Viking Bride

They took the women first. Burly, bearded men
with round shields and gleaming blades poured through the village,
a rising tide of destruction and mayhem. Eliza huddled in the
hovel, listening to the roars and the screams. If she could only
make herself small enough, only hide well enough, maybe they’d miss
her.

A faint hint of smoke hung in the air. It was
heavier than the little cook fire where the fish stew she’d been
preparing for her father hung in its pot. The pale skinned, blond
raiders had been sailing further and further up the Seine. She
hoped beyond hope that they’d overlook her. Well, that they’d
overlook her and that they’d overlook her father’s fishing raft,
wherever it was.

The reed and mud door of the hut slammed open
and a Viking strode inside. The wooden floor shook beneath him. He
was big, blond and impossibly muscled.

He poked through the crockery, but didn’t
disturb the herbs stored inside. It felt like an eternity before he
turned back to the door. Eliza held her breath afraid to even
breathe. He took a single step toward the light, then stopped. He
peered into the gloom of the hut, then approached the bed.

Eliza held perfectly still, praying he
wouldn’t see her.

It didn’t work. “Up,” he said, in French.

Eliza gulped, too scared to even move. Her
knees rattled together.

He tugged the pallet away, revealing her
hiding place. Then he smiled. A rough hand grabbed her by the arm,
pulling her to her feet.

“Father!” she screamed, her face wild with
terror. “Anyone! Help me!”

He led her to the door, her struggles
worthless against his strength. Outside in the light, she caught a
better look of him. He was more handsome than she thought. And
younger. Only a few years older than her.

The village burned around her, the acrid
smoke stinging her eyes. Two Vikings hauled a bearded man, Gruyere
the Elder, she realized, toward the edge of the village. More of
the blond devils dragged another woman, fire-headed Aldith. She
didn’t fight, though Eliza soon saw the bloody splash matting the
hair on the side of her head.

The grip on her arm tightening, her captor
moved faster, nearly pulling her off her feet. She had a feeling he
wouldn’t have a problem dragging her like his fellow raider dragged
Aldith.

Where are the men?
She looked between
the huts, to the palisade, thinking someone would come. Her father
would save her. They had to!

They rounded the log wall on the far end of
the village, and her heart stopped. Bodies lay scattered and
bloody. The men of the village. Dead. A pall of smoke hung over
them. Gruyere was on his knees before the bodies, the Viking behind
him with an axe raised high.

Eliza looked away, knowing what was coming.
Gruyere’s pleading stopped abruptly.

A great Viking ship with curved bow and
square sails sat beached on the riverbank beyond. Two more ships
floated behind it, their great oars slapping the water like
waterbug legs. A cheer went up from one of the boats as it passed,
making its way further up the Seine. Blond haired men lined the
gunwales, shaking their shields and axes at her village.

“So many of them,” she whispered. Her father
had said their village was safe so far from the sea. The raiders
had never come so far, nor in such numbers. The Seine was turning
into an easy path of plunder, and she was the one being
pillaged.

Eliza shuffled forward, her bare feet
squelching in the mud of the riverbank. She tripped, fell to her
hands and knees, coating herself in the muck, but twisting away
from the Viking in the process. Before she could clamber to her
feet and try to run, strong arms wrapped under her, and lifted her
free.

He carried her then, like a maiden on her
wedding day. The clammy hands of fear that gripped her heart had
little resemblance to a maiden’s anticipation. She’d spent enough
time with the women of the village to know that. No, those
squeezing fingers, that crone’s grip, they were something
altogether different. Something altogether more frightening. This
man that carried her was taking her. Claiming her. And dragging to
some far land from which no woman ever returned.

Eliza let her terror take her then. Let the
wails that that been building in her chest burst forth. She
screamed, she begged, she pleaded. Her legs kicked and her nails
scratched.

It had no effect. Her captor was implacable,
marching to his ship, his treasure in his arms.

The Viking carried her up the plank and set
her, still blubbering, on the far side of the ship alongside
Aldith. More women were lined up along the gunwale, all bound
together, a shivering mass of tears and snot and heaving backs. He
stooped over her, his frightening sword dangling behind him, and
bound her hands and feet, then secured her to the rope that held
the rest.

Eliza rubbed her hair from her eyes with her
shoulder, and turned to the other girl. “Will anyone come for
us?”

“Who?” Aldith asked. “They’re dead. All
them.” Her eyes had a vacant stare, as if she’d already given up
any hope.

“No one comes back,” a gray haired crone
said. Cordith, her name was. Aldith’s aunt. “Never. The blond men
come, they pillage, they take what they want.”

“But why do they want…” Eliza trailed
off.

“Us?” Cordith asked.

Eliza nodded.

“Sea wives.” She looked Eliza over, eyes
lingering on her full breasts. “Keep your head down, girl. Your
best hope is that one of them claims you for himself.”

“Or what?” Aldith asked.

“Or they’ll all have you, and none too gentle
I would think.”

Eliza’s eyes grew wide. “They mean to wed
us?”

Cordith snorted, no trace of amusement
reaching her eyes. “No, not wed us, child. To lay with us.”

Eliza’s shoulders slumped. There it was.
She’d known what Cordith would say. Known what the Vikings meant to
do with her, but there was a vast river between knowing of a
possibility and having one’s hands and feet tied to the gunwales of
a longship. She let herself collapse forward until her forehead
pressed against the rough wood, let the impossibility overwhelm
her, let the tears flow. From the sounds of it, she wasn’t the only
one.

The Vikings crowded back onto the ship, their
weapons in their fists and their faces screwed up with anger. They
set down blankets, and knives and cook pots. One of them even had
Gruyere’s wooden chest, the lid hanging askew.

“They didn’t find enough plunder,” Cordith
whispered. “Better hope they don’t choose you.”

Leather-booted men shoved the girls aside as
they grabbed the oars stored alongside the gunwales. One of the
biggest men, wrapped all in furs and metal, roared something in a
strange language. Two of the others began untying the girls at the
front of the line.

“What are they doing?” Eliza asked.

Cordith shrugged and hunkered down, her eyes
not meeting any of the men’s.

Eliza couldn’t help but watch. Part of her
was hopeful. Hopeful that they were taking another girl and not
her. Shame followed quickly on the hope. Her pa had taught her
better than that.

Thoughts of Pa brought a fresh round of tears
to her eyes. He’d been on the river fishing. If the Vikings didn’t
get him, he’d be coming home to find his village destroyed and his
daughter taken. She wasn’t foolish enough to think her Pa would
come rescue her. He was just a poor fisherman, about as far as a
man could be from a warrior. Besides, no one ever came. No one ever
got rescued.

Her own mother had been taken from a village
much like this one when she was but a babe. Somehow the raiders
hadn’t seen Eliza sleeping in her basket. When her father returned
from fishing that evening, he’d gathered his squalling babe and
sailed inland, far from burned husk of his village, and far from
the coast where the Vikings came to raid.

He hadn’t sailed far enough.

Her eyes followed the Vikings. They weren’t
taking the girls for pleasure; they were just moving them to the
middle of the boat. Tying them together between the masts. As the
girls moved, men stepped into their places, slotted their oars
through the side of the boat.

A yellow toothed beast with furs that smelled
like smoke stepped behind her. He grabbed a handful of her rump and
gave it a squeeze. Eliza grit her teeth, tried not to give him any
response. Anything to avoid being chosen. He untied her hands then
dragged her half by her arm and half by her hair to the middle of
the boat before looping a rope around her wrists and moving on to
the next girl.

Eliza huddled against Cordith, her bottom and
her scalp both smarting from the mistreatment.

Behind her, one of the crew members rumbled
something in the guttural Viking tongue. Aldith screamed as he
pawed her chest.

“Don’t look, child,” Cordith said, bowing her
head.

“What?” Eliza turned back, watched Aldith
being dragged upright. The yellow toothed man sliced the ropes from
her ankles and hauled her toward the bow. “What’s he doing?”

“Oh, don’t watch it. They’re going to take
their pleasure with poor Aldith.” Cordith shuddered.

Eliza couldn’t look away. She had never been
good friends with the other girl, but they still knew each other.
Yellow Tooth ripped her shift away, revealing the pale skin
beneath.

Aldith’s breasts bounced as she struggled,
her cries going from fear to outright panic. Another Viking came
over, a thick rope in his hands. He waited for Yellow Tooth to push
her against the mast, then snaked the rope around her arms and up
around her neck. He pulled it tight, cutting off her screams.

Aldith’s eyes bulged as the rope bit into her
neck. She kicked her bare legs, but it only made the Vikings laugh.
The second man relaxed the rope, letting her suck in a breath, then
he smashed his lips to hers, a kiss of conquest. He fumbled at his
waist, untying his leather breeches. Yellow Tooth pulled Aldith’s
ankle aside, and the other Viking stepped up between her legs.

“Oh God,” Eliza whispered. She stared at her
bound hands, unable to watch any longer. Aldith’s screams
redoubled, then rose to a piercing shriek. Eliza collapsed forward,
her back shuddering.
That could have been me. It could still be
me.
The screaming cut off abruptly, but she was too afraid to
look to see how.

The Viking’s grunting mixed with the slap of
the oars and the creak of the timbers. The longship pulled slowly
down the river, taking Eliza deeper and deeper into hell.

Over the coming days, each one of the other
girls was taken to the mast, even Cordith. For some reason she
couldn’t understand, Eliza wasn’t chosen. Aldith even had to go
back a second time. Whatever their reasons for skipping her, Eliza
thanked the Gods that she’d been left alone.

When Cordith returned after her bout of
pleasuring the crew, she collapsed on the deck, her body shaking.
“Your turn will come, child.”

Eliza couldn’t meet her eyes.

“It’ll be all the worse for the waiting. When
they come for you, take your mind away. Imagine you’re in the
village cleaning fish. Picture yourself by the river mending nets.
Don’t focus on what they do.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

“It’s for my benefit as much as yours.”
Cordith rubbed her chest, wincing.

“Are you well?”

“No, I’m not well. I just lay with a dozen
men. I ache, inside and out.”

“I’m sorry,” Eliza whispered.

“Aren’t we all.”

The crew’s conversations took on a different
tenor the morning of the eighth day. The weather had turned cooler,
and they’d provided the captive women fur blankets to keep them
from freezing in their thin dresses.

Eliza spent her time trying to work out their
language. To piece together a few words she might be able to use to
communicate. It was precious little, but enough to have a vague
idea what a few objects were. References to the captain picked up
that eighth way, and she thought she’d puzzled out the word for
home
as well.

The ship grinding onto a beach confirmed it.
They had barely come to a stop when cheering rose from somewhere
beyond the bow. The crew threw down their oars and rushed the front
of the ship, cheering back at the people on the beach.

Yellow Tooth came over to start untying the
women as someone lowered the boarding plank. He kept his distance
from her, but seemed to have a special eye on Aldith. It made
Eliza’s stomach churn.

One by one the women were led off the boat
until Eliza was left alone, wrists still tied to the long rope that
connected her to the mast. She sat on the deck, a blanket over her
shoulders, and waited. Her time was soon. She could feel it.