“By decree of England’s King Cnut,” Wolf told them from his saddle, “I give you a chance to live if you obey. We can cut each and every one of you—”
“Help!” a woman screamed from the trapped crowd. “What happened? Where am I?”
He followed her shrill voice and found her clawing at the netting. She was…rather beautiful. He hadn’t seen anyone like her in all his years. She wore her long, golden hair loose and flowing just over her dainty shoulders. Her large eyes were wide with terror and panic. They were painted in dark shades of blue and gray, like a storm filling the sunlit sky. Their shape, like his cat’s eyes at home. The top half of her was covered in a puffy red coat, cut to her hips. The bottom half of her was most intriguing in black hose and furry boots. Wolf had never seen garments like hers before. What was it she was screaming?
“Let me go! Is this some kind of sick joke?”
Was it the language of the Saxons? He spoke it almost fluently. This sounded somewhat different.
“I demand to speak to the person in charge!” she screamed out.
He rode to her, stopping before he trampled through the crowd. They scattered, but she did not. The net sank around her. She held it up in her fingers and glared at him.
“I am the leader,” he told her, staring into her defiant gaze.
“I’m going to have you fired for this.”
He couldn’t help the crook of his mouth rising with amusement at the venom of her threat. “Fired in what?”
“What?” She went a little paler than she naturally was.
“You will stop speaking now,” he commanded after his head cleared. “I will not be seduced by your witchery.”
“Witchery?” She managed to sound indignant instead of afraid. “What is this? Who are you? You don’t get to tell me what to do. Do you know who I am? Let me go!” By now, she was screeching and paining Wolf’s ears. “The joke is over, and it wasn’t funny!”
Fin came forward on his horse and rode the snorting beast so close to her that she had to step back lest she be trampled underfoot. “Do you disobey our chief?”
Though the blood drained from her delicately cut face and her eyes appeared glassy and deeper blue, less gray, the haughty tilt of her chin and the pert lift of her nose proved her foolish courage. Who was she? Wolf wondered. Where had she come from around here, where women were so bold? Or garbed themselves the way she did, with her beguiling curves almost bared before all?
She was terrified, yet—
“Are you all supposed to be Vikings?” she managed to ask.
Fin lifted his sword to her face. There was blood, still wet from his many victims, on it. She looked at it, covered her mouth, then her eyes, and then fell backward into a dead faint.
“Bring her to me,” Wolf commanded, then looked out among the crowd. They were mostly women and children, some men too old to fight a war but too young to be called old men. “If any of you are the wives of the fighting men, you are now widows. I am remorseful for your sakes—for how you will now live.” He stopped and waited while wailing filled the air and brought with it dark, dreary clouds. “I want food and lodging for me and my men. You will serve us from now on and will be provided for.”
Silence, save for some weeping, but no one defied him.
He turned his horse and was about to ride toward one of the huts for some shelter, when someone rose up to defy him yet again.
“I’m not serving anybody! Um, I’m Camelee Pendrey!” She gripped her head. “I think I need a doctor.”
He turned to look at her. He knew it was a mistake. The men were lifting the net while she awoke from her faint and sat up. The netting pulled and tugged at her hair. Her color had returned. Pale pink with darker contours masterfully applied with some kind of magical paint. He couldn’t take his eyes off her.
Camelee Pendrey.
“You are now my servant,” he corrected her. “Bring her to me.”
He was patient while Fin and Akkar dragged her from the center of the market to him.
She resisted every step, even after he found a smile within him and let it shine on her.
“Seriously,” she pleaded when she reached him. “What’s going on here? Please. What’s going on?”
He understood enough of the Saxon’s language to know what she was asking. He understood that she was pleading for something. That was a little more like it. She was finally understanding that being subservient would get her more—
“Where. Am. I?” she asked carefully. “Who brought me here?”
