20. Cherine

Chapter 20

Cherine

E rik had returned me that day, just in the nick of time. I had only just entered the manor when Rolf came looking for me, begging my forgiveness for being so barbaric and uncouth. He showered me with kisses and lavish gifts I had no doubt he had pilfered from the same manor, and that night, he made uncharacteristically tender love to me, going down on me over and over again until I was too blissed out to argue.

The next day, however, I felt trapped in my growing feelings for Erik, and Rolf was back to being unruly and snappish. The snow had fallen throughout the night, and though it was beautiful to gaze at from my high windows, the manor was unprepared for the cold snap, and the Vikings were growing even more restless with their immobility.

As a result, everyone was terse and terrible to be around. I had spent the better part of the morning just walking up and down the halls, partly to avoid Rolf’s wrath, and partly in the hopes of running into Erik again.

But he was nowhere to be found, and his absence gnawed at my chest. For the three weeks I had been with Rolf, I had concentrated on him and him alone. Rolf was so large and mysterious, it was hard not to think about anyone else. Yet the moment Erik came back into the picture, the moment I heard that Erik had wanted me as badly as I found myself wanting him, I knew he was the man I needed to be with.

And yet, he still pushed me away. He told me he loved me, and those very words caused my soul to soar, to fly higher than any falcon, but he seemed adamant that we couldn’t be together. I knew why. I knew it was foolish to think we could just turn our backs on Rolf and he would be fine with it. He would murder us both in our sleep—if we were lucky.

By the time dinner rolled around, Rolf was still in a foul mood, made worse by the copious amounts of strong ale he was consuming. Thankfully, Erik was dining with us. I wondered if he had invited himself to our table, having picked up on Rolf’s temperament. He hadn’t shared a meal with us since Rolf took me away.

I sat across from the two men, busying myself with the leftover pig roast from the night before. It seemed that poverty was hard-wired into me, and I couldn’t help but eat more than my share, as if I would never be fed again.

Rolf blabbered on in his drunken manner, occasionally shouting obscenities and slamming down his ale mug, dousing all three of us in sprays of pungent beer. I kept glancing at Erik, trying to read his stoic expression, to not to sigh internally over his handsome eyes. Tonight, they were cautious, the same inky color as dawn on an overcast day.

Rolf slammed the mug down again, this time right in front of me. I jumped, my heart trying to escape my throat, and Rolf leaned in, blocking my view of Erik. His eyes were bloodshot and mad.

“I noticed the way you keep batting your eyes at Erik here,” he snarled, his breath more rank than the beer. I gulped, and my fingers gripped the edge of the bench to steady myself. “You think I haven’t noticed? You think I haven’t noticed all this time?”

I fought for words to say, but none came. I smiled awkwardly. “Rolf, please. You’re being silly. I-”

“I am not being silly!” he roared. It was loud enough that everyone in the room stopped eating and looked over at him. I felt my cheeks grow hot with their scrutiny. “Everyone can see you’re in love with the spineless bastard!”

“Rolf,” Erik reasoned, putting his hand up. “Let’s talk-”

“Talk?” Rolf laughed. The sound sent chills down my back. “What is the point in talking when the woman who is supposed to belong to me keeps looking at you like she belongs to you ?”

“Cherine is all yours,” Erik said quickly, avoiding his eyes. I pretended not to be hurt by that, even though I knew Erik was saying it to protect both of us.

“You are damn right she is mine,” Rolf bellowed. He turned his vicious expression back to me, and I shrank in my seat. “Do you think you’d want Erik if he looked like me? If he had a nice long scar to make him less pretty?”

Before I could respond, Rolf quickly drew his dagger out of its sheath and slashed the blade down Erik’s face, slicing his flesh open from forehead to chin. Erik screamed, immediately covering his eye as the gash spilled blood through his fingers.

I hadn’t even realized I’d been screaming as well until a hard whack to my face made me shut up and fall backward out of my chair. I hit the ground and saw blinking black dots and darkness closing in.

“Oh no, you don’t get to sleep through this,” Rolf’s sinister voice came through, and I found myself being yanked up by my hair. I screamed from the pain, and Rolf delivered another blow, this time, his palm smashing into my left cheekbone.

Everything was black, a swirling blur of nausea and agony. I could hear the chatter of the Vikings, but I couldn’t hear Erik. My poor Erik. And I was now being dragged by Rolf across the dining room floor, away from him.

Suddenly, Rolf let go, and I fell to the floor in a heap. There was the sound of a table being flipped over, a scuffle, seething grunts. I tried to sit up and see past the pressure behind my eyes.

Erik had tackled Rolf and was wrestling him to the ground. He was doing a good job, too, despite the fresh blood that poured from the gash in his face. Both men were fit and muscular, built to be fine machines and brutal killers. But as hard as Erik slammed Rolf’s head into the stone floor and punched him with swift uppercuts to the face, there was no denying who’d win. Erik wasn’t Erik the Axe anymore, but Rolf was Rolf the Walker. Rolf the Best. Rolf the Barbarian.

After Erik strained to keep him down, his taught muscles bulging from the effort, Rolf head-butted him, and Erik flew backward into the bench.

“You never could beat me,” Rolf sneered, spitting a bleeding tooth from between his puffy lips. “Even when you were at your best.”

Rolf’s lopsided smile was melancholy, and that was all the warning Erik needed. He tried to get to his feet, but Rolf was faster. He grabbed his dagger off the table and speared Erik through the shoulder, pinning him to the wooden bench behind.

I felt all hope deflate, sinking softly in my stomach. Erik looked up at me, choking for words as the silver handle stuck out from his shoulder. Half his face was covered in blood; I couldn’t tell if he even had his eye anymore. The other half was crumbling in fright, and I knew it wasn’t for him. It wasn’t that he might die.

He was crumbling for me, for he knew what was going to happen next.

I held onto his gaze for as long as I could until I was ripped to my feet again.

“You’re coming over here,” Rolf said, his fingers digging into the tender flesh under my arm. He dragged me to the opposite end of the hall, where many of the Vikings were standing, some of them excited by the violence.

I looked for the face I needed to see: Knut, or maybe even Arvid. Someone who would help Erik and come to my aid. But there was no one like that. These were men who followed Rolf’s every command, even if they didn’t agree with them, and I was nothing to them. Even if I had become a duchess, a feat I was sure I wouldn’t accomplish because I knew I wouldn’t live to see tomorrow, Rolf would have held all the power. I would have had nothing.

“Men,” Rolf announced, throwing me forward into them. I fell to the ground, and they backed up, making a circle around me. “It turns out, my beauty thinks like a whore. So I say, we turn her into one. When you’re all done with her, I want to make sure no man will ever want to touch her again.”

Though I couldn’t understand what he had told them, I knew it all the same. I screamed for Erik, screamed for Knut, but the men only closed in on me. Ross, with his missing eye and perverse looks, was the first one to grab me. He forced his tongue up and down my face and held down my arms while yelling at another man, who in turn grabbed my legs and pulled them apart.

“Rolf, please!” I managed to scream while I felt rough hands tearing at my clothes and scrambling up my thighs. “Please, you’re a good man at heart. Please, stop this.”

I couldn’t see him over the leering, rabid faces of the men peering down at me, but I could hear his laugh, that slow, malicious sound that sunk into the marrow of my bones.

“I’m a good man at heart?” he repeated, amused. “Did you know the last time a woman I loved angered me, I slit her throat? From ear to ear. I slit our little boy’s throat too. I guess I’m not much of a family man, am I?”

Then I heard his boots fade away into the distance, and I knew that I was really, truly alone. I closed my eyes to their prodding fingers, their tongues and mouths, and whatever was next to come. I wished for death.

It came in the form of an axe.

A whoosh filled the air, coupled with a wet gurgle and a thunk. I felt the splatter of warm liquid on me, and I opened my eyes to see my vision all red.

Another whoosh sliced the area above me, and a man’s head fell into my lap, his dead eyes staring up at me. I screamed and tried to get up, but I was nearly trampled in the confusion. Men were being beheaded left and right, blood spraying in arcs across the room. I looked up in time to see Erik with his mighty axe in hand, bringing it down on another man’s head, while young Knut speared a charging Viking with his sword. There was a third man helping them in the attack, a short man with long blond hair and hard eyes, and together they, had turned the dining hall into a bloodbath.

Erik shouted orders at Knut just before he swung at another man, slicing his head off clean at the neck. I didn’t have time to feel disgusted by the scene. Knut picked me up by my arms and swung me up and over his shoulder. He began running out of the room, dodging a sword from another man, then spinning around and spearing the man through the heart, all while keeping me on his back. Knut may have looked boyish, but his skills were definitely all warrior.

I fought back the dizziness to watch Erik as he fought off the remaining Vikings. His face was still a mess, his shoulder bleeding profusely, yet there he was in all his Nordic glory, fighting his countrymen to the death.

Unfortunately, as handy as Erik had been with his namesake, there appeared to be about a dozen headless Vikings scattered about, which meant the rest of them had run off. Perhaps to get more weapons. Perhaps to get Rolf.

“Where are we going?” I yelled at Knut as I bumped up and down on his back.

“Norge,” he replied, seeming to have picked up a bit of French. I bit my lip in surprise.

Norway.

We were going home.