“He will be all right, Taby, I promise you. He’s just very weak from hunger and from a lot of exertion. We’ll row to shore in a few hours and camp until dawn. I’ll see that he’s fed then and that he continues to rest until he gets his strength back. You too, lad.”
“It’s very dark,” Taby said. He raised dark blue eyes to Merrik’s face and once again, Merrik felt that twisting and burning deep inside him. “I’m afraid of the dark.”
“No need to be afraid now,” Merrik said, feeling that damnable pain in his gut at the child’s words. He forced himself not to reach out to the little boy and bring him against his chest. No, it would frighten the child, but he wanted to hold him, very much, and Merrik didn’t understand it. He said only, “I’ll keep the dark at bay. It’s important that we put a goodly distance between us and Kiev before we stop. You’re safe now. So is your brother. Trust me.”
The child nodded, very slowly, and Merrik doubted that he believed his words. He doubted he would believe them himself if he were Taby. He stared at the small dirty hand on his brother’s shoulder.
Now he had three slaves and hadn’t paid a gram of silver for two of them. He hadn’t gotten his mother a female slave, but no matter.
Slaves.
He looked from Taby to his brother to the man, Cleve, with his magnificent golden hair and his scarred face, who was rowing clumsily, obviously unused to the task. He was young, not more than twenty, Merrik thought, but he was strong, just untrained in fighting.
What was he going to do with the three of them?
The boy accepted the water skin from Merrik and drank deeply. Then he began to shake uncontrollably, and he dropped the water skin. Merrik reached out his hand to the boy’s forehead. He was hot to the touch. He had the fever. Merrik frowned. Because he was hungry? Because he’d kicked Merrik in the groin and belly and bitten Oleg’s hand to the bone? It made no sense. Merrik cursed, knowing he could do little, save soak the boy with cold water to bring the heat down. It seemed a strange thing to do since the heat was on the inside, but it sometimes worked. It was something his mother always did. He prayed the boy wasn’t sickening of something that could kill all of them.
“Taby,” he said quietly to get the child’s attention without frightening him. “Tear off a bit of the cover your brother has wrapped around him. Hand it to me so I can wet it in the river.”
The child did as he was told.
Merrik slipped his hands beneath the boy’s armpits and lifted him over his legs, saying, as he looked down into the vague pain-blurred eyes, “Don’t move. For some reason you have the fever. I must soak the heat out of you.”
The boy said nothing. Merrik could feel him trembling and shuddering and wondered at it. It was more than that, he knew, but he refused to let that fear, or whatever it was, into his mind.
The night was cool. There were cloud-covered stars above the smooth dark waters of the Dnieper, gleaming dully off the opaque surface. The wind was still naught but a whisper of a breeze scarce rippling the surface of the water. The men were bent low over the oars, pulling, pulling, their motion smooth and powerful. He could see the boy clearly in the sudden shifting of the clouds that showed a quarter moon. He could see Taby’s face just as clearly.
He yelled to Cleve, “Do you know what could be wrong with the boy? He has the fever. He’s shuddering like a virgin.”
The boy began to struggle. Merrik merely tightened his hold around the boy’s back. He moaned and jerked. Merrik felt something wet and sticky against his arm. Frowning, he slowly lifted the boy on his legs, bending him over his left arm. He jerked off the filthy sealskin, then pulled away the ragged and torn tunic. Beneath was a clean linen sheet. When his hands closed over it, the boy jerked. Then he tried to scuttle away from him, but this time Merrik was ready for him. He pressed his hand against the boy’s back to hold him still. The boy keened deep in his throat. It was then Merrik saw the dark wet shadows on the white linen, felt the stickiness against his hand. He lifted his hand in the star-dim light and saw the blood on his palm.
He winced. By all the gods, no. He was careful not to touch the boy’s back again, saying close to his ear, “Hold still or I will hurt you without intending to. He beat you.”
“Aye,” the boy said between gasping breaths. “Thrasco beat me.”
“For striking him at the slave market.”
“Aye, for that, and to teach me obedience.”
“Hold still,” Merrik said again. “I have to see how bad it is. You have the fever and now I know the cause.”
He slowly peeled down the sheet, much of it sticking to the bloody welts. He knew the pain must be very bad, but the boy didn’t move now, didn’t make a sound. He had guts.
He finally managed to get the linen sheet down to the boy’s waist. He looked at the narrow white back covered with bloody welts. He cursed softly. Taby was standing beside him now, his face bloodless, tears streaming down his face.
“Nay, Taby, he will be all right. I promise you. Sit down, I do not want you to fall overboard.”
Merrik looked down again at the narrow back, at the flesh scored with the long raw whip slashes. It was a very narrow, very white back that curved to a waist. Something wasn’t right here. He looked at the thin arms, at the shoulders, at the slender neck, at the filthy tangled hair. Very gently, he laid the boy on his belly over his thighs. Slowly, he pulled at the ragged breeches, drawing them down the boy’s hips. The boy tried to rear up again, striking Merrik’s legs with his fists, but it did no good. Merrik just pressed him back down, holding him still with his palm against his waist. He pulled the breeches down further, baring the boy’s backside.
These weren’t boy’s hips. This wasn’t a boy’s backside.
Merrik closed his eyes a moment. He didn’t need this. By all the gods, this was too much, more than too much.
He heard Cleve call out, “Nay, lord. Don’t strip the lad. He needs his clothes. He must have his clothes!”
Merrik said for both Cleve and the girl over his legs, “I understand. I’ll keep the boy covered.”
He jerked the breeches back up to the girl’s waist. He leaned down and said close to her ear, “Hold still. Now that I know what I’ve got here, I’ll try to keep you covered.” And then he cursed and cursed some more until he saw the fear in Taby’s eyes, and he stopped.
“I won’t hurt her,” he said low to the child. “I won’t. Keep seated. I don’t want to have to worry about you as well.”
What he would do with her, he had no idea.
He cleaned her back as best he could. The river water was clean, ah, but the pain of it against the welts, the harshness of it, and she was naught but a girl. He’d never been beaten in his life. He’d never whipped a slave. He’d cuffed shoulders and heads when he’d needed to gain obedience, particularly when a slave was newly captured, but not the whip, not to flay the flesh from a back.
He gently pressed the wet cloth against her back, holding it there, hoping to leach out some of the pain, to cool the fever. The longboat rocked with a sudden shift in the current sending a wave to slap against the starboard side, and she nearly slid off his legs.
He called out to Oleg, “Find a good place on shore for us to remain the rest of the night. The boy here needs to have his back tended. Thrasco beat him badly.”
Roran, one-eared and black-eyed, an unlikely looking Viking in his darkness, said, “This is all very strange, Merrik.”
“Aye, I know it well. You must keep your nose on watch, Roran, for I have to see to the boy here. I don’t remember any savage tribes along this stretch of the Dnieper, do you?”
Roran shook his head, saying, “I will sniff them out if they are stupid enough to think of attack.” He looked toward Old Firren, a master trader as well as a master rudderman. Old Firren shook his head. “Nay, ’tis safe enough. We’re drawing close to Chernigov though, and that filthy place is filled with savages.”
“Aye, I know.”
“We are b
ut one longboat, though only a fool would attack us. Since you have the children, though, we’ll take care where we go ashore.”
Merrik merely held her until they pulled the longboat ashore on a narrow strip of beach, not a beach really, just a shoreline littered with black rocks and driftwood. Tightly packed fir trees and pine trees pressed toward the water, and the gods knew what or who could be hiding in that dense forest.
He leaned down and said, “I will lift you over my shoulder now and we will go ashore. Don’t fight me. Say nothing.”
She was limp over his shoulder and he wondered if she were unconscious again. He gave Taby over to Oleg and watched Cleve pace back and forth along the narrow strip of rocky land until Merrik strode to him, the girl still over his shoulder.
“Help the men raise the tents, then spread covers and furs inside mine. The men will build a fire and we will eat. I will see to her. What is her name, do you know?”
“Laren.”
“A strange name, as is her accent. Do you know where she comes from?”
“I am not dead,” she said, rearing up slightly, and he could hear the pain mixed with a natural arrogance in her voice. “Cleve knows nothing. Leave him alone. Let me down. I don’t want your heavy hands on me.”
“You aren’t strong enough to fight me,” Merrik said mildly, “at least not enough to make me fall to my knees, so it’s best you shut your mouth.”
“Let me down.”
“I will as soon as there is a fur to let you down upon.”
She said nothing more. He imagined it wasn’t because she didn’t want to but because she wasn’t able to. He winked at Taby but realized the boy couldn’t see him for the light from the stars wasn’t as bright here as it had been on the water. The heavy dark fir trees seemed to steal all the light.
When the furs and wool blankets were spread inside his tent, he bent his head and walked inside and laid her onto her stomach. “Don’t move,” he said shortly, rose, and helped fetch firewood. He wanted to bathe her as well. Her stench was as heady as his brother’s dog, Kerzog, in the early summer, after a long winter. So was Taby’s.
It was Cleve who fed her the bits of flatbread soaked in hot water and a handful of pecans and hazelnuts. It was Cleve who bathed Taby and black-eyed Roran who collected an assortment of odd clothes to cover the child.
But it was Merrik who decided he would care for the girl. He looked at each of his men in turn as they sat around the campfire, eating cheesy curds, dried beef, flatbread, and nuts. He nodded as if to himself, and said, “This boy here was beaten badly by Thrasco. He isn’t a boy, he’s a girl. There is no reason not to tell you. Her name is Laren and I know nothing more about her save that Taby is her little brother. I will tend her. She is very young, no older than your little sisters, so you will not think rutting thoughts about her. Eat now, drink only a cup of ale, and get some sleep. Roran, bend that nose of yours to the night sounds. Begin the first watch.”
Merrik had heard Cleve suck in his breath when he’d spoken, but now he turned to him and said, “They would find out soon enough. There was no reason not to tell them. They are all good men. I trust them with my life.”
They were still Vikings, men who were raw and violent, and Cleve wasn’t sure how good that made them, but he said only, “She told me she’d been a boy for a long time and I said that the people where she’d been were stupid. She has no look of a boy.”
“No,” Merrik agreed.
He walked back into the tent and stared down at her raw back. He said matter-of-factly, “You will think of me as your father or your brother or even your mother, if it pleases your modesty. I am going to take off these rags and bathe you, then I will cover your back with some clean cloths. I have a clean tunic you will wear and Eller, my smallest man, will give you some breeches. Oleg, the man you bit, will even give you some cord to keep the breeches at your waist.”
“I don’t want you to. I want you to go away. I will take care of myself.”
“Your mouth lies even to you. Close it. If you fight me, I will leave you here and take Taby. You will never see him again. Your escape to save him will have proved worth naught. Do you understand me, girl?”
She said nothing.
He frowned. “I have no intention of ravishing you, if that is your worry, if that is what makes you vicious as a snake. Have you looked at yourself? You’re about as tempting as a field of trampled onions. You are thinner than a starved goat. How old are you, twelve? I have no taste for children, none of my men do either. Rest easy now. Rest your mouth as well. This will hurt but I will be as gentle as I can.”
Merrik realized his mistake when he pulled the ragged breeches down her legs, off her feet, and threw them outside the tent. She was on her belly, her legs slightly spread. He stared at the long legs, very thin, true enough, but shaped well enough to give promise to what they would look like when she’d gained flesh, and the hips that surely weren’t a boy’s hips, he’d known that, but these hips weren’t a girl’s hips either. These hips hadn’t been twelve years old in a long time. Too long a time. They were a woman’s hips.
Merrik cursed.
4
MERRIK SAID NOTHING more. He bathed her legs and back quickly, matter-of-factly. She was very thin, pale and bony, and that helped. She was older than he’d first believed, but she was still pathetic, beyond pathetic, and he refused to let himself see anything save a bloody back and what should have been a boy. He was careful that the wet, soapy cloth covered his hand well when it washed her hips and between her legs. She was sick, she was dependent on him. She was a slave, nothing more.
He even washed her hair, three times, rinsed it twice, and spread his fingers through it to pull through the knots and tangles. It took him a very long time. She was very dirty and he wasn’t done yet.
“I got most of you clean, but you will need another bath tomorrow,” he said, and slowly turned her over onto her back. “Now I’ll wash the front of you.” He wished he hadn’t turned her over.
Her eyes were closed, her face white with fatigue and probably pain as well. He could see her ribs, sharp and ugly, her flat belly with her pelvic bones sticking up. But he also saw very nice breasts that surely didn’t belong on such a thin body. He got hold of himself and set himself to work. Her eyes were closed and remained closed even when he finished washing her face and moved on. When the cloth went over her breasts, she didn’t move, but he saw her hands clench at her sides. He closed his own eyes when he bathed her belly and her woman’s flesh. He worked as quickly as he could for he feared the onset of the fever again. The air was getting cooler as the night grew later and later.
“The skalds will write great songs about me,” he said to her even as he eased his hand between her legs to wash her. “I am a man with a Christian monk’s control and a warrior’s honor, surely a combination that brings on a pain as great as the one in your back.”
She opened her eyes and stared up at him. “What are you? Why are you pretending to be gentle with me and Taby? What is it you want? Will you give me to your men or to a friend to gain you something? Thrasco was going to give me to the prince of Kiev’s sister, who likes young boys. What will you do?”
“You must get well again to find that out,” he said as he rinsed her as quickly as he could, then covered her even more quickly, drawing the thick soft wool to her chin. He said instead, “Does it hurt you too much to lie on your back?”
“Aye, it does.”
He helped her to turn onto her stomach. He patted her back with more hot water, then laid clean linen cloths over it. He pulled the wool cover to her neck. Her hair was thick, curly, short, and very ragged.
“What color is your hair?”
“Red.”
He sat on his haunches and frowned down at the back of her head. Her voice was arrogant again, just that one simple word and yet it sounded like a royal announcement from a royal mouth. He said, “The light is dim and I could not tell, and before it was so dirty, it could
have been green. So it is red. I do not like that color, and our women at home don’t have it.”
“Do you think I care, Viking?”
He smiled more widely at the back of her head, adding, “It is too strong a color for a woman, it is perhaps indecent, not quite civilized. No, it is a color I do not like. How do you know I am a Viking?”
“You are from Norway. Are you so witless you remember not what you say? Also, you have blond hair and blue eyes. You are larger than the men I’ve seen in other lands. All Vikings are big. All Vikings look alike. There is nothing about you that sets you apart from any other man of your country. You are common.”
He laughed. “And where you come from, do all women have red hair, red hair so dark it looks nearly black in the dim night?”
“Nay.”
“I did not think so. All the women from your land don’t have skin as dead white as a new snowfall in Vestfold either, do they?”
“Nay, but more than a few do, if one looks closely, which the Vikings don’t, since all they do is raid and kill and steal whatever they can carry, including people.”
He ignored that, saying, “Ah, you are even different from those in your own land. I thought as much. Red hair and white flesh, surely the Christian devil’s curse on a female, one that bespeaks a god’s punishment.”
“It wasn’t a god or a devil who cursed me,” she said, and he heard the pain in her voice and the utter weariness, and something else, rage, banked but still there, so deep it would remain with her the rest of her life, hard and strong.
He frowned again at the back of her head, only this time there was no mockery in his voice as he said, “Do you wish for more bread?”
“Nay, but Taby is always hungry, always more hungry than I. He would want more bread.”
“Cleve is seeing to the boy, both he and Oleg—the man whose hand you bit—are tending to him. They will feed him until he can’t move. There is enough food for both of you. Neither of you will starve.”
“You will then sell him?”