Silk Dreams - Songs of the North 3 (35 page)

“O my heart,” she said, cupping his cheeks with both palms. “Life is a short journey. While we travel it together, let us choose joy.”

“Every day,” he promised. “Every day.”

The man crested the rise and looked down into the village of Sardica. It seemed smaller than he remembered, shabbier, but tears welled in his eyes anyway. He sank onto the lush grass to catch his breath. The last climb was steep, and for one who had recently cheated death, foot travel was a weary business.

Damian Aristarchus, one-time chief eunuch to the Imperial household, took out his waterskin and brought it to his lips. By mid-morning, he'd refill this skin at the well in the center of his hometown. He couldn't summon the courage to think further than that.

He was still suffering from the aftereffects of the dose of spotted corobane, but his precaution, the flask of olive oil he'd downed just before joining Mahomet, coated his insides enough to protect him from the full malevolence of the draught. Mahomet was not so lucky. Damian had watched him die in agony, shortly before losing consciousness himself.

Even with the oil, it had been a near thing. By the time Damian recovered enough to ask Lentulus what had transpired while his spirit hovered between worlds, the emperor had already dealt with his nephew. Leo Porphyrogenito was given a choice of punishments— blinding or gelding. Either debility would exclude him from succession to the throne.

Leo chose darkness.

Damian thought the choice showed a lack of courage. A blind man was still a man.

Below him, the village was coming to life. A woman came to the well, bearing a clay pot on her shoulder. When she set it down to draw water, Damian caught a clear view of her face—dark laughing eyes, her nose perhaps a shade too long, lips like an angel slightly turned up at the corners by a trick of musculature than gave her a perpetual enigmatic smile. There was no mistaking her. Calysta.

His heart hammered in his chest and though he'd just taken a drink, his mouth went dry. Coming home to his wife seemed a much better idea when he was back in Constantinople than it did now. But despite his trepidation, he wanted his life back. He wanted to know his son. He wanted to love his wife.

Or try to, anyway.

And if Calysta couldn't accept him as he was?

He brushed away his doubts. If he didn't try, he'd never know. Damian shoved the bung back into the waterskin. He raised himself to his feet and started walking down the switch-backed goat track. He picked up his pace.

He'd already died like a man. It was time to start living like one.

Thanks so much for reading
Silk Dreams
. I hope you enjoyed it.

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• Silk Dreams
  is a stand-alone Viking romance, but if you love those bad boys of the North, I have a trilogy of books for you—The
  Songs of the North
  series.
  

Maidensong
,
Erinsong
, and coming November 2013
Dragonsong
. I hope you enjoy them all!

If you’d like taste of
Maidensong
, please read on.

The babe wailed again.

“There, lamb,” Helge whispered as she sponged the last of the slick fluids off the enraged little body. Flickering light from the central fire kissed the newborn and danced across the smoke-blackened beams of the longhouse.

The old midwife sighed. However difficult the babe’s entry into the world had been, she was at least a healthy child, perfectly formed with all her fingers and toes. A crest of coppery hair was plastered to her damp head.

“Hush you, now,” Helge coaxed.

The wrinkled little face puckered and the newborn shrieked as if Loki, the trickster godling, had just pinched her bottom. Helge wrapped the child snugly in a cat-skin blanket, crooning urgent endearments.

“Shut the brat up,” Torvald said, his voice a broken shadow of its usual booming timbre. All the souls sheltered in the longhouse went expectantly silent. As if she sensed menace in the air, the child subsided into moist hiccups.

“Will you not hold your daughter?” Helge offered the small bundle to Torvald. “She’s a fine child, fair and lusty.”

“No, I’ll not.” Torvald knuckled his eyes. “She’s killed my Gudrid. I’ll have naught to do with her.” When he looked at the mewling babe, his face was a mask of loathing. “Put her out.”

Helge flinched. “But, my lord—”

“Don’t argue with me, woman. Am I not chief over my own house?” Torvald’s gray eyes blazed with a potent mix of fury and grief. “I said, put her out.”

Helge’s shoulders sagged. She couldn’t remember the last time a healthy child had been exposed. But Torvald was master here, so there was nothing for it but to do his bidding.

Still, it didn’t seem right to consign the babe to
Hel
empty-handed. It was bad enough that she’d go unloved and unmourned to that shadowy, icy place. Even worse, she’d arrive there as a pauper.

Helge laid her little charge on the bedding, and untied the thin strip of leather from the dead woman’s slim neck.

The pendant was a simple little amber hammer, its only distinctive mark a tiny purple orchid trapped forever in the glowing stone. Perhaps Thor would mark the child for his protection if she met her death wearing his talisman. It wasn’t much, but it was all Helge could do for the mite.

She bundled herself against the cold and left the longhouse bearing her whimpering burden. The stiff hairs in her nostrils froze with each breath.

The thought of leaving the child for the wolves made Helge’s chest constrict smartly. She decided to let the sea take her. It would be clean and quick. There’d be less chance of hearing the child’s keening death wail on the wind. And the unhappy little soul would find it harder to trouble those who’d disowned her with malicious tricks later, as some malevolent ghosts were known to do.

Snow crunched underfoot as Helge trudged down to the shore where the fjord was choked with ice. Armed with an ax she picked up as she passed the woodpile, Helge carried the babe as close to the edge of the floe as she dared.

“Good-bye, little elf,” Helge said as she placed the newborn on the smooth, cold surface. “Thor keep you, for I cannot.”

She brought the sharp ax down with a thwack. The brittle ice shattered in a jagged line and separated from the main body of the floe. Helge gave it a nudge with the ax handle.

She watched with a gathering heaviness in her chest as, bobbing and dipping, the tiny bundle on the ice sheet floated out with the tide.

Though Silk Dreams is a work of fiction, several actual historical persons are mentioned—notably the Emperor Basil II. His nephew Leo Porphyrogenito is a product of my imagination, but his niece, Zoe, is not. Zoe succeeded her Uncle Basil to the Byzantine throne and was married to no less than three subsequent emperors. Rumor has it she helped more than one of her husbands to early graves, but that is fodder for another story.

The use of Northmen as the emperor’s elite guard is well documented. The Varangians were the unlikely watchdogs of the most sophisticated court of its time. The veneer of civilization didn’t rub off on the Norse cohort though. Visitors to the Hagia Sophia today can still see runic graffiti carved into the 5
^th
century church’s fine wood—a sort of Viking version of “Kilroy was here.”

Sufferers of the “falling sickness” have been alternately revered and reviled throughout history. I’d like to give a special word of thanks to my friend, Angie Sumoski, who deals with her epilepsy with a cheerful spirit. She was open-hearted enough to share her experience with me so Valdis’s life with her illness would have the ring of truth. Angie is a true hero.

And thank you to you, dear reader. I appreciate you more than you know.

If you’d like to shoot me a question, please contact me through
my website
.

Happy reading,

Mia