The Codex Lacrimae, Part 1: The Mariner's Daughter and Doomed Knight

Chapter 9: The Fenrir-Baude

Aurelius leaned an elbow on the armrest of the couch by the fireplace. The deep relaxation that came from being clean and at ease with new friends settled upon him.

With Clarinda behind her, Skade returned from the kitchen, bearing an enormous ceramic pitcher of honeymead. Fenris was in one of the lower halls, seeing to the needs of the wolf-pack, while the talking animals who usually traveled with Grimnir slept in front of the fire. Geri and Freki lay on their sides, breathing deeply in slumber, and Ratatosk (looking slightly ridiculous) lay flat on his back with legs akimbo like he'd just fallen from a tree limb.

Clarinda brought Aurelius a goblet and sat on the couch beside him. He murmured his thanks and surveyed the surroundings.

They'd retired after the meal to the fireplace in an enormous common room, whose high-arched oaken structure resembled an upside-down Viking longship. The room housed a great gaming table and an assortment of distractions, from backgammon and Gluckhaus, to chess and checkers, and Nine Man's Morris. Most of the furniture in the room was built for comfort while waiting out the never-ending winter outside.

Shortly after the group's arrival, Hela's Tempest hit as a blizzard and thundered upon the building with the sound of a thousand horses' hooves, but all inside remained safe and warm thanks to elvish woodwork and dwarvish stonecraft. From sculpted-walnut leather chairs to stone trestle tables thrusting outward from exposed granite, the Fenrir-Baude's soundness against the elements seemed more like a mountain fortress than the chalet resort in actuality it was.

The fires all blazed, and hundreds of oil lamps cast light on a variety of dwarves, elves, and humans who milled about the great house when they arrived. The vibrant and relaxed social setting was an unbelievable change from hours of flight in the wastelands, and when they had first arrived it had taken Aurelius and Clarinda completely by surprise.

A bard sang on the corner dais by the southern fireplace, his voice mournful as he chanted the Lay of Gudrun; the tale of when Gudrun learns that her brother, Gottarm, had slain her husband, Sigurd. In another part of the room, elves danced with each other to harp music played by two of their kinsfolk. Dwarves and men conversed and drank at the tables along the shuttered windows or gamed by the central fire pit. Aurelius even thought he saw a centaur in the boisterous crowd before Fenris guided them to one of the hallways that led off the main chamber.

They'd followed one of the many stairwells carved into the mountain into a vast cavern that held great bubbling pools of water fed by volcanic vents.

"Not quite your Norn Grottoes," Skade had said to Clarinda, coming from another entrance with a stack of carefully folded linen bath sheets, "but I think you'll find the waters here a great comfort after the kind of day we've had."

Skade placed the broad towels on a boulder whose flat, smooth surface made for a perfect table, and then began to take off her soiled garments.

Aurelius coughed in embarrassment and turned away, saying that he'd be heading off to a more remote part of the cavern for privacy. He didn't wait to hear Skade's response because by the time he realized she was going to strip in front of everyone, she already had most of her clothes off. Nor was he going to wait to see if Clarinda would follow the other woman's example.

It wasn't that the Hospitaller was excessively modest—they all needed to take baths, and he'd been in enough public ones in Sicily to have seen naked bodies before—but there was no place for romantic relationships in his vocation as a scholar and priest. If he wished to be a clergy member—and he did—he had to take vows of chastity, poverty, and devotion to God. Within a very short time, however, he'd now met two women who'd confounded all his expectations of the female gender, and his emotions confused him. Skade was a passionate, elemental force who, like a passing storm, seemed unconcerned with anything except following the path of her nature. Aurelius had never seen anyone fight as she'd done against the Wilde Jagd, as sensuous in battle as she was disrobing in the steamy cavern of the hot mineral springs.