Naked (9 page)

My pulse thumped out a terrified tattoo. I could barely swallow with the metal pressed into my skin. Somehow I found words.

“What do you want?” In shame I heard my strangled note of fear.

“What do I want?” He laughed; the same terrible mocking laugh I’d heard him make before the battle had begun. “I want the Middle Lands. Then today I saw something else I wanted.”

Yanking my hair, Thurkill the Tall wrenched me closer, so close I smelt his foul breath. “You.”

9

And all the low wind hardly breathed for fear …

—Tennyson (1842):
Godiva

Scream. Kick. Run. Spit. Fight.

A putrid rag stuffed in my mouth.

The point of Thurkill’s knife jagged on my neck. His other hand a bolt around my wrists as he pushed me through the bower doorway. Across the courtyard. Toward the gates.

No guards nearby. No Edmund at my side. No one to help me. Draped by darkness, no one to see me either.

The rising bile of terror scorched my gullet as we passed through the unattended gates.

My people. Feasting in the hall, unaware of my danger.

No blame attached to them. It was I who should have expected another attack.

Lord Leofric’s grim face flashed into my mind. The Earl of Mercia had suspected something amiss in Thurkill’s sudden retreat. Why hadn’t I listened to him?

My mind screamed out.
Help me!

In the shadows beyond the gates, Thurkill’s horse was tethered to a tree stump. He dragged me toward it.

He was going to take me away from Coventry.

Don’t let him take you.

Part of my numb brain registered. I had to seize a chance for escape, before he abducted me to another place. Where all help would be gone.

Think. Quickly.

He’d have to release his hold on me to unfasten his horse. My body tensed, ready to spring free.

But Thurkill had recognized the opportunity, too. His grip became a deadlock.

“Untie it!” he grunted, indicating the knotted rope with a jerk.

I shook my head.

He slapped me across the face.

“Untie it!”

Fumbling for time. Too soon the knot came free.

Thurkill’s blade pressed harder against my neck. Grabbing the rope, he shifted the knife to aim straight at my heart and bound my hands with it.

A lamb to slaughter.

Mounted. The blade still against my neck, Thurkill forced me onto the saddle. In a loud rip my tunic tore down the middle, between my legs. Heaving himself behind me, his belly pressed into my buttocks. The butcher stench of him.

A brutal kick against the horse’s side. Into the darkness.

Don’t let him take you.

The reins. Out of reach.

The ground. Better to fall from a galloping horse than be taken by Thurkill the Tall.

His muttered curse as I wriggled. He clamped his hold. We rode on.

Rain began to pummel my clothes, my skin.

To fight down the fear coming up in my mouth I focused on where we were going. Driving rain lashed my cheeks as I flung my head from side to side, scanning for landmarks—a lone farm, tall trees, a clump of bushes—anything I could make out in the dark. The Middle Lands were like the back of my hand, every hill, every valley scored on my skin. He was traveling east, a knoll to our right indicated, as the horse’s hooves thundered along. Was he taking me to the Angle Lands?

Another slap across my face.

Onward. An hour passed; another. My sliding survey. Still searching the darkness.

Farther and farther. Away from Coventry.

As he pulled to a sudden stop my neck snapped in pain. The horse pawed. Dimly I distinguished a wooden hut in front of us. It appeared to be deserted.

Thurkill dismounted and wrenched me down. Cramped, sore. Yet as I slid off I seized another chance to wrench free from his grasp.

My weight tumbled into him.

A kick. Only my leather shoes. The strips of my wet, torn tunic strangling my legs. Feeble. No boots.

He guffawed.

Another kick. More force.

A better aim.

“Nidstang.”
He cursed.

Grabbing me by my hair he began to haul me toward the hut.

Don’t let him take you inside.

“Aagh!” My scream escaped now, shrill and desperate, forcing the rag from my mouth. A noise I didn’t know I could make.

His fist came up.

Then it came down.

*   *   *

The smell of smoke woke me as if Aine had lit the morning fire.

But I was not in my bower.
I sensed it before my lashes flew open. Hooves kicked inside my brain. Bursts of red light. Pain shot like forge sparks from where I’d been struck by Thurkill’s fist on the side of my forehead. How long I’d been unconscious, I didn’t know. Minutes. Hours. My body stiff. Chilled. Damp. From under the door a draught curled around my legs.

The wind howled.

Coughing, I choked. The rag stuffed in my mouth. Tied firmer this time. Instinctively I reached to pull out the foul-tasting piece of linen but my hands were still roped. So too were my legs, now tight-fastened at my ankles.

Bound and gagged. Slay-ready.

Twisting my neck brought another blast of pain as I scanned my new location. I lay on a pile of rags on a dirt floor inside the hut. The single-room dwelling appeared disused. No furniture, not even a stool. Parts of the thatched roof were missing, jagged teeth, the straw singed and black. At the center of the floor, a circle of pebbles, a small fire burned.

A hovel.

Abandoned.

Get away!

Like a worm I lifted my body, ready to move any way I could.

And froze.

Men’s voices filtered in from outside.

Every nerve of my body strained as I tried to hear.

Only two, as far as I could make out. Not a gang of warriors. One was Thurkill—I recognized that guttural tone. The other was slightly muffled, as though wrapped in a cloak.

They were arguing. They spoke in Danish—that much I could discern. I spoke but a little of the language, but some of it was similar to my own. Only a few words were distinct, the rest lost to the shriek of the wind.

Soon the argument stopped.

A set of footsteps sounded, as though a man was walking away. A horse neighed.

Hooves clattered away.

Dread gagged me as much as the rag in my mouth as the other steps came back toward the hut.

Thurkill kicked open the door.

Before I slammed my lids shut I saw his arms full of wood, his boots coated with mud and grass. His massive Dane-axe strapped to his belt, his dagger on the other hip. I slammed my lids shut to pretend I remained unconscious as his boots clumped across the floor. My heart pounded as through my lashes I watched him load the fire with fuel, the flames licking high.

From inside his cloak he brought a hare, hanging limp. With a gluttonous thrust of his knife he skinned it and tossed it on the flames.

Minutes passed. Long, painful minutes. He sat sideways to me, sucking his teeth, watching the animal burn.

Don’t breathe in. Don’t breathe out.

But the smell of smoldering flesh made me want to retch.

My stifled choke betrayed me.

His massive back stiffened.

Brute slow. He hauled to his feet.

A piece of wood scorched from the fire.

Holding the flaming torch aloft he thudded over to where I lay.

Firelight buffed his bald dome as he leaned in.

My eyelids widened in revulsion. Even gagged, my lips drew back.

“Welcome, Saxon lady,” he jeered.

Gross-tongued, he licked a drop of saliva from the scar at the edge of his mouth.

“About time you woke up. It’s not the same if I can’t see your face. Such a pretty face.”

I flinched.

Smirking, he fingered the sparrow-hawk brooch pinned to my tunic. “I’ve seen this before.”

With one hand he ripped it down my front.

“I’m going to make you struggle.”

Another claw. Another rip. My shift. Woven so fine.

“I want it to last.”

Spittle on my skin. Dripped between my breasts.

“I’ll make you beg like a bitch, just as I did your mother.”

My mother. I choked. The last sight she’d seen had been this killer’s leer.
But she would never have begged.

“I’m going to do to you what I did to her. I made your father watch.”

Moder. Fader.

Help me.

The flaming piece of wood jerked higher. Fire-lit him. A swamp-thing from hell.

Thick fingers became talons. Stroked my hair.

Reached for my bared breast. Caught the nipple. Dug.

No fear. No fear. I would show no fear
.

But to my shame I heard my muffled sob. Fear forced out by repulsion, grief, and anger at my mother’s fate. Now mine.

The kind of fear that gutted courage, destroying hope in its wake.

“There’s no one to hear you,” he sneered. “We’re all alone, at last.”

A voice came from the doorway.

“Wrong again, Thurkill.”

10

Was clash’d and hammer’d …

—Tennyson (1842):
Godiva

Thurkill the Tall hurled me aside and spun on his heel.

My stifled gasp as I fell on my elbow. My heart leapt of hope.

The burning torch still aloft, Thurkill gave a mock bow. “Lord Leofric. I expected you, though not quite so soon.”

Thurkill’s words sank my heart to my stomach, a pebble dive, wrong-skimmed. Stifled by the rag in my mouth, I gasped.

A trap.

If Leofric cared he made no sign. He moved in from the shadows and pushed back his hood.

His hair. Rough glinting in the firelight.

His eyes. River darkness.

The door creaked and slammed shut as he sauntered into the broken-down hovel with a dismissive glance, barely looking my way.

Yet as on the battlefield, the air between us was not air, but something thicker, denser. An invisible rope that bound me to him as surely as if it had been tied around my waist.

“So predictable, you Saxons,” Thurkill sneered, “with your famous code of honor. What you said before the battle got me thinking. Why should I waste my men on the battlefield, when I can keep the maid of Coventry hostage and get exactly what I want—and more?”

So he’d planned to keep me alive. Shudders overcame me.

Thurkill’s hostage.

Better off dead.

“What’s this, Thurkill? A change of strategy? You’re taking hostages now? You destroyed my cities in Mercia. Left all for dead.”

Thurkill smirked. “Merely to break the Saxon spirit.”

“Impossible.”

“
Nidstang
.” Thurkill cursed. “Enough of this talk. I’ll trade the maid for the Middle Lands.”

“Bad trade,” Leofric said, in the flat tone I now knew to be so dangerous. Did Thurkill also know Leofric was at his most deadly when he sounded calm? I feared he did for he spat on the ground, so close to Leofric I flinched.

“Was it? You’ve come for her. Now I can kill you in single combat.”

Leofric shrugged. “What difference does it make if I’m killed? Another good Saxon will step up to take my place.”

“Come now.” Thurkill’s mocking laugh. “We’re both leaders, you and I. We understand power. Not all men will follow another man as they follow us.”

“You flatter me.” Leofric sounded anything but flattered. “But I have brothers to take my place.”

“Younger brothers,” Thurkill corrected. “They’re not leaders such as you—or your elder brother Northman.”

“Don’t speak my brother’s name.”

Thurkill raised a brow. “No? Don’t speak the name—
Northman
?”

The silver of Leofric’s sword flashed out from beneath his cloak as fast as a falling star.

With a roar Thurkill lunged, brandishing his torch.

Struggling for breath I watched them fight, cursing the ropes that bound me. Now I knew why Thurkill the Tall was feared across land and sea. His size, yes, his brute force, these were his advantages, but they were not his true strength. His strength lay in his being the size of a bear with the cunning of a fox.

Every move, every slash of the blade and swish of the battle-torch gripped me, flaming and spitting sparks, until it seemed I fought Thurkill, too.

In. Out. Back. Forth.

Blow for blow, my hand held Leofric’s sword. Each move he made, I made with him as he dodged and parried, his feet quick, his arm quicker. But Thurkill was quick, too, quicker than a man his size should be.

In a sharp sideways slice, Leofric knocked the torch from Thurkill’s fist. Sparks flew as it rolled on the ground toward where I lay. Immediately Leofric lowered his sword, his gaze following the torch’s fiery path.

Slamming down my bound feet, I surged my body toward the torch with all my might and kicked loose dirt onto the flame.

When I looked up, I realized what Leofric’s glance toward me had cost him.

Thurkill had reached for his axe and his dagger, too. He’d dropped the torch near me as a distraction. On purpose.

Against the gag in my mouth I tried to cry out, strangled by the foul rag. My neck jerked, my lids wide. Leofric must have read my warning. Instantly he regained his focus. He jumped aside, and with a soul-curdling yell Thurkill raised his axe and slashed it across Leofric’s shoulder.

Leofric made no sound, but as the blood gushed from his sword arm he stumbled, his face white with pain. His blade sank, point resting in the hovel dirt.

Thurkill had control now and he knew it. Choking on my fear, my bound limbs stiffened as Thurkill circled and crouched, weapons in both hands, his whole, huge body a taunt.

“This axe killed your brother.” Thurkill spoke almost conversationally, sending a hell chill down my spine. “I watched him die.
Northman
.”

Leofric’s sword stayed down. His head lowered.

Time stilled.

My heart. A stutter beat.

Thurkill lifted his axe. As if in slow motion I watched it come down in a gruesome sickle sweep.