Silk Dreams - Songs of the North 3 (2 page)

Erik cast a glance at the tall girl on the dais and then looked away. Against his will, his gaze was drawn back to her willowy form. The palla draped about her was thin as a butterfly's wing and the morning sun rendered it all but transparent. She stood ramrod straight, her high breasts full, nipples showing taut through the linen. There was a pleasing contrast between the girth of her waist and hips, and the outline of her long legs was shapely. He could see why Hauk was willing to part with his hard-earned coin for her.

His lips drew together beneath his pale mustache. A bed-slave might be fine for Hauk, but Erik had learned the hard way that a permanent attachment to a woman was a weakness a man could rarely afford. It had certainly cost him dearly.

“Careful, friend,” Erik cautioned as Hauk's bid soared higher. “Better a no-nonsense agreement with a willing woman of light virtue. No one gets hurt and everyone emerges from the tussle with exactly what they bargained for.”

Hauk shook his head. “There comes a time in a man's life when he wants something more.”

Erik had once had more. Or thought he did. Whenever Erik was tempted to try for more again, he remembered who he was and why he was in Miklagard.

He was Erik Heimdalsson, convicted murderer and banished son of the North. In this southern city, through his own valor he’d risen from the status of lowly
tagmata
to the rank of centurion in the Varangian Guard, the Byzantine emperor's elite force. Erik feared no man.

And trusted no woman.

Someone in the throng called out that the girl's high price demanded proof that her hair color was genuine.

“Oh, no, girl,” Erik said under his breath as the young woman gripped the edges of her garment and struggled away from her captor. “Don't fight them.”

The auctioneer reached again to remove the girl's palla and met with strenuous resistance. She backhanded the little man and sent him staggering. Erik smiled despite himself. Whether in warhorses, fierce hunting dogs, or the beautiful and cruel kestrel he'd bound to his fist and bent to his will, he admired spirit wherever he found it.

But this girl's spirit was going to earn her a beating. Erik's jaw tightened as a pair of eunuchs grabbed her arms and bore her away for discipline.

“A thousand pardons,” the auctioneer stammered to the assembled buyers. “I beg your indulgence while this ungrateful odalisque is brought to a more biddable frame of mind.”

The crowd fell into light gossip, awaiting the first blow, the first delicious shiver from the first spine-tingling scream. The traders wouldn't countenance their merchandise being spoiled by the lash, but cruel practice had presented them with a punishment designed to inflict maximum pain without damaging the appearance of the victim. Erik heard the stinging slaps of the bastinado and the grunts of the eunuchs who delivered the blows to the bottoms of the girl's feet. From the girl herself, he heard not a peep.

Erik ground his teeth as the punishment wore on. He'd seen grown men reduced to incoherent sobs by this type of beating, but the girl still didn't cry out. Erik fingered the handle of his battle-ax and imagined feeding the spineless worms who were abusing her to its sharp edges. The thought gave him pleasure, but the action would land him in prison. And a Miklagard gaol was far worse than banishment.

“Cry out, girl,” Erik muttered. “It's what those cursed
fuologi
are waiting for.”

The sounds of leather on flesh ceased and Erik guessed she'd passed out. A gasp rose from the assembly when the girl reappeared, visibly shaking, but walking under her own power. She mounted the dais, leaving a trail of slim bloody footprints on the rose-veined marble. White-lipped, she resumed her position in the center of the dais.

The auctioneer moved toward her, but she stopped him with a glare, her dark eye spitting fire and the pale one cold venom. The man stutter-stepped back. Erik wondered if the girl was a practitioner of
seid
craft, the way she shoved the man away with just a look. Then she turned her gaze on the crowd. Her contempt rolled over them in palpable waves.

She drew open her palla and let it float to the ground, pooling on the dais by her tortured feet. Her pale arms raised in a gesture that didn't have a smidge of submission in it. She dared them to look on her.

So Erik did. She was well worth seeing. From the crown of her head to the curve of her ankles, he found no blemish. Of course, the Byzantines liked their women rounder, but the triangle of pale curls on her mound would be novelty enough to pique their interest.

She certainly piqued his.

He forced himself to ignore the way his body quickened to her. No good could come of this, he told himself. Then she looked directly at him and held his gaze for the span of several heartbeats.

“Help me,” she mouthed in the tongue of his homeland.

The slave market faded around him and he felt himself pulled into those mismatched orbs of hers. He breathed in the green scent of the fjords in spring, heard jackdaws chattering in the forest, and felt the caress of a snow-tinged breeze—snippets of the home he'd never see again. Then she broke the spell and bent down, her breasts falling forward in a way that made his hands throb to hold them. She pulled the palla back up around her and stared straight ahead with studied indifference.

The Greek who'd been vying with Hauk for her raised his bid without prompting.

When the auctioneer recovered his power of speech, Erik's hand flew up to best the Greek.

“What are you doing?” Hauk demanded.

“Probably doing you a favor.” Erik signaled again as the bid volleyed back and forth across the colonnade. “She's a witch, I'll warrant. I'm saving you from her curses. Anyone with eyes can see this girl is trouble.”

“A man can always do with that kind of trouble.” Hauk crossed his beefy arms over his chest and raised a russet brow at his friend. “If you wanted her, all you had to do was say so.”

Erik barely heard him. He edged closer to the dais, one hand on his ax handle, the other hefting his money pouch, trying to calculate how much of last month's pay still resided in the leather bag.

The Greek raised the bid again.

Erik narrowed his eyes at the man. He'd seen him before at the palace. A eunuch, he was sure. Nearly all the officials who kept the Byzantine Empire humming were members of the "third sex." Even though the Greek's frame had the wiry toughness of one who'd seen combat, Erik fancied he could smell the man's perfume from across the colonnade. His lip curled in dislike.

Could the Greek be trying to acquire the girl for his employer? Not likely. The emperor was a follower of
Kristr.
His Imperial Greatness kept a discreet mistress or two, but no harem. That was the province of the followers of the Prophet who made Miklagard their home.

“Lend me the rest of your bezants,” Erik said to Hauk as he signaled once more to the auctioneer. Hauk pressed his purse into Erik's hand.

The girl still stared straight ahead, as if unaware that she was the vortex of the market's swirling excitement. Her eyes seemed to lose their focus and her lids fluttered rapidly for a few heartbeats. Then she gasped as if she'd been holding her breath, her gaze darting about like a starling in a net. She gave herself a brief shake and continued to stare into the distance.

Is she spelling me, even now?
Erik wondered. It didn't matter. For one brief moment, when she looked at him, he'd tasted home. He had to have it again. Erik nodded at the auctioneer and glared over at his competitor.

The Greek's dark eyes met Erik's, and then slid over him in that damnably condescending way the Byzantines had. Something in their very stance shouted how superior they felt themselves to the
barbaroi
—the barbarian sobriquet with which they tarred the rest of the non-Byzantine world. Even this eunuch, this limp-sword, this half-man felt himself better than Erik.

The Greek flicked his fly-whisk again and, even counting Hauk's coins, the girl's price climbed beyond Erik's reach.

Impotently, Erik watched as the eunuch paid the auctioneer and signaled for a sedan chair. The Greek bundled the girl into the enclosed seat and climbed in with her.

The knot of buyers dissolved around Erik, scurrying off to the next venue where the finest examples of human flesh might be offered for sale.

“What does a ball-less wonder want with a woman?” Erik asked.
And why that one?

“Who knows? I've little luck when it comes to understanding the way these Greeks think. Guess you won't be needing this,” Hauk said as he snatched his purse back from Erik. “You were probably right about her. A permanent woman is more trouble than she's worth. Let's go see if we can wake up those little dancers at the tavern by the Xenon.” Hauk strode from the colonnade.

Erik glared at the empty dais. She'd shown such courage, his chest ached. The outlines of the girl's bare feet still showed, pink-tinged on the marble. He was nearly overcome with the urge to plant kisses on the slim imprints.

Bah!
That cinched the matter. She was undoubtedly an adept at the dark arts of
seid
and he was well clear of her. The last thing he needed in his life was a woman. A witch would be even worse.

He needed a drink, that's all. He followed his friend away from the market, congratulating himself on his narrow escape. After all, he'd nearly beggared himself for her and she didn't even look back.

As if through a gauze panel, Valdis watched the soldier advance. He was dressed in the style of the Varangians
—
a long
byrnnie
draped over his muscular form, his calves bared above regimental hobnailed boots, an ax tilted from a shoulder baldric, its razor edge thirsty for blood-wine. She couldn't see his face beneath his conical helmet. Only his eyes blazed above the bronze cheek pieces, pale and glittering with the early stages of the madness called
berserkr.

Even though the man moved with the sturdy grace of a blooded warrior, Valdis sensed danger hovering about him like a silent corbey circling a carcass. He slid catlike along the corridor, appearing and disappearing as he stepped from fading sunlight to shadow. The space he traversed had many windows on one side and was indented with several niches on the other, the homes of secret trysting places for lovers. On came the soldier with single-minded doggedness. Valdis’s chest tightened.

He doesn't know, she realized. He doesn't feel death stealing over him. Valdis sensed the gaping blackness reaching for him.

A dark figure emerged from one of the niches and clubbed the warrior from behind. He crumpled to the flagstones with a clatter of mail. The blow was hard enough to knock off his helmet.

Valdis pushed back the gauze obscuring her sight and looked at his face.

I know this man
, she thought.

His eyes stared sightlessly at her, the pupils so enlarged they nearly swallowed the icy gray of his irises. Then she remembered who he was and gasped.

The sharp intake of breath woke her. For a moment, she hovered in the thin veil between the waking world and the land of shadows. Valdis lay still, trying to orient herself. This was the third time the same dream had plagued her since her arrival in Miklagard. She looked up into the swirl of gossamer curtains splayed over and around her sleeping couch.

It made no sense. She'd only seen the man during the brief time she'd stood on the slave market dais. She didn't even know his name. Why should she dream of the Varangian? Even though two men vied for her, the Byzantine was the one who bought her and now frustrated her days with his attempts to teach her the Greek tongue. Why could she not banish that Norse soldier from her dreams?

And why was she tormented by his danger?

The soft brush of sandaled feet brought Valdis to full wakefulness. The Greek, or one of his many servants, was stirring. She parted the bed curtains with one finger and peered out from her filmy cocoon.

It was the Greek himself, newly risen from his sleeping couch in the adjoining chamber. Even though he'd made no sexual overtures toward Valdis, she knew he slept in the nude not a stone's throw from her. He seemed unaffected by their proximity, and if he cast furtive glances in her direction, she'd yet to catch him at it.

He was turned from her, his tight buttocks dusted with fine dark hairs. A body slave scurried to his side and lifted a linen robe of obvious quality over the Greek's head. The soft fabric draped his broad shoulders and tapering torso, falling in creamy folds till the hem brushed his ankles. When the man turned to perch on the bed so his servant could lace his sandals, Valdis let the curtain drop.

While she was grateful the Greek hadn't forced himself on her, she was puzzled by his indifference. She knew she was desirable. Early on, her parents marked her as comely, the one whose unique beauty would secure the family's fortune. She was destined for a grand match, her mother always told her. When she caught the eye of Ragnvald, the
jarl's
oldest son, her father spent himself into poverty preparing for her wedding.

Then the unthinkable had happened.

Even now, she was unable to conjure her parents' faces without seeing pinched expressions of confusion and suspicion. She had no clear memory of that awful morning before the assembled gathering at the
jarlhof.
She could only trust the account of her younger sister before she was bundled off to the flesh market at Birka.

Some malevolent spirit had taken hold of Valdis and thrown her to the ground, thrashing and raving. She was obviously cursed. The
jarl
was relieved the malady had shown itself before his noble house was ensnared in a misalliance. Her parents claimed to know nothing of the ill wish stalking their daughter.

Only Valdis suspected it wasn't the first time evil had swirled its bony finger in her brainpan.