“Have you ever been tortured?”
She stood there, just staring at him, then ignored his question and went back to contemplating just how to go about untying the ropes that restrained him. A dimwit, for sure. “Are you waiting for a ‘Please, M’Lady Pirate,’ or gods forbid, ‘Thank you for your hospitality’?”
“There is no need for sarcasm,” she sniped, and began to undo the knots that bound his hands behind his back and around a slim tree. Other women were doing the same for his men, who were restrained at various spots about the central clearing of what appeared to be a village of sorts. Some of the structures were rather lopsided. An indication of inept building skills that got better over time? The runic writing above the lintel of the largest longhouse was expertly carved, though, with the message: “Men Stay Out!” Still others carried similar, if not more blunt messages in the vein of: “If You Have a Penis, You Are Not Welcome.”
This has got to be the strangest adventure of my misbegotten life. Even stranger than that time in Byzantium when . . . “I beg to differ, M’Lady Lackbrain. Sarcasm is the least I can do to protest your dimwitted audacity. You dosed us with sleeping herbs again, did you not? I told you after the first time how I felt about that act. I told you that a Viking man cannot be left incapacitated and weaponless, an open target for his enemies. I told you that if you ever did it again, you would be very, very sorry.” He favored her with his third fiercest scowl to emphasize his point. He had a wide range of facial expression meant to scare his enemies.
She paused in unknotting the sealskin rope that was apparently giving her some difficulty, but the expression on her face was not one of apology or fear, more like irritation. In fact, he could swear she murmured, “Loathsome lout!”
You have no idea how loathsome I can be, M’Lady Pirate.
Before he could voice that thought, she continued, “Mayhap the problem is that you are always telling me what to do. Mayhap you should proffer your concerns rationally.”
“Proffer? What kind of word is that for a pirate?” He crossed his eyes with frustration. “Why does it feel as if the skin has been peeled off my backside?”
A slight amount of color bloomed on her cheeks. Very slight. Not quite a blush. “Um. We had to drag you part of the way here,” she said, a mite apologetically, but then she ruined the effect by stating, “I have met pregnant boars smaller than you.”
“If I had been standing on my own two feet and not a deadweight to be dragged like a dead bear . . . or boar, it would not have been a problem. Women have no sense!”
“Women have no sense,” she repeated after him in a growly male voice. “Those are the words men employ when they are losing an argument.”
“Huh?”
She sighed deeply and revealed, “Rending you unconscious was our only choice. We could not let you know the location of our home.“
He glanced around, studying the terrain. They were in a valley, surrounded by steep mountains, much like a deep bowl. The flat bottomland was not large, and they must have worked hard to clear it enough to build a number of longhouses and outbuildings, a few garden plots, and a small pasture for cows and the new bull, who was already happily occupied at what it did best. Chickens ranged freely and sheep and the two new goats could be seen romping about in the rocky hill area, needing only forest pannage to subsist.
It was not unlike his father’s estate at Dragonstead, except on a much smaller scale. Except there were only women here, except for the odd boy child here and there.
His ropes were finally free, and reacting with the swift instincts of a soldier, he grabbed her by the forearms, lifted her high, and slammed her against the tree. “Who is in charge now, M’Lady of the Ropes? How does it feel to be helpless? Shall I begin your torture now, or let you stew in the juices of fearful anticipation?”
She blinked at him with surprise, so fast had his moves on her been. As the haze of his anger began to clear, he saw up close how comely she was. Her skin, clear and sun-healthy, was mostly unlined, considering her age, except for a few lines bracketing her eyes when she frowned, as she was beginning to now. Her long blonde hair had loosened from its braid and was spilling about her shoulders. Breasts, fuller than he’d expected, pressed against the tautened fabric of her tunic. Only two of them, thank gods! And her eyes . . . Holy Thor! Surely only a goddess would have eyes of such a beautiful shade of lavender. He inhaled sharply and caught her woman scent. Clean skin, with no perfumed soap residue, but a scent of its own, honed his senses to an erotic sharpness.
Although he still pinned her upper arms to the tree, she was able to bend her one arm at the elbow and raise a hand to her mouth. He thought she was going to sigh into her fingertips, as some women did when close to him—a feminine gesture of helplessness—but what she did instead was place two fingertips in her mouth and let loose with a shrill, very unfeminine whistle.
Immediately, they were surrounded by a dozen or more women with weapons raised. Archers with bows raised. Swords that should have been too heavy for the weaker sex to carry. Crudely made wooden shovels and pitchforks. Even a long-handled soup ladle.
Beyond them, he saw his men begin to gather. They were weaponless but nonetheless able to fight, if he gave the order.
“Holy Thor!” he exclaimed, stepping back from her so quickly that her feet dropped to the ground and she fell onto her rump. “Are you trying to turn me deaf? I will be hearing an echo in my ears for hours to come.”
She stood and began to dust off the backside of her braies, which caused him to notice for the first time that it was a very nice backside. Despite the seeming danger that surrounded them, he picked up the small leather thong that had been holding her braid in place, but instead of handing it to her, he tossed it to her other side. She bent over to pick it up, then glanced up over her shoulder as she noticed the direction of his gaze. Tsking her disapproval, she stood and said, “Lackbrain! You are surrounded by female warriors who would kill you without a second thought if I so ordered, and you stand there ogling my arse?”
He grinned. He couldn’t help himself. If they hesitated to kill monks when a-pirating, he doubted they would kill him. Unless he really provoked them. So, of course, he said, “And a very nice arse it is, too.”
His men laughed, and he could swear he heard a few giggles from her women. Bolthor would be composing a saga about it. “Female Pirates with Nice Arses,” or some such.
Thork had no fears that she would order his death, considering the live and thriving monks. She’d already said that their capture was not her idea and that they would be returned safely to Hedeby in good time. Guilt . . . that was the difference between men and women. Women succumbed to it, and men knew how to ply a woman’s guilt to their advantage.
She dismissed her women and told them to show the other men to their quarters.
“Should we lock them in?” one woman asked.
Medana shook her head. “They have nowhere to go.”
We will see about that!
“Just stand guard.” Turning to him, she said, “If you think to charm me with compliments on my private parts, you do not know as much about women as you think you do.”
He knew plenty. And he could charm her if he wanted to, but he had more important things to do. Stifling the urge to grab her once again but this time shake some sense into her silly head, he inhaled sharply for patience and studied his surroundings. Something bothered him about what he saw. “I thought you said that Thrudr was an island.”
“Um.”
“I see no fjords.” The only water he could see was a small pool against one hillside, and there were water barrels to catch rainwater outside a number of the dwellings. No well as far as he could see. “How do you access the seas?”
“Um. Did I say we lived on an island? Ha, ha, ha. You must have misheard me.”
“Your eyes are blinking.”
“ ’Tis dust on the wind.”
He arched his brows. The morning sun beat down with
not even a light breeze. Although he did get a faint whiff of salt water. Hmm. “When are you taking us back to Hedeby?”
“Soon.” More eye blinking.
He noticed the longship was already up on trestles, and women in men’s attire appeared to be working on its underside. How they’d gotten the boat inland without water access remained a puzzle. One he would solve soon. In addition, there was another half-completed longship on another trestle. Female shipbuilders? “What’s wrong with your vessel?”
“Nothing of importance. The usual recaulking and small repairs.”
“Do you have other longships, as well?”
She smiled, and her teeth were not horsey at all, by the by. White and even and scarce any receding gums. “Just the one that is seaworthy.” No eye blinking this time. So presumably the truth.
“If there are no major problems with your longship, then we should be under way shortly,” he said. When she didn’t immediately agree, he grew suspicious. “If you are thinking about keeping us here until you have swived us silly, think again.”
She bared her teeth at him but said nothing, a clear attempt on her part to restrain her temper. Good to know that he could rile her so easily. “Any swiving to be done will be initiated by you or your men. My women have orders.”
He almost laughed. Even in this short time since he’d regained his senses, he could see many of the women strutting about with the widened necklines of their gunnas half falling off their shoulders to expose the tops of their breasts, even those carrying weapons. Those wearing braies must have used crowbars to help pry their arses into the tight confines. Some even had berry-stained lips and cheeks, like painted harlots.
Not Medana, though. She wore a plain brown tunic and braies with her blonde hair hanging in a long braid down her back. If she only knew, her modest attire, compared to the others, only gave her more allure, even at her advanced age. A Viking man with experience, like him, would be wondering what she hid beneath. Not that he was considering her as a bedmate. Nay, his visions of her involved dungeons and whips and feathers. Nay, nay, nay! I did not think feathers. I meant fetters.
“Why are you smiling?”
“Oh, lady, you really do not want to know.” He studied her and was amazed to see not a lick of fear in her incredible violet eyes. “Were you dropped on your head as a babe? Do you not have the sense to quiver with fright now that I am free to throttle you?”
She shrugged. “I have two hundred women here, give or take. You have already seen how quickly they come to my defense. You might succeed in killing me, but your fate would be the same within minutes. So save your brutish urges.”
“Save your brutish urges,” Thork mimicked under his breath as she led him to a longhouse where he and his men were soon assigned temporary quarters. Another woman showed them a place beneath the waterfall where they could bathe. Although not large, the timber building was not an uncomfortable dwelling, with one central hearth fire and sleeping pallets lining both of the long sides. After a serving maid set pottery jugs of ale before them and a cook roasted several rabbits over an open fire and put them on platters, along with flat circles of manchet bread, they were left alone, except for the guards outside.
“Pirates! We have been captured by female pirates!” Jamie grinned, as if announcing some wondrous event.
“They want us for one purpose only. Our man seed,” Thork pointed out.
They all grinned then, except Thork.
And except for Bolthor, who constantly bemoaned the overlarge number of children he already had. Plus, “Katherine will kill me if I dare to lie with another woman. She’ll say I planned this all so that I can fornicate and claim no responsibility.”
And except for Jostein, who harbored sour feelings toward all women because of the dispute with his wife. Jostein’s one and only wife, by the by, the man never having practiced the more danico, or multiple wives.
“Spare us your disapproval, Thork. Have you never fantasized about being a love slave?” This from Henry, who should have the least interest in slavery of any kind since his mother had been a thrall.
“Never.” But now that you bring it up, it does have a certain allure. Nay, nay, nay, it does not. I cannot fall into that trap.
“Did you see the one named Lilli? Hair like wet sand, green eyes, bosoms out to here. She has been following me around like a besotted puppy.” Henry sighed and cupped his hands out, far out, in front of his chest to demonstrate.
“Just because a wench wags her tail does not make her a docile pet. A dog is a dog. Beware of bitches. In the end, they all bite.” This jaded view was expressed by Jostein, of course. What had his wife done to turn him so sour? Thork wondered, recalling a time, not so many years ago, before his marriage, when Jostein had been merry of heart.
“I canna think of aught better than taking a woman dog style,” Jamie said.
By the runes! What has one to do with the other?
“What is dog style?” Brokk wanted to know.
Jamie proceeded to explain in detail, including an explanation of how that position allowed a man to strum a woman’s “bud of paradise” whilst tupping away.
Jostein made a snorting sound and muttered something about never having heard of such strumming.
“No wonder your wee wife left you,” Jamie concluded, ducking as Jostein attempted to punch him in his laughing mouth.
“I for one never noticed the one named Lilli. You can have her, but I get first dibs on Solveig, the rudder master,” Finn said. “There is something about her that bespeaks experience in the bed furs.” Thork couldn’t help but notice that Finn had somehow managed to trim his beard and mustache already, probably after bathing in the pond. The rest of them were clean but decidedly scruffy-looking, while Finn managed to look like he’d just prepared for a royal feast.
“You do not want a virgin?” Brokk asked Finn. “Everyone says the best sex is like guiding a sleek longship down a narrow fjord, even if a dam must be breached first.”
Everyone blinked with surprise at the obviously untried boyling.
“Brokk, Brokk, Brokk!” Finn patted his shoulders. “The best bedsport comes with a woman who knows what to do with a . . . a longship.”
“I’m saving myself for Ianthe,” Alrek said.
“Hah!” Finn snorted. “You have as much chance with her as I have with Isobel.”
Alrek and Finn had fallen head over lackwit arses in love with the two women on a recent trip to Miklagard, the golden city known by the Greeks as Byzantium. Neither had been favored with reciprocated feelings from the two women, who now lived in the Saxon lands.
“I have not given up hope,” Alrek said, raising his chin defiantly.
“Hope is the salvation of all men,” Bolthor proclaimed, about to launch into a saga, no doubt.
Luckily, or not so luckily, Jamie continued with the previous conversation. “Personally, Siobhan, the bonnie Irish lass with the lush bottom, is more to my taste. I do like something to grab on to when taking the wild ride.”
Thork had to smile. “Jamie! Forget about her buttocks. Siobhan is older than you by ten years at least. Plus she is in charge of all the outdoors, including the gardens and plough fields and animals, like pigs and cows and chickens. Do you see yourself as a farmer now?”
Jamie pretended to shiver at the prospect.
“There is naught wrong with a few gray hairs. In fact, I wrote an ode one time to my wife’s nether hair, like pepper and salt it is.”
“Thank you for reminding us about that,” Thork said. He would have that image in his head every time he met up with Lady Katherine, especially if Bolthor kept repeating it.
“I do not know why Katherine was so upset,” Bolthor went on. “My nether hairs are all white, and I would not mind if someone wrote an ode about mine.”
“Thank you for sharing that,” Thork said. Now, he would have that image, too.
“You know what I mean, Finn,” Bolthor said.
“Me? Why me
? I am a young man yet. Not yet thirty and two,” Finn protested.
Bolthor gave Finn a meaningful stare with his one good eye.
“The time you saw me plucking it was only one gray hair. One. Only. One.” Finn couldn’t be more affronted if Bolthor had accused him of having a needle cock. Well, mayhap that would have been worse.
“Och! If not Siobhan, then Bergdis,” Jamie compromised.
Thork had to laugh. “Bergdis is a rower on the longship. She is mistress of buildings and woodworking. I doubt you know how to even hammer a nail straight. And chopping firewood, now that’s a job I’d like to see you do, day in and day out. By the by, did you notice her shoulders? She could pick you up and slam you down in a trice.”
Jamie shrugged and winked at him. “Dinna fash yourself, laddie. A little pain ne’er hurt a Scotsman, especially when the gain is so sweet.”
“What pain? What gain?” Brokk asked.
“Boyling, you need to learn a few facts of life,” Jostein said to Brokk, but not unkindly, to Thork’s surprise.
“Men in eastern lands often favor women with a little extra fat on the bone,” Henry proclaimed with a slight slur to his words. He must have imbibed too much ale. Already? “A cushion for the ballocks, or some such thing. Plus their bellies make good cushions for sleeping.”
Yea, definitely drukkinn.
“Besides, Jamie, did you not notice that Bergdis has a front tooth missing?” Thork asked.
“Weel,” Jamie drawled out with a chuckle, “ ’tis nae so bad a thing if a woman is missing teeth,” Jamie replied with a chuckle. “The better to blow a man’s horn, mind ye.”
“Hah! You have a very slim horn if it can fit in the space of one missing tooth,” he countered.
“Pay no mind to Thork, Jamie. Everyone knows ’tis best for a man to find an ugly woman,” Bolthor said before belching loudly. “They are more appreciative of any male attention they can garner that they will do anything.”
Now, that would make a good saga. One Bolthor best not ever recite in front of his wife.