“What are you thinking? You are silent too long. I don’t like it, for your thoughts are dangerous even though you are but a woman and ungoverned.”
She shrugged. “Bad memories, nothing more.”
“Is that all?”
“Very well. I was remembering that first day in the warship when you put your foot on my neck and I bit your ankle. You yowled, I hurt you so badly. I saw my teeth marks there for two days.”
“Aye, you hurt me well enough,” Rorik said, remembering mainly the shock of her act. She’d been screaming at him that he was naught but a vicious animal, that she should have plunged her knife through his neck. Aye, she’d still had her fury and her strength to sustain her that first day out of Clontarf. To punish her, he’d pressed her face to the plank and held her down with his foot on her neck. She’d turned red with rage. The bite had hurt. He said only, “I can’t see that it would be a bad memory for you. That memory would make you laugh with pleasure. Thus, you are lying to me. Tell me the truth now, what were you thinking?”
“If you would know, I was also wondering if it really bothered you to whip me. I doubt it. Men are violent. They enjoy hurting those weaker than themselves. I was thinking of the times Einar whipped me. And now you did. Both of you said it was my fault.”
He grabbed her arm and jerked her to her feet. The tunic slid to the ground. He shook her. “Don’t compare me to your brother, ever again. You gave me no choice but to whip you and you know I stayed my strength. You know well enough that I could not allow my men to see me as bending to a woman’s wishes, particularly after I’ve been played the ass by the women since our return to Hawkfell Island. I am their lord and their leader and I cannot be seen to be weak or irresolute. I had no choice. Damn you, admit it!”
He’d done it again, given her an order. She stared up at him, fury banking in her eyes, and this time, he just shook his head at himself.
“Finish your mending.” He released her, leaned to pick up the tunic and threw it at her. He shoved her down onto the bed. She made no move to escape him.
Her hands were quiet in her lap. She stared up at him, and said, “Were you unfaithful to Inga?”
His face, deeply bronzed from the sun, paled at her words. His hands fisted at his sides. He raised his right arm, and she knew he wanted to strike her. She knew too that he would control himself. She didn’t know how she knew it, but she did. She had no doubts at all. He did. He turned on his heel and strode away from her. She called out, “I think you must have been, for you threatened to beat the women just because they don’t want their husbands to be unfaithful to them. What power do they have save ruining your meals? Were you my husband and you bedded another woman, I would kill you, not just give you belly pains from eating swill.”
He jerked, then strode from the sleeping chamber, never looking back.
Rorik drank deeply of the mead. His belly was full and now his mind was fast dulling with the drink. He heard his men laughing, bragging of their victory over the women, and, indeed, it was truly a victory, for the meal had been the best any of them had eaten in a very long time. The boar steaks had been broiled over the pit fire, wrapped in oiled tartar leaves. The herring and bass, both baked to tenderness, turning to tender flakes in the mouth, had made them groan with pleasure.
Rorik finished the mead in his cup. He leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes. The woman was chained in his sleeping chamber. He’d refused to have food sent to her. Let her suffer as he and his men had, damn her. She’d already eaten enough—given to her by those damnable treacherous women—to hold her steady for a good week.
She’d dared to demand if he’d been unfaithful to Inga. He’d wanted to kill her, at least to strike her at the sound of Inga’s name on her lips.
He heard someone approach, and slit open his right eye. It was Entti, and she was holding out a pitcher of mead. He allowed her to fill his cup again.
She was smiling at him, a very sweet smile that added warmth to the near vacant expression in her eyes. She was simple, this girl he’d captured on a raid the previous summer in the Rhineland, but kind. She harbored ill will toward no one. There was no malice in her. That she was a slave to a Viking seemed not to bother her at all. She seemed to enjoy the men who had bedded her here on Hawkfell Island. She’d not drawn away or screamed and pleaded. Even the women were kind to her despite the men’s lust for her. Their revenge had been against the men, not against Entti. Rorik thanked her. Her smile widened, showing dimples, and he realized that she wanted him to bed her. She was really quite pretty, with her thick rich brown hair and her brown eyes, but those eyes were too childlike for him to appreciate, too blank in their intent, for him to consider bedding her. She was tall and slender, full-breasted, really quite lovely, but still, he couldn’t bring himself to want her. It would be like taking advantage of a child even though she was a woman grown, all of eighteen, he was certain. Hafter had taken her first upon her capture. Rorik wondered if she’d been a virgin.
He said quietly, his voice low and gentle, “Nay, Entti, not tonight. I must attend our prisoner.”
Another female would have shown displeasure, but not Entti. She said, looking down at his empty plate, “The food is delicious. I am so glad.”
He laughed at that. “Aye, all of us are glad. Seek out your bed, Entti, you have labored enough. I am sorry. I had not realized the women had fed you the swill they’d given to us.”
She lowered her eyes and her fingers began plucking at her gown sleeve. He realized that she didn’t wish to sleep. She wanted a man. He saw Hafter looking at Entti with more interest than a man should show a woman who wasn’t his wife, and said, “Hafter looks unhappy. I release you from your work. You may see to him.”
She nodded happily, and left him.
Rorik rose, felt the chamber spin around him, shook his head as would a mongrel hound caught in the rain, and walked toward his sleeping chamber, Kerzog at his heels.
Ottar called out, “Lord Rorik, do you go to whip the prisoner again?”
Hafter laughed and called out, “Oh nay, Ottar, he’ll plow her belly, that’s his thought.”
Sculla raised his head from his conversation with Old Alna and said, “Rorik is too sodden to plow a field, much less a woman.”
Old Alna cackled.
Sculla’s wife, Amma, said, “He isn’t used to so much drink like the rest of you louts. His belly won’t like him for this.”
Rorik turned and said, “All of you, keep your tongues behind your teeth. You chatter because your bellies are content.”
“Aye, that’s the truth of it,” Askhold said. “Beat the witch, Rorik.”
Rorik didn’t hear him. He was thinking about his belly and his dulled head. He prayed Amma was wrong in her prediction but knew that she wasn’t. He didn’t hold drink well.
The sleeping chamber was dark as the deepest pit. He brought in a rush torch and fastened it into its holder on the wall. He saw her on the floor, on her side, her legs drawn up to her chest. He couldn’t see the chain, but he knew it was there, wrapped around her wrist.
She was awake. She hadn’t moved, hadn’t breathed, it seemed to him, but nonetheless, he knew she was awake. He didn’t care.
He pulled off his clothes, doused the rush torch, and flung himself down onto his bed.
“You drunken lout. You disgust me.”
He laughed, a drunken laugh that sounded demented. “I begin to believe you have missed me, Mirana.”
“I would that you had rotted, you and all your vicious men.”
“You have been left too much alone,” he remarked to the darkness. “Even I am welcome after your overlong solitude. You obviously have grown bored with your own company. Aye, that’s a woman’s plaint, isn’t it? She cannot bear to be alone.”
He could hear her breathing, harsh and deep.
“Shall I tell you about the delicious meal we enjoyed? It was quite excellent, truth be told. The boar steaks were broiled; the fat sizzled on th
e sides. I decided to let your belly shrink a bit—you’ve eaten too well in your captivity. Now, it is your turn. Would you like to say something?”
“Unfasten the chain.”
He came up onto his elbow, weaved a bit, looking in the darkness toward her. “I just might if you would say, ‘Please, my lord Rorik, I would be your willing slave if you would free me.’ Say it and I will consider releasing the chain.”
Her breathing was deeper now and hoarse. He was glad she didn’t have a knife.
“Say it, Mirana, else I will leave that chain on your wrist until you do.”
He was drunk, he knew, and it was his only excuse. But he wouldn’t bear more from her. She would obey him else he would make her life a misery.
“Please, my lord Rorik, I would be your willing slave if you would free me.”
He stared toward her. He couldn’t believe it, yet the words he’d demanded from her hung in the silence between them. She’d done as he’d asked. He didn’t understand. His brain, filled with too much mead, suddenly rebelled. He couldn’t make sense of her. He wanted to demand that she tell him what she was planning now, but his belly chose this moment to rebel as well. He groaned and leapt from his bed. He managed to run to the palisade walls before retching. His body shook and trembled. He leaned his forehead against the wooden planks and waited for his belly to calm. It had been thus all his life. He couldn’t drink much of the delicious mead or even the fruity wine from the Rhineland without becoming violently ill. He would not drink more than a cup of anything for months at a time and then he would forget, and drink too much. And this was his punishment. It was the woman’s fault. If she hadn’t taunted him, if she hadn’t then given in to him and dared to call him lord, he wouldn’t have become so ill.
He shuddered and straightened. He was so thirsty his tongue felt swelled in his mouth. It was some time before he returned to the longhouse and to his sleeping chamber, his belly emptied of the vile mead as well as of the wonderful boar steaks, the vegetables, and the bread.
Mirana waited until he was stretched out on his bed. He’d run as if a Christian demon had been after him. She waited another minute, slapped down her pride, hating herself even as she said, “If you please, my lord Rorik—”
She heard a deep snore.
She fell onto her back. Her hand was numb, the flesh on her wrist rubbed raw. It hurt her so badly she would have begged him to release her, she would have called him Odin All-Father had he demanded it of her. She wanted to howl and cry at the same time. She did neither. She fell asleep with his snores sounding in her ears.
10
Clontarf, Ireland
Danish Fortress
EINAR CARESSED THE soft cheek, smiled as the warm open mouth turned to him, and leaned down to kiss it. His tongue smoothed over the lips, then slipped inside. He heard the gentle sigh, took it into his own mouth, and tasted the sweet honeyed almonds they’d shared an hour before.
He drew back, patted the smooth cheek, then lay on his back, his head cradled on his arms.
“You please me,” he said.
“Aye, there’s truth in that, my lord. But you are too tired to bring me much pleasure tonight.”
Perhaps in a week, perhaps even as long as a month from now, Einar would slap that smooth cheek, or wield his whip on the flawless back, rage overflowing at such impertinence, but not now, not after only three days. The impertinence, the moments of insolence, aye, it was pleasing to him now. It whetted his passion and his interest.
He said slowly, “I have brought you to pleasure two times, more than you deserve. Cease your plaints. I am thinking of my sister, Mirana. I must have her back.”
“I hear she is but your half-sister.”
“Ah, is that jealousy that stings your agile tongue?”
“She is not golden as am I, so I have been told. Her hair is black as sin—”
“Aye, like mine. And her eyes are also like mine—as green as Erin’s hills after a spring rain. Her flesh is as white as goat’s milk, unlike yours, which is shaded with a rather ugly olive tinge.”
“Aye, but the gold of my hair and that olive tinge is unique, quite out of the ordinary, so you said yourself when you bought me from that fat French merchant in Dublin. You have said that you could drown in my golden eyes, a gold like rich sweet mead, you said. You have endlessly admired my black lashes, so thick you’ve said more times than I can remember, more lush than any of your women’s.”
Einar merely smiled. He enjoyed the show of jealousy, the preening vanity, the edge of viciousness to gain his attention, but Mirana—ah, where had the Viking taken her? He must find her quickly or he would surely find himself in grave difficulties. He thought of King Sitric, but didn’t worry overly about him. No, it was Hormuze who made his blood slow, made his stomach curdle and cramp. Hormuze was an old man, tottering in his years, but he was still a man to fear and Einar recognized it deep inside himself. The old man’s black eyes held passion and determination, not the dimming and clouding of old age. He had no desire, ever, to face Hormuze and have to admit that he’d failed. Well, he wouldn’t have to admit anything. He would find her in time.
Rorik Haraldsson was the bastard’s name, at least that was the name he’d told Mirana. Einar had forgotten, truth be told, about that day well over two years ago, a long time, after all. He’d done much in two years, too much to remember Rorik Haraldsson, a man he’d never even seen, a man whose farmstead in the Vestfold he’d visited and reduced to ashes and death.
But the Viking had found him. And Gunleik, the damned old fool, had been tricked. The Viking should be dead; they could have and should have butchered him easily, but they hadn’t. Mirana had even seen to his wound. He’d been pampered as a sultan in Miklagard. All that talk about keeping him for Einar’s pleasure he discounted. On the other hand, Gunleik never lied to him. But still . . . He wished Mirana had been here so he could have beaten the truth out of her. Had she admired the Viking and that was the reason she’d allowed him to live? Nay, Gunleik and his men were cowards. The Viking had frightened them, made them believe he was beyond them, and thus to be respected and held in awe.
The Viking had kidnapped his sister—nay, his half-sister. He grinned, but sobered almost immediately. He had men out searching for any word of her, of this Viking Rorik Haraldsson. It could take a long time, a very long time, more time than he had. He thought of Hormuze again, and felt bile rise in his throat.
He felt long fingers stroke over his belly, downward, to tangle in the thick hair at his groin. When the fingers closed around him, he sucked in his breath, his fears momentarily forgotten. He knew what was coming and all his senses focused on the mouth that was now on his belly, wet and soft, nipping at his flesh, moving ever downward.
His pleasure, when it took him, arched his back off the bed and made him scream. He forgot Mirana in those long incredible moments. He thought only of that warm skilled mouth and knew that it would take perhaps even more than a month for him to be bored with his new slave.
“By all the gods,” he managed to say after his heart calmed, “you are a beautiful animal.”
“Aye, more beautiful than your black-haired half-sister with her flesh whiter than a virgin’s teeth.”
Einar didn’t even consider a slap or a whipping. He merely smiled as he stroked his hand down a slender thigh.
It was nearly an hour later. Einar was sitting in his massive oak chair, his hands curved around its ornately carved chair posts. He accepted a plate of food from a slave.
As he chewed on the leg of mutton, tougher than it should be, he thought again of Mirana. She wouldn’t have allowed any meal to be served unless it was perfect. He’d remarked too that the turnips mixed with sweet onions and peas weren’t seasoned properly. He frowned. Nothing was quite as it should be without her here. Damn Mirana for not simply killing the Viking. He had to get her back, by all the gods, his own life depended on getting her back. He wanted to see her again, to hear her voice as she gave o
rders to the slaves, a calm voice, many times gentle, but also sharp if need be.
He looked up to see Gunleik chewing on his own mutton, his face down, silent as a stone. He’d aged ten years in the days she’d been gone, and rightfully so, since it was his fault that she was taken in the first place. Einar handed his wooden plate to a waiting slave, a girl not older than eleven, a sharp-featured child he didn’t like. He called out, “Gunleik, I have decided you will find Mirana. You will take three men and you will leave on the morrow. Two of these men will be Emund and Ingolf—my men—and thus I will be certain they will tell me the truth of things when you return. Aye, you will leave and you will find her. I have no need of you here. You have proved your worthlessness as the fortress commander.”
Gunleik looked up, trying to prevent the look of joy that washed away the drawn pallor of his face, but Einar saw it. “Ah, so you would go after her, would you? You lost her and now you will find her. Kill the Viking, I care not, or bring him back to me. I wish to punish you again, but now, even though it pleases you, I don’t wish to see your face until you’ve succeeded. Now, get out of my sight before I have you whipped anyway.”
Gunleik obeyed quickly, though it was difficult for him still to walk upright, his stride steady. The long deep welts on his back still burned and pulled, making him lock his jaw to keep his pain to himself. He’d deserved the beating. Had he been Einar, he would have done the same thing. The only difference was, he wouldn’t have enjoyed wielding the whip with such ferocious ecstasy.
“I do not like that old man, Einar. I am glad that you will send him away. He looks at me with contempt.”
“I have not asked that you like him. I punished him and now he will leave and find my sister. He will go because I believe him to have the best brain of all my men. Aye, he will find her, if she still lives.” His hand clenched into a fist. “I must have my sister back here or I will lose more than I can afford to lose, mayhap even my life.”