Ivar’s threat lingered in the air as he and Rangvald left the crowd. The moment the two jarls left, the crowd surged towards Gressa. Strian and his friends only had seconds to draw their weapons and circle Gressa for her protection.
“You will not touch this woman,” Leif’s voice was low but carried the authority that came from being first in line for the jarldom. “My father has not condemned her, and neither will you. She is Strian’s wife and is under his protection. If that is not enough, she is under mine as the heir to this jarldom. She is under Freya’s, the daughter of our jarl, and her husband Erik’s, son of our ally. She has Tyra’s, captain of our fleet, and Bjorn’s, the captain of our forces. You will not harm her without facing our wrath. Which one of you would stand against any of us, denounce our authority? Test any of us, and you will die.”
“Anyone who attempts to make her look guilty or makes any further accusations will be treated as a person without honor and will find themselves tied to the níðstöng. The shaming pole shall become your new home.” The tribe members knew Freya’s warning carried a greater promise of death than anyone else’s among the jarl’s leaders. She was intensely loyal and slow to forgive, making her someone others rarely crossed. “Leave now. Return to your homes or your duties. We will see those who linger as lazy and shirking their responsibilities. They will find themselves shoveling shite from the cesspit.”
No one waited to determine whether Freya’s warning was a hollow promise. Once everyone scattered, Strian lowered his sword. The others followed suit. Strian pulled Gressa into his arms and held her, anxious over her exchange with Ivar and his tribe members’ threats.
“I’m all right,” Gressa murmured as she ran her hand over Strian’s heart.
“Just let me hold you until my fear goes away. I need to feel you safe against me,” Strian’s breath brushed her ear as he whispered.
Gressa wound her arms around his waist, content to be held after the draining morning. Their friends gave the couple their privacy as they turned away.
“We can’t let her be alone now,” Tyra kept her voice quiet. “Someone will attack her if they see her by herself.”
“You’re right, but she’ll refuse our help. She’ll feel as much a captive as those Welshmen.” Freya nodded her head towards the níðstöng, the tall wooden pole made from a tree trunk where they shackled prisoners or accused while awaiting their fate.
“I don’t have a solution, but I will ask Sigrid if she has seen anything,” Leif offered. Leif’s wife, Sigrid, was renowned for her gift of second sight. So much so that Hakin, Grímr’s older brother, had her kidnapped early in the ongoing battle. “Perhaps she’s had a vision or can cast the runes.”
Erik and Bjorn stood quietly, neither having anything to add to the conversation, but they were in agreement that their friend’s wife needed more protection than the woman would willingly accept.
Thirteen
Gressa knew her friends were handing her off one after another, rarely leaving her alone. She appreciated the time to reconnect and rebuild what had been an unbreakable friendship when they were children. But after three weeks she was tired of being followed everywhere, feeling once more like a thrall than a shield maiden and a free woman. She had tried to bring it up with Strian, but his look of worry then resolve made her abandon hope that he would agree to dismissing her guard. Gressa was honest with herself and knew they were right to protect her, even if the over protectiveness chafed. She saw the looks directed at her and even caught some of the whispers.
It came to a head one afternoon as she walked with Freya and Tyra to the kitchens. She joined the other two in the kitchens after their training in the morning. She worked alongside other women from their tribe, but the women kept their distance as though they would catch an illness from being too close. Tyra and Freya huddled around her, pretending there was not an expanding rift between Gressa and the other women of the tribe. They shielded her from anyone who might insult her, but Gressa was growing claustrophobic from their constant attention. When they needed more eggs for the bread dough, she dashed out before Freya or Tyra could stop her.
“I’ll fetch them,” Gressa leaped at the chance to volunteer. She looked to Freya and Tyra as they exchanged a look, deciding who would be her chaperone. “I’ll be gone only a moment.”
Gressa grabbed a basket as she bolted for the door that led outside. She basked in the freedom she lost a month earlier when the Welshmen arrived and her life once more tilted on its axis. She did not dally as she made her way to the chicken coop. She was bent over, reaching for eggs under the roosting hens when voices that were much too near reached her.
“Her bodyguards seem to have abandoned her. It was only a matter of time before they grew fed up of playing nursemaid to the Laplander.”
Gressa recognized the men’s voices as one that belonged to boys she had avoided as a child. She did not bristle from the pejorative name for her mother’s people, but she did from their proximity. She inched her fingers toward the knife sheathed at the front of her belt. She drew it, prepared for the inevitable attack. She had it clutched in her hand when strong hands bit into her waist and dragged her backwards. A hand clamped over her mouth as an arm that felt like an iron chain wrapped around her chest, pinning her arms to her side. She kept the knife pointing down, hoping to conceal it until she had the opportunity to use it on her captors rather than them using it on her. Despite having a hand over her mouth, her head was unrestrained. She threw it back with as much force as her neck could muster. It crashed into the man’s nose, cracking it with a crunching sound. Rather than release her, the man’s fingers bit into her cheek. She tried to snap her teeth but could only reach the edge of his hand, no flesh within reach to bite down upon. A second man stepped in front of her, attempting to gather her legs. He made the mistake of stepping in line with them. She threw her upper body’s weight backwards as she kicked her booted foot into the man’s groin. Her foot landed in its desired destination, but it only gave the second captor the chance to grab her ankle as he pulled her other foot from the ground. She writhed and twisted as she tried to break free.
A third man appeared from beyond Gressa’s peripheral vision, landing his fist in her exposed middle. She slashed out with her knife and tore through the man’s forearm. He reeled back, and Gressa twisted her wrist to stab his throat. Blood geysered from the attacker’s neck, spraying Gressa and the other two assailants. The warm fluid hit her face, galvanizing her into further action. She threw her head back once more contacting the man’s already broken nose. His grasp loosened as he howled in pain. With a little freedom to move her arms, she felt for the sensitive flesh beneath his wrist and dug her nails in as she pinched, hoping to break the skin. Her teeth sank into the fleshy side of the man’s hand until she tasted blood. He dropped his hold on her, and as her body crashed against the ground, she released a blood-curdling scream. She scrambled on the ground trying to twist away from the man who held her legs. She tried to kick, but while her legs moved, she could not connect with his body.
“Scream if you want, but no one who cares will hear you, and no one who hates you will come to your rescue.” The man dragged her along the ground, small rocks and pebbles abrading her skin despite the tunic she wore. She screamed over and over, but the man did not slow. He pulled her around a storage building before throwing himself onto her, fumbling with the laces of his leather pants. She could feel his arousal pressing against her leg and wanted to be ill. She even tried to conjure vomit she could spew at him.
Once he had his cock free, he set his sights on the laces to Gressa’s pants. She tried to bring her knee up between his, but his weight kept her pinned to the ground. When he tried to push her pants from her hips, she sank her hips against the ground, refusing to budge. A hand she had not expected slapped her hard enough to twist her head. She cried out in pain, but she meant her scream more as a distraction than a hope for rescue. She wrestled her arms free and gouged her thumbs into the man’s eyes. His hand came around her throat and tightened the deeper she plunged her thumb. She released one eye to push her knuckles against his Adam’s apple and windpipe. As he gasped for air just as she did, she used the last bit of strength she had as stars danced in the blackness before her eyes to dig her feet into the ground and thrust upwards as she twisted, hoping to buck her assailant off her. It gained her some leverage, and his body rolled from hers, but not completely. She screamed once more, but a hand grasped her hair and yanked backwards. Gressa groaned as the man whose nose she broke returned to the fight. A knife bit into the skin at Gressa’s throat, and pressure convinced her to stop fighting the assault. She would have to wait until she had a better position to defend herself without having her neck sliced.
A feral growl came from behind her before a weight was thrown at the man who fisted her hair, making him flew sideways. The force knocked her over, pinned beneath the weight of two giant men. She gasped for breath as they struggled on top of her. Everything turned to black as she heard Leif and Bjorn yelling.
Strian wrestled the man who dared touch his wife. He had already beaten one man to death for touching her, so he had no qualms of doing it again. He tried to roll off Gressa, seeing her pinned beneath him and the man who had clutched her hair, but his opponent kept pulling them both back onto Gressa. Strian heard more than saw Leif handle the man whose cock still hung free of his pants. Bjorn added his weight and strength to Strian’s fight and helped Strian move them off Gressa. Two blonde heads with long braids carried Gressa from the fight. Bjorn backed off once Gressa was free, allowing Strian to finish the fight as was his right. He drove his fist into the man’s windpipe, crushing it and forcing the last breath from the man’s body. He turned his sights to the man Leif had laying on the ground at knife point. He stood and moved towards the last living attacker, but Freya pushed past him, knife drawn. She swiped it across the attacker’s manhood, severing it in one deep cut.
“Tyra can’t be the only one with a reputation for cutting off a man’s cock.” Freya announced as she stepped way, leaving Strian to finish the man with a knife through the eye that had viewed Gressa as a target.
“Strian! You’d better come here,” Tyra called out.
Strian ran to where Freya and Tyra had laid Gressa on the grass. There was blood on her throat. Strian feared it was from the cut he could already see on. He slid onto his knees as he arrived at his wife’s unmoving body. Gressa’s eyes fluttered open as Strian used his sleeve to wipe the blood away. She looked into eyes she had once believed she would stare into every day for the rest of life, eyes she had once feared she would never see again. She reached her hand out and cupped his cheek, running her the pad of her thumb over his stubble.
“It’s not mine. Not my blood,” she rasped. “I stabbed one of them and broke the other’s nose. It’s their blood.”
“Most of it, but the skin is broken on your throat again. I think this time it may be deep enough for stitches.” Strian looked up at Leif and Freya. “Fetch Lena and Sigrid. Have them meet us at my longhouse.”
Strian lifted Gressa into his arms before his long strides carried her to their home. Bjorn, Tyra, and Erik who had just joined them, walked behind them. Onlookers whispered as Strian carried Gressa away from the dead bodies strewn across the places where the attack happened. Strian did not stop or look around, knowing what he would see. His singular focus was getting Gressa into the safety of their home to await help from Sigrid and Lena.
Fourteen
