‘If the water or a sea monster doesn’t claim you first, he will.’ He paused, allowing the significance of those words to sink in before continuing, ‘If you attempt to harm one of the men, you’ll be at their mercy. Do you understand? There is no escape.’
‘Aye.’ The word came out harsh between her clenched teeth. Eirik welcomed the fire that had returned to burn fierce in her eyes. Her anger, he could understand.
When her hands relaxed, he set the knife to the hemp binding and began to saw through it. His pace was fast and efficient, because already her close proximity was beginning to weaken him. The air was being squeezed from his chest, causing his breaths to become more frequent, and his limbs felt wrong. Heavy near the ends and alive with sensation. She unbalanced him—a dangerous state for a warrior—and it made him angry that someone so insignificant could hold so much power over him.
He was Eirik, son of the jarl Hegard. He had amassed a fortune raiding and trading while leading his men to victories in the lands south of the North Sea. He would one day be called jarl in place of his father. When the day came that he, too, went to take his place in Asgard, the skalds would write verses of his heroic deeds.
Who was this girl? She was no one. She’d probably never been more than two leagues from her home and knew only the coarse words of her own Northumbrian tongue. She had no right to have any effect on him.
When the bindings fell away, he threw them into the water and meant to leave her there in the stern of the boat. He would have, except that when he moved to rise, the red welts the rope had left on her wrists caught his attention. And when he looked at her face, he noted the ivory skin and knew from experience that it wouldn’t stay that way with the sun and wind beating down on it.
He left her to return to his chest at the bow of the boat. Some of his men watched him, but he ignored them and their speculative looks as he dug through the chest for the ointment. He refused to ponder why he cared so much about her welfare. Leather pouch in hand, he returned to once again kneel before her. She regarded him suspiciously as he untied the opening and dipped his fingers inside. The moment he withdrew his hand with his two fingers piled high with the oily, fishy-smelling goo, she pulled back in disgust.
‘Ugh! What is that?’
Eirik ignored her and grabbed her hand in his. He couldn’t help but notice how soft her skin was compared to his callused palm. He wanted to stroke it, to luxuriate in the satin texture, but he forced the thought out of his mind and rubbed the ointment on the scrapes, first one wrist and then the other. When he grabbed her chin to repeat the process on her face, she wasn’t so docile. Her arms came up to knock him aside and even managed to loosen his grip. She grabbed his forearm and would have forcibly pushed him away, except that he lurched forward and wrapped his hand in her hair to pull her across his lap.
The brief skirmish ended to the cheers of the men nearest them when his arm closed around her, holding her chest tight to his. Eirik’s breath came harsh and fast as he looked into the dark depths of her eyes. He tried to tell himself that it was from the fight, but he was a seasoned warrior who didn’t wind easily. Besides, a tightness had begun in his groin. It was her. The darkness in him that had been appeased by her capture was awake again, bringing with it a desire that he despised.
‘Take me back,’ she whispered, her eyes wide and pleading. She must have felt the tension within him, because she sat stone still atop him.
‘You are mine!’ The words ripped from him with such vehemence, she startled. ‘Even if your lord brother sent two boats laden with gold, I would not sell you back.’
The words shocked her into silence. She didn’t protest when he rubbed a coat of the ointment over her face, just stared at him with those too-big eyes that made him want to reassure her. To stop the things she was making him feel, Eirik needed to get away from her. He moved to his feet so fast that he dumped her none too gently on the deck and didn’t bother to look back as he made his way to the bow of the boat. The girl was dangerous to him. He vowed to stay away from her lest she weaken him.
There came a time, over the next several days, when Merewyn would have welcomed death as the only escape from the constant rocking of the boat. It made her stomach roil in protest. Even the thoughts in her head seemed to rock and shift with the movement of the vessel. They floated from anger to fear to despair and back again as if a wave had pitched them around. The men on the boat didn’t seemed to notice that constant moving and walked around as if on land. She’d glared at them at first, but soon her physical discomfort had turned her thoughts inwards so that she barely noticed them.
And they barely noticed her, a small favour for which she was eternally grateful, since she spent a good portion of the first couple of days retching over the side of the boat. But after she became too weak to move, it happened where she lay. By then her retching was dry heaves and the water forced on her; it mixed nicely with the seawater that constantly sloshed around the bottom of the boat, soaking her gown and freezing her to the bone. It felt as though she would never be dry again, and was caked in a layer of salt and grime that she feared would be fused to her skin for ever.
She didn’t even know how long she’d been on the cursed boat, only that the light became dark in a nauseating cycle she couldn’t keep up with. Every morning when the sun broke over the side of the boat to touch her face, the boy named Vidar, who’d been told to watch over her, offered her smoked fish. It tasted awful. The boy couldn’t be but a few years younger than her, probably the same age as Godfrey, Alfred’s eldest son. But he seemed much older, leaving her to wonder if these people only produced giants.
He was the one to supply her with water, but after she refused Eirik had been summoned. He appeared every time her thoughts turned to death and despair to stand over her with that ever-present look of disappointment. Apparently, she wasn’t as well behaved as a good captive should be. Perhaps she wasn’t supposed to be sickened by the constant motion. He never reprimanded her, though, only spoke to her in quick commands to eat or drink, but she could never get much of the smoked fish down. Not even after the nausea had subsided.
* * *
By the time land was sighted, Merewyn could barely rouse the interest to lift her head at the sound of the cheer that went up in the boat. But as the longship drew ever closer to the shoreline, her stomach crept further into her throat until she could barely swallow and the trembling in her limbs returned. What demands would be made of her in this new place? Was this their destination or simply another stop on the journey?
Before she realised that she had moved, she clutched the gunwale with a white-knuckled grip and searched the approaching shore for some clue as to her fate. She saw a long stretch of a sandy beach with slight green hills in the background; as they drew closer, she discerned the outline of what appeared to be a village. Numerous buildings were clustered together, most of them squatty and slight, but a few were a more substantial, rectangular shape. Farther past the village dark spots that she assumed were animals grazing littered a slight rise in the ground.
She hoped the perfectly tranquil setting didn’t house something darker, such as a market that dealt in human flesh. She had always imagined those cities to be bigger, not villages with shepherds tending sheep and mothers tending hearths.
‘This is home.’ Eirik’s deep voice was so near her ear, it made her jump.
She turned her head slightly to see him leaning close to her as he looked out at the shore. Her gaze traced the strong line of his jaw. The weight of his body was warm behind her, though he didn’t touch her. His face
