BLADE HONER--Book One by Maria Kvilhaug

Author:Maria Kvilhaug
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: BookBaby
Published: 2014-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

Terror and Beauty

The Sun was setting by the time we set out from the village. The Vikings vigorously rowed upriver for the rest of the evening and all through the night, taking turns at the oar seats. Seeing the way they seemed entirely accustomed to row hard for hours on end without a break, I began to understand why they were all so immensely broad-shouldered. We moved in silence, as if the Vikings had had enough of play, allowing their prisoners to grieve in peace. I remembered my father’s tales about the Viking crew he had been a part of, and wondered if this lot was somewhat less cruel. At least there was no crying girl tormented before the eyes of everybody, and so far I had not seen a rape happen, at least not with my own eyes. Having seen Arnulf almost taking my sister on the bed the moment he had found her, I suspected that he was not the only one and that my sister had been unusually fortunate.

But after the slaves had been herded aboard, they were left in peace, given food and water, and I noticed that the Vikings acted kindly to the small children who sometimes got loose from their mothers, since they had not been chained. The children, of course, were terrified of the Rus, not just because they had seen them kill, but because their very appearance was designed to terrorize others. From the moment I came among them I had watched these men and kept finding them spectacular. Even the captives often forgot their own predicament and just sat back, gazing with open mouths at their captors.

They liked to keep their hairs long, sometimes hanging loose and well-combed, or perhaps with a few braids in it, like my father had done his hair, but just as often they had done their hair in ways I had never seen before. Some had shaved their head at the sides and done things to make the remaining hair stand up like spikes, others had dreadlocks that made their hair look enormous, often tied at the top of the head so that it looked like a fountain, and there were many other interesting haircuts. It was obvious that they wanted to look fearsome, and that they were skilled at it. Their beards were often braided, and I understood that they, like my father had, spent a great deal of time combing and braiding their hair and their beards, making sure they looked the way they wished to. I remembered how my mother had sometimes chided her husband because he was too vain about his hair and his beard, acting like a young girl about it, but secretly she liked that he cared about his appearance. There was no doubt that the Vikings did.

Most of them had tattoos with various symbols covering their arms, their chests, even their faces. I remembered my father’s tattoos, and that he had explained to me that he had received most

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