She looked up at him. “What is that place? It looks like a crack that goes all the way to Hel.”
“I have heard that said,” said Solvi. “I have also heard that it delves into Svartheim, where the dwarves hammer out their magical weapons.”
“It is too beautiful to go into Hel,” said Svanhild. Their ship’s path had come closer, by luck, or some god’s hand. “Can we not go closer still?”
“This is not a pleasure cruise,” said Solvi, irritated.
“No,” said Svanhild. “It is my last freedom, for a time at least. Unless you do not go to Yrjar, and instead take me with you on your raiding.”
Solvi shook his head. “That cannot be.”
“Will you take me into that gorge? If you would shame me by getting rid of me, I will never pass by here again.” She sighed and peered into the depths of the ravine. No, of course, she could not expect this of him. She was only glad that he had not beaten her and forced her to remain in the tent. She would have to do more than simply ask him for favors, if she wanted him to truly be her husband.
He looked at her a moment longer before giving the command to turn the ship. It steered straight for the gorge. As they drew closer, it seemed the rent in the cliff might swallow them up. The gorge was wider at the base than she had thought, deep and dark. It would admit a ship at least partway in.
“This would be a rare place for an ambush,” she said to Solvi, who was by her side again.
He did not speak, but made hand gestures that his men obeyed. One of them leapt out onto the shore and tied a rope around a tree that grew almost horizontally out from the cliff.
A narrow landing of rock led into the gorge’s depths. Svanhild did not know what she would do inside it. Perhaps she had been guided here by the hand of a god or spirit. Solvi followed her in. She turned and looked at him over her shoulder.
“I could leave you in here,” he said, “and claim the dwarves got you. You would make one of them a good wife.”
Svanhild only smiled up at him, keeping her thoughts about his own short stature to herself. She walked slowly, allowing her eyes to adjust to the dark. The base of the falls here was lost in darkness, and only a narrow strip of light showed at the entrance they had come through. She stopped and let Solvi bump into her, his chest against her back. She had felt him like this when she had ridden with him at the ting, when his body and his warmth had called an answering warmth in her. The dark freed her, somehow, of her last constraints.
“Have me,” she said. “Be my husband, once at least.”
“Why this change?” he asked. The waterfall, hidden in darkness, was not far away. It made her face wet and cool, and only made him feel all the warmer against her. “Why did you punish me so much, Svanhild?”
She had a sharp retort at the ready. She had not punished him that much—he had tried to kill Ragnvald, after all, and he might be a king’s son, but he was no prize in more than a few ways. She turned to face him and pulled his face to hers. She kept silent until her lips were almost touching his.
“We punished each other, I think,” she said. Her hands shook. She put them against his waist, pulling up the edge of his tunic. He did not stop her. When her cold hands found the warm skin of his stomach, he flinched, but still did not pull away.
“Show me, please,” she said, her voice shaking. She did not know what to do, how to touch him. As when she had negotiated for Solvi to leave the merchant Solmund his goods, if she stopped for even a moment, she would falter. Here, her performance was for Solvi alone, and he was a far harsher judge than his men had been.
“Careful,” he said. “We will end up in the water.” He pressed her back until she was against the cold stone wall. “You would rather this than a bed?” he asked, sounding both amused and resigned.
“This is the bed we have now,” she said.
He kissed her for real now, opening her mouth with his tongue. She tried not to think, only to feel, to yield.
“Help me,” she said. He must take the lead at some point, he must.
“You’re doing well enough,” he murmured against her neck.
“Now you are punishing me,” she said teasingly. Her hands found his waist again. She pressed where he was hardening for her. He still wanted her, at least.
He took pity on her hesitancy then, and pulled up her dress. He pressed her up against the cliff wall where she could half support herself on an outcropping. When he pushed his fingers into her, it hurt again as it had at the wedding, but she bit her lip against any outcry. He did not seem to care this time whether she liked it or not. She thought she could detect some undercurrent of anger in his movements when he went into her, or perhaps that was what it was usually like, sharp and brutal.
There was some pleasure in it, though, after he pressed into her, and she felt his breath on her cheek, the beat of his heart in his chest, the pleasure as frightening as her own boldness. She wanted to push him away again, and off her, away from this closeness, but she had been down that road before, and there was no freedom there either, only another kind of lonely bondage.
He did not hold her afterward, only whispered into her hair, “Well, Svanhild, you have gotten what you said you wanted. How do you like it?”
“No,” she said. She wanted to say something coquettish, like, I have only gotten it once. Or something true like, I heard it would get better, and I hope it does. But here was another truth: “I am only learning what I want,” she said, after a moment. “Do you still want to send me back?”
“You have not changed my mind,” he said. “It takes more than a willing cunt for that.”
The words fell like a slap. Svanhild nodded in the dark, tears in her eyes, her voice failing her. She wiped her face. He would not see those tears. She had triumphed, in this way, as thin as the victory was. She could do this again, and perhaps Vigdis was right, it would get better. She had taken pleasure in parts of his touch. There might be more she could find.
25
“Death does not want you, Ragnvald Half-Drowned,” said a woman. She pressed a hand to his forehead. Ronhild, Harald’s mother, her voice as cool as her fingers.
It took Ragnvald a moment to realize that his hand no longer burned, and his chest clutched with fear. Someone had taken it; Ronhild had taken his hand with her magic. He would live out his days a useless cripple.
Then he wiggled his fingers and found that it was still whole, and pained him when he moved it. He drew it out from under the covers. It was bandaged.