Soul's Fire (The Northwomen Sagas Book 3) Page 9

  Standing at his father’s side, Leofric saw a spasm of furious grief tighten his cheeks. “It is meet that they should take her, yes. But do not spend in her. No child should come of that.”

  “Would she be alive long enough to bear a child, Sire?” Eadric asked, surprised.

  The king stared down at the tense form on the floor. “Mayhap. We would see her suffer until our grief is cleansed.”

  He walked from the cell. Leofric met his brother’s eyes. If their father meant to keep the barbarian woman alive until he no longer mourned Dreda, then she would suffer a very long time indeed.

  “To me!” the king summoned, and Leofric followed Eadric into the center chamber, where their father waited.

  The warden slammed the oaken door shut and turned the iron lock, and Leofric knew their prisoner had been left in perfect darkness.

  “Where is the governess?” the king asked.

  “Not on this level, Sire,” the warden answered. “She’s in the light.”

  “Take us to her.”

  They climbed to the level where the gentler prisoners were kept—not nobility, but those who moved among them. These cells had humble but comfortable furnishings and small but airy windows.

  The warden opened a window in a cell door, and the king looked in. Again, Leofric saw an angry spasm tighten his father’s profile.

  He wondered if that anger would be directed his way were his father to know that he had shielded both Dreda and her governess from his censure on more than one occasion.

  “Summon the executioner. Her head was too empty to keep her focus on her charge, and so we will take it from her shoulders.”

  He turned, then paused and turned back. “She is fair-haired.”

  “Aye, Sire.” The warden cocked his head at the king’s stray observation.

  Leofric, unable to see into the cell, wondered if he’d ever known the color of the governess’s hair. Always he had seen it covered, in the way of women of her station.

  “The savage bitch is a leader, you say?”

  Leofric looked to his brother, who seemed as baffled by these random comments from their father as he was.

  “Leofric, did you say so?”

  “Yes, Sire. She seemed to be a leader among them.”

  “She will be missed, then. They will come for her.”

  “Mayhap, Sire,” Eadric answered. “But there are not many of them left. We will turn them back long before they reach the castle.”

  “No.”

  “Sire?” Eadric asked.

  “Father?” Leofric asked at the same time.

  But their father turned to the warden and slammed the window closed. “Have her hair braided like the savage’s before you take her head. When it is done, take the eyes and crush the face so that she might be any yellow-haired wench.”

  He spun on his heel and faced his sons. Leofric had never seen such a look in his father’s eyes before. It was more than grief or rage. It seemed like madness—and it seemed madness, too, to desecrate the body of a Christian woman, no matter her sin or her station.

  “You will take the head back to the raider camp, and you will throw it at them. Let them know we’ve taken their woman, and let them think her dead. Let them feel it. Then let them run. Deny them their deaths in battle. Make them flee.”

  ~oOo~

  They rode under their father’s gold and blue banner, a full unit of soldiers behind them. Eadric had collected the barbarian woman’s axe as well, thinking to return it with the battered remains of the governess’s head, thereby strengthening the ruse.

  Weary and desolate in spirit, Leofric felt no satisfaction as they came upon the still-smoldering remains of the raider camp. The stench of death filled his nose and lungs. The bodies of their own soldiers and their mounts, left behind when they’d fallen back, were still strewn over the ground.

  The raiders’ dead were piled like firewood. Little was left of the camp. But as Eadric, Leofric, and Dunstan rode up, the Northmen picked up their weapons and stalked forward, ready to do battle again.

  At Eadric’s signal, mounted archers spread out, making an arc around them. They nocked and drew, and then waited.

  Eadric dismounted, and Leofric followed. With the leather bag over his shoulder and the axe on his back, his brother strode forward. Resting his hand on the pommel of his sword, Leofric kept his brother’s back.

  The giant yet lived, as did his woman. The woman’s arm and chest were wrapped in heavy bandages, but she walked up with her mate and the blond warrior, who also showed bandages over his chest.

  The giant seemed unscathed.

  “Do any among you speak our language?”

  The blond man stepped forward at Eadric’s question, and the giant followed, hefting an axe in his hand. When the woman made to join them, the giant stopped her with a hand on her shoulder.

  The blond spoke. “Speak some.”

  “I come with a message from Eadric, King of Mercuria. You are not welcome here. Do you understand?”

  None of the barbarians answered. They only glared. But Leofric thought they understood.

  Eadric continued. “The king commands many more soldiers than these we have brought. If you have not quit our land by the next day’s break, this fate shall be the fate of you all.”

  He opened the bag and pulled out the head by its braided blonde hair. It was filthy and bloody and barely seemed human. Eadric threw it at the one who’d spoken. In a move of obvious reflex, he caught it and beheld what he’d caught.

  His eyes came back up, wide and full of shock and rage.

  Eadric stalked forward, within a mere few paces of those huge, furious, fierce men. He pulled the woman’s axe from his back and dropped it to the ground. “You go, by day’s break. Do you understand?”

  Again, there was no response. But Eadric turned on his heel, putting his back to the enemy, and walked calmly back to his horse.

  A roar filled the air, and the giant charged. The first archers loosed their arrows. All three arrows struck the giant in the chest, and he went down.

  He was not invulnerable after all.

  As a child, Astrid had been terrified of the dark. She’d been tormented by horrifying nightmares, vivid stories charging through her young, sleeping mind, clawing at her until she would burst from sleep howling and sobbing. Even during her wakeful hours, when the dark got too deep, the fearsome, inexplicable creatures from her sleep would creep and slither at the edges of her sight.

  In their world, darkness was a steady companion. For the long months of winter, especially in the weeks nearest the solstice, darkness was all but constant. Her fear had been a source of shame and anger for her father and of impatience and consternation for her mother.

  When she’d had seven years and still would not tolerate to be left alone in the night, her father had taken her by the hand one afternoon, during a time of the year when the darkness lasted only the length of a good rest. He’d led her into the woods, beyond the sight of Geitland, under the pretense that they sought a particular night-growing herb for her mother’s potions.

  With the town out of sight and out of hearing, as the sun began to sink beneath the ground, Astrid’s father had bound her to a tree. He’d walked away, deaf to her screams and wails and pleas.

  That night was Astrid’s clearest memory.

  She’d screamed herself hoarse, and then she’d screamed until something had torn in her throat and she could taste blood. She’d wept until there were no more tears inside her, and then she’d wept without tears.

  She’d wet herself. She’d soiled herself. She’d vomited.

  Though the night had been hours shorter than the nights of winter, it was the longest night of Astrid’s life. The animals of the wood had come to play with the creatures of her imagination, and she’d fallen into a black, bottomless chasm, delving every moment into a deeper place of terror.

  And then she’d found the bottom.

  And then the terror had fallen away.
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  Her father had returned to her in the dawn. He’d unbound her, and she’d stood. When her body had exploded with painful prickles, she’d jerked her arm from her father’s stabilizing hand and had gripped the tree instead. The prickles had subsided, and she’d walked ahead of her father through the wood and back home, where she’d cleaned herself up and gotten on with her chores.

  Her love for her father had never recovered, but he’d done what he’d set out to do. She’d never feared the dark again.

  She’d never known fear of any kind since that night.

  And she did not know it now.

  Despite all the hours she’d lain bound and ignored in this dungeon cell, her eyes had found no hint of light to grab onto. There was no sound, either, not even a drip of whatever moisture kept the cell damp. Only the sounds she made herself as she shifted in the minuscule ways she could, and as she coughed against whatever ills the fire she’d breathed in had left inside her, assured her she hadn’t gone deaf.

  She might as well have been blind, and she might have thought she was, had she not been visited by her jailer and three other men, who’d stared down at her and talked in their strange words and then left her. The jailer had carried a torch, and after a moment’s pain from the sudden glare, she had seen the men, three of them in gleaming costumes that spoke of their wealth and power.

  And she’d seen the jailer, in his humble woolens and his hateful eyes. His nose had been a vile meal, but she’d enjoyed the sight of his bandaged face.

  They had done nothing to her yet but beat her, strip her, bind her, and leave her. They’d bound her for maximum discomfort, her hands and feet in contact at her back, and the bindings at her neck tightening subtly with each movement more than a twitch. If she had the mind to do it, she could end herself in that way, drawing on her arms and legs until the rope at her throat throttled her. But that was no way to be welcomed to Valhalla. So she would live until she escaped or was rescued, or until they killed her. Either way, she would be free.

  Why they’d taken her, she’d yet to discern. She doubted they intended to press her; even if she’d been a traitorous coward, she had none of their words to say, and by now they must have come to understand that. They’d taken her for some other reason.

  They’d leered as they’d stripped her and pawed at her body, pinching and probing. When she hadn’t reacted as they’d expected her to, they’d become more emphatic and brutish, shoving their fingers wherever they could, biting her, slapping her. That had been her opportunity to hurt them back, and every blow they’d dealt her after they’d managed to restrain her again had been worth the satisfaction of making them bleed.

  These men seemed to want her to be ashamed of what they did to her. She’d seen it in their eyes, that they’d thought they were abasing her in some way. She’d seen it, but she hadn’t understood it. Her body was no source of shame, and what other people did to it could not possibly bring shame unto herself.

  These Christians had bizarre ways of thinking and being. They seemed to disgust themselves almost as much as they disgusted her.

  They caused her pain, however, and that she would remember. At every opportunity, she would repay injuries dealt her.

  She didn’t know the fate of her people, but she felt strong hope that they’d been victorious, even against that sneak attack. She imagined Leif and Vali opening the cell door and unbinding her, and she let that vision fill her blank sight.

  And then she imagined her retribution.

  If the Christians had won, however, she would die in this place. They would hurt her, or they would leave her where she lay and let her starve. Either way, she knew they would kill her.

  She knew that, but the knowledge carried no fear and no self-pity. If this was to be her end, then she would meet it with her eyes open and her mouth shut.

  And she would fight at every slightest chance.

  ~oOo~

  Using her body’s signals—its need to void and its need for nourishment— to mark time, Astrid judged that she’d been left alone in the pitch black and perfect silence for near two days when she heard the deafening clank of a lock being turned. The cell door scraped open, and she slammed her eyes shut at the stinging glare of a torch.

  Until the golden glow through her eyelids no longer bit into her eyes, Astrid did not open them. When she did, she saw the jailer’s bandaged face wavering behind the torch flame. He made a gesture with his free hand, and two other men pushed into the cell past him.

  She recognized these men as those who’d stripped her and pawed at her. They both bore the marks of the fight she’d put up before they’d managed to subdue her and bind her.

  She smiled and saw the leering satisfaction on one face falter.

  Bound as she was, she couldn’t fight, so she lay still while they stomped up to her. One of them made a show of sniffing deeply and saying something to his fellow. Astrid didn’t understand the words, but she supposed them to be making a jape about the filth she lay in. Again, they expected her to feel shame, but her body’s need to void was not a shameful thing, and it was not her fault she’d had no other choice but to void where she lay.

  One of them brandished a crude dagger, and Astrid tensed. But he reached back and cut her bonds. Then, while the other began to unwind the rope from her, he leaned in close and pushed the blade under her chin, letting the point sink into her flesh.

  He spoke snarling words at her, his breath reeking of old meat and poor ale. She glared back.

  The second she felt that her arms were free, she rolled, disregarding the brief, shallow slice of the blade through the underside of her chin, and slammed her hands over the ears of the man who’d wielded it. He roared in shock and pain and fell back, landing on his end with a crack.

  Slowed by stiffness and weakened by hunger and thirst, Astrid saw the other man’s fist coming for her head but could not manage to avoid it. She felt the blast of pain at her temple and sagged, and then she felt fists and feet crashing into her.

  ~oOo~

  She woke in a room so bright she nearly thought she was outside. But no, she was in a different cell, still dank and rank and windowless, but illuminated by torches on every wall.

  They had bound her to some kind of table, her arms and legs spread wide. She could lift her head to look around, but she didn’t. Instead, she focused on her body and let it tell her what it could.

  The way the air—sluggish and tepid—seemed to move over her skin, she didn’t think the table was of a typical shape. It seemed to be formed like one of the Christian crosses, except split at the bottom.

  She was surrounded by men, at least six of them. They were all filthy, sneering rotting mouths at her. The jailer was among them. His bandage was soiled, and there was a smear of yellow over the wound where his nose had been. Astrid, daughter of a healer, knew that yellow was a bad color to come from a wound.

  Good. She wished to see his face rot off.

  Letting her eyes drift around, she also saw a man in a dress, like one of their seers. Fat, with a large red nose. His hands were laced together over his big belly. He stood back, near the door. The other men seemed to defer to him.

  Their eyes met, and his expression did an interesting thing: First, he smiled. Not kindly, but smugly. Then the smile twitched and became a sneer like all the other men in the room. And then his face went completely blank. All but his eyes, which glittered with rapacious interest.

  The seer spoke, and then the jailer spoke. And then all the men except the seer put their hands on her.

  At first, they simply touched her. There was no gentleness in them, but neither was there an obvious intent to hurt her. It was as if they expected her to be different from their own women and were testing out her body to see if she was.

  Then one of them grabbed her breast and twisted it savagely, and that emboldened the others.

  Astrid understood. She was meant to be their plaything. That was the torment that they had devised for her.

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bsp; Such simple, stupid men. With no weapon but their own bodies, they could hurt her, but they couldn’t do her harm enough even to linger in her memory, let alone break her.

  She lay still and stoic, casting aside the hurts of her body and focusing her mind on the image of Leif and Vali opening the cell door.

  The men babbled and laughed, but words she couldn’t understand were meaningless.

  When they took their turns with their little worms, she met their eyes and didn’t blink.