Viking Ecstasy (30 page)

I
t seemed only moments later to Tabor when he opened his eyes. Tanaka was sitting on the floor, cradling his head in her lap. She stroked his hair and searched his face with grave concern. And the assassins—the Egyptian soldiers who had jumped and clubbed him —stood above him, their concern nearly matching Tanaka's in intensity.

"Why?" Tabor asked in Danish so that the soldiers would not understand him.

Tanaka smiled, relieved that Tabor had not drifted irrevocably into the black sleep and that he was thinking clearly.

"Kahlid told the men it was the foreigners who caused our problems in the palace. He had your men arrested and thrown into the dungeon."

"I'll kill him!" Tabor pushed Tanaka away, determined to free his men immediately.

"Be still," Tanaka cooed, grabbing Tabor's wrist. "Your men are being freed as we speak." She stroked the side of Tabor's face lovingly. "You're lucky I was with you. I alone had the power to convince these men that you are innocent and that Priest Kahlid is the real enemy."

"You saved my life."

"Yes," Tanaka replied simply, her smile broadening. "I'm getting rather good at it by now, don't you think?"

Her smile rankled Tabor's Viking pride, but there was truth to her statement — and impish charm in her eyes. When he let her help him to his feet, he became aware of a throbbing in his head and a lump behind his ear, but the dizziness had passed.

"We must go to the pharaoh," Tabor said in Tanaka's tongue and with sufficient volume for the soldiers to hear. "Kahlid will not rest until all his enemies are slain."

Tanaka followed the men; and for the first time, the palace seemed strange and unfamiliar. The long hallways were empty. No servants milled about. No children laughed or played. Everyone, it seemed, was hiding. . . . and though she tried to deny it, Tanaka could smell death in the air.

As they approached the pharaoh's private chambers, they passed the two guards who always stood on either side of the entrance. The guards lay on the floor, arms and legs strewn in a death sprawl.

With hardly more than a glance, Tabor deduced that the men had not died simultaneously. First one guard had been killed, then the second one struck down as he gazed at the corpse of the other.

With Tabor leading the way, the men burst into the pharaoh's quarters, only to stop instantly at the scene unfolding before them.

Kahlid stood behind Neenah, one hand against her throat, the other holding a dagger behind her ear. And Pharaoh Moamin Abbakka tried desperately to buy her freedom with his own life. Yasir knelt on the floor, scooping Neenah's jewelry into a leather pouch.

"Drop the dagger," Tabor said, his Egyptian bad, but sufficiently good for Kahlid to understand. "It's over for you. You've failed."

"Get out!" Kahlid retorted, adding an ounce of pressure behind the dagger. Neenah let out a scream of primal fear.

"Stop!" Moamin shouted. "It's me you want, not her!"

"Tell them to leave!" Kahlid shouted back.

"All of you, drop your weapons and be gone!"

The soldiers could not disobey a direct order from their pharaoh, and they were out of the chambers in a breathless second. Tabor, sword in hand, stood his ground, surrounded by the abandoned weapons of the fighting men. Tanaka stood at his side, surveying the scene.

"You, too," the pharaoh said to Tabor. "You must leave."

Tabor shook his head, his glittering blue eyes sharp and deadly as the sword he held. "I am Tabor, Son of Thor, and I take orders from no man."

"Leave or I'll kill her!" Kahlid hissed.

Tabor shook his head. "If I leave, you will kill her, then you will kill the pharaoh. But if I stay . . ."

With valuables overflowing the leather bag, Yasir got to his feet. Clutching his looted wealth, he wiped saliva from his thick lips with the back of his arm.

"I killed your friend," he said triumphantly, believing there was nothing Tabor could do to exact revenge. "I put my dagger in his back and watched him bleed like a slaughtered goat!"

Yasir laughed until the heavy broadsword that had been in Tabor's hand an instant earlier flew toward him. In all his years of fighting, Yasir had never known anyone to throw a heavy broadsword, nor had he thought any man would have the strength to throw such a weapon. He had no time to react before the blade sliced cleanly through his clothing, but he did have an instant to looked at the handle of the sword and the growing red stain on his shirt before he fell-face down. He did not move again.

In the silence that followed, Tabor retrieved a bow and arrow from the floor and notched the arrow.

"Never underestimate me," Tabor said quietly.

Kahlid ducked behind his captive, using Neenah as a shield. "Drop the bow!" he shouted, peering at Tabor from behind the pharaoh's wife. "Drop the bow or I'll kill her!"

"Drop the dagger, or I'll kill you," Tabor replied.

Moamin Abbakka inched further away from Tabor, whose skill, he hoped, would free his beloved wife. As he moved, he kept up a steady discussion with Kahlid, trying to convince the would-be assassin that nothing would happen to him if he would put down his dagger and release Neenah.

"I'm warning you!" Kahlid cried out, his body twisted sideways so that he could remain behind Neenah, but she was much shorter than he. "Put the bow down now or I'll kill her!"

Tabor had the bow fully drawn, the taut line barely touching the tip of his nose. Thick blue veins bulged in his forearms as he bent the bow, needing only to relax the fingers of his right hand to release the string and send the arrow on its deadly journey.

"Walk away from this," Tabor whispered. His eyes were unblinking, his voice as cold as death. "You can't win by hurting any more people."

Kahlid laughed hollowly, hysterically. He pressed the dagger's tip to Neenah's neck and drew a single drop of blood.

"You walk away, barbarian! Foreigner! I'm where I belong!" Kahlid's spittle sprayed from his lips as he spoke.

Then, almost incoherent, he cursed Tabor. Babbling, he bobbled, shifting position behind the pharaoh's wife. Tabor's arrow remained pointed straight at him.

"You can have whatever you want," Moamin offered, his tone steady, but not strong. "Don't listen to Tabor. He doesn't speak for me. It's not Neenah you want, it's me. I can get you what you want. Money, women —tell me and you shall have it."

Kahlid swore again, and the eyes that he turned to the pharaoh were filled with loathing and contempt.

"What you'll give me?" Kahlid asked, a peal of hateful laughter erupting from his throat. "Whatever I want, I'll take!"

"But I can help you!" the pharaoh said, nearly shouting now. Experience told him that it was nearly impossible to negotiate with desperate, irrational men. And they were completely impossible to predict.

Tabor stood solidly, his feet at shoulder's width, moving only his upper body to correct his aim, always readjusting to Kahlid's movements. The only way for Kahlid to leave the room was to pass by him. The tall blond man with the taut bow had every intention of making that escape quite impossible.

"I don't want your help," Kahlid said. "I want your blood, you dog!"

Tabor had to strain to fully understand the priest's guttural language, but there was no mistaking the rage. Kahlid had been living under a great tension he'd kept buried for a long, long time —tension that was finally erupting. Soon —perhaps in no more than a few seconds — Kahlid's mind would snap, breaking like dock moorings overtaxed by the weight of a great ship buffeted by stormy seas.

Tabor, more than anyone else in the room, knew the great price often paid in negotiating. Tabor had believed that Ingmar the Savage might want peace, although a trap was more likely. Tabor's instincts had told him —warned him —that he should not listen to Ingmar, that anything the cruel Northman had to say would be a lie. But instead of listening to his inner voice of reason, Tabor had allowed his desire for peace to substitute for judgment, and that illusion had cost the lives of many of his men and nearly his own as well.

Negotiating with villainy was a mistake that Tabor would not make twice.

Twenty feet separated Neenah and Kahlid from Tabor. Kahlid peered over the woman's shoulder, only his eyes and forehead visible to Tabor.

"Tanaka, close your eyes," Tabor said quietly.

"If you miss, you'll kill the pharaoh's wife!" Kahlid spat, never for a moment believing that Tabor had the skill or the courage to attempt such a dangerous shot.

But Tanaka knew Tabor better. She closed her eyes and turned her back. She heard the
twang!
of the bowstring being released and the sound of an arrowhead piercing flesh and bone.

Neenah's frightened scream echoed through the quarters. Tanaka kept her eyes closed until she felt Tabor's large hands at her shoulders. Then his strong arms encircled her, and her head lay against his chest.

"It's all over," he said softly, stroking her hair and back. "We can be at peace now."

I
t had been months since the carnage, but there were still times when the violence rippled across Tabor's sense of ease.

The winds were blowing steadily from the south now, strong, warm spring breezes that would carry him back to Scandinavian waters and the unfinished business of Ingmar the Savage. Soon he would be sailing to a land of violence and away from a woman —his wife Tanaka — whom he loved and adored.

"Much is weighing upon your mind," Sven said, moving beside Tabor on the dock, in front of the twin boats that the pharaoh had had specially made as a gift to Tabor for his valor and service.

"The boats. I think they will serve us well."

Sven smiled, shrugging his broad shoulders. He knew Tabor and knew that it wasn't the construction of the ships that had silenced his tongue more than usual. It was leaving his wife behind. He also knew Tabor well enough to avoid suggesting once again — he'd already done so three times, and the last time precipitated a shouting match with Tabor—that

Tanaka accompany them on their journey back to Hedeby.

"We will still leave at dawn?" Sven asked.

"Aye."

Sven glanced sideways at Tabor, wanting to say more, to find the words that would convince his good friend that Tanaka would be safe in their absence and that she would be a faithful, loving wife no matter how long their separation. But Sven was no better with words of tender emotion than Tabor, so the two Vikings stood shoulder to shoulder in silent accord, each knowing the other's thoughts almost as clearly as if they'd been put into words.

❧

"Will you be moving back into the high priestess's quarters?" Tabor asked. He pushed himself away from the table, which was piled high with the delicacies of Egyptian food that the pharaoh had ordered brought to him on the night before his departure.

"I don't know," Tanaka replied. "I haven't thought about it very much. Not at all, actually."

She had moved in with Tabor when they were married, and they lived in the quarters the pharaoh had provided. He had not moved into hers because it was still an issue that the high priestess had taken a husband. It would have compounded the scandal if he had committed the great blasphemy of living in her quarters.

"You understand that I must leave, that I really have no choice?" Tabor pressed.

"Yes, I understand. We've talked about this a dozen times, and I'm resigned to the fact that as a Viking you must return to your homeland to do what you can to get rid of Ingmar the Savage. He is a vile man and he must be dealt with. I understand all of this."

"You're being very reasonable," Tabor said.

She was being reasonable. . . . and it bothered him. Initially, there had been tears. She didn't see why her husband had to leave. Then, when he spoke of honor and leadership, Tanaka demanded that she go along. Tabor's laugh —surely any woman who wanted to go along on a war ship had been made senseless by too much sun — infuriated Tanaka and made her all the more determined to go with him. She demanded that as his wife she be allowed to go with her husband wherever he went, but Tabor refused. Tanaka even begged the pharaoh to use his influence on the stubborn Viking. The pharaoh said no. Perhaps it would be best, he suggested, if Tanaka did not make too much of an issue of being Tabor's wife. The ceremony itself had been unorthodox, since it was the pharaoh who officiated it for the high priestess and not the other way around, and no one —not even Tanaka herself—was altogether sure of the propriety of such a ceremony. No high priestess had ever married before, and many people did not think the pharaoh should have allowed Tanaka to marry at all —and certainly not to a blue-eyed barbarian.

And then, as the boats' construction neared completion and the sailors were selected so that Tabor and Sven would have a full complement of men, Tanaka had abruptly quit arguing.

"I know you, Tabor," Tanaka said, finishing the last of the honey-glazed roast duck breast. "When you make a decision, you never back down. I can argue with you until I haven't a breath left in my body, and I'll still never accomplish anything. . . . so why waste breath better used on other words?"

Every word that Tanaka spoke was irrefutably true, but that still didn't make Tabor feel any better about the way she was accepting this. He would have actually preferred her tears and protestations to this quiet, Viking-like acceptance of the inevitable.

"There is only one thing that I will ask of you," Tanaka said.

"Tell me, and I will make it so."

"That you don't expect me to watch you sail away. When you leave, I don't want to stand there as you disappear into the distance."

It was not the request Tabor had expected, though he hadn't been certain what she might ask of him, but he nodded his acceptance.

"I will return to you as quickly as possible," Tabor said.

Tanaka smiled pleasantly. "I'm sure you will." Her nonchalance ripped holes in Tabor's peace of mind and made him question how much his wife loved him after all.