“Your hair,” he said at last. “I have never before seen such a color, though my men have told me of it. Red as blood, they said.”
Her hair! What nonsense was this? She looked at his sword. She looked behind him but could see no one else. He appeared to be alone. Surely there was no reason for her to be afraid of him, at least not yet.
“Who are you?”
He smiled, revealing very white teeth. He was a handsome man, she thought dispassionately, still eyeing that sword. She wondered if people above, within the palisade, could see them, and if so, what they would do.
“I have waited for you, and the wait had become tedious. I would have attacked Malek earlier, but I didn’t really want to. I wanted only you, and now it appears that the gods have delivered you up to me. I doubted mine own eyes when I saw you leave the safety of the palisade.”
“I doubt your Viking gods have anything to do with my being here. Who are you? Why would you want me?”
“I do not like a woman’s tongue to be shrill, nor do I like demanding questions.” He took a step toward her, and Zarabeth took a step back. She eyed the distance up the incline to the palisade gate, wondering if she could outrun him.
He said, “You cannot. You are but a woman, and thus you could never outrace me. Now, I would look more closely at you. I won’t hurt you. Hold still.”
He walked to her, the sword still held in his right hand. He stopped in front of her and, to her surprise, lifted her long braid in his hand, pulling it forward. With quick, nearly angry motions, he pulled it apart. He ran his fingers through her hair, then gathered a thick tress around his hand and rubbed it against his cheek. “I hate the braid. You must leave your hair free and loose. The feel is as rich and vibrant as the color. Ah, and the smell. Lavender? You are very foreign, just as Ingunn said. The green color of your eyes is also unusual. I have never seen a green so pure and deep, like the greenest moss deep in a forest where little sunlight filters through. I wonder, is the rest of you different as well?” He grinned then and chuckled. “Of course, Ingunn would never admit that you were beautiful. She hates you, you see.”
And then she knew. Ah, yes, she knew. “You are Orm Ottarsson, aren’t you?”
He was still grinning at her. “Ah, so you still have your wits about you. My fame has preceded me. Aye, I am Orm Ottarsson and you are Zarabeth, wife of Magnus.”
“Why are you here? It isn’t safe for you to be here. Even now your deeds are being discussed at the thing.”
“I have come to take you away from here, away from Magnus Haraldsson. I have long wished to do him in, and Ingunn has no tender feelings for you. She has begged me to avenge her. She wants you dead, truth be told, but she would never admit to that. What she so prettily begs me to do is to sell you to some Arab in Miklagard and thus turn a tidy profit.” He touched his fingertips to her jaw. “I do not believe you would make a good slave, though I doubt not I would get much gold for you. Are there still marks from the slave collar Magnus put on you? No, I see that they are gone. You must have angered him greatly for him to humiliate you thus.”
“Yes,” she said. “But I meant not to anger him. ’Twas not my fault.”
“It matters not now. He forgave you and wedded you. At first I did not credit it, for Magnus is such a proud man, unbending as an oak. When we were boys, he could be more stubborn, more inflexible, than any of us. I remember seeing him pale with fear when a wild boar turned on him, but he swallowed his vomit and made his stand, and he killed the beast. Aye, a proud man, Magnus.” He was looking at her again, and rubbed her hair between his fingers. “Ingunn is as proud as her brother. She can be merciless as well. I have always admired that in her.”
“Ingunn has no reason to hate me. I did nothing to her.”
He shrugged, saying, “She is a passionate creature whose heart is easily bruised, whose mind is easily twisted. She saw you as a threat, saw you as the woman who would usurp her, and thus set out to destroy you. She wasn’t wise in her methods, though, for Magnus cares for you above all others, including that little whore of his, Cyra, but Ingunn didn’t fully realize that until it was too late—for her.”
“She has told you all these things? You kidnapped Ingunn from her home?”
He laughed then, shaking his head. “Helgi wants to believe that, I doubt not, but she is no fool and she knows that Ingunn came to me freely. I had but to send her a message and she flew to me.”
“Magnus, his father, and many others are at the meeting of all free men and they are considering evidence of your deceit and trickery. You should leave Norway, Orm. I have heard it said that many of your countrymen sail to the west, to lands discovered and settled by the Vikings.”
He nodded, smiling at her as though he were her friend, a guest, not a man standing before her with a sword in his hand. “You are right, of course. There is little for me here now.” He looked bemused. “How odd that one of the Ingolfsson females lived and is right now telling of my rape of her. I had thought her well dead with all the rest of them. There was much gold and silver there—the man who told me was right about that. I have more than enough now.” He looked up at the strong palisade that protected Magnus’ farmstead. Then he looked out over the viksfjord to the mountains beyond.
“But this is my home and it pains me to be forced away. Aye, I have wealth now, but no land.”
“No one forced you to kill and rob and rape.”
He looked at her then, and there was no longer a smile on his face. “I do not discuss my deeds with women. You have no understanding of what forces drive a man.”
“I understand Magnus, and he is more a man than any I have ever known.” The moment the words were gone from her mouth, she froze, understanding flooding into her. Magnus was kind and fiercely loyal and he had truly wanted her to become his wife. He had loved Lotti and mourned the child’s death. And to lose his own son on the very same day . . . She felt small and petty and stingy. She had given him no comfort, provided him no understanding. She had wallowed in self-pity, ignoring him and his pain, selfishly shutting him away from her. She closed her eyes a moment, wishing that she could shut out all that she had done, all that she had said and thought, for now she understood—oh, yes, she well understood—that she had lied to herself and to him.
“Did Magnus take your maidenhead?”
She drew back, her eyes still clouded with her thoughts, and then his words came cleanly into her. Again she looked up that winding path, and saw herself running and running. She saw him catch her. What would happen then? She didn’t see that.
“Answer me, woman! Was it Magnus who took your virginity, or another man, that first man who wedded you?”
“ ’Twas Magnus.”
“Ingunn reviles you, calls you whore and slut, but I doubted it. She calls you these names even as she screams out the pleasure I give her. It is strange, but she is, still, only a woman and there is no sense to her actions.” He paused and looked upward toward the palisade. “You are right. Soon someone will notice that you are gone and perhaps even see me here speaking to you. We will leave now, Zarabeth.”
She turned and ran.
The meeting of the thing had continued now for three days. Harald was the chieftain who directed that the evidence against Orm be brought forward. But it was the Ingolfsson daughter, a girl named Minin, who was only twelve years old, who brought the meeting to a near-hysterical climax. Orm had raped her and then thrown her against some rocks, believing her dead. She had lain without consciousness for three days. She spoke in a quavering child’s voice, and each man there saw his own child in her stead; each man knew such fury he choked on it.
Orm was proclaimed outlaw. He would have to leave Norway, if he wasn’t killed first, for the Ingolfsson men wanted his blood.
Magnus sat across from his father and his brother Mattias that evening. It was warm and still bathed in the summer-evening half-light.
“I would go home,” Magnus said.
Mattias grinned
at him. “Your blood is heated, Magnus, and you would have your bride consume you.”
Magnus said nothing. He was seeing Zarabeth on her back beneath him, her eyes closed, her arms at her sides, her hands fisted, as he took her. That last night before he’d left to come to the thing, he had taken her yet again, as he had told her he would, and when he was done, he saw the tears seeping from her closed lids down her cheeks. She had made no sound. The tears had merely continued. By Thor, he hated it, hated her and himself as well.
“Nay, I would just leave here,” Magnus said. “My men wish to go on a-raiding, Ragnar tells me, just a small raid, he explains, to relieve the men of their boredom and fatten their caskets and relieve some fat English monks and their monastery of their gold and ornaments.” He sighed. “Perhaps we should go. Either a raid or we could hunt down Orm and take all the gold he’s stolen.”
Mattias said absently, “Toke Ingolfsson will kill Orm, and it is his right.” He looked at his father, who was rubbing a knotted muscle in his shoulder. “I agree with Magnus. Bring all this to a close on the morrow and let’s go home. I have my own bride to keep happy.”
Harald grunted, then winced as Magnus began to massage the knotted muscles in his shoulder. “Glyda isn’t a bride, she’s a wife, and only Freya knows why she cares more for you than you will ever deserve. You’re a rutting stoat and the poor girl must constantly suffer your pawing and your—”
Mattias laughed and buffeted his father’s other shoulder. “Me? A rutting stoat? Glyda is the one, Father, who pats the side of our bed and gives me those long-eyed looks.”
Magnus listened with half an ear to their jests. He missed Zarabeth and he worried about her. He didn’t want it to be true, but it was. Other men joined them, and Magnus moved away, wanting to be alone. He had felt wounded since the day Lotti and Egill had died, wounded inwardly, where none could see. He strode to the edge of the giant encampment and looked back at the myriad tents and cook fires spewing smoke into the air. He turned to stare at the snow-covered mountains in the distance. He had dreamed again of his son, and Egill appeared the same way he had in the first dream—alive but ragged and dirty. It ate at him, this damnable dream, for he was a straightforward man and this dream, or whatever it was, disturbed him profoundly. No, his son was dead, just as was Lotti. He had to accept it, for if he didn’t, how could he expect Zarabeth to?
He wanted to return to Malek.
He had to see her again.
Orm caught her in half a dozen steps. He grabbed her around the waist and hauled her off her feet, back against him, and he held her there, laughing, pressing his face against the back of her head. Then, without warning, he whirled her about and slapped her.
Not hard, just enough to sting her flesh and make an imprint of his hand on her cheek. Just hard enough so that she would fear him. “A taste of punishment,” he said, his face very close to hers. He was studying her expression, looking closely, hoping to see tears in her eyes. There were none, and he was tempted to hit her again, but he didn’t. It was enough for now. “You gave me no choice but to strike you. Don’t be foolish again, Zarabeth, else I will have to give you more than a simple taste of pain.”
But she couldn’t help herself. She slammed her fist into his belly, then began to struggle against him, tried to rip his face with her fingernails, and finally he grunted in disgust and slammed his fist to her jaw. She slumped against him, unconscious. As he lifted her over his shoulder, he looked upward to see if any in the farmstead was looking. He saw no one.
He carried his sword in his right hand and held his left to her buttocks to hold her steady over his shoulder.
When he reached the pine forest some fifty yards up the shoreline, one of his men emerged.
“By Odin, look at that hair—’tis magic, that color. Let me touch it.”
“Nay,” Orm said. “Let us away from here. If we are quick about it, we will be back to our camp by this evening.”
“She is gone,” Eldrid said again.
Magnus was shaking his head. No, it couldn’t be true.
“Two days ago. She simply disappeared. It was after a storm and she left the palisade and none saw her again. I am too frail for this, Magnus. The girl is flighty and wounded. Leave her be. Aye, perhaps she will return on her own.”
Magnus wanted to strike the old woman. He turned on his heel and went to Hollvard, the old man who had guarded the palisade gates of Malek for two decades.
“Aye, Magnus, I watched her leave, her head bent, deep into her thoughts, I remembered thinking. It had rained so hard that all of us were annoyed with each other, all of us just wanted to be outside, and so it was that she left the palisade and walked down the path to the water.”
“She had nothing with her?”
Hollvard shook his head.
“Then someone took her away by force.”
“Aye, perhaps.”
He heard the doubt in the old man’s voice. Hollvard believed, as did all the rest of his people, that she had killed herself or simply walked away into the woods, there to be killed by wild animals. Magnus didn’t believe it for a minute. Zarabeth was a fighter. She would not destroy herself.
He called all his men together, and another search began. None of them said a thing, merely searched as they had for Egill. It was Ragnar who found a ragged piece of her gown on a bush some twenty yards into the pine forest.
Magnus studied the piece of cloth and the bush. “She was being carried,” he said at last, standing. “Over a man’s shoulder, a man nearly of my height. She was taken from Malek.” He wanted to yell with the relief he felt at their discovery, but it was quickly quelled.
She had been taken. By whom? Was she still alive?
Eines, a small man who was a superb tracker, came forward. “This way, Magnus. There are still prints, vague, but enough for me. Thank Odin that it hasn’t rained since that day.”
Eines, Magnus thought, falling into step behind him, had no shortage of conceit. He prayed the man was right and not bragging to hear himself speak. They came upon the camp late in the day. It had been abandoned, Eines stated, some two days before.
“What do we do now, Magnus?”
He turned to Ragnar. “We arm ourselves and prepare for stealth and cunning. I know who took her and I will have the bastard’s blood.”
22
Zarabeth felt a stinging slap on her cheek, then a dash of cold water in her face. She sputtered with the shock of it and opened her eyes.
Ingunn was kneeling beside her, an empty wooden cup in her hands. “So, you’re not dead. Orm was worried that he had struck you too hard. But I told him that I would wake you quickly enough.”
Zarabeth said nothing. Ingunn sat back on her heels, her eyes narrowing suddenly as Orm strode over to them. He came down on his haunches, leaned over, and took Zarabeth’s face between his hands. He studied the bruise on her jaw. His touch was gentle as he traced the now-yellowing flesh.
“I hadn’t meant to strike you so very hard. You have been unconscious for a very long time.” Then he grinned at her. “You won’t ever fight me again, though, will you?” Again he touched her jaw. Not so gently this time.
Pain shot through the side of her face, but she didn’t make a sound. She looked at the man who had taken her from Malek. “Where are we?”
He smiled widely, but it wasn’t a pleasant smile. She braced herself for another blow, but he didn’t touch her. “I told you before that I dislike shrill questioning, particularly from women.”
“I am not shrill. I am merely questioning.”
“She makes a mockery of me, but I’ll forgive her imprudence this time.” Orm grinned at Ingunn, whose face was tight. He said to Zarabeth, “Not far from Malek. No, not far at all. Now that you are awake, you will make yourself useful. We must be gone soon. Ingunn, see that she obeys you.”
Orm touched his fingers to Zarabeth’s hair, his gaze so intent it frightened her. He then rose, hands on his hips, to look down at her. “B
e about your tasks now.”
“Get up.”
There was venom in Ingunn’s voice, and triumph as well. Zarabeth got to her feet, the movement sending waves of pain into her jaw. She rubbed it gently, then opened and closed her mouth several times. Her jaw wasn’t broken, thank her Christian God and the Viking gods as well.
“You will get no sympathy from me, Zarabeth, so don’t try your stupid tricks.” Ingunn stepped closer. “I told you I would pay you back for what you have done to me. I told you I would make you regret what you did, and here you are. Now, you will carry these things.” She threw several bound bundles at her. Zarabeth picked them up. They were heavy. Orm called out then, and she shifted the bundles in her arms.
There were only two of them walking, an older woman and she. Orm and his two men and Ingunn all rode. She wondered who the woman was, but she kept her head down and away from Zarabeth, as if she were afraid of her. Whoever she was, the woman appeared to be a captured slave, just as she herself was. Unconsciously Zarabeth touched her fingers to her throat where the iron slave collar had once encircled her. She closed her eyes a moment and pictured Magnus in her mind. He would find her. He would come for her. If he still cared at all about her.
Unless all the people at Malek convinced him that she had fled or that she had killed herself. She remembered that last night with Magnus. He had taken her and she had chanted over and over to herself that she hated what he was doing to her, hated him for forcing himself on her like that night after night, and the tears had come and she’d known he was looking at her, seeing her tears but hearing no sounds from her, and he’d pushed deeper then, and deeper still, as if to prove that what she felt, what she did, meant nothing to him. Then he had left the next morning and she had looked away from him even after he had kissed her in front of his men and ridden away from her laughing.
With two of them walking, the pace was slow. Finally Orm called a halt. He called to one of the two men, Kol, and ordered him to take the other woman up on his horse. Orm took Zarabeth on his horse, in front of him.
Season of the Sun Page 26
