Chapter 147: Oath of Blood
The cold of the tent seeped into Nick’s bones, sharper than the sea. He’d slept fitfully against the pole, lulled by the deep, exhausted rhythm of Svala’s breathing from the cot. In the hour before dawn, when the world was a muted gray, the tent flap rustled.
Freydis entered without ceremony. Her eyes went immediately to the linen strip on the furs, the dark stain at its center. She picked it up, holding it close to her face in the dim light. Her expression was unreadable. Then she looked at Nick’s bandaged hand, at Svala sleeping soundly wrapped in furs, and a flicker of something—perhaps reluctant respect, perhaps deeper suspicion—crossed her sharp features. She gave a single, almost imperceptible nod, then left as silently as she’d come.
The camp awoke to a steady, freezing rain. It turned the paths to mud and dripped from the leather hoods of the warriors. Nick was summoned to Alarik’s hall. The atmosphere was different. The gawking curiosity had been replaced by a watchful, operational focus. The bloodied linen, passed from Freydis to Torvald to Alarik, had served its purpose. Nick was no longer a bridegroom. He was a resource.
He stood before the high seat again, Svala a silent shadow a pace behind and to his left. Alarik hunched over a rough map scratched onto a worn piece of hide, weighed down at the corners by spearheads. Rurik, Torvald, and Ulf flanked him.
“Hakon rebuilds,” Alarik said without looking up. “Our scouts say he has rallied the survivors. He drags timber from the untouched forests uphill. He’ll have a wall by spring. A strong one.”
Ulf grunted. “A winter siege here would rot us. The men need a real victory, or they’ll start looking homeward.”
Alarik’s pale eyes lifted to Nick. “You said destroy. Not raid. Not skirmish.Destroy. The debt you speak of—does it carry a plan?”
All eyes were on him. Nick could feel Svala’s fearful attention, a warmth on his left side. He felt the cold spiral stir, not with vision, but with a cold, logical certainty, a pattern assembling from broken pieces. He stepped forward and placed a fingertip on the hide map, on the headland west of the burnt shell of Bergen. “He’s vulnerable now. Not to your axes. To his own people.”
Rurik sneered. “Poetry. We need iron.”
Nick ignored him, his gaze locked on Alarik. “You burned their homes, their food stores. Winter is a claw at the door. Hakon must provide or fall. His legitimacy is new, thin. Where will he get grain? Meat? Timber for his wall?”
Torvald’s burned fingers tapped his axe haft. “Raids.South. The smaller settlements up the coast.”
“Exactly,” Nick said. “He’s desperate. He’ll take every able fighter he has, leave Bergen skeleton-guarded, to bring back plunder and prove his worth. He’ll have to.”
A slow smile spread on Alarik’s face. He saw it. “We don’t meet his raiding party. We sail past it. We hit Bergen while it’s hollow.”
“But the glory—” Rurik began, offended by the indirectness.
“The glory,” Nick cut in, his voice a low rasp, “is in making the new jarl fail so completely his own people slit his throat for him. Let him return to a smoking ruin again, his people dead or taken, his stolen plundered worthless. His own hearth-men will break his skull on his own high seat.”
The hall was quiet, save for the sputter of the fire. It was a cruel, complete kind of warfare.Psychological. Efficient.
Alarik leaned back. “A prediction. When?”
Nick closed his eyes. He didn’t see the future. He saw Hakon’s blunt, brutish mind, his hungry pride. He saw the deepening cold. “Within the week. The first true hard frost is coming. He’ll move before it locks the fjords with ice.”
“And how do you know this?” Torvald asked, his voice a gravelly challenge.
Nick opened his eyes. “Because I’ve seen men like him before. In many places. Their patterns are the simplest to read. They are all hunger and no patience.”
Alarik stared at him for a long moment, then slapped the map. “We watch. We wait. Ulf, triple the scouts on the western ridges. I want to know the moment Hakon’s ships leave their beach.”
The meeting dissolved into logistics. As they turned to go, Alarik called out. “Nick. A final thing.”
Nick turned.
The young jarl’s smile was back, thin and unwavering. “A vow made in a hall is one thing. A vow made on the land itself, to the gods who watch… that is another. Come.”
They filed out of the hall into the pissing rain. The entire camp seemed to be gathering on the open ground between the tents and the beach, a somber circle forming in the mud. This was a ritual, Nick understood. For them.For him.
Alarik stood in the center. Torvald handed Nick a small, sharp seax. The warriors watched, rain dripping from their beards.
“The soil is Svear soil now,” Alarik said, his voice carrying in the wet air. “Our blood has soaked it. Your words are wind. Let your blood bind them.”
Nick understood. He took the seax. The cold spiral on his chest felt like ice. He thought of the cage, of Hakon’s triumphant bellow, of Astrid’s furious, betrayed eyes. He thought of debts, yes. But deeper, he thought of endings. Of cutting a rotten thread.
He turned his left palm upward. The cut from the night before was a thin, dark line. He placed the blade’s edge beside it, and with a swift, hard motion, drew it deep. Fresh, bright blood welled instantly, a hot line against the cold rain.
He knelt, ignoring the sting, and pressed his bleeding palm flat into the churned, muddy earth. The red bloomed around his hand, mixing with the brown mud and rainwater, a fleeting, vivid stain.
“I will help you destroy Hakon,” he vowed, his voice clear and hard, carrying to the ring of watching faces. He looked up at Alarik, his gray eyes like stone. “Not for glory—but debt.”
Torvald watched closely, his burned hand clenched. Alarik smiled thinly, a victory in his pale eyes. “Then welcome, Frost-Bearer,” he said, the new name a brand, a title, a shackle. “Betray us, and we’ll feed you to the sea.”
The circle broke. The warriors moved off, talking in low tones. Nick stood, the mud and blood clinging to his hand. Svala was there, a small, clean strip of linen ready. She didn’t speak. She took his hand gently and began to wipe away the mud, then wrapped the linen tightly around the fresh cut. Her touch was deft, soft. He watched the top of her head, the dark parting of her hair.
“You gave them what they wanted,” she whispered, not looking up.
“I gave them a truth,” he corrected, his voice low. “That’s more dangerous.”
She tied the bandage off and finally met his gaze. The fear was still there, but it was now tempered with a dawning, horrified understanding. “You’re really going to burn it all down.”
Nick looked past her, towards the mist-shrouded fjord, towards the west where Bergen—what was left of it—lay. “Some things only grow in ash,” he said, though he didn’t believe it. He just knew some things needed to be ash before anything else could even be considered.
The days that followed were a tense, wet vigil. Nick was given a small tent of his own, next to Svala’s. They shared meals in silence, a quiet, joint performance for the camp. He saw Freydis often, deep in consultation with Ulf and the scouts. She acknowledged him with a curt nod, nothing more. The strategy was in motion; she was attending to its machinery.
On the third evening, as a brittle frost finally began to lace the edges of the puddles, Rurik sauntered up to their cook-fire. He grinned at Svala, then at Nick. “Cold bed, Frost-Bearer? A man needs warmth before a fight. Or does your oracle’s blood run too thin for a woman?”
Svala went rigid, staring into the flames.
“My bed is my concern,” Nick said, his tone devoid of inflection.
“Perhaps,” Rurik leaned in, his voice oily. “But the camp wonders. A marriage needs consummating. A single bloody rag proves a cut, not a fucking.” He let the obscenity hang in the cold air. “People talk. They say you’re not a man. They say she’s still a maid. It undermines things. Weakens the chain you’re so fond of.”
Nick saw the trap. It wasn’t about lust. It was about perception, about the solidity of the bond he’d sold them. Doubt was a weed that could unravel everything. He caught Freydis watching from across the camp, her expression unreadable. She would not intervene. This, too, was a test.
That night, in his tent, the weight of the expectation was a physical pressure. He heard the muffled sounds of the camp: laughter, arguments, the grunts of couples in nearby tents. He stared at the hides overhead. The logic was inescapable.
There was a soft rustle at his tent flap. Svala entered. She wore the same thin linen shift, and she was shivering, though the tent was no colder than any other night. Her face was pale, set.
“They sent you,” Nick stated.
She nodded, a tiny, jerky motion. “Freydis. She said… the talk must stop. For the alliance. For my safety, too.” She wrapped her arms around herself. “I understand the… requirement.”
He could see the terror she was trying to crush. The resigned dignity was back, but it was a brittle shell. He felt a surge of cold anger, not at her, but at the machinery that ground them both.
“Close the flap,” he said quietly.
She did. The tent felt suddenly smaller, the air closer.
“This isn’t about debt,” he said.“Or strategy. Not for you and I in this moment.”
She shook her head, mute.
He stood up. “Then we take the requirement out of their hands. We make it ours.” He reached out, not to grab, but his fingers brushed her arm. She flinched, then forced herself still. “Look at me, Svala.”
She lifted her eyes, glistening in the low light of the small oil lamp.
“Do you want this?” he asked, the question stark, offering her a sliver of agency in the transaction.
She swallowed. Her voice was a thread. “I want… the talking to stop. I want to not be afraid of them coming in here to check. I want…” She took a shaky breath. “I want to not feel like a lamb waiting every night.”
He understood.Control. Even the illusion of it. “Then tonight, we control it.”
He moved slowly. He untied the thong holding his own tunic closed and shrugged it off. His torso was lean, marked with faint, old scars she didn’t recognize. He wasn’t muscled like a berserker, but there was a tensile strength to him. He approached her.
“Take off the shift,” he said, his voice low but firm, a command meant to cut through her paralysis.
Her fingers trembled as she pulled the linen garment over her head. She stood naked before him, hugging herself, her skin pebbled with cold and fear. Her body was slender, her breasts small and pale, her hips narrow. She was all gentle curves and vulnerable angles.
He guided her down onto the bed of furs. She lay stiffly, eyes wide, staring at the tent roof. He lay beside her, propped on one elbow, looking down at her. He didn’t touch her yet.
“They want a performance,” he murmured, his face close to hers. “We’ll give them one. But we do it on our terms.” He leaned down and kissed her, not with passion, but with deliberate, slow pressure. Her lips were cold and stiff at first, then they softened, parted slightly in surprise.
He let a hand come to rest on her rib cage, feeling the frantic flutter of her heart beneath cool skin. He moved his mouth from her lips to her jaw, then down the line of her throat. She gasped when his tongue touched the hollow at its base. He could taste salt and fear.
His hand drifted down, over the plane of her stomach. She tensed, a small whimper escaping her. He paused.
“Svala,” he whispered against her skin. “Breathe. It’s just us here.”
She let out a shuddering breath. His fingers trailed lower, through the soft, dark hair between her thighs. He felt her legs instinctively try to clamp shut, then force themselves to relax. She was wet, but it was the slickness of terror, not arousal.
He knew he couldn’t simply take her. The performance would fail; she would break. He had to make her body respond, even if her mind was far away. He bent his head, his mouth leaving her throat, trailing kisses down her sternum. He took one small, peaked nipple into his mouth. She jerked, a sharp inhale. He suckled gently, then harder, using his tongue. Her breathing hitched, changed. A different kind of tension entered her spine.
He switched to the other breast, his hand still cupping her mound. He began to stroke, a slow, persistent circling with his thumb just above where she was most sensitive. Her hips gave a tiny, involuntary twitch.
“That’s it,” he murmured, his voice rough. He moved down her body, his kisses blazing a trail over her quivering belly. He settled between her legs. He hooked his arms under her thighs, spreading her wide, putting her on full display for his gaze and his mouth. She cried out, trying to sit up. “Don’t,” she pleaded, shame flooding her voice.
“This is ours,” he insisted, his breath hot against her inner thigh. “Let them think what they want.” Then he lowered his mouth to her.
The sensation was so foreign, so shockingly intimate, that her protest died in a choked gasp. He licked her, a slow, firm stripe through her folds, tasting her fear and the faint, rising salt of her body’s reluctant awakening. He focused on the small, hard nub at her apex, licking and sucking with a ruthless, dedicated rhythm. He used his fingers to part her, to hold her open, to make his assault undeniable.
Her hands fisted in the furs. Whimpers, thin and high, spilled from her lips. She was fighting it, fighting the creeping heat that was uncoiling low in her belly. Her body was betraying her terror. He was relentless, his tongue fucking her softly, then flicking hard, a maddening alternation. He slid a finger inside her, just one, feeling the tight, clutching heat. She was a virgin, impossibly snug. He worked the finger in and out slowly, in time with his tongue.
A low moan escaped her. Her hips lifted off the furs, seeking more. “Oh… gods,” she breathed, the words a confession. Her fingers left the furs and tangled in his dark, unkempt hair, not to push him away, but to hold him there.
He added a second finger, stretching her carefully, the burn of it making her cry out. He curled his fingers inside her, searching, and rubbed over a spot that made her entire body arch off the bed. “Fuck,” she swore, the crude word startling from her prim mouth. Her eyes flew open, wide with shock at her own voice, at the explosion of sensation.
He pulled his mouth away, his lips and chin glistening. He rose over her, his own hard length pressing against her thigh. He lined himself up with her wet, open entrance. He looked into her eyes. They were no longer terrified. They were dark, clouded with a stunned, desperate need.
“Now,” he said, and it was both a promise and a command. “For us.”
He pushed into her, a slow, inexorable invasion. The barrier gave way with a sharp, tearing pain. She gasped, nails digging into his shoulders. He held still, buried deep inside her, letting her adjust to the profound, full feeling. He kissed her, swallowing her pained whimpers.
When the tension in her body eased a fraction, he began to move. A slow, deep withdrawal, then a thrust back into her warmth. She was so tight it was almost unbearable. He set a rhythm, steady and measured, each stroke claiming her, filling her completely. The wet, slick sounds of their joining filled the small tent, a raw, unmistakable music.
He shifted, lifting her hips, driving deeper. The angle changed, and he hit that spot inside her again. She sobbed, a sound of pure, overwhelmed sensation. Her legs wrapped around his waist, pulling him deeper with each thrust. Her shyness was incinerated by the fire he’d stoked in her core. “More,” she begged, her voice breaking. “Please, Nick, more.”
He fucked her harder, faster. The furs beneath them were a mess. His thrusts became pounding, brutal, the bedframe slamming against the tent post. He was chasing his own release now, the cold detachment burned away by her incredible, clutching heat. She was moaning with each drive, her head thrashing side to side, her small breasts bouncing. He felt her inner muscles begin to clamp down on him in rhythmic spasms. She was coming, her orgasm ripping through her with a silent scream, her body convulsing beneath him.
The sight of her, the feel of her pulsing around him, broke his control. With a final, deep, grinding thrust, he emptied himself into her, a hot, sudden flood. He groaned, a raw, animal sound, as he spilled everything he had, his body shuddering
Chapter 147 (continued)
with the intensity of it. He collapsed beside her, his breath sawing in the cold air. The damp smell of sex and sweat and fur filled the space. For a long moment, there was only the sound of their ragged breathing.
Slowly, reality seeped back in. The camp outside, the frost, the war. The performance was over. The proof was inside her, a warm, leaking reminder. Svala lay still, staring at the hide ceiling, her body humming with unfamiliar echoes. A single tear escaped the corner of her eye and traced a path into her hairline. It wasn’t sadness, or pain. It was the shock of her own dissolution.
Nick turned his head on the furs to look at her. He didn’t speak. He waited.
“No one,” she began, her voice husked raw, “has ever… done that. The… mouth.”
“No one should have to be a requirement,” he replied, his own voice thick.
She finally turned to face him. In the gloom, her eyes were searching. “Was it… for them? Or was that last part for you?”
He held her gaze. “Both. The line disappeared.” He reached out and wiped the tear track with his thumb. Her skin was fever-warm. “I’m still a man. You’re not a ghost anymore, either.”
She absorbed that, her expression shifting from dazed vulnerability to a new, fragile awareness. She shifted slightly, wincing at the soreness between her legs. The physical evidence was a profound, unsettling fact. She was changed. She gingerly pulled a fur over them both. The shared warmth was sudden, intimate.
They didn’t sleep. They lay in silence, listening to the camp settle. A guard coughed. A dog whined. The intimate violence had forged a silent, mutual pact. They were accomplices now, bound by more than a blood-stained linen.