Lord of Raven's Peak - Catherine Coulter [0]
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Epilogue
Author’s Note
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
LORD OF RAVEN’S PEAK
A Jove Book / published by arrangement with the author
All rights reserved.
Copyright © 1994 by Catherine Coulter
This book may not be reproduced in whole or part, by mimeograph or any other means, without permission. Making or distributing electronic copies of this book constitutes copyright infringement and could subject the infringer to criminal and civil liability.
For information address:
The Berkley Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Putnam Inc.,
375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.
The Penguin Putnam Inc. World Wide Web site address is http://www.penguinputnam.com
ISBN: 978-1-1012-1418-3
A JOVE BOOK®
Jove Books first published by The Jove Publishing Group, a member of Penguin Putnam Inc.,
375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.
JOVE and the “J” design are trademarks belonging to Penguin Putnam Inc.
First edition (electronic): July 2001
Titles by Catherine Coulter
“The Bride Trilogy”
THE SHERBROOKE BRIDE
THE HELLION BRIDE
THE HEIRESS BRIDE
LORD OF HAWKFELL ISLAND
THE WYNDHAM LEGACY
(in hardcover from G. P. Putnam’s Sons)
To my sweet sweet cat, Gilly,
Who’s the same age as my marriage.
1
The Slave Market of Khagan-Rus
Kiev, A.D. 916
THE SLAVE RING was as sweet-smelling as it would ever be, Merrik thought. It was early morning and still cool; a breeze off the river Dnieper rustled gently over the scores of unwashed bodies. It was July and the water below the embankment flowed smoothly and serenely within the Dnieper’s broad banks now, the ice floes having finally melted early the month before. The consequent flooding had eased now as well, sending cleansing river smells upward.
The sun had just risen behind Kiev, showing bright gold behind the endless stretch of barren hills and jagged mountains to the east. The stench of winter-dirty furs and scrawny bodies too long unwashed wouldn’t offend the nostrils until later in the day, even here in the slave ring. The only thing here to offend anyone was the abject human misery, and that was a condition so familiar in a place like this, it hardly bore notice.
Merrik Haraldsson had unfastened the pounded silver brooch and slipped its sharp point from the soft otter fur cloak. He’d slung the cloak over his arm as he walked toward the slave market’s perimeter. He’d come from his longboat, The Silver Raven, moored below at a long wooden pier that lay in a protected inlet of the Dnieper just below Kiev. He wasn’t sweating now, but the climb was a hard one, and he’d walked briskly, wanting to be here as early as possible to find a slave his mother would approve before they’d been picked over and only the sick and wasted were left.
The Khagan-Rus slave market was set apart from the town. Its name was the same as that of the prince of Kiev: a reminder that there was a tax at each purchase that would go directly into Prince Khagan-Rus’s capacious pockets.
Merrik turned to Oleg, a man he’d known since they’d both been boys—wild and passionate and eager to best their older brothers and acquire their own longboats to trade and fight and grow rich, rich enough to buy their own farmsteads sometime in a future that they pondered only rarely, richer even than their fathers and older brothers.
“We will leave after I buy a female slave. Keep a sharp eye, Oleg, for I don’t want a drudge for my mother’s longhouse, or a sloe-eyed maid that would unduly strain my father’s faithfulness. He has had no concubine for thirty years. I don’t want him to begin now.”
“Your mother would break his head open were he ever to gaze fondly at another woman and you well know it.”
Merrik grinned. “My