Lord of Raven's Peak - Catherine Coulter [138]
Otta didn’t want to die. He was a man with a noble and proud destiny awaiting him. He’d been patient, endlessly patient, his belly growing more painful by the year. But he’d borne it. King Charles had assured him that his destiny would come to pass. He looked at Laren, hating her even though she’d just been a child and he hadn’t known her, hadn’t paid her any heed. At least the little brat, Taby, was dead. If only she hadn’t come back, if only she hadn’t married the Viking warrior . . .
“Let me tell you something else, Otta,” Rollo said. “Taby is alive. Merrik saved him. Of course, it was Laren who saved him for two years. She protected him with her life. Aye, Taby is alive, and he will serve William loyally and faithfully. But if fate decrees it, then Taby will become the second duke of Normandy. You have lost mightily, Otta, everything. Your dishonor sickens me. I will see that your death is more painful than the pain you have caused all of us.”
Otta began to tremble. “Bitch!” he screamed at Laren. He drew his sword, raised it above his head and, yelling like a madman, jumped onto his horse’s back, kicked it hard in the sides and ran directly at her.
25
AT THE LAST instant, Otta jerked his stallion toward Rollo. There was fury and death in his eyes, and Merrik knew in those few moments that Otta accepted his own death if he could kill Rollo.
Merrik threw Rollo to the ground, blocking him with his body. His sword was drawn and up.
Otta was yelling, the language of the Franks that Merrik didn’t understand, but Merrik knew Otta fully intended to kill him to get to Rollo. Otta was on him, the stallion rearing back, snorting frantically, his hooves lashing out.
Quite suddenly, Otta’s yell became an obscene gurgle. He dropped his sword nearly at Merrik’s feet and grabbed his throat. A slender knife was bedded to its hilt through his throat, its bloodied tip protruding from the back of his neck.
He stared from Merrik to Rollo, who’d risen and was standing between his brother and the damned Viking, then to Laren, who was staring at him, pale, her hand still raised.
“You killed me,” Otta said, blood making his voice slur. “You’re but a woman, yet you killed me. I should have strangled you two years ago and thrown your body in the forest for the animals to ravage. Aye, I should have killed you and that puking little brat.”
“Aye,” she said, “you should have.” She said nothing more, just stood there and watched him try to pull the knife from his throat, watched his face turn a sickly gray, watched the blood gush from his mouth and well thick and hot from his throat. He slid off his horse, dead before his body thudded to the ground.
Rollo stood over Otta’s body, staring down at him dispassionately. He smiled then at Laren. “I am glad it wasn’t Weland who betrayed me. I don’t think I could have borne that. Aye, I am more relieved than I can say. Your throw was straight and true, girl. It’s obvious I taught you well.”
“You?” Hallad said, striding forward, his long white robe brushing the low-growing grass. “I taught her, do you not remember? She was but a little nubbin of a girl when I put a knife in her hand and began to teach her.”
“Nay, your wits are more addled than you would like to think, Hallad. Attend me, for I am Rollo, the first duke of Normandy, and I never remember things awry. I taught her and I will teach Taby as well. You are naught but an old graybeard. What do your trembling hands know of knife-throwing?”
“Ha! Heed me, Rollo, I had to live with those wretched Christian monks at St. Catherine’s. I had to stoop my shoulders and mumble all the time so they would believe me holy. But no longer. No, it is I who will teach my son as I did my daughter.”
Laren looked at Merrik. She shook her head at the two men trading insults that would surely lead to