He nodded, smiling at her as though he were her friend, a guest, not a man standing before her with a sword in his hand. “You are right, of course. There is little for me here now.” He looked bemused. “How odd that one of the Ingolfsson females lived and is right now telling of my rape of her. I had thought her well dead with all the rest of them. There was much gold and silver there—the man who told me was right about that. I have more than enough now.” He looked up at the strong palisade that protected Magnus’ farmstead. Then he looked out over the viksfjord to the mountains beyond.
“But this is my home and it pains me to be forced away. Aye, I have wealth now, but no land.”
“No one forced you to kill and rob and rape.”
He looked at her then, and there was no longer a smile on his face. “I do not discuss my deeds with women. You have no understanding of what forces drive a man.”
“I understand Magnus, and he is more a man than any I have ever known.” The moment the words were gone from her mouth, she froze, understanding flooding into her. Magnus was kind and fiercely loyal and he had truly wanted her to become his wife. He had loved Lotti and mourned the child’s death. And to lose his own son on the very same day . . . She felt small and petty and stingy. She had given him no comfort, provided him no understanding. She had wallowed in self-pity, ignoring him and his pain, selfishly shutting him away from her. She closed her eyes a moment, wishing that she could shut out all that she had done, all that she had said and thought, for now she understood—oh, yes, she well understood—that she had lied to herself and to him.
“Did Magnus take your maidenhead?”
She drew back, her eyes still clouded with her thoughts, and then his words came cleanly into her. Again she looked up that winding path, and saw herself running and running. She saw him catch her. What would happen then? She didn’t see that.
“Answer me, woman! Was it Magnus who took your virginity, or another man, that first man who wedded you?”
“ ’Twas Magnus.”
“Ingunn reviles you, calls you whore and slut, but I doubted it. She calls you these names even as she screams out the pleasure I give her. It is strange, but she is, still, only a woman and there is no sense to her actions.” He paused and looked upward toward the palisade. “You are right. Soon someone will notice that you are gone and perhaps even see me here speaking to you. We will leave now, Zarabeth.”
She turned and ran.
The meeting of the thing had continued now for three days. Harald was the chieftain who directed that the evidence against Orm be brought forward. But it was the Ingolfsson daughter, a girl named Minin, who was only twelve years old, who brought the meeting to a near-hysterical climax. Orm had raped her and then thrown her against some rocks, believing her dead. She had lain without consciousness for three days. She spoke in a quavering child’s voice, and each man there saw his own child in her stead; each man knew such fury he choked on it.
Orm was proclaimed outlaw. He would have to leave Norway, if he wasn’t killed first, for the Ingolfsson men wanted his blood.
Magnus sat across from his father and his brother Mattias that evening. It was warm and still bathed in the summer-evening half-light.
“I would go home,” Magnus said.
Mattias grinned
at him. “Your blood is heated, Magnus, and you would have your bride consume you.”
Magnus said nothing. He was seeing Zarabeth on her back beneath him, her eyes closed, her arms at her sides, her hands fisted, as he took her. That last night before he’d left to come to the thing, he had taken her yet again, as he had told her he would, and when he was done, he saw the tears seeping from her closed lids down her cheeks. She had made no sound. The tears had merely continued. By Thor, he hated it, hated her and himself as well.
“Nay, I would just leave here,” Magnus said. “My men wish to go on a-raiding, Ragnar tells me, just a small raid, he explains, to relieve the men of their boredom and fatten their caskets and relieve some fat English monks and their monastery of their gold and ornaments.” He sighed. “Perhaps we should go. Either a raid or we could hunt down Orm and take all the gold he’s stolen.”
Mattias said absently, “Toke Ingolfsson will kill Orm, and it is his right.” He looked at his father, who was rubbing a knotted muscle in his shoulder. “I agree with Magnus. Bring all this to a close on the morrow and let’s go home. I have my own bride to keep happy.”
Harald grunted, then winced as Magnus began to massage the knotted muscles in his shoulder. “Glyda isn’t a bride, she’s a wife, and only Freya knows why she cares more for you than you will ever deserve. You’re a rutting stoat and the poor girl must constantly suffer your pawing and your—”
Mattias laughed and buffeted his father’s other shoulder. “Me? A rutting stoat? Glyda is the one, Father, who pats the side of our bed and gives me those long-eyed looks.”
Magnus listened with half an ear to their jests. He missed Zarabeth and he worried about her. He didn’t want it to be true, but it was. Other men joined them, and Magnus moved away, wanting to be alone. He had felt wounded since the day Lotti and Egill had died, wounded inwardly, where none could see. He strode to the edge of the giant encampment and looked back at the myriad tents and cook fires spewing smoke into the air. He turned to stare at the snow-covered mountains in the distance. He had dreamed again of his son, and Egill appeared the same way he had in the first dream—alive but ragged and dirty. It ate at him, this damnable dream, for he was a straightforward man and this dream, or whatever it was, disturbed him profoundly. No, his son was dead, just as was Lotti. He had to accept it, for if he didn’t, how could he expect Zarabeth to?
He wanted to return to Malek.
He had to see her again.
Orm caught her in half a dozen steps. He grabbed her around the waist and hauled her off her feet, back against him, and he held her there, laughing, pressing his face against the back of her head. Then, without warning, he whirled her about and slapped her.
Not hard, just enough to sting her flesh and make an imprint of his hand on her cheek. Just hard enough so that she would fear him. “A taste of punishment,” he said, his face very close to hers. He was studying her expression, looking closely, hoping to see tears in her eyes. There were none, and he was tempted to hit her again, but he didn’t. It was enough for now. “You gave me no choice but to strike you. Don’t be foolish again, Zarabeth, else I will have to give you more than a simple taste of pain.”
But she couldn’t help herself. She slammed her fist into his belly, then began to struggle against him, tried to rip his face with her fingernails, and finally he grunted in disgust and slammed his fist to her jaw. She slumped against him, unconscious. As he lifted her over his shoulder, he looked upward to see if any in the farmstead was looking. He saw no one.
He carried his sword in his right hand and held his left to her buttocks to hold her steady over his shoulder.
When he reached the pine forest some fifty yards up the shoreline, one of his men emerged.