Nena by Ann Boelter (digital book reader txt) 📕

He took it, then chuckled when he had finished drinking the rest of it.

“What could you possibly find amusing?” she asked.

“I was just considering the irony of my being chained to a pole as your prisoner, much as you were mine.”

“It is not at all the same. Both cases were brought about by your own actions. I did not capture you and bring you here.”

“No, you did not,” he agreed. “I came of my own free will, but make no mistake, you have captured me in other ways, and that makes it no less your fault.”

She wondered how much of the exchange Gentok could overhear. The walls were thick with a solid wood cage frame underneath. The clay and grass plaster mixture between the bars should muffle most sounds, but the door was only made of thin slat wood.

She held up her finger to her lips and nodded toward the door, but Jarl shook his head. “Let him hear. Let them all hear, and know why I’ve come. If I have my way, they will all know soon enough.” He paused. “You could release me, you know.”

“I think not.” Nena shook her head.

“I won’t go anywhere. It’s not like when I held you prisoner. I chose to be here.”

“Except that now you know you will probably die.”

“Do you think I did not know that before I came? I’m actually more than a little surprised to still be alive now,” Jarl admitted.

“Then why are you here?” she whispered.

She seemed confused and more than a little miserable, or was that just his wishful thinking? Jarl couldn’t be sure. “You know why,” he said softly.

The intensity in his eyes trapped and held hers. She could not tear her gaze away. Her heart skipped a beat and then began to thump wildly in her chest.

“Or perhaps you don’t, so I will speak plainly, to ensure there is no further misunderstanding between us. I came because I am in love with you. I think probably from the first moment I saw you holding that oversized sword against Tryggr and the other men, but confirmed when you chose me—and further cemented every time we lay together from that point on. Because you fill my thoughts every waking moment, and the thought of life without you is not a life I care to live. I love you.”

Nena could not hear these things from his lips. It had been one thing to wonder about them, when he was camped far below, to make herself feel better about her own feelings and doubts, but not for them to be so real that he would sacrifice himself for her. She was desperate to change the subject. “The Teclan do not have this word,” was all she could come up with.

“Surely the Teclan have a word for love.”

She shook her head.

“If a Teclan woman does not always marry the man of her first choosing, or if she does and he dies, how does she choose her next husband? How does she choose one over another when it is not the gods’ choice? Does she not base that decision on love or strong feelings?” Jarl asked.

Nena knew that should be an easy question for her; she had faced it so many times lately. But if the answer was simple, then why had choosing been so difficult? She shared none of this with Jarl and instead said, “She looks at many things and chooses a man who can best provide for her—one who is a good hunter or who is a great warrior and will return to her from battle. Or sometimes she chooses one who has status and will elevate the status of her children.”

“I am all of those things,” he whispered, his voice intense. “I have jewels and gold and I am the leader of my people. I am a great hunter, and I have returned from many, many battles. I will match myself against any Teclan warrior, right now, to show you.”

“You are not Teclan.”

“Neither were the men competing for you in the tournament on the plains.”

“But they were Dor.”

“In what way am I different? You gave me the criteria a Teclan woman would use to choose a man, and I meet all of them—and have offered to prove it to you.”

“You are in no condition to fight. Let me look at your wounds. ” Nena changed the subject again. Jarl surprised her by not declining, and she moved around to kneel behind him. He tipped his head forward as she parted his thick chestnut hair with her fingers to reveal the three swollen gashes. She took off her sash and shook the last drops of water on it from the waterskin, then began to clean away the dried blood, thankful for something other than his words to focus her spinning thoughts on.

Jarl held very still, reveling in her nearness. Her touch on the areas where he’d been clubbed was painful, but her being so close to him and not touching him anywhere else was excruciating. “You say you do not have a word for love, but when a warrior is killed, what does his wife do? Or if a wife dies, how does a Teclan man react?” Jarl asked.

“You speak of the spirit sickness.”

Jarl smiled. “I suppose many would agree that love is an affliction. Tryggr certainly would. Has it never happened that a Teclan felt the spirit sickness so strongly they could not go on living?”

Nena knew he had worked her into this trap much as she had done Baldor in the council tent. “No one dies from spirit sickness. It’s not a true illness.” Even as she said it, she wondered if it were true. Lornel had refused to eat or drink when her husband was killed and soon joined him in the sky. And Pragdor, a great warrior, had allowed himself to be slain in battle, by a far lesser foe, after his wife died in childbirth. No one spoke of