AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Yourself as well?”
“Aye, all three of us.”
He laughed, marveling at her. “You are flat on your belly, my girl, with naught to cover you but the clothing I and my men give you. The food in that skinny stomach of yours is from me. Everything is from me, including your clean hair and your clean hide. You wouldn’t have Taby if it weren’t for me. Mayhap you should caution yourself to guard your tongue before you speak. I think it would serve you better.”
She was silent for a very long time. Merrik rose and stretched and tossed away the dirty bathwater and threw her rags into the forest. He doubted even the animals would scavenge those smelly rags. He then came back to her and stretched out on his back beside her. He snuffed out the candle, throwing the tent into blackness.
“You are right,” she said, nothing more, then she turned her face away from him, and soon she was asleep.
Merrik didn’t sleep until the sun was beginning to rise. Right about what, exactly? That she should guard her tongue around him? He thought it a good idea, but doubted that she could maintain such a guard for very long.
Oleg shouted, “Merrik, Eller smells something!”
Eller’s nose was all Merrik needed. Within moments, all the men were carrying their supplies to the longboat. Merrik had jerked trousers to the girl’s waist and a tunic over her head and was carrying her over his shoulder. Within another minute, they were pushing the longboat into the current and hoisting themselves over the sides. In the next instant, at least fifty men rushed onto the narrow beach, yelling and shouting at them, waving spears and rocks. One spear came arcing through the air and landed solidly in the wooden bench, not a hairsbreadth from Old Firren, but he didn’t move nor did his hand recoil from the rudder.
“Eh?” he said only, and spit over the side, toward the shore.
“We could have killed most of them and taken the rest,” Oleg said, his voice wistful.
“They don’t look like a likely lot for slaves,” Merrik said. “We would have to kill most of them and the others look too savage.”
Oleg shaded his eyes with his hand from the bright sun overhead. “Aye, you’re probably right.”
It was then that Taby eased up beside him and looked at him with his child’s clear eyes. Merrik watched the shifting expressions on Oleg’s face, then saw him sigh and lift the child onto his lap. He said not another word, merely bent to the oar.
Soon they could no longer hear the shouting from shore or see the small men in their ancient animal skins jumping about, hurling curses at them in a strange tongue.
Merrik looked down at the girl. She was soundly asleep again, not that she’d ever really awakened earlier when he’d dressed her and grabbed her up over his shoulder and run to the longboat with her. Her flesh was very white and he feared the sun would roast her. He leaned over her, trying to protect her. It was something, but not enough.
It was Cleve who silently handed him a hat of sorts fashioned out of a shirt covering a wooden plate.
Merrik had bread waiting in his hand when she awoke. She was asleep one instant, and the next, she was staring up at him, making no movement, no sound.
“How do you feel?”
“Clean.”
He grinned at her. “You should. Do you remember my bathing you last night?”
She merely nodded. Somehow, though, he knew that in a very short time, she would have something to say about it, something sharp. No, she would not guard her tongue. He tore off a piece of bread and stuck it in her mouth when she opened it.
“I’m glad you’re alive,” he said, watching her chew the bread. There was an expression of sheer bliss on her face. Her eyes were closed.
He was sorry the flatbread was stale, though to look at her he’d never know it.
He fed her until she said at last, “Nay, I wish no more. It is remarkable, but I don’t.” She sighed. “I’ve been hungry for longer than I can remember. To be full-bellied is a wonderful thing. Thank you.”
“You are welcome,” he said. “Would you like to sleep some more?”
“Nay.”
“Perhaps you will want to close your eyes anyway, for I want to look at your back and bathe you again if it’s necessary.”
She just looked up at him. He knew she wanted to refuse him, but she didn’t. She kept her mouth shut. She was learning; she was showing control. He supposed he knew she had to have some control, else she never would have survived any time at all as a slave.
He gently turned her onto her belly over his thighs and drew the tunic over her head. He looked up briefly to see that all his men were at their oars, faced away from him. He scooped up river water and set to work. Her makeshift hat fell off but he didn’t retrieve it just yet.
How could anyone have ever believed her a boy? Her hair, as red as an early fall sunset over Vestfold, nearly as bright as the bolt of bloodred silk he’d seen from Baghdad two years before, curled in ragged clumps around her face and down her neck. A pretty face, he thought, never a boy’s face. But so very thin. He still feared she would die. Not from the beating Thrasco had given her, but from knowing hunger for too long.
