Besieged (5 page)

Peggy took a deep breath and expelled it.
She prayed to God the custom had been lost in antiquity to the stone-dwellers.

* * * * *

Who were these people that had taken her
captive? Peggy wondered for what felt to be the millionth time as Geirwolf
helped her from the dogsled. Their journey, she had been told, was over now,
yet she couldn’t make out the beginnings of a village anywhere within viewing
distance.

She took a thorough look around, noting
that the climate had grown harsher, snowier, than the climate she’d been stolen
from. What was going to happen to her now? she asked herself. Had she been
brought here as a breeder, as Sara had indicated, or as something else
entirely?

“Let’s move,” Geirwolf barked to his men.
“I want us out of sight as quickly as possible.”

Peggy’s eyebrows rose. She offered her
captor no resistance when he took her by the arm and guided her toward what
appeared to be an empty snowbank, but wasn’t. Her brow furrowed as she watched
the heavily muscled Aevar grit his teeth, his muscles bulging, while he
manipulated a snowbank that was no snowbank. Instead it was a well-concealed,
ice-coated stone door leading to only who knows where. The door eventually
gave, and Aevar quit gritting his teeth.

She was intrigued despite herself. Peggy
estimated that they were deep into the belly of the Arctic by now—perhaps still
in Alaska, perhaps not. Wherever they were, it was in a climate so harsh, so
remote and seemingly uninhabitable, that nobody ever bothered to venture here
let alone build villages in so rough an atmosphere.

She swallowed over the lump in her throat.
Apparently the stone-dwellers lived in villages that went below the ground or
were carved out of caves. She couldn’t imagine what else the stone door could
possibly lead to.

Peggy took a deep breath, realizing at once
that nobody would ever think to look for her here.

She chewed on her bottom lip. They wouldn’t
even know that here existed.

Gawking at her surroundings, Peggy couldn’t
seem to close her gaping jaw as they walked through the ice-coated stone door
and into another world, a world that looked as though it had been frozen in
time a thousand and some odd years ago, never to be touched by the hands of
progress. Or what outsiders would consider to be progress at any rate.

The narrow passage they had been walking
through abruptly widened, and an entire civilization previously unknown to her
was revealed. Throughout the mammoth underground cave, which was lit by
lanterns, smaller caverns had been dug out of the walls. To the left were a
series of small merchant dens where citizens were even now bartering for goods,
and to the right there were about six grocer dens, all of them specializing in
the selling of different foods.

All of these fascinating bartering dens
were sealed off from the corridor she was walking through by doors, the doors
actually being no more than black iron bars that were lifted up and out of the
way during hours of commerce.

Peggy’s brow furrowed as an odd awareness
went through her. Something, she thought anxiously, was troubling about this
scene. Something she couldn’t quite pinpoint. She was tired, she realized, so
maybe it would take a while before she figured it—

She gulped. Her eyes widened.

Oh. My. God.

Peggy’s jaw about unglued when it dawned on
her that every woman in the vicinity—every woman!—was either totally naked or,
at minimum, topless.
No way!
she thought angrily.
No way am I walking
around like this!

“Is this,” she hissed, her nostrils
flaring, “some kind of a sick joke?”

Aevar chuckled, immediately recognizing the
source of Peggy’s distress.

She came to an abrupt halt and spun around.
She took a moment to glare Aevar into silence, then turned her narrowed gaze to
her captor. “I’m not kidding!” she said in a venomous whisper. “I refuse to
walk around like that!”

Geirwolf frowned. “It’s the accepted dress
for females amongst our people.”

“What dress? They are naked!” Peggy’s eyes
widened in horror as she quickly glanced around, her anxiety-ridden gaze
drinking in the sight of so many nude women. She turned back to Geirwolf, her
aqua eyes pleading. “I feel like I’m going to be sick. I can’t do this. I
absolutely cannot walk around like that.”

His eyes softened a bit. “All will be
well.”

“All will be well?” Her nostrils flared to
wicked proportions. “All will
not
be well!” she spat. “I am a scientist,
not a…a…stripper!”

His gaze hardened, telling her without
words that, insofar as he was concerned, the subject was not up for
negotiation. “You will learn to accept this.”

“Why did you take me?” she breathed out,
her voice desperate. Her breathing grew labored as acute panic settled in. Her
hand balled into a fist. “Why don’t you let me go?”

“Peggy…”

But she had no interest in whatever it was
her captor had been about to say. “Go away!” she screeched, batting at the hand
that was trying to rest on her shoulder in a gesture of reassurance. “Go away!”

In an instinctive action born of fear and
self-preservation, Peggy dashed around Geirwolf before he could catch her and
ran toward the stone door leading back to the outside. Her heart felt as though
it was going to beat out of her chest as her arms and legs pumped like mad,
trying to outrun him.

“Help me!” she screamed, not for the
benefit of those inside who she knew would offer no assistance, but in the
futile hope that somebody on the outside world would hear her. It was a small
chance at best, but the only real one she had. “Please help me! I was stolen by
a crazy man!” she wailed as she ran toward the door. “Please somebody help me!”

Peggy ran smack into a male she didn’t
recognize, knocking the wind out of her as she tumbled backward to the ground.
She gasped for air, panic enveloping her again when Geirwolf and Aevar plucked
her off of the ground.

The other two men who had rode with them
out on the tundra were there too, men whose names she didn’t know—men whose
names she had no desire to know. They spoke to Geirwolf in their common tongue,
so she had no idea what they were saying to him.

Peggy screamed as loudly as she could, her
arms and legs flailing madly as the men picked her up and carried her away.
“Please somebody help me!” she cried, tears welling up in her eyes. “Oh
god—please!”

It took all four of them to restrain her, a
testament to the adrenaline coursing through her blood. She’d never felt so
panicked and out of control as she felt at this moment.

For the first time since this surreal
situation had begun, it dawned on Peggy that these men would never let her go
alive…

Unless outsiders came in and forced them to
release her.

* * * * *

Geirwolf ran a hand over his stubbly jaw,
then wearily plopped down onto the tavern bench. He thanked Hilda, the tavern
master’s wife, when she set a mug of hot tea and whiskey before him. He threw a
silencing look at his brother Aevar, who was still busy chuckling over Peggy’s
screaming and kicking episode.

“‘Twas amusing,” Aevar sniffed, his tone
defensive.

Geirwolf frowned. “Mayhap to you, but not
to me. She called me a crazy man. Did you hear her speak thusly of me?”

The two brothers continued their
conversation in Old Norwegian, the untainted version of it that was centuries
old and more familiar to them than English. Old Norwegian was a tongue so
different from modern Norwegian that nobody in the motherland would even
recognize it in the present day.

The English spoken by their people, on the
other hand, was of the modern variety, taught to them by captured American
brides. Hence, when males of the Valkraad clan spoke in English, it tended to
be through a romanticized, feminine view of the world. A fact their mother
often had a laugh about.

Aevar snorted. “She is distraught. She will
come to accept you in time. You know this, Wolf.”

Geirwolf said nothing to that, merely
frowned at his hot tea and whiskey. “I just hope the trainers aren’t too tough
on her. I don’t want her spirit broken, only amenable.”

“The trainers know what they are about,
brother. Many of them are married women who have been dealing with captive
brides for years.”

“True.”

Aevar grinned. “Hurry up and breed her and
then she can leave the breeding stalls. Mayhap you won’t worry about her
fragile—” He coughed into his hand, knowing it was a ridiculous word to
describe Peggy given today’s outburst—”spirit. If she’s always near to you,
that is.”

Geirwolf gave him a semi-smile. “I’ll let
her settle in.” His expression grew thoughtful, serious. “But,” he murmured,
“I’ll begin as soon as the ceremonial words are spoken.”

Peggy was certain she had died and gone to
hell. Gone were her clothes, gone were her shoes, gone was her dignity, gone
was her life, period. In its place was Hell with a capital H.

Upon awakening from the effects of the
sleeping agent she’d been given last night to help calm her, the first thing
Peggy noticed was that she had been bathed without her knowledge or consent and
was now completely naked. Even her pubic hair had been trimmed into a tiny
triangle, the coppery arrow pointing down to her hooded clit. The rest of her
mons was as smooth as baby skin.

The second thing she noticed was that her
feet were painted with intricate designs in a henna-based pigment. She had no
idea why this had been done to her and harbored a strong suspicion that she
wouldn’t like the answer.

The third thing Peggy noticed upon waking
was that she was being corralled in an area with a bunch of other naked women,
some of them English-speaking and weeping in the way she felt like doing, some
of them giddy and speaking that odd tongue she couldn’t place. All of them had
henna designs etched into their feet. Again, the anthropologist in her
screamed, this didn’t bode well.

Especially since in some cultures, such as
India, painted feet often preceded marriage ceremonies.
Shit
.

“Good morn, everyone.”

Peggy’s head shot up at the sound of the
feminine voice. Her gaze immediately honed in on the speaker, noting her to be
in her late thirties or early forties. The woman was naked like the rest of the
females in the corral, her pubic hair trimmed down into a tiny blonde triangle.
Also like the other females, her feet were painted. The only noticeable
difference insofar as Peggy could see was that the speaker was wearing gold arm
bangles around either bicep, whereas the other captives hadn’t been adorned
with them.

“My name is Ivara,” the speaker continued
in that same accent as Geirwolf’s, “and I, along with the help of two other
Valkraad women, will be helping…err…how do you say?…
prepare
you for your
new lives.”

Peggy frowned. This definitely did not bode
well.

“Please stand up.” The speaker smiled
warmly. “I would like for everyone to introduce themselves.”

Peggy blinked. She had been kidnapped,
drugged, and otherwise humiliated, yet she was supposed to stand up and
introduce herself as if nothing was amiss? Yeah. Right.

“I said stand up.” Ivara’s smile dissolved,
replaced with a harsher expression when none of the English-speaking females
took to their feet. Peggy snorted at that, wondering what kind of reception
this woman had possibly expected from them.

Ivara narrowed her eyes at the
English-speaking women, Peggy included. “I repeat,” she said softly, motioning
toward a male guard without breaking eye contact, “stand
up
.” The guard,
a huge, thickly muscled male close to seven feet in height, raised his hand,
revealing the bullwhip he held. He lashed it once on the ground for effect, the
severe sound shocking.

Peggy’s eyes widened. She scurried to her
feet.

Shit.

“Very good.” Ivara smiled warmly again, her
earlier irritation seemingly forgotten. “Now, you will introduce yourselves to
me and to your other trainers. When we have finished, I will then tell you more
about what will be expected of you in New Norway.”

New Norway, Peggy thought as she nibbled on
her lower lip. So she had been right—this society was some offshoot of the
ancient Viking lineage. If she’d been studying this culture as an
anthropologist, she would have been fascinated. As a captive, however, all she
felt was unadulterated fear.

Peggy listened with half an ear as the
captives introduced themselves one by one. When it was her turn to speak, she
muttered out a half-hearted “my name is Peggy,” then spoke no more. Apparently
she’d said enough, for the whip-wielding giant didn’t make any moves to hit
her.

Before long Ivara was speaking again.
“Every female in this area has been claimed as a Valkraad bride.” Her smile was
proud. “Of this, you should feel fortunate—”

“Fortunate!” an English-speaking captive
spat out, interrupting the trainer. A beautiful caramel-colored woman of what
looked to be mixed Afro-European lineage, her light brown eyes were as frantic
as her speech. “Well, I don’t! And I want to go home!”

Ivara’s eyes narrowed at the recalcitrant
captive. The whip-wielding giant took a step forward, but Ivara held up a palm
and shook her head. She muttered something in her tongue to the giant, who
apparently grumbled his agreement. “Michelle, is it?”

But Michelle didn’t answer. She was too
busy crying. Peggy reached out and took the young woman’s hand, noting that she
couldn’t be more than nineteen. “It’ll be okay,” she whispered. “Just stand by
me and relax. We’ll figure something out.”

Ivara’s eyebrows rose. Peggy could tell the
trainer was wondering what she had said to Michelle to calm her. Michelle was
now standing close to Peggy, quiet and semi-collected, though still sniffling.

“Well,” Ivara said to Peggy, her gaze a bit
suspicious. “I see you are a quick study.” She shared a look Peggy didn’t know
the meaning of with the whip-wielder behind her, then turned back to the crying
captive. “Michelle,” she said softly, “I realize this is difficult for you. At
least right now. But things will look up.”

Michelle said nothing. She huddled her nude
body closer to Peggy’s and continued sniffling. Peggy put her arm around her,
offering silent comfort.

“It’s best,” Ivara continued, “for you to
accept your fate and adjust to the new life waiting here for you in New
Norway.” Her gaze remained fixed on Michelle, though Peggy realized the trainer
was speaking to all of the female captives.

Ivara was silent for a moment, but finally
smiled warmly to the captives and continued her speech. “I had thought to begin
by telling you of what your future mates will expect in their wives, yet I see
now that topic must wait.” She sighed, and oddly enough, Peggy was fairly
certain the action was genuine. Whatever it was Ivara was about to tell them,
it appeared that she held no desire to do so. Peggy gulped.

“A happy fate awaits every woman here in
the breeding stalls,” Ivara began. She stopped when the English-speaking
captives, Peggy included, gasped at her words.

“Breeding stalls?” Michelle murmured to
Peggy, her gaze unblinking. “Oh my god.”

Peggy swallowed against the lump in her
throat. Her thoughts exactly.

“Unless,” Ivara said firmly, “you refuse to
accept your fate.” She whispered something to the giant behind her, then turned
back to the captives. “I want everyone to form a single file line. We will
begin this morn’s instruction by visiting first the Commons and then the
Dungeon of Shame.” She turned around, then cocked her head to look at the
captives from over her shoulder. “I think it’s best,” she said softly, “if you
see what becomes of recalcitrant brides.”

Peggy and Michelle glanced at each other warily,
then broke apart to form a single file line. Peggy stepped in front of the
younger woman, unconsciously trying to shield her from the trainers and the
whip-holding man whose name they had still not learned.

The other captives got in line behind them,
all of them looking solemn. Even the women native to New Norway seemed to tense
up at the mention of this field trip.

Peggy stepped in line behind Ivara and
another trainer, preparing to follow them to wherever it was the captives were
to be led. The giant with the whip and the third trainer took their places at
the end of the line, keeping a vigil to make certain nobody dared try to
escape. The giant’s eyes flicked over Peggy’s body as he took to the end of the
line, a gesture that made her conscious of her nudity. She blushed, her hands
instinctively flying up and cupping her breasts to shield them.

He grunted and continued on. She blew out a
breath of relief.

As the naked women were led from the large
underground earthen room they’d been closeted in, Peggy noticed that there were
several stone doors dotted all around it, leading to what were presumably
connecting chambers. She was curious as to what all the doors led to, at first
assuming that they permitted natives to reach the “breeding stalls” from various
points in the primitive underground kingdom. But she assumed incorrectly, a
fact she was quick to find out.

Peggy’s heartbeat accelerated when the
captives passed by an open door. She immediately recognized the rooms for what
they were—trysting chambers. A place for the men of New Norway to be with their
captives in private. A place where they could—she gulped—breed them.

The individual rooms were much smaller than
the large inner chamber they were adjoined to. There was enough space in each
one to fit two people and a bed, but nothing else.

Her thoughts turned to young Sara. She
wished she had heeded the twelve-year-old Inupiat girl’s whispered advice more
than words could say. She had been a fool to dismiss the stone-dweller legends
as just that. Her present circumstance was living proof of the fact that the
tales were true.

What now, Peggy? How the hell are you
ever going to break out of this place?

Escape was looking grimmer by the moment,
she silently conceded. Even if she could find a way to sneak from the breeding
stalls, she had no idea where they were located in conjunction to the
ice-coated stone door leading to the outside. And even if she made it to the
outside, what then?

On the way here their party had driven by
dogsled for days without seeing a single soul. How in the world would she ever
manage to find civilization on foot?

Peggy shivered as the captives were led
from the breeding stalls and down a frigid earthen corridor that wasn’t heated.
Her nipples immediately plumped up, the ice-cold air making them stiff. Her
hands dropped to her sides, her nipples too sensitive to continue palming her
breasts in a fruitless mission to keep them covered. It wasn’t like it mattered
anyway, she thought resignedly. Anybody passing by could see the rest of her
naked body.

“Here is our first destination,” Ivara
announced in thickly accented English. She stopped before a tall door made of
wood and iron bars, then turned around and faced the group, her expression
grim. She threw a blonde curl over her shoulder. “In this room,” she said in an
authoritative tone, “you will bear witness to what becomes of recalcitrant
brides. This large cavern we are about to enter is called the Commons Chamber,
or more simply, the Commons.” She waved a hand towards the door. “The females
inside have been sentenced as laborers here. They see to the needs of
all
males covetous of their bodies, rather than just the
one
male who was to
be their husband,” she said pointedly.

Peggy could feel Michelle tense up from
behind her. She held out her hand without turning around, letting the young
girl clutch onto her for comfort. Lord only knows, Peggy thought as she nibbled
on her lower lip, that she could use a little comforting herself.

The captives were ushered in single file
through the door and paraded in front of a group of loud, boisterous—and
huge—men. The men immediately took notice of the captives and began to whistle
and shout out things at them in their native tongue.

Peggy tensed up, yelping when a heavily
muscled blonde man ran his callused palm over her exposed breasts, squeezing
them as she walked past. Ivara said something to him in a reprimanding tone, to
which the giant only grinned.

Peggy blew out a breath of relief even as
her heart rate picked up. She quickly forgot about the man who’d groped her,
concentrating instead on gawking at her surroundings.

Males were seated all around the Commons, a
room that looked to be a large tavern. Naked women were scurrying about
everywhere, waiting on tables and catering to the men here. The only difference
Peggy could see about the females in general was that rather than having a
small triangle of hair between their thighs, all of their pubic hair had been
shaved bald. Also, their feet were not painted. Otherwise, they looked the same
as everyone else here. Naked, she thought grimly.

But that wasn’t what was making her gape at
the people inside of the tavern. The upsetting part was that Ivara hadn’t lied.
The bodies of these poor women were being groped and fondled, pinched and
played with, and none of the males seemed to be asking for permission. Men were
pulling the serving maids down onto their erect laps and doing whatever they
wanted to do to them. Suck on their nipples, shove the women’s faces down to
give them blowjobs, fuck them—they did everything.

Peggy’s hand unconsciously flew up to cover
her mouth. She watched in morbid fascination as the body of a beautiful
brunette was stretched out onto a table by four men. The men were laughing and
boisterous as they sucked on her stiff nipples and played in her cunt. They
spoke in their native tongue so she had no idea what was being said.

“Oh my god,” Michelle whimpered, threading
her fingers through Peggy’s. “Look what they’re doing to her.”

Peggy could only nod, her gaze snagged by
the scene across the room. She watched as the woman was turned over and placed
on all fours. A groaning Viking sank into her pussy from behind, his fingers
digging into the flesh of her hips as he rode her body hard. The woman gasped,
giving another male the opportunity to shove his swollen cock into her mouth.

The men rode her body hard, stuffing her
cunt and mouth full of cock. She could hear the woman moan from around the
penis fucking her face, and didn’t know what to make of it. Were they moans of
pleasure? Or, she thought wide-eyed, moans of horror at what was being done to
her?