She did, gathering the boy up gently into her arms and whispering against his cheek, “This may hurt a bit more, dear heart, before it gets better. ’Tis all right for you to scream once more.”
He did, right in her ear, before he slumped in her arms, unconscious. She carefully laid him back down, wiping the tears from his cheeks, ignoring her own, glad he had fainted for the while. She caught Turgeis’s eye, was about to thank him, but remembered instead. The prisoner. And again the color drained from her face.
“Go!” she gasped out, praying she wasn’t too late. “Stop Wulnoth from hurting the Celt, and mayhapyoucan get a name out of him so we can be rid of him.”
Turgeis had only waited for her permission. He ran now, and the rafters shook down dust motes in his wake, the servants amazed to see a man his size moving so fast. But Turgeis was also afraid too much time had passed, and when he arrived at the pit, he wasn’t pleased to be proved right.
Wulnoth didn’t hear him enter, too intent on what he was doing. Turgeis caught his upraised arm before it could descend again, and used it to hurl the man across the room, where he slammed into the wall.
“She did not tell you to kill him,” Turgeis growled.
There wasn’t a man alive, Wulnoth was sure, who wouldn’t be terrified of this Viking if that man earned his fury. “I had barely begun,” he protested, though he said no more. Turgeis imagined that was so, that Wulnoth would have continued for several hours if he had had his way. Turgeis ignored him for the moment to see what damage had been done, and was relieved to see it was not serious.
The prisoner had been twisted around so he faced the wall, his tunic cut from his body and now lying at his feet. More than two dozen vivid welts were raised across the man’s back and tender sides, where the lash had curled around him. A goodly number dripped blood. But at least Wulnoth had not deviated from what he had been told. Erika had said a lashing, and he had used the short, multi-stripped lash rather than his skin-mutilating whip. The cuts didn’tlook deep enough to scar, as long as they didn’t fester, but the whole would cause considerable pain for a while.
Yet it was plain to see the man was unconscious. That, of course, wouldn’t have stopped Wulnoth. But it shouldn’t be so, not after so few strokes, and Turgeis could not credit that a man this size had so little tolerance for pain, when he knew what he himself was capable of withstanding.
Something was not right. He had thought so earlier, watching the prisoner wax repeatedly between seeming drunkenness that slowed his words and sharp clarity, between bemused confusion and perfect understanding wherein he had ready answers for each charge. And he had to be crazy to insult Erika as he had done, when his fate rested in her hands. That, or he had a death wish.
If Turgeis had thought those insults had been intentional, he would have challenged the man himself. But he didn’t think so. They seemed more a slip of the tongue, or a natural response to a woman. Either way, the prisoner hadn’t seemed surprised by the slips, hadn’t asked pardon for them, and hadn’t even realized he was giving offense.
Turgeis had also wondered why, with the kind of muscle that was capable of it, the man hadn’t yanked the hooked spike that his chains were attached to right out of the wall. Even if he had been biding his time for the best advantage, surely he would have prevented the lashing ifhe were able. Only Wulnoth had remained to administer it. The man calling himself Selig the Blessed could have easily escaped. Yet he hung there against the wall, unconscious, his back crisscrossed with blistering stripes that would make movement extremely painful now.
Turgeis suddenly cast a suspicious look at Wulnoth, who hadn’t moved from where he had been hurled. “Was he even awake when you began this?”
“I did not notice,” Wulnoth replied belligerently, beginning to resent the Viking’s interference, since nothing more had come of it.
Turgeis grunted, a sound Erika would have recognized clearly to mean “You lie.” And in fact, he doubted the prisoner had felt any of the lashing yet. He also suspected Wulnoth had not bothered to rouse him because he had known full well his lady would recant her decision, and he did not want to lose a moment of wielding that lash while he had the opportunity. Wulnoth might prefer his victims to experience their torture fully, but in this case, he would settle for the pain that would be felt afterward.
Turgeis proved now what a simple matter it was to yank that spike from the wall if you had the strength for it, which he certainly did. He caught the man before he fell, surprised, even though he had expected it, that he was so heavy, despite a marked leanness across his torso that made the muscles stand out even more.
Turgeis carefully lowered him to the floor, laying him on his stomach, positioning his head on a bent arm. Holding him, he had felt the heat of fever, and now, the lump on the back of his head.
Again the Viking’s eyes pinned Wulnoth, with enough accusation in them that the captain of the guard started backing toward the door. “You lied to her,” Turgeis said low. “He has the injury he claimed to have.”
Wulnoth still lied, though his lack of color proclaimed it loudly. “I felt naught.”
“What youwillfeel—!”
Turgeis didn’t finish, unaccustomed to being this angry and showing it. He had learned at a tender age to control all emotion. His size demanded it. His one lapse had nearly killed his own brother, which was never forgotten, and why his brother had plotted to be rid of him.
He turned his back on Wulnoth, adding only, “Come near him again and I will kill you.”
A simple statement. He was a simple man of few words. In fact, he had said more this eventide than he had in the past month. And he had no idea what to do now. Illness and injuries were beyond his ken. But he couldn’t send for the healer yet. She would be busy still with Thurston. Erika knew the ways of healing also, but she would not leave the boy now either, and besides, he wasn’t going to tell her of this if he could avoid it. Which still did not tell him what to do for Selig the Blessed now.
He thought to move him to a cleaner place, but he didn’t think the man would notice much of his surroundings when he woke—if he woke. So he went out to summon one of the guards to him.
“Find a servant to fetch a pallet, blankets, candles, water—and food. Lots of food. Bring them to the pit, then wait outside the young lord’s chamber. The moment the healer leaves him, bring her to me.” The guard knew Turgeis well, sat near him at table each day, and was amazed to hear so much out of him. And he was not done. “Lady Erika is to know naught of this, especially that I need the healer.”
Turgeis returned to the pit, in time to hear the prisoner’s groan and a hissed “Thor’s teeth cannot be this sharp.”
He moved to squat beside him. The man hadn’t stirred other than to utter those words. He had spoken in Turgeis’s native Norse, and it had been sweet indeed to hear. As unlikely as it seemed, he was afraid everything the man had claimed was true. Wulnoth, that miserable slime, had accused him simply because he was a stranger to them, when they should have given him the aid he had been seeking.
The man’s eyes were squeezed shut, his fists clenched. Another groan escaped him. Turgeis could only guess at the headache that lump was causing.
Turgeis spoke Norwegian himself for the first time in many years. “I would suggest you do not move.”
A half moan, half chuckle. “I do not think I care to try. What ails me, that my back is afire?”
