“Aye. Stay here. We are bringing up more water from the viksfjord. It won’t help much, but maybe we can save the food-store hut and the bathouse.”
He was gone from her, and Zarabeth stood there feeling helpless and deadened. Hollvard, killed! But who? That old man who had always been kind to her, from the very first, even when she had worn the slave collar.
Then she knew. She felt such rage that she shook with it. Slowly, with no show of outward feeling, she made her way through their people, studying every face, speaking a soothing word here, a word of encouragement there.
Ingunn wasn’t there. But Zarabeth had known she wouldn’t be.
It was when she found Ragnar, near to one of the storage huts, a sword thrust through his shoulder, that she raised her voice and cried out in shock and rage.
She fell to her knees beside him. He was still alive, but the blood was flowing freely from the wound high on his left shoulder. She ran to the well, grabbing Magnus’ new tunic from the ground as she went. One of the men had filled his bucket, and she quickly dipped the soft wool into the water, wringing it out as she ran. When she reached Ragnar, she cleaned the wound as best she could and pressed the tunic against it to stop the bleeding.
She wasn’t aware that she was crying until Magnus gently laid his hand on her shoulder and said quietly, “Come, Zarabeth, let the men carry Ragnar into the open, where there is less smoke.”
An hour later, Malek’s people were still huddled in small groups near the barley fields, staring at the smoldering ruins of the longhouse and the roofless huts surrounding it. The palisade walls were standing in places, straight and upright and untouched. Just a few feet away there was naught but smoldering timber left.
Five people were dead. Ragnar was still alive and Eldrid was attending him.
The animals were safe and the fields were untouched, but the destruction within the once-secure compound was nearly complete. Zarabeth looked over at her husband. He was speaking quietly to one of the slaves, a young man whose eyes were still red and tearing from all the smoke. She watched Magnus speak to many more of the people, then saw him pull away and walk off toward the pine forest at the back of the palisade. He stopped and turned, and she saw such naked rage in his face that she drew back.
He stood there for many minutes looking at his once-flourishing farmstead. It was gone now, years of work and tending. But it was but stones and lumber, she wanted to tell him. They had saved nearly all the things from within the longhouse, including his chest. She would help him. They would rebuild. They still had their crops, their lives, their belongings. They still had each other.
Zarabeth looked away, unable to bear it. It was past dawn now, and soon everyone would be hungry. She had several men collect stones to stack around a small fire pit. Then she had long stakes hammered into the ground, deep notches cut into the tops. Then the men lowered a cross-stake carefully into the carved notches. Chains were wrapped around the top stake. Now Zarabeth could hang pots from the chains. She kept busy, kept toiling so that she wouldn’t have time to think.
Ragnar was still alive, but all of them knew it would be a close thing. Eldrid stayed with him, wiping his face with wet cloths, feeding him water, waiting for Helgi to come with her store of medicines.
It was in early afternoon that Magnus’ parents arrived, bringing no more than a half-dozen people with them. Mattias and Glyda hadn’t come. It was soon obvious why. They had had to leave their farmstead well-guarded, Mattias in charge. They would take no chances that Orm would attack while they were gone. Indeed, all wondered if that was his plan.
Zarabeth listened to Magnus and his father speaking; rather, his father was yelling and tugging at his hair.
“By Thor, that a daughter of mine could betray us thus! How could she do it? Does Orm have such an unnatural hold over her?” His question wasn’t meant to be answered. He fell into mumbling curses and shaking his head.
Helgi said in a low voice to Zarabeth, “No one suspected? You sensed nothing?”
Zarabeth remained thoughtful and silent, saying finally, “Nay. She was quiet when we returned. She stayed by herself for the most part. She did nothing to gainsay me. She made no snide remarks. Ragnar kept after her, teasing her, ordering her about, but she didn’t seem to mind it. Now, of course, when I think back, she was too quiet, as if she were biding her time, waiting.”
“But why?” Helgi struck her palm against her thigh and winced from her own blow. “If she wanted to remain with him, escape Norway with him, she didn’t have to save you! She did not have to pretend to strike him and flee with you.”
“I was certain that she struck him hard, Helgi. Now I don’t know. But she seemed overwrought when he pretended to want me and not her. He taunted her with it. I had believed she’d struck him more to punish him than to save me, to pay him back for humiliating her. But it mattered not, at least then.”
“But why plan this diversion—and that is what it was—and return to Malek? Why?”
“I will tell you why, Mother.” It was Magnus and he was standing over his mother, his shoulders squared, his
face hard as stone. “Orm probably decided that Zarabeth would be too much trouble. She would never come to him willingly. He would have had to kill her, and he wanted revenge against me more than he wanted her or her death. He also wanted more wealth before he left Norway. He must have followed us back closely. I didn’t really wonder why he hadn’t stayed and fought me, for he had only two men to my five. He may be mad, but he isn’t a fool. It wasn’t ever his plan to stand and fight. He must have somehow gotten to Ingunn—that, or it was all a sham and planned to happen just as it did.
“Why else did he continue to divert from the direct route to the fjord and his vessel? I don’t know. Zarabeth told me that Ingunn continually pressed him to hurry, that I would come. There are many questions and no answers as yet. But I do know that all my jewels are gone. All my gold and silver ornaments and coins are gone. They were kept in a cask behind a hollowed-out log near the front of the longhouse. All Ingunn had to do was wait until there was panic from the fire, then calmly retrieve the cask. Why, had anyone asked her what she was about, she could have simply said she was saving the cask for me.”
“But you could have been killed!” Helgi turned away, her shame and rage palpable.
“And Orm was waiting outside the palisade for her to bring him the jewels and coins. He killed Hollvard and is responsible for five other deaths as well.”
His mother still looked stunned and ill, and Magnus hugged her to him. “I suppose we are lucky that Orm didn’t try to take Zarabeth again. Perhaps he waited after the fire was blazing to see if she would separate herself from me. But she didn’t. The bastard was out there, Father, watching all the destruction he had brought about. Ingunn must be punished for this. I am sorry, but she is no longer my sister. She is as much my enemy as is Orm. At least my vessel is intact. There were a dozen men working on the Sea Wind, and thus Orm couldn’t take her or destroy her. I vow his death before the summer is over.”
Zarabeth felt weighed down with his hatred, with his vow, with the stolid endurance he practiced. He worked harder than she did, cleaning away the burned timber, looking to salvage, looking to repair.
At the end of a very long day, as they sat about the outdoor cook fire, all warm with the blankets Helgi had brought, Zarabeth thought she had never been so weary in her life. She could think of nothing to say. She lay on her side, her head on Magnus’ thighs, listening to him speaking to his father and the men, slaves and freeman alike.
She felt the strength of him beneath her cheek and remembered what he had done to her so few hours before. He had given her a woman’s pleasure and it had made her wild with feeling, torn her away from any barriers she might have erected against him. But when she had screamed with her pleasure, there had been other screams as well . . . She shuddered. Magnus gently stroked her arm, now listening to his father.