by M. K. Hume
“Shut up, you idiot!” Frodhi hissed under his breath to Stormbringer as the Sae Dene began to protest. “You’ll only make him worse.”
The king returned to the throne and sat down casually, as the two strong warriors began to cut Arthur’s clothes away from his body with their razor-sharp knives.
“Let me undress myself,” Arthur insisted, but his captors refused to listen. The king wanted Arthur humiliated and, as Arthur had caused Stormbringer, his benefactor, to suffer Hrolf Kraki’s anger, humiliation was the least punishment Arthur merited.
“Frodhi’s right, you idiot,” Stormbringer hissed, his mouth close to Arthur’s ear. “Perhaps it’s possible to salvage something out of this fiasco you’ve created.”
Arthur stood passively under their ministrations, lifted his arms above his head, and turned in a circle so every man present could see the white seams of deadly scars across his torso.
Once he was stripped naked to the waist, his years of battle training showed in the slabs of muscle that overlaid his powerful arms. The golden tan on his face, his forearms, and his legs below the knees threw the whiteness of his tall and graceful body into sharp focus, and even the angry Dene king could see that this particular Briton was a warrior in both musculature and strength.
“Your scars are impressive,” Hrolf Kraki stated evenly. “They’re old scars and they’re all on the front of your body!”
“I congratulate you for having the good sense to play fair in your battles,” Frodhi murmured, so his respective kinsmen were unable to hear him. “Every wound is very sensibly on the front of your torso. I do approve of a clever man!”
“Fuck off!” Arthur hissed, but his voice was so low that his comment went unheard. However, Frodhi stopped his annoying whispers.
Something stirred in the darkness behind the king, while Arthur’s mind suddenly screamed shrilly in alarm. At the same time, Frodhi cursed and quickly stepped back into the watching line of Dene warriors. Hrolf Kraki heard the small movement as well, but he raised his hand in a beckoning gesture, although his eyes never shifted from the outlander.
“Aednetta! Come forward and tell me what you think of this young man. Should I treat him like a Dene, or order him to be chained to Stormbringer’s longboat to row until he rots?”
The warning voice in Arthur’s mind rose higher and higher in a scream that was primal, urgent, and infused with danger. Don’t trust this witch and her evil words, it roared.
This woman plans treason. Then, as if it had never existed, the warning voice was silenced.
“I know you’re there, Aednetta, so don’t keep me waiting,” Hrolf Kraki’s voice was impatient, but a whine underlay its force. The Dene king oscillated from brutal tyrant to careful assembler of information. Who was he?
Conscious of his nakedness in front of a woman, Arthur dragged his torn tunic over his shoulders and awkwardly straightened his leather trews, while struggling with the laces because of his bound hands. Around him, the warriors paid no mind because their eyes were fixed on the dais and the small figure standing in the shadows. Surreptitiously, Maeve passed her brother a strip of cloth from her battered skirt to wipe his bleeding mouth.
From those pools of darkness behind the throne where the light of the sconces failed to reach, a darker puddle began to coalesce into the form of a woman of indeterminate age. She glided forward as if her feet were hovering several inches above the wooden floor, so her felt slippers were eerily soundless.
Maeve stiffened and her head swiveled towards the newcomer as if she smelled something vile. Her green eyes glowed oddly, and their amber flecks darkened as if a flare had been lit inside her skull. Arthur could feel his sister’s sudden intensity and shot a warning glance at her as she stood with her gaze fixed glassily on the coalescing form of this wisewoman who was Hrolf Kraki’s most respected adviser.
“I’m coming, my lord, so there’s no need to shout or to be disturbed. Your Aednetta will always be standing at your side, to protect you and advise you in times of threat.”
Untrue! Arthur’s warning voice whispered inside his brain. Look at her hands.
Arthur’s eyes slid away from his sister to the woman whose pale hands were half concealed in the folds of her robe. Flickering torchlight shone on her knuckles, polishing them to the whiteness of bone as they clenched into fists that revealed her irritation and repressed dislike. Yet what was visible of her face was as smooth as the complexion of a newborn babe. She showed no appreciable emotion, but the telltale fingers were busy pulling at the hems of her sleeves with sharply destructive nails.
“I can’t see your face, Aednetta, so come into the light where I can talk to you properly.”
The king’s orders were uttered reasonably and courteously, but the witch’s hands convulsed in the folds of black material as if he had been cursing her. As she moved to obey her master, her eyes smiled obligingly while her lips repeated that shallow emotion, but her guilty hands were busy saying something quite different.
Aednetta was neither young nor old; and she was neither beautiful nor plain. This wisewoman was so self-contained that her features appeared to have been forced into a mold, like the ceramic funerary masks that Arthur had seen in the house of King Bran. His mind skittered away from Heorot, and for a brief moment he was a boy again in his kinsman’s house.
What wonders I’ve seen, he thought sadly, and what horrors! His muscles twitched with the memory of the Dragon Knife that had lain in his left hand since he was a boy.
The wisewoman came fully into the light now, and those telltale hands rose to touch the king lightly on the forearm with the ease of long custom.
See? The voice in his head was almost too loud to bear. Beware! The witch is no adviser, for she has seduced the king. Does no one else notice? No, they’re accustomed to her, so her actions are invisible to anyone but a stranger. Or they think she’s negligible. Arthur had learned to rely on his inner voice since childhood, so he decided that this woman was an even greater danger to his friends and himself than the Dene king was likely to be. That Maeve was also on her guard was more than enough reason for Arthur to distrust Aednetta on sight.
The wisewoman raised the cowl of her robe to reveal her full face to the light of the sconces. Her face was smooth, egg-shaped, and lacked clear definition, but she could be beautiful and ugly by turn, depending on her emotions and the quality of the light.
“What do you require of me, my lord? You know you need only ask.” Aednetta’s voice was a deep, husky contralto that was drenched with sexual promise.
At last, Arthur could see the attraction that she possessed. Her voice, if Arthur closed his eyes, promised silken flanks, breasts that pillowed a man’s head perfectly, and an innocent lasciviousness that suggested subtlety and any number of exotic and erotic sins that would be available at his command. Such a voice seduced the listener by its timbre, its warmth, and its ancient femininity. Even now, Arthur’s body was responding.
Now that he recognized their closeness was something more than master and servant, Arthur could read the intimacy in the king’s eyes. The young man groaned, for this relationship between a lord and his adviser was highly dangerous to the four captives. When sex was added to such an explosive mix, his dealings with Hrolf Kraki were doubly unpredictable. The king already disliked the captives because of Arthur’s inability to control his tongue.
Aednetta’s brows were thin and highly arched so her expression was one of perpetual surprise. Her eyes were blue, but the color was so pale that they seemed to be transparent. Likewise, Aednetta’s skin was so thin and smooth that Arthur swore he could see the blood pulsing in her veins, rosy or blue by turns. In fact, her unlined flesh had an unearthly blue blush, creating an exotic aura. Maeve was quick to notice that the warriors closest to the wisewoman avoided her gaze as if her eyes could blight them—or suck away their wits.
Maeve had ne
ver possessed any special intuitive qualities, but the girl had scented wrongness in this woman from the moment that Aednetta appeared in the hall. She had smelled a reek of wickedness in the king’s woman, much like the faint sourness of tainted fruit. The woman was obviously a witch of some kind, or thought she was, although Maeve had never previously believed in such nonsense. Now, as Aednetta’s eyes drifted lightly over the four captives, Maeve felt her stomach begin to revolt, and only a concerted effort of will prevented her from vomiting uncontrollably onto the smooth floor of Heorot.
Yet the face that gazed so lightly and disinterestedly at the outlanders seemed harmless. Perhaps the woman’s cold and passive calm was what disconcerted Maeve and Arthur so profoundly. The mouth that smiled so delicately was both seductive and ugly, a rare combination. The top lip was thin and pale, suggestive of a cold and secretive nature, while the bottom lip was full and rich. This contrast of cruelty and voluptuousness was compelling.
While Arthur struggled to thrust lascivious thoughts of that full bottom lip out of his mind, the king explained Arthur’s insults to his wisewoman. Aednetta smiled at Arthur, and the young man’s tumescence deflated with a suddenness that spoke of his instinctive understanding of her.
“This boy may be of royal blood, my lord, but he is of little importance to us.”
The wisewoman smiled beatifically and exposed a pale tongue, serpentine in its unnatural length. Carnality was her promise as she slowly licked her lips, but Arthur grimaced as he noticed that her canine teeth were both much longer than normal and appeared to be very sharp. She must file them, Arthur decided with a sick feeling of dread. He had been told how his aunt Morgan had done the same to all her teeth.
A picture of Morgan’s face, with her sharklike teeth, swam into his mind. It was a face he’d never seen, but could imagine from the many descriptions he had heard as a child. His aunt Morgan had searched for power and collected fear like coin. Some women who search for earthly domination through the dark arts are prepared to deface themselves. He knew in his bones that this creature, Aednetta, would kill without mercy if she could arrange such a fate for him. But why?
Perhaps she was curious about the outlanders? Perhaps she wanted something of him before she had his life snuffed out?
“Blood price is for the Dene alone and, perhaps, for those Jutes who haven’t forgotten their ancestors,” Aednetta stated baldly. “This boy—regardless of his antecedents—doesn’t merit your generosity. He claims to be a man who has been touched by the gods, so we should allow him to prove his power. Words are cheap, Master, as you learned when you had to resist the treachery of Snaer and his minions.”
The slightest mention of his predecessor, Snaer, filled Hrolf Kraki with fury, so that his keen mind was blunted by old resentments. Hrolf Kraki’s fear of potential traitors was always paramount above all others.
“Aye! Words are cheap, and only actions will impress the Dene people,” Aednetta continued gently. “He is as tall as our warriors, but can he fight? Can he earn our respect?”
“The wisewoman seeks to blind you, Lord Hrolf,” Maeve called out from the press of warriors. “Perhaps you should ask her why she would have the Last Dragon put to death! Ask her why she wants loyal warriors like Stormbringer to be kept away from your court? And then, ask yourself why she seeks to bend you to her counsel with silken ropes of sexual desire, so that you seek her in your bed by day and by night.”
The room erupted with a rumble of voices, until Hrolf Kraki rose angrily to his feet.
Maeve had no idea why she had spoken in such an inappropriate fashion for a young maiden. The warriors around her were shocked and instinctively drew away, leaving her alone inside a small cone of superstition. Arthur deliberately stepped back to stand at her side. “Do you truly believe that spring cleaves to autumn? Or does Aednetta desire something else rather than love?” Maeve spoke out so clearly that her voice carried into the darkest recesses of Heorot.
“Your insinuations are lies and insults,” Aednetta whispered so softly that the king had to strain to hear her, while Arthur was forced to admire how the wisewoman could adroitly play the victim. Single tears snaked down from her colorless eyes, and she allowed them to fall onto the dull black cloth of her robe. Maeve appeared to be shrill and self-serving by comparison.
“They seek to save themselves by driving a wedge between the king and his most loyal subject,” Aednetta stated blandly, her face expressing hurt, as if she was genuinely upset by such perfidy. Her hands tore at the hem of her sleeve, unraveling and shredding the coarse black wool.
Puzzled and suspicious, Stormbringer frowned at his liege lord’s reaction to the words of the witch woman. He had never liked or trusted Aednetta, although she had once breathed an invitation into his ear that had both excited and repelled his younger self. Fortunately for all concerned, the wide seas had kept him out of her sphere of influence, but he was uneasy to see the light of affection that glowed in Hrolf Kraki’s eyes whenever she was in the king’s presence.
The common people read Aednetta’s character unkindly. The women who spent their time at the wells frightened each other with tales of her spells, her curses used to garner power over foolish men, and her use of the pleasures of the bed as a trap and as an illusion. Stormbringer had always been immune to sexual blandishments, something that made him a rarity in the halls of Heorot. He spoke out bravely now, but he remained very careful, for any criticism of Aednetta was an implied attack on Hrolf Kraki himself.
“I was the servant who brought these captives to you as a personal gift, my lord. They were purchased with my own rings of silver from a man who vouched for the quality and value of all four. Before any decisions are made concerning their fates, I ask that you hear more of their pedigrees so you can judge for yourself if they have been raised in an honorable court, a place where warriors are required to conduct themselves in the same way that Dene men are expected to behave.”
“For honorably raised persons, they have destructive, boastful, and divisive tongues. Perhaps I should order those tongues to be removed immediately.” The king’s face was sullen and angry, while Aednetta seated herself on the top step of the dais and leaned against his right leg.
“Perhaps,” the witchwoman echoed the words of her master.
“But such actions would destroy a valuable source of information that could be of use to the Dene people, my lord. Britannia is rich beyond our understanding, and their tribes are in turmoil as war ravages their lands. We can profit from their misfortune by sending suitable families to settle on the coastal areas where our forces can gain in strength until, as with Jutland, we have sufficient power to claim huge tracts of their tribal territories. It will be invasion by stealth! Such action would require minimum force and could be achieved at virtually no cost to the Dene nation. The captives I have given you hold valuable information that meets the needs of our people, because these prisoners come from the greatest families in that rich and verdant land. Your prisoners also hate those Saxons who control the east coast of Britannia, the very part of the country that would be of most use to us. I beg you to consider the practical uses to which these prisoners could be put. Their unintended insults are as nothing when compared with the information and influence that they possess.”
Stormbringer’s impassioned speech stirred the warriors to voice their approval behind their hands, but Hrolf Kraki was further angered by this swelling wave of low muttering.
The Sae Dene’s heartfelt words had weakened Hrolf Kraki’s position, although the king never doubted the loyalty of his vassal. Weeks earlier, Aednetta had warned Hrolf Kraki that he would be safer if Stormbringer vanished under the distant seas forever. But the long duty and comfort provided by the captain’s father, the legendary Bjorn, prevented such a permanent solution. At heart, Hrolf Kraki was an honorable man. As he had listened to Stormbringer’s words, his face had darkened with irritation and the desir
e for thwarted violence, but the calm and logical center of his brain urged caution. The open, puzzled faces of the Dumnonii siblings revealed that they had little understanding of what their captors had said. Only Arthur, the young warrior, had revealed by the furrowing of his brows that he knew and understood.
That is one young man who must be watched closely, the king thought. If he survives the night!
Hrolf Kraki felt the impatient, insistent pressure of Aednetta’s hand, which had been caressing the soft, unprotected skin behind his knee. The king closed his eyes for a moment, because he was caught between common sense and obsessive suspicion as he felt his lover’s nails bruise the tender flesh.
“I have heard your words, Stormbringer,” Hrolf Kraki began, although Aednetta’s hand continued to explore the back of his knee. He almost gave the order to kill the captives out of hand, but something inexplicable twisted and changed the words in his mouth.
The king shook his head, as if to clear the webs of his lust from his mind.
“Very well! I can’t decide whether these Britons are speaking the truth or are crafting cunning lies to mislead our people. The prisoner’s purpose in invoking blood price made me doubt his motives, but he has since relented and called back the demand—a concession which I accept. He appears to be a young man of education, and he certainly possesses physical gifts. I must also consider the word and worth of my greatest Sae Dene captain, Bjornsen, who vouches for these Britons. They seem so helpless while they are surrounded by my warriors, yet they have dared to attack the motives of my adviser, the lady Aednetta, who is dear to me for her continuing advice and loyalty.”
He gazed directly at Arthur and smiled. The curve of his mouth had no trace of mercy in it, and Arthur was immediately on guard.
“Therefore, we will let God make the final decision, as Father Stephan would have urged us to do. I have decided that open, single combat alone can reveal the fate of these prisoners. Both men will face suitable adversaries, and we shall let the truth of their words be proven by the strength of their bodies. The men will fight Dene champions of our choosing, and I will think deeply on how the honor of the young girls can be tested.”
