Lord of Hawkfell Island (28 page)

“I won't marry that old man, king or not.”

“Aye, I know. We will escape then. This Rorik is your husband?”

“Aye, he is.” She turned away from Gunleik. “I pray he will come, but I cannot be sure of it. I know that his family will want to come for Sira. It is all uncertain, Gunleik.”

“You are no virgin.”

“Oh no.”

“Then you cannot wed with the king. Your virginity, I am told, is why he wishes to have you, that and who you are, or so Einar has claimed.”

“But I am nobody, Gunleik! Why me?”

He shrugged. “None know, even Einar. He pretends it is your beauty and your purity, but there is no belief when he says it. Once he even tried to convince me it was because he was your half-brother that the king wanted you.”

“Since it is a fact, I suppose there is no reason why we must understand it as well. There is really little hope, is there?”

“I will think of something,” Gunleik said. He glanced down at the whistle from one of his men. “It is Ivar. We must go.” He paused a moment, then added, his voice low, “Do not give up, Mirana.”

S
IRA WAS STRADDLING
Lella, her breasts smothering him as she stretched forward to jerk and twist his wrists above his head. He was throwing himself upward, arching madly, striking her back with his knees. She slapped him hard, but before he realized he was free, she'd grasped his wrists again, then dipped down and bit his cheek.

He shrieked. She bit him again, on his other cheek. The boy stopped struggling. He was whimpering.

“Ah, at last you will be quiet, you wretched little fool. Don't dare try to hit me again else I'll rip your pullet's throat out.”

Sira looked up to silence. There was Mirana staring at her, Gunleik at her side. Einar was there also, and he was smiling, stroking his long fingers over his chin, watching, saying nothing, merely watching. For how long?

“There is blood on your lips,” Einar said to Sira.

“I know, and it is a foul taste, for it comes from this little savage.”

“Is that what you are, Lella?” Einar said, coming down to his haunches to stare at the boy whose eyes were overflowing with tears. “Are you in truth a little savage?”

The boy looked up at his master, his lover, and his tears streaked down his face, running in crooked rivulets over the bloody bites on his cheeks. “She marked me,” he whispered. “She has ruined my beauty.”

“Get off Lella,” Einar said to Sira. He offered her his hand and pulled her to her feet. “Now, tell me what brought this to pass.”

Lella started to open his mouth, but Einar shook his head, and turned to Sira. “Tell me.”

“This smug little bitch told me she would kill me if I tried to seduce you to my bed. I told her, my lord, that I wasn't a whore like she was, that I am a virgin, that I am a cousin to Harald Fairhair, the king of Norway. I told her I wouldn't willingly seek your bed until you married me.”

There was utter silence following Sira's words. Every eye was on Einar, waiting for his reaction. Would he whip the new slave right now, his eyes darkening to near black when she screamed from the bite of the oil-soaked leather strips? Or would he shove his knife into her breast and watch as she bled to death?

Einar looked at Sira, at her hair—ah, that beautiful hair, thick and long and almost silver—now disheveled and spilling wildly down her back and over her shoulders. He looked at the passion in her pale blue eyes, at her full mouth, open now for she was panting from her exertions, and her heavy breasts, pushing against her gown that Lella had ripped. He saw the line between her breasts. There would be bruises soon on her white throat, for Lella had gotten a few good hits before Sira had beaten him. He knew Lella was strong; it pleased him that this new slave was stronger, that she hadn't hesitated to retaliate, and viciously. By the gods, she'd bitten Lella on his cheek twice, and he was bleeding, and there was blood on her mouth, and she had as yet
made no move to wipe it away. He didn't disbelieve her for an instant—oh aye, she was a virgin and she was kin to the king of Norway. How odd that she would also be kin to Rorik Haraldsson, a stupid man whose honor would one day most likely kill him.

Lella had scrambled away and now stood on Einar's other side, waiting for his master to turn to him, waiting for his master to strike the new slave. But he wanted to be the one to kill her, perhaps beat her until she was pleading with him to stop, but he wouldn't, oh no, he surely wouldn't. There wasn't much blood on his cheeks, but the bitch had actually bitten him. He knew a bolt of fear that seared deep in his belly, for Einar was still holding himself silent, that intense look again on his face. Lella feared that look, for it went beyond what should be in Einar's mind, it went deeper, into that puzzling blackness. He saw Mirana standing back, Gunleik at her side. She was paler than her white flesh; he saw the revulsion clear in her eyes. He hated her more in that moment than he feared and hated Sira. He plucked at Einar's tunic.

“My lord,” he said, his voice soft, so very soft, just the timbre he used when he was bringing Einar to his release, encouraging him with all the words that old Dublin merchant had taught him. Einar didn't say anything nor did he turn to Lella to reassure him, to kiss him perhaps, as he'd done many times in front of his people, warriors as well. He hadn't kissed him since Mirana had returned, but he would, he had to, and he had to do it now. He had to prove that he loved his Lella still, Mirana watching, that bitch Sira watching.

“My lord,” he said again.

Einar turned to him and gently caressed his chin with his fingers. “Take off your clothes, Lella.”

He jerked back as if Einar had struck him.

“You heard me. Remove your clothes this instant or I will beat you witless.”

Lella quickly pulled off the tunic, the gown, the soft shift beneath. He stood naked, head down, his rich golden hair thankfully hiding his face. He was humiliated and defeated. He couldn't bear all their eyes on him, all their sneers.

Sira stared at the boy. Then she looked at Einar, her head cocked to the side, and then she laughed, a deep rich laugh that rang out, filling the longhouse. She gasped on her laughter, then stopped when Einar took her arms and shook her.

“Ah, my lord, this bit of offal thinks you want him?” She laughed again, the blood smearing on her mouth, and Einar said nothing now, merely waited.

“He does believe that,” Einar said finally.

“He is wrong. I am the one who will hold you, my lord.” She smiled at Einar, then rose on her toes and kissed him full on his mouth, and he tasted the sweet coppery taste of Lella's blood. He didn't move.

Lella shrieked and threw himself on Sira's back. His hands were around her throat and he was squeezing with all his strength. Einar calmly turned and nodded to one of his men, a huge man with grizzled red hair, Malle by name, a man who hated the little pederast. He grabbed Lella by his neck and lifted him off Sira. Malle held him in the air, dangling, his face turning red then washing to blue as his air was cut off, then he grinned, shook Lella once more, and said, “What do you want done with the little beggar, my lord?”

“Take him to the storage hut. Anyone who wants to use him may use him, my women included. Do not beat him. I will see to him later. Ah, give him a blanket, I do not wish him to become cold.”

Sira was rubbing her throat. She looked at Einar now, and said, her voice and manner remote as a queen's, “I would have killed him.”

“Aye, I believe you.” He touched her face, the smooth cheek, the soft hair at her temple.

“What of me, my lord?” she asked now.

Einar was staring at her breasts, then at her belly. “I haven't made up my mind,” he said, “but I will. There is much to consider here,” and he walked from the longhouse.

Mirana knew she had to escape, tonight. She didn't care about the risk. She didn't want to die, but she knew well enough that if Einar found her again she would yell out the truth to him and he would kill her, that or humiliate her first, and he would do it more brutally than he had Lella. Ah, but perhaps death was preferable to the madness that festered here.

 

Hormuze was furious—with himself. He'd believed that once the king had managed to spend his passion with the young girl he, Hormuze, had found in the slave market and had personally trained, that the king would be content to wait now until the exact day and the exact month Hormuze knew from all his studies was the first fall month, and the first day of the fall month. Not before, not after.

But now Sitric wanted to fetch Mirana immediately. He didn't want to wait to be transformed again into a young man, vigorous and potent, a man who would once more be able to take a woman as many times a night as he had three decades before. He wanted it now, despite the risks, despite the dangers Hormuze had cautioned him about.

Hormuze wanted to stick his dagger in the old man's ribs. He tried to reason with him, even threatened that
his youth would probably slip away like a fragment of a dream were he not to wait until the time exactly foretold by all the signs, but such lyrical reason was beyond the old man's mind. No, Sitric wanted it now, he would risk all the dangers, the failure that could result by not listening to Hormuze.

He drew a deep breath and ceased his pacing. Very well. It was not far from the first day of the first fall month. It lacked but another cycle of the moon. It couldn't really matter, could it? But no matter how he rationalized it, Hormuze knew deep down that his studies and his conclusions drawn from stellar signs hadn't lied to him.

He was taking a big risk to fetch Mirana sooner, that moon cycle was critical, and deep down, he knew it.

But he also knew he had no choice. He couldn't afford to lose the king's trust, or he would lose everything. If he refused, Sitric would simply go fetch Mirana himself. No, he had to accept the risks. He would overcome the obstacles fate would doubtless place in his path. He always had.

He had heard rumors that Einar had lost his half-sister, that some Viking marauder had stolen her away, but then the rumors ceased and so he discounted them. The king's court was always rife with rumors. Still, it worried him. Einar wasn't a man of any honor to speak of. He trusted him only because Einar knew what riches lay in store for him if he delivered up his sister to Sitric. And she had to be a virgin; she had to be pure. She had to be clean of mind and spirit to be worthy.

Thus it was that the king, fifty of his warriors, and Hormuze left at first light the following morning for Clontarf, the Danish fortress held by Einar, son of Thorsson.

* * *

“They've left, Rorik.”

Kron was out of breath. Rorik waited a moment, then said, “Aye, I know it. Did you learn why?”

Kron nodded, then calmed his breathing. “I spoke to Aylla, the woman who owes her loyalty to Hormuze, the woman who nightly holds the king and chants her incantations to him. She said the king wanted Mirana now. He refused to wait longer. He wants his youth and his vigor returned to him now. Hormuze is displeased, but he had no choice but to obey the king's wishes.”

Rorik turned away from Kron and looked down at the glowing embers of their fire. They were close to Dublin, camped in a pine thicket whose branches overhung the shallow tidal river, Liffey. It rained all the time, or so it seemed to Rorik. The air was many times so thick and heavy that it was difficult to breathe; the land was too green, too lush for Rorik's tastes. It choked a man. The pine trees were crowded close by thick-branched strawberry trees and yew bushes and strange bloodred flowers that grew wild in the hedgerows.

He looked toward their two flat-bottomed longboats that had easily navigated the shallow muddy river and were now hidden beneath layers of pine branches not many yards away.

Rorik turned back when the embers suddenly sparked, striking each other loudly, and exploding small volcanoes of fire upward. He drew a deep breath and rose. He kicked sand onto the embers. Then he turned to his men who were waiting silently.

“We get the daughter now.”

 

It was easy, too easy, and Rorik worried about that. Hormuze's daughter, Eze, was alone with her servant,
an old woman with failing eyes. Kron lightly tapped the old woman against her head, caught her when she crumbled, and laid her gently onto a floor mat.

The girl just stared at the big men who filled her room, all of them staring at her.

Rorik knelt beside her. He took her hand and held it gently. “I won't hurt you, Eze. My name is Rorik. I will take you to see your father. He wants to take something that belongs to me and I must have you to trade. I intend you no harm. I know your father loves you. He won't endanger you. All I want is what is mine. Do you understand?”

Eze nodded. Her papa was above all men and he would see that she was all right. She looked at this man, younger than her father, stronger perhaps, larger. But he didn't frighten her.

“I understand you,” she said.

“You are a brave girl,” Rorik said and rose to his feet. “We must be away.” He stared down at the girl as she watched Hafter fetch her cloak from the trunk at the foot of her bed. She looked thoughtful, studious, a serious child. Then suddenly she smiled and something froze within him. He stared at her hard, then came down on his knees in front of her again. He turned her face to his. “Bring the light closer, Raki.” When it shone directly on the child's face, Rorik felt his heart slow and his breath shorten. “By all the gods,” he said slowly, wanting to disbelieve but unable to. “This is a mystery beyond any I had ever expected.”

He took the cloak from Hafter and wrapped it around her. They were away from Hormuze's spartan chambers within minutes. They were in the longboat and rowing down the Liffey by late afternoon.

 

“My lord.”

Einar turned at the sound of Gunleik's deep voice.
“Aye, what is it you want? I must think. There are many problems to deal with.”

“I know, but one of them is going to arrive here at Clontarf shortly.” Gunleik drew a deep breath. “The king and Hormuze will be here within the hour. They bring many warriors with them.”

Einar cursed.