She wanted to vomit. “You have said many things, Einar. What do you wish to know first?”
He frowned at her, and leaned closer. “Tell me about the whipping.”
She said calmly enough, “One doesn’t like to be whipped. You whipped me, remember?”
“Aye,” he said, and there was remembered pleasure in his voice. “You deserved it. Tell me, did he hurt you?”
“It hurt.”
“Did he strip off your clothes?”
“I don’t remember.”
“Of course you do. Did he strip you naked and have one of his men hold you whilst he wielded the whip?”
She could only shake her head, knowing she was showing weakness in front of him and that it wasn’t wise. But he was drunk, surely he would leave her alone tonight. “I don’t wish to speak of it more, Einar. I am very tired, surely you can believe that. May I seek my bed now?”
He brooded, obviously displeased with her answers to him. “You keep things from me, Mirana. I don’t like it. Your tongue is as sharp as always, but at the same time you are different. Mayhap it is your weariness that allows these evasions, this mockery I’ve heard in your soft voice. I suppose it has been hard for you, this captivity and your long voyage back to Clontarf. But I wish to know more of this whipping he gave you before I let you seek out your bed. Be certain that I will avenge you; that is why I wish to know.” He leaned closer to her, his eyes on her mouth. “Tell me and I will make this Rorik’s death longer and more painful than any before.”
Very well, she thought. “He hurt me badly, Einar. He stripped me naked and threw me to the ground. He had one of his men hold my hair away from my back. He tied my wrists to a stake. He beat me until I was unconscious.”
His breathing was coming fast now. By the gods, she’d given him too much, she’d made a mistake. She’d gone too far. Her tale hadn’t excited fierce protectiveness in him toward her. No, she’d excited him surely, but her words had brought him pleasure, a dark ugly pleasure. His nostrils flared and his eyes gleamed with a light that terrified her. “Did he touch you afterward?”
She shook her head as she rose quickly. She said loudly, “I am glad to be home. You are all my friends and you wish me well, my dear brother most of all. Tonight, I sleep safely.” Then she quickly turned on her heel and left the hall, praying that Einar wouldn’t come after her and perhaps whip her to see if he could best what she’d told him Rorik had done. No, he wouldn’t do that, now he could not afford to, for there was the king who wanted her. Nay, he would whip another, an innocent, just because she’d taunted him and excited him with a lie.
What if Emund told Einar what she’d said of him? He wouldn’t kill her for there was too much at stake. But what would he do? She wondered now as she had many times before what was in his mind.
He was staring after her. Sira was looking at him. There was no smile on her lips now.
26
MIRANA KNEW SOMEONE was there even before she was fully awake. Gunleik, she thought, and felt a surge of hope. She opened her eyes but it wasn’t Gunleik who stood there.
It was a beautiful young girl with golden hair—not the silver blondness of Sira—no, golden as the wheat in August, and brilliant golden eyes. She was dressed in pure white linen with a tunic of the finest white wool over it. Mirana frowned a bit for those thick, beautifully designed silver bracelets at her wrists and on her upper arms surely belonged to Einar. She realized then that it was the same girl Ingolf had taunted Einar about just before Einar had killed him.
“You’re awake, witch,” the girl said, her voice vicious and low.
“Who are you?”
“I am your brother’s mistress. Those other two women no longer hold him except on rare occasion, the bleating sheep. I have been here since you’ve been gone. I am more beloved by Einar than any before me and that includes you as well. He found me in Dublin and brought me here, nay, begged me to come here. I am the one he loves. You are here only until he can contact that old bastard, King Sitric, to come and fetch you. Then you will be gone and I will be glad. All the people will realize that I am here to take your place, and then they will have to respect me and obey me as they now do you.”
“What is your name?”
The girl straightened now and simply stared down at her. She appeared fine-boned, yet tall, lithe, and sleek. “Einar told me you were beautiful. He said your flesh was as white as goat’s milk, that your eyes were the same color as his, but it isn’t true. The green of your eyes is impure, dulled with other colors, not the pure vibrant green of his. Nay, you are nothing with your ugly black hair. Einar remembered you in his image and endowed you with his own beauty. I know why. It was because you have such value to him. He wants you to be comely so the king won’t be angered. Aye, he was afraid you would be lost to him forever. I had believed that Einar feared nothing, but I was wrong. He fears that old king and that advisor of his, Hormuze.
“I listened to you speak to him last night. You spoke sharply to him; you were cold when you wished to be; you taunted him, surely you lied to him about that whipping the Viking gave you. You did not treat him with respect, with the honor he deserves, yet he didn’t strike you. Mayhap he wanted to but he didn’t want you marked for the king. Aye, that is it. You’d best pray the king will fetch you quickly, else Einar will grow weary of your bitch’s deceit and insolence. He will strike you and I will enjoy watching him do it. Else he will stick his knife in your breast, just as he did to that bastard, Ingolf, and I will enjoy watching him to do that as well.”
“Has he struck you?”
There was a frown that marred the beautifully smooth forehead. The girl couldn’t be more than sixteen years old, Mirana thought, so very young to have pride in being a man’s whore. She felt no compassion, just sharp dislike.
“Once he did. I was sharp-tongued like you. I realized quickly enough that he enjoys that, but not all that much of it. It is simply difficult to judge when he is wearied of mockery and audacity. His moods change quickly, but that only makes me love him more. He did not strike me hard.”
Mirana shook her head, sending her hair into a thick sweep about her shoulders. She laughed a little. “You have learned a lot about him in a very short time. Perhaps you will last longer than those before you, though I doubt it. That or you will become like the other women, submissive and silent and afraid.”
“What do you mean ‘those before you’? Surely you can’t compare me to those two.”
Mirana simply shrugged and smiled up at the girl. “You heard what I said. Do you believe my brother a virgin, mayhap? You don’t believe he took women before the two he now beds only occasionally? At least that is what you say.” She laughed more, then shoved herself upright in her box bed. The girl stepped back a step, and that pleased Mirana. Perhaps the girl believed her to be like her brother, perhaps she feared her a bit as well. She gave her another smile, a vicious smile, and it had some effect as well, for the girl took another step away from her.
“Einar also told me you might dislike me and might try to whip me. I know he won’t allow it, so I warn you, keep away from me.”
Mirana pulled her hair over her right shoulder and began to comb her fingers through it. She appeared bored, but she was thinking furiously. So the girl expected cruelty from her, and she feared it. She said easily, “I will warn you, for what reason, I don’t know. Perhaps because I find you pathetic. Or perhaps because you are so very young. When Einar is bored with his women, he isn’t necessarily kind to them. In the past he has occasionally dismissed them in rather violent ways. You see his other two women—you call them silly sheep. That is because they are afraid to say anything in his hearing for fear he will be displeased. And then he will hurt them. He enjoys hurting those he beds.”
To her surprise, the girl smiled, her whole body radiating confidence, and said, “Ah, but I am different, very different from his other women. I knew you were a fool and now I’ve proved it to myself. I am not pathetic, ’t
is you who are. Now I will prove it to you, and your blindness, ugly witch.”
Then the girl giggled. She stood by Mirana’s bed, straight and tall and giggling. Without another word, she stripped off her tunic. Then slowly, she turned her back to Mirana. The gown followed, then the soft linen shift and leather slippers. Mirana saw a tall girl with a straight back and long legs lightly furred with golden hair. Her buttocks were small, too small, and there was something strange here, something . . .
The giggles turned to laughter as she turned to face her again. “Behold, Mirana.”
A boy stood in front of her. A beautiful boy with golden hair that brushed his shoulder blades. His flesh was smooth and tinged with an olive tint. There was little hair on him, only at his groin and on his legs, lightly sprinkled. His rod was soft against him. He was slender as a girl and as supple. But there was strength there as well, Mirana could see it. And a very strong will. And a vanity that went too deep, a vanity born of too few years.
“I told you I was different. Am I not beautiful?” The boy did a turn, raising his arms, preening. “What I do to Einar gives him great pleasure, more pleasure than those two stupid women ever give him. He will sell both of them, he told me he was going to. Also he will sell them because I have asked him to sell them. Their stupid faces and their witless sighs annoy me. Their breasts hang on them like cows’ udders, ugly and bloated. Nay, he won’t ever dismiss me. Mayhap he’ll hit me, but only because of his uncertain tempers. He would never mark me, at least not overly much, or send me away.”
Mirana could only stare at the boy. Memories flooded into her mind and she knew now that there had been other boys before this one, but she hadn’t realized, hadn’t guessed, that her brother had used them as he would use a woman. Did Gunleik know? Did his warriors know? How could they? But of course they did. Ingolf had known and laughed about it and Einar killed him for it. She closed her eyes a moment against the knowledge. But there had been women as well, many women, some kind to her, others frightened, yet others certain their beauty and endowments would hold his attention. None ever had for very long, male or female. She remembered the boy she’d tried to protect. Einar had whipped her for her interference and the boy had died. Was he one of Einar’s lovers as well?
“Look at me, damn you! I am more beautiful than you could hope to be. Look at me! Aye, none of you white-fleshed bitches can approach my beauty. As for that slut, Sira, mayhap Einar will plow her belly once or twice, but it is to me he will return, always to me. It is only her hair that charms him, nothing else about her.”
“What is your name?”
The lad smiled. “You may call me Lella. Einar is pleased to dress me in a woman’s name and in a woman’s clothes. It amuses him. It tweaks his men’s noses, for they too are forced to call me Lella. They despise me, but it matters not. Once Einar even had me flirt with old Svein Forkbeard. I thought the old sot would faint when I touched his shriveled rod. Aye, the men must smile or look the other way, for I am the lord’s favorite and they must mind their tongues.
“But you, Mirana, I had believed you would be different. Aye, I had feared you, for there is something dark in Einar, something that confuses me, and I thought it was you there, in the shadows of him, lurking and hidden from sight, holding him from me. But now that I see you, I can laugh and be certain of myself again. You are nothing save a possession to be used to gain him more power, more wealth. You are no part of his darkness, no specter to obscure what he is to me. He merely praises you to make me jealous. He speaks of you with affection because he knows it will but make me love him more. And soon you will be gone.
“I had to see you alone, see your face close to mine. Now that I have looked my fill of you, I will return to Einar’s bed and I will know that I have nothing to fear from you.”
The boy Lella laughed again, dressed quickly, and walked to the doorway of Mirana’s small sleeping chamber. He turned to face her, but she forestalled him, saying in a lazy, taunting voice, “You think not, boy? Now that I am returned, you will learn the meaning of true fear. Forget not, Einar is my brother. Think you we are so different from each other? You don’t yet know the meaning of fear, little man.”
He paled, she saw it clearly, but then he laughed, an uncertain laugh, turned on his heel and was gone, no more words spoken. She heard him singing in a voice high and pure as a woman’s.
Mirana lay back, her heart pounding in loud, slow thuds. She’d come home to a nightmare. No, not home. Hawkfell Island was home. Mirana shook her head. She would probably never see Hawkfell Island again. Or Rorik. There was no home for her, not now.
She lay back, closing her eyes. The boy Lella was there again in front of her, laughing, then looking fearful. She’d perhaps won that small exchange, but it was she who feared him, deep down, she feared him for he’d shown her just how little she’d really known her half-brother. She laughed then, softly, because she realized the boy was nothing. It was Einar to be feared, no one else.
She wondered again, as she had so many times before, if Rorik believed her dead.
Rorik and Kron stood alone in the shadows of the king’s fortress in Dublin. Hafter, Aslak, and Raki were hidden some thirty yards away.
Kron said quietly, “Yon is the private entrance to the king’s chambers. As I told you, Rorik, there are three guards, berserkers all of them, very dangerous.”
“Aye, we must kill them and it must be done quickly and quietly. Are there others we must worry about?”
“Early each evening a woman is brought to the king. If she fails to stir his rod, then she is sent away and Aylla is brought to him, always Aylla. She is the woman who sleeps with him, cradles him like a babe, his wrinkled old face against her breasts. She is the one who feeds him a nightly potion, prepared by Hormuze.”
Rorik made a sound of disgust.
“Aye, ’tis true,” Kron said. “I discovered all this from one of the women’s slaves. She said that whilst the king sleeps, this Aylla recites an incantation over and over again, one to renew the king’s vigor, to push away the demons that age him and shrivel his rod.”
“Who gives her this incantation?”
“Ah, Hormuze again, the king’s own advisor and physician. He’s an old man like the king, but he’s wily, smart, and dangerous. He is not one of us. His name is strange. I have heard it said he comes from a land even farther to the south than Miklagard, a land of deserts and vast burial monuments that go back hundreds upon hundreds of years. He speaks a strange tongue, this from a servant I bribed who said she heard him speaking to his daughter in this alien language. I heard it said that he controls the king, though I cannot testify that it is true. Few see the king, but enough to swear that he lives and gives the impression that he makes the decisions and gives the orders. He says to those familiar to him that Hormuze is his physician and advisor, and thus he is willing to trust him in matters of his health and in matters that need advice. Then he laughs his old man’s laugh and says that in matters of the marauding Irish chieftains, it is he who commands and who rules. However, as I told you before, Rorik, I heard it said that both Hormuze and the king will come to fetch Mirana from Einar.”
Rorik nodded, saying, “And what do the king’s people and his warriors believe about Hormuze?”
“They believe what the king says, that he is his physician and advisor, and yet they are wary of him. They fear him, for his hold on the king is a strong one. Hormuze has told them that once the king has wed Mirana, daughter of Audun, on the first day of September, he will be reborn, he will be vigorous and young again, and he will give his people heirs to rule them forever. On that day he will appear to them and all will see that he has spoken the truth. On that day, he claims, the Irish chieftains and all their forces will be as insects underfoot. The people cling to this. They even now begin to dream of a vigorous man emerging from his bridal chamber, renewed and somehow young again and ready to lead them to undreamed-of glory.”
“What kind of blank-brained fools
are these?” Rorik said, and spat into the bushes. “Why did he choose Mirana of all women? She is of no great house, her birth isn’t royal. Why her?”
Kron shook his head. “I don’t know. No one does, save Hormuze and the king.”
Kron had already told Rorik most of this, but there were more details he’d thought to add this time. Rorik smiled. He had an idea. He said to Kron, “Tell me, is there someone close to this Hormuze? A wife? A son or daughter?”
“Aye, there is a daughter. She is but ten years old if I remember aright.”
“And he is an old man himself?”
“Aye, he appears beyond old, an ancient relic.”
“Odd that he could sire such a young child. Is he attached to her?”
“Aye, my lord. Hormuze worships the girl. She is a sweet child I have heard it said even though he treats her like a princess. There is no wife. I believe she died well before Hormuze came to the court.”
Rorik rubbed his hands together. “Excellent,” he said. “That is excellent. We haven’t much time, but we have enough.”
* * *
Hormuze was a careful man, very careful. He trusted no one and he never would. Slowly, meticulously, he pasted down the gray beard that covered his face and hung down past his neck. He patted the woven mat of gray hair over his own thick black hair. With the skill of long practice, he lined his face, taking care not to use too much walnut oil. He did not believe people to be stupid as the king did. But he believed people saw what it was they expected to see.
Lord of Hawkfell Island Page 25
