Total pages in book: 65
Estimated words: 59320 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 297(@200wpm)___ 237(@250wpm)___ 198(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 59320 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 297(@200wpm)___ 237(@250wpm)___ 198(@300wpm)
“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.
Chapter 21
Erik
Pulling the blade out from his own shoulder was one of the hardest things Erik had to do. Everything after that came easier.
As soon as Rolf fed Cherine to the dogs and stormed out of the room, Erik knew he had little time to act. With his shoulder no longer pinned to the bench—the wound, thankfully, a clean cut—he got to his feet and looked around for the closest weapon. He knew it was a matter of time before one of the men took their cocks off Cherine and noticed him, and he couldn’t afford to run the stairs to his room and get a weapon from there. Sure, he could do some damage with the dagger Rolf speared him with, but it wasn’t enough. He needed something fatal, something brutal, something that would do justice to the intense rage choking him from the inside out.
He only had to scamper to the open hallway to see the weapons displayed on the wall, all courtesy of the now-dead baron. A sword was too boring, the bow and arrow too emotionless, but the axe? Yes, the axe would do.