Page 72 of Lord of Fire and Ice

Her captors lengthened their jolting strides. She forced her eyes open. If she somehow won free, she’d need to be able to retrace her steps back to the ridge and the coracle in the fjord below.

She couldn’t let herself think about how worried Brandr would be. How long would he wait before he came after her?

The dark terrain rushed past her in shades of gray with no discernible landmarks. She pointed her toes and kicked, trying to leave an impression in the track to show she’d passed that way. She managed to scuff the tip of her boot in the dirt in a couple places.

“Stop that, wench,” one of the men growled. “Or I’ll knock out your teeth.”

“Probably be for the best, considering the work she’s got ahead of her this night,” another said, laughing at his own wit. “I hate when a woman scrapes a tooth on my prick.”

Her night meal threatened to come back up.

A faint light showed over the next hillock, the dim shaft of illumination from a smoke hole in the roof of a hovel. One of the men ran ahead and threw open the door. Katla and the ones bearing her hustled through the opening, and the portal banged shut behind them.

They dropped Katla on one of the earthen benches lining the walls. She yanked the gag from between her teeth and spat on the floor to clear the taste from her mouth.

One of the men backhanded her, sending her sprawling into the dirt.

“Good blow, Tryggr,” one of the others exclaimed. “Show her who’s headman.”

“Don’t be spitting on my floor, wench.”

The floor was packed earth, like the floor in the main section of Katla’s longhouse, but unlike her tidy home, no one had bothered to sweep out the bones and refuse from past meals for several months. A gob of spittle would do this filthy place no harm, but Katla restrained herself from saying so.

“Let’s see what we got here.” Tryggr grasped her hair and lifted her to her feet.

It was easy to see why he was the leader of this ragtag group. He was the only one who looked as if he’d recently been fed. Hard and unfeeling, he was a vicious hawk of a man, his eyes as cold as a bird of prey’s.

“Not bad,” Tryggr admitted as he stroked her cheek with the back of his knuckles. She tried to jerk her face away, but his grip on her hair was firm. “The slavers from Birka will pay a pretty price for the likes of you.”

He shoved her to her knees.

“More if she’s a virgin,” another said. “Shall we find out?”

“I’m a married woman.” Katla was shocked at the reedy sound of her voice. She fumbled at the rope around her neck, but her captor jerked it tight.

All her wind was shut off, and she gasped like a cod flopping on the bottom of a boat’s hull. She clutched at her throat, trying to pry the rope loose, but it was so tight she couldn’t wedge so much as a fingertip under it.

Just as her vision started to tunnel, the headman loosened the rope. She dragged in a lungful of smoky air, grateful for every murky bit of it.

“You’ll wear the rope till we can fit you with iron. Cross me again, and I’ll crush your throat. You’ll get no second warning. I’ve no time for unbiddable thralls,” Tryggr said with a snarl. “Obey or die. Do we understand each other?”

She nodded slowly.

A babe wailed from a dark corner of the fetid hovel.

“Shut that brat up or I will,” the headman growled.

A terrified young mother sat bolt upright on her bed of badly cured furs. She bared her breast and gave the child suck, crooning urgent endearments. The woman cast a darting glance in Katla’s direction and clutched the babe closer to her, turning to shield the child from the headman’s malevolent gaze with her emaciated body.

“So she admits it. She’s not a virgin, she says,” one of the men said. His pinched face reminded Katla of a weasel. “Then there’s no reason she can’t entertain us till the Birkamen come, is there?”

“No reason at all,” Katla agreed with what she hoped was a confident laugh. The men laughed with her, thinking her receptive to a debauch with them. Then she glared at them. “Except my husband might not appreciate it, and I imagine he’ll arrive long before the slave traders. When he gets here, he’ll show you the color of your insides.”

She hadn’t actually seen Brandr kill someone, but she’d watched him vanquish Albrikt Gormson and knew his reputation as a warrior.

“And who’s this husband of yours that we should shake in our boots?” Tryggr asked, toying with his end of the rope as if considering whether to draw it taut around her neck again.

“Brandr, son of Ulf, Captain of the Varangian Guard,” she said defiantly.