AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Chapter 2
Shan
Goldenfieldsofbarleyflanked me on both sides, a worn down dirt path running between the rows. The sunset was a gorgeous gold that matched, bright orb disappearing behind the mountains we lived in the shadow of. My quaint longhouse was up ahead, timber still fresh and smelling of the forest it came from. A piece of the dried grass roof was flapping in the gentle breeze, informing me I had something to fix. Sigrid would try to do it herself if she came outside to see our home falling apart.
Or she was already doing it.
I broke into a jog when I realized my wife was placing a wobbling stool beside our front door, one foot braced to step up. “Sigrid!” I yelled. “Stop that immediately.”
She looked over her shoulder and rolled her eyes. Golden brown hair fluttered freely around her shoulders, her skirt blowing around in the same chaotic pattern. Today she wore her leather belt resting above the bulge of her stomach, swollen with our first child. Near the end of her pregnancy, she shouldn’t even be picking up the stool, let alone standing on it in the wind to repair a roof.
“The roof needs to be fixed,” she said, but she relaxed her posture and stepped away from the stool.
I was panting by the time I came to a stop between her and the longhouse. “For the love of Odin, woman, I’ll fix it. The grass only came loose today, and I’ve been out tending the fields since the morn.”
“The winds are picking up. Might be a storm coming.”
Her gaze focused on a spot on the horizon, and I looked too. Despite the gorgeous sunset on one side, the direction I’d come from had dark and roiling storm clouds. “I’ll reattach it right now. You and our babe need to stay inside. Now, my love.”
She didn’t react to the authority in my tone other than a slight quirk of her lips. Hands resting on her stomach, she leaned in to connect us in a soft kiss. The sweet scent of vanilla swirled around me, her lips a cushion against mine. I leaned into her, swiping my tongue along her lips until she allowed me entrance to taste her. Since becoming pregnant with our child, the other note of her scent had been lighter. The brewed coffee notes.
Wait, no. Coffee?
I had no idea where that descriptor had come from. I’d always described it as a bittersweet, nutty scent, nothing I could put a name to.
Hands brushing against her belly, I stepped back from the kiss. Her smile was sly as she glanced down at my crotch, where my cock had taken notice. “Fix it quickly, Aric. I’d like to have you tonight, making me scream while the wind is howling outside the walls of our new home.”
Her explicit comments were the reason we’d no longer been able to stay within the walls of my family home. As much as they loved her, my parents didn’t enjoy crass language. And of course, we would need the space of our own home when the baby came. My parents were too old to be pleased at having a screeching babe keeping them awake at all hours. “It’ll only take a few minutes. Please go lay down and rest for once in your life, my love.”
Sigrid smirked, but waddled into the longhouse. How she’d been planning on maintaining her center of gravity on the stool with that belly, I hadn’t a clue. Likely, I would have come home to find my wife lying on the ground. She was used to being crafty and resourceful. Didn’t enjoy having to be careful. She was more excited than I was for the baby to be here, so she was able to return to normal activities, and I was the happiest husband on this side of the sea.
Moving the stool to the side, I went around the back of the house and got our ladder. My father had crafted it for us as a gift to celebrate the longhouse, or so I didn’t have to continue borrowing his. The wooden steps were barely high enough to get me to the roof, but did the job. Reattaching the frayed piece of woven grass, the world went grey like I was passing out, but I didn’t feel myself falling.
I felt nothing.
The grey shifted in tone to orange, a heavy ochre pressing against my eyelids. My eyes were closed? I didn’t remember closing them. Snapping them open again, the world erupted into colour and sound.
Flames licked at the edges of a nearby longhouse while the one beside it was engulfed. The sky was orange and grey, dark with night, and the smoke sat heavy in my lungs, every breath burning. Screams pierced the air and a person came tumbling through the door of one home, scratched and burned. They reached out for me, begging for help as I blinked at the suddenness of the scenery. Before my brain caught up, they fell face first, nearly on top of me, with an arrow sticking out of their back.
Where was Sigrid?
Sigrid. She consumed my mind and though I didn’t know how I’d gotten here, I had to get to her. This was our village. Our home. And we were under attack.
Head swivelling, I didn’t recognize any of my surroundings in this state. I’d seen these homes hundreds of times before, knew who lived in each one and where their parents lived, too. But everything was different under the orange glow and the chaos. “Aric!”
I whipped toward the sound. She’d called for me, so faint beneath the crackling of flames and trampling feet. Why hadn’t I been with her in the middle of the night? I ran toward the sound, darting around fires and felled bodies. Most were people I’d known since childhood. A few were outsiders, vikings from another village come to raid us. More than a raid. They wanted to decimate us.
Through the smoke, I saw a lithe form, tailed by one tiny one. Sigrid. And our children, Alvis and Astra. Somehow I remembered their names and knew they were still toddling even though last I’d seen my wife, she’d been pregnant with our first.
Pushing past the pain of every breath, I finally got close enough to see them in the haze. Alvis and Astra were both crying, tears and snot dripping down their faces. Sigrid held Alvis in the crook of her arm, Astra’s hand clutched tightly in hers. But they weren’t the only people standing outside our longhouse. Two men in ash-covered wool tunics and animal furs stood beside them, hands on my wife’s arm.
A fallen axe caught my eye, and I paused in my sprint to pick it up off the body of a neighbour. I wasn’t skilled in using weapons. All I did was tend crops. My rage would have to make up for the lack of skill.
Unfortunately, I didn’t get close enough to use my axe.
My gaze caught on Sigrid the second a searing pain ripped through my upper back. Footsteps fumbling, I tried to continue on, but the pain didn’t end at my upper back. More bloomed in my lower back, then on the other side. I fell forward, not taking my eyes off her. She looked horrified, tear streaks running down her face. That’s how I knew it was bad. My wife never cried.
There were so many things I wanted to say to her, to our children, but the ground rushed up to meet me. I didn’t feel the impact before my soul fled my broken body, moving on to the next life.
