Page 6 of Viking’s Highlander Prisoner

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“Come out here, you Hoffstad bastard. I hear that you’ve been saying you could beat any warrior. Well, come and beat me,” he said as he slammed a heavy fist into Erik’s face, slapping him three times. Erik was still on the ground, hands bound together, although they were not behind his back. He flailed and tried to defend himself, but Ivar’s onslaught was relentless. He kicked Erik’s stomach and then continued raining down blows on him.

“I’m going to make you pay for what your father and uncle did to me. I suppose they told you the story, didn’t they? Oh yes, I wager that it was told to all of you about how they met me in battle and stormed my ships and left me for dead. Yes, real warriors they were, coming out of the fog to strike when I least expected it—when they came under the guise of an ally! I suppose they didn’t tell you that particular truth, did they? Oh no, I’m sure they painted themselves as the noble heroes who stopped me from spreading my might across the coast. The fact is that they were just jealous of me, and when they realized they couldn’t hope to contest my strength, they left these shores in search of greater fortune elsewhere.” The words burst out of Ivar’s mouth in a torrent of emotion and fell as heavily as the blows he dealt to Erik.

Sigrid watched on along with other members of his clan, although she was not enjoying the sight as much as they were. Blood spilled out of Erik’s mouth, and cries of anguish could be heard in between her adoptive father’s sneers and taunts. There was no point treating this as a contest of strength because Erik had no chance to fight back, yet others were acting as though Ivar had won a great contest.

“But now you’re here, delivered to me by the gods. Clearly, I have honored them greatly, unlike you, you traitorous bastards who left our fair shores to settle elsewhere. You have betrayed your own kind, and I will not rest until I have seen you all punished. I fight for the glory of the gods, for the glory of all Vikings! And I’m glad that you share a name with your uncle. I can almost imagine that I’m beating him,” he punctuated these words with a heavy blow. Erik’s face snapped back, and blood poured down his nose. The prisoner looked dazed and groggy. Ivar strutted about like a peacock, whipping the crowd up into a frenzy.

Sigrid felt sick. These sycophants were nothing to her, and all she felt in her heart was pity for the man who had never been allowed to fight back. As he lay on the ground, helpless and bloodied, she could not help but think about her own parents, who had been killed swiftly. She had lost her parents, suffered through no fault of her own. Now Erik was suffering because Ivar had feuded with his relatives. He was bearing the weight of past sins, and it wasn’t fair. Ivar was punishing him just as she had been punished, and Erik was just as helpless to fight back against the tide of pain.

Ivar danced around Erik, who groaned and writhed. He pushed one arm against the ground to try and lever himself up. The arm trembled, and just when it looked as though he might be able to prop himself up, his arm was kicked away by Ivar. Erik gasped as he collapsed to the ground, his face deep in the dirt. Ivar clapped and laughed and seemed to take great delight in this act of grim cruelty. Buoyed by the crowd, she knew that he wasn’t going to stop. She wondered if he had danced around the bodies of her parents, and suddenly anger flared within her.

It didn’t help that now she had learned Erik was from a noble family. The Hoffstads had always been talked about in glowing terms by people who were not her father. Many people admired them for being able to take the Viking way of life and spread it across to another shore, although there were people like Ivar who saw this as a betrayal. Sigrid wasn’t sure how she felt about the matter, but she was surprised that Erik had not told her he was a member of this illustrious family when she asked him who he was.

Would she have treated him any differently? She doubted it, but it spoke well of the man that he did not try to demand special treatment based on his name. All she knew was that this wasn’t right. Nobody should have been ridiculed in this manner.

She strode up to her father just as Ivar was about to kick Erik again and tugged at his arm, giving Erik a chance to catch his breath.

“This is not honorable, Father. There is nothing glorious about attacking an unarmed man,” she said. There was a hush in the crowd. She strained when she said the word father. She didn’t mean it, but the earl hated it when she did not refer to him as such, given how he had shown her such a great kindness by taking her into his home and treating her as one of his own daughters. She winced every time she addressed him in this way, but it was better than enduring another bite of leather in her skin. There was only so much pain a person could take before it became intolerable, and it didn’t change the fact that he would never be her father in her heart.

As she stared in defiance at Ivar, she met his gaze evenly. Ivar was an unpredictable man, and there was no telling what he might do next, but she knew the worst thing she could do was show weakness before him. A serpent’s smile appeared on his face.

“You’re right, my daughter. Of course, you’re right.” He turned. Sigrid breathed a sigh of relief, hoping that this was the end of it, but of course, it wasn’t. Ivar called for two swords. He threw one to Erik, who clung to it as though he was a drowning man who had just been thrown a rope. Ivar had his own sword, a great broad blade that had claimed the lives of more men than Sigrid could count. She feared that Erik would be the next, for he did not deserve to be punished like this.

“Defend yourself!” Ivar roared as he brought his sword down. It crashed against the steel of Erik’s sword, which he just about managed to hold up when he needed to. He staggered to his feet, but although he was armed, it was not a fair fight at all. Erik was starved, tired, weak. He was already beaten until he was bloody, and his hands were still bound together. He managed to dodge a few strikes, but only enough to enrage Ivar. Ivar then roared and barged into Erik, sending the prisoner staggering back. As he regained his balance, Ivar struck again with his sword, and it was too much for Erik to cope with. The sword etched at his arms, cutting gashes that made blood flow. Erik cried out in pain, and then Ivar swung down and swept Erik’s legs out from underneath him. Erik flipped on his back to the ground and landed with a crash. The sword fell helplessly from his hand, and he stared up at the dizzying stars.

Sigrid gasped at the sight of such cruelty and was afraid that Ivar was going to end his life there and then, but instead, Ivar sheathed his sword. He turned to Sigrid and had the most callous look on his face that she had ever seen.

“See what you’ve done? Now he’s beaten and bloody beyond what he would have been if he was unarmed. Your empathy”—he spoke the word with complete disdain, as though he couldn’t even fathom feeling this way about a prisoner—“has brought him in an even worse condition. I hope that you’re happy, Daughter. The only reason why he’s still alive is because he’s useful, and now you need to make sure that is still the case. You must clean his wounds. Make sure he doesn’t die because I still have need of him.”

Ivar walked away from her without saying anything else, back to the cheering crowd who fed his ego. They walked away, returning to feast and drink the night away, while Sigrid was left with Erik. She glared at the earl as he walked away, hating him with every fiber of her being. The feeling had only grown stronger over the years; in fact, it had only worsened when she realized just how cruel he could be. And now he treated her as some wet nurse when she was supposed to be a warrior. The only wounds she should have been cleaning were her own.

She scowled as she went over to Erik and helped the pitiful man up. He barely said anything as she walked away with him, and anything he did say was little more than an incoherent moan. She wrapped his arm around her shoulders and dug her feet into the ground to support his weight. His feet dragged along as he stumbled to propel himself forward using his own strength, but so much of it had been drained away because of the beating he had suffered. Ivar might have declared that this man was from a noble family, but at this moment in time, there didn’t seem to be anything noble about him.