Page 73 of Lord of Fire and Ice

The rope tightened a bit, and a muscle under Tryggr’s left eye ticked. “You lie. The son of Ulf was enthralled. We heard the tale only last week.”

Katla’s conscience lanced her. She wished with all her heart she’d never enthralled Brandr, but for now, she held Tryggr’s gaze.

“Then you heard wrong. He’ll be coming,” she promised evenly. “When he gets here, you’ll see there’s no iron on his neck. And the only thing that will save you from his wrath is if I can tell him that you haven’t harmed me.”

“Sigurd, go stand the watch,” Tryggr ordered. “Sing out if you see this son of Ulf.”

Sigurd swore and rose halfheartedly, while his smaller, weasel-faced companion smirked at him.

“But what good is having a new woman if we don’t make sport of her?” Weasel-man said, his hand fingering his own genitals through stained trousers. “I claim first time with her.” His gaze darted first to Sigurd and then cautiously to the head man. “After Tryggr, o’ course.”

“You’ll get all the fresh woman you could wish for once the Bloodaxe comes,” Tryggr said.

“How do you figure?”

“The men’ll all be dead, simpleton. Once the Bloodaxe sweeps through this fjord, even you’ll have your pick of women.” Tryggr turned his attention to his other friend. “Get going, Sigurd. I’ll not tell you again. And don’t let me catch you buggering the ewe. If you don’t keep watch for Ulfson, you’ll get no woman at all this night.”

Weasel-man laughed uproariously as Sigurd stomped out.

Tryggr raked his gaze over Katla and licked his lips. Lust oozed from him like sour sweat.

“I don’t know who this Bloodaxe you speak of may be, but if you touch me, my husband will feed you your own balls. On all the gods, I swear it.” She willed herself not to show fear, though her insides roiled like a bucketful of eels.

Tryggr’s lip curled. Then he pulled a small object from his belt and fondled it for a moment. It was a talisman of sorts, fashioned in the likeness of the headless torso of a woman, her belly distended in late pregnancy. Tryggr ran his thumbs over her full breasts and around her belly.

“What do the Old Ones say?” his friend asked.

“They say for you to shut up so I can concentrate,” Tryggr said. He consulted the figure once more with an intense stare. Then he looked at Katla and jerked his head toward the dark corner.

“Get over with the rest of the women. We’ll wait and see if your husband comes, but I wouldn’t count on it if I were you. It would take a wolf’s nose to track us in the dark.” He bared his teeth in an oily smile. “If he does come, it’s still three to one. Once we’re done with him, we’ll do for you.”

Katla didn’t need to be told twice to put some distance between herself and the headman. The woman with the babe, who was now sucking its own bottom lip in fitful slumber, slid over to make room for Katla on the fur.

Katla noticed an iron collar on the thin, lank-haired woman. On the wide earthen bench across the narrow space, three other females snored softly, their bodies entwined like a litter of puppies.

She sank down, her insides shaking, but outwardly, she was as stiff as the rank wolf pelt. She propped her spine against the back wall. There was no way she’d lie down among these miserable women.

She ached to snatch up the helpless babe to protect it from the lice and other vermin that must lurk in the communal bedding, but its mother held it close.

A nightmare. That’s all this is. In another heartbeat, I’ll wake.

But she didn’t.

Katla hadn’t traveled beyond sight of the coastline of Tysnes Island since she was a very little girl, when her father took her and her brothers to see the great temple at Uppsala. The people of the North were a rough lot, and the nine days of festival before the Blot were as wild as she could imagine, but there were clearly defined limits to people’s behavior, even during the Blot.

The Norse peoples were bound by the Law.

Her chest had swelled with pride as the whole assembly listened to the Law Speaker recite the ordinances and requirements. It took two days for him to intone the complex system of rights and responsibilities for civilized men.

Then the priests of Odin began their rituals. The animal sacrifices were bloody, but nothing worse than what she’d seen growing up on a farm.

Katla didn’t retch until nine men were hung on the sacred oaks alongside the carcasses of roosters and horses and dogs. Her father promised she’d understand when she was older.

She still didn’t.

But thanks to the Law, her father had told her, a man could take his family on a voyage of many weeks and expect to return home in safety.

Then while she married and buried and ran her household on quiet Tysnes, the world beyond those narrow confines had changed. If Tryggr and his lot were any guide, men of the North had cast off the constraints of the Law and gone wild on the inside. She’d seen household gods before, but never that crude female figure. Whomever these men venerated, it wasn’t the Norse deities.