Hormuze straightened, belting his gown more tightly about his waist. “This Sira, she wants instruction?”
“What she wants is beating,” Hafter said. “But she is beautiful, Rorik is right about that. She needs new direction. She needs to learn how to control herself. She wants taming.”
“Discipline is important,” Hormuze said, nodding.
Rorik said thoughtfully, “It is not that she is evil. I believe that my parents simply gave her no rules, no boundaries, and thus her wishes always took precedence. No one ever said nay to her. As to honor, I believe the concept foreign to her. She’s had no reason for it and thus it doesn’t yet exist for her. However, she isn’t stupid and she is certainly passionate.”
Hormuze stared at the fallen brazier, deep in thought.
“Papa, are you certain you want to have this woman?”
Hormuze stared down at his daughter with her too old voice and her too keen eyes. “I wish to survive,” he said simply. “If I present myself as the king tomorrow with a queen at my side—the woman who was supposed to bring me back my youth and my vigor—why then, you will be a princess, my sweeting, and I will have a beautiful snake to tame.”
Mirana laughed. “Do you believe it would work?”
Rorik shrugged. “There is only one way to find out. It would be a risk, Hormuze, but you must know that.”
“Aye, I know the risk. I am willing.”
Mirana said slowly, “Perhaps it would be best if Sira had hair as black as mine. You will change. Why not your queen as well?”
“She worships her beautiful hair,” Rorik said. “She will howl to the moon. I should like to see how you deal with her rage. Aye, I like it.”
“I do too,” Eze said. “I should like to be a princess. My papa would be the best king in the world. This Sira, she will come to worship my papa.”
“Aye,” Hormuze said. “She will.”
31
EINAR STOOD QUIETLY beside the sleeping woman. He was brooding and he didn’t like it. There was no reason for it. He did as he pleased, always, and now he wanted her. His loins were tight and he ached and he wanted her now. It didn’t matter that she was a virgin and that she was a cousin to the king of Norway. None of it mattered. She was a slave, his slave. He thought then of Lella, alone in the storage shed, unless some of his men had decided to rape him. Or some of his women, he thought, and smiled at the notion.
He stared down at that hair of hers. Hair so bleached of color that it was silver in the dim light, spilling over the sides of the box bed, nearly to the floor. She was beautiful, no doubt about that, and he did need sons, many sons. Even though he looked young and strong, he was gaining in his man’s years. Aye, he needed a wife in order to have heirs. Why not wed her? He could control her, he didn’t doubt it.
She was vicious. He liked that. He also liked that if he disliked any of it, he could strike her and see the viciousness turn to fear. Of him.
But first he would take her. It mattered not if she wished to keep her virginity safe until her wedding night. Her wishes mattered not at all. Aye, once he’d tested her, assured himself that she would please him, he would marry her and she would breed his heirs. He would continue to do just as he wished to. He would remove poor Lella from the storage shed on the morrow, a long enough time to punish the boy for his imprudence. He rather liked the notion of the two of them living together, each hating the other, each vying with the other for his attention and his affection. Of course there would be others in the future. He smiled.
He thought of Mirana and knew another surge of relief. He’d been worried, he admitted it to himself. Not frightened, no, not that, but concerned that she would not behave as he’d counseled her to. But it appeared that she’d chosen wisdom and life. She’d chosen to be a queen. She’d pretended to virginity. If she hadn’t, if the old king had wondered at all about her vaunted purity, he would have raised an alarm, and both Einar and Mirana would be dead now. But there had been no alarm raised. Nothing. Mirana wasn’t stupid, and Einar was profoundly grateful that she wasn’t. He wished only that he’d had the chance to touch her, to know her as a woman before the old king had come to Clontarf. Einar shrugged. He was a man who didn’t dwell on the past. It couldn’t be changed or altered. Only the future was important. And thus this sleeping woman.
He leaned down to shake Sira awake.
In that instant, a thin rope went around his neck, digging into his flesh, breaking through the skin, tightening even as he struggled to get his hands beneath the rope to ease the awful pressure, even as he tried to yell, even as he tried to jerk about to face his assailant.
The rope tightened more, twisting and gouging in very strong hands, unknown hands, and his flesh shredded and he felt the stickiness of his own blood. He felt the blackness coming closer now, so close that he knew he had just moments before he was unconscious, just moments beyond that before he was dead. Had the old king discovered the truth? Surely not. But who was trying to kill him?
He kicked back with all his strength, struggling as hard as he could against the blackness. He heard a grunt of pain but the rope merely pulled so taut that Einar would have screamed with the pain if he’d been able to. He wanted to give in to the blankness, to end the unbearable agony, and soon he did. He slumped back against the man who held him.
Rorik smiled as he eased Einar onto the ground. “Bind him securely,” he said low to Hafter. “And stuff something in his mouth.” Rorik then turned to Sira. He stopped, for Hormuze was bending over her, and he was touching her hair. He realized that Einar’s struggle had been silent, utterly silent. He stared down at his hands. Einar’s blood was on his palms.
Suddenly, Sira bolted upright. She stared into the face of a stranger, then saw Rorik standing behind him and opened her mouth to shriek, but Hormuze was faster. He smiled at her and struck her jaw with his fisted hand.
She sagged back onto the bed.
“She is beautiful,” he said to Rorik. “Such hair I’ve never before seen and I have seen my share of Viking women. Ah, but her hair is splendid. It is like silver silk, an odd thing to say, but it’s true. I will have her and that magnificent hair of hers will grow black overnight.”
“Let us out of here then,” Rorik said. “Gunleik, are we still clear?”
“Aye, Lord Rorik. The men are sodden and snoring loudly.”