Luckily, or unluckily, the women decided to tie the goats up on deck. Luckily, because the ship would not sink, and the whole bloody lot of them would not drown. Unluckily, because the goats did not take a liking to Thork and his men, who were still tied and gagged. The bearded billy goat, in particular, was giving Thork the evil eye, and Thork just knew, if the beast got loose, it was going to butt an important part of Thork’s body.
The women, soggy wet and some of them battered and bleeding, were congratulating themselves on a pirate venture well done, as the longship skimmed over the waves in a fortuitous wind that had come up of a sudden. Eventually, they got around to ungagging the men.
When he was finally able to speak, he found himself speechless.
“See, all your worries were for naught.” Medana beamed at him. Her head scarf had been lost somewhere, her blonde hair hung in unattractive clumps about her face, her tunic and braies clung to her slim body. No curves in sight. She was a mess. “We did not even have to kill anyone.”
“Oh, that is a wonderful attribute for a pirate. No killing. Pfff!”
She raised her chin proudly. “We got our goat.”
Tongues and feathers and candles, oh my! . . .
Two days later, Medana huddled in her small sleeping quarters with Elida, Solveig, Gudron, and Bergdis. It was midday, and they were only hours away from Thrudr.
The stop at the monastery to steal the goats had taken longer than they’d expected. Not the pirating itself. But adjusting the goats into the ship life had created mayhem, especially amongst the men, who complained constantly about the smell, the bleating, even the “evil eye,” of all things. More than once, she’d threatened to put the men back in the hold with the bull.
Even worse, her women were making fools of themselves in their attempts to make themselves tempting to the men. Yestermorn, Medana had even had to scold two young females who were trying to impress the men by dancing deftly above the sea waters on the shafts of the extended oars. To their credit, neither had fallen in.
But Medana had more important issues to settle.
“We cannot allow the men to see how we enter our hidden homeland,” Medana proclaimed for about the fifth time. “It is essential that, after we release them, they cannot find us again.”
“I still say that once we sate them in our bed furs, they will be so pleased, they will leave with smiles on their faces.” This from Bergdis, who had taken a liking to the clumsy one named Alrek. The young man had nigh fallen over the rail when she’d handled his dangler in a particular way as she aided him in relieving himself this morn.
The leader, Thork, was not smiling, though. Not that she cared, but then, Medana hadn’t been strolling back in forth in front of him with swaying hips and outthrust breasts. Not that he would smile at that type of attempt at seduction from her, anyway. He would probably laugh . . . with derision. In fact, he did sometimes as he muttered something foul about three breasts. The lout!
“Besides, you have made it abundantly clear that the men must be willing partners,” Solveig added. “So why would there be a question of revenge?”
“Because you took them without their permission. Because you trussed them up like spring chickens about to be plucked. Because they spent a goodly amount of time in the hold breathing bull dung. Because they say the goats are as bad as the bull. Because they must take care of bodily functions with women watching . . . and touching. Because one of them has a shy bladder and has to be . . . coaxed.”
The three pirate ladies ducked their heads sheepishly.
“We will just have to entice them to our bed furs then and hope they will be so pleased they will not want to lop off any body parts,” Elida asserted, arching her shoulders back and her bosoms forward, for emphasis.
“Tempting and pleasing are all well and good, but that does not preclude thoughts of retaliation. I do not want the men to know where we are located. It’s a chance we cannot take. A Viking man with vengeance on his mind would hunt down his prey with his dying breath. It is a game to them,” Medana told the women. “Our safety is secure only because our location has been kept secret all these years.”
“Blindfold them, then,” Solveig suggested.
“It might work, but some men—especially sailing men—develop a knack for sailing directions by instinct. One of my brothers’ seamen once said he could guide a ship home with his eyes closed. Another claimed to be able to sense directions by the changes in the wind, bird chatter, the sun and moon rays,” Medana told them.
“There is only one solution then. Give them the sleeping draught again.” This from Gudron, who wanted first dibs on the giant Bolthor. Apparently he had a large number of children back in the Saxon lands, thus proving his ability to produce babes. Not all his, some of them being stepchildren, but that didn’t seem to matter.
Medana groaned her dismay. Thork had been outraged at having been dosed to helplessness. To do so again would raise his ire even more. But did they have any choice? “So be it!” she concluded. “Put it in their ale during the noon meal.”
When she went out on deck, Thork summoned her in his usual obnoxious way, “Come! Here! Wench!”
She’d learned not to react to his baiting by voicing her annoyance, which was obviously his goal. “What now?” Walking over toward the mast pole, she tried not to notice that he was an especially handsome man, only a few years older than her twenty-six years. And he knew it, too. Even with days-old bristles on his face and his dark blond hair unkempt from the sea breeze, he was a fine specimen of Viking virility.
“Are we almost there?”
“Um . . . another day or two,” she said. More like another hour or two, but he does not need to know that.
“Liar!”
“What?”
“Your eyelashes flutter when you tell an untruth.”
She stared fixedly at the lout, trying her best not to blink. Then she couldn’t stop herself and blinked repeatedly, narrowing her eyes at the scurvy cur.
He laughed. “How soon will you release us?”
They’d discussed this before, but he was no doubt trying to catch her in yet another lie. “As soon as we unload the bull and make sure he has not suffered from the voyage, we will restock the ship and take you back to Hedeby.”
“And that will take how long?”
“A sennight at most.”
“A sennight to mount a cow? Are you barmy? Have you looked at its cock lately? That beast is more than capable of swiving anything remotely resembling a cow’s arse on a moment’s notice.”
I will not blush. I will not react to his crudeness. I will be calm and polite. “We have more than one cow,” she informed him.
“And you expect us to wait while the randy fellow tups a herd of cows? Pfff! My longships will be gone by then. The instant you untie us, we are going back to Hedeby, that I assure you.”
“Really? Eight men to row a longship?”
He narrowed his eyes at her.
“If you think you can force a woman to row when she does not want to, you have a lot to learn about women.”
“I am going to enjoy torturing you before I lop off your silly head.”
“You do not make it easy to be polite.”
“Did I ask you for politeness? Politeness will be the last thing on my mind when I get my hands on you.”
“Talk, talk, talk. I will not give you the opportunity.” There, I go. Reacting to his taunts again. She bit her bottom lip to stop herself from saying more.
“Oh, I will have the opportunity. And, believe you me, all the time you have had me tied up here, I have been making lists in my mind. Lists of all the things I will do to you.”
“Dost think I haven’t felt the lash before?” she scoffed.
“By whom?” he scoffed back.
“My brothers, the evil trolls.”
“Ah! I thought you meant real lashings.”
“You do not think a leather whip against the bare back is real?”
> His head jerked up with surprise.
“Broken skin, blood, and scars are not real?”
“What did you do to merit such ill treatment?”
She went lance stiff. How like a man to assume the woman must be at fault! “Breathe. Disagree with their profound wisdom. Hide the jewels my mother left me. Refuse to wed a vicious man.” She could tell he didn’t believe her. No matter!
“In any case, the lash is not the manner of torture I have in mind. I would much rather use a feather than a whip. My father taught me about the varied uses for feathers.”
“Feathers?” She could not hide her curiosity.
He nodded. “First I will remove your clothing, tie your hands together, and attach them to a ceiling hook. After I examine your body . . . for blemishes and such . . . I’ll use various feathers to stroke your skin, from your forehead to your toes and various spots in between.”
“Why?”
“Why, why, why? You sound like that bothersome parrot my father gifted years ago to my aunt Eadyth. ’Tis said that such strokes are painful pleasure.”
“Pfff! What nonsense!”
“After that I intend to lick you.”
“Lick . . . lick?” she sputtered.
“Yea, but first you must be clean. I guess I will have to bathe you.” He released an exaggerated sigh. “But the question is whether I should use soft scented soap in a brass tub to get you clean or whether I should just dangle you by your feet over the rail of my longship. I am leaning toward the latter.” He smiled at her as if imparting some gift.
“You are wicked.”
“Yea, it is one of my best traits.”
“I thought you were trying to be good.”
“Betimes a Viking must be bad to be good.”
“That is the worst bit of male illogic I have ever heard.” She started to walk away.
“Don’t you want to know what happens next in my torture regimen?”
“Nay.”
“I’m thinking about shaving your head. Nay, that is too gentle a punishment. Hmm. Yea, that is it! I will shave your nether hair.”
She almost tripped over her own feet, but she kept walking. “Loathsome lout!” she muttered under her breath.
He chuckled, then added, “And you do not want to know what kind of sweet torture I can inflict with a candle. A big candle.”
Everyone within hearing was laughing. Even her women.
Home, sweet home, it was not . . .
The men were still drooping against their seal ropes by late afternoon when they arrived at Thrudr. The ship dropped anchor near the shoreline of a small, pretty island, known only as Small Island, one of thousands in the North Sea. This one drew seafarers who stopped on occasions, but only for short periods because it was mostly uninhabitable, with its wide, stony beaches, and it occasionally became submerged during heavy storms.
The only structure was a thatched hut and an attached lean-to under which were a small rowboat and fishing gear. Several large rain barrels sat outside the building.
Greeting them were the lone inhabitants, the mid-aged Salvana; her elderly mother, Sigrun; and a dog the size of a small bear. In fact, that was its name: Bear. Many a visitor with ill intent had been scared off by Bear, the lone survivor of a shipwreck off their shore some five years past.
During fair weather months, spring through fall, the two women preferred to dwell here, alone. Small Island was a stopping off place for distressed ships or traders, dropping off or picking up messages. Although it was not encouraged, the women of Thrudr sometimes wanted, or needed, to make contact with others back in Hordaland or Jutland or Norsemandy or even the Saxon lands. Traders were only too willing to provide the service for a small coin.
Any unwelcome visitors not put off by Bear were soon dissuaded by Salvana’s bow; she was as tall as a man and as talented in archery. And by Sigrun, who was a scary image with her wild, flowing white hair, toothless smile, and the spiked club named Slow Death that she always carried with her.
Sailors ignored the much larger island, about thirty ship lengths away, because of its mountainous, impregnable terrain, with sharp cliffs and steep-faced forests leading right to the water’s edge. This was Thrudr.
What most people did not know, and Medana and her women had discovered only by chance, was that Thrudr was a very large, bowl-shaped island with a flat, even valley in its middle. It was accessible only at low tide when a wide cave entrance became visible, connecting it via a narrow landmass to the smaller island. At high tide, the earthen strip was hidden again and the cave filled with water that rushed into the base of the mountain, coming through the other side into a waterfall that filled a pond—a pool, really, with upright sides, like walls.
At this time of the year, they had only a few hours to unload the ship onto the smaller island, including the men and the bull, both of which proved equally stubborn. The bull because it was a stubborn animal at the best of times, and the Vikings because they were heavy as deadweight and had to be carried by four women, one at each limb, sometimes lifting, sometimes dragging. There would be more than a few bruises on Norse arses come nightfall. Another reason for the men to enact revenge, Medana mused.
As soon as the landmass emerged from the falling tides and the cavern drained, close to midnight, the women, including the large number that had stayed behind, worked efficiently to carry the cargo, the men, even the lightweight ship itself onto log rollers into the cave and through to the other side. When they were done, huge bushes were pushed to the entrance, just as a precautionary measure, though a person had to be searching specifically for an opening to notice it among the trees. It was not yet dawn when they were able to breathe a sigh of relief.
The women were smiling profusely, Medana noticed, and not just because they’d returned from a profitable voyage. The sleeping men were tied to various trees about the central clearing.
Olga, the short, rotund cook, was the first to voice what all the other women who’d been left behind must be thinking. “Now that is what I call plunder! Medana, Medana, Medana! Methinks I will go a-pirating with you next time.” She pinched the arm of the giant Bolthor, as if checking the flesh on a side of boar.
“Hey, he is mine,” proclaimed Gudron. “We are more of a size, him being so big and tall.”
“There are not enough men to go around,” another woman complained. “We must share them.”
“Well, I get the first few tups from the big one, then,” Gudron conceded with ill grace.
Medana could feel her face heat with color. “No need for you to go a-pirating, Olga. We did not get these men whilst a-pirating. We got them at the trading town.”
Siobhan, a voluptuous, red-haired, mid-aged woman from the Irish lands, who was circling the prettily mustached one, laughed. “What did you trade for them?”
“We did not trade anything for them. We . . . um, borrowed them,” Medana tried to explain. She couldn’t believe she was using the same lackbrained excuse that her women had.
There was a rush then for the bathing hut and the salt pond as one by one more than one hundred women attempted to cleanse themselves and don new garments, wanting to appear at their best once the men awakened. Medana could not imagine what the men’s reaction would be once they finally opened their eyes to their new surroundings.
She did not have long to wait.
Sitting on a low stool, having bathed herself—but not because she wanted to impress some fool man, but because lice were always a problem when they returned from a voyage—Medana chewed at a fingernail, contemplating the village that had grown here in this harsh valley.
A series of ten longhouses with steep-pitched thatch roofs and gabled ends were centered around a clearing, like the spokes of a wheel. Beyond them were outbuildings; small pastures for cows and the new bull, which was already at its merry work; neat vegetable gardens; even a new enterprise, shipbuilding. Like much of the Norselands, Thrudr did not contain many hides of arable land, but the women, d
ay by day, sennight by sennight, month by month, then year by year, had managed to create ploughlands to eke a living out of the harsh, hidden environment. What they could not grow or build themselves, they stole via their pirate ventures, or gained by barter in the trading towns of Hedeby, Birka, and Kaupang, even occasionally the Saxon market city of Jorvik.
Usually, she felt a fierce sense of pride and peace when she returned from a voyage. But not today. Her mind was too unsettled.
She sensed Thork’s piercing glare in the dawning light before she raised her head and met his fury. He was finally awake, and struggling against his tight bonds.
“The other torture I have planned for you,” he said, as if his earlier conversation with her had never been interrupted, “is that your naked body is going to be the figurehead on the prow of one of my longships. I intend to rename it She Pirate. Or Fish Bait. Far and wide, roving Norsemen will want to nab their very own live female pirate figureheads.” He glanced around his surroundings, taking in all the women moving about their various chores. “And I will guide them here.”
It was a ludicrous threat, of course. She tried to laugh, but she could not.
Chapter Five
In the end, men will be men . . .
“We are going to release you now,” Medana told Thork.
And about time, too! He was hungry and thirsty and angrier by the minute at the indignity of his capture, including a second time of being rendered unconscious by sleeping herbs. Besides that, his arse felt as if he’d slid down a hill of shale.
“Aren’t you afraid I’ll kill you once free?”
“What good would that do you?”
“It would feel damn good.”
“Then what? You would have no way to get off the isl—no way to get back to Hedeby.”
“You are certain about that?”
“Absolutely. My women and I have an understanding. If any of us get taken by you men, no one is to attempt a rescue. There is no way your killing one of us, or threatening to kill one of us, would get you home. And we are sworn not to reveal our secrets, even under threat of torture.”