“Aye, Magnus, I watched her leave, her head bent, deep into her thoughts, I remembered thinking. It had rained so hard that all of us were annoyed with each other, all of us just wanted to be outside, and so it was that she left the palisade and walked down the path to the water.”
“She had nothing with her?”
Hollvard shook his head.
“Then someone took her away by force.”
“Aye, perhaps.”
He heard the doubt in the old man’s voice. Hollvard believed, as did all the rest of his people, that she had killed herself or simply walked away into the woods, there to be killed by wild animals. Magnus didn’t believe it for a minute. Zarabeth was a fighter. She would not destroy herself.
He called all his men together, and another search began. None of them said a thing, merely searched as they had for Egill. It was Ragnar who found a ragged piece of her gown on a bush some twenty yards into the pine forest.
Magnus studied the piece of cloth and the bush. “She was being carried,” he said at last, standing. “Over a man’s shoulder, a man nearly of my height. She was taken from Malek.” He wanted to yell with the relief he felt at their discovery, but it was quickly quelled.
She had been taken. By whom? Was she still alive?
Eines, a small man who was a superb tracker, came forward. “This way, Magnus. There are still prints, vague, but enough for me. Thank Odin that it hasn’t rained since that day.”
Eines, Magnus thought, falling into step behind him, had no shortage of conceit. He prayed the man was right and not bragging to hear himself speak. They came upon the camp late in the day. It had been abandoned, Eines stated, some two days before.
“What do we do now, Magnus?”
He turned to Ragnar. “We arm ourselves and prepare for stealth and cunning. I know who took her and I will have the bastard’s blood.”
22
Zarabeth felt a stinging slap on her cheek, then a dash of cold water in her face. She sputtered with the shock of it and opened her eyes.
Ingunn was kneeling beside her, an empty wooden cup in her hands. “So, you’re not dead. Orm was worried that he had struck you too hard. But I told him that I would wake you quickly enough.”
Zarabeth said nothing. Ingunn sat back on her heels, her eyes narrowing suddenly as Orm strode over to them. He came down on his haunches, leaned over, and took Zarabeth’s face between his hands. He studied the bruise on her jaw. His touch was gentle as he traced the now-yellowing flesh.
“I hadn’t meant to strike you so very hard. You have been unconscious for a very long time.” Then he grinned at her. “You won’t ever fight me again, though, will you?” Again he touched her jaw. Not so gently this time.
Pain shot through the side of her face, but she didn’t make a sound. She looked at the man who had taken her from Malek. “Where are we?”
He smiled widely, but it wasn’t a pleasant smile. She braced herself for another blow, but he didn’t touch her. “I told you before that I dislike shrill questioning, particularly from women.”
“I am not shrill. I am merely questioning.”
“She makes a mockery of me, but I’ll forgive her imprudence this time.” Orm grinned at Ingunn, whose face was tight. He said to Zarabeth, “Not far from Malek. No, not far at all. Now that you are awake, you will make yourself useful. We must be gone soon. Ingunn, see that she obeys you.”
Orm touched his fingers to Zarabeth’s hair, his gaze so intent it frightened her. He then rose, hands on his hips, to look down at her. “Be about your tasks now.”
“Get up.”
There was venom in Ingunn’s voice, and triumph as well. Zarabeth got to her feet, the movement sending waves of pain into her jaw. She rubbed it gently, then opened and closed her mouth several times. Her jaw wasn’t broken, thank her Christian God and the Viking gods as well.
“You will get no sympathy from me, Zarabeth, so don’t try your stupid tricks.” Ingunn stepped closer. “I told you I would pay you back for what you have done to me. I told you I would make you regret what you did, and here you are. Now, you will carry these things.” She threw several bound bundles at her. Zarabeth picked them up. They were heavy. Orm called out then, and she shifted the bundles in her arms.
There were only two of them walking, an older woman and she. Orm and his two men and Ingunn all rode. She wondered who the woman was, but she kept her head down and away from Zarabeth, as if she were afraid of her. Whoever she was, the woman appeared to be a captured slave, just as she herself was. Unconsciously Zarabeth touched her fingers to her throat where the iron slave collar had once encircled her. She closed her eyes a moment and pictured Magnus in her mind. He would find her. He would come for her. If he still cared at all about her.
Unless all the people at Malek convinced him that she had fled or that she had killed herself. She remembered that last night with Magnus. He had taken her and she had chanted over and over to herself that she hated what he was doing to her, hated him for forcing himself on her like that night after night, and the tears had come and she’d known he was looking at her, seeing her tears but hearing no sounds from her, and he’d pushed deeper then, and deeper still, as if to prove that what she felt, what she did, meant nothing to him. Then he had left the next morning and she had looked away from him even after he had kissed her in front of his men and ridden away from her laughing.
With two of them walking, the pace was slow. Finally Orm called a halt. He called to one of the two men, Kol, and ordered him to take the other woman up on his horse. Orm took Zarabeth on his horse, in front of him.
Ingunn rode close. “Let her have my horse, Orm. I will ride with you. This isn’t right, having a slave treated so finely.”
