The Enchantment by Betina Krahn Page B

at them from the doorway. “She once brought a warrior across our threshold, took him to her furs, and her child was born without breath.”
    â€œBut Aaren is a woman,” Marta insisted. “Like us.”
    â€œ
Not
like us.” A graying, fine-featured woman with an air of authority stepped forward, running a wary eye over Aaren’s breastplate, male leggings, and wristbands. “She dresses like a warrior and wields a blade like a warrior.”
    â€œBecause I am a warrior,” Aaren insisted irritably, finding herself caught in an unexpected quandary. She was indeed a warrior, and the shape of her and her sisters’ lives among Borger’s people depended on the honor she could earn as one. But now, as a warrior, she could not stay in the women’s house with her sisters. The anxiety in Miri’s and Marta’s faces pierced her to the core. “But because I am a warrior-maiden, I have the right to sleep by my sisters in the house of women.”
    â€œThere are warriors and there are women,” the leader proclaimed their common sentiment. “You must be one or the other.”
    â€œWho are you to declare what I must be?” Aaren advanced on the woman, who drew back a pace before finding her resolve and lifting her chin.
    â€œI am Helga . . . once-wife to Jarl Borger . . . still keeper of his storehouse.” Her work-roughened hand slid to the ring of keys that dangled at her waist, the symbol of her authority and of her right to speak.
    â€œI am not a gleaning from Borger’s fields, or a barrel of ale to come under your hand!” Tension grew as thick as peat-smoke between them.
    â€œThere’s Jorund!” one of the women behind Helga exclaimed, pointing across the clearing. “Ask him, he’ll know.”
    The women called and waved, and when Aaren turned to see who they summoned, she found herself facing the huge flaxen-haired warrior she had seen the night before. She watched his smooth, rolling gait and the easy carriage of his massive shoulders as he approached, and felt an odd prickle up the back of her neck. Him? They called him to settle their dispute?
    â€œWhat say you, Jorund . . . judge between us fairly,” Helga said as he settled back on one leg to scrutinize the gathering. “You know we do not allow a warrior under our roof. Now this one comes.” She gestured curtly to Aaren and took a step back toward the other women. “What say you? Is this a woman or a warrior?”
    Aaren watched his wide, sensual mouth slide into a knowing smile as he turned his gaze on her. “A
woman
or a
warrior,
” he mused, in tones as clear as a mountain stream . . . and just as liquid and engulfing. “Hmmm . . . let me see . . .”
    Aaren bristled as he leaned first one way, then another, viewing her critically from more than one perspective. Then he stalked slowly around her to view her rear and she wheeled to keep him in her sight.
    â€œWhat right has he to pass judgment on me?” she demanded, slinging a hot glance over her shoulder at the women, then spearing him with a similar one. The women’s only response was a nervous tittering. He deigned not to answer, either. Instead, he edged closer, as if testing her with his presence.
    If she didn’t move away, it would seem she was submitting to his judgment; if she withdrew, it would seem she was retreating from his intense scrutiny. Nothing in her battle training or her limited social experience had prepared her for so personal and disturbing a confrontation.
    She felt his eyes wander over her shoulders, breasts, and waist . . . felt them pause speculatively upon her hips. Certain that his hands would soon follow, she braced and made fists, ready to knock him flat if he so much as laid a finger on her.
    â€œLooks like a woman,” he murmured, circling her like a forest cat on the prowl. He lowered his face to her shoulder and moved it up her neck and