Lord of Raven's Peak - Catherine Coulter [36]
She was aware of what he was doing, distracting her, trying to make her focus on his voice and his words, not on the pain from the burns. She did hear his voice, deep and soft, and she tried, she truly tried to think about what he was saying, but it was beyond her. Finally, when he was quiet a moment, she said, “You love your mother.”
“Aye, she and my father are the finest parents I know. Even when they hate, they do it better than anyone else. They are not without flaw, don’t misunderstand me. I remember how they hated Rorik’s Irish wife, believing her evil. But they changed because they saw the justice of it, realized they had been wrong about her.”
She nodded, then said, “I have few body parts left unscathed. Thank you, Merrik. You are kind.”
“Keep those parts sound. This was the same cream I used on your back. After this I don’t wish to use it again on you. I haven’t much left, for my mother can only make the cream in the fall months.”
“What else could happen? You are not that far from your home now, are you?”
“Aye, ’tis true. Still, you must learn to be faster.”
“Aye,” she said, feeling the flesh grow cool and numb. “Next time I will be the one to inflict the pain.”
“A slave doesn’t inflict pain,” he said in an utterly emotionless voice. He turned and called out, “Oleg, bring a cup of mead.”
When Oleg came into the tent, he said nothing, merely stared down at her, then nodded. He handed the mead to Merrik and was quickly gone again.
When he put the cup to her lips, she drank.
“All of it,” he said. “It will make you sleep.”
And she did.
They survived a storm of two straight days in the Baltic Sea before turning northward up the Oslofjord to Kaupang. Oddly, Laren hadn’t been particularly frightened. She was too busy trying to keep Taby reassured. He was as wet and miserable as they all were, there was naught she could do about that. She told him one story after the other. Her cheek had turned purple and yellow from the blow and had swelled. It didn’t hurt, just made her look a witch, she imagined. It was her leg that hurt and throbbed, but then again, so did Deglin’s and each time she thought of that, the pain seemed to lessen. Merrik made him row as long and hard as all the other men.
Laren wondered if he would die, for he moaned over his oar and complained endlessly, but the men ignored him. But he was tough, and on that fifth morning when the sun was hot in the sky and the winds had quieted into soft breezes that were just heavy enough to fill the sails, she saw that he hadn’t sickened, nor was he complaining anymore. He was silent, and she distrusted that. Silent men, in her experience, usually were thinking of revenge. He saw she was looking at him and she quickly looked away. Since that night, none of the men had asked her to tell them about Grunlige the Dane. She wondered if she would continue the tale if they did ask her. She was nodding even as she wondered. Deglin deserved nothing from her.
There were seagulls overhead, screeching as they dove close to the longboat, then swooped away at the last instant. She heard one man yell when a seagull’s wing hit his face. Scores of cormorants flagged their progress, the large birds in loose formation off their bow. There was a new quickened vitality to the men’s conversation. All their talk was of home, of their wives, their children, their crops. And they spoke of their wealth, each man richer than he was but four months earlier.
As for Merrik, he would look at her cheek and frown. At night he continued to rub more cream into her leg, even though she could do it now, and she told him that she could. But he had merely shaken his head and continued with the task.
The trading town of Kaupang was protected by a wooden palisade made of lashed-together sharply pointed wooden poles, set in the shape of a half circle. There were a good half dozen wooden docks that stretched out into the inlet and it was at the nearest one that Merrik had the men row the longboat. When they stepped onto the dock, there was a loud cheer. They were home, or very