“You – like - the touch of the wolfskin,” Skarga whispered, sitting where he ordered. “But you have no others in your hall. May I – give it to you?”
Grimr’s eyes remained utterly cold. “If I wanted it, I would have taken it,” he answered her, “since everything here belongs to me, including you. But I do not hunt wolves, nor allow them slaughtered on my land.”
It was a long, strained night with the fire low, spitting soot, and the draughts whispering in the rushes. Grimr’s great grey hound watched, the glint of half closed eyes catching the gleam of the ashes. Skarga’s determination to neither antagonise nor excite, faded slowly. A renewed hatred of Grimr was born from the ingenuity of his cruelty. As she’d expected, he intentionally provoked her pain. He designed specific humiliations. He experimented, not with her feelings, but with his own. He did what fascinated him, and his fascinations were intense.
Finally, when she was bruised and utterly weary, she bit him. Without any sound, either of surprise or hurt, he caught her hair and flung her off. Then he took his belt, long discarded on the ground, and used it to whip her. He did not bind her or tie her to the central pillar as he had once threatened. He flexed the leather, rubbing his thumbs along the tongue as though testing it. The hide creaked, responding and willing. Grimr knelt over Skarga, one booted foot hard to the back of her neck and forced her down. At first, when she realised what he was doing, she struggled, twisting and turning against him. He forced her chin to her knees and slapped his belt across her buttocks with such strength that she collapsed and cried out.
He varied the direction of the blows and the force of his strokes, but always careful, hard, flat, and then a watchful pause as he calculated the effects. She heard the leather sing, cutting air. The pain became astonishing. She had been whipped before with the lash across her back, but less personal and less malicious, that had also hurt less.
Grimr made little sound but a quick intake of breath each time he swung the belt. At the first strike, in sudden surprise, Skarga had cried out. Then she swallowed the shame, just flinching with a grunt of bitter acceptance. She tried to stay silent but very soon she was sobbing. When Grimr knew she was close to losing consciousness, he knelt. Instead of his foot to the back of her neck, he put his knee to the small of her back and bent over her. “Tell me,” he whispered.
She heard him, even through her own weeping. She was quite unable to reply.
He held her down but dropped his belt, watching while she shuddered, calming her panic, hysteria subsiding into gentle hiccups. “Tell me,” said Grimr again. “Ask me.”
While she stayed quiet, desperately catching her breath, he moved his hands across her, admiring and caressing the inflammation. “It’s a well fed, well fleshed arse,” he said softly, “and takes the bruising well. The bleeding is superficial. But now, unless you wish me to stripe you again, ask me.”
She had come to know him. She understood. “I beg you,” she gulped. “Please, no more.”
“Again,” he said.
He traced his fingers across the welts. She could smell his sweat. “I beg you,” she whispered.
Grimr slipped both arms beneath her, lifting her up against him. One hand grasped under her knees, the other under her arms, and he cradled her very tenderly to the wide silk shirted strength of his chest. She had no further ability to struggle but when she turned her head aside, he pressed her cheek to him again, firm against his breast. He walked with her back across the boards to his bed, hitched the door open with one foot, and very carefully laid her down, propped a little on the pillows. He sat on the edge of the heaped furs beside her and she felt the threatening sink of the covers beneath his weight. The door remained open and the dull crimson light entered across his shoulders. She resolutely closed her eyes. Her whole body flushed, many times scorched. “Turn over,” he suggested, “it will hurt you less.”
She knew he was right but could not move. He shifted her himself, tumbling her over with careful hands, stroking the hair from her eyes, turning her face towards him, resting one hand on the back of her waist, the other returning to light rhythmic strokes where he had whipped her. He was gentle, but his fingers aggravated. “You are deeply bruised,” he said; words of love, “and the marks are raised in sweet purple blushes. But the flesh is only cut a little, here and here,” he ran a fingertip slantwise across her, “and it bleeds in tiny bubbles, like jewels. I was tempted to cut deeper, but resisted.” He paused, and sighed. “How do you feel, child?”
“Very, very sick,” she whispered.
“You should not have provoked me,” he reminded her.
She wanted very much to say she hoped she’d hurt him too, but did not dare. “I’m sorry,” she said, hating herself.
He laughed. “Hypocrisy, my dear. I’m quite sure you are not. At least,” he added, “I’m sure you’re sorry I punished you. But I doubt you’re sorry for having tried to bite my prick off. Shall I tell you how much you hurt me?” Skarga blinked into the pillows. “Oh, a great deal,” he assured her cheerfully. “But of course you were too scared to bite hard enough, and besides, your aim was poor, as with your other targets. With your bow, your arm drops and the arrows fall low and short. Tonight you aimed for the centre, where the shaft is strongest. Had you aimed much lower, or even a little higher, you’d have succeeded better. Though of course, once I’d recovered, I’d have killed you. Which would be such a waste for I’ve better things planned. But naturally you’re inexperienced in that, as in everything else, and need training. Perhaps I should teach you how to disarm a man more easily. Though as it happens, I doubt you’ll be servicing many other men after me.” She stayed quite silent, wishing he would take his infernal complacency, and go. He stayed. “I think,” he continued, stretching up his legs onto the bed beside her, booted ankles crossed, “you give me as much gratification as any, ever before. Perhaps more.” His fingers, still caressing, were never aimless, always controlled. “But of course, inevitably, you’ll soon begin to pall. I shall let you go before that happens. A few more days perhaps.”
She wondered, silently and urgently, how she could purposefully begin to bore him. “If I’m careful,” she said, tentative since saying anything might antagonise rather than appease, “and try not to annoy you from now on, will you be kind?” He stared at her, one eyebrow raised as she struggled to continue. “I mean, surely tonight was enough. Will you not punish me again?”
“It is understandable of course,” he answered, “but you have no idea how kindly I treated you tonight. I punished you, naturally. But I might have done so much more. I have done so to others, in the past. I could have given you to my dogs, for mauling and for fucking. I could have whipped the soles of your feet instead of your arse, though you probably have no comprehension of how painful that can be. I could have cut off your nipples, flayed your back, broken your thumbs. Instead, I have been quite amazingly kind.”
She managed to say, “How can you think of such things? Why do you want to hurt people? What pleasure is it, to hurt me?”
He smiled. The light caught the sheen of his saliva and turned his gums wolf-brown. “You could never understand, so I will not bother to answer. Though,” he spoke more to himself, “it would be interesting, one day, to explain to someone.” He turned again to Skarga, grinning down at her. “But of course, I should have to kill you at once, if I ever told you everything. And I’m not quite ready for that.”
“You’re still going to let me go?” Skarga insisted.
He nodded, still smiling. “I rarely change my mind. About anything.”
CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR
During five cold days and five wearisome nights, Skarga discovered that Grimr could also experiment with kindness. Once, his hand tucked busily between her legs, he said, “Pleasure, from any source, is such an individual experience. Tell me now what you feel.”
“I can’t feel pleasure,” said Skarga, “not like that, not from you.”
“How interesting,” smile
d Grimr. “Then I shall have to try something else.”
Frequently he gave her gifts, he talked gently to her and again he encouraged her to eat. “It will be cold when you leave,” he reminded her. “Mid winter, food will be scarce. Build your strength first.” And he took her out walking with him into the forests, teaching her how to find acorns beneath the snow drifts, and the herbs and salads to stave off possible starvation.
“I know about these things,” she said, when he’d climbed through a thorn bush and returned, sleeves hitched to his elbows, forearms deep scratched and bleeding, with a handful of berries to offer her.
“Would you eat these?” he said. “How would you know which are poisonous?”
They lay in her cupped palm where he had tipped them, staining her fingers black with the little puddles of their juice. “They look edible,” she frowned. She raised her open hand to her mouth.
Grimr knocked her arm, slapping it violently aside. The berries fell on the snow. “Fool,” he said. “There were six wild raspberries, mouldy with damp, edible but ripe only for belly ache and shitting. And I won’t fuck a woman with the shits, or let her into my bed.”
“Just a few tiny berries wouldn’t hurt me,” Skarga insisted, annoyed.
“And the others?” Grimr demanded. “They were dwale, or doolberries which usually grow further south. Eat those, and you wouldn’t live to shit.”
Skarga hung her head, stamping the small dark seeds into the snow. “So I don’t know much,” she admitted. “But sometimes I went berry picking with the cook girls when I was a child.”
Grimr smiled. “What interesting stews your servants must have served, if they used your talents to collect the salads. Come here, and learn.”
She had become used to his touch. When he took her elbow or her hand and guided her, when he lifted her over obstacles, or steadied her down the iced slopes, she accepted his closeness. She no longer flinched when he pushed her suddenly against a tree and threw up her skirts, pressing himself into her. On the last day he took her to the forest, it was snowing again, just a light swirl of dampness between the trees. She thought it beautiful and when he took her gloved hand, and squeezed it, she felt an absurd sense of friendship.
Grimr bent, brushing the snow from the weeds pushing up through the loamy mulch. “In this season, these leaves are old and tough,” he said, “but pick them and shred them, like this, and pound them with a rock. Bruised, they’re edible enough. Nettles too, though don’t sting your tongue, or it’ll burn and swell and you won’t be able to eat for a day.”
Skarga was puzzled. “Is it such a bad road south in winter? I thought the way would get easier.”
He smiled. “You intend going south?”
Skarga nodded. “I can’t go north back to my father. I don’t know anyone else. I’d like to feel the sun on my back.”
“I should warn you,” Grimr said, “I have no intention of giving you either pony or cart.”
It was a disappointment. “But you’ve taught me to look after myself. I - thank you for that.”
Grimr nodded “You’ve been an adequate pupil.” He stood away from her a moment, watching her, his hands on her waist, holding her at a required distance. His eyes were deeper grey beneath the lowered lashless lids and intensified his scrutiny. The russet streaks in the gold of his hair were shaded and lost beneath the branches, and spangled with snow drops. Eventually he smiled. “Very well,” he said. “I believe you’re ready. But I shall, just perhaps, miss you.”
She stared back and held her breath. Eventually, she said, “When?”
He released his hold on her waist, and moved towards her again, taking her fully into his embrace. He lifted her chin with his index finger and bent, and kissed her on the mouth. His lips were warm and slightly moist, and his breath was hot and damp. One hand moved naturally across her breast. He did not try to hurt her but when his tongue pushed into her mouth, his fingers tightened on her breast, finding the rise of her nipple through the stuff of her tunic. His tongue searched her throat, and his lips became hard, and when he pulled away he was smiling, a twitch of humour at the corners of his mouth, and a flicker of dimple, previously unseen, tucked deep. “I have decided,” he said softly, “to release you tomorrow.”
She stood, almost unbelieving, and gazed up at him. Finally she managed to say, “Thank you.”
“Your heartbeat,” Grimr said, removing his hand, “has become very fast. It seems you are aroused more by the prospect of freedom than by all my interesting seductions.” He watched her a moment, but she did not answer. “And now,” he continued, “you are blushing. How intriguing. I shall reward your absurd innocence with new warm clothes for your departure. Tonight, however, you must try very hard, harder than usual if you will, to amuse me. Then in the morning, I will attempt to amuse you, in the manner you obviously prefer.”
Early morning before sunrise the fire was out and it was very cold. There was no one in the hall except two of the slaves, one of whom brought her a bowl of porridge, which she ate quickly. Neither Bram nor the other dogs roamed the draughts, and she presumed them still out hunting with Grimr.
She was dressed and ready. Clothes had been brought to her as usual and she had dressed with great care. She was immensely excited. She had been Grimr’s prisoner since he had captured her in the last days of summer bordering autumn, and now the long winter season was creeping past. Before him, she had been her father’s prisoner, and before that, a prisoner on the Sheep Islands, held by another man who called himself Grimr. The year was almost complete and it seemed she had been imprisoned for nearly all of it. “I will never,” she said aloud, but not too loud, to the chicken pecking the rushes at her feet, “for the rest of my life, be the prisoner of any man ever again. And I swear it will be a long life, and I’ll find happiness somewhere. And lastly I swear I’ll revenge Egil’s death, if I can, on Asved and my father.”
She wore woman’s clothes, as grand and winter warm as any dream she’d once had of impressing the jarls’ wives at Ogot’s vik, who’d despised her, pointed, and called her cursed. The woollen shift was double pleated and the tunic was heavy with embroidered tapestry. The stockings were thick, there were beaver trimmed gauntlets, and she had new ankle boots, well soled and fully lined in sheepskin. She wore the silver armlet and the two huge silver brooches that Grimr had given her, and she wore her own belt, tight fastened. Over all this was a long hooded cape in felted goat’s wool, and covering it all, Asved’s cloak. She had never been so well prepared for winter weather. She would be walking a wearisome time on a wearisome road but under Grimr’s tutelage she had learned to trust her own feet, and as long as Grimr kept to his word, she did not mind at all.
With the sudden wariness of the long incarcerated when first facing freedom, Skarga walked back towards the master’s bed, which had also been her own. She traced the outside of its door. More than any other place, it had been her home. Within it was piled with a mountain of quilts and covers, outside it was carved with beasts and birds twining around the great soaring trunk of Yggdrasil, the tree of life that held all the planes of the world in their allotted places. Skarga was no longer sure of her allotted place. She slid the bed’s door fully shut and turned away.
It was snowing again and pushing open the great double doors of the hall took all her strength, heaving against the battering of the wind. Doors, always doors. But now they opened for her, although it was not the easiest weather for a long walk south and she wanted no delays.
Grimr was already standing in the snow, talking to his men. He turned at once when he heard her, and smiled; a small unpleasant twist of the mouth. His face was now the public face, the cold eyes almost hidden beneath heavy lids. The tenderness he had recently shown her was gone. The sardonic, rather than the reassuring smile, had returned. She did not care. His jarls, the usual group, watched and Ingmar smiled, bowing slightly. The boy Knut stood well back behind the taller men, head down, fiddling with his gloves. Asved was ther
e too. Amongst the jarls he was the shortest, the darkest and the youngest.
It was still dark and several men held torches, flames flaring in the wind gusts and hissing in the snow flurries. Skarga disliked the men’s scrutiny but imminent freedom made everything else small. Then Knut left, removing himself from the circle of torchlight. He strode away to where the slaves were unharnessing the horses. Skarga was puzzled only by Asved. For some months he had been waiting to witness her death and take back the tale of it to their father, yet he clearly made no objection to her release. At only seventeen years and brought up on a tiny holding, Asved had experienced little opportunity for adventures until now, and Grimr had offered him a wealth of them; the hunt, the company, the women. Perhaps watching his sister’s death seemed less enticing than a clutch of naked slaves in his bed. A good host could please most guests and offer many bribes. Grimr had once claimed to have no weaknesses and no whims. Asved claimed many.
Skarga shivered in spite of all her winter finery, and stamped her feet to keep warm. Grimr watched her for a moment, then said, “Very well. You will do.” She looked up and smiled at him. He nodded, and passed her, tied tight and well packed, a small bag of supplies. “Hang this from your belt, to the right side,” he said. “It’s food for the first part of your journey, adequate rations for one full day if you’re careful. Naturally you must become accustomed to far greater abstinence than you experienced in the comforts of my hall.” Then he handed her a pair of long bladed hunting knives, each sheathed in leather and reinforced with iron bands. He said, “You will need to catch food, and you will need to defend yourself on the road. Both these weapons are well tried. Put one into your belt, and hang the other to the links, here on the left since you are right handed.”
They were larger and far more formidable than the short stabbing knife she had practised with. These were knives for killing. She said again, “Thank you.”
Stars and a Wind- The Complete Trilogy Page 23