The Blood Princess

Chapter Three

Chapter Three

I cannot sleep and usually I’m a log. I’ve happily dozed through fires in our village and storms on our longboats. I’ve even partially slept through goblin attacks. Danger at dawn has never given me troubled nights before. But this is different. This is a real adventure, just for me. One that seems destined to end in my certain death, even if I manage to triumph in my quest. I shall just have to cross that bridge when I come to it. After all, every good saga has some extraordinary, even magical, resolution.

It’s not that death scares me. Tomorrow I will take up the sword after years of being forbidden to. Fighting is a big thing for my people. To gain honor on the battlefield and be slain there means a certain place in either Asgard or Fόlkvangr. I would dearly love to join my grandfather Sørgen Knotbeard at the feasting tables of Valhöll, I miss him too much. But as with any maiden who ever wields an axe in anger, I am sworn to the Goddess Freyja, not Odin, so it is to Fόlkvangr and its great hall of Sessrúmnir that I must go—if only I can manage to die fighting.

The alternative does not bear thinking about: to die of disease or, the Allfather forbid, of old age—and an eternity spent in Hel. This is the fate my father had condemned me to by barring me from taking up the sword. Hel means only darkness and boredom, and certainly none of the carnal thrills promised by Asgard or Fόlkvangr. And it is thoughts of such things that has kept me awake this night: vivid, lurid visions of kissing and touching and f*****g.

I want to know pleasures of the flesh and why shouldn’t I? It is all everyone seems to think and talk about around the feasting tables. The air can be so full of it I am almost suffocated. I know something of ecstasy but nothing of sharing it with another, of having someone give it to you. I cannot go without it. I cannot lead a life of dull subjugation followed by an eternity of gloom and chastity. This is not the destiny of any granddaughter of Sørgen Knotbeard. I was born to fight and to f**k, in this life and in the next.

My mind keeps reaching back to Jaromir. How to make him want to keep me alive when no blood appears on the bedsheets that first time. How to be more to him than someone simply to bend over. How to tame the beast. I imagine mounting him, of taking the pleasure I want whilst keeping him in thrall. If only I knew some of the tricks of the concubine! It is hard not to think of that thick prick inside me. Is it possible that it can sprout hairs like they say? What if he sprouts a wolf’s snout and fangs whilst he is inside me—what of me then? See what you have done to me, father, in banning me from knowing lust? You have turned my mind wild!

Yet it is not me making the whimpers of passion now coming through the darkness. I recognize the noise from those I make myself on nights like these: it sounds like someone yearning to be taken. It comes from the next chamber to mine, where Runa sleeps—a curtain taking the place of a door to allow for the quick thwarting of goblin attacks. She must hear me sometimes, especially when I have the pestle to hand, but this is the first time I have ever heard her.

Curiosity defeats me and I am up, picking uncertainly through the gloom to get to that curtain. I don’t even know why I want to spy. Perhaps because it is thrilling to know you dominate someone else’s rudest thoughts. I am cruel to her, I know it. I order her to wash me sometimes. I give her I-must-have-you looks that I know will burn her insides. It could be that I want to stoke her fire of obsession, because it is flattering. Or it could be that spiteful me just wants someone else to feel the un-scratchable itch I feel; to know the agony of being deprived those joys of physical contact I crave.

I move the curtain just enough to peek through. She is lit by the lamp burning on the table. Light means her never having to stumble through night’s blackness to come to my aid. Fitful sleep is just one of the sacrifices she makes in being my bonds-maid—but as I said, whilst I live, so does she. Her eyes are closed, more so it seems in rapture than in sleep. Her mouth is open and wet. I can see the glisten there. The furs are already cast aside. She is writhing, her hips and little behind grinding into the straw-filled mattress. She looks somehow possessed, and I know every inch of her wanting.

Then her hands are on her thighs and dragging up her robe to expose bareness beneath. My heart is already beating too hard. Any more and the thud might wake her. The robe is pulled higher and I can see the little curls of hair, the puff of her lips. I can almost feel their throb in my own. I am smiling. It is wonderful to know you can bring someone else to this, to cause their minds such distraction. Then movement comes from away in the gloom and I almost jump out of my skin.

How my shock wasn’t audible I do not know, but Runa does not stir, nor does the man stop his emergence from the shadows into the glow of the torchlight. Fear, anger, jealousy freeze me, and all I do is stare. He is bare and erect—a fourth to add to my list. I do not know him. He could be one of the warrior tribesmen here, if the sheer size of his body and the crude inking upon it is anything to go by. He could be one of the few tradesmen who come this way. Either way, Runa is always by my side, so any connection she has made with this man must have been done with a just a few telling glances.

She parts her legs and I see the hunger for her light his eyes. He comes forward, almost bursting with desire for her. And why not? She has the customary short-cropped hair of a thrall, a sign of her servitude, and her nails are too often grubby, but her lips are luscious and her body lithe and full of fire. He kneels onto the bed, moving up her, raising her robe further to bare little breasts yearning for the warmth of his mouth. With eyes still closed, she arches her back to meet him.

I feel almost betrayed. I’m sure she aches only for girls—for me. It is written all over her, branded into her soul. How can she think this brute man anything like a substitute? Her axe is propped against the bedhead, easily accessible. I could strike him down, claim I thought him an intruder come to ravish her. In truth I could chop them both to bits—for Runa to allow herself to be distracted from keeping me safe is punishable by death. But all I can do is watch. I am gripped. Not just because all carnal acts thrill me, but because of the gentleness of him.

When their mouths meet it is not the lurid feasting our warriors share with the wenches when the ale is flowing. There is none of the vulgar pawing and grasping. Our warriors are simply forbidden from showing any kind of gentleness of character, of anything but raw, impenetrable masculinity. Yet he strokes her bare surface with tender affection. His hands test the softness of her breasts but without cruelty. The fingers pinch the hard tips but not enough to see her cry out in pain, only enough to have her gasp and writhe. I have to pinch at my own to know the exquisite burn there.

Despite the strain in his prick he wants to kiss and taste every bit of her. My wonderment almost outstrips my jealousy. He gorges down there until his beard glistens with her pleasure, but it is certain her kunta will take more of him than just his tongue. My heart is racing now. How can he show such teasing patience? I almost shout at him to flip her over and sink in as deeply as I have witnessed Jaromir and my own brother do before.

But he doesn’t put her on her front. When he enters her it is from above, their lips locked; a gentle slide rather than a ramming thrust. I’ve never seen it done like this. I’ve seen warriors behind women of the villages we have sacked. I have seen princes squashed to the rumps of concubines. I have spied on my mad stepmother, bare arse stuck right out as she demands to be filled by a king’s c**k. I have overheard the drunken warriors say to wenches, time and time again, “I’ll bend you over, girl, any more teasing from you!” I thought this is how it was always done. I hardly dare imagine it any other way to avoid disappointment.

This is the first time I have known the act not as urgent and bestial but tender and loving. It is no less thrilling for it—more so, perhaps. Imagine if Jaromir could be taught this. A beast when you need it and then a gentle lover all the rest of the time. Then Runa wraps her legs around her man and that’s when my envy almost has me collapsing. How can two people who have surely never spoken forge such a closeness? Does she do this every night, and I am too fast asleep to notice?

Even now, though, she will not open her eyes. I am almost screaming at her to do so, to drink in every detail of this man who ruts her with such skill and patience and tenderness. When their lips are not locked her mouth comes open, her breaths coming deep and hard, rasping in her throat. And then the realization strikes me: she is not awake! She never has been during his visit! It can mean only one thing. This warrior who is sunk so deep inside her is not a man at all but a night mara, a sleep-demon!

It explains it all, of course. Some say they only have to look at you once to possess your mind. They make you dream of them and they come to you. There is no separating your dream from reality and no defense against them. They kiss you not out of love but to suck the Önd—the life-force—from your body. It is what feeds them and eventually what finishes you. For all the rapture Runa now shows and feels, she is under attack.

Yet still I am not rushing for the axe. I know the Roman god she believes in strictly forbids any coupling outside of marriage, but I am too entranced to save her. My mind instead demands each tiny detail be seared into it: each stroke of hand or c**k; the noise of them making love; the smell of their f**k. It will enrich my fantasies so much. I am banned this thrill and this is the closest I can get to it. I know I might be sacrificing the one person who would and has seen me live above all others, but I simply cannot make myself move to free her of this demon.

Instead I watch in awe, buzzing from head to toe, as he f***s and kisses and sucks her until she is spent. Her cheeks and chest bloom with her rapture and I take comfort knowing that I spared her from never knowing this. He slips his muscle from her and then without a backward glance disappears into the shadows. For my part I slip back into my bed. To the sound of her fitful, rasping breaths, my mind goes to work picturing my future husband doing every last thing to me that I have just witnessed.

It is a revelation, of course, a watershed. Fighting and dying is now not going to be enough for my hungry soul. I need to fight hard enough to live long enough to feel for real what Runa will wake thinking was just an extraordinary dream. I will have to win Jaromir and enchant him enough to save myself and see him throw his weight behind saving my family. Enough to turn the ripping beast into the tenderest, most passionate lover anywhere. If ever a quest deserved to become the subject of a famous saga, it is surely this one!