Chapter 8: The River's Secret
The river was not a clean, silver ribbon. It was a swollen, piss-yellow torrent, choked with debris from the storm. The bank where she stood was a wasteland of churned mud and shattered branches. And there, jammed into a beached log half-submerged in the roiling water, was the axe.
Its haft was dark with water, but the wedge of the blade, embedded deep in the wood, showed no rust. It was just as Harald had said, and the sight of it—a familiar object in all the ruin—stopped her breath. Proof. But of what? A battle, yes. An abandonment. Not a death. The river had not swallowed it. It had been left.
A cold deeper than the morning air settled in her bones. She approached the log, the mud sucking at Egil’s dead wife’s oversized boots. The current pulled greedily at the waterlogged wood. She needed the weapon. It was iron. It was a piece of him. She waded in, the freezing water shocking her calves, her thighs, rising to her hips. The tunic ballooned around her. She reached for the haft, her fingers closing over the familiar grip, worn smooth by a larger hand.
As she braced her feet and pulled, the rotten log shifted. Something beneath the murky surface shifted with it.
A hand, pale and bloated, shot up from the tea-coloured water and locked around her ankle.
She screamed, a raw sound lost in the river’s growl. The grip was iron-strong. It yanked. Her feet slipped on the slimy river stones. The world upended, cold water flooding her nose and mouth. She flailed, the axe still in her hand. The hand on her ankle dragged her deeper, then shoved her sideways, through the current, until her back slammed into the steep, muddy bank under an overhang of roots.
Another body crashed against her, pinning her. An arm like a bar of chilled steel wrapped across her chest. She gasped, spitting water, terror a silent scream in her throat.
A face emerged from the water beside her own. Dark hair plastered like kelp to a skull. A beard thick with river silt. And eyes—ice-blue, burning with a feral, unmistakable fire.
Ragnar.
He was alive. But death had brushed him. A savage gash wept redly down his temple into his hairline. His lips were pale, his skin tinged blue with cold. But the fury in him was a furnace.
He shoved her harder against the bank, his body a trembling, waterlogged weight. “You,” he rasped, his voice a ruin of gravel and river water. “You should have run further, woman. To the edge of the world.”
She could only stare, water streaming from her hair, her mind refusing to knit the reality together. He was a river ghost, a hallucination born of exhaustion and trauma.
His free hand fisted in the sodden front of her tunic. With one brutal wrench, he tore the coarse fabric open to her waist, exposing her breasts to the cold air and his blazing gaze. The gentle curves were marbled with bruises—the dark, fingerprint blossoms from Hakon’s grip, the larger, vaguer shadows from Harald’s handling. The sight of them struck him like a physical blow.
His breath hissed out. The fury in his eyes condensed into something blacker, sharper. A murderous calm. He traced a bruise with a cold, calloused fingertip. “Who.”
It wasn’t a question. It was a demand for a name to kill.
She found her voice, a thin, choked thing. “Harald’s men. At the fishing hut. Last night.”
His jaw tightened. The muscle leapt. He looked down her body, his gaze raking over her as if taking inventory of stolen goods. His hand moved from her chest, down over her belly, pushing the torn tunic and her smallclothes aside. He hooked his fingers into the waist of her borrowed trousers and yanked them down her hips, exposing the junction of her thighs. The skin there was chafed, tender. The evidence of the night’s brutal use was subtle but unmistakable to a warrior’s eye. To his eye.
A low, animal sound vibrated in his chest. It was not sympathy. It was pure, undiluted rage.
“Mine,” he snarled, the word guttural and absolute.
He didn’t prepare her. He didn’t ask. His own trousers, sodden and loose, were pushed down just enough. His cock, despite the cold, was already thick and rigid, a blunt instrument of possession. He shoved her legs apart with a rough knee. He positioned himself at her entrance, which was clenched tight with cold and fear and soreness.
He looked into her eyes as he pushed in.
The burn was exquisite, a tearing ache that made her cry out. She was dry, unwilling, her body recoiling from the fresh invasion. He didn’t slow. He fed his cock into her with a single, relentless thrust, seating himself to the hilt inside her tight, resistant channel. The water lapped at their joined hips.
“You.Are. Mine.” Each word was punctuated by a short, brutal stroke, forcing her body to accept him, to stretch around him. The friction was a raw, fiery pain. “No one else.” Thrust. “Touches.” Thrust. “What is mine.”
He set a hard, driving rhythm, pinning her against the muddy bank. The world was reduced to the cold slap of water, the sucking sound of their union, the searing fullness of him reclaiming a territory he considered his by right of first conquest. His teeth found the soft skin where her neck met her shoulder. He didn’t bite, but pressed them there, a primal warning. His hips pistoned, the force of his thrusts driving the air from her lungs in ragged gasps.
It was punishment. It was branding. It was an act of erasure, as if he could fuck the memory of other men out of her flesh. The pain began to mutate, her traitorous body warming from the violent friction, a slickness of forced arousal beginning to ease his passage. Shame flooded her, hotter than the heat building in her core. She hated it. She hated him. And yet, a desperate, clawing part of her mind clung to this—this known violation, this savage who had, in his way, claimed her before others had simply taken. The distinction was meaningless and everything.
He felt the change in her body, the involuntary clutch of her inner muscles. A grunt escaped him. His hand left her hip, slid between their bodies, his thumb finding her clit. He pressed, circled roughly, his touch devoid of tenderness, purely functional. It was all it took. The orgasm ripped through her, a convulsive, unwanted wave of sensation that wrenched a sob from her throat. Her cunt spasmed tightly around his invading length.
That broke his control. With a guttural roar that echoed off the water, he plunged deep and held there, his body rigid. She felt the hot, sudden pulse of his release inside her, a claiming of a different, more profound sort. He shuddered against her, his forehead dropping to her shoulder, his breath coming in harsh gusts.
For a long moment, there was only the sound of the river and their breathing. Then he pulled out of her. The loss was a strange, empty chill. He pushed back, standing unsteadily in the waist-deep water. He looked down at her, dishevelled, bruised, and pinned against the mud. His expression was unreadable.
“Up,” he commanded, his voice ragged.
She struggled to stand, her legs watery, the torn tunic hanging open. He took the axe from where it had fallen, wedged in the roots. He looked at it, then at her.
Then he grabbed her by the back of the neck and forced her down to her knees in the shallows. The icy water soaked through her trousers. He stood before her, his cock, still slick with her fluids and his own, jutting out. He fisted it, giving it a few rough strokes.
“Clean it,” he said, his tone flat.
She stared at the swollen head, beaded with their mingled spend. Her stomach turned. She hesitated.
His hand tightened in her hair. “Do it, or I’ll wash you in the river until you bleed.”
A final surrender. She opened her mouth. He pushed himself inside, not deep, just resting the head on her tongue. The taste was salty, musky, intimately familiar. “Use your tongue,” he ordered. “Clean your own cunt off my cock.”
She closed her eyes and obeyed. She licked along the shaft, swallowing the bitter-salty evidence of his possession, of her violation. It was the most degrading thing she had ever done. When he was satisfied, he pulled out.
He turned away, hauling his trousers up, tying them. He scoup river water in his hands, drinking deeply, then splashing it over his wound. He moved with a stiff, pained economy, but purpose was already coiling back into his limbs.
He turned back, holding out a hand. Not to help her up, but for the axe. She gave it to him. He hefted it, a flicker of life returning to his eyes.
“Harald sits in my hall,” he said, looking north, toward his lands. “He thinks I am fish-food.” A cold, terrible smile touched his lips. “He thinks he has broken what is mine.” His gaze swung back to her, taking in her torn clothes, her bruises, the haunted defiance in her green eyes. “He is wrong on both counts.”
He reached down and grabbed a handful of her tunic, pulling her roughly to her feet. “We hunt.”
She stood there, shivering, ruined, and strangely, utterly alive. The river had not taken him. It had given him back. And now, covered in mud and the marks of men, she was no longer just a healer, or a captive, or a whore. She was a weapon he intended to wield. And for the first time, she felt the sharp, dangerous edge of herself begin to form. She nodded, a single, sharp movement.
He grunted, a sound of approval. Without another word, he turned and began to move upstream, away from the sea, toward the dense, dark forest that bordered his territory. She followed, the cold water still dripping from her skin, the taste of him still on her tongue, a new and terrible road opening before them both.
She followed, the cold water still dripping from her skin, the taste of him still on her tongue, a new and terrible road opening before them both. The forest swallowed them whole, its silence more oppressive than the river’s noise. Ragnar moved with a predator’s economy, each step deliberate, his head canted to listen for things she could not hear.
He did not speak. The only sounds were the squelch of their boots in the peat, the distant crack of a branch, the labor of their breathing. Her body was a symphony of aches—the deep throb between her legs, the sting of the mud in the scrapes on her knees, the persistent bloom of pain where Hakon’s fingers had dug into her arms. She focused on that pain. It was an anchor.
After an hour, or perhaps two, they came to a place where the pines grew dense, their boughs creating a damp, needle-carpeted vault. A low structure of mortared stone and mossy sod slumped against a rock face, nearly invisible. A hunter’s lodge. Ragnar kicked the door in; the wooden bar inside splintered with a sound like a breaking bone.
“Inside,” he grunted.
The single room smelled of old smoke, animal musk, and rot. A rusted brazier sat cold in the center. A shelf held a clay jug, a chipped bowl. A pile of moth-eaten furs lay in one corner. He barred the ruined door with what remained of the timber, plunging them into a gloom pierced by fingers of grey light from gaps in the roof.
He turned to her. His eyes were adjusting, picking out the details he’d only felt in the river. The bruising was livid against her cream-colored skin. His expression tightened. He walked to the shelf, took the jug, and shook it. A sloshing sound. He pulled the stopper with his teeth, sniffed, and nodded.
“This will sting,” he said, his voice flat.
He poured a measure of the liquid—old mead, sour and strong—into the bowl. He tore a long strip from the already ruined hem of her tunic. He didn’t ask. He soaked the cloth and began to dab at the cut on his own temple. He hissed, his jaw clenching. The mead mingled with the river water, tracing pink paths through the grime on his neck.
He finished with himself, then looked at her. “The worst ones.”
She didn’t move. He stepped forward, and she flinched. A shadow crossed his face, something that might have been regret, or just impatience. He grabbed her arm, not gently, and pushed the torn sleeve up to her shoulder. The bruises there were purple, flowering into yellow at the edges. He pressed the wet cloth against them.
The cold was a shock, then the sharp, acidic bite of the alcohol in the broken capillaries. She sucked in a breath. His touch was clinical, thorough. He cleaned the mud from her knees, the grit from her palms. He worked in silence, his breath warming the crown of her head. When he was done, he tossed the cloth aside.
“They will not touch you again,” he said. It was not comfort. It was a statement of fact, colder than the river.
“You left me,” she whispered, the words escaping before she could cage them.
He froze. His ice-blue eyes locked onto hers. “The world is not a song, woman. Men betray. Rivers rise. Axes slip.” He leaned closer, the smell of him—river silt, cold sweat, iron—filling the space between them. “I am here now. That is the only fact that matters.”
He stood and went to the pile of furs. He shook one out, a stiff bear pelt, and laid it on the ground before the dead brazier. “Sleep. We move at dusk.”
“I’m not tired.”
“You’re shaking. Your eyes are hollow. Sleep.”
She remained standing, her arms wrapped around herself. The admission of weakness felt more dangerous than any physical threat. He watched her for a long moment, then sighed, a rough exhale of frustration. He reached for his belt, untied the long leather thong that held his trousers closed. He tested its strength between his hands.
“Come here,” he said.
Wariness prickled over her skin. “Why?”
“Because I cannot watch the door and you at the same time. And you will run, the first chance your courage returns. It’s in your eyes.”
She didn’t deny it. The thought of fleeing into the dark trees was the only clean thought she had left. He pointed to a thick roof-support post near the fur bedroll. “Sit.”
Reluctance made her feet heavy. She sat, her back against the rough-hewn wood. The stone floor was icy. He knelt before her, his movements weary but inexorable. He took her right wrist, his thumb stroking over the frantic pulse there. His touch was not cruel. It was final.
HE BINDS HER WRISTS.
He looped the leather thong around her right wrist, pulling it snug but not cutting off her blood. He wrapped it three times, a tight, expert series of twists. Then he drew her other wrist to join the first, binding them together palm-to-palm. He tied the knot tight and secure, his fingers brushing her bound hands. The leather was worn smooth in places, hardened in others. It smelled of him.
“Comfortable?” he asked, his tone devoid of mockery.
She pulled against the bind. They held firm. A hot tear of humiliation traced a path through the dirt on her cheek. She was trussed like a goat for market. “Go to hell.”
A faint, grim smile touched his lips. “Likely.” He stood, looming over her. “Sleep. I will wake you.”
He turned his back on her, taking up a position at a slit in the wall that served as a window, his axe in hand. He was a silhouette against the grey light, a statue of watchfulness. Her bound hands rested in her lap. The vulnerability was total, suffocating. Yet, the leather was warm from his body. The knot was his handiwork. In the silence of the lodge, with her enemy standing guard, Alexandra found a perverse sliver of safety. She was his prisoner, his property, his bound thing. But for now, in this moment, she was also undeniably under his protection. She leaned her head back against the post, the exhaustion a tidal wave, and let the dark take her.
She leaned her head back against the post, the exhaustion a tidal wave, and let the dark take her.
It was not a true sleep, but a shallow, fevered trench where the cold of the floor seeped into her bones and the images of the river and Harald’s tent bled together. She drifted in this grey haze, aware of the ache in her wrists, the smell of damp fur and rotten wood, the solid shadow of Ragnar motionless at the wall. Time dissolved. Then, a new sound etched itself into the silence—not the wind, but the soft, deliberate crush of a foot on wet needles outside.
Her eyes snapped open. Ragnar’s silhouette had gone rigid. He turned his head a fraction, a finger rising to his lips in the gloom, his other hand tightening on the axe haft. She held her breath. The crunch came again, closer. Multiple feet. A low whisper, swallowed by the forest.
The door exploded inward.
Splinters filled the air. Two men surged through the ruined opening, their forms bulky in the low light. Hakon’s face, split by a leering grin, was the first thing she recognized. The other was a brute called Stig, all shoulders and matted beard. They’d tracked them. Of course they had.
Ragnar moved. It was a blur of violence, silent and efficient. He didn’t roar. He pivoted and buried his axe in Stig’s collarbone with a wet thunk. The man gurgled, collapsing. But Hakon was ready. He lunged, not at Ragnar, but at her. A short seax gleamed in his hand. He grabbed a fistful of her hair, yanking her head back, the blade’s edge kissing her throat.
“Drop it, Lordling, or I open her from ear to ear,” Hakon snarled.
Ragnar froze, his axe still wedged in Stig’s dying twitches. His eyes, locked on Alexandra, were volcanic. He assessed the space, the angles. He was five steps away. The seax was already dimpling her skin. A thread of warmth trickled down her neck. Slowly, he opened his hand. The axe clattered to the stone floor.
“Smart,” Hakon spat. He kept the blade at her throat but shouted over his shoulder. “Gunnar! Get in here and pin this fucker!”
A third man, younger, with nervous eyes, darted in. He brandished a spear, keeping Ragnar at bay while Hakon transferred his grip. With a brutal shove, Hakon forced Alexandra flat on the furs, her bound hands useless at her chest. He kicked her legs apart and knelt between them, his weight crushing her hips. He never looked away from Ragnar.
“Harald sends his regards,” Hakon sneered. “Wanted you to know he enjoyed your little healer. Wanted you to have a front-row seat for the encore.”
Ragnar took a step forward. Gunnar jabbed with the spear, the point tearing a line across Ragnar’s chest. He stopped, his breath heaving, cords standing out in his neck. “Touch her and your death will take a week.”
Hakon laughed, a harsh, barking sound. He fumbled with his belt, one hand still pinning Alexandra’s shoulder. “Promises, promises.” His trousers loosened. He didn’t bother pulling them down fully, just shoved the rough cloth below his hips. His cock, thick and already hard, sprang free. He spat into his palm, slicked himself roughly. “Let’s see if she’s as tight for me as she was for you.”
Alexandra thrashed, a wild, panicked animal. Her bound hands beat against his chest. He slapped her, hard. The world swam. He positioned himself at her entrance. She was dry, clenched tight with terror, her body screaming in revolt from the violation hours before. Hakon didn’t care. He leaned his full weight onto her and drove himself inside.
The pain was a white-hot spike. It tore through her. A raw, jagged scream ripped from her throat, a sound of pure, unadulterated agony that held no trace of the traitorous pleasure Ragnar had wrung from her. This was simply destruction. She arched against him, but he was an unmovable weight, fucking into her with short, brutal jabs, each one a fresh violation.
“That’s it, fight it,” Hakon grunted, his face flushed with effort and cruelty. “Makes it better.”
She turned her head, her eyes finding Ragnar’s. He was a statue of pure, impotent fury. His gaze was nailed to where Hakon’s body joined hers, to the brutal, rhythmic violation. His hands were fists at his sides, shaking. Blood sheeted from the cut on his chest.
The pain was everywhere, a fire in her core. To stop the screams, she clamped her teeth down on her own bottom lip. She bit harder, through the skin, into the soft flesh. The coppery tang of blood flooded her mouth. She bit down until the pain in her lip rivaled the pain below, a desperate, focused anchor. Blood welled, overflowed her lips, and poured in a warm, dark stream down her chin, staining the bear pelt beneath her.
Hakon saw it. He laughed, panting. “Look at that, Lordling. She’d rather taste herself than taste me.”
He picked up his pace, his hips slamming into her with a wet, punishing sound. His grunts filled the lodge. Alexandra’s screams had died into choked, wet sobs, her body convulsing beneath him with each thrust, her blood-slicked mouth open in a silent cry. She was being split apart. Her vision tunneled. The only constants were the tearing, pounding agony between her legs and Ragnar’s eyes, twin blue flames of promised murder, watching it all.
Hakon’s rhythm grew frantic. He groaned, a piggish sound, and shuddered, driving deep as he emptied himself inside her. He stayed there for a moment, pulsing, his sweat dripping onto her face. Then he pulled out with a slick, obscene sound and stood, tucking himself away.
He looked down at her, broken and bleeding on the furs, then at Ragnar. “Tell you what,” Hakon said, breathing heavily. “We’ll leave him for you. A little project. See if you can get him back to Harald in one piece.” He nodded to Gunnar. “Break his leg.”
Gunnar hesitated, looking at the fury in Ragnar’s still-standing form. “Just the leg?”
“The right one. So he has to crawl.”
As Gunnar lowered the spear, shifting his grip to use the shaft as a club, Ragnar moved. He wasn’t aiming for Gunnar. He lunged, not for his axe, but for the seax Hakon had left beside the furs. His fingers closed over the hilt. In the same motion, as Gunnar’s club swung toward his knee, Ragnar pivoted and threw the blade.
It wasn’t a good throw. It was desperate. The seax tumbled end over end and buried itself not in Hakon’s heart, but in the meat of his thigh. Hakon roared, stumbling back. “You bastard!”
Gunnar’s club connected. The crunch of bone was horribly loud. Ragnar collapsed with a guttural shout, his right leg folding unnaturally beneath him. Hakon, clutching the seax in his leg, limped forward, fury overriding pain. He kicked Ragnar hard in the ribs, once, twice. Ragnar curled around the agony of his shattered leg, his eyes still open, still fixed on Alexandra.
“Try that again and I’ll feed her your eyes,” Hakon spat. He wrenched the seax from his own leg and shoved it back into his belt. “Let’s go. Harald’s waiting.”
Gunnar cast a last, nervous glance at the ruined pair on the lodge floor—the woman bleeding from her mouth and cunt, the man with a leg bent all wrong—and followed Hakon out into the fading light.
Silence descended, thick and suffocating.
Alexandra lay where she was. The pain was a country she now inhabited. The throbbing, torn feeling inside her. The metallic ache in her shredded lip. The chill of the air on her exposed skin. She heard a ragged, dragging sound. She turned her head.
Ragnar was crawling. Teeth gritted, face grey with shock, he used his arms and his one good leg to drag himself across the stone floor toward her. Each movement was agony. He left a smeared trail of blood from his chest and his ruined leg. He didn’t stop until he was beside the furs. He collapsed, his breath coming in pained gusts, and reached a trembling hand toward her bound wrists.
His fingers, slick with his own blood, fumbled at the knot. They shook too badly. He cursed, a raw, broken word. He tried again, pulling with what strength he had left. The leather finally gave. Her hands fell apart, numb and heavy.
He didn’t touch her elsewhere. He just looked at her, at the blood on her mouth, at the awful vacancy in her eyes. His own were desolate. “Alexandra.” Her name was a rasp, barely audible.
She couldn’t speak. She could only bleed and tremble. She curled onto her side, facing him, her knees drawing up slightly in a futile attempt to contain the devastation. He remained propped on one elbow, his broken leg stretched out, his body a shield between her and the empty doorway. The light was failing. The cold was deepening.
Outside, a wolf began to howl.