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Chapter 3
Njal snorted as though laughing at Ragnhild’s teasing comment as Arne placed a hand on the flesh of his belly. It was as lean and taut as ever.
Ragnhild laughed and golden particles shimmered around her form. She stepped forward and embraced him, all formalities forgotten. Arne breathed in her scent, revelling in the shock of desire that swept through him as her body pressed close to his.
“You are as mischievous as ever, woman,” he said with a laugh as she pulled away from him.
Green eyes, sparkling with mirth, caught him in their gaze. His heart beat a little faster.
“It has been too long since I saw you last,” she said.
“Much too long,” he said and slipped his arm around her waist then pulled her to him. She melted into his body and the familiar yearning for her became intense. He bent his head to her upturned face. Soft warmth met his lips as she returned his kiss. “You still love me then?” he asked and tipped her chin upwards with a gentle finger. His hand was huge and rough compared to the delicate jaw and flawless alabaster of her face. Her green eyes shimmered with magick but held a flicker of … of what? He could not tolerate pity.
She nodded in agreement. “You know that I do,” she said but he recognised the flicker in her eyes as sadness and felt the grip of disappointment around his heart.
“But you have not spoken to him,” he stated with an edge to his voice. Ragnhild shivered under his touch as Arne’s thoughts returned to him; the man who had trapped her at his side. Jarl Orm. A self-proclaimed chieftain whose battle-won and stolen lands lay in the Old World, a realm separated from this world by a gauze of aether, a thin but impenetrable barrier, a spider’s web that stretched and clung but never broke. Behind it lay a land where the gods of thunder, fertility, and war reigned, dragon ships sailed the whale road, and a leader’s reputation as a fearsome warrior and giver of treasure was all that kept him in power.
Some ruled with fairness, others did not. Jarl Orm ruled with a choking grip in one hand, and a hammer in the other.
Notorious for his viciousness in battle, his fearsome reputation was one sung about by the skalds, the travelling poets who wrote verse and songs to honour kings and great warriors. But Arne suspected that Orm himself paid the skalds to spread word of his bloodthirsty, unforgiving, treatment of his enemies and vicious victories in battle. He was, in Arne’s opinion, exactly what his name proclaimed—a serpent. Slithering, conniving, and poisonous. Orm used the skalds to incite fear and his authority to suppress and Ragnhild was just another weapon he used against his enemies to stay one step ahead.
It was before the great Battle of Frostheim that Ragnhild had come to the Jarl’s attention. Word had spread of her prophetic dreams. How she had seen Jarl Orm victorious but only after his discovery of treachery. In her dream, his ally, Jarl Konig would betray him during the battle but die a dreadful death. The dream became a reality on the battlefield, and his foreknowledge of Konig’s betrayal, and exactly how it would play out, had allowed him to become victorious. When Konig had died precisely as described, impaled by an iron-tipped spear and pinned to the ground, his legs trapped beneath his horse, Jarl Orm had realised Ragnhild’s worth.
From that day he sought her out and bound her allegiance to him, trapping her at his side through trickery and deceit. Now, only Orm could break that bond of servitude by granting her freedom. Death would come first, Arne realised. Jarl Orm would never release Ragnhild from her bonds, she was far too useful. In his darker moments, Arne imagined the man’s death at his own hands. In his heart, he knew it was the only solution. Reaching him beyond the aether, in the Old World, was the problem, that and Ragnhild’s insistence that she was bound to the Jarl by virtue of her promise. What did she have, if not her word, she had said when pressed to allow Arne to break the bond.
‘It was a stolen promise! He tricked you,’ Arne had complained.
‘Yes, but it was a promise, nevertheless. I gave my word.’
Death will come to him soon, Arne thought darkly as he held Ragnhild in his arms, revelling in the softness of her flesh.
“It is not easy,” Ragnhild replied.
Arne pushed down his frustration and instead stroked her jaw with his thumb, the pain of holding her so close exquisite. How much longer will I have to wait? Impatience overwhelmed him. “Ask him, Ragnhild. Ask to be released from your bonds or … I shall break them for you!”
She clasped the hand at her chin with her own. “Then all will be lost. Be patient, my love.”
The frustration became too much, and he released her chin and turned to Njal, patting the stallion’s neck. How could one woman have such power over him? Njal shivered beneath Arne’s touch, picking up on the pent up and grating energy ready to burst from his fingers.
“After so long, you have paid your servitude, repaid your debt,” he said as the horse nickered. The need in his voice grated against his need to take Ragnhild as his own, but the woman owned his heart, and he was defenceless.
“I pledged my allegiance. I gave my word.”
“Would that you hadn’t,” he said with vehemence.
“I gave my word before I met you.”
“But we were always meant to be as one.”
Her hand pressed down on his shoulder, and he returned to face her. As their eyes met, she said: “Our time will come. It is written.”
“But when?”
“Soon. I feel it on the wind. In my very bones.”
Once again, he pulled her to him, sinking into her as their lips met. She returned his passion with her own and they held each other as a chill November breeze began to rise.
In the distance dark clouds gathered.
“But that is not what you have come to tell me,” Arne said.
She shook her head. “No, it is not.”
“Then what?”
“Dark storms are coming for this world. Uthr, Vergandi, and Skuldi have spoken of it.”
Arne withheld a sigh of cynicism. Uthr, Vergandi, and Skuldi, three ‘wise’ women, seers who crafted themselves as norns, had a reputation for misguiding those who listened to their foretelling. But Ragnhild did not and so he was willing to listen to their proclamation. “There is always something dark besetting this world—war or famine or plague. Why should this warning be different?”
“I have seen it too.”
Arne caught the concern in her eyes. There was something deeper than knowledge of trouble.
“What has this to do with me?”
“You are the one who must stop what is foretold.”
“And what is it that is foretold? I can see the fear in your eyes.”
“A black witch has gathered together heinous and dangerous castings. Hexes, spells, and curses that draw on the darkest forces within the aether scribed onto skin with the blood of a child let beneath a blackened moon.” Ragnhild gripped Arne’s bicep. “It is told that her book will be rent into thirteen parts. The parts will become hidden only to be found again, their evil stitched back together and used with great malice against Mankind. This world will be lost to the darkness. It will make the plague and famine that stalks this land as naught!”
Arne grimaced as memories of plague-ridden corpses surged to the front of his mind. Across the years he had lived through numerous outbreaks; some killing entire families, others entire villages. During one outbreak that came to be known as the Black Death, a remote village he had passed through seemed deserted until he spotted a young woman dragging a body from her back door and out into the garden. Immune from the disease, he had offered her help, but fearful of him, she had refused and continued to drag the body towards the bottom of the garden where other bodies already lay. As she turned to thank him, he noticed the familiar lump on her neck already bruising to purple.
Arne groaned. “And there are thirteen parts …” he murmured. “And all lost?”
“Not lost yet, but soon.”
“Then there is hope—if I can-”
Ragnhild shook her head. “Nothing can stop the fate of the book.”
“Of course,” he said. “Nothing is ever that easy.” He managed a wry smile.
“Each part, if found and used without permission of its creator, will bring down terrible curses.”
“Plagues, famines, and terrible curses,” Arned sighed. “And I am to find them?”
“You are the only one who can,” she said.
“Thirteen books,” he said, already sensing the weariness the quest would bring. “This world … it is a corrupt and hellish place already. Mayhap I should leave it to its fate.”
Ragnhild’s eyes widened. “No!”
Surprised at her vehemence, he returned her gaze with a questioning frown. “No?”
She shook her head. “Arne, I have seen what lays ahead—for us!” Her eyes glittered, silver particles within the iris dancing.
“Go on!” he said as his heart tapped a harder beat within his chest.
She grabbed his hand, and a smile broke across her face. “When they are found … and destroyed—that will be our chance.”