Free Owned by the Vikings by Isabel Dare Page B

settled in his belly at that realization, and he felt blood rush to
his cheeks.
    “No one would dare claim him,” Leif was
saying. “But will you not lend him to us one more time? Would you not enjoy
seeing him on his knees, being used? Broken in a little more?”
    The other men’s silence was now almost a
physical pressure. They were all looking at Thorvald, though some of them stole
glances at Edric, too.
    Edric swallowed heavily, goose-pimples
rising on his bare arms and legs. He tried not to show his consternation.
Whatever Thorvald planned for him, he could only accept it. He had no rights,
no recourse as a thrall. But he was still alive, and he would survive this,
too.
    Thorvald’s fierce eyes focused on Edric,
and every man on board held his breath. They all knew the look of Thorvald when
he was making a hard decision.
    Edric stared back, not daring to speak.
He tried to communicate without words that he belonged to Thorvald, and
whatever Thorvald did was all right with him.
    “Leif and Arik have spoken fair,”
Thorvald said, raising his voice so everyone could hear him clearly. “We have
been becalmed three days, and I will offer compensation for your hardships. In
another thousand strokes, we will bench the thrall, and each man may take his
fill.”
    A huge cheer rang out, the men’s deep
voices deafening Edric, who stood there uncomprehending. Bench the thrall? What did that mean ?
    Leif grinned wide, showing gleaming
teeth. “I’ll be waiting, thrall,” he whispered. Staring at Edric, he slowly ran
his tongue over his teeth.
    Edric shuddered, but did not look away.
He raised his chin defiantly.
    The longboat was picking up speed, but
not from the wind. It was because the men were rowing harder now, cheering each
other on with loud cries.
    The second shift began singing a rowing
song, something loud and rhythmic that Edric could not understand a word of,
but it had a driving cadence that spurred the rowers on even further. The oar
strokes were coming faster, yet still perfectly synchronized, each man’s oar
moving parallel to the next.
    Edric waited for what was to come. He did
not even try to count the strokes of the long oars.
    The sun was coming out from behind thick
cloud cover, and the air grew almost balmy. Many of the rowers threw off their
sheepskins or cloaks and shouldered out of their embroidered linen tunics,
baring their muscular shoulders to the sun. Edric watched them avidly, trying
not to be obvious about it.
    Someone in the stern of the boat had
started to drum a beat on an empty beer barrel. The rowers kept time to the
beat, and the second shift changed their song’s cadence to match it. The entire
longboat seemed to rock to the driving rhythm.
    Then at last Thorvald threw down his oar.
“A thousand strokes!” he cried, and the ship erupted in cheers.
    The rowers left their benches, the
waiting second shift taking their places at the oars so smoothly that they did
not lose a single stroke, and the driving rhythm of the oars moving to the
drumbeat continued.
    The exhausted rowers breathed hard,
wiping sweat from their foreheads, shaking out their trembling arms. They drank
long draughts of watered-down beer from a barrel that stood near the stern,
letting it trickle down their bare chests.
    Thorvald strode forward. “Ogleif,” he
ordered, “Set up the bench.”
    Ogleif stepped out of the cluster of
rowers. He was a burly man, broad-shouldered, and he seemed to be Thorvald’s
second-in-command.
    He walked past where Edric stood tied to
the mast, and returned dragging a wooden bench. Not a rower’s sea-chest, but an
actual bench, with thick wooden legs and a heavily scarred surface.
    With a grimace, Edric recognized it; the
Vikings used this bench as a butcher block, to slaughter captured hogs and
sheep for their meals. It bore the scars of axes and butcher knives, and it was
heavy enough that even Ogleif could not lift it by himself.
    Ogleif dragged the bench in front of
Edric.