good spending time with my friend, I would be lying if I said I didn’t watch the gates, eagerly awaiting her arrival.
Some small, worn part of me had stopped believing she might someday return and become my wife, and now it had happened.
She was here and soon to be mine—if not in the flesh right away, then in little time if it were the last thing I did.
Sooner rather than later, I hoped, based on her near ethereal beauty when she finally appeared, and a hush fell over the crowd.
No surprise, given the vision she presented.
She wore a green dress that complemented her coloring, a ring of spring flowers on her head, and her fiery locks spilled down around her shoulders.
She had once again accentuated her luminous amber eyes with coal, and she wore the white Helvig bear fur draped over her slender shoulders proudly.
Going to her, I held out my arm in offering, hardly able to catch my breath at her beauty. At the fact that I would finally become Freya Helvig’s husband, as I had long dreamed. As I had wanted since I first saw her as a lad.
“You look beautiful, Freya,” I said softly before speaking loud enough that all could hear. “Welcome, Freya of the Helvig clan, born of the bear.” Though I need not say it, I would give her all her proper titles. “Fierce shield-maiden and seer of the north born of a strong berserker bloodline.”