Huddled in the hastily emptied wooden chest, the crouching woman listened with fear as her village was sacked. Her hut lay a bit apart from the ring of homes around the commons. She was a weaver and traded her skill for meat and milk and cheese. Still, the clanging of weapons, rending of wooden doors and walls, and worst of all the screams roared in her ears. These were not neighboring soldiers in a land dispute, she recognized only a few of the words shouted by their attackers -- definitely Norse.
Sooner than she expected, she heard the unbarred door slamming open: barring it would only mean she'd need a new one. She held her breath and clutched her right fist, knowing the chest would attract immediate attention from looters. That was her plan.
Footsteps clunked across the floor and the chest shifted slightly as it was kicked. Not waiting for the lid to open, she sprang up and stabbed her enemy. She was rewarded with a shout of pain and she shoved hard past the distracted warrior toward her door. She felt herself swung around by the sleeve almost immediately. Shit shit shit. She pulled loose, but the force of the swing slammed her into the wall. Recovering her balance, she gasped in terror at the vision of a broad axeman stalking toward her, whipping off a bloodied helm and drawing his sword.
She cried out in the foreign tongue, praying that the word meant what her grandmother claimed it did. And that it would be heeded.
Gunnarr closed in for the kill, blinking blood out of his left eye, but slowed in confusion when he heard a shout that somehow disoriented him. When it was repeated, he realized that he was hearing his own language from an enemy villager far from his home. The word was distorted, but repetition and the setting drove its meaning home.
"Mercy!" Grainne cried out desperately as the livid and bleeding warrior approached, "Mercy, mercy, mercy!"
She caught the man's eye and dropped her dagger, then straightened and placed her hands, palms forward, on the wall beside her head to show they were empty and she was willing to surrender. His furious expression changed only slightly, remaining brutal enough to rip the air from her lungs. The resulting softening of her voice likely saved her life.
"You want MERCY, do you, after stabbing me? What kind of MERCY was that? I almost lost an eye. Oh, you drop the dagger NOW. Not convincing."
Deliberately keeping eye contact despite her fear, Grainne spoke the word over and over in an increasingly breathless tone, nodding eagerly when the warrior repeated it. Only blissful ignorance of the rest of his meaning allowed her to concentrate. She did her best to convey calm, as she would to soothe a young child or frightened animal wordlessly, hoping it would catch like a yawn as it often did. Her hope increased as the warrior kept his sword pointed down and actually dropped his axe, though he strode forward with unflagging speed and crowded her against the wall.
He seemed to freeze there, just staring, as Grainne held her breath in fear but dared to slowly bring her open hands to his brow. She stroked gently, again as if to soothe without words, wiping the blood away from the stab wound from she'd inflicted across his cheek. She held his gaze, and he did not strike.
Gunnarr's anger evaporated into pounding lust as the low voice, gentle fingers and plump curves of the woman he'd pinned to the wall gathered into an overwhelming impression of yielding softness. Her face came into focus as he calmed from the necessary rage of battle. A broad forehead and curving cheeks tapered into a cleft chin. Hazel eyes, wide with concentration and courage, gazed intently into his. Only the pallor beneath sunned skin and parted lips hinted at the fear her quickened breath and shaking body confirmed. Gunnarr groaned.
He had not been with a woman since shortly before his wife died birthing their perfect stillborn daughter the year before. A flash of Bera's teasing smile as she urged him to "knock" so the baby would answer the door and FINALLY be born rose unbidden, but slipped away as his body's yearning reasserted the present.
Gunnarr realized how much he had missed the feeling of a panting woman trembling against him, and thought to himself that he could give the comely one he had trapped better reason than fear to continue doing so. He lowered his head to bite her exposed throat, his lips sensing her racing pulse. He managed to tear his mouth away and looked into her eyes again.
"Eir?" He asked with raised eyebrows, sheathing his sword part way to convey the bargain he meant to strike.
