Viking Bride (2 page)

The biggest of the Vikings, the one that had
originally captured her, strode into view. He stopped before her
and watched her a moment. “Up,” he said, beckoning.

Eliza rose, letting the blanket fall. He slid
a knife from his belt and approached. She held out her wrists and
let him slice the ropes that bound her. Fighting him wasn’t going
to do much good, not surrounded by his countrymen in a place so far
from everything she knew.

“Come.” He beckoned her forward, toward the
plank.

At the top of the plank, he stopped her with
a hand on her shoulder. A crowd of Vikings gathered below them. It
was far larger than the crew, larger than a dozen crews. She looked
down the shoreline, astonished. Two dozen or more ships were lined
up on the banks. The crowd below her had to have hundreds of
people. Behind them were enormous huts, as long as the ships.
Dozens of them. It was like a barbarian Paris.

The Viking behind her yelled something to his
countrymen.

They roared back.

His hand moved, swept over her waist, and the
next thing she knew, she was flung over his shoulder, her head
hanging over his back. They strode down to the gangplank to
cheering and the clanging of axes on shields.

Men came up, clapped the Viking on the back.
Some pinched her rump. One slipped a hand between her legs, goosing
her painfully.

The chieftain, she decided he had to be more
important than a mere captain, carried her onward. A crowd of
warriors followed, some of them leering at her. She let her head
fall, her hair dangling.
This is it then. Not a ship of them.
Not for me. A whole village.
She wanted to cry, but knot in her
stomach hurt too much.

They stopped outside one of the long huts,
and the chief set her on her feet. The warriors stopped behind
them.

“Do not touch,” the chief admonished. He
pushed through a door and into the longhouse.

A tiny flicker of hope kindled within her.
Maybe he didn’t intend the whole village to lay with her.

Eliza shifted her feet, unsure what to do.
She knew she couldn’t run. The warriors were all around her.
Following didn’t seem right, either. If the chief wanted her, he’d
have taken her with him. She swallowed, waited.

The chief returned quickly, beckoned her to
follow him inside.

Eliza took two steps inside and stopped. The
longhouse was
huge.
Two rows of posts ran down the center,
disappearing into a hazy gloom beyond a large fire. Sections of
tables and ornately carved beds were tucked into nooks on either
wall. A thin, raven haired Viking woman tended the fire in the
middle of the hut. Smoke swirled around her and up out the hole in
the roof above her.

The chief led Eliza to the other woman. He
said something in words she didn’t understand. The woman studied
her a moment. “Welcome to Kelnhall, Eliza. I have been waiting for
you.”

Eliza backed up a step, stopped when she
collided with the chief’s chest. There hadn’t been time for the
woman to talk to the other captured girls. Something was wrong
here. Something was very, very wrong. “Who are you? How do you know
me?”

“I am Kelnar’s… advisor. As for how I know
you.” She grinned, her eyes crinkling. “I have ways.”

“What does he want with me? They left me
alone on the boat.”

“Kelnar is chief of this village. He sought a
bride. Someone that would elevate him in the eyes of the Gods.”

“But why me?” Eliza whispered.

“You’ll learn. In time. Come. I must prepare
you.” She led Eliza deeper into the longhouse. The chief went back
outside.

“What do you mean prepare me? He intends to
lay with, yes?”

“Of course. But you must be purified.” She
pointed to a bench near the fire. “Raise your dress.”

Eliza stared at her, unwilling.

“Girl, you’ll do it or you’ll suffer.” She
threw a handful of herbs into the fire, causing a great cloud of
smoke to rise. Instead of flowing up and out of the hole, it hung
in the air, billowing before the woman. It twisted, shapes writhing
within it. Stags and dragons and demons. They crawled through the
air, circled Eliza’s head.

“What are they doing?” Tiny voices whispered
in her ear. Snippets of the Viking tongue, snippets of her own. She
thought she heard her father’s voice, pleading to the gods to
return his only daughter. “Make it stop.”

“The dress.” The witch’s voice was hard.

Eliza peeled off her dress. The smoke rose
above her, but the shapes kept circling, as if they were waiting
for her to disobey again. The witch came back with a stick daubed
with paint. She pressed it to Eliza’s chest.

“Ouch!” Eliza said. It burned something
fierce, though she’d hardly said the words and it turned bitterly
cold.

“Quiet.” The witch painted elaborate shapes
over her chest and back, making her rise to paint them across her
rump and her legs. She took special care to inscribe delicate lines
around Eliza’s woman parts. It tickled in a way that wasn’t at all
disagreeable.

“What are these?”

“Runes. You must please Kelnar.”

“And if I don’t?”

“You die. Painfully.” She looked into Eliza’s
eyes. “At the hands--and cock--of every man in the village.”

Eliza snapped her mouth shut. Better to
please one man then. She closed her eyes. “I don’t know how…”

“You’ve never lain with a man before?”

“No.”

The witch stepped back, frowning. “You have
the chest of a woman. Did you have no husband?”

“My father was a fisherman. I had not taken a
man yet.”

“I see.” She turned, rummaged in her basket.
She started adding herbs to a small pot, then poured water on top.
“Drink this. It will help.”

Eliza looked at her, dubious.

“Drink. It.”

Eliza took the pot, tested it for heat, then
sipped the liquid. It was worse than undercooked fish. Bitter and
slimy and cold. The clouds over her swirled down, a dragon dancing
before her face.

She swallowed the liquid, nearly gagging in
the process.

“Good.” The witch touched the paint on
Eliza’s chest. “You are ready. Don your dress and wait here.”

“I don’t know…”

“Eliza, you must do this if you wish to
survive here. Your father would be disappointed if you threw your
life away.”

Thoughts of her father nearly knocked her to
her rump. She had no way to know if he’d survived the Vikings
passing on the river, or how he’d reacted when he’d returned to the
village. She blinked back the tears that threated to overwhelm her.
There was no time for self-pity. Not when she’d seen what had
happened to Aldith and Cordith, and knew what the alternative
was.

Satisfy the chief, or satisfy the village.
Only one of those ended with her sanity still intact.

“Very well,” Eliza said, at last.

The witch nodded, satisfied. She left, then
returned a few minutes later with the chief.

Kelnar stopped before her and said something
to the witch that Eliza couldn’t understand. One hand gripped her
shoulder. The older woman bowed her head, then slipped past
them.

She stopped at the door. “Please him
well.”

Kelnar guided her around the fire and on to a
bed the size of the hut Eliza had left behind on the banks of the
Seine. The carved heads of strange beasts rose from each corner,
curling down back on to the posts. Layers of animal skins and woven
blankets covered the frame.

Eliza stopped a few feet short. She closed
her eyes, gathered her nerve. It was not hard to find. Her head
swam from the elixir; her loins already ached with heat. Kelnar’s
hands found her waist. They held her gently, neither moving her
forward, not letting her go back.

“I’m ready.” She twisted her dress up over
her head and let it fall across one of the posts.

Kelnar rumbled approval, the sound emanating
deep in his chest. He unlaced his breeches, then stepped forward
between her trembling knees. His manhood stood erect before him,
bigger than Eliza had imagined possible. A thick bush of curly hair
spread around the base.

How will that even fit inside me?
She
licked her lips, unsure what she was supposed to do.

Kelnar rubbed his massive cock along her
thigh, then up to her pussy. He prodded her with it, then paused.
His rubbed her with a finger, his thumb exploring down to her
folds.

The runes on her skin began to itch. It
started off small, but built to something like the wings of a
hummingbird.

She expected him to shove himself inside, to
have his way with her quickly and violently, but he crouched before
her, pulling her hips to the edge of the bed. His tongue found her
folds, his nose in woman’s hair. He explored her in ways she had
never imagined. His tongue was a more tactile than a finger,
working up and down her slit, around her most sensitive nub.

Eliza’s eyes were wide, the heat building.
This is what it means to lay with a man?
It was much better
than she had ever imagined.

Kelnar’s tongue found her channel, teased in
and out. He slipped a finger inside her, then moved his attention
up. His tongue swirled around her nub, flicking up and down,
coaxing out. A second finger slipped inside her, stroked in and
out.

Eliza shuddered. Her breath caught in her
throat. She let her eyes close, astonished at how amazing it
felt.

His head rose past her mound, though his
fingers kept moving. Kisses crept up her belly. His whiskers
brushed rough on her fair skin, but it didn’t matter. When he
reached her breasts, his lips on her areolas, the whiskers made her
want to scream as they passed over her. His fingers slipped into
her again, deeper than ever, curling as they stroked back out.

“Oh, that. Do that,” she breathed. “Gods
above, don’t stop.”

He stroked her again, the sensations growing
by the second. She didn’t know what was supposed to happen, but she
never wanted it to stop.

And then his fingers were gone.

“What?” Her eyes opened, plaintive. Then they
opened wider than ever. She looked down at her woman parts, saw his
thick rod of flesh piercing into her. He slipped it back, then
thrust it in again.

Eliza remembered to breathe.

He was so thick, so long. He filled her so
completely. Every inch of him sent pleasure pulsating through her.
Each thrust was a slice of ecstasy unlike any she had ever known.
The runes gripped her, her whole body humming with their
energy.

Kelnar leaned over her, his muscled chest
brushing her breasts. His lips met hers, then slipped on to the
side. He kissed her cheek, her ear. His whiskers brushed her jaw as
he moved to her neck. A strong arm slipped behind her shoulders,
the other under her rump. He lifted her up into him, thrust back,
deeper than ever.

Eliza gasped. Her mind melted like wax before
a flame. Every feeling of pleasure doubled, then redoubled. Her
body felt as if it were on fire. Wisps of smoke rose from the
runes, sweeter than the most precious incense.

She gasped again, shuddering in pure
ecstasy.

Above her, Kelnar groaned. He was so hard she
couldn’t bear it. His manhood flexed within her. Each thrust was
exquisite.

It took her a few seconds to realize that he
had stopped moving. Her channel flexed around him still; she
couldn’t control it.

Kelnar gave her one last kiss, held his hand
to her cheek a moment, then rose. Eliza sighed when he pulled out.
She was so empty without him. He looked down at her, nodded
gravely, then pulled his breeches back into place. A minute later
and he was gone, the door to the long house swinging behind
him.

Eliza sat up and realized his seed was still
within her. She rose, feeling the sticky wetness shift within her.
She cleaned herself as best she could with the blanket they had
lain on, then pulled her dress from the end of the bed.

Before she made it to the end of the
longhouse, the door opened. The raven haired witch entered,
approached. “Stop.”

“Stop what?”

The woman pressed a hand to Eliza’s stomach.
“Did you take his seed?”

“Y-yes.” She trembled at the touch.

“Good. You will bear him a son. It is
foretold.”

“I’ll bear him a son?”

“In time, yes. Today was a beginning.”

“A beginning of what?”

“Of your trial, girl. Kelnar will lay with
you every day until you are quickened. Pray it does not take
long.”

Eliza stared at the other woman, open
mouthed.
Pray it doesn’t take long? Gods, may it take a lifetime
if it’s like it was today.

“I see he went gently with you.” She stepped
closer, her mouth nearly touching Eliza’s ear. “It will not always
be so. Do not fail to please him, and do not entertain thoughts of
laying with aught else.”

“I would never.”

“You do not know the temptations of our men.
Remember what I say, girl. You are the chief’s now. Obey him in all
things, but especially in matters of the—“ she squeezed Eliza
between the legs.

Eliza blinked.

“Go. Rest.” Smoke swirled around her,
different shapes than before. Fish and bears and nymphs.

“Who are, really? You don’t have the blonde
hair of the women I saw outside.”

“I am Kelnar’s advisor, I told you this.”

Eliza moved closer, sensing the evasiveness
in the woman’s voice. “You’re some kind of witch. I understand
that. But how do you know about my father.”

The other woman looked away. A small squeak
escaped her and her shoulders shook. She turned back to Eliza, eyes
glistening. “I was taken by the Kelnar’s father seventeen years
ago. Eliza, I’m your mother.”

Eliza stumbled back, thumped into a post and
slid to the ground. Her mouth hung open.
My mother is
alive.