The Pirate Bride (18 page)

Of course, she heard Thork’s laughter behind her. The loathsome lout!

Chapter Seventeen

Tiger by the tail . . .

M
edana took off down the path like a scalded cat. But after tripping on the edge of the blanket she’d wrapped around herself like a shroud and stubbing her bare toe, yelping, “Ow, ow, ow,” she stormed back, dropped the blanket in front of him and Bolthor and Jamie, nose pointed north, and slipped on her
gunna
and half boots.

It was only a brief glimpse she’d given them of her naked body, but they were all bug-eyed with appreciation. Even Thork, who’d seen plenty of that naked body for the past five hours or more.

Turning to Bolthor, she glowered. “If you voice a poem about this, I will cut off your tongue when you sleep and roast it for the pigs to eat.”

“Me? What did I do?”

“You looked at me.”

Bolthor blinked his one eye. “I am a man. Men look. I may have only one eye, but I am not blind.” Now it was Bolthor whose nose pointed north.

“What are you laughing about?” She turned on Jamie.

“Dinna turn your rage on me, lass.”

“Lass my ass!” Thork muttered.

Medana graced Thork with a killing glance for daring to speak.

“I am laughing at Thork,” Jamie explained.

Huh?

“He tried to trap a tiger with honey, he did.”

Thork had no idea what that meant, and neither did Medana, apparently, because she gawked at the lackbrain laird as if he spoke some strange gibberish. In truth, the Scottish manner of speaking betimes resembled a foreign language. A burr, they called it. More like a slur, if you asked him, which no one did.

Thork began to approach her. “Medana, give me a chance—”

She didn’t even glance his way. Instead, she began to exit the clearing again, swanning off like the bloody queen of all the world.

Clothing himself quickly, Thork told Bolthor and Jamie to gather up the blanket and remaining foodstuff. Then he rushed after Medana. He had some explaining to do. Not that he had to justify himself. All rules of courtesy were nullified when he became a captive. He tried to ignore the voice in his head that said,
But the rules changed when you made love
.

Just then a clap of thunder broke overhead, and he saw dark clouds moving in from the east. Bolthor had been right. There would be storms soon. Which meant there would be no longship through the tunnel tonight.

He smiled. That would give him plenty of time to make amends with Medana.

He couldn’t wait.

Jamie had mentioned a tiger. He had other ideas. “Here, kitty, kitty. Someone wants to lick the milk off your mustache,” he sang under his breath as he strutted at a leisurely pace after one tempting feline.

Life was good.

Spill that, you lout!  . . .

Medana’s life was becoming a disaster.

Thork intended to take Thrudr’s longship, and life on this island would never be the same. In truth, it would never be the same even if they left
Pirate Lady
behind. The men were making too much of an impression on the women, and one man in particular would leave his mark on her. The beast!

While she was hurt and angry over Thork’s perfidy, the bigger issue was how to prevent that catastrophe from happening. There was little she could do while trapped up here at the hunters’ longhouse. And apparently her dubious charms weren’t enough to sway him. Oh, she could walk right off this mountain and down to the village, where her women would do their best to protect her, but she knew without a doubt that Thork would come right after her, and she did not want to risk even one of her women being hurt.

To make matters worse, a fierce storm was rising, foretold by fiercesome claps of thunder and lightning bolts from an almost black sky, and it not yet time for nightfall. Winds were starting to rise, and it was so humid you could nigh cut the moisture in the air with a knife. She prayed that Sigrun and Salvana would be able to make it through the tunnel to Thrudr before all Muspell broke loose. Summer storms on the North Sea were naught to dismiss casually. If only the rains would hold off for another five hours or so.

“Medana! You are to stop haranguing my men,” Thork said, coming up to her where she was stirring a huge cauldron of rabbit stew thick with vegetables someone had managed to pilfer from the gardens below—carrots, onions, turnips, and such. “You are not permitted to go down to the village. So stop making excuses for why they should allow what I precisely disallowed.”

She crossed her eyes and mumbled something about tiresome tyrants. Thus far, she’d managed to avoid talking to the scoundrel directly, and she ignored his commands to do this or that, or to not do this or that. Like bothersome gnats they were, not worth reacting to.

“Do you hear me, you stubborn wench?”

“All of Thrudr hears you. I need to go down and assist my women in preparing for the storm.”

“They are doing fine without you. Henry and Alrek are helping them to batten down any loose planks on the buildings and to bring the animals under cover.”

“Pfff! Henry is probably off tupping Lilli somewhere, and Alrek might very well hurt himself if a loose plank flies his way.”

Thork barely suppressed a smile. “My men know their duty. Your only responsibility is here, with . . . us.” She could tell he meant to say “with me.” She might have smacked him with the long-handled ladle she was using if he had.

“What are you so afraid of that you will not let me out of your sight?”

“The sleeping draught,” he answered without hesitation.

She couldn’t deny that she had considered using it again. Her silence was an affirmation to him.

“Once the stew is done, we’ll bring the cauldron inside. The stew, along with a supply of bread Brokk is bringing up and a tun of ale, should hold us through the worst of the storm. You will first taste anything we bring up from the village.”

“Oh gods! I am going to be trapped in a confined space with eight men. Will I be expected to serve all of you?”

He didn’t bother to suppress the smile this time at her ill-chosen words. “Only me,” he said, and reached out to brush some loose strands of damp hair off her forehead.

She swatted his hand away.

“I know you are angry with me, Medana, but try to understand my side of things. We need the longship and some of your women to get us back to Hedeby. You never gave me a chance to say that the longship will be yours to return to Thrudr.”

“Are you really so dimwitted that you do not understand the problem? You men now know the location of Thrudr. If we take you back to the market town, others are bound to see us and ask questions. It takes only one person to mention our secret hiding place. How soon do you think it will be afore my brothers come storming our sanctuary? Or the king’s men?”

Thork recalled the scars on Medana’s back and vowed to find time to confront her brothers about their wicked ways. But she needed reassurance now. “We will take a vow of secrecy,” Thork said. “We will take care not to let others see you.”

She shook her head. “It might not be intentional, but it will happen. Mayhap just a chance word when
drukkinn
. Or loose lips during bedsport. Mayhap even greed if a reward is offered. You cannot guarantee what others will do, even close comrades.”

He inhaled and exhaled with exasperation.

She had more to say, though. “I must needs consider Agnis, as well.”

“Who in bloody hell is Agnis?”

“Our agent in Hedeby.”

He was the one crossing his eyes now, and he looked adorable doing it. Like a little boyling who was not getting his own way.

“If my brother Sigurd discovers Agnis’s whereabouts, a war will ensue. That, I guarantee.”

“Why would your brother care about Agnis? Was she one of his wives?”

“She was a thrall that he took to his bed furs.”

“Unwillingly?”

“Hah! Do thralls have any choice?”

He shrugged. Thralldom was a fact of life, and not just in Viking lands.

“He will be especially angry if he discovers that Agnis harbors his son Egil.”

“Hell and Valhalla! You women really are barmy. I cannot deal with this now. We will discuss everything later. And try not to pop any more surprises on me.”

Here’s a surprise, lackwit.
“What if I am with child?”

He released an exhale of relief. “That is a problem you need not worry over. I told you that spilling man seed outside the body is an almost foolproof method of preventing childbirth.”

“But you didn’t.”

He cocked his head to the side. “Didn’t what?”

“Pull out. That last time.”

“That’s impossible. I always . . .” The horror on his face would have been mirthsome if she wasn’t so horrified herself.

It was a dark and stormy night . . .

The rains finally came, and came, and came on the tail of driving winds that would leave damaged crops, fences, and trees. More deadfall for the women to cut for firewood. Hopefully, Thork would be long gone by then.

Or would he?

Everyone was asleep by now, except him and Bolthor, who sat by the hearth fire in the hunters’ hut, a necessity on this chill night. After all the hard work preparing for the storm, the men had been exhausted. Their snores and sleep snuffles were background noise to the crackling fire.

He’d just told Bolthor what he had done, or not done, to Medana, seeking the old man’s advice. The skald did have five children betwixt him and his wife, four of them from her previous husbands, now long gone to the Christian Heaven, or wherever their life deeds had sent him.

“Could you in good conscience leave Medana knowing she might be carrying your seed?” the skald asked.

“That is what keeps me awake this dark night.”

“I can tell you this, I married at a young age, but I lost my wife and two little daughters.” Thork started to ask him a question, but Bolthor raised a halting hand. “Nay, I do not discuss that dark time in my life, but that is why I never planned to wed again, or have more children. I love Katherine’s children and the one of my loins. I love them all, and that is a fact. I miss them sorely.” Tears filled his one eye.

Thork pressed a hand to Bolthor’s shoulder. “Soon, my friend. Soon, you will be home again.”

Bolthor nodded, then grinned. “The reason I am telling you is this, my boy. Having a child is a blessing. Do not miss it. Besides, your mother would kill you if she learned you had a child somewhere not under your own roof.”

“I have no roof.” Well, land, but no buildings. Yet.

“Dost think that matters? Believe me, I have witnessed your mother’s wrath.” Bolthor, being closer in age to Thork’s father, had been friends to his parents for a long time. In fact, Bolthor had served with Tykir in the Battle of Ripon, where he lost an eye and his father had sustained a thigh wound that caused him to still limp on occasion. “I recall the time your mother got infuriated by Rurik’s constant harping on her being a witch, which she was not, as you know.” Rurik was Jamie’s father. “She nigh scared the spit out of him by inserting an eel skin under her
gunna
trailing on the ground, because witches are said to grow tails on occasion. Then there was the time she took sword in hand and . . .” On and on, Bolthor related tales of his mother’s fiery temper. He had heard them all before.

“What concerns me more than my mother’s reaction is Father’s.”

Bolthor nodded. “He will have further disdain for his wild son.”

More important, Thork realized,
Can I, a man of honor, abandon my child, or the mother of my child, living hand to mouth on this godsforsaken island?
He put his face in his hands and groaned. “How did this happen?”

Bolthor laughed.

“I know
how
it happened, but why now did I slip after all these years of practicing controlled lust?”

“Medana,” Bolthor replied.

“Nay, I cannot blame her.”

“I meant that ’tis Medana herself,” Bolthor explained. “She made the difference.”

Just then, a wet splat of rain hit Thork’s head and he shifted slightly on the bench. One thing they’d discovered right off when the rains had started was that the roof leaked. In lots of places. Those men sleeping about the room had to continually move their sleep furs to evade new leaks. One more thing to fix on the morn.

Thork stood and yawned widely. “Time to get some sleep. You too, old man. There will be much to do come daylight.”

Bolthor agreed, standing, and then laying a fur along the bench they’d been sitting on. Would it be wide enough and long enough to hold the giant? Not Thork’s concern.

When he entered the added room, the air was cold as a troll’s arse on an iceberg, not having a fire in there. He shivered and removed only his boots before sliding between the two furs that warmed Medana on the bed, one under and one over.

He thought she was asleep until she said, “Touch me and I will cut off your balls with the knife I have under my pillow.”

Chuckling, he moved closer, his one foot touching her leg.

“By the runes, you are cold,” she said.

“And you are warm.” He snuggled closer, despite her warning. He’d been threatened with worse weapons and survived. Soon her warmth heated him and he yawned again with the need for rest. Just before he fell asleep, he murmured, “As for the baby, Medana, you are not to worry. I will not abandon you.”