Then she knew. “No, please, no, Magnus.”
He ignored her and spoke to the smithy.
As the sun lowered for the night, Zarabeth walked beside Magnus back toward the Sea Wind. He carried Lotti.
Around her throat was a slave’s iron collar.
She felt such humiliation, such hopelessness, she didn’t want to go on. Were it not for Lotti, she believed that she would fight Magnus until he was forced to kill her. She walked several paces behind him, like a dog.
13
When the Sea Wind took the sharp wind off the Oslo Fjord and veered into the viksfjord that led to the Gravak Valley and the home of many of the Haraldsson family, Zarabeth heard the men cheer. She looked out of the cargo area, curious. The men were sitting back on their sea chests, their oars still as wind filled the huge red-and-white-striped sail. She met the gaze of Ragnar, the man she had struck to escape in York.
She wanted to shrink back at the barely veiled hostility in his eyes, but she forced herself to stand perfectly still.
“What want you, slave?” Ragnar asked, taking a step toward her. His eyes were on the slave collar around her neck.
“I wondered why the men were cheering.”
“We near home. Another half-day is all, and then you will begin your life as a Viking’s slave. You will not like it, and I shall be pleased at your misery. The slave collar becomes you. It fits you well.”
“What goes here, Ragnar?”
Zarabeth marveled at the suspicion she heard in Magnus’ voice. He distrusted Ragnar? Surely he knew the man despised her.
“Nothing, Magnus. Your slave here merely wished to know what the men were cheering about. I told her.”
Ragnar turned away then and left them, whistling. She suddenly had the feeling that she was completely alone with Magnus, even though Lotti stood just beside her and his men were within feet of them, their voices a low rumble over the flapping sail.
“The men take their ease now. The wind will stay at our backs until we reach the valley.”
“And your home? You called it Malek?”
“Aye.” He fell silent and his look was on the collar that encircled her neck. It looked heavy, too heavy for a woman’s slender throat. He hated it. Hated that he had done it. He turned away from her. “Stay in the cargo space. I want none of my men to succumb to your enticements.”
Her craw was filled to overflowing and she gave him an utterly false smile, saying, “Enticements, Viking? How odd that sounds. Perhaps I am a sweetmeat?”
“Mayhap sweet between your thighs, but no place else.”
She turned away, defeated by his distrust, but not for long, for she was too curious to hide herself in the cargo space. She sat in the opening with Lotti on her lap and watched the huge rising mountains on either side of the fjord, mountains jutting upward, their tops cloud-sheathed, covered with thick pine forests. How could one farm here, she wondered, when everything was so densely covered with trees? The water was so clear and so blue that it nearly hurt the eyes to look at it, particularly with the bright sun striking off it. The thick wadmal sail bulged and the men who held the ropes to control it struggled, their muscles clenching and twisting with the force it took to control the huge sail in the fast wind at their backs. The mast creaked with the pressure, and the man at the tiller was sweating and swearing loudly.
The air was cool and the sun hot overhead. Zarabeth couldn’t imagine the land frozen with snow and cold for five months of the year, not now, now with all the vastness of the green and blue and the softness of the air. She closed her eyes a moment. She should have been coming here as Magnus’ wife, not his slave, but the collar around her neck, dragging on her every moment of the day, told the endless truth.
She turned when Horkel said to her, “Do you know about the midnight sun?”
When she shook her head, he continued, “It is high summer, and here there is almost no night. The sun still holds its course in the sky even when it is midnight. We call this time the season of the sun. Alas, in the winter, the sun scarce ever shows itself, and its season passes. You will become used to it, in time.”
“It is very cold?”
“Aye, and the days are short and become shorter still. But there are feasts and games and nights filled with songs and drink and laughter.”
Two hours later, the men began to shout and point. Zarabeth looked toward the shore and saw a wooden pier stretching out into the water. Beyond it was a narrow beach covered with pebbles and driftwood. A wide path wound its way upward from the beach to a wide flat expanse of ground, cleared as far as the eye could see. In the middle of the flat ground was a circular wooden palisade some eight feet high. Beside the palisade were fields filled with rye and barley and wheat, shining gold and brown under the sun. She saw men and women alike working in the fields. Would she be doing that as well? The wide fields went to the very edge of the tree line. Magnus had used every bit of land available to him.
“This is my farmstead, Malek,” Magnus said with simple pride; then, just as suddenly, bitterness
filled him and he added, “It is your home now as well. But you do not come to it as I had wished.”
“It is beautiful,” Zarabeth said, and meant it. He did not respond. The next minutes were busy as the men lowered the sail and took down the heavy mast. Two men jumped from the vessel to the wooden dock and tied the heavy ropes around the thick wooden stakes. Others began to empty the cargo hold of its goods.