Season of the Sun (Viking Era 1)

“Get up.”

There was venom in Ingunn’s voice, and triumph as well. Zarabeth got to her feet, the movement sending waves of pain into her jaw. She rubbed it gently, then opened and closed her mouth several times. Her jaw wasn’t broken, thank her Christian God and the Viking gods as well.

“You will get no sympathy from me, Zarabeth, so don’t try your stupid tricks.” Ingunn stepped closer. “I told you I would pay you back for what you have done to me. I told you I would make you regret what you did, and here you are. Now, you will carry these things.” She threw several bound bundles at her. Zarabeth picked them up. They were heavy. Orm called out then, and she shifted the bundles in her arms.

There were only two of them walking, an older woman and she. Orm and his two men and Ingunn all rode. She wondered who the woman was, but she kept her head down and away from Zarabeth, as if she were afraid of her. Whoever she was, the woman appeared to be a captured slave, just as she herself was. Unconsciously Zarabeth touched her fingers to her throat where the iron slave collar had once encircled her. She closed her eyes a moment and pictured Magnus in her mind. He would find her. He would come for her. If he still cared at all about her.

Unless all the people at Malek convinced him that she had fled or that she had killed herself. She remembered that last night with Magnus. He had taken her and she had chanted over and over to herself that she hated what he was doing to her, hated him for forcing himself on her like that night after night, and the tears had come and she’d known he was looking at her, seeing her tears but hearing no sounds from her, and he’d pushed deeper then, and deeper still, as if to prove that what she felt, what she did, meant nothing to him. Then he had left the next morning and she had looked away from him even after he had kissed her in front of his men and ridden away from her laughing.

With two of them walking, the pace was slow. Finally Orm called a halt. He called to one of the two men, Kol, and ordered him to take the other woman up on his horse. Orm took Zarabeth on his horse, in front of him.

Ingunn rode close. “Let her have my horse, Orm. I will ride with you. This isn’t right, having a slave treated so finely.”

“I would think having her ride a horse singly, without one of us holding her, would be treating her more finely.”

Ingunn chewed her lower lip, searching wildly for something to say that would change his mind. She saw that Zarabeth was markedly silent. She watched as Zarabeth accepted Orm’s hand, watched the muscles in his arm bunch as he lifted her up in front of him. He then held her against his chest, his arms around her, holding the horse’s reins in front of her. Ingunn felt great fury, a greater sickness in her belly. She wished she had a dagger; she would surely stick it in the woman’s ribs.

“Ingunn!”

She swallowed her anger and eased her mare beside his stallion. “Aye?”

“Tell me more about this slave with her strange hair and strange name. You called her a slut and a whore and said she had bewitched your brother. Why is this?”

“My brother wished to wed with her, but she betrayed him. She sent him away and wedded with an old man who was richer than Magnus. Then she poisoned him slowly. She is not to be trusted. She is a witch, with many tricks.”

“I trust no one, man or woman, so I am safe. As for her tricks, well, do you believe me a fool, Ingunn?”

She looked at him stupidly for a moment, then saw that his eyes had darkened, the blue irises blazing nearly black. Quickly, for she was suddenly afraid of him, she shook her head.

“Say it,” he said.

“Nay, you are not a fool, Orm.”

“Good. You please me when you are obedient, Ingunn.” His eyes lightened, and the wildness was gone from them as suddenly as it had come. Ingunn remembered the brief speech she’d had with him before he’d gone to take Zarabeth. She had said, her voice trembling, “Perhaps I am a fool.” The instant the words were out of her mouth, she had hated herself for speaking them.

“What mean you?”

“I came to you because I believed you loved me. I left my parents’ farmstead to come to you.”

“And now you change your woman’s mind? You are foolish, Ingunn. You will be my wife, doubt it not.”

Now she said, “What will you do with her?”

“I have yet to decide.”

Ingunn had nothing more to say. In her mind’s eye, she had seen Zarabeth, that wild red hair loose and full down her back, and felt the familiar rancor boil in her belly. She would still have her revenge. Orm was a man, and she mustn’t forget a man’s weaknesses. Magnus had succumbed to this woman and turned on her, his own sister, very quickly.

Orm was speaking again, but it wasn’t to her. It was to Zarabeth. “Does your jaw still pain you?”

“Nay.”

“Excellent. You seem a strong woman, and that pleases me. Now, tell me, what do you think Magnus will do when he returns to Malek and finds you gone?”

“He will come after me and he will kill you.”

It was Ingunn who laughed at that. “Ha! All will tell him that you fled from him, or that you jumped into the viksfjord like that little idiot sister of yours.”

Zarabeth twisted about to look at Ingunn, her face twisted with pain and rage. “I told you never to speak of Lotti like that.”