Chapter 5
Gaelfr would stay.
The protests surged through Raye’s chest, jostled in her throat. No, he couldn’t stay. He couldn’t. He was her worst enemy, he was a monster, a danger to her and Svein, and…
Svein was already — nodding. Nodding, and even bouncing up and down. And his expression was pure relief, and joy, and sheer contagious excitement, sparkling in his eyes, drawing his stunning grin across his mouth.
“You will?” he asked Gaelfr, his voice a squeak. “You’ll really stay, and help us?”
Gaelfr betrayed a glance up toward Raye’s face, but then set his jaw and nodded, his hand still over his heart.
“Ach, my son,” he said, so low and heavy it rumbled through Raye’s chest. “I shall help you, and guard you, with all my strength, until Kalfr returns. I swear this to you, before the goddess.”
It again dragged Raye’s memories back to that long-ago moment when Kalfr had knelt before her, and made that vow to their goddess. As if the vow was something precious, something sacred, that could never be undone.
But Raye still should have refused it. She should have shouted at Gaelfr, and told him he had no damned right to invade her house, and make vows to her son. And Svein was her son, not Gaelfr’s, Gaelfr hadn’t been here a single day in Svein’s life —
Maybe Gaelfr had caught Raye’s disapproval, whether in her face or her scent, because he rose to his feet again, and bowed his head toward her. “I shall now go hunt some game for our supper,” he told her. “Bar the door whilst I am gone, and start a fire, also.”
Raye bristled beneath the order — Gaelfr was not in charge here, and did he really think she had to be told to bar the door?
While beside her, Svein cast a worried look toward the fireplace, which was currently devoid of a single stick of kindling, and Gaelfr followed Svein’s gaze, his jaw spasming in his cheek.
“I shall fetch firewood first, then,” he said, with an unreadable glance toward Raye. “Wait here, and I will return soon.”
With that, he rustled his hand against Svein’s hair, and strode out the cottage door without a single look back. Leaving Raye to first stare blankly at the closed door behind him, and then to belatedly stagger over to secure it — just as he’d ordered her, gods curse him.
“Is it true, Mama?” came Svein’s quiet voice, as Raye turned back around, and sagged against the closed door. “That orc is my Papa, too?”
Raye took a deep, dragging breath, pressing her palms to her closed eyes. “I… I know it’s true that he’s Kalfr’s bond-brother,” she replied, her voice dull. “The rest of it…”
She couldn’t finish, couldn’t begin to find a way through this mess, and Svein’s head tilted, his nostrils sniffing at the empty air before him. “He smells right,” he said, though his voice was uncertain. “Like… like me.”
Raye couldn’t hide her grimace, or her harsh exhale. “He’s from the same clan as Kalfr,” she replied, with more certainty than she felt. “The Bautul. I’m sure that would affect such things.”
Svein didn’t look convinced, his nostrils still flaring, and in truth, Raye wasn’t convinced, either. Because what had Gaelfr said, that horrible long-ago night? This woman shall now always reek of me. Of us.
“Why didn’t you tell me about him?” Svein asked, his voice small. “How I had another Papa?”
Raye’s eyes briefly closed, and she fought down the overwhelming urge to start shouting, to curse Gaelfr to hell and back. To tell Svein that this enraging orc wasn’t his father, he wasn’t…
But — that hopefulness, still shimmering in Svein’s eyes. The relief. The joy. And he’d gone hungry because of her, he’d been trying to protect her, and what the hell was she supposed to do now?
“I… never knew Gaelfr,” Raye finally replied, through gritted teeth. “I didn’t know he…”
Considered himself your father, she might well have said, as more bitter awareness struck through her thoughts.
Because maybe she had known that, after that awful night in the garden — but she’d only ever seen it as a threat, hadn’t she?
As a waiting horrifying loss, forever hanging over her head.
It truly had never once occurred to her that it could mean something like this.
I shall stay. I shall help you, with all my strength.
But — no. Surely it was all still a ruse, a plot. Gaelfr was probably already planning to kidnap Svein, or to run off to meet his fellow warriors, to attack. She needed to pull herself together, needed to lock Gaelfr out of the cottage forever, and…
“Oh, he’s back!” Svein exclaimed, scampering excitedly toward the side window.
And once he’d lifted the paper with his claws, Raye could see that Gaelfr had indeed reappeared.
Striding out from the nearby forest carrying a huge armload of wood, and dragging what appeared to be a small fallen tree behind him.
Raye drifted closer to the window too, watching as Gaelfr dropped all the wood beside her usual chopping block, and then slung off his fur cloak, and set it aside.
Revealing the sudden, alarming sight of his broad bare back and shoulders, criss-crossed by the thick leather straps that held his huge, gleaming axe.
Raye’s throat convulsed, and she cast an uneasy glance down at Svein beside her, who was still watching with rapt interest. “He’s going to chop the wood for us, Mama,” he said, in a far-too-loud whisper. “Look!”
But Raye was already looking again, watching as Gaelfr stood up multiple large pieces of wood on the block, and drew the massive axe off his back. And with a swift, impossibly graceful motion, the axe flashed down through the air, and splintered the wood apart.
“Wow!” Svein breathed, and Raye fought back the curses jostling in her throat, and the whispering shame, too.
Yes, she could chop wood herself, but she’d never found it an easy job, and splitting multiple pieces at once like this would have been a distant laughable fantasy.
And now this infuriating invasive orc was just — doing it, stacking the cut wood neatly on the ground beside him, and piling up more on the block.
Again, Raye should have stopped it. Should have rushed out there, and ordered Gaelfr to go away, and never come back. She should have at least pulled Svein away from the window, and clung to her dignity and her pride.
But instead, she just stood there. Watching as Gaelfr’s huge axe swung down again and again, the muscles shifting in his back, his rich grey skin now gleaming with a sheen of sweat.
Raye could see the multiple scars across his back, now, too, lines and gouges marked in light and dark, rippling with every strike of his axe.
And she fought not to think of how they’d gotten there, how many battles he’d fought in, how many men he’d killed during that war. He was dangerous. Deadly.
Gaelfr didn’t stop until he’d cut up every last piece of wood, and chopped up some kindling, too. Only then did he glance toward the window, catching Raye’s gaze — and her stomach churned with the awareness that he’d known they were watching him all that time, gods damn him.
But he didn’t speak, or come back to the cottage. Instead, he jerked a purposeful nod toward the pile of wood and kindling, and swung the axe onto his shoulder. And without another look back, he strode off into the forest again, leaving the wood behind him.
It was as good as another order, shouted back toward them, but suddenly Raye felt so tired, so empty and defeated. What Gaelfr had just done would have taken her an entire afternoon, and she couldn’t be so proud and foolish as to refuse to make a fire to feed her precious son. Could she?
Svein was watching her again, his sharp tooth biting his lip, as if maybe he expected her to refuse to fetch the wood, too — and Raye swallowed her sigh, and waved him toward the door. “Will you help me bring it in, love?” she asked, as steadily as she could. “Start the fire for supper?”
Svein’s eyes lit up again, and he dashed over to the door, and waited while Raye unbarred it.
And together, they brought in every last stick of wood, first piling it up high beside the fireplace, and then lighting the fire together.
And if nothing else, reminding Svein how to start the fire was at least a distraction, a thread of tenuous reassurance.
He was still here. Gaelfr hadn’t taken him away, not yet.
But Raye still felt jumpy, uneasy, out of sorts, even once the fire began merrily crackling in the grate, and she held out her hands toward it, feeling its wonderful billowing warmth.
And as the heat rolled over her, she had to blink back more stinging wetness behind her eyes.
Gods, what had become of her, that she was weeping over a fire?
Over having help from the dangerous enemy orc who had ruined her life?
She couldn’t stop glancing over her shoulder toward the door, either, as if waiting for Gaelfr to return — and she knew Svein was waiting too, his nostrils frequently flaring. “He won’t leave us again already, will he, Mama?” he asked. “After he promised?”
Raye almost couldn’t bear the doubt in Svein’s eyes, the glimmer of genuine fear. And again, she should have taken the opportunity to stop this. Should have told Svein that Gaelfr couldn’t be trusted, Gaelfr was a stranger, an enemy, he’d ruined her life…
“No, love,” she said, through her thick throat. “I don’t think he’ll leave yet.”
The flash of joy in Svein’s eyes was both relief and pain, enough that Raye almost hoped she was wrong. That Gaelfr would disappear out of their lives forever, and never come back.
But when Svein finally yelped and leapt up, racing toward the window again, something leapt in Raye’s belly, too.
Gaelfr had returned, just like he’d said he would.
And this time — Raye let out a shaky breath — he was carrying multiple dead hares with one hand, his other hand’s claws dripping bright red blood.