“I know it hurts. I’m sorry. Lie down.” He pressed her back down, his fingers splayed on her bare stomach.
She lay there, feeling pain, feeling helpless, and she hated it. He laid a blanket over her, leaving only her leg bare. She wanted to thank him for that, but she couldn’t. It took all her resolve to keep cries buried in her throat, not to moan or whine, not to let him see that she was weak.
Suddenly she felt his fingers on her burned flesh, felt his fingers lightly rubbing in the cream. She wanted to scream as loud as a blast of thunder, but she forced herself to lie still, to bear it. The cream brought the strangest mixture of pain and relief, of hot and cold, then blessed numbness, just as it had on her back. She held herself still, concentrating on keeping her mouth shut.
When he was finished, he sat back on his heels. “You will be all right. The burn isn’t that bad. My mother makes the cream, with elderberry juice, she told me. You will like my mother, she can be fierce as a warrior one moment and gentle as a child the next. She knows all about potions and medicines. When I was a boy, I was fighting with Rorik, my older brother, and fell in the fire pit and she... ”
She was aware of what he was doing, distracting her, trying to make her focus on his voice and his words, not on the pain from the burns. She did hear his voice, deep and soft, and she tried, she truly tried to think about what he was saying, but it was beyond her. Finally, when he was quiet a moment, she said, “You love your mother.”
“Aye, she and my father are the finest parents I know. Even when they hate, they do it better than anyone else. They are not without flaw, don’t misunderstand me. I remember how they hated Rorik’s Irish wife, believing her evil. But they changed because they saw the justice of it, realized they had been wrong about her.”
She nodded, then said, “I have few body parts left unscathed. Thank you, Merrik. You are kind.”
“Keep those parts sound. This was the same cream I used on your back. After this I don’t wish to use it again on you. I haven’t much left, for my mother can only make the cream in the fall months.”
“What else could happen? You are not that far from your home now, are you?”
“Aye, ’tis true. Still, you must learn to be faster.”
“Aye,” she said, feeling the flesh grow cool and numb. “Next time I will be the one to inflict the pain.”
“A slave doesn’t inflict pain,” he said in an utterly emotionless voice. He turned and called out, “Oleg, bring a cup of mead.”
When Oleg came into the tent, he said nothing, merely stared down at her, then nodded. He handed the mead to Merrik and was quickly gone again.
When he put the cup to her lips, she drank.
“All of it,” he said. “It will make you sleep.”
And she did.
They survived a storm of two straight days in the Baltic Sea before turning northward up the Oslofjord to Kaupang. Oddly, Laren hadn’t been particularly frightened. She was too busy trying to keep Taby reassured. He was as wet and miserable as they all were, there was naught she could do about that. She told him one story after the other. Her cheek had turned purple and yellow from the blow and had swelled. It didn’t hurt, just made her look a witch, she imagined. It was her leg that hurt and throbbed, but then again, so did Deglin’s and each time she thought of that, the pain seemed to lessen. Merrik made him row as long and hard as all the other men.
Laren wondered if he would die, for he moaned over his oar and complained endlessly, but the men ignored him. But he was tough, and on that fifth morning when the sun was hot in the sky and the winds had quieted into soft breezes that were just heavy enough to fill the sails, she saw that he hadn’t sickened, nor was he complaining anymore. He was silent, and she distrusted that. Silent men, in her experience, usually were thinking of revenge. He saw she was looking at him and she quickly looked away. Since that night, none of the men had asked her to tell them about Grunlige the Dane. She wondered if she would continue the tale if they did ask her. She was nodding even as she wondered. Deglin deserved nothing from her.
There were seagulls overhead, screeching as they dove close to the longboat, then swooped away at the last instant. She heard one man yell when a seagull’s wing hit his face. Scores of cormorants flagged their progress, the large birds in loose formation off their bow. There was a new quickened vitality to the men’s conversation. All their talk was of home, of their wives, their children, their crops. And they spoke of their wealth, each man richer than he was but four months earlier.
As for Merrik, he would look at her cheek and frown. At night he continued to rub more cream into her leg, even though she could do it now, and she told him that she could. But he had merely shaken his head and continued with the task.
The trading town of Kaupang was protected by a wooden palisade made of lashed-together sharply pointed wooden poles, set in the shape of a half circle. There were a good half dozen wooden docks that stretched out into the inlet and it was at the nearest one that Merrik had the men row the longboat. When they stepped onto the dock, there was a loud cheer. They were home, or very nearly.
They would do no trading here this time, but the men wanted women and there had been no slave women for their use on the trip back from Kiev. They were hungry and they wanted one last night of wildness and freedom before they returned to their families. Laren saw it and understood it. They were men and that was simply the way they were. She didn’t hate them for it, she was simply relieved that none of them wanted her. And that was thanks to Merrik.
She said to him even as he set her down on dry ground, “Thank you for protecting me.”
“I didn’t,” he said. “Deglin hurt you badly.”
“That isn’t what I meant. The men—they will relieve their lust here. They didn’t relieve their lust on me. I thank you for that.”
He said nothing to her, merely turned to shout to the men remaining on the longboat to protect their silver, “Keep sharp. We will be back in six hours and ’twill be your turn.”
He looked down at her. “Can you walk?”
She nodded.
“Cleve will keep Taby close. Would you like a bath?”
They were allowed through the large double gates, and she found herself in a bustling area crammed with people and small wooden dwellings and shops, all connected with wooden walkways, and it seemed that everyone was busy selling something or making something to sell or yelling with another to buy or trade or barter. It seemed that everyone was talking. She smiled, wanting to stop, just a moment, just long enough to look at the beautiful soapstone bowls displayed in front of one wooden shop, but Merrik didn’t pause. She saw a collection of weapons, and wished she could buy a knife, but she imagined her four small pieces of silver wouldn’t be enough, and she had nothing else. Merrik took her to a bathing hut where an old woman looked not at all at her face, but only at her worn trousers and dirty tunic, tsked through her rotting teeth, and told Merrik to take his wife inside.
