Page 16 of Her Rogue Viking
He eased her off his chest and arranged her next to him. Then he propped himself up on one elbow to regard her still perplexed features. “We will break our fast, then we should be on our way.Do you require another visit to yonder stand of trees before we leave?”
She reddened prettily. “I… yes, please.”
“Right then.” He smiled at her as he released her bound wrists. “Let us be getting on with it.”
The camp all packed up,Ulfric assisted Fiona to where his mount waited. He had considered rebinding her wrists when they returned from the brief sojourn in the nearby trees but decided against it. She could not hope to escape with her injured ankle, and he had learnt a hard lesson himself about underestimating his latest slave. He would afford her no further opportunity to seize or wield a weapon.
The large horse pawed the crisp earth as they approached, clearly ready to be on his way. It was a sentiment shared by Ulfric and his men.
“Grasp the saddle and hold on. I will help you up.” He swung himself onto the horse’s back then leaned down, his hand outstretched. Fiona took it, and he hauled her up before him into the saddle. “You will be more comfortable sitting astride.” He helped her to lift her leg over the steed’s wide back, then tucked his heavy cloak about the pair of them. “We will be perhaps five or six hours on the road. If you need to stop, you will tell me. Keep close to me and you will be warm enough.”
“Thank you,” she murmured. He noted that she made no attempt to sit forward, or to break contact with the warmth he offered. Ulfric was surprised to find that this pleased him, though he could not imagine why he would care. He gave the matter some thought. She was his slave, just property, but valuable even so. It made sense to take care of valuedpossessions. Satisfied, he urged his mount to the head of the line of men.
“Onward,” he called. “We will soon be home.”
“May I ask you a question?”
They had been riding for a couple of hours and the wench in his arms had been silent throughout. Now she turned to look up at him over her shoulder.
“If you wish.”
“How is it that you speak my language?”
“You are not the first slave to be taken from your land. I have listened to their speech all my life and picked up enough to manage.”
“You do not merely manage. You are fluent in my tongue.”
“Thank you. In time you will learn mine, I do not doubt.”
“Perhaps. But, the rest of your men, they do not understand my language?”
“No, they do not.”
“And the other Viking, the dark one with the scar?”
“No, my brother neither, though perhaps he should. His mother was a thrall too, another captive from your land. She died when he was very young, so had little enough opportunity to teach him her native tongue. Gunnar was raised as a Viking with me, in our father’s longhouse.”
“Is he still alive? Your father?”
“No.”
“Do you know if my father…? In the attack on our village, was he…?”
“I do not know. I am sorry.”
“I see.” She fell silent once more.
5
Fiona became more and more afraid as they neared the Viking settlement she knew to be called Skarthveit, the stronghold where her captor was master and she was now to be a slave. She could only start to imagine what fate awaited her there.
His bed-slave, he had said. His to fuck.
She shivered, though not with cold. The strange sensations her Viking had unleashed within her as she lay with him in their warm bed this morning still haunted her. Fiona had heard other women speak, had listened to their ribald laughter and occasionally to their hushed whispers, but had never dreamed she might share such an experience. If indeed that was what had happened to her. She longed to ask, to better understand what he had done, but she did not dare to. He would laugh at her, or worse still, offer to extend her understanding with a further demonstration.
She had no wish to learn. Had she?
Skarthveit came into view when they crested a particularly steep hill and their party paused to look down on the scene below. The settlement was larger than she had imagined, muchmore extensive than her own village of Pennglas. It was a town really, made up of many buildings spreading inland from the coast. The structures were not unlike the ones Fiona was accustomed to at home, plain wattle and daub walls for the most part with roofs of thatch or sometimes turf. Smoke seeped up through the thatches or from under the eaves, evidence of crowded habitation.
