Strictly Taboo, page 1
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
BARBARIAN
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Epilogue
NEMESIS
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
NAUGHTY NANCY - A Trek Mi Q’an Tale
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Epilogue
THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP
Published by the Penguin Group
Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA
Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada
(a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)
Penguin Books Ltd., 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
Penguin Group Ireland, 25 St. Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd.)
Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia
(a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty. Ltd.)
Penguin Books India Pvt. Ltd., 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi—110 017, India
Penguin Group (NZ), Cnr. Airborne and Rosedale Roads, Albany, Auckland 1310, New Zealand
(a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd.)
Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty.) Ltd., 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196,
South Africa
Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
STRICTLY TABOO
This book is an original publication of The Berkley Publishing Group.
These are works of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2005 by Jaid Black.
eISBN : 978-0-425-20245-6
This book has been catalogued with the Library of Congress.
http://us.penguingroup.com
BARBARIAN
Chapter 1
January 7, 878 A.D. Chippenham, Wessex
“Nay,” she murmured. Color rapidly drained from her cheeks as she watched the grisly sight unfold. Her breathing grew labored and her heart dropped into her stomach as she saw one of her sire’s men fall to the ground, decapitated by a Viking’s sword. She felt nigh close to fainting. “Nay,” she whispered again, pulling the heavy cloak tightly around her.
Lady Elen of Godeuart was too shocked and horrified to say aught more. Never had she thought to see her family’s mighty stronghold fall to the heathen Northmen, yet it was precisely what was happening.
“Bloody infidels!” Lothar of Godeuart swore. His nostrils flared as he stood upon the parapet with Elen watching the mayhem below unfold. “The king should have known the savages would break their word!”
Elen turned her worried gaze to her eldest brother. She fought with the ferocious icy-cold wind to keep her long blonde curls from lashing into her face. “I—I thought King Alfred paid the Northmen much Danegeld to leave Wessex and return to Mercia.” Her lips were parched, her throat dry. “Lothar, I’m afraid.” She breathed. “What do we—”
“Stay here, Elen,” he cut in, reaching for his sword. “I shall return for you the soonest. Do as I say and keep yourself from harm’s way.”
“Lothar—nay!” Panic engulfed her at the thought of her brother confronting the Viking marauders. Her heart pounded against her chest as she reached for his tunic sleeve and pulled. “I beseech you not to go down there! Already Father is lost to us. I could not bear it were you to—”
“Elen,” Lothar said with gentle insistence, “I must go.” Her eldest brother was an unsmiling, stoic man, mayhap, yet Elen could see his love for her there in his eyes. “I will return to you. I swear it.”
She nodded, her breasts heaving up and down in time with her labored breathing. “May God be with you and mighty Wessex.” Her apprehensive gaze followed Lothar until he was well out of sight.
Elen’s attention returned to the carnage below. When first she had heard tell that the savages had stormed Chippenham last eve, she had known deep within herself that the Godeuart holding would be one of the first attacked. Verily, the keep was built entirely of stone, a rarity in the region and one that underlined the wealth of her family. She had known the Vikings would attack her ancestral holding, yet Elen had never truly believed her beloved home would fall.
It was falling. Rapidly. And, what’s more, there was only but a handful of King Alfred’s men left to defend it.
Never in all of her nineteen years had Elen witnessed a slaughter the likes of which she was seeing this morn. Her brother, Lothar, had mayhap been overprotective of her since Papa’s death, but then Elen was one of only four Godeuart progeny—and the only daughter—to have survived past childhood.
Sweet Beatrix had died of fever at the age of two. Gisela had died at birth along with their mother. Verily, out of the nine children Lady Helene had carried in her womb, only Elen and three of her brothers had endured. Such was the reality of their world.
After the death of their father, Asser, in a bloody battle with the Vikings a year past, Lothar had been all the more determined to marry his sister off to a warlord with vast holdings who was in favor with the king. He wanted Elen’s protection from a man capable of giving it. Baron William Lenore, Lothar had decided, was to become Elen’s husband.
Another battle had broken out a scant month before her betrothal was to be decreed. The betrothal had never come to pass and William’s whereabouts were presently unknown. She didn’t know if her intended betrothed was dead, or alive and in hiding. She could only wish the marriage alliance had already come to pass so that William Lenore might throw his soldiers behind Lothar in the fight to save their stronghold from barbarian hands.
That wasn’t to be. And now, the saints save them all, it looked as though the most heavily fortified stronghold of Chippenham was a stone’s throw from falling.
“Milady!”
Elen whirled around atop the parapet. She closed her eyes briefly and opened them on an expelling of air, grateful to see that her beloved nurse, Theodrada, was alive and well. Theodrada had been caring for her since she was but a babe, the elder woman now well into her forties.
Elen ran toward the woman. “Praise God Almighty you are well! What goes on below?” She felt desperate to hear that her brothers were alive. Her youngest brother, Arnulf, was deep within Wessex at the king’s court, and therefore hopefully safe. Still, that left Lothar and Louis here in Chippenham, possible death lurking just around every corner. “Well?”
Theodrada’s breathing was heavy, her blue eyes wide and haunted, as she stopped before her mistress and clutched at both of her arms. “Louis took a sword through the side, milady.” She ignored the horrified cry from Elen and continued. “It looks deep, but mayhap the saints will smile on him. I packed the wound with herbs before I came to find you.”
“And Lothar?”
The old woman shook her head. “I know naught of Lord Godeuart.”
Elen felt ready to vomit. The temperature was nigh unto freezing atop the parapet due to a rogue January snow that had enveloped the region, yet her heart was pumping so mightily her forehead had broken out with beads of sweat. “Come!” she called out to Theodrada as she loosed from her hold. Grabbing her skirts, she ran from the tower into the keep proper. “We must aid them!”
“We must aid them?” the servant incredulously retorted as she followed on her mistress’s heels. “Milady, we are but women. What are you thinking we can do?”
Elen didn’t know, yet she felt sure they could do something. At this point their interference could hardly hurt.
“I know what to do!” she said, coming to a halt and whirling around to face Theodrada. Finally all the boring talk of battles she’d been subjected to over the years at countless feasts would serve her, and hopefully Lothar as well. “Gather me together five strong slaves and go to the kitchens the soonest.”
“The kitchens?”
“Do not question me, Theodrada! Do as you are told!”
The servant inclined her head before dashing away. Elen ran as quickly as she could below stairs. Several minutes later, as Elen had known she would, Theodrada entered the kitchens with five of the Godeuarts’ strongest slaves. Theodrada quirked a black eyebrow as she watched her mistress churn a cauldron of boiling hot wax over an open spit.
Elen’s nostrils were flaring as she glanced up. Her outer cloak had long since been removed, yet sweat plastered her modest green gown to her body from the labor of working the heavy spoon back and forth within the bubbling wax. She didn’t care. Elen was tired of the bedamned Vikings, tired of losing men she loved to their greed and pilfering. King Alfred had paid them well to leave Wessex alone. The word
“I need pitch and I need tar,” Elen commanded the slaves without breaking from her task. “Get them and bring them to me anon.”
Thirty minutes later, Elen smiled to herself as she watched the male Celtic slaves pour the wax, tar, and pitch concoction they’d created together into seven large urns, one for each of them. It took every bit of strength, grunting, and groaning Elen had in her to pick up her urn, but she was angry enough—and worried enough about her elder brother Lothar—to do it. “To the high walls!” she beseeched them. “Now!”
The slaves followed quickly, all of them as much in a frenzy as Elen to see their job done. They knew as well as their mistress did that should the keep fall to the Northmen, the Vikings were as likely to slay them all as they were to claim them for slaves of their own. All of their lives could very well depend on victory.
Elen’s green eyes widened in horror as she glanced down the high wall and saw flaming arrows shooting toward the keep. Her heart beating rapidly, she instructed the slaves to set the urns down upon the wall until she signaled them to spill it upon the enemy below. That done, she frantically searched for Lothar. She didn’t find him.
Nay! she thought, terrified. Lothar—please be alive!
Batting long blonde curls out of her line of vision, Elen got her first good look at the enemy. She stilled.
There were at least thirty of them and they had the keep surrounded on all sides. What’s more, the Viking heathens were as huge and formidable as legend bespoke. They might have sat atop their warhorses, but even seated it was easy to surmise that not a one of them would be below six feet in height—most of them much taller.
All were heavily muscled, battle scars riddling their bronzed bodies, and bejeweled gold bangles delineating the musculature of their biceps. Many of them sported foreign braids plaited against either temple at the sides of the head—some even wore those braids in their beards.
They were the heathens King Alfred had called them. They were the nightmare the Church decreed them. They were the pestilence Lothar had sworn to destroy.
Elen’s gaze collided with one of the Northmen’s, a colossal barbarian who stood out from the other giants by virtue of the night-black hair that fell past his shoulders. He wore the same odd dress—bare chest despite the freezing weather, leather brais, gold bangles clasped unforgivingly about either arm, and two braids plaiting the hair back from his temples. There the similarities ended. Most of the others were fair of hair and eye. This warlord’s hair was darker even than the Welsh Theodrada, his eyes a chilling, fathomless black.
Elen shivered. The savage looked ruthless, merciless.
He held his sword high into the air and bellowed a war cry that sent a deeper chill coursing down the length of her spine. His men responded to whatever heathen word he’d yelled, and two warriors on horseback came charging toward the front of the circle, a battering ram held between them.
Sweet saints—nay!
Terror quickly evolved into anger. Her jaw clenching, Elen stared challengingly down to the black-haired Viking as her hands seized either side of the urn. His dark gaze narrowed as he wondered at her intentions.
“Now!” Elen called out to the slaves, her eyes never leaving the barbarian’s. “Kill them all!”
She had assumed the savage wouldn’t understand her tongue. She had been wrong.
The giant’s eyes widened as he watched Elen and the Godeuart slaves pick up the urns and prepare to heave them over the high walls. He called out a warning to the others as he backed up his warhorse—bedamn the heathen to the fires of hell anyway! Yet much to Elen’s satisfaction, the warning hadn’t come in time to save them all.
In fact, she thought, her breath shuddering as the feeling of victory surged through her and warmed her, the Viking’s warning hadn’t saved nigh unto a dozen of them. The two warriors with the battering ram fell screaming to the ground on contact!
The warlord cursed as pandemonium broke out around him. Warriors were screaming, their scalps and backs burning, as boiled wax, tar, and pitch clung to them, the concoction refusing to let go. Three more men collapsed in agony. Several more threw themselves to the snow-dusted ground and wallowed around in it like helpless pigs, screaming as the brew ate at their flesh.
Elen smiled with a satisfaction that bordered on maniacal hysteria, her gaze straying back to the warlord staring daggers at her. These barbarians had killed her sire, injured her cherished younger brother Louis, and the saints only knew what horrors had befallen her beloved elder brother, Lothar. To her way of the thinking, the Northmen had this day coming—and then some.
“Die!” Elen spat, tears that refused to fall springing to her eyes. In that moment, all of her fear, all of her rage, and all of her hatred coalesced into a warbled cry that reached the earshot of the mammoth giant whose soulless black eyes tracked her every movement. “I pray to the heavens that every last one of you die!”
Time stood still as the Saxon lady and the Viking warlord stared each other down. Both sets of eyes were narrowed, both sets of nostrils flaring, and both jaws clenched. Elen’s heart drummed in her chest.
She shivered as it occurred to her that the warlord was assessing her as though he mayhap wanted to kill her with his bare hands for this slight. It was of no consequence. Were Louis and Lothar to die, Elen thought it just as well to join them.
Long moments ticked by. Carnage and mayhem surrounded them; screams permeated the air. And then, finally, after what felt like long hours, the raven-haired warlord broke Elen’s stare. Bellowing a foreign word that she took to mean retreat or something equivalent, she watched with satisfaction and elation as the Northman and his surviving men rode off from the keep and away from Chippenham.
Her breath caught in the back of her throat. Elen clutched her stomach and gasped, the reality of what she’d just accomplished catching up to her as she used a shaking hand to support herself against the wall.
She had done it. Her plan had worked.
“Milady!” Theodrada laughed, her hands clutching either of Elen’s shoulders. “You saved us all! I can scarce believe it, yet I saw the savages retreat with mine own eyes!”
“I know,” Elen rasped, her gaze round and disbelieving. “It worked,” she added in a dumbfounded murmur. “Praise the saints.”
Theodrada’s chuckle deepened. She hugged her mistress tightly to her. “Because of you, my heart. All because of you!”
Elen’s thoughts briefly returned to the chilling black eyes that belonged to a certain Viking. She swallowed over a lump of worry in her throat, stark fear that he would seek retribution momentarily overtaking her.
She discarded the thought almost as quickly as it came to her. There would be no sense in attempting yet another raid on the keep. The barbarians were removed from their stronghold in Danish Mercia. They would return there. By the time they came back with reinforcements—if indeed they ever returned with reinforcements—Elen would see to it that the keep was a veritable fortress.
Elen’s smile came slowly, but when it came it was luminous. “We did it,” she breathed. She began to laugh, dancing around with an elated Theodrada. She was certain her father could see her from the heavens and that he was smiling down upon her. “We won!”
Tired and bone-weary, Elen paid no attention to the girl washing her hair. Her thoughts were miles away, or more to the point, four rooms and one floor away.
Her younger brother Louis’s injury was far more severe than what Theodrada had informed her of atop the parapet. She supposed Theodrada, someone she thought of more as mother than servant, had told Elen what she thought she needed to hear to endure until the Vikings had retreated.
Mayhap Theodrada had the right of it. Mayhap Elen would have been too overwrought with grief to keep her wits about her had she known her beloved Louis would be dead by morn. And then all would have been lost to them—the keep, their way of life, mayhap even their very lives.
