Season of the Sun (24 page)

“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.”

Z
arabeth 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. “Be 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.

Ingunn rode close. “Let her have my horse, Orm. I will ride with you. This isn't right, having a slave treated so finely.”

“I would think having her ride a horse singly, without one of us holding her, would be treating her more finely.”

Ingunn chewed her lower lip, searching wildly for something to say that would change his mind. She saw that Zarabeth was markedly silent. She watched as Zarabeth accepted Orm's hand, watched the muscles in his arm bunch as he lifted her up in front of him. He then held her against his chest, his arms around her, holding the horse's reins in front of her. Ingunn felt great fury, a greater sickness in her belly. She wished she had a dagger; she would surely stick it in the woman's ribs.

“Ingunn!”

She swallowed her anger and eased her mare beside his stallion. “Aye?”

“Tell me more about this slave with her strange hair and strange name. You called her a slut and a whore
and said she had bewitched your brother. Why is this?”

“My brother wished to wed with her, but she betrayed him. She sent him away and wedded with an old man who was richer than Magnus. Then she poisoned him slowly. She is not to be trusted. She is a witch, with many tricks.”

“I trust no one, man or woman, so I am safe. As for her tricks, well, do you believe me a fool, Ingunn?”

She looked at him stupidly for a moment, then saw that his eyes had darkened, the blue irises blazing nearly black. Quickly, for she was suddenly afraid of him, she shook her head.

“Say it,” he said.

“Nay, you are not a fool, Orm.”

“Good. You please me when you are obedient, Ingunn.” His eyes lightened, and the wildness was gone from them as suddenly as it had come. Ingunn remembered the brief speech she'd had with him before he'd gone to take Zarabeth. She had said, her voice trembling, “Perhaps I am a fool.” The instant the words were out of her mouth, she had hated herself for speaking them.

“What mean you?”

“I came to you because I believed you loved me. I left my parents' farmstead to come to you.”

“And now you change your woman's mind? You
are
foolish, Ingunn. You will be my wife, doubt it not.”

Now she said, “What will you do with her?”

“I have yet to decide.”

Ingunn had nothing more to say. In her mind's eye, she had seen Zarabeth, that wild red hair loose and full down her back, and felt the familiar rancor boil in her belly. She would still have her revenge. Orm was a man, and she mustn't forget a man's
weaknesses. Magnus had succumbed to this woman and turned on her, his own sister, very quickly.

Orm was speaking again, but it wasn't to her. It was to Zarabeth. “Does your jaw still pain you?”

“Nay.”

“Excellent. You seem a strong woman, and that pleases me. Now, tell me, what do you think Magnus will do when he returns to Malek and finds you gone?”

“He will come after me and he will kill you.”

It was Ingunn who laughed at that. “Ha! All will tell him that you fled from him, or that you jumped into the viksfjord like that little idiot sister of yours.”

Zarabeth twisted about to look at Ingunn, her face twisted with pain and rage. “I told you never to speak of Lotti like that.”

“And what will you do about it, you slut?”

Zarabeth tried to fling herself off the horse at Ingunn. Orm was taken by surprise and nearly missed grabbing her in time. She was flushed and breathing hard with fury, he realized, not with fear. “Hold still, else I will strike you again!”

“My little sister is—”

“Was, Zarabeth,
was
! She's dead!”

“As dead as Egill! Do you mock him, Ingunn?”

Ingunn hissed breath out. “Say you nothing about Egill. He was a fine boy, he was Magnus' heir, not a pathetic little slave with no blood ties to him, to any of us—”

Again Zarabeth tried to pull free of Orm and fling herself upon Ingunn. Orm held her. He watched, his expression mocking, as Ingunn pulled her mare some distance away.

“A slave shouldn't have such passions,” he said, his breath warm against Zarabeth's cheek, and he wrapped a thick tress of her hair round and round his hand until he was pulling her head back against his
chest. “Now, you will be silent. We have some way to go yet before we make camp.”

Ingunn kept her distance.

Orm called a halt for the night when they reached a small copse of pine trees hidden from view near the base of a snow-covered mountain. “In another day or so we will reach the Oslo Fjord and my vessel, the
Wild Tern.
”

Zarabeth was desperate to know where he intended to sail, but she kept her mouth shut. She realized, dispassionately, that she was afraid of him and that she had to tread warily around him. She couldn't begin to imagine what he would do, how he would react, from one moment to the next. She was told to gather firewood. The man Kol stayed with her, doing nothing himself, merely watching her. He was dark, his face pockmarked, and he was so silent, even when he moved, that she found herself continually looking over her shoulder to see where he was. He didn't try to touch her, merely watched her with that silent look of his until she wanted to scream.

She didn't realize how hungry she was until Orm handed her a charred piece of roasted rabbit. It was delicious, even the black burned flakes. She wanted more.

He held a piece just out of her reach. “What will you give me for another piece?”

His voice was soft and teasing, not at all the voice of a vicious killer. He stood over her, his legs parted, and he waved the piece of rabbit in her face.

“I have nothing to give you.”

“Perhaps not,” he said, and to her surprise, he handed her the other piece. Her stomach settled and she felt waves of tiredness hit her then. She was asleep within minutes.

Orm stood over her. She'd quietly fallen to her side,
her legs drawn up, and her cheek was pillowed on her palm.

He picked up a blanket and covered her with it. He looked up to see Ingunn staring at him.

“Come, Ingunn,” he said, and rose, stretching out his hand to her.

Her cheeks flushed, for he'd spoken in a normal tone of voice, and both Kol and Bein looked up. Both of them knew what he intended. She felt shame at his blatant use of her body, and she was not yet his wife. Still, what else could she do? She had come to him, trusting him, and if she stopped trusting him, why, she would have nothing.

She rose, pretending to adjust the skirt of her gown, pretending that they were going for a walk, perhaps to discuss their future together.

She heard one of the men snigger. It was Bein, and she hated him for the way he looked at her and the way he spit when he looked away.

“How would you like me to take you, Ingunn?”

“They are listening! Say not such things!”

Orm laughed, and in sight of his two men, in the sight of the other woman, who was a pathetic creature, he pulled her against him and kissed her soundly. Then he pushed her back, still holding her with one arm, and let his fingers trail over her throat downward until his palms were brushing across her breasts.

She cried out in mortification, and he laughed, releasing her. She ran from the camp, knowing that he would follow, knowing that he would not even lower her to a soft blanket, but push her against a tree and jerk up her gown. It was how he punished her. He had done it several times now when he thought her unwomanly in her speech to him.

He pushed her against a tree this time as well, and she was crying silently during the long minutes when he was grunting against her. When he was finished
with her, she pulled down her gown and wished she was dead. “You must bathe, Ingunn, your sweet woman's scent is gone. I like my smell on you, but not the sweat of the horse.”

She nodded, walking away from him, saying nothing, for there was nothing more to say.

She fell asleep finally, only to awaken when he pressed against her back. “Hush,” he said, and kissed her ear. “Forgive me, Ingunn. I hurt you and it angers me that I did so. I will make it up to you now.”

She felt his hand under her gown, moving upward, and she wanted to pull away from him, wanted to scream at him to leave her alone, but then he was touching her and she closed her eyes and let the pleasure build within her. She whimpered softly, her fist against her mouth when her release came, and she heard him laugh softly against her ear.

“There,” he said. “Now you won't give me your wounded looks. You are pleased, are you not? I want you to thank me, Ingunn.”

She whispered her thanks to him. He laughed again and left her.

The following morning, Ingunn kicked Zarabeth in the ribs. “A slave doesn't sleep whilst her mistress works. Get up and collect more firewood. Be quick about it, Zarabeth.”

She did as she was told, her companion the same one as the evening before. Kol looked sullen this morning, his pockmarked face even uglier today. Still, he remained silent, making no move toward her, watching her.

Orm let the two women slaves walk for three hours before calling a brief halt. He brought Zarabeth up on his stallion in front of him again. Ingunn said nothing. He called out to her, “The woman needs to bathe. There are no men's smells on her, but the scent
of horse is strong. We will halt at the small lake that lies just east.”