Season of the Sun (Viking Era 1)

“Ha, I barely touched you, lying bitch! You carry on to impress Magnus, but he has guessed what you are about. Even though he has rutted you, he isn’t stupid. His senses are returned now. You betrayed him before, lied to him, and now he knows what you really are. He has left, but were he still here, he would not protect you.”

Zarabeth felt the blood pounding through her as her anger built, anger and fear that Ingunn had spoken the truth. “I did not betray him!”

“Keep to your lies, I care not. But you will cease your laziness and rise. There is much to be done and I cannot do it all. You take, yet return nothing. That is not the way of the Vikings, and you are but a worthless slave.”

Zarabeth forced herself to sit up. She realized she was naked and pulled the woolen blanket to her chin.

Ingunn looked at her long and hard, the ungoverned hatred she felt toward this woman growing so that now it nearly choked her.

“Know the truth, slut. Magnus does not know what to do with you. He doesn’t want you now, for he has had you and known not the pleasure he receives from Cyra, but you pretend to such pain that he cannot turn you out now. He wants to sell you, he told me but hours ago, but you are here crying and whining, so what can he do? I could tell him that all this is naught but an act, a sham, but I do not want to hurt him. You did quite enough of that, did you not? So now he has a worthless hag sleeping in his bed and gets nothing from her save what her skinny body offers to him. Just look at you—you are a witch, a bedraggled slut!”

The words pounded through her and Zarabeth wanted to shake her head to clear them away, she wanted to scream at Ingunn that it wasn’t true, that she was lying, that Magnus didn’t want to sell her, that . . .

“I will rise in a few minutes. Please leave, Ingunn, I must dress.”

“And you wish to work now? Magnus will not allow me to whip you until you are well again. But he has left because he no longer wishes to see you. It pains him still, your betrayal of him. Do you tell me that you are willing to do what I bid you to do, without whining to Magnus?”

“Aye, I am willing.” Aye, she thought then, she was also a fool, for she had let Ingunn weave her into a web of her own spinning with great ease. Her back throbbed and her head ached, but she refused to be a useless weight. She could not, she would not. Slowly she rose. At least her belly was full. Slowly she managed to pull open the lid of Magnus’ chest. Her gowns lay there, where he had told her to put them. Slowly she pulled an old gown over her head, one that was frayed and too short for her now. Slowly she forced herself to walk into the hall.

Magnus steered his single-man boat cross-current to the northeastern side of the viksfjord. The water was calm, the air cool, the sun bright overhead, but he didn’t particularly notice the beauty of the day. He was worried and he was angry, for once again he felt out of control of himself, a condition he should be getting used to, a condition that had begun when he had returned for Zarabeth.

When he reached his parents’ farmstead, he waved to the guards, keeping his distance until he was recognized. This farmstead was twice the size of Malek, for there were at least one hundred people living and working here. The wheat and rye fields were bounded by high rock borders.

The farmstead village wasn’t encircled with a wooden palisade, but rather came to the shoreline itself. There was a wall only at the rear of the farmstead, nearly against the line of pine trees so thick that it would take a very stealthy enemy to gain any surprise advantage.

He strode inside the huge longhouse and felt familiar memories flood him. He smelled the same smells as had the young boy, saw his mother’s loom in its place where it had been as far back as he could remember. There was his mother, Helgi, in the middle of a score of chattering women and children, and she was smiling at him, coming quickly toward him, soon hugging him until his ribs ached, for she was strong as a man.

She was still smiling until she looked up at his beloved face. She touched her fingers to his cheek. “What is wrong, Magnus? Ah, no, you needn’t answer that. It is the woman, isn’t it? What has happened?”

Magnus laughed, a raw, ugly sound. “Is my face so open for all to see, then?”

“Only to a mother’s sharp eye. Come and sit down.” She called for mead, then followed her son to one of the long wooden benches.

He noticed a faint line of perspiration on her broad forehead. The hall was hot, overly so, and he frowned. “Come outside, Mother. You grow overheated in here.”

Helgi smiled and nodded.

Outside, he took her arm and led her toward the shore. “Father is hunting?”

“Aye, the men must hunt enough for the winter. How go your stores?”

“I hunted with my men all day yesterday.”

“I see.”

He drew a deep breath. “Ingunn must be wedded. She cannot remain at Malek.”

Helgi remained silent in her surprise.

He looked at his mother, and felt her love flow through him. Unquestioned love, he thought. There was nothing he could do, nothing he could ever say, that would change that. He gave it up without a whimper and told her what had happened.

“. . . Zarabeth is now lying on my bed, on her belly, her back raw from Ingunn’s whip. My house is a battlefield. Ingunn must go. She has changed, somehow. But perhaps you have already seen some of it. She loses control; she speaks rashly, without restraint. You must bring her here until Father finds a husband for her, since he has dismissed Orm’s claim.”

Helgi looked clearly at her son and nodded slowly. “Aye, I have seen it, but she is your sister. Why have Ingunn leave Malek? She is your sister, after all, and has seen to your household for five years now. Why not bring Zarabeth here? She will be a slave here for me. I will even buy her from you so that she would never be your responsibility again. That would bring you peace again, would it not?”

He stiffened and Helgi smiled into the distance, knowing this would be his reaction. “Very well, Magnus, you want the woman with you. You love her. Despite all she has done, you love her.”

He said slowly, his brow furrowed, “I truly do not know if she poisoned her husband, Olav. I would have sworn that she could not have done it. There is a gentleness about her, you see, a caring that would make such a deed alien to her nature.” He shrugged. “But Olav’s son and his wife . . . they swore and swore, and there were others as well.”