Berserker (Omnibus) (38 page)

The land rose steeply on the opposite bank and towards the beginning of the slope they could see six shapes, moving indistinctly through the fog. They could hear the snickering of horses, and the soft pad of hoof on turf; there was the distant chink of metal harness.

Light gleamed from strange helmets, and glittered on unsheathed swords, hung in simple slings from the riders’ waists, the blades tilted outwards by one hand resting lightly on the hilt. This is how they rode, upright and proud, and as naked as the three watchers themselves.

As the riders slid gently down the bank, their horses slipping and struggling on the slick grass, Niall felt his body surge with excitement as they were finally revealed as women.

Fergus’s hand reached out to touch Niall’s lips and silence him; he realised he had been making strange sounds, of excitement, of anticipation …

The women warriors watered their horses in the river, still seated stiffly upright, left hands resting lightly on the hilts of their long, curved bladed swords. Each wore a gleaming bronze face mask, a domed helmet that reached down to cover nose and cheeks, and around, in the form of ear flaps, to conceal their necks; slanted eye sockets had been carved through the metal of their helmets, and Niall felt moments of panic as over and over again the dark eyes of the women came to rest on the part of the opposite bank where the three men lay.

But they said nothing, the only sound being the restless shuffling of the horses, the rushing water and the clinking of metal chain with which the beasts were protectively decorated. The mist grew thick.

One warrior woman in particular caught Niall’s attention. She was perhaps the most experienced warrior for her body bore the white lines of a thousand war scars; but her breasts were voluptuously high and proud, slung full and orange-tipped between crossed leather thongs that held a brace of thin dirks on each of her flanks. Her legs were lean and strong, her skin tanned almost brown by sun and wind. Full lips, all that was visible of her face, were held in a solemn pout and Niall could almost taste their sweetness. The mask of this woman was scored and inscribed in such a way that a fiercesome face peered from the gleaming bronze, a scarred and withered hag’s face, that was frightening to regard.

It was the war queen herself, Grania, who hid behind that hateful mask, and Niall sensed Fergus’ tenseness, and Conan’s excitement rising as the two of them saw the target of their revenge within slingshot.

Birds rose, flapping and noisy, into the mist. Niall glanced up and saw the flight of dark birds, and in the same moment he grew aware that the warrior queen had seen him.

All six women were staring at the place in the undergrowth where they lay. There was a frozen second when Niall and the others held their breaths,
wondering if they were right to believe what they suspected … and perhaps there was a frozen moment among the women over the river as they wondered if there really
were
naked warriors watching them.

Then panic, with the realisation that death was close at hand. Thighs squeezed tight on rearing horses as they might have often squeezed on a lover’s body. Grania twisted her horse around and rode it hard up the bank, her back bent forward and her spine standing out from the lean flesh of her body; her flanks tense and firm, spread invitingly across the saddle as she stretched her legs to get more power to her kicks.

The other women drew their swords from the slings that held them and followed their queen, two of them turning, half way up the bank, and riding back towards the river where already Fergus and Niall were splashing across from one side to the other.

Blades flashed and came down to cut at the two men, but Niall caught the sword on his own weapon, swung it aside and cut the warrior woman from her horse with a savage slash that found her heart through the quivering meat of her left breast. He hacked off her head with two swift strokes and waved the dripping trophy by its suddenly revealed tresses of flame red hair.

Fergus fared less well in his combat and found himself struggling below the surface of the river with the screaming woman whose dirk found the meat of his arm before his sword found the ripe softness of her belly and put an end to her.

Conan was already half way up the bank and he had cut the front legs from a horse that waited there so that its rider was thrown forward. He had drawn his sword from crotch to throat along the woman’s tumbling body and dispatched her before she could strike at him.

The other three, led by Grania, rounded and rode back through the mist, screaming their war-cry and waving their swords around their heads.

They found themselves facing three naked and grinning men, one still holding the gory head of a woman, which at the last moment he cast aside as he began to scream …

A scream that was cut short by the flat of Fergus’ blade striking him on the back of the head, and cutting short the sudden possession by the maniac spirit of the god Odin.

The last that Niall knew for several hours was the screech of horse, the cry of women, and the chilling, hollow clash of metal blades.

When he came round it was dark, and the possessing spirit of the Bear lay sulking and quiet at the back of his mind. Niall rolled over on the rush and dirt flooring and found himself peering through the low doorway of a wattle house; beyond a short and grassy piece of ground he saw the crude palisade of Cnocba: from the inside!

A fire burned in the low hearth, hollowed from the mound in the middle of the dwelling. In its dim glow he could make out the sweaty, hunched body of Conan. The warrior grinned at him, waved a meat-covered bone in greeting.

‘We didn’t know it would take you so long to come round,’ he said.

Niall touched the back of his head; it hurt, but not badly. If the Bear had managed to possess him in time it probably would not have hurt at all, nor had any effect. As it was the blow had put him out for several hours. ‘Why was I hit? Not one of the women … it was you …’

‘It was Fergus,’ said Conan, tearing off a strip of meat. ‘There’s a lot of food, come and eat.’

Niall crawled to the fire.

Conan said, ‘We couldn’t risk you killing all the women. We wanted three at least for our pleasure, and Grania especially to keep for a special death. You would have taken their heads in three blows.’

Niall plucked a charred roast of beef from the embers, brushed off the ash and ate hungrily. ‘Where’s Fergus?’ he asked through mouthfuls, and Conan nodded to a dark side of the house.

There was a tangle of white limbs there and after a moment Niall realised he was staring at Fergus’ thrusting body, lying between the kicking legs of one of the women; his lips, pressed hard and mercilessly on her own, were stopping her cries; her arms were securely tied above her head, at the base of the wall.

‘The others?’ asked Niall, and this time his gaze was directed to the opposite side of the house.

In the dimness, sitting upright but tied and helpless, glowering at him, were the other two women. One of them, a red-haired, dark-eyed woman, her jawline strong and proud, her lips full and glistening, her whole bearing angry and sexual, this one was surely Grania herself.

Blood trickled from bite wounds on her neck and shoulders. There were
red weals on her jutting breasts, and scratch marks on the insides and outsides of her ample thighs. She had been the first to know the lust of both these fiana.

Niall cast the half-eaten roast back on to the fire. He knew that Conan would expect him to finalise the rape, before they slit the woman open in their particularly nasty way.

This made him nervous.

After a while Fergus had spent his energy and interest in the woman warrior and came back to the fire, his thick member slapping against his legs until he had drawn on his leather breech-clout.

He was breathing heavily, and grinning with enormous satisfaction. ‘My stomach muscles are killing me,’ he said with a chuckle. ‘If it wasn’t for that I’d go round again.’

‘Pig!’ spat Grania from the corner, and Fergus laughed. He winked at Niall. ‘She’s as strong as a cow,’ he said, ‘and has teeth in it, I’m sure. But she actually moaned with pleasure after the first hour, so there’s a woman in there somewhere.’

‘Good,’ said Niall, still staring at the fire. Vague memories, not his own, painted a picture of a woman, open to his lust and thrust, and welcoming his dripping body with every fibre of her flesh and blood. He could sense the coolness of air on his back, and the way her hands moved from his shoulders to the rigid flesh of his rump, and under him to tease and caress him as he entered her. But none of these memories were his own, and the bodily experience that he needed before he could take Grania and the others was lacking.

And he felt ashamed to admit it to Fergus.

Remembering the standing stone, he found an excuse to hide his embarrassment. He asked if they had found it.

Conan shook his head. ‘It’s here. But these bitches have buried it somewhere, tired of its unprompted pronouncements. They don’t seem inclined to tell us where it can be found.’

When Niall expressed worry, Fergus slapped him on the knee, then reached up and patted his breech-clout, grinning. ‘What’s the hurry, boy? Your snow sword isn’t the only weapon you possess that needs some blooding.’

Nervously clutching the bull amulet around his neck, Niall glanced at the two women again; Grania was staring at him thoughtfully. The other girl, her breasts and stomach scarred with their heritage of war, stared beyond him at the third surviving member of their band. This third girl lay flat out, legs still apart, her breath ragged and deep. Niall almost hated to think what Fergus had done with her, but he suspected that no metal blade had found its way into her body: he just knew what he was doing, that was all.

‘Niall? What holds you up, boy?’

Fergus’ gaze was intent and interested. Niall met that gaze, only looking away when Grania snickered from her bondage in the corner. The war queen said, ‘The baby still smells his mother’s womb. Leave him alone. He has years to go before he is ready for a woman.’

Fergus jumped quickly to his feet and walked to where Grania squirmed away from him; grasping her by her thick red hair he dragged her back to the fire, ignoring her cries of pain. Throwing her near to where Niall crouched by the fire he jerked her upright on her knees so that the boy was close enough to kiss her.

‘Look at this Niall; look at this body. Take it from me, who knew his first woman at the age of ten, nearly fifteen years ago! Take it from me you’ll not see many women as plump and ripe and fit as this one. Look,’ he reached down and cupped Grania’s fat right breast in his hand, squeezed it so the orange nipple stood an inch out from the mound of flesh. ‘You’ll not find much bigger or firmer than that, friend Niall. Take it, enjoy it while you still may. Look!’ He jerked the woman round by the leather strips that bound her arms tight behind her so that her round, tanned haunches faced him, the dark cleft between them an invitation to Niall’s sexual senses that he had never before experienced. ‘Get in there, Niall,’ growled Fergus, slapping him heavily round the head, father-like but friendly. ‘By morning this beauty’s paps will hang from a headless corpse, and her head will ride proud and red-haired on the end of my great broad-bladed war spear.’

He finalised the woman’s indignity by flinging her at Niall. The fiana caught her body and swung it across his shoulder, after briefly meeting the impassive, searching gaze of the war queen.

‘If it’s privacy you want, young first-timer,’ said Fergus, ‘take her to the stabling hut next to the house.’

Niall climbed to his feet, bearing the woman’s weight easily. She hung limply over his shoulder, her tied hands across her back resting against his cheek. Fergus slapped her buttocks and winked at the Connachtman. ‘Don’t come back with her unless she has to walk on all fours.’

Conan chuckled, eyed the scarred woman in the corner hungrily. ‘In the name of the Dagda get on with screwing the cow. All this talk is getting me aroused again and I haven’t the energy for it.’

Carrying the strangely placid woman out of the house, Niall found the low-roofed, straw-filled stabling hut, and flung Grania on to the floor. She lay there, quiet, staring up at him; her only movement was to shift slightly and make her arms more comfortable beneath her.

Niall took off his breech-clout, glad to do so since his excitement made the garment uncomfortable to wear. Grania stared at him, and at his loins, and smiled … her smile was encouraging.

Suddenly sensing the prowling, scowling Bear in his head … suddenly
sensing the watchful eyes of a northman called Swiftaxe … suddenly remembering his quest, the desperate need to shake this god, Odin, from possession of his life, Niall dropped to his knees between the parted legs of the war queen.

‘Tell me where the standing stone is buried! Tell me!’

‘Release me first.’ Her voice was deep and strong, almost a whisper, a far more sensual voice than he remembered from the skirmish in Connacht. The sound of it, the richness of the tone, excited Niall in more ways than he realised was possible. He stared at her moist lips, the perfect white teeth that were shown to him as Grania smiled … a perfect smile.

Her breasts rose and fell as she breathed, and Niall found himself reaching out with both hands and kneading and feeling them, touching the crinkly skin of the woman’s nipples, longing to put his lips to the jutting fingers of orange-brown flesh. Beneath his touch Grania’s body shuddered and lifted; her eyes half closed, and a soft moan escaped her lips, cut off abruptly, so that only Niall’s intense awareness of the woman enabled him to detect the spasm of pleasure.

‘You’ve never known a woman, have you?’ she said, and Niall, hating himself, shook his head.

The Bear laughed and he silently cursed it.

Grania merely smiled, not a mocking smile, but a smile of encouragement. ‘Touch me again,’ she said, and Niall reached out, conscious of his nearness to the final expression of lust, and cupped and squeezed her breasts. ‘Kiss them.’