Lord of Raven's Peak (Viking Era 3)

She nodded, words stuck in her craw. She couldn’t keep from staring at her burned leg.

“You are doing well.”

And he expected her to continue doing well, she thought, and knew that she would. She smiled again, more difficult than she would have thought, and said, “I should have been faster. During the past two years I’ve learned to duck quick as a flea and dodge blows with the spryness of a horse about to be gelded.” She sighed, and he saw color come back into her face, too much color on her cheek.

It was now turning a pale purple. He knew that she was calming, that her mind would tell her quickly enough that there was a goodly amount of pain to come.

It wasn’t fair. She’d suffered too much already, and now this.

Eller handed him the cream. “I have only one other pair of trousers, Merrik.”

“Bring them. She cannot be naked around an army of men.”

Merrik saw that she was just staring at that cream and she was afraid of his touching her burned flesh, afraid of the pain, and he didn’t blame her. When he’d rubbed it into her back, it had hurt, and she remembered that, too well.

He said nothing, merely took the cream in one hand and grasped her beneath her arm with the other. He half carried her to the tent. When he laid her onto her back, he said, “I’m going to pull these trousers off you.”

She didn’t want him to for she was naked beneath the trousers. But her leg was hurting now, throbbing, the pain deep and becoming deeper and stronger by the moment. What did it matter? He’d already seen her body, already tended to her back, bathed her. She said nothing, merely turned her head away. He was kneeling over her now, his expression intent. She couldn’t look at him. She closed her eyes as she felt his hands at her waist, unknotting the rope that was holding up Eller’s trousers. She felt the cool night air on her bare flesh as he pulled them down. He was very careful, she’d give him that, but when a bit of charred wool clung to her leg, she lurched up, crying out with the sharp pain of it.

“I know it hurts. I’m sorry. Lie down.” He pressed her back down, his fingers splayed on her bare stomach.

She lay there, feeling pain, feeling helpless, and she hated it. He laid a blanket over her, leaving only her leg bare. She wanted to thank him for that, but she couldn’t. It took all her resolve to keep cries buried in her throat, not to moan or whine, not to let him see that she was weak.

Suddenly she felt his fingers on her burned flesh, felt his fingers lightly rubbing in the cream. She wanted to scream as loud as a blast of thunder, but she forced herself to lie still, to bear it. The cream brought the strangest mixture of pain and relief, of hot and cold, then blessed numbness, just as it had on her back. She held herself still, concentrating on keeping her mouth shut.

When he was finished, he sat back on his heels. “You will be all right. The burn isn’t that bad. My mother makes the cream, with elderberry juice, she told me. You will like my mother, she can be fierce as a warrior one moment and gentle as a child the next. She knows all about potions and medicines. When I was a boy, I was fighting with Rorik, my older brother, and fell in the fire pit and she . . . ”

She was aware of what he was doing, distracting her, trying to make her focus on his voice and his words, not on the pain from the burns. She did hear his voice, deep and soft, and she tried, she truly tried to think about what he was saying, but it was beyond her. Finally, when he was quiet a moment, she said, “You love your mother.”

“Aye, she and my father are the finest parents I know. Even when they hate, they do it better than anyone else. They are not without flaw, don’t misunderstand me. I remember how they hated Rorik’s Irish wife, believing her evil. But they changed because they saw the justice of it, realized they had been wrong about her.”

She nodded, then said, “I have few body parts left unscathed. Thank you, Merrik. You are kind.”

“Keep those parts sound. This was the same cream I used on your back. After this I don’t wish to use it again on you. I haven’t much left, for my mother can only make the cream in the fall months.”

“What else could happen? You are not that far from your home now, are you?”

“Aye, ’tis true. Still, you must learn to be faster.”

“Aye,” she said, feeling the flesh grow cool and numb. “Next time I will be the one to inflict the pain.”

“A slave doesn’t inflict pain,” he said in an utterly emotionless voice. He turned and called out, “Oleg, bring a cup of mead.”

When Oleg came into the tent, he said nothing, merely stared down at her, then nodded. He handed the mead to Merrik and was quickly gone again.

When he put the cup to her lips, she drank.

“All of it,” he said. “It will make you sleep.”

And she did.

They survived a storm of two straight days in the Baltic Sea before turning northward up the Oslofjord to Kaupang. Oddly, Laren hadn’t been particularly frightened. She was too busy trying to keep Taby reassured. He was as wet and miserable as they all were, there was naught she could do about that. She told him one story after the other. Her cheek had turned purple and yellow from the blow and had swelled. It didn’t hurt, just made her look a witch, she imagined. It was her leg that hurt and throbbed, but then again, so did Deglin’s and each time she thought of that, the pain seemed to lessen. Merrik made him row as long and hard as all the other men.

Laren wondered if he would die, for he moaned over his oar and complained endlessly, but the men ignored him. But he was tough, and on that fifth morning when the sun was hot in the sky and the winds had quieted into soft breezes that were just heavy enough to fill the sails, she saw that he hadn’t sickened, nor was he complaining anymore. He was silent, and she distrusted that. Silent men, in her experience, usually were thinking of revenge. He saw she was looking at him and she quickly looked away. Since that night, none of the men had asked her to tell them about Grunlige the Dane. She wondered if she would continue the tale if they did ask her. She was nodding even as she wondered. Deglin deserved nothing from her.

There were seagulls overhead, screeching as they dove close to the longboat, then swooped away at the last instant. She heard one man yell when a seagull’s wing hit his face. Scores of cormorants flagged their progress, the large birds in loose formation off their bow. There was a new quickened vitality to the men’s conversation. All their talk was of home, of their wives, their children, their crops. And they spoke of their wealth, each man richer than he was but four months earlier.

As for Merrik, he would look at her cheek and frown. At night he continued to rub more cream into her leg, even though she could do it now, and she told him that she could. But he had merely shaken his head and continued with the task.