Chapter 5

All that evening Elessa was still jumpier than a housecat in a room full of hunting dogs. Her eyes looked very puffy and she couldn't seem to keep her hands or fingers still. I got up to have a good stretch and went outside to relieve myself for the evening and give a last security check before darkness to all of our wards and protections. Something felt fairly 'wrong' in the growing dusk somewhere. Not Orkneas, I didn't think ... there was no hint of pink anywhere in the darkness and this just felt different. I felt that someone or something bad was out there not too far away...

"When you're certain you're safe, you're probably not!" I reminded myself and taking some branches I gave our outside cave area the very best snow scrubbing I could manage to try remove all of our tracks. The small warming fire inside would also have to go out and the both the last of the goat for tomorrows' breakfast and our latrine area would need to be buried deeply into the snow to hide their scent. Elessa didn't have the only keen nose. We would be cold tonight and would need to be extra alert and quiet.

These tasks done, I warned her that we might have "company tonight". This seemed to derail her nervousness and emotional discomfort as we both sat in the cold quietly all night long never making a sound. Our weapons constantly remained in hand ready to fight for our lives at a moments notice. Once around midnight I thought I heard growling and scratching sounds a bit off in the distance, near but not immediately close to our well hidden cave entrance. The moment passed and eventually we cheered ourselves to the sight of the rosy start of dawn.

Some unwanted company had indeed passed us by quite closely in the night. There were many Eotenas monster tracks, probably a hunting band from the looks of it and even a cursory examination revealed that there were at least 10 of them. Probably Eorfleod (Boar-Men) from the look of their ill-shod leather boot marks clearly apparent in the snow. They had passed by our little hillside and cave entrance within but a stone's throw during the night. They appeared to have paused near here, finding some signs of my fresh woodcutting of the previous day but discovered no scent or trail to our refuge. At length they had passed on, but unfortunately seemed to be heading in the general direction we would both be probably heading today. Their tracks seemed to head down hill in a path to take them (and later us) out of the foothills back towards the river.

I gave our surroundings another extra special cleanup in case they returned. The Boar-Men were much like and nearly the size of men, in that they were bipedal but had the appearance of beasts preferring to do their hunting at night. I don't know what courtesies they had with the Orkneas and the other demons of the supernatural but I think the pink left them alone. Certainly at night they didn't seem to fear the same things that men did. Given an excuse, they'd kill us just as happily by daylight if they could find us. They had a good sense of smell perhaps better than that of most men but not on a par that of a trained hunting dog. Their ability to smell was maybe on a par with Elessa's own talent. Their rather piggy eyes were a different matter and to my experience they seemed a bit near sighted. They also tended to be rather unimaginative pack hunters and did not possess either the ability or the inclination to carefully scout their surroundings or to set elaborate traps or ambushes.

I was almost relieved and on the whole I considered Boar-Men in general to be a very minor threat. They were irrational and insanely aggressive creatures that did possess great physical strength but they did not make good warriors. They didn't have much in intellect and their crafting skills were severely lacking. Of the arts of metalworking they knew nothing, and their arms and armor were of the lowest grade possible.

Still, they were a threat best avoided. It was another complication we just didn't need right now. I made sure our latrine area was well covered with fresh snow and the remainder of the goat carcass that didn't shortly become breakfast received a deep snow burial. I went to give her the bad news. We need to spend another day hidden at minimum without a fire or hot meals.

Elessa took the news well with a resigned shrug and began to peel off her clothes for the days sleep. I was watching her in the very dim fireless light and was about to do the same. After she had become completely nude she then stood in front of me very nervously, clearly attempting to prepare her thoughts for something apparently extremely important she had to say to me.

In the dim light, I did notice one interesting detail. She had completely shaved her public region and her once very shaggy bush was now entirely hairless and smooth. That must have not been easy or fun for her to do sitting in the cold snow with just a sharp dagger to work with. I certainly would have never considered doing the same to myself under these conditions.

She took a last deep breath and knelt down in front of me holding up and offering to me a small cloth wrapped bundle. I accepted it from her in obvious confusion. At first it thought it was her small bundle of silver shavings I had seen earlier but these were shavings of an entirely different sort. She had presented me a formal gifted package, complete with a small bit of ribbon for a bow of all of her shaved pubic hairs!

"You have accepted my most intimate gift." She said rather formally, as if reciting from a story or epic poem of old. "By accepting all that hides me, physically and within my soul, I can now become yours and cannot possess nor keep any secrets from you. All that you behold of mine becomes yours. In acceptance, all of myself that was mine alone, also becomes yours; my body, my heart and my soul. In acceptance, I shall obey you and submit in all matters. I offer myself also to you as your fripwebba - your "Peace-Weaver". My hearth, fire, food and salt become yours and I will pour your mead at your feasting table and become your Ring-Giver. Your enemies shall become my enemies and your people shall become my people. Your deepest wishes and desires shall become mine to uphold, this life and forever afterwards. Lastly, let our threads of fate woven inseparably together from now until the final weaving is done and the last thread, ours, is cut for the last time in this world to be rejoined once again together in the next. Do you accept this Doom and my Oath, thusly swearing ourselves bound and irrevocably intertwined together until the last star has fallen from the sky and the final days of the Weaving are done forever?"

She trembled on her knees, her eyes in tears looking at me in combined terror and hope.

I was frightened; utterly to the depth of my soul. I know little of the ways of the Gods and of the three Goddesses that spin, weave and shear our fates into the Ymbwyrcan — the Great Tapestry of Life. Little did I know also of fearsome and powerful Oaths such as this one, but I could feel its might power. Elessa had said she had previously foolishly uttered an especially powerful one, backed by the power of the Gods and in fact she knew of only one Oath that was greater still. This was undoubtedly the one.

It was certainly the most terrible Oath that I could even imagine in the wildest bounds of fantasy. There was absolutely no circumstance I could possibly contemplate where I would ever have uttered an Oath-Binding such as this one.

By accepting it, she would become eternally bound to me by every means possible. It would mean utter abject slavery not only in this life but in all of the next ones to come. Her previous Oath, to kill me, would indeed be rendered null and void but she instead would now be required to willingly serve me as either my devoted lover or helpless slave. I could kill her at my feet now and she wouldn't even blink or lift a finger in self-defense.

If I refused her Oath, what would happen?

As she had hinted, this was old and very powerful magic. If I rejected her submission, would she then have to take her own life, or would we be now bound irrevocably to kill each other? Would that curse of killing also continue throughout all of time in every future weaving of the great tapestry of life? I could easily envision this - two cursed would-be lovers trapped in an endless cycle of death and destruction until the end of time. The most horrible sagas ever told by the Word-Weavers in the greatest feasting halls couldn't hold a candle to the potential terribleness of this particular tragedy.

After a seemingly endless length of time, I opened my eyes to make that absolutely impossible decision that would bind us until the end of our days. She was quaking on her knees, shaking uncontrollably. As our eyes met I heard her whisper wordlessly, "Please..."

I let my heart make the final choice. It was also the only decision that I thought I could possibly live in honor with. For good or for ill, for now and for all of those eternal tomorrows, my decision was made.

"I accept your gift of your hair, your heart and your soul. Now and forever more. We shall have peace between us, and I hope in time we shall enjoy the softer bounds of love. You shall be mine and I shall keep you for the remainder of our days and shall never deny you my hearth, its warming fire, the food from my table, or its salt blessing, or even the warmth of my bed. I would not have you call me Master but would that you first become and remain my friend in our long companionship. If the time comes that you would prefer to call me your Ceorl, your Husband, and accept my Consort-Oath I would be most proud of that title and would hold it and you dearest in my heart as my accepted Gefera-Wife. I accept this Doom as I accept that the threads of our souls shall now become intertwined together and our fates, good or ill, forever shared. May our Thread-Fate in doing the Goddesses' bidding be pleasant to their eyes and might we with each new reunion in each new weaving of the Tapestry of Life enjoy of even greater happiness. I thus do I pray and accept your given Oath."

Why I said what I did I'm not entirely sure, nor was I sure the words came from just within me alone. Had my heart know exactly what words to say or were the Gods consecrating this Oath? For better or worse, our Thread-Fates were now as one. Elessa and I could never again be enemies but would instead be companions throughout all time.

I guess there are many worse things.

Elessa showered me with a thousand tears and kisses of joy. "I will not yet call you my Ceorl, for I shall take but one for life and it is not yet time. But your faithful lover I shall indeed be from this moment onwards." Before I knew it, my pants were down and my cock was deep in her mouth. There were certainly no complaints now about either its taste or its smell. It did not take me long at all to flood her eager and waiting mouth with my discharge and there seemed to be quite a lot of it.

"Was this part of the ritual Oath-Binding too?" I asked her.

"No. But, I've been wanting to do this for days now and the timing seemed very appropriate." She replied with a sticky smile. "Now, I want to properly enjoy what I was unable too the other night when I was not quite myself and share with you all of the lovemaking that I willingly offered to Wulfric and much more."

Indeed she did enjoy herself. We made far too much noise that night and I'm sure if any of the Eotenas, or any of the other thousand monsters of the desolate places had been even remotely close they would have heard the sounds of our lovemaking. After awhile, Elessa never even tried to restrain her cries of pleasure, and there were many. Elessa told me later she rarely achieved orgasm when performing vaginal sex but the Maiden Goddess was certainly with her tonight. Perhaps there would be some small rewards for mortgaging our souls until the very end of time. I was certain that we would undoubtedly be providing them now with some slight amusement.

For my own amusement and burning curiosity to know, since I now possessed a woman that could keep no secrets from me, I asked her why she had been crying earlier that afternoon outside in the snow. Had it been the pain of deciding to swear this dreadful Oath in order to absolve herself of her old one? She was solemn for a moment but did indeed confess her closest held secret.

"I am with already with your child now." She said simply, but deigned to explain the situation for me further. She had received the gift of a magical silver bowl with Ylfen runes from her own mother the day her cycles of womanhood began. When urinated into by a woman who was no longer a maiden, it would reveal if the woman was with child or not by a change of the water color. She continued to explain.

"While thinking you to be Wulfric that night, you did that which he could not. I am several days newly pregnant, the Bowl says so and I think I can already feel the first changes. It was not an unexpected surprise, I was nearly sure of the result even before I peed into the bowl. Within the bowl, my flow turned to red and I was named a mother-to-be. As all this is mine is now yours also, what fate shall you decree for this new life? Is it to be rejected or shall I continue to bear it for you? Upon its birth, will you cherish it and give our child your love as well? Technically, your part of the Oath does not bind you to do this and if you are un-accepting or unwilling I will understand and obey all of your instructions in this matter."

My answer was to hold her even tighter in my arms and I kissed her with all of the love and sincerity that I could muster. Then we made love again slowly and more quietly, "just to make sure". When I was done, I kissed her still-flat belly and pledged my love also to that which we had created, albeit quite accidentally, and fell asleep as the happiest of contented lovers in each other's arms.

The morning came much too soon. I really could have used more than a few hours of nap time during the night and we had some critical decisions to make soon, but that could wait while we did something a bit more enjoyable first. Tired or not, there are few things more arousing than the sight of a cuddled, affectionate and very naked woman in the morning. My thoughts immediately went towards having a morning "eye opener". While Elessa certainly didn't reject this thought, she voiced her own slight hints.