“Come here,” he said again, and his body was pulsing with lust, his heart was pounding in his chest, and he was near to panting with need. He was on the edge of violence. He wanted her now, and he would have her.
She didn’t move, just stood there, trying to cover herself, shaking her head.
He grabbed her hand and dragged her to the bench against the wall. She was still covered with soap and very slippery. She jerked away from him, but he caught her and slammed her against the wall beside the bench. He pulled her hard against him, forcing her legs to straddle his thighs. He thrust two fingers up into her and felt her flinch with pain. But she didn’t make a sound. He was swelled hard, painfully full, and he didn’t wait. The violence in him erupted. He lifted her, then violently forced her down onto him, impaling her, pushing into her, his hands digging into her hips, until he was touching her womb, and it was easy, this powerful entry of his, and he didn’t hurt her, for she was slick with soap. Then he clasped her to his chest. He worked her, but it wasn’t long, just a few strokes of his sex deep inside her, for his lust was part of his violence and he couldn’t contain either. He yelled his release, feeling his own pain and fury, the grinding helplessness of it, all pouring out of him.
He lifted her off him. He dropped his hands from her hips as if he couldn’t bear to touch her more. He staggered away from her, sat on the bench and leaned back against the wall, closing his eyes. His breath was harsh, deep and raw. He felt the drain in his body, the easing in his mind. But still his heart pounded so fiercely he wondered if he would die. No woman had brought him to such violence before. He hated himself for it, and her, hated her for who she was and what she’d brought him to. There was no fairness in what he had done, but he didn’t care. He was, in these few moments, beyond guilt and thought, emptied of violence and savagery.
Mirana, free of him, stumbled, nearly falling, as she turned to run. She stopped suddenly. She felt his seed on her legs, could still feel the pounding of him so deep inside her. She grabbed more soap and scrubbed him out of her body, scrubbed herself until her flesh was raw. Then she took buckets of hot water and rinsed herself thoroughly. She looked up then to see him staring at her. There was no smile on his mouth, no expression in his eyes, languid now, even dazed. Then he slowly straightened. He would kill her now. He raised his arm, thick with muscle, deadly with strength. She cried out and raced out of the inner chamber.
Rorik didn’t move for a very long time.
The afternoon was warm, the sun bright overhead, the storm but a memory now. Mirana sat outside the longhouse, in the shade of the overhead beams. She looked to see Tora, Rorik’s mother, walking toward her. She was a tall woman, hair so blond it shone nearly white beneath the bright afternoon sun. She was deep-bosomed, her face once lovely, but now there were bitter lines scarring the flesh about her eyes and mouth. She looked hard and unforgiving.
Tora’s shoulders were squared, her step firm, her lips thin in their meager line. Mirana drew herself up, knowing that she was to be attacked, but knowing too there was nothing she could do about it. She set down the gown she was stitching. It was a pale blue wool and she thought the material beautiful, a present from Old Alna, who’d been hoarding it for herself for more years than she could count.
Mirana stared at Tora, wishing she could make her believe she wished her or her family no harm, wishing she could convince her that she was innocent of her brother’s crimes. She opened her mouth, but Tora forestalled her. The woman stood in front of her, blocking out the sun.
“I have come to warn you,” she said, nothing more, just those few stark words.
Mirana merely nodded.
“Sira will kill you, very soon now. I cannot stop her.”
“You warn me so that I will leave?”
“Aye. Leave. Now. If you die, my son will feel but more guilt. He is innocent of any evil. He is a good man and I don’t want him hurt more or beguiled by a woman with no honor.”
Mirana looked away from Tora, out over the water, which was a glittering blue-green under the bright sun, and calm, for there was little wind today. For an instant she smiled, for there were pinwheels spinning and diving over the water. “Do you now believe that I didn’t trick Rorik into wedding with me?”
“Of that crime, you are innocent. Rorik said that you came to him a virgin, and that on the night of your wedding. No, you are not a slut, more’s the pity. Sira still refuses to believe it. Leave, Mirana, else she will kill you. Or you will kill her because you must save yourself. To kill her would destroy Rorik. He has known her all her life, has known that she loves him and wanted to wed him, but he wed you and thus he hurt her badly. It would force him to seek but more vengeance were you to kill her. Stop it, Mirana. Leave now.”
“Very well.”
The woman looked stunned. “You agree?” she said, uncertainty and surprise in her voice.
“I want no more pain for Rorik. He doesn’t deserve it.”
“No he doesn’t.”
Then there was a shadow behind Mirana and she turned, afraid it was Sira, a knife raised, but it was Merrik, Rorik’s brother. He was broad-shouldered and tall, and would become as large as Rorik when he gained his full man years. He was hard, no warmth in his eyes, no giving in his mouth.
“Don’t accept her lies, Mother,” he said, so much rage in his voice that Mirana knew in that moment that his family would never change, that there would never be any hope for her, for Rorik.
“She will leave, Merrik. She has agreed to.”
Merrik looked around quickly, then said, “I’m pleased that Rorik isn’t here. I don’t know what he would do if he heard she was willing to go. But I don’t trust her, Mother. She probably lies. She will go to Rorik and plead and cast her woman’s spells over him and make him forget what he owes to Inga, to his dead babes, to us.”
“What does he owe to them, Merrik?” Mirana said, her voice low, steady.
“He owes them vengeance!”
“I agree. But why do you think I am deserving of punishment as well?”
“You will be quiet, you damned slut! You have torn my brother apart with your lies and your promises and your false understanding.”
Mirana sighed. There was no hope for it. “That isn’t true, Merrik, none of it. However, as I told your mother, I will leave. I don’t want Rorik to be hurt any more than you have hurt him by bringing him back such pain.”
“My two small grandchildren were impaled on your brother’s sword! Such beautiful babes, so happy and full of life, and your brother butchered them!”
“I know,” Mirana said. “But heed me. I am Rorik’s wife. When I leave I will still be his wife. He needs children, Tora. He needs happiness. He needs a union free of guilt and pain, one blessed by the gods. What will you do for him then? Give him more reasons to hate? More reasons to keep remembering that awful time? More guilt until he manages to kill my half-brother? When will it stop, Tora?”
“Your death would be a start,” Sira said, coming to stand beside Tora. “I don’t want you to go, Mirana. I want you to die. By my hand, by Rorik’s, I care not.”
“Be quiet, Sira,” Tora said, shaking off the girl’s hand. “Your vengeance is mixed with jealousy; it isn’t pure or noble. You speak with a mouth full of envy.”
Merrik said slowly, his eyes on his cousin, whose features were twisted with hatred, “I had considered wedding with you for I believed your beauty great. But now you have no more beauty for me, for you have no more kindness of spirit. I don’t wish to have you now, Sira.” He turned then and walked away from them, his mother staring openmouthed after him.
“I didn’t realize he wanted you,” she said to Sira. “Now it doesn’t matter, for you have lost him.”
“I care not,” Sira said, her eyes still on Mirana. “I will have Rorik once she is gone.”
“I don’t think so,” Mirana said. “Alna told me that Rorik wouldn’t have you after his wife was killed. Why would he have you now?”
&nbs
p; Sira’s breath came out in an ugly gasp. She jumped at Mirana, her hand hard and flat striking her cheek, throwing her from her stool and onto her back on the ground. She was on top of her, straddling her, slapping her, sending her fist into her breasts, her belly.
Mirana heard Tora yelling. She felt Sira’s blows, then the rising of tears in her eyes. She had to stop this. Quickly, in a move Gunleik had taught her years before, she brought her knees up, striking Sira hard against her back, and at the same moment, she sent her fist into the girl’s throat. Sira gave a strangled cry, grabbed her throat and fell off Mirana onto her side, gurgling and clutching her throat, for she couldn’t breathe.
Mirana rolled to the other side and came up to her knees, panting as she stared at Sira, knowing that within a few moments, she would be all right again, and wondering if she would attack her again. She slowly drew her knife from its sheath at her belt.
When Sira regained her breath, when the pain in her back receded, when she looked at Mirana, she stilled at the sight of the knife.
“You filthy slut.”
“Come here, Sira,” Mirana said, her voice low and dangerous, beckoning her with her hand. “Aye, come here, and this time I won’t be so very gentle. I will stick this knife into your cheek—aye, I’ll mark you so you won’t believe yourself such a goddess among women any longer. I will make you as ugly on the outside as you are on the inside. Aye, come here, Sira.” Mirana tossed the knife from her right hand to her left, and back again. She knew she was taunting her, but she didn’t care. She didn’t want to be a victim, not anymore.
“So, you will knife my cousin?”
It was Rorik, fetched by his mother, and she was panting beside him from exertion.
“Aye, if she forces me to.”
“Give me the knife, Mirana. I should never have allowed you to keep it. You stole it from my trunk and like a fool I allowed you to keep it with you. You are too ungoverned in your passions, too unpredictable, mayhap too vicious.”
Mirana stared up at him. Without a word, she gave him the knife, sticking it toward him, its handle first. He took it, staring at her, surprise in his eyes. In the next moment, Sira jumped at her, sending her fist into her jaw.
Rorik wondered if the world had always been mad or if the gods had plunged him into a nightmare that would never end. He tossed the knife to the ground, grabbed Sira beneath her arms and dragged her off Mirana. She was panting with rage, and he shook her.
“Stop it! Enough!”
She cried out and twisted in his arms, wrapping her own around his back, pressing herself against him. “Oh Rorik, she is vicious, evil. I was but protecting myself. She hurt me. I couldn’t let her believe me a coward. Save me, Rorik!”
He pressed her hard against him. He looked at Mirana and saw that her face was pale, without expression. He watched her slowly rise, feel her jaw with her fingers, then work it open and closed a few times. He saw her pick up her knife, sheath it again at her waist, turn without a word, and walk away. He started to call after her, demand that she give him back the knife, but he said nothing. He remembered thinking on their wedding night that he should return her knife to her, remembered being surprised that she—a woman—would consider a knife as part of her clothing, but he’d forgotten it in his need for her. He watched her walk away from him, walk away from the madness that was within him and surrounded him and seemed to infect the very earth he stood on. Her shoulders were as square as a quarried stone.
Aye, he thought, the world was surely mad, at least his world was, so mad in its madness that sense was nonsense and nothing had meaning anymore, nothing at all. This mad world was also without hope. He held Sira whilst she sobbed, aware of her body against his, aware that he felt no desire, no burgeoning lust, nothing but immense pain that wouldn’t go away.
20
“TONIGHT,” ENTTI SAID quietly to Mirana as she passed her, a platter of boar steaks on her arms.
Mirana merely nodded. “When all are asleep. But what of Hafter?”
Entti shrugged but Mirana wasn’t fooled. There was both worry and another emotion in her eyes Mirana couldn’t identify, but it puzzled her. Entti said, shrugging yet again, her eyes on a boar steak that was close to the edge of the platter, “I will deal with the lout if he forces me to.” She turned, and began serving with the other women.
And what of Rorik? Mirana thought. She looked across the longhouse to see him sitting between his brother and his father, only this time they were all silent. He wasn’t eating, merely sitting there, drinking the sweet red wine from the Rhineland his father had brought him as a gift. She wanted to tell him not to drink too much of it, for it would make him ill. Ah, but she could imagine how he would look at her if she even approached him, much less expressed concern for him. She felt sorry for him, but there was naught she could do. He’d avoided her since the scene several hours before. As for Sira, she was seated next to Rorik’s father, head down, picking at her food, her beautiful hair clean and glimmering again in the rush torch light.
Mirana filled her own plate and joined the women. Asta said, “The gown becomes you more than it ever did me, Mirana. I think it’s because of that black hair of yours and your skin that’s whiter than the goat’s milk I’m drinking.”
“You just wait until she finishes the blue wool I gave her,” said Old Alna. “Your gown is poor and miserable when compared to that blue wool. Aye, it’s the color my eyes used to be when I was young. Then I was more beautiful than the lot of you.”
Erna said, giggling through the fingers of her one good hand, “There is no one to tell us if she speaks the truth, for any who would know are all dead now.”
“The wool probably has holes in it you’ve hoarded it for so long,” Asta said and laughed, poking the old woman lightly on her scrawny arm. “Aye, I believe you had it when you were young and had all your teeth and a man about to warm you, but Alna, none of us can remember, it was so many decades ago, just as Erna said. How can you remember?”
“You’ll talk and talk, won’t you, Asta! Well, look you to Gurd, a mangy one, that man.”
“Aye, but he’s strong and hard in my bed, Alna.”
“You’ll grow old and lose your teeth, you’ll see.”
Asta laughed and laughed.
So very normal, Mirana thought. It was as though this part of the longhouse was in a world completely apart from Rorik’s. These women didn’t hate her. It seemed too that they’d made a choice. They’d chosen her over Tora. She looked over at Amma, the leader of the women’s revolt, a woman she’d trust with her life. Her husband, Sculla, so tall Mirana felt like a child standing next to him, wasn’t always a reasonable man, though he hadn’t even slept with Entti. She wondered if there was still acrimony between them.
Utta said shyly, “Your recipe for the sauce is delicious, Mirana. Would you let me watch you make it next time?”
Mirana smiled and nodded. She looked over at Entti, silent as a stone, and she knew she was forcing herself to eat because she knew she would need her strength. Her rich brown hair hid her face, a long thick curtain falling forward to touch her forearm. Hafter was also staring at Entti, like a hungry goat, Entti had told her earlier, her voice sour and frustrated.
Mirana forced herself to eat as well. She knew that Entti had stolen food and water and hidden it down near one of the smaller longboats. Mirana still had to steal another knife, but she knew it would be no problem. Once the men were asleep, many of them sodden with drink, she would easily be able to slip a knife out of a sheath. Rorik had let her keep her knife to her, saying nothing, and for that she was grateful. She wondered why he’d let her. Didn’t he fear that she would slip it between Sira’s ribs still?
She ate and sipped sparingly at the rich mead. She listened to the women talk of smoking herring, arguing over which wood smoke was the most flavorful—oak or fir. She watched Rorik’s parents and his brother, Merrik, and Sira, the violence in them silenced now, but for how much longer? It was like an armed cam
p, and she was the enemy, just out of reach, but not for long. Every once in a while, Sira raised her head and looked straight at Mirana. Tora was silent, withdrawn. Mirana ached for the older woman. Her position in all this was damnable.
Mirana oversaw the cleaning of the plates and pans and pots. There was always a seemingly endless supply. Finally, she dismissed the slaves and sent the other women off to their beds. She sought out Entti and the two of them took blankets to the far corner of the longhouse, not far from the front doors.
Mirana lay there, her heart pounding, wondering what would happen. In her experience the gods didn’t suddenly smile upon a mortal’s plans and allow them to act and succeed. The gods weren’t like that. When she looked up to see Rorik standing over her, she wasn’t surprised. He was either here to rape her or to kill her. She had rather hoped that his mother would keep him away from her. Tora believed she would leave, trusted her to leave.
Had Merrik said anything to Rorik about her promise? Had he told his brother that he didn’t believe her, that he knew she was lying?
“What do you want, Rorik?”
“You. Come with me. We will sleep in the barn.”
Entti stiffened beside her but remained quiet, pretending sleep.
He continued, “As for her, Hafter will come for her shortly. He won’t bear with her woman’s deceit any longer.”
He reached out his hand to her. Mirana looked at that hand, strong, browned from the summer sun, a large hand, a man’s hand that could soothe as easily as it could kill.
Lord of Hawkfell Island Page 19