Lord of Raven's Peak - Catherine Coulter [29]
She said to Taby, “I don’t want him to take care of us.” Her voice was too sharp and Taby flinched back from her. “Nay, sweeting, it isn’t Merrik’s responsibility to care for us. He is a man and men don’t feel comfortable about caring for those who aren’t part of their blood family. He’s caring for us just for now, that’s all. Then I will take care of both of us. We are still a long way from home, but soon, perhaps very soon, we will return.”
She wondered if she believed it herself. How could she return when she didn’t know the face of her enemy? She wondered, as she had countless times during the past two years, what home was like now.
* * *
With loud cheers and equally loud prayers of thanksgiving to Thor, the men finally shoved the longboat into the Gulf of Riga six days later. They’d been slowed by a violent storm that had shredded the men’s tempers and tested their strength, but it had only lasted a day and a half, nothing all that dreadful, but dreadful enough. When the longboat slid smoothly into the clear blue water of the gulf, she and all of the men breathed a deep sigh of relief.
No one had attacked them.
Thor had given them a safe portage, they’d earned a lot of silver from their trading, and all were thankful. When they camped that evening, she decided she would make them a delicious dinner.
Her back was healed now, but still, she tired too quickly, and it angered her, this weakness, this continued betrayal by her body. Merrik had merely laughed at her that morning when she’d cursed her weariness in language as colorful as the brightly plumed birds they saw in the forest. As for Taby, she could now look at him without pain. His cheeks were no longer sunken, but were rounding out again. He walked upright, no longer bowed down with hunger. There was light in his eyes, not the dull blank acceptance, or silent questions to her that she couldn’t answer. And his laughter, that was the best of it all. Just a few moments ago when the men were cheering their safe portage, Merrik had suddenly lifted Taby high in the air, swinging him over his head. Taby had shrieked with laughter. Laren had simply stood there, watching them and listening to her little brother’s joy.
They brought her venison for supper. She cut the meat into thick steaks and seasoned them with snow berries and juniper roots, then wrapped them in wide maple leaves rubbed with venison fat.
After the meal, the men, their bellies full and content, shouted for Deglin to finish his tale of Grunlige the Dane.
But Deglin was sulking. Merrik had told him earlier that he would be in charge of keeping the furs brushed and clean, and most importantly, to make certain they were kept dry in the hold of the longboat. Deglin had thought himself above such a chore, but Merrik had held firm, and Deglin had grumbled endlessly as he’d done it, making the men want to yell at him and Merrik want to break his neck.
So Deglin refused to do anything now, telling Merrik and the men that it was his genius that enabled him to tell them stories and that the genius had been overworked by brushing and cleaning the furs, a task that didn’t merit his skills and talent. He was a skald and was to be revered, not worked like a slave, and he’d looked at Laren, who was busy adding vegetables to the buck the men had killed and said she was a slave, she should have tended the furs. Merrik said, “There are few furs, only those we are taking back to our families as gifts. Your tasks were light, Deglin, and the furs important.”
But Deglin sniffed and said his bowels weren’t happy with the foul offal she had made them eat. He took himself off into the pine trees and relieved himself for an hour. The venison steaks had been delicious, but she didn’t say anything. The men grumbled at Deglin’s perversity. Several began throwing pebbles in a test of their accuracy. After a while, though, they were bored.
It was then