She could wait until they all fell asleep, she thought-several of the warriors had already slumped over-and make her escape then. But the darkest part of the night was coming very soon, the time Eirik said they made their offerings…
He was not there for the moment, having passed down the length of the hall and gone through one of the smaller doors-probably to where they were laying out the bodies of the men that Roric and Hadros’s men had killed. Could she try her mocking gray eyes on one of these warriors, smile and tease him into taking her off somewhere from which it would be easier to escape? But she rejected this as impractical-as well as revolting. Too many of the warriors were still awake for her to get one aside for private conversation.
She could feign illness, ask to be shown to the women’s loft. That way she could leave the hall without immediately having them all in pursuit. She coughed convincingly and rested her forehead in one hand. It did feel feverish.
But as she began a weak gesture of supplication toward one of the warriors watching her, Eirik came back.
He took her wrist and jerked her to her feet, paying no attention to her cough. “The women want to see you,” he said and pushed her ahead of him the length of the hall, then through a narrow passage that seemed carved from living rock. The fire in the hall behind them and a flickering red before them were the only light, and she could not see Eirik’s face. She stumbled on the rough surface, but his hand on her arm kept her upright.
“Do you want to know what kind of offerings we make to the lords of death?” he asked, a harsh laugh in his voice. “Are you wondering if we slit the throats of living victims, or whether we set them out on the mountain top for the dragon?”
She was glad he could not see her face. She swallowed twice and managed to answer calmly, even with a chuckle. “Don’t tell me a berserk warrior believes in dragons, Eirik. They only appear in the old stories.”
But he did not chuckle in return. “You’re from the south, Princess,” was all he said.
And then they emerged from the passage into a firelit room where six naked bodies were laid out. A woman with stringy black hair down to her waist turned around sharply. Several other women remained bent over the bodies, washing them, but this woman advanced to meet them with a bearing as proud as a queen.
She looked Karin up and down scornfully. Her eyes were an unexpected light green. “So this one claims she is a princess,” she said. Karin kept herself from shrinking under that gaze by an effort of will. “But what I hear is that you were riding through the rift valley by the dead castle with no companion but one warrior-scarcely an activity for the heiress to a kingdom, Eirik!”
If they put her out on the mountain top, Karin thought, then she might-just-have a chance to escape before a dragon or whatever creatures of voima inhabited this land came to eat her. But if this woman thought that a princess was trying to take her man away, even a man she might hate herself, Karin would never even have a chance to meet the dragon.
“I was riding with my lover, fleeing those who wished to separate us,” she said, her chin high. “If you ask a ransom from my father I am sure he will pay it, and then I shall return to the man I love.”
Eirik laughed derisively behind her. “Not likely. A man who eloped with a princess will be an outlaw, not someone to whom a ransomed princess will be likely to return. But here’s an idea,” he added thoughtfully. “Since he’s an outlaw, he’ll need to find new brothers. He’s a good fighter, as my men can attest, and I’m now short six warriors. How about if both of you join us?”
“Eirik!” cried the woman, stepping up to him with a hand raised as though ready to strike him. She was as tall as he, and her green eyes flashed in the firelight.
But he pulled a knife-Karin’s knife-from his belt and showed it to her in his right hand while making a fist with his left. “One more step forward, Wigla,” he said quietly, “and I’ll give you a choice between these.” She stamped her foot in disgust and whirled away from him.
If he could speak of her and Roric joining him, Karin thought while the fingernails bit into her palms, then maybe she was not going to be sacrificed after all to the lords of death. Or maybe he was just mocking her again with this offer.
“Are the bodies ready for the ceremony?” Eirik asked. “It must by now be midnight.” He took Karin’s arm firmly again. “I’ll take her along and send you some of the men to carry the bodies out to the mountainside.” He laughed again at the expression that Karin was unable to conceal. There was no more humor in his laughter than there was in his scarred lip. “Not looking forward to meeting the lords of death, is that it, Princess?”
4
When Gizor did not answer him at once, Roric slapped his blade against his palm and said, “If you are my father, tell me at once, for I have no wish to be a patricide, but that is the only thing that will keep your spirit from Hel this morning.”
“You are No-man’s son,” Gizor growled at last. “I have no sons. And if I did, I would kill them rather than know them for oath-breakers who had turned against their sworn lord.”
He shifted as he spoke, and Roric, moving to continue facing him, realized the old warrior was maneuvering to put his own back to the sunrise, so that the sun would hit Roric in the eyes-one of those eyes still half swollen shut-when it rose over the eastern cliffs. A misstep here, thirty feet above the river, would be fatal.
And this battle could be fatal even if he survived it. Gizor had three times tried to kill him, and had insulted him far too thoroughly last night for Roric to let him live or his own honor would be gone. And yet that honor would also be destroyed by killing another of Hadros’s oath-sworn warriors.
“When the king brought you home,” Gizor said almost absently, as though in speaking he hoped to distract Roric while finding his own best position, “it was clear you were the whelp of some housecarl on one of the manors.”
Roric, concentrating on the island’s surface and moving himself to what he hoped would be a better position, stopped dead. “The king brought me home?” he said in a tight voice. “I always heard I had been found outside the castle gates.”
Gizor froze for a second, then shrugged. “King Hadros brought you inside the hall when he found you outside.”
But that was not what he had said. Roric stood absolutely still, his jaw clenched. Why had he never considered this before? If he was the son of King Hadros and some serving-girl, the king might well have brought him home to raise as a foster-son, especially since Valmar had not yet been born. How else had the king persuaded his queen to raise a serving-girl’s baby herself, except by telling her that he intended to make this baby his heir if she herself could not produce a son? But then Valmar had been born, followed by Dag and Nole, and five years ago the queen had died.
He had never felt he knew the queen well once he grew past early childhood, had indeed talked to her but seldom once Valmar was born and he was taken to be raised among the men. Was she the kind of woman who would have taken in her husband’s base-born child? Karin, he thought and almost smiled, most certainly was not.
He did not have a chance to wonder further, for it was then that Gizor attacked.
He came at a rush out of the sunrise, with the yell he told all the young warriors would startle their enemies and even freeze them momentarily. Roric had heard that yell too many times. He braced himself to meet the charge, catching Gizor’s sword on his own.
Steel rang on steel, and Roric ducked another blow as he sprang sideways to get the light out of his eyes. He caught himself six inches from the edge. Hadros’s son, he was thinking. I am Hadros’s son.
“Who then is your father, Gizor?” he shouted mockingly. “I never hear you mention him. Was he some slave brought up with the booty from southern raids?”