Page 31 of The Outlaw Viking

“That’s ridiculous. What if he doesn’t come back?” Rain’s heart sank at the reminder of her earlier worries about Selik. She had a lot of complaints for him and many questions that needed answers, but she couldn’t imagine living without him. How unbelievable, she thought, tilting her head in wonder, that she would feel so intensely about a man she had just met. Forcing herself to concentrate on the present, she added, “I mean, what if he doesn’t come back until tonight?”

Ubbi shrugged disinterestedly.

Rain shook her head in disgust at her predicament, then mumbled an obscenity under her breath as she once again untied her bounds and stomped over to the cookfire.

Ubbi’s eyebrows lifted with amusement as he commented dryly. “Is that how they imprison people in yer lands? The captive gits ter tie and untie his own knots whenever the whim hits ’im?”

“Shut up, you fool.”

He chuckled and continued sawing away at the bony rabbits, which he then threw into a pile at his feet.

“Is this all you have?” she asked, her nose curling with disgust as she leaned over the cauldron.

“Yea,” he answered sheepishly. “I am not too good at cooking, but there be no one else to take on the chore. Perchance could ye—”

“No way! I do not cook.”

“Well, that is it then,” Ubbi said, pointing to the smelly pot of mush. “It sort of burned on the bottom when the fire got too hot.”

“It sort of smells like hell.”

He smiled. “Do ye perchance know how hell smells, comin’ as ye do from heaven?”

Rain made a vulgar sound of disgust.

“Just askin’. No need to be rude. Mayhap ye could give this gruel to the prisoners so I kin clean the pot fer the dinner meal.” He pointed to the pile of rabbit meat and bones at his feet.

Having no choice, Rain doled the contents of the pot into two wooden bowls and carried them back and forth to the captives who were forced to hold the bowls in their bound hands and drink from them. Not one of them complained about the ungodly mess, being too hungry to care and probably wondering if it might be their last meal.

When she finished, Rain helped Ubbi scour the cauldron near the pond with coarse sand. Then she returned to the captives and approached Blanche, the woman who had been with Edwin.

“Can you cook?” she asked gently, sensitive to the young woman’s bereavement. But Blanche didn’t seem all that concerned about her dead lover when she sensed the prospect of a reprieve from her imprisonment.

“Yea, I can, mistress,” she replied readily. “And rabbit is my specialty. If you let me gather some herbs in those trees, under guard, of course, I can make up a tasty stock pot that would please even a king.”

Rain doubted that heartily, but she preferred anything over Ubbi’s cooking. It took almost no convincing for Ubbi to agree to give Blanche a chance.

Rain was pleasantly surprised several hours later to find that Blanche hadn’t lied. The rabbit stew was thick and savory with wild onions and carrots and mushrooms, not to mention a few spices she did not recognize. Blanche preened, knowing that, at least for the time being, her hide was safe.

Gorm’s eyes gleamed with lascivious interest as Blanche bent over the cookfire. Rain shot him a look that said clearly, “Don’t you dare.” He smirked and countered with a contemptuous leer that challenged silently, “Try and stop me.”

Selik returned to camp late that night, weary in body and soul. Dodging the Saxon guards who patrolled the battlefield had taken an alertness that Selik and his exhausted comrades did not have, being still unrested since the battle.

They had buried as many of their friends or acquaintances as they could locate—a horrid enough chore under the best of circumstances; a torment of the mind when they had to fight the flesh-gorged vultures for their prey. The eyes of the dead went first—a particular delicacy for the beastly birds, no doubt—and Selik and his brave men stopped to vomit numerous times in the face of so many eyeless bodies. Not to mention the half-devoured flesh. Or the stench. Oh, God, the stench! The whole time, wolves and other predators circled the field, waiting for their departure.

So Selik was not in the best of moods when he entered his tent, removed his cross-gartered leather shoes and armor, then dropped to his bed furs without removing his tunic. It took him only a moment to realize that the strange wench who claimed to be his “guardian angel” had flown the coop.

“Ubbi!”

The little man opened the flap of his tent as soon as his little legs could carry him from across the campsite, where he had placed his bed furs.

“You called, master?”

Selik said a very foul word, and Ubbi cringed.

“Where is she?”

“Who?” Ubbi shifted uncomfortably from foot to foot and would not meet his questioning gaze.