Chapter 26
PIPER’S GREEN AND THE EPITOME OF COMPLIMENTS
It was moonrise when Ivar the Bane woke.
The ground was soft and springy beneath his body, comforting when all he’d known was the hardship and chill of the permafrost. Alarmed, he hinged upright to discover he lay in a bed of clover.
The soft light of the moon slid over gentle hills thick with grass and blanketed with oxeye daisies.
Fluffy sheep and speckled goats dappled the landscape, but no split-rail fences or walls of stacked stone corralled them.
There were windmills in the distance, too, and haystacks nearby, and he smelled woodsmoke and herbs on the easy breeze that brought the soft sounds of a flute with it.
Was he dead? Was this Piper’s Green, the afterlife of easy living and sweet reprieve after a long life of blood and battle? He was weaponless, after all. He would mourn the loss of his piolet—the gift every boy received from his father when he turned eight—but he would not miss that warhammer.
Something creaked and scuffled behind him, and he rose fully now to find he had awoken near a covered well.
Leading away from the well was a dirt path that meandered to a quaint cluster of stone cottages with sod roofs and smoke twisting from their chimneys.
Fireflies drifted above the roofs, twinkling like fallen stars.
Approaching the well was a fair-haired milkmaid with a yoke and two earthenware water jugs slung across her shoulders.
Gods above, the tops of her breasts mounded above her corset like prize eggs in an Ostara basket.
The moon bleached her hair, which had to be stunningly golden in the sunlight, for now it shone like the purest silver.
She was neither too skinny nor too plump, and strong to be carrying that yoke and those jugs.
She wasn’t a young lass either, but a full woman. A true ice flower.
He must have gasped in delight or disbelief, for the milkmaid stopped short and straightened, peering.
Then she shed her burden and planted her hands on her curvy hips.
“You’re not from around here, are you? Most men, even the baseborn shepherds around here, know not to be prowling around at night so indecently exposed. Folks might get the wrong impression.”
Ivar glanced down at himself, discovering his erect member poking free from the hole in his hide trousers.
Apparently the two of them were in much agreement and passionate enthusiasm about the milkmaid’s appearance, strength, and sass.
He didn’t bother to adjust himself—Skali barbarians weren’t ashamed of nakedness—and truly there was no greater compliment to a woman.
He looked the fair-haired milkmaid in the eye.
“Is this Piper’s Green?” he asked. “Are you an angel?”
She shuddered. “Caelus preserve me. Your flattery is juvenile and trite, and your accent is atrocious.” She wrinkled her nose.
“I swear, we’ve allowed the bar to slip below the bare minimum for you menfolk.
More mothers should insist their sons train in the Delicate Arts for the sake of all our sensibilities, if not for civilization itself. ”
While Ivar had understood the words, he hadn’t comprehended their meaning, not entirely, but that was the way of angels, he supposed.
And he didn’t mind. She had a musical way of speaking that assured every part of him that she was, indeed, a most desirable woman.
And, should she find him equally exemplary, what offspring they could make in Skali the Icemother’s honor!
Fighters that were as beautiful as the dawn and as strong as a winter storm who could sing like angels as they robbed the heads from the necks of their enemies.
He sighed wistfully, enraptured by it all.
When the great hulk of a man didn’t back-pedal or apologize, but gazed at her with a mist in his eyes, the milkmaid regarded him with a mixture of criticism, suspicion, and a fledgling hope that even if he was extraordinarily unrefined, he was still being sincere.
Vigorously sincere. The milkmaid tucked a stray wisp of hair behind her ear and pinned her lower lip between her teeth, let it drag out slow. “An angel, you say?”
“There is no other name for someone like you. Except ice flower.”
“Ice flower?”
He nodded. “Porcelain beauty.”
The milkmaid blushed, but she didn’t wilt under his compliment or attempt to brush it off or outright dismiss it. Instead she glanced behind her down the dirt path; the village was quiet aside from the faint flute music.
“Screw Mistress Gertrude and her over-salted mutton stew; the water can wait. This place isn’t exactly known for its rigorous societal standards, and no one’s complimented me in months”—her eyes slid down below his belt, lingered on the ringing endorsement sprouting there—“much less so . . . exuberantly.”
There was coltish skip to her gait as she closed the distance between them and grabbed his hand. Her other hand shamelessly caressed the hard ridges of his bare abdomen and hooked around his belt. “The headmistress whip me, but you are a mountain of a man.”
Ivar bounced his pectorals, and his ice flower delighted him with a gasp from those full pink lips.
“Come with me, handsome. This angel would like to welcome you to—Piper’s Green, did you call it?—properly.”
And Miss Sicily Whitewhistle led Ivar the Bane to the nearest haystack where they made very good use of the compliment sticking out of his trousers.