Mirana sighed. There was no hope for it. “That isn’t true, Merrik, none of it. However, as I told your mother, I will leave. I don’t want Rorik to be hurt any more than you have hurt him by bringing him back such pain.”
“My two small grandchildren were impaled on your brother’s sword! Such beautiful babes, so happy and full of life, and your brother butchered them!”
“I know,” Mirana said. “But heed me. I am Rorik’s wife. When I leave I will still be his wife. He needs children, Tora. He needs happiness. He needs a union free of guilt and pain, one blessed by the gods. What will you do for him then? Give him more reasons to hate? More reasons to keep remembering that awful time? More guilt until he manages to kill my half-brother? When will it stop, Tora?”
“Your death would be a start,” Sira said, coming to stand beside Tora. “I don’t want you to go, Mirana. I want you to die. By my hand, by Rorik’s, I care not.”
“Be quiet, Sira,” Tora said, shaking off the girl’s hand. “Your vengeance is mixed with jealousy; it isn’t pure or noble. You speak with a mouth full of envy.”
Merrik said slowly, his eyes on his cousin, whose features were twisted with hatred, “I had considered wedding with you for I believed your beauty great. But now you have no more beauty for me, for you have no more kindness of spirit. I don’t wish to have you now, Sira.” He turned then and walked away from them, his mother staring openmouthed after him.
“I didn’t realize he wanted you,” she said to Sira. “Now it doesn’t matter, for you have lost him.”
“I care not,” Sira said, her eyes still on Mirana. “I will have Rorik once she is gone.”
“I don’t think so,” Mirana said. “Alna told me that Rorik wouldn’t have you after his wife was killed. Why would he have you now?”
&nbs
p; Sira’s breath came out in an ugly gasp. She jumped at Mirana, her hand hard and flat striking her cheek, throwing her from her stool and onto her back on the ground. She was on top of her, straddling her, slapping her, sending her fist into her breasts, her belly.
Mirana heard Tora yelling. She felt Sira’s blows, then the rising of tears in her eyes. She had to stop this. Quickly, in a move Gunleik had taught her years before, she brought her knees up, striking Sira hard against her back, and at the same moment, she sent her fist into the girl’s throat. Sira gave a strangled cry, grabbed her throat and fell off Mirana onto her side, gurgling and clutching her throat, for she couldn’t breathe.
Mirana rolled to the other side and came up to her knees, panting as she stared at Sira, knowing that within a few moments, she would be all right again, and wondering if she would attack her again. She slowly drew her knife from its sheath at her belt.
When Sira regained her breath, when the pain in her back receded, when she looked at Mirana, she stilled at the sight of the knife.
“You filthy slut.”
“Come here, Sira,” Mirana said, her voice low and dangerous, beckoning her with her hand. “Aye, come here, and this time I won’t be so very gentle. I will stick this knife into your cheek—aye, I’ll mark you so you won’t believe yourself such a goddess among women any longer. I will make you as ugly on the outside as you are on the inside. Aye, come here, Sira.” Mirana tossed the knife from her right hand to her left, and back again. She knew she was taunting her, but she didn’t care. She didn’t want to be a victim, not anymore.
“So, you will knife my cousin?”
It was Rorik, fetched by his mother, and she was panting beside him from exertion.
“Aye, if she forces me to.”
“Give me the knife, Mirana. I should never have allowed you to keep it. You stole it from my trunk and like a fool I allowed you to keep it with you. You are too ungoverned in your passions, too unpredictable, mayhap too vicious.”
Mirana stared up at him. Without a word, she gave him the knife, sticking it toward him, its handle first. He took it, staring at her, surprise in his eyes. In the next moment, Sira jumped at her, sending her fist into her jaw.
Rorik wondered if the world had always been mad or if the gods had plunged him into a nightmare that would never end. He tossed the knife to the ground, grabbed Sira beneath her arms and dragged her off Mirana. She was panting with rage, and he shook her.
“Stop it! Enough!”
She cried out and twisted in his arms, wrapping her own around his back, pressing herself against him. “Oh Rorik, she is vicious, evil. I was but protecting myself. She hurt me. I couldn’t let her believe me a coward. Save me, Rorik!”
He pressed her hard against him. He looked at Mirana and saw that her face was pale, without expression. He watched her slowly rise, feel her jaw with her fingers, then work it open and closed a few times. He saw her pick up her knife, sheath it again at her waist, turn without a word, and walk away. He started to call after her, demand that she give him back the knife, but he said nothing. He remembered thinking on their wedding night that he should return her knife to her, remembered being surprised that she—a woman—would consider a knife as part of her clothing, but he’d forgotten it in his need for her. He watched her walk away from him, walk away from the madness that was within him and surrounded him and seemed to infect the very earth he stood on. Her shoulders were as square as a quarried stone.
Aye, he thought, the world was surely mad, at least his world was, so mad in its madness that sense was nonsense and nothing had meaning anymore, nothing at all. This mad world was also without hope. He held Sira whilst she sobbed, aware of her body against his, aware that he felt no desire, no burgeoning lust, nothing but immense pain that wouldn’t go away.
20
“TONIGHT,” ENTTI SAID quietly to Mirana as she passed her, a platter of boar steaks on her arms.
Mirana merely nodded. “When all are asleep. But what of Hafter?”
Entti shrugged but Mirana wasn’t fooled. There was both worry and another emotion in her eyes Mirana couldn’t identify, but it puzzled her. Entti said, shrugging yet again, her eyes on a boar steak that was close to the edge of the platter, “I will deal with the lout if he forces me to.” She turned, and began serving with the other women.