When Kristen woke again, the sun was just beginning to set. She started to moan, then caught herself and sat up slowly, looking accusingly at Thorolf.
“You hit me.” She did not make it a question.
“I did.”
“I suppose I should thank you.”
“You should.”
“Bastard.”
He would have laughed at the mild way she said this, if he felt free to laugh. He didn’t. They had been left unguarded earlier while the enemies were busy seeing to their own wounds, but two guards rested near them now.
“There will be time to grieve later, Kristen,” Thorolf offered gently.
“I know.”
She straightened her ankles with the heavy iron rings about them. Ohthere’s borrowed silver helmet was gone, as was her jeweled dagger and belt. Even her fur-trimmed boots had been stripped from her feet.
“They took everything of value?” she asked.
“Aye. They would have taken your vest, too, if it were not such an old shaggy fur.”
“And bloodstained,” she added, looking down at the dark blotches all over her, for the blood had shot out from the tall man she had killed when she pulled her sword out of him. She felt her head for the bump there that had rendered her unconscious, and then realized. “My hair!”
The braid was still tucked into her tunic, but it would be clearly obvious if she was closely examined. Instantly she began to break the hair from the braid.
“Nay, Kristen.” Thorolf grabbed her hands away, realizing what she was trying to do. “It will take you forever to cut it that way.”
“You have a knife to offer?” she snapped.
He grunted at such a stupid question, but then began to look her over. With the belt gone, her short tunic lay in straight lines down to just below her hips, effectively hiding the deep curve of her waist. Her dark-brown leggings were bulky beneath the loosened cross-garters, disguising the shapeliness there, too. Her hands and feet, bare now, were not tiny, yet not manly, either. But more dirt would help there, as well as on her bare arms, which were entirely too slim even for a youth.
Thorolf was satisfied. “If not for that glorious hair of yours, it would take only your loud mouth for them to guess that you are anything more than a boy. How did you get your breasts to disappear?”
Kristen blushed scarlet, looking down to avoid his curious eyes. “You should not ask me that.”
“But how did you?”
“Thorolf!”
“Keep your voice down! In fact, do not say a word that they can hear. We can tell them you are a mute, and that will solve that problem.”
“But what about my hair?”
He frowned, then suddenly grinned and began to rip away the lower hem of his tunic. He called for Ivarr to block Kristen from the view of the guards, then whipped her braid out and wound it quickly around her head, wrapping the soft leather from his tunic over it and tying it tight at the base of her neck.
“My injury is not there,” she started to point out.
“I am not concerned with that puny little bump,” he
retorted. “Wait a minute. I have just the finishing touch.” And he proceeded to slap at the ugly-looking cut on his arm until he had a good deal of fresh blood on his fingers, which he then smeared on her bandaged head.
“Thorolf!”
“Shut up, Kristen, or that woman’s voice of yours will render my clever efforts wasted. What do you think, Ivarr? Will she pass for a boy now?”
“With that swelling jaw, and that big head, no one will look twice at her,” Ivarr replied with a grin.
“Thank you so much,” Kristen retorted churlishly.
Thorolf ignored her sarcasm. “Aye, it is a little thick around the head, but since they will not be looking for the girl in her, they will only think it is a thick bandage. As dirty and unkempt as she is now, it will do. But keep it tight, Kristen. If it falls off, you are done for.”
She gave him a dark look for that unnecessary warning. “I think it is time you told me where we are.”
“The kingdom of Wessex.”
“The Saxons’ Wessex?”
“Aye.”
Her eyes rounded in disbelief. “You mean an army of puny Saxons defeated you?”
Thorolf flushed at her aghast tone. “They fell on us from the trees, woman. Half our number were down before the rest of us even knew we were attacked.”
“Oh, unfair!” she cried. “They ambushed you?”
“Aye. It was the only way they could have won, for their numbers were not more than ours. And the irony is that we were not interested in them or what they had to offer. We would have passed by this place that they have brought us to. It was—” He paused, looking suddenly chagrined. “Never mind.”
“It was what?” she demanded.
“Nothing.”
“Thorolf!”
“Thor’s teeth! Will you keep that voice down?” he snapped at her. “It was a monastery we were intent on sacking.”
“Oh, nay, Thorolf, tell me not.”
“Aye, it was, and this is why Selig did not want you to know, for he understood how you would feel about it But this was our last chance to share in some of the wealth of this land, Kristen. The Danes will soon have all of it. We thought only to take a little of that wealth first. There would have been little or no killing. It was only the fabled wealth of the Jurro monastery that we wanted.”
“How did you know where to find it?”
“Flokki’s sister, the one who married a Dane, came home to visit last year. She had much news of what they are doing here, and she told about the failed attempt on Jurro in 871, when the combined armies of Halfdan of the Wide Embrace and King Guthorm first attacked Wessex. They are intent on the kingdom of Mercia right now, even though those fools have paid them Danegel each year to keep the Vikings at bay. And once the have Mercia under their belt, they will be back here. If not this year or the next, then soon after. You think they can ignore this rich, fertile land? These little Saxons will not keep them out.”
“They managed to defeat you,” she reminded him.
“Odin’s luck was on their side.”
“They were not all little, Thorolf. The one I killed was as big as you are.”
“Aye, I saw him when they brought the carts to carry all the wounded here. But you did not kill him, Kristen At least, he is not dead yet.”
She groaned, his words filling her with regret. “You mean I could not even avenge my brother?”
His hand went to her cheek in support, then quick fell away lest one of the guards should see. “He will die
soon, I am sure. He was bleeding heavily from his belly when they carried him into that large building over there.”
Kristen cringed at the reminder of the scene of carnage she had witnessed in the forest, even though she had added to it. But her part in it was justified. How could she ever face her family if she had not tried to kill her brother’s slayer?
She turned to look where Thorolf nodded, not wanting to think of the blood she herself had let. It was a very large building of two floors, built mostly of wood, with large and small windows to let in the daylight, but no doubt they let in the cold of winter, too. There were many other smaller buildings around the place, and a wooden fence that surrounded the area, thick but not very high.
“Aye, you can see how easy it would be to take this place,” Thorolf commented.
“But they are preparing well for the Danes. Look there.” She pointed to a huge pile of large blocks of stone on the far side of the enclosed yard. “It looks as if they plan to build a more sturdy wall.”
“Aye, we saw more stone outside the wooden fence,” he agreed, then laughed contemptuously. “The Danes will be here before they can finish it.”
Kristen shrugged, for that was nothing to them. They would escape from this place long before then, she had no doubt.
Glancing back at the large building, she frowned a little. “That hall is big enough that it must belong to an important lord. Do you think the tall one might be their lord?”
“Nay. From the little I could understood of what they said, the lord of this place is not here. But I think he was sent for. I really should have given you more attention
when you were trying to teach me old Alfreda’s tongue.”
“Aye, you should have, for you are the only one who can speak for us if I am to be a mute.”
He grinned. “Will it be too hard on you, to keep your mouth shut when they are near?”
She made a sound very much like a snort to show what she thought of his teasing. “I will manage somehow.”
O
ne brave man had walked in among the Vikings to plant a torch in a hole in the post they surrounded. Six guards stood near with swords in hand in case the Saxon was set upon. Kristen hid a grin as the man passed near her. She had heard them arguing about who would carry the torch, for none of them wanted to get this close to the prisoners, even chained as they all were and lying and sitting about in relaxed positions. With so many wounded, they offered no threat, at least not at the moment. But the Saxons weren’t taking any chances.
The torch was not for the prisoners, but for the three men who remained to guard them, so they could better see the prisoners now that night had fallen. No food had been brought for them, nor bandages to tend the wounded. This boded ill. They needed food for strength if they were to escape. No food could mean many things, including that they were not to live long.
That possibility was confirmed a while later when the guards began talking among themselves. The Saxon who had walked among them, obviously feeling bold now that he had done so and had come to no harm for it, spoke the loudest, his voice carrying to them all.
“Why does he keep looking at you while he brags?” Kristen asked Thorolf.
“I am the only one who was able to speak for us earlier. They thought we were Danes,” he said with a measure of contempt. “I disabused them of that fact.
The Danes are here to steal their land. We only wanted to steal their wealth.”
“And you thought that would make them deal more kindly with us?” she scoffed.
Thorolf chuckled. “It did no harm to point it out.”
“Nay?” she asked darkly. “Then you are not listening to what they are saying.”
“In truth, the little bastard is talking too fast for me to understand more than a few words. What does he say?”
Kristen listened for several moments, then could not stop the look of disgust that came over her features. “They mention someone called Royce. One says he will makes slaves of us. The braggart swears he hates all Vikings too much to keep us alive and will torture us to death as soon as he returns.”
She did not add that the little braggart the others called Hunfrith had gone on to describe the torture, suggesting that the one called Royce would make use of the Vikings’ own ingenuity, doing to the prisoners what the Danes had done to the King of East Anglia when he was captured. The King had been set against a tree and used for archery practice until he bristled with arrows like a hedgehog. And when he was torn away from the tree, still alive, his back was ripped open, exposing his rib cage. A gruesome torture indeed, but one of the other guards suggested the prisoners would more likely be hacked into small pieces, kept alive as long as possible, and forced to watch as each severed limb was thrown to the dogs to eat.
There was no point in Kristen telling all that to Thorolf. Torture was torture, no matter what form it took. If they were to die when the man called Royce arrived, then they should be making plans for escape immediately.
She turned around to look at the tall post around which they were circled, judging it to be as tall as three
men. The chains running from one man’s ankle to the next were longer than she could have hoped for, at least two arms’ length, a stupid move by the Saxons, for this gave them ample room to maneuver.
“It should take only three men, mayhap four, to climb that post to set us all free from it,” Kristen speculated aloud.
“Which is no doubt why they made sure no three of us in a straight line were without serious wounds.”
Ivarr said this, and she looked at him to see the open leg wound he pointed to that would make it nearly impossible for him to scale the post. And the man on the other side of Thorolf still had the head of a spear embedded in his shoulder.
“I could carry one man with me,” Thorolf said, “but the going would be too slow. We would have arrows in our backs before we got near the top.”
“Could you unroot that post?” she ventured.
“We would have to stand to do that, and that would forewarn them what we were about. We could push it over, but it would fall slowly and they would still be warned and be on us instantly with their swords. Even if we should still succeed after that, too many of us would die and be dead weight to hinder the rest of us, chained as we all are. If they are smart, they would not even come close to us so that we could get at their weapons, but pick us off with arrows from afar.”
Kristen groaned inwardly. “So with the chains keeping us together, we have no hope?”
“Not until our wounds are healed and we can get our hands on some weapons,” Ivarr replied.
“Take heart, Kristen.” Thorolf grinned unconcernedly. “They may decide to use us to train them to fight the Danes.”
“And then let us go on our merry way, eh?”
“Of course.”
She snorted at that possibility, but Thorolf’s jesting did make her feel better. If they were to die, then they would die together, and fighting, not calmly accepting the Saxons’ torture. That was the Viking way, and though she was a Christian, she was a Norsewoman too.
She would have said as much if the wooden gate had not opened just then to admit two men on horseback.
Only one was worth watching, and watch him she did as he moved his great black steed slowly toward them. When he dismounted only a few feet away, she was amazed to see that he was nearly as tall as her father, which put him at a height above most of the young men with her. He was young himself and not slim for such a height, but powerful across the shoulders and wide chest. His sleeveless leather vest was almost like a short jacket and revealed a bush of dark hair on his chest running nearly to his neck, and arms that were thick and wrapped with steely muscle, the arms of a warrior. The belt wound tight about his waist showed that there was no fat on him.