The Pirate Bride Page 24

  “But that is not why she went with them,” Brokk continued, gasping for breath.

  His mother gave him a drink of water.

  Brokk went on, “Medana went because of some woman and child being held captive on the ship. They threatened to kill the woman and dismember the boy slowly, unless Medana came willingly.”

  Agnis and Sigurd’s son, Thork concluded.

  His father handed Thork a sword, and Starri gave him his favorite knife.

  “One more thing,” Brokk choked out. “Medana said: ‘Tell the loathsome lout not to follow me.’ ”

  “Oh, Thork!” his mother said behind him. She knew as well as he did what the hidden message meant. “Loathsome lout” was intended as an endearment.

  Thork ran as fast as he could, jumped into the pond where water was already starting to pool, and sloshed as fast as he could out to Small Island.

  The longship had already pulled anchor and was sailing away. No care for the men they’d left behind. They’d got what they came for.

  The terrible trouble just kept getting more terrible . . .

  Medana was living her worst nightmare. She was back in the hands of her brothers, vulnerable to whatever dire fate they planned for her. Agnis and Egil had been taken, too.

  The only thing she was unsure of was Thrudr. A dozen or so of her brothers’ men had gone through the tunnel, and surely the great Tykir Thorksson, his four sons, Thork’s men, and the Thrudr women would have been able to withstand their attack, if attack had been her brothers’ plan and not just a distraction. At least for the moment, Thrudr was safe, but its future was uncertain now that men knew about the sanctuary for women.

  There was a groan on the floor beside her, and Medana rolled over and onto her knees, stifling a groan at her own pains. “Do not fret so, Agnis. I am here now.”

  Agnis opened the slits of her swollen eyes. “Medana? Oh gods! They’ve taken you, too. And your face. And arms. What have they done to you?” Immediately, Agnis tried to sit up in panic. “Egil? Where is my son?”

  “Shhh!” Medana said, helping Agnis to lie back down. “He is asleep over there. Unharmed. Settle please, Agnis. We do not want to call attention to ourselves. Shhh!”

  “Where are we?”

  “In the shelter of Sigurd’s longship. My brothers are on the other ship. We have been asea for hours now.” Agnis’s eyes darted about the small room in the center of the longship, created by drapes of sailcloth. Dawn light showed through some of the parted folds.

  “Where are they taking us?”

  “I’m not sure. Probably Stormgard, but mayhap to King Harald’s court in Vestfold.”

  “Oh, the things Sigurd said to me! And did! He punched with a closed fist. And kicked me. And took a belt to my back. In front of his very own son! I know he is your brother, but he is an evil man, Medana. Evil to the core.”

  Medana had not realized that Agnis might have injuries on her back, too, when she’d tended her face and arms and legs. She would check later. “I do not consider Sigurd a brother. He is naught to me. Nor are the other two villainous brothers of mine, Osten and Vermund, who follow every word of Sigurd’s as if he were a god. God of evil, that is what he is. Nithings, all of them!”

  For now, she needed to rest, to maintain her strength for the fight that was sure to come. What nature that fight would take she did not know, but it was coming, sure as dawn followed night.

  “Do you know what the worst part was, Medana?” Agnis said, turning her head to look at her through those pitiful eye slits.

  “What, sweetling?” She tried to brush some blood matted hair off her face.

  “Gregor was there. I thought he cared for me, he said he did. But when Sigurd told Gregor that I belonged to him and that he should leave, Gregor just gave me a disappointed look and left me to Sigurd’s evil devices.”

  “Men! They are all alike,” Medana said. But as she drifted into a pain-riddled sleep, she realized that she no longer really felt that way. Thork’s men were not like that, nor were Tykir and his followers. She did not think any one of them would leave a woman in distress or beat her bloody.

  And Thork . . . She closed her eyes and felt hot tears sting her bruised cheeks. He was so much more than she had thought on first meeting him. He was everything she’d dreamed of in a man. Would he understand her silent message to Brokk when she’d referred to a “loathsome lout”? Would he know she loved him?

  After all, there was no longer any reason for him to stay with her. Whether it was due to Sigurd’s kick to her belly or her regular monthly flux, she no longer carried Thork’s baby. If she ever had.

  And wasn’t that the saddest thing of all?

  First, you need to just breathe . . .

  Thork’s rage could not be contained.

  He wanted to swim through the tunnel, under water, until he got to the outside, then swim the considerable distance out to Small Island.

  “Impossible! Have you lost your mind, Thork?” his father yelled, as he and his brothers held him back.

  Then he wanted to attempt to climb up and over the mountain.

  “It cannot be done, Thork. Believe me, many of us have tried over the years. There are no footholds,” Gudron said in a softer voice than he’d ever heard come out of her thin lips.

  His father led them—his mother, his brothers, his men, and the warrior women of Thrudr—into the biggest longhouse, and they all sat down.

  “Well, here is one thing I guarantee,” Thork stormed, and plopped down hard on his bench. “There will be steps built up and down that mountain in the future, if I have any say.”

  “And why would you have any say in the future doings of Thrudr, my son?” his mother asked.

  “You know bloody hell why. Because I love the bloody damn willful woman and I will no doubt have to live on this bloody damn awful island for the rest of my bloody fool life. That is why.”

  His mother smiled and patted his arm, as if that was the answer she’d been seeking.

  His father, on the other hand, swatted him aside the head and said, “Do not swear at your mother.”

  Thork blinked, unaware that he had been swearing.

  “Leave be, husband. He is not himself,” his mother said to his father.

  “Hah! I will tell you this. If the boy does not calm down, I am going to douse him with that sleeping draught the women here are famous for.”

  “You would not!” Thork stood and cast accusing eyes at his father.

  “Listen, Thork, just breathe. Inhale deeply and exhale slowly. Calm yourself down,” his father said, shoving him down onto a bench and sitting down beside him. “You are no good to yourself or anyone else in your present condition. You cannot think when you are so distraught.”

  “How would you feel if it was Mother?” he snapped.

  “I know exactly how it feels. Your mother’s lackwit brothers captured her one time.”

  Really? That was one story he had not heard. Thork rubbed a hand over his forehead. “It is just that I am worried. What is happening to her, at this moment? Brokk said they hit and kicked her while still on the island. What might they be doing now she is on their territory?”

  “You cannot dwell on that, Thork,” his mother said. “Medana is a strong woman. Let her take care of the day to day. You need to think longer term.”

  “Here is what we are going to do,” his father said, motioning for the others to come closer, the men as well as the women. “Thork, you will be taking the Thrudr longship to Hedeby, where you will take possession of your three longships, which are hopefully still there. Then you will send one longship to Northumbria under your brother Guthrom, to ask for your uncle Eirik’s assistance. Starri, you will take another longship to Dragonstead, where you will gather not only our men and longships, but go to our neighbors for their assistance. Thork, you will take the third longship to Stormgard, although I have my doubts about whether Sigurd and his brothers would go there. Your mother and I will go to King Harald’s cou
rt, where they will have to bring Medana eventually. They could not marry her off, if that is indeed the brothers’ plan, without the king’s consent.”

  “What about us?” Gudron asked.

  “You and your women will of course go with Thork to Hedeby, but then you should return to Thrudr in your own ship. Selik will come with you, then return to the island with you. It is important not to leave the island vulnerable in the midst of all this chaos. Bolthor, can you and Katherine stay here to hold things together?”

  Bolthor agreed, reluctantly.

  “We can fight, too,” Gudron asserted, raising her chin in defiance.

  “And you will probably have to,” Tykir said. “Word will be out. Every miscreant in the world will be hastening here for the treasures they think you hoard on the island.”

  Several women made harrumphing sounds at the idea of treasure on Thrudr, where day-to-day subsistence was a chore.

  “Are we in agreement?” Tykir asked then. At their nods and vocal assents, he added, “We have all day to prepare our weapons and ready the longships. Have I covered everything?”

  “One more thing,” his mother said. “Let us pray. Whether to my Christian One-God, or your Norse gods, we must seek guidance and protection from above.”

  They all bowed their heads, in silence.

  Thork took a deep breath and in his head said, Help me, God of my mother, gods of my people. Help me find Medana and keep her with me thereafter. Help her to withstand whate’er her brothers throw her way until we arrive. Help me be the man she wants and needs. Help me!

  He could swear a voice in his head replied, She called you a loathsome lout. You are halfway there.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Nightmares are just dreams turned upside down . . .

  For two days Medana was awaiting, or rather dreading, the return of her brothers to Snow Pines, her dower estate in the far north of the Norselands. Actually, it would be the return of Sigurd and Osten. They’d left her youngest brother, Vermund, to watch over them with a small group of housecarls.

  Nor that they’d seen much of Vermund. He seemed to be in a perpetual state of ale stupor since their arrival, as were his housecarls.

  Medana and Agnis and Egil probably could have walked out the door, but where would they go? It was some distance by land to the nearest fjord, and even then she did not know if there would be any longboats there. Although it was summertime, the weather was chilly and there was daylight most of the day. Land of the Midnight Sun.

  “What will become of us?” Agnis asked, not for the first time.

  They were in the summer kitchen, detached by a roofed, open-sided walkway from the keep’s main scullery, which was filthy and ruled with an iron hand by an often drukkinn, equally filthy cook. Here they worked with the meager provender available—barley flour to make unleavened bread, dried fish and venison, and a little honey crystallized in pottery jars that would suffice for oatcakes.

  She could ask Vermund to hunt some game for their table, but she didn’t want to call attention to them down in the lower level where the kitchens and their bedchambers were located.

  “I will marry Jarl Leistr Adilsson and go off to his estate, which is said to be run-down, but that is probably because there has been no woman in charge for many years.”

  “Oh, Medana! How can you?”

  “How can I not? I do not care about Snow Pines. I would sign it over to my brothers in a trice, but apparently the Odal laws are strict about such inheritances as mine, and the only way a male can gain ownership is through marriage.” Or death.

  “But he is said to be a hard man.”

  “I have lived in a household of hard men for years. I know how to evade their evil clutches. I will survive.”

  Agnis was at the cook fire, stirring the honey to make it regain its more liquid nature. Every once in a while, she would stretch and press her hand to her lower back. As the whip marks healed and tightened, she was in pain, though the woman never complained. Agnis was just so glad that Egil was safe. He was outside now, foraging for nuts and fruit.

  Agnis’s face was still puffy and black and blue and yellow in spots. As was Medana’s, though not as bad as Agnis’s. That was one of the reasons Sigurd and Osten had brought them to Snow Pines . . . to heal. Oh, not out of any great sympathy for the pain the brothers had inflicted—they were, after all, only women—but Medana must be presentable when they took her to court to get the king’s forgiveness for her “crime” and permission for her to wed Jarl Adilsson. Or else a death sentence from the Althing court, which amounted to the same thing.

  In Agnis’s case, Medana’s cruel, miscreant brothers wanted her healthy because they intended to sell her in the slave marts of Hedeby, the very town where she had been living freely for almost ten years. Agnis didn’t know that yet. Egil would be taken back to Stormgard, where he would be a thrall in his own father’s household.

  “It will not be so bad. Leistr is old. If I can outlive him, mayhap I can make my way back to Thrudr,” Medana said.

  Agnis looked at her, frightened for her future. “Dost think I would be able to go with you? Egil and I?”

  “I do not know,” Medana lied. She still hoped . . . for what, she wasn’t sure. Oh, she knew Thork and his family would have searched for her, but by now they would have probably given up the search. Still, she was hoping for a miracle.

  One of her biggest concerns was Thrudr. Once her brothers satisfied their greedy hunger with Snow Pines, they would look for other easy ways to fill their coffers. They might go back to Thrudr, thinking to find treasure, or if naught else, they would take the women as slaves, a tradeable commodity. Female pirates would garner a high price as a novelty.

  Gudron would fight to the death, as would many of the others, but could they withstand the type of attacks her brothers would launch?

  On the other hand, mayhap Thork and his father would make good on their promises to protect the island. She could only hope so.

  Egil came rushing in then, his basket half full of nuts and berries. “Men are coming. Many men.”

  Medana’s heart lifted for a moment. Thork. Thork has come.

  “I think it is my father,” Egil whispered in a fear-riddled voice.

  Medana’s shoulders slumped.

  Egil had the good sense to rush off and hide, but she and Agnis sat frozen in their chairs, awaiting whatever would come. They had almost an hour to wait.

  Sigrun and Osten stomped in eventually, without a greeting. Not that she noticed their rudeness, so stunned was she by their appearance. Despite their fine garments, the two men looked as if they’d been in an alehouse brawl. Sigurd had a blackened eye and a scab growing over a cut in his bottom lip, and she wasn’t sure, but she didn’t think he’d had that bump in his nose before. Osten was limping and had one arm in a sling. Both had bruised knuckles.

  “What happened to you two?” she blurted out.

  “You happened to us,” Osten snarled.

  “Me?” She was taken aback. “What have I to do with your injuries?”

  “Thork Tykirsson came to Stormgard looking for you, and when he could not find you, he went berserk.”

  At first she frowned with confusion. Thork? He came for me? She smiled, widely.

  “You find humor in our pain?” Sigurd asked incredulously. His face flooded with color and he approached her with fisted hands.

  She moved quickly, putting the table between them. “I was just surprised by your sudden appearance. What you see is happiness . . . happy to have company.” My eyes are probably blinking madly, if Thork’s test for lying is true. “We have been lonely here at Snow Pines, haven’t we, Agnis?”

  Agnis, who still sat at the table, frozen with fright, nodded her head briskly.

  “How is it, my dear sister,” Sigurd said, “that you cried rape when Ulfr bedded you, but you spread your thighs with ease for Tykirsson, who is known to be wild and dangerous, an outcast from his own family?”

  “I
. . . I have no idea what you mean.” I will not blink. I will not blink.

  “Liar! Once he realized that you weren’t at Stormgard, Tykirsson championed your cause for vengeance. The brute dared to attack us, in our very home. Believe you me, King Harald will hear of this outrage once the Althing commences.”

  “I ne’er asked Thork—”

  “Thork, is it? How is it that the man knows of the scars on your back, girl, lest you were his harlot? Lest you set him on a path of retribution?”

  “Of course she is a harlot. There is naught new in that,” Osten contributed.

  “Everyone knew about the beatings I suffered at your hands, anyone who lived at Stormgard,” she tried to say, but her brothers had already moved on to another complaint.

  “We have more immediate problems.” Sigurd took Medana by the arm and hauled her to her feet. Glaring, he spat out, “You have been here at Snow Pines for nigh on two sennights, and this keep is a pigsty.”

  You are just now noticing? Where have you been the past ten years when this estate has been moldering away?

  “I wouldn’t sleep on the bed linens here! They are no doubt loaded with lice.” Sigurd’s eyes, which matched hers in color, were bulging with outrage.

  You would be right about the bed linens. Except for those Agnis and I boiled and rinsed, boiled and rinsed in the laundry tubs.

  Sigurd was going on about the greasy tables in the great hall, the moldy, stinksome rushes, the salon, the corridors, even the stables. “Why haven’t you cleaned the place?”

  “Me? You expected me to clean the entire keep?” Medana asked with consternation. She was accustomed to hard labor, but while Snow Pines wasn’t a large building, it would still require more than her and Agnis, to maintain it. “There is no staff here to speak off,” she sputtered out. “The steward and house servants left long ago when none of them were paid, and no women are safe here with . . .” She let her words trail off when she’d meant to mention Vermund and his drukkinn comrades.

  But her unfinished explanation didn’t matter.

  “If I had my way, I would beat you bloody and send you to a nunnery.” He shoved her away, causing her to stumble and have to catch her balance with the edge of the table.