“Nearly two years—nay, I forget. It isn’t important. There is no reason for you to know, no reason for you to be interested.”
“It matters not that you told me. Had it been longer than two years, you would probably be dead, at least Taby would. It is amazing that you managed to keep him alive for two years. He was naught but a baby. Where do you come from?”
She shook her head and said, “I am from a place much like the place you come from. It is a place I will return to, in my own time, when I am ready to return. And I meant it, Viking, I want to buy the three of us from you.” She drew a deep breath. “I will pay you for the clothes, I will pay you for what you paid for Taby, for—”
He wanted to cuff her. Instead he grabbed her arm and jerked her around to face him. “My name is Merrik. You will use it. You will also learn to mind that tongue of yours. No wonder Thrasco beat you. How many other masters have flayed the hide off you for your insolence?”
She shook her head, looking at him straight in his eyes. “Only one, the first one. I kept quiet after that. But I did win, for she bought Taby as well.”
“And why has your learning failed you now? Do you believe me too soft to beat you?”
Her eyes shifted and she looked over his left shoulder, toward Cleve, who was holding Taby’s hand, looking down at him and listening to him speak. “You aren’t like the others,” she said. “You are not soft, but you are different. I don’t fear you, at least I don’t fear that you will beat me or Taby.”
“You should fear me only if you find obedience to me difficult.”
She shook away his words. “You are different, aren’t you? You won’t sell us or hurt us or give us to your friends? When I asked you before, you mocked me.”
“I will think about it. Perhaps one of those choices you named will suit me. I will eventually determine some gain the three of you will bring me, but I will have to think about it, perhaps discuss it with Oleg, whose hand you nearly chewed off. In any case, I must fatten you up first, for now no man would want to grind his body against a woman with more bones than soft flesh.”
She said matter-of-factly, “I have learned that men will grind themselves against any female who is not dead. I became a boy after I saw a man rape a girl. He cuffed her until there was blood streaming from her nose and mouth and then he tore off her clothes and raped her. I don’t know if she lived. When he was finished with her, she was bloody everywhere. If I’d had a knife I would have killed him. If you decide to sell me to a man who would do that, I would kill him.”
“Then perhaps you should consider more gentleness of word and manner toward me.” He supposed it pleased him that she didn’t consider the possibility that he would rape her. But he could if he wished to, surely she knew that. Surely she knew he could do whatever he wished to her. On past trading voyages, he’d been given slave girls to pleasure him, thus making him more apt to spend his silver and trade his goods with the men providing the girls. Would she believe he had raped the girls? They’d never fought him or cried out. He’d never raised his fist to any one of them. He’d never hurt any of them. Or had he? And hadn’t he simply left that merchant’s house in Kiev when he’d seen Thrasco plowing that girl? Aye, he’d left, disgusted with what he’d seen. Still, a female slave was for the use of her masters, wasn’t she? He frowned, disliking the way of his thoughts. He dragged his hand through the fresh, cool water, wondering yet again why he had rescued these three from Kiev. Surely he had been struck by a madness, a strange sort of malady that would leave him soon enough. His hand fisted in the water, spewing a light rain upward to his chest and throat.
“Why did you stare at me at the slave market?”
5
HE DIDN’T LOOK at her, rather at the huge sail that was flapping wildly overhead. He held his hand up to dry and to feel the exact direction of the wind. He said with complete indifference, “Why do you think I would stare at you?”
“You did. I remember feeling that someone was staring at me and that’s why I looked up. There you were, standing there as if you’d been frozen and you were looking hard at me.”
He shrugged. “It’s true, no need to quibble about it. I don’t know why. I simply saw you and I couldn’t look away. Then you looked at me and I thought you defeated, utterly, then just as suddenly, your eyes held such anger, such bitterness, that still I couldn’t look away from you. I didn’t understand you. You intrigued me.”
She said nothing.
“Then there was Taby. That is truly odd. I have no particular liking for children. But these feelings for him went deeply within me the moment I saw him. I did not understand them then nor do I now, but I will keep Taby safe.”
“That is why you came to save me, then, isn’t it? This feeling you have for Taby, you wanted only him but you had to save me, too, in order to make him happy.”
“Aye, that’s more the way of it than not, though you did interest me as well.”
“You will get over these odd feelings for my little brother. You’re a man; men don’t love children, not as women do. They are proud of them if they show prowess in something a man admires, but to have love for them, to give them attention, it’s more a thing of words for men, not of action, as it is for women.”
“You appear to be knowledgeable beyond your years,” he said, sarcasm thick as he looked toward the shoreline and not at her. “Your words are perhaps true for the men in your country but I doubt it. Men are men. My father loves me and my brothers. His affection for us isn’t to be questioned. He also cuffed us and praised us in equal amounts, and taught us endlessly when we were boys. As to my feelings for Taby, you have no idea what kind of man I am or what I will or will not feel for him in a year or in five years.”
/> “He is no kin to you. He doesn’t carry your blood. I know this is important to men. You will easily forget Taby once you are home again. What will your wife think of a child you bring back to her?”
“I have no wife.”
“Men must have wives to have heirs. You will have a wife soon enough. You are still young, but not that young. Men must breed when they are young else their seed loses its potency. Aye, you will have a wife and then will you expect her to care for Taby? What if she were cruel to him? It isn’t fair, Merrik. This is why you must let me buy him back from you, before you come to care nothing more for him, before your wife hurts him, before you come to sell him.”
“You spin better tales than a skald, and none of it has a footing in truth. Also, you will stop asking that question. You have no silver, you have nothing to buy anything, much less three people.”
“I can get silver, a lot of it, more than a man like you could possibly trade for or ever steal.”
“Do I scent a ransom in your insult? Do you have rich parents, relatives? Is that the silver you speak of?”
“Perhaps.”