The Ninth Lost Tale of Mercia: Runa the Wife Read online

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  Runa waited for the winter to break. She waited and waited. She ate the last of her stores. She ravaged the last pieces of food from the cold earth. But she could not do enough to support herself. Her body rejected her. She rejected it. She ate strange flowers and herbs, even though she knew they would make her sick.

  She and the baby would not last another fortnight unless she sought help.

  By the time she walked to the fortress of Jomsborg, her dress hung in ripped tatters. Bruises and scrapes covered her skin. Her elbows were sharp enough to rival a pair of spear-tips. She was thinner than she had ever been in her life—except for her belly, protruding from her body like some sprite-infested mass. Between her legs, blood trickled out and caked on her thighs. She didn’t even know when the bleeding had begun.

  The guards of the land-gate stared at her with a mixture of disgust and fascination.

  “I’m here ... for Thorkell the Tall,” she said.

  “Er ... no women in Jomsborg,” said one.

  “Then I’ll sit right here and wait for him to come out,” she said.

  Once she sat she fell asleep, and her mind became lost in the evening’s cold embrace.

  She awoke in a peasant’s lodge and smelled food. Her stomach flipped within her. The sensation felt strange … like her body had changed shape. She touched the swollen lump of her belly and groaned. The ceiling flickered above her with the orange light of the fire. Shadows flitted over her vision and made her head ache.

  “Drink this.” A woman’s hand touched her clammy forehead. She poured cool water down Runa’s throat. Runa struggled not to gag.

  “It’s killing me,” she rasped, her fingernails digging into her own stomach.

  “No,” said the woman. “I think you’re killing it.”

  This seemed inexplicably true.

  Runa’s dizzied gaze fell on a large man standing in the corner. She recognized the towering frame and soft gray eyes of Thorkell the Tall. She tried to smile at him.

  Her pain overcame her and swept her away. Her body writhed and jerked in the clutches of agony, battling itself, struggling to expel the fetus like a poison from her body. She became lost in the struggle and thought of nothing else. She roared a battle cry. Her muscles ached and stiffened, as if they became rods of ice cold steel twisting within her. Her vessels throbbed. Her loins heaved. The blood flowed.

  By morning she expunged the baby’s small, dead body from her womb.

  She heard Thorkell’s heavy breath next to her. It heaved less steadily than she recalled. His hands enveloped hers, coarse but comforting. She looked to him, her lids heavy, but her gaze bright. She saw tears on his cheeks. She wanted to reach out and touch one, but she felt too weak.

  He met her stare and jerked with a sob. It was strange to see the giant cry. “It ... was a girl.”

  “It was nothing,” said Runa. “A lifeless piece of flesh.”

  He did not have a naturally expressive face, but his eyes crinkled and his lips twisted with despair, shifting his yellow beard. Her heart lurched, giving her the strength to squeeze his hand. Water stung her own eyes, and it was an unfamiliar feeling.

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered. She thought of the plants she had eaten, knowing they would weaken her body. “I didn’t want it.”

  He squeezed back against her fingers, a gesture that sent pain up her arm, but she ignored it. “Why not? Why did you go away?”

  She didn’t respond at first, only stared at him, not judging, only observing. Had he really missed her all this time? She thought he would have forgotten her, written off their night together as a meaningless jaunt through the trees, and yet she could she see in his eyes that he had searched for her, longed for her. And she had longed for him as well, though she had tried to ignore the feelings as trivial lust, when in truth they ran deeper. The warrior had raided helpless villages, slaughtered innocent people, and taken what did not belong to him. But somehow, he did not frighten her. He was a Jomsviking. It was his job. As for the rest ... she trusted him completely.

  “I don’t know why,” she said at last. “But maybe I’ll stay this time.”