| Copyright © 2006, Brynneth
N. Colvin Reviews For ON BORROWED WINGS by Brynneth N. Colvin "Adventure, shape shifting, and romance are bountiful in this romance. From the beginning of this tale you are thrown into the perils of Carriad’s life, and can easily feel her need for escape and freedom. Secondary characters are very interesting and important as they show you the mind of the evil man that owns Carriad. With plenty of action and adventure, you never have a dull moment as you follow Carriad’s life to freedom." Wateena 'Wonderful scenery, intense scenes, and a bit of romance make this one interesting fantasy read that this reader enjoyed.' by Linda at Fallen Angels. Sample Chapter For
ON BORROWED WINGS by Brynneth N. Colvin
As soon as Astrid caught sight of her, a heavy, choking feeling of foreboding clasped her. Even at first glance, the girl looked like a storm bringer. She shivered to think of such a being loose in Ulfwick, and knew with heavy certainty that this girl carried a doom for them. Turning, she saw the look in Gardar’s eye and knew it was already too late. There was nothing she could do or say now; it had already begun. * * * * With the ice finally melting, boats were once again plying their trade across the grey sea and up the muddy Eise into Ulfwick. There was a hint of spring in the air and the taste of possibility as the sun raised its head in the sky to make the world fertile again. The wind had finally ceased to carry a wolf’s bite, and instead, bore the sounds of sea birds and the raucous cries of a lively marketplace. The advent of the first trading vessels of the season had drawn the townsfolk out of their winter refuge and brought Ulfwick vibrantly to life. Gathering in the pale sun, they examined new curiosities from foreign lands; trinkets and statues, furs, wines, spices and other fine goods. Pens were filling up with livestock and Gardar had cast his eyes towards those merchants. Nods of recognition and respect greeted him as he strode purposefully through the crowd, drawn to the slave pen and the auction block. He had thralls enough, but could not resist looking at the women on offer. Dressed in red and blue with metalwork glinting about his body, his dark hair gleaming from careful attention and his expression regal, Gardar cut an impressive figure. However, at this moment, remarkably few eyes were moved to gaze in his direction. The girl they had been trying to lead to the block was fighting like a wildcat. She had one hand free, scratching wildly with strong nails, spitting and snarling at the man who restrained her. While the language she spoke might mean nothing, the sharp anger of the words she hurled was unmistakable, bitter with impotent rage and malice against her captors. Without warning, she broke free, turning to stare down the men, challenging them to risk her wrath again. She circled, trapped but defiant to the last. Her angry passion was irresistible, but it had been her hair that had drawn Gardar’s eye; a wantonly displayed cascade of red that fell to her waist. As he drew closer, he could see that she was well formed, if thin and pale from a long period on a ship. She had spirit and he liked that; it would make breaking her all the more entertaining. By the time he had haggled over her asking price, the girl had bitten one of the men who had tried to hold her and had drawn blood. Gardar paid less than he had expected to, and was pleased. Regardless of her striking looks, the girl was evidently a wild and unruly savage. She would need taming and breaking in before she would make an acceptable thrall, and there was no knowing what sort of mayhem she might wreak upon his household in the meantime. Reluctant to take any chances with his new prize, Gardar signaled to Ivar. “Buy me a length of rope. I want this girl secure before we move her.” Ivar nodded, and by the time he returned, Gardar had drawn another of his men to him with gestures. The girl was putting up less of a fight now, but her eyes were watchful and she seemed ready to pounce at any moment. “Secure her.” She fought against being bound until Gardar pulled a knife from his belt and held it to her throat. She was still then, and he was conscious of a significant crowd watching them. His new prize would be much discussed that night, and the thought pleased him. “Take her home,” he said. “Astrid will deal with her, but I don’t want any nonsense from her in the meantime. If she tries anything, use whatever force you need to.” He looked at each man in turn: Ivar was nodding in understanding, and Rorik was usually trustworthy, neither were likely to take advantage or cause excessive harm. “I don’t want any lasting damage done.” She was reluctant to walk, and Gardar watched the three of them make slow progress through the crowd. He wondered how long it would take her to submit to her thraldom. Astrid watched the scene unfold with a feeling of grim resignation. Gardar strode towards her, his cloak flapping dramatically behind him. “I have a new charge for you,” he said, smiling. “So I observe,” Astrid replied, keeping her voice carefully neutral. “What would you have me do with her?” “See if you can knock some of the wildness out of her, break her in for me, render her a little more biddable and presentable.” “I see.” She knew he would not want the girl broken, just softened enough so he could do the rest himself when autumn came. It was a game Astrid had no desire to play. “If you can make anything of her, we shall see what happens in autumn,” he added, his thoughts obviously following hers. He paused to offer a smile and greeting to a passing acquaintance. “Now, sister mine, if you will excuse me, I have business to attend to.” He swept away, no doubt, to view the progress his own craft was making. The girl was a problem Astrid did not need, and the feeling of looming fate still hung close in the wake of her premonition. Astrid had no desire to launch into it, and so, to ward off her own trepidation, she took her time examining exotic wares she did not mean to buy. There were people to greet, small social duties to perform, whether she liked them or not, and she was conscious that her girls needed some freedom for themselves. The long winter had made them all prisoners, and she could not grudge them a little time in the light with the companionship of their fellows. She made a game of pretending interest in goods that did not stir her imagination. She needed time to adjust her thoughts and pull a mask in front of the turmoil in her mind. The last thing she wanted was to have Gardar see that he had unsettled her; it would only make matters worse. Nothing boded well in this; she knew it. When finally she could delay no longer, she gathered up Gyrda and Thyri and made her way home. “I saw Gardar buying the red-haired girl,” Gyrda said as they walked. “She was very strange looking. What does he want her for?” “I gather she is to be a thrall in the household.” “What can she do?” Thyri asked. “I have no idea,” Astrid confessed, “but she fights well.” “Did you see the colours of the cloth that man with the loud voice was selling?” Gyrda paused long enough to see that Astrid had. “Weren’t they lovely? I saw Sigrid haggling over the price.” Astrid did not even bother to feign interest, the dress habits of other women did not fascinate her, nor did the purchases made by Matilda’s thrall. “Colours always fade,” she said, and, seeing the look of disappointment on Gyrda’s face, added, “but they were pretty, yes.” “I think Hild is pregnant,” Gyrda added. “I wonder whose it is.” “Or if she knows.” Thyri broke her pensive silence briefly, but Astrid could tell there were other things on the girl’s mind. She glanced at her favourite thrall, seeing the way in which the girl’s quiet countenance reflected her own mood. She had always felt a certain affinity with the sharp-witted Thyri—for the girl too wise to live happily as someone else’s property, but who had little scope for bettering her lot. When eventually they returned to the homestead, she regretted having delayed so long. * * * * The sea had been a curse, a monster of shifting waves and churning waters that had made her sick to the core, but the land was not the blessing she had thought it would be. It, too, seemed to twist and turn beneath her feet, rocking dangerously as she walked upon it, tricking and confusing her. Sick to her stomach and deeply afraid, she eyed this new land grimly, wondering how she might survive in it. Determination to escape had kept her alive this long, even when she had thought the waters might swallow her up. It would keep her going now, she thought, give her something to fight and live for. She was not going to let them destroy her. “World of salt winds, I will challenge you,” she had pledged. “I will find my way home, no matter what it costs me.” There was no knowing if her goddess could hear her, now that she was so many miles from home. She prayed anyway: for strength and vision; for the courage to see her life through, no matter where it took her. As soon as they were away from the crowds and there was more room in which to move, she had lashed out with a foot at the shin of one of her captors and rammed an elbow below the ribs of the other. Both had been startled, but they responded quickly enough. The ropes binding her made her all too easy to restrain and, try as she might, she could not get free of them. One of her captors was lanky and no taller than she, but the other was a large man and once he had his hands on her, she could not wrench herself free. Realising it was hopeless, she fought with every ounce of strength she had, struggling against the men who led her, nearly breaking free once. She no longer cared what happened to her; she could not think; the world churned and she was caught in a whirlwind of angry frustration. It had taken a single, well-placed blow to knock her to the ground, but she had still fought back, kicking out when they had tried to approach her. She would not go willingly in ropes; that much she promised herself, but there were two of them and they were better fed and rested than she, it was no match and all she could do was provoke them into hurting her. * * * * Astrid returned to find the new girl had been dumped unceremoniously in the main hall and tied to one of the posts that supported the roof. Of the men who had been given her charge, there was no sign, but this was no cause for surprise. Rorik would have gone back to his own family at the market, and Ivar was seldom where she expected him to be. The foreigner was unconscious, and the bruises were already starting to show on her face. It was obvious they had hit her repeatedly. Astrid cursed under her breath and hoped none of the girl’s fine bones had been broken. Gardar would blame her and not his men if his new plaything had been damaged. “Gyrda, I will need hot water, and I need to move her into our room,” Astrid began, her mind racing. “Fetch me Elstan, he’s not too rough and has half a brain.” She knew that the quiet man had not ventured out, preferring the seclusion of the empty homestead to the chaos of the market. At least it meant there was someone she could rely on. As the young woman scurried off, Astrid turned to Thyri. “I think we have a lot of work to do here. I will need elder water for her bruises.” She paused, looking at the wild girl. “I want to keep her drugged, at least until Gardar has gone, it will be easier to deal with her.” Thyri nodded. “Should I make up an infusion?” “Yes, we’ll probably need it as soon as she comes ’round.” With her two thralls at work, Astrid squatted carefully on the rush-strewn floor, and looked her new charge over as she began to work loose the bonds that held the girl to the wooden pole. The bruises would be bad, but a tentative exploration with her fingers encouraged her to think that the girl’s face, at least, had suffered no lasting damage. She was dressed strangely, with broad trousers gathered tight at the ankle and a long tunic, which must have been beautifully embroidered once, but was now filthy and torn. Anything else she might have owned had long since been lost or taken. Looking at her dark red hair and peculiar costume, it was obvious she had come from far afield. The girl was not a woman of their people, and Astrid could not help but wonder if this had been in Gardar’s mind when he purchased this thrall for whom they had no obvious use. It was a cold, troubling thought to add to the collection that the day had already brought her. The pad of footsteps alerted her to Gyrda’s return, and she rose to her feet. The girl carried a small cauldron of water, and at her heels came Elstan. She did not need to glance up in order to know it was him; he favoured his left foot rather heavily after a broken bone which had never properly been set. He stood quietly, awaiting her instructions. “Move the woman to my room, please.” Elstan was tall and broadly built, but he moved with care and unusual delicacy. He knew better than to ask the mistress of the house who this striking stranger was. Astrid went with him to the far end of the hall, where a space had been partitioned off for her. Heavy cloth drapes gave her a warm and private sleeping area, but made the space dark. Her bed consisted of a large pallet covered with furs and woollen blankets. Elstan laid his charge down gently and turned, colliding with Astrid in the near darkness. For a few seconds, they stood close, listening to each other’s breathing in the gloom. “Can you fetch me a light?” Astrid asked, softly. “And we will need another sleeping pallet for her, can you find me something?” He nodded. “Will do.” When Elstan returned with a rushlight, there were four women gathered in the gloom beyond the curtain. Although three of them were familiar to him, the low light and intense atmosphere made them seem somehow more than human, grander than usual, and he felt a tingle of awe looking at them. Gyrda, he had known since birth, she was the child of thralls, who had themselves been born into the service of the Vendel family. Her father had died when she was barely walking, lost over the side of a ship, and her mother had not survived to see her daughter to womanhood. He’d always thought her a sweet-natured girl, with her broad, open face and the straggles of hair that always peeked out from beneath her cap, making her seem childlike, where on another girl, they might have been deemed suggestive. Thyri had not been with them for very long; she was the purchase of a few summers previously and he knew she had cost Gardar dearly, but she was skilled and he could not deny she had proven her worth. She had always kept to herself, and he suspected she was a sly one, but in a homestead such as this, it was probably just as well. Gardar was a demanding man to work for, and Astrid could be wildly unpredictable at times. The two seldom agreed, and a thrall who did not watch herself, could find she was in significant difficulty. The new arrival he could see only in profile, her eye bruised shut and blood caked around her lips. She looked thin, drawn and pitiful. His eyes strayed towards Astrid’s calm features, to the large, grey-blue eyes that gazed towards him impassively and the gentle contours of cheek, nose and chin. He passed the light to Gyrda and departed as quietly as he could. “They’ve made a mess of her,” Gyrda said softly, her voice full of care. “It’s not as bad as it looks,” Astrid said, “but her body needs to rest.” They began with the easy, obvious things, peeling away the tattered, slightly rotted clothes, cleaning dirt and dried blood, brushing tangles out of long hair. She was in a better condition than Astrid had dared to hope; the men on the boat had evidently not been too rough with her. She had been fortunate. Whenever the girl showed any signs of regaining her wits, Astrid dripped a little more of the thick poppy infusion between her lips until her eyes glazed over and she slipped away from them. It was dangerous to use so much, but equally risky to have this wild and beautiful creature at large while Gardar and his men were on shore: they had all seen her hair, and every last one of them would be contemplating bedding the exotic creature. It would be best to give them time to forget. The old underdress of Astrid’s was too short by about a handspan and showed off a good deal of ankle, but it was enough to render the girl decent. With her hair bound up and covered, she did not draw the eye quite so readily, and Astrid hoped it would suffice to keep her out of sight until the men had gone. It was late, however, and she could hear sounds of their returning. Leaving Thyri to watch over their charge, she took Gyrda with her and went to attend to the evening meal. * * * * Evening time always brought the hall to life with a bright fire in the hearth and a host of people to fill the tables and long benches. Gardar sat at the head of the room with Lief at his side and a few of his men around him. When there were no guests, as was the case this evening, Astrid helped to serve the thick stew and fresh bread, and took a seat amongst the female thralls at the lower tables. While Gardar would not degrade their house by demeaning her in front of guests or strangers, he took ongoing pleasure in varying the status he gave her amongst his people. A lesser woman might have struggled to run servants and slaves when sometimes the head of the house treated her as he might the lowest amongst them. Astrid preserved her dignity with care, in spite of his efforts, and managed. She took food to Thyri, but on observing that her thrall was restless, let the girl go to the table and remained to keep the vigil herself. There was little to do; it was a matter of making sure the girl stayed unconscious, but did not fall into a fit or slip away into death from too much of the infusion. It was, in many ways, a relief to sit in the quiet gloom, free from the pressures of the hall. She had little desire to watch Gardar holding forth, and the sound of his voice alone was enough to tire her. There was little joy to be found in watching her son’s public idolizing of her half-brother. She was losing that particular fight, and she knew it. Much as she loved Lief, she could not bear the strained mistrust that had grown up between them of late, and she was close to thinking it might be better to be without his company for a few months, even if the travelling would be dangerous for him. From the occasionally raised voice and the sporadic toasts and cheers, she knew they would be celebrating, much as they did every year when the spring came and the ice melted. They would be telling tales of glorious efforts made on previous years and working up ever more implausible and overblown notions of what this year’s trading might bring them. Her son, the traveller and adventurer, would be off again, and it wrenched her heart to think of it, even now. Even wanting him gone, she feared to lose him. She had thought him too young when he had announced his desire to go the previous spring. He was still barely old enough to be putting his life in danger and perhaps even killing others. She had not wanted that sort of existence for him, but he would not be ruled by her in this or in anything else anymore. When she had protested the previous year, her fears had been met with Gardar’s laughter. “He’s man enough,” he had said. “I was fighting at his age. He’ll go with me and we will hear no more from you, woman.” Gardar had spoken and that was the end of the matter, because her influence extended only so far as her son cared to allow it, and he did not like her protectiveness. Gardar ruled under their roof, she thought with some bitterness. Her father had brought this upon her, preferring to leave everything to a thrall-born bastard child, who might not even have been of his own fathering, when he had a legitimate daughter by an honourable wife. The memory of that particular betrayal would always stay with her. She could not forgive her father for the misery he had brought upon her and the way in which he had shamed her mother’s memory. From her dimly lit sanctuary, Astrid listened with little interest to the rising clamour of drunken enthusiasm amongst the men as the mead horns were raised and toasts offered up to their new venture and the gods. They were talking up the voyage to come, they always did, invoking the names of old heroes and reliving triumphs past, as though by this means, they could somehow render their own small venture epic. No one would tell stories about their trading and fighting, no one would care in a decade. Gardar, she decided, was a small man making a lot of noise in the desperate hope someone would mistake him for something greater. Her father, when he still had his wits, had been a great man, and she had known others whose names she no longer dared to think too often, much less mention. Gardar had neither honour nor vision, and she quietly wished he would manage to drown himself on this escapade. All too soon, she heard the distinctive rhythm of a chant begin, marking the onset of one of Gardar’s personal rituals. She tried not to think about what would be happening, but had been forced to sit this one through before and knew its content only too well. The images played through in her thoughts even as she tried to ward them off. Thyri lifted the half skull down from its niche, the bone cool in her hands and the fine gold lining catching the light as it moved. Gardar had once promised her that he would tell her the history of his prized vessel, but so far, he never had. It was not an old skull, that much she could tell just by looking at it. It had never seen weather, or lain in the earth. It had, however, been cut a little above the jaw, and given a rim of soft leather, as well as its precious lining. Gardar filled this unlikely cup with liquor and watched with evident enjoyment as it passed swiftly amongst his men. Lief took his turn with the bowl, firmly established now as an adult and one of Gardar’s own. Thyri felt a flush of fierce pride as she watched him: He might be barely old enough to cut a beard, but he had courage and determination. |