Captured (1 of 3 free samples)

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COPYRIGHT
Captured by Helen Kirkman. Copyright 2007 by Helen Kirkman.
All Rights Reserved. Sharing not permitted.

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CAPTURED

Helen Kirkman

To Michelle, Stuart, Rosie, Jackie and the team--for all your support and encouragement. Sincerest thanks.


CHAPTER ONE

Wareham, the South Coast of Wessex, England A.D. 876

ROSAMUND SAW the iron chain first. Fire-hardened links snaked across the frost-whitened ground into the dark. The chain was attached to a man's hand.

They were surrounded by a Viking army preparing to withdraw from a fortress--better described as fleeing through the night before the West Saxon troops could fall on them.

He must be dead. Surely?

A thick metal band encircled his heavy wrist. Her gaze followed the shadowy length of an arm. It was solid, encased in a deep blue tunic sleeve that had once been fine. She could see his skin through the ripped material. The torchlight turned it to molten gold. Like fire.

Who was he? All the Saxon prisoners had been given back--a requirement of the truce now about to be broken in a mad dash to reach Exeter. Exeter held Rosamund's only chance to escape. She could not do anything that might jeopardise that chance. Not just her life, but Merriwen's depended on it, Merriwen with her helplessness.

Her foot brushed the chain. The cold iron, hard, roughly fashioned, completely confining, made a small deadly sound. Her heart tightened.

She withdrew her narrow, gilt-decorated shoe. The chain clinked. The fine hand on the ground did not move.

Rosamund's mind filled with what it must be like to be trapped and held down in such a way. She had been a prisoner of the Danish Viking army for three years, but never like this, never bound so that all but the most trivial movement was impossible. The chain between the fetters around the man's wrists was perhaps three feet long. It was stapled to the ground.

She stared at the metal hoop driven into the uneven frost-hardened earth to pin down the chain. Gooseflesh rose on her arms. Such a measure could not be necessary. It was barbaric.

Torchlight flickered over the unmoving flesh. The prisoner's palm was broad, the heavy fingers curled inwards, solid and well-shaped, gold skin and shadows. The smoky light showed the richly curved rise at the base of his thumb. Such a hand should have been as passively beautiful as a sculpture--it was a fist.

Someone shoved past her, cursing in Danish and trying to stuff a silver necklace and a looted piece of cheese into a bulging leather saddlebag. The way things stood for the fleeing army, the cheese was the more valuable.

Rosamund had her own store of hidden provisions. She had planned for her escape with the meticulous care of the desperate. She had no protection now and she had to defend Merriwen. The world crushed people who were defenceless. It had the power to crush Rosamund herself if she made one wrong move.

She stepped over the chain in the wake of the departing army.

Her embroidered skirts, bead-sewn and scented with Frankish lavender, trailed across forged iron, then a veined wrist and she looked back, caught between shadow and smoking flame, her gaze drawn by that unmoving gilded flesh, held fast. The prisoner had hit someone so hard he had skinned his knuckles. The motionless hand radiated trapped fire, the kind of fire she had once felt . . . the untameable kind that got fools like her into too much trouble.

No. She could not involve herself. Merriwen would die without her. Besides, the fire in her was extinguished.

She took one last look. The veined wrist had small bloodied marks where the iron fetter had broken through the skin.

"St. Chad's spotless coffin." The words did not come out in Danish, but in English, Mercian.

The prisoner had hit someone while still chained.

Something inside her, the long-lost dangerous fire, stirred. She leaned over the fist; she would not call it a mere hand, and looked more closely. There was no more blood now. Probably because he was too cold to bleed. Dead.

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