Sandra Hill - [Vikings I 02] (10 page)

Ubbi shrugged disinterestedly.

Rain shook her head in disgust at her predicament, then mumbled an obscenity under her breath as she once again untied her bounds and stomped over to the cookfire.

Ubbi’s eyebrows lifted with amusement as he commented dryly. “Is that how they imprison people in yer lands? The captive gits ter tie and untie his own knots whenever the whim hits ’im?”

“Shut up, you fool.”

He chuckled and continued sawing away at the bony rabbits, which he then threw into a pile at his feet.

“Is this all you have?” she asked, her nose curling with disgust as she leaned over the cauldron.

“Yea,” he answered sheepishly. “I am not too good at cooking, but there be no one else to take on the chore. Perchance could ye—”

“No way! I do not cook.”

“Well, that is it then,” Ubbi said, pointing to the smelly pot of mush. “It sort of burned on the bottom when the fire got too hot.”

“It sort of smells like hell.”

He smiled. “Do ye perchance know how hell smells, comin’ as ye do from heaven?”

Rain made a vulgar sound of disgust.

“Just askin’. No need to be rude. Mayhap ye could give this gruel to the prisoners so I kin clean the pot fer the dinner meal.” He pointed to the pile of rabbit meat and bones at his feet.

Having no choice, Rain doled the contents of the
pot into two wooden bowls and carried them back and forth to the captives who were forced to hold the bowls in their bound hands and drink from them. Not one of them complained about the ungodly mess, being too hungry to care and probably wondering if it might be their last meal.

When she finished, Rain helped Ubbi scour the cauldron near the pond with coarse sand. Then she returned to the captives and approached Blanche, the woman who had been with Edwin.

“Can you cook?” she asked gently, sensitive to the young woman’s bereavement. But Blanche didn’t seem all that concerned about her dead lover when she sensed the prospect of a reprieve from her imprisonment.

“Yea, I can, mistress,” she replied readily. “And rabbit is my specialty. If you let me gather some herbs in those trees, under guard, of course, I can make up a tasty stock pot that would please even a king.”

Rain doubted that heartily, but she preferred anything over Ubbi’s cooking. It took almost no convincing for Ubbi to agree to give Blanche a chance.

Rain was pleasantly surprised several hours later to find that Blanche hadn’t lied. The rabbit stew was thick and savory with wild onions and carrots and mushrooms, not to mention a few spices she did not recognize. Blanche preened, knowing that, at least for the time being, her hide was safe.

Gorm’s eyes gleamed with lascivious interest as Blanche bent over the cookfire. Rain shot him a look that said clearly, “Don’t you dare.” He smirked and countered with a contemptuous leer that challenged silently, “Try and stop me.”

Selik returned to camp late that night, weary in body and soul. Dodging the Saxon guards who patrolled the battlefield had taken an alertness that
Selik and his exhausted comrades did not have, being still unrested since the battle.

They had buried as many of their friends or acquaintances as they could locate—a horrid enough chore under the best of circumstances; a torment of the mind when they had to fight the flesh-gorged vultures for their prey. The eyes of the dead went first—a particular delicacy for the beastly birds, no doubt—and Selik and his brave men stopped to vomit numerous times in the face of so many eyeless bodies. Not to mention the half-devoured flesh. Or the stench. Oh, God, the stench! The whole time, wolves and other predators circled the field, waiting for their departure.

So Selik was not in the best of moods when he entered his tent, removed his cross-gartered leather shoes and armor, then dropped to his bed furs without removing his tunic. It took him only a moment to realize that the strange wench who claimed to be his “guardian angel” had flown the coop.

“
Ubbi!
”

The little man opened the flap of his tent as soon as his little legs could carry him from across the campsite, where he had placed his bed furs.

“You called, master?”

Selik said a very foul word, and Ubbi cringed.

“Where is she?”

“Who?” Ubbi shifted uncomfortably from foot to foot and would not meet his questioning gaze.

“You know damn well who.”

“With the prisoners, m’lord. But ’twas not my doin’. Nor Gorm’s,” he added quickly.

Selik exhaled loudly and forced himself not to shake his faithful servant. Carefully, he spaced each word as he spoke. “Why is she with the prisoners?”

“She sez she be a pacifist—”

“Pacifist?”

“Yea, pacifists are against all fightin’, even—”

“Pacifist be damned!”

Ubbi slanted him a condemning look for the interruption and went on. “She sez she be a pacifist, and if me or Gorm would not release the captives, then she would become a captive, too.”

“She
is
a captive.”

Ubbi raised his chin in challenge. “Nay, she is a hostage. I told her so. And there is a difference, m’lord.”

“Yea, and a valuable hostage she is with her medical skills. I want her back in this tent, where I can guard her so she cannot escape.”

Ubbi raised an eyebrow in disbelief at his motives.

“I have not bedded the wench,” he said, oddly defensive.

“Have I said ye did?” Ubbi replied quickly, raising both hands in the air defensively.

“Well, I know what ye were thinking.”

“Hah! Does God speak to you as well? You are becoming as bad as the wench,” Ubbi said with a knowing grin, which annoyed Selik even more.

“Bring the wench here,” he snarled.

Ubbi backed away from him. “Nay, not me, master. She already threatened to clout me today. Best ye gather her yerself.”

Scowling, Selik headed toward the bound captives. “Why did she threaten you with bodily harm if she is such a pacifist?”

“’Cause I killed one of the prisoners, that surly lad who was making all the threats yestereve.”

Selik stopped and looked at his servant, who rarely entered the battle fray. He knew Ubbi must have had good reason to kill a valuable slave. “Why?”

“He was choking the mistress.”

“Rain?” Cold terror swept over Selik at Ubbi’s casually spoken words. Why would he feel bereft at the prospect of losing a mere wench he had met just the day before?

Ubbi nodded. “And best ye be prepared fer the tongue-lashin’ of yer life. She is sore angry with you.”

“Well, I am in no mood to hear her shrewish carping on the issue of captives tonight. Mayhap I should just stuff a rag in her waspish mouth and ease myself on her body ’til she is too tired to complain anymore.”

Ubbi made a clucking, skeptical sound that questioned the wisdom of such a plan.

A full moon and the campfire provided enough light for Selik to see the prisoners, who lay on the ground, most of them sleeping. A few stared up at him through wide, frightened eyes as he passed. He would have to find some warmer clothing for the mangy lot in the morn or they would never make the arduous trip to Jorvik. And food—his men would have to find more game to fatten their scrawny frames, lest they bring naught from the slave traders.

Selik finally found his troublesome wench at the end of the line, curled into a ball, shivering with the cold even in her sleep. He noticed that she had purloined one of his wool tunics, not that it was any protection against the autumn winds. Instead of being angered by her thievery, he felt an odd satisfaction in knowing his garment caressed her flesh, like a poor substitute for his arms.

“Bloody hell!” he muttered aloud. “The wench is turning me as senseless as an untried boy yearning for his first mating.”

Rain’s eyes opened slowly as Selik’s voice seeped into her consciousness. Still sleep-disoriented, she didn’t protest, at first, when he leaned down and untied the loose knots at her ankles.

“God’s bones! Some captive you make when you can slip in and out of your bindings so easily.”

“It’s symbolic,” she said sleepily, then yawned
widely, forgetting to cover her mouth daintily. But then she noticed his smile and frowned, trying to shove him away.

“Symbolic of what?” he asked, standing up and watching as she sat and rolled the kinks out of her shoulders. No doubt she had developed an ache or two sleeping on the hard ground. A well-deserved punishment for being so stubborn, he decided.

“My protest of your barbaric act.” Her face suddenly became hard as she seemed to come fully awake.

He raised an eyebrow in question and folded his arms across his chest. Even his tough flesh was beginning to feel the cold. “What barbaric act?”

“The taking of slaves,” she hissed. “How could you? As much as I hate violence, I understand how some people can justify it as self-defense. But taking captives when the heat of battle is over—well, it’s uncivilized.”

“I do not have to defend myself to you or any other person. And you do not understand civilization, shrew, if you think Norsemen are the only ones who consider captives part of the spoils of war. ’Tis universal. I know of no country or any people who condemn the practice.”

“But what do you know in your heart?”

Her question stunned Selik. There should have been an easy answer, but he could not form the words to defend himself.

A rustling noise drew his attention then, and Selik noticed that their conversation had awakened all the prisoners, who listened intently to what must seem a strange conversation. With a grunt of disgust, he leaned down and picked up the troublesome wench.

Rain exhaled sharply in surprise at his quick movement, but before she could protest, he tucked her face into his neck, wrapped a steely arm around her
now flailing legs, pressing them against his hip, and pinned both arms against her body by the enclosure of his right arm.

Selik knew Rain considered herself too big to be picked up by any man, and he delighted in perpetuating her misconception. He pretended to trip and almost fall. She stopped struggling immediately.

“Mayhap, if you would not eat so much, you might stop growing.”

“Argh! Put me down.”

“Nay, I find the exercise good for me after a long day of riding. Much like carrying my horse.”

She stilled suddenly, then asked in a small voice, “Selik, where is your horse?”

Surprised by her question, he answered hesitantly, “’Tis picketed with the other horses near the pond. Why?”

“Would you take me to see Fury? Please. It’s important to me.”

Selik shrugged. He saw no harm in letting her look at the animal. Besides, he could use a quick bath in the pond. As he recalled, his saddlebag, containing soap and linens, lay on the ground near the horses, where he had left it.

But he did not want to acquiesce too soon. “And why should I? What will you give me for the favor?”

He felt her stiffen immediately. “I have nothing to give.”

“Oh? I do not know about that. You could promise to silence your shrewish tongue. Or pledge an oath not to escape.” A delicious, heart-stopping thought occurred to him. “Or…”

“Or?”

“Or you could kiss me of your own free will,” he whispered huskily as he nuzzled her hair. It still smelled of Passion, the perfume she had worn yestereve. And her own sweet, sweet scent.

“Hah! I gave you a lot more than kisses last night.”

“Yea, but not really of your own free will, since you were asleep. And, as I recall, there were no kisses.” In truth, he recalled a great deal more than that.

How odd, he thought, that he had touched her so intimately and not kissed her! If he had truly thought he was making love with his dead wife in his berserk state, why had he not supped of her lips? Mayhap he had not been as bemused as they both thought. Mayhap he had known exactly who was in his bed furs, but his inner mind wanted to deny the traitorous attraction.

“A kiss? All you want is a kiss?”

He nodded, releasing his hold on her now that they had reached the pond. She slid sensuously down his rigid body until she stood facing him, only a breathing space apart, but not touching.

“And then we will talk?”

He nodded silently once again, unable to move under the spell of her seductive nearness. Truly, she must be a sorceress to entrance him so.

Rain put her hands on his shoulders and leaned up. He felt her sweet breath on his lips before she closed her eyes and brushed her soft lips gently from side to side against his as if savoring that barest of caresses. But the effect was powerful, overwhelming.

She whimpered.

He held himself rigid, fighting against the roaring of blood in his head, the wild beating of his heart.
’Tis just a kiss
.

“Selik,” she whispered pleadingly against his mouth.

Moving her hands from his shoulders to the back of his neck, she stroked the tense muscles. And moved closer. Breast to chest. Thigh to thigh. Hip to hip. Manhood to womanhood.

Selik moaned. He could not help himself.

And she moved her lips once again, more firmly this time, shaping, coaxing. She nipped his bottom lip, then suckled at it gently.

He gasped with sheer, utter pleasure, and she took advantage of the opportunity to slip the tip of her tongue between his lips. A brief foray. Over so quickly he might have dreamed it.

And she claims to get no particular joy from the bed mating! What might she do if really aroused?

Selik felt himself harden and elongate against her soft body. Enough of teasing games! He put his arms around her and pulled her tighter against his body. And he took over control of the kiss.

Then, placing a hand on each side of her face, he tilted her face up to the bright moonlight and noted with extreme satisfaction the slumberous, half-lidded eyes, the slightly parted, moist lips. With exquisite care, he traced her lips with the pad of his thumb, then did the same with the tip of his tongue.

She parted her lips even more, and his heart stopped. He rubbed his lips seductively back and forth across hers, making them slick with the juices of their mutual wanting. He pressed hard, wanting all of her, then slackened to a feathery question of a kiss, then hard again. He could not get enough of her. Her taste was an aphrodisiac he could not resist.