Page 10 of Shared By the Vikings

“Naught.” She thrust her hips forward, wanting more of his touch.

Caw. Caw.

“Ravens,” he said. “Odin has sent them to watch us.”

“Why would he want to watch us?” She tore open her eyes and studied the sleeping oak tree to her left.

Nine glossy black ravens perched on the bare branches. Each had a plumed beard and sooty gray beak. Their eyes glinted as they tipped their heads taking in the sight before them.

The sight of Ingrid and Raud.

“We shouldn’t be doing this,” Ingrid said, fear replacing lust and her skin crawling with it. “Odin will not be happy.”

“Odin will be happy we are following our hearts.” Raud flicked his hand at the ravens. “Go!”

They ignored him.

“Raud. Nine ravens from the nine worlds. That is what they are.” The wrongness of their actions was palpable, indescribable.

“They mean naught.”

“We both know that’s not true.” She stepped away, frustrated because she knew Raud believed it as well as she did but was thinking with something other than his mind. “We have to find a way to be together. To get out of Ravndal and be together.”

“How can we do that?” He kept his arms open, as though she was still in there or he was waiting for her to step back into them.

“I don’t know.” She grabbed her sword handle and plucked the blade from the ground. “But we’ll think of something. What we have cannot be stopped.”

“No, it can’t be.” He picked up his axe and stood at her side.

She stared at the vast fjord, its surface reflecting the sky and a flock of geese flying west. On the opposite shore several longboats bobbed. They were small and distant. Even smaller, on the beach to the boats left, were warriors practicing for battle. They held shields and spun and splashed in the shallows as they honed their sword mastery. “Jarl Brun of Eaterly is planning on sailing west, is he not?” she said.

“I believe so. And he has negotiated a loan of fierce northern fighters.”

“That is them practicing?” she asked.

Raud was quiet for a moment, then, “Ja, they are not our villager neighbors, that I know.”

“I agree.” She continued to study the small figures, knowing that if she stood next to them, they would not be small at all. “They are journeying to England, my father said, there has been much talk of fertile land and rich pickings from the Christians. Perhaps they will stay for a long time. The entire summer.”

“Ja.” He’d said it slowly, as though his mind was also working, as though he were reading hers, keeping up with the chains of her thoughts. “I believe he takes to the tide as soon as Aegir rests and the sea is passable.”

“Ja, he will go in the spring,” she said.

“That could be right for us.”

“Ja, it could.” She nodded and her belly tensed in excitement. A small nugget of a plan was growing fast. It was sprouting from the ground, stretching up to the sun, flourishing, becoming real... “Can we?” she asked. “Could we?”

“We can do anything, you and I.”

She reached for his hand, squeezed his fingers. “Ja, we can, Raud.” A twist of disappointment suddenly attacked her belly. “But they will not be happy to have me on board without my father’s permission.”

“We will not tell them who you are?”

“Raud?”

Again he took a lock of her hair in his hand. “You are going to make a beautiful boy.”

“Boy?”

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