The Pirate Bride (24 page)

After all, there was no longer any reason for him to stay with her. Whether it was due to Sigurd’s kick to her belly or her regular monthly flux, she no longer carried Thork’s baby. If she ever had.

And wasn’t that the saddest thing of all?

First, you need to just breathe . . .

Thork’s rage could not be contained.

He wanted to swim through the tunnel, under water, until he got to the outside, then swim the considerable distance out to Small Island.

“Impossible! Have you lost your mind, Thork?” his father yelled, as he and his brothers held him back.

Then he wanted to attempt to climb up and over the mountain.

“It cannot be done, Thork. Believe me, many of us have tried over the years. There are no footholds,” Gudron said in a softer voice than he’d ever heard come out of her thin lips.

His father led them—his mother, his brothers, his men, and the warrior women of Thrudr—into the biggest longhouse, and they all sat down.

“Well, here is one thing I guarantee,” Thork stormed, and plopped down hard on his bench. “There will be steps built up and down that mountain in the future, if I have any say.”

“And why would you have any say in the future doings of Thrudr, my son?” his mother asked.

“You know bloody hell why. Because I love the bloody damn willful woman and I will no doubt have to live on this bloody damn awful island for the rest of my bloody fool life. That is why.”

His mother smiled and patted his arm, as if that was the answer she’d been seeking.

His father, on the other hand, swatted him aside the head and said, “Do not swear at your mother.”

Thork blinked, unaware that he had been swearing.

“Leave be, husband. He is not himself,” his mother said to his father.

“Hah! I will tell you this. If the boy does not calm down, I am going to douse him with that sleeping draught the women here are famous for.”

“You would not!” Thork stood and cast accusing eyes at his father.

“Listen, Thork, just breathe. Inhale deeply and exhale slowly. Calm yourself down,” his father said, shoving him down onto a bench and sitting down beside him. “You are no good to yourself or anyone else in your present condition. You cannot think when you are so distraught.”

“How would you feel if it was Mother?” he snapped.

“I know exactly how it feels. Your mother’s lackwit brothers captured her one time.”

Really? That was one story he had not heard. Thork rubbed a hand over his forehead. “It is just that I am worried. What is happening to her, at this moment? Brokk said they hit and kicked her while still on the island. What might they be doing now she is on their territory?”

“You cannot dwell on that, Thork,” his mother said. “Medana is a strong woman. Let her take care of the day to day. You need to think longer term.”

“Here is what we are going to do,” his father said, motioning for the others to come closer, the men as well as the women. “Thork, you will be taking the Thrudr longship to Hedeby, where you will take possession of your three longships, which are hopefully still there. Then you will send one longship to Northumbria under your brother Guthrom, to ask for your uncle Eirik’s assistance. Starri, you will take another longship to Dragonstead, where you will gather not only our men and longships, but go to our neighbors for their assistance. Thork, you will take the third longship to Stormgard, although I have my doubts about whether Sigurd and his brothers would go there. Your mother and I will go to King Harald’s court, where they will have to bring Medana eventually. They could not marry her off, if that is indeed the brothers’ plan, without the king’s consent.”

“What about us?” Gudron asked.

“You and your women will of course go with Thork to Hedeby, but then you should return to Thrudr in your own ship. Selik will come with you, then return to the island with you. It is important not to leave the island vulnerable in the midst of all this chaos. Bolthor, can you and Katherine stay here to hold things together?”

Bolthor agreed, reluctantly.

“We can fight, too,” Gudron asserted, raising her chin in defiance.

“And you will probably have to,” Tykir said. “Word will be out. Every miscreant in the world will be hastening here for the treasures they think you hoard on the island.”

Several women made harrumphing sounds at the idea of treasure on Thrudr, where day-to-day subsistence was a chore.

“Are we in agreement?” Tykir asked then. At their nods and vocal assents, he added, “We have all day to prepare our weapons and ready the longships. Have I covered everything?”

“One more thing,” his mother said. “Let us pray. Whether to my Christian One-God, or your Norse gods, we must seek guidance and protection from above.”

They all bowed their heads, in silence.

Thork took a deep breath and in his head said,
Help me, God of my mother, gods of my people. Help me find Medana and keep her with me thereafter. Help her to withstand whate’er her brothers throw her way until we arrive. Help me be the man she wants and needs. Help me!

He could swear a voice in his head replied,
She called you a loathsome lout. You are halfway there.

Chapter Twenty-Two

Nightmares are just dreams turned upside down . . .

F
or two days Medana was awaiting, or rather dreading, the return of her brothers to Snow Pines, her dower estate in the far north of the Norselands. Actually, it would be the return of Sigurd and Osten. They’d left her youngest brother, Vermund, to watch over them with a small group of
housecarl
s.

Nor that they’d seen much of Vermund. He seemed to be in a perpetual state of ale stupor since their arrival, as were his
housecarl
s.

Medana and Agnis and Egil probably could have walked out the door, but where would they go? It was some distance by land to the nearest fjord, and even then she did not know if there would be any longboats there. Although it was summertime, the weather was chilly and there was daylight most of the day. Land of the Midnight Sun.

“What will become of us?” Agnis asked, not for the first time.

They were in the summer kitchen, detached by a roofed, open-sided walkway from the keep’s main scullery, which was filthy and ruled with an iron hand by an often
drukkinn
, equally filthy cook. Here they worked with the meager provender available—barley flour to make unleavened bread, dried fish and venison, and a little honey crystallized in pottery jars that would suffice for oatcakes.

She could ask Vermund to hunt some game for their table, but she didn’t want to call attention to them down in the lower level where the kitchens and their bedchambers were located.

“I will marry Jarl Leistr Adilsson and go off to his estate, which is said to be run-down, but that is probably because there has been no woman in charge for many years.”

“Oh, Medana! How can you?”

“How can I not? I do not care about Snow Pines. I would sign it over to my brothers in a trice, but apparently the Odal laws are strict about such inheritances as mine, and the only way a male can gain ownership is through marriage.”
Or death.

“But he is said to be a hard man.”

“I have lived in a household of hard men for years. I know how to evade their evil clutches. I will survive.”

Agnis was at the cook fire, stirring the honey to make it regain its more liquid nature. Every once in a while, she would stretch and press her hand to her lower back. As the whip marks healed and tightened, she was in pain, though the woman never complained. Agnis was just so glad that Egil was safe. He was outside now, foraging for nuts and fruit.

Agnis’s face was still puffy and black and blue and yellow in spots. As was Medana’s, though not as bad as Agnis’s. That was one of the reasons Sigurd and Osten had brought them to Snow Pines . . . to heal. Oh, not out of any great sympathy for the pain the brothers had inflicted—they were, after all, only women—but Medana must be presentable when they took her to court to get the king’s forgiveness for her “crime” and permission for her to wed Jarl Adilsson. Or else a death sentence from the Althing court, which amounted to the same thing.

In Agnis’s case, Medana’s cruel, miscreant brothers wanted her healthy because they intended to sell her in the slave marts of Hedeby, the very town where she had been living freely for almost ten years. Agnis didn’t know that yet. Egil would be taken back to Stormgard, where he would be a thrall in his own father’s household.

“It will not be so bad. Leistr is old. If I can outlive him, mayhap I can make my way back to Thrudr,” Medana said.

Agnis looked at her, frightened for her future. “Dost think I would be able to go with you? Egil and I?”

“I do not know,” Medana lied. She still hoped . . . for what, she wasn’t sure. Oh, she knew Thork and his family would have searched for her, but by now they would have probably given up the search. Still, she was hoping for a miracle.

One of her biggest concerns was Thrudr. Once her brothers satisfied their greedy hunger with Snow Pines, they would look for other easy ways to fill their coffers. They might go back to Thrudr, thinking to find treasure, or if naught else, they would take the women as slaves, a tradeable commodity. Female pirates would garner a high price as a novelty.

Gudron would fight to the death, as would many of the others, but could they withstand the type of attacks her brothers would launch?

On the other hand, mayhap Thork and his father would make good on their promises to protect the island. She could only hope so.

Egil came rushing in then, his basket half full of nuts and berries. “Men are coming. Many men.”

Medana’s heart lifted for a moment.
Thork. Thork has come.

“I think it is my father,” Egil whispered in a fear-riddled voice.

Medana’s shoulders slumped.

Egil had the good sense to rush off and hide, but she and Agnis sat frozen in their chairs, awaiting whatever would come. They had almost an hour to wait.

Sigrun and Osten stomped in eventually, without a greeting. Not that she noticed their rudeness, so stunned was she by their appearance. Despite their fine garments, the two men looked as if they’d been in an alehouse brawl. Sigurd had a blackened eye and a scab growing over a cut in his bottom lip, and she wasn’t sure, but she didn’t think he’d had that bump in his nose before. Osten was limping and had one arm in a sling. Both had bruised knuckles.

“What happened to you two?” she blurted out.

“You happened to us,” Osten snarled.

“Me?” She was taken aback. “What have I to do with your injuries?”

“Thork Tykirsson came to Stormgard looking for you, and when he could not find you, he went berserk.”

At first she frowned with confusion.
Thork? He came for me?
She smiled, widely.

“You find humor in our pain?” Sigurd asked incredulously. His face flooded with color and he approached her with fisted hands.

She moved quickly, putting the table between them. “I was just surprised by your sudden appearance. What you see is happiness . . . happy to have company.”
My eyes are probably blinking madly, if Thork’s test for lying is true.
“We have been lonely here at Snow Pines, haven’t we, Agnis?”

Agnis, who still sat at the table, frozen with fright, nodded her head briskly.

“How is it, my dear sister,” Sigurd said, “that you cried rape when Ulfr bedded you, but you spread your thighs with ease for Tykirsson, who is known to be wild and dangerous, an outcast from his own family?”

“I . . . I have no idea what you mean.”
I will not blink. I will not blink.

“Liar! Once he realized that you weren’t at Stormgard, Tykirsson championed your cause for vengeance. The brute dared to attack us, in our very home. Believe you me, King Harald will hear of this outrage once the Althing commences.”

“I ne’er asked Thork—”

“Thork, is it? How is it that the man knows of the scars on your back, girl, lest you were his harlot? Lest you set him on a path of retribution?”

“Of course she is a harlot. There is naught new in that,” Osten contributed.

“Everyone knew about the beatings I suffered at your hands, anyone who lived at Stormgard,” she tried to say, but her brothers had already moved on to another complaint.

“We have more immediate problems.” Sigurd took Medana by the arm and hauled her to her feet. Glaring, he spat out, “You have been here at Snow Pines for nigh on two sennights, and this keep is a pigsty.”

You are just now noticing? Where have you been the past ten years when this estate has been moldering away?

“I wouldn’t sleep on the bed linens here! They are no doubt loaded with lice.” Sigurd’s eyes, which matched hers in color, were bulging with outrage.

You would be right about the bed linens. Except for those Agnis and I boiled and rinsed, boiled and rinsed in the laundry tubs.

Sigurd was going on about the greasy tables in the great hall, the moldy, stinksome rushes, the salon, the corridors, even the stables. “Why haven’t you cleaned the place?”

“Me? You expected me to clean the entire keep?” Medana asked with consternation. She was accustomed to hard labor, but while Snow Pines wasn’t a large building, it would still require more than her and Agnis, to maintain it. “There is no staff here to speak off,” she sputtered out. “The steward and house servants left long ago when none of them were paid, and no women are safe here with . . .” She let her words trail off when she’d meant to mention Vermund and his
drukkinn
comrades.

But her unfinished explanation didn’t matter.

“If I had my way, I would beat you bloody and send you to a nunnery.” He shoved her away, causing her to stumble and have to catch her balance with the edge of the table.

Osten picked up where his brother left off. “And the food! The roast boar is rancid, and I saw dead weevils in the bread.” He glanced around the small, meticulously clean summer kitchen and picked up an oatcake, popping it into his mouth. “ ’Twould seem you know how to care for yourself well enough, though.”

Now they are going to blame me for their filthy cook? What next? The garderobes?

Sigurd’s attention turned to Agnis then. “Go prepare a chamber for me and my brother, thrall. And wait for me in my bed.”

Agnis, who a short time ago had been an independent, happy merchant in Hedeby, cowered and scurried off to do Sigurd’s bidding. And Medana felt helpless to do anything about Agnis’s position. She would grab a knife and stab her brother in a trice if that would save Agnis, or herself. But that would only cause more problems for them. Nay, she needed to act docile and accepting until she could come up with a plan.

Gathering all her courage, she motioned for Sigurd to sit down at the table. “We must talk, brother.”

“Must we?” Sigurd arched a brow with scorn, but he sat down.

Meanwhile, Osten was already seated on the same bench and stuffing bread and honey and oatcakes into his mouth.

“What do you want of me?” she asked, sitting across from the two brothers.

“Not what I want of you, but what you
will
do. We leave in the morning for Vestfold. The Althing will start in five days, where we will present a case for pardon of your crime against Ulfr and permission to wed Leistr. Throughout this whole process, you will act repentant and humble. And you will do everything in your power to make yourself agreeable to your betrothed. In fact, if he chooses to test your wares afore the wedding, there will be no talk of rape this time.”

Inside, she cringed, but she would not show her brother how repulsed and frightened she was. “Is that all?”

Her sarcasm fueled his anger even more. “Dare you take an attitude with me, you demented bitch?” He half stood and reached across the table with an open palm raised high, about to slap her, hard.

Osten pulled him back just in time and cautioned, “No marks. Remember. Leistr must believe she comes willingly.”

With a sigh of resignation, she looked directly at first one brother, then the other. “You cannot sell Agnis. She and Egil must come with me after I wed. I will not cooperate, otherwise.”

“You have no choice,” Sigurd snapped, and she could tell he was barely restraining himself from doing her some bodily harm.

“Wait, Sigurd,” Osten said. “If giving up Agnis will ensure Geira’s compliance, then let it be so. As for the boy . . . you have sons aplenty. A thrall son will make no difference.”

Idiots! My brothers are callous idiots.

Sigurd hesitated and then nodded. Gods only knew if he would keep his word, but his concession would give them time. For what, she wasn’t sure.

“Why? Why do you go to all this trouble?” she asked then. “Take Snow Pines. I’ll go away, and this time you can have me declared dead.”

Sigurd laughed and it was not a nice laugh. “You lackbrain split-tail! Snow Pines is of little importance to us. Leistr will die soon after your marriage, and we will get our hands on his vast wealth. After that, we will find you another husband. A graybeard again, of course. And from there, at your age, we figure you may manage at least three more marriages afore you lose your comeliness.”

“Comeliness?” she choked out, the least important of all the filth her brother spouted.

“Yea. Men seem to find you attractive,” Osten explained. “I cannot see it myself.”

“Me neither,” Sigurd said with a shiver of distaste.

Medana sat there, stunned, in the face of her brothers’ leering looks. Their plan for her was so much more evil than she ever could have imagined. She suspected they weren’t talking about natural deaths for her husbands.

And she knew in that moment that her nightmare was about to get much worse.

It was like a giant festival, except he wasn’t feeling very festive . . .

Thork had run into so many dead ends he no longer knew where to search for Medana anymore. He was beyond worried about her condition, with the vicious nature of her brothers.

One of the first places he had gone after regaining his men and longships at Hedeby was Stormgard, where he was told on arriving that Medana’s brothers Sigurd and Osten were in residence. After ascertaining from some guards they’d captured that Medana was not there and hadn’t been for more than ten years, he had stormed into the great hall, uninvited.