Marika Imprisoned, Part 1
 


Copyright:  John Barker, IV
                 2005
 
Reformed Viking Raider Marika Is Sent To Tunisia To Negotiate the Freedom
of Numerous Slaves Imprisoned by the Saracens.
 
She awoke with a thudding head to find herself a prisoner of her Saracen
host.  The cell in which Marika slowly regained consciousness was little
more than ten feet by ten feet.  There was no window in her door, but
shadows under it (as well as the sounds they made) told her that many
sentries, perhaps as many as ten, were on the  other side of the door. 
 
The cell was as spare as could be.  The interior seemed to be all thick
stone, the door, stout wood.  There was a single pallet on the floor to
serve as her bed.  A single window began 6 feet from the floor.  Iron
bars an inch thick and 8 inches apart prevented her exit from that
window.
Marika did not panic. 
 
In her ten years as head of a tribe of Viking warriors, she had been in
many tight places before.  Still, an objective analyis of her situation
did not give her much cause for hope.  Here she was prisoner in an
apparently secure cell in a Saracen castle atop a hill overlooking a port
many miles from the nearest Christian land.  She had come to negotiate
the release of Christian slaves, but now more than suspected that the
emir she had visited with diplomatic credentials from the court of
England, negotiated with, and dined with, planned to make her herself a
slave, probably a member of his harem.  Her own boat and loyal crew had
put back to Catholic Malta to bring more ransom demanded by the emir, and
would not return for at least a week.
Marika tended to take such things in stride.  As a Viking queen, she had
led raiding parties all over the Baltic and North Sea.  She had ruled for
a time a small kingdom in Ireland.  She was herself a formidible warrior,
capable of killing virtually any opponent (human or otherwise) with mace,
sword, lance bow, knife, or her extrordinarily strong and skilled hands,
arms, legs, or feet. 
 
Her many opponents saw only an incredibly beautiful woman of just under
30 years.  They took in the long blonde hair, the suntanned skin, the
large breasts, narrow waist, and wide hips, the gorgeous face, but did
not reckon on her 6 feet, the amazing power of her 18 inch biceps, or the
might and tirelessness of her large, hard, but shapely thighs.
Indeed, Marika was something of a Renaissance woman, 300 years before the
Renaissance began.  She was intelligent, well-informed on political
developments all over Western Europe (much of which she had seen), wise
in estimating men, and shrewd in dealing with them.  She was notably just
and fair to those she held responsibility over.  Her conversion to the
Catholic faith 4 years before had put an end to her raiding days, but had
ushered in a new life as something of an adventuress.  It would have been
too much to expect such a woman, who had known many men, and killed many
others, to go quietly into the cloister.  Instead, her might and prowess
in battle, as well as her skill, were now at the service of God.
 
 She had come to Algiers with proper diplomatic credentials.  She had
been received by the emir.  They had negotiated.  But the iron bar that
crashed into the back of her head and toppled her into unconsciousness
after a formal dinner was an unexpected diplomatic gambit, since the emir
had seemed to be only interested in more ransom money.
 
Had she missed a signal that he was interested in her as his chattel? 
She did not think so, but perhaps this emir was quite unusually adept at
hiding any sign of his true motivations.
Marika knew she had to get out of this cell, and out of this castle,  as
soon as possible.  She knew from looking out the window that it was
night, still several hours before dawn.  She guessed that she had been
out about 2 hours.
 
She dragged the pallet to the wall, and stood it on its end so that she
could stand on it and get a better look out her window. 
 
"Great. This cell is on the side with the virtually vertical cliff."
 
She was a good 60 feet above a road that spiralled down the hill to the
port city at the base.  
 
The noise of the guards at the door told her she could not go that way. 
There were too many of them for her to take on unarmed, and the Good Lord
knows how many more would come running at the sound of a scuffle.  Marika
was confident of her ability in a fight, but also was keenly aware that
her strong flesh was but flesh, that swords or spears or arrows would
kill her just as dead as anyone, that vast numbers overcome skill and
strength.
"So, if it can't be the door..."
 
Marika got back up on the pallet, and began to survey the window and its
bars more closely.  The bars were set into the stone, but the mortar was
not new.  The iron appeared to be a little rusty from the damp maritime
air.  She had nothing to pick at the mortar with.  Getting the whole
grill out of the window was impossible, even for someone as strong as
Marika (and she was said to be as strong as any 5 men).
"But maybe..."
 
Her powerful hands gripped one of the bars, and she pulled her legs up,
so that her feet now rested on the solid support of the sill, rather than
the unsteady pallet.   She looked at the bars very closely, and decided
to try the two just off center to the left.
She braced her feet against the sides of the window, and gripped the
bottom of one bar with both mighty hands, and began to pull on it with
every bit of her considerable strength. 
 
Her first efforts brought nothing but prodigous amounts of sweat.
"Damned bastard!!!"
 
She rested a moment, and tried again.  Still nothing.
 
"God, make me strong and the mortar and iron weak."
 
She rested a little more.  Then huge waves of strength, strength that
might have uprooted a tree pulsed through her arms as she tried to pull
the bar  from the mortar of the sill.  Her effort was long and
sustained.  Then she stopped.
"God, I seek not my own escape, but the release of those Christian souls
unjustly imprisoned by these heathens.  Blessed Mother, pray for me to be
strong enough." 
Again, using every bit of leverage and every once of strength in her
mighty body, she pulled on the bar.  She thought she felt a slight
tremble.  She poured on the power and kept up her effort.
Then there was a low, grating, grinding scrape.  She was sure that she
had heard it, and sure that she could feel a slight movement in the bar
in the mortar.  This encouraged her to sustain the effort even longer. 
Then the sound grew, and she was sure that the bar was coming free. 
Suddenly, the mortar cracked, and the bar was more loose in her hands,
 
But it was still a straight and intact iron bar anchored at the top of
the window. 
 
With all of her might, she pulled at the base of its neighbor.  The
mortar, once cracked, gave more easily now, though only to Marika's
almost preternatural strength.  After a few more minutes of her immense
effort, the mortar at the base of the second bar gave way.
She rested a moment, then tried the center bar itself, as the mortar had
cracked in a way that suggested it, too, might give way.  She would need
more than the two bars out of the way to get out.  After a few minutes of
the sustained effort of Marika's mighty hands and arms, the mortar of the
third bar gave way, too.
 
"Well, that is a start."
 
Well she knew it was only a start.  She had overcome the mortar at the
base of three bars.  But each bar was straight, intact, and anchored at
the top of the window as well, and still barred her exit just as much as
before she had done a thing. 
 
"Try to bend them, or pull them out of the window?"
 
She weighed the options.  Pulling them out meant climbing higher to reach
the top of the window, bracing herself up there, and then doing all this
over again.  Trying to bend the bars meant she could work from her
current position.  But leverage would be a problem.  She decided to try
to bend the bars out of her way.
 
Marika braced her feet against the intact bars on the left side of the
loosened ones, and gripped the left-most bar in her two strong hands
about mid-way up. 
 
Marika began to pull and yank at the bar with all of her considerable
strength.  The muscles of her arms and shoulders knotted and flowed in
immense waves as she poured effort after effort into the drive to bend
the bar.  An inch of iron, even when a little rusty, does not give way
easily.  Nor was Marika anything but human, just an extraordinarily
strong woman.  So it took some minutes of her best efforts before she had
the slightest encouragement. She had to pour more and more strength into
the effort.
 
Finally, after a seeming eternity of refusing to budge, a slight metallic
groan and whine told her that the iron was fatigued by her efforts and
was giving.  She knew that few men alive could do this, but she knew that
she could, if only she tried hard enough.  A quick prayer asking the
Blessed Mother for her prayers passed through her mind, and finally, the
iron began to noticeably bend in the direction she was pulling it.
The effort was long and hard.  But after five minutes from the time the
bar first began to give way, she had bent it enough to the left so that
the lower part of it was far from its intended direction.
 
She repeated the effort with the right hand bar.  Her muscles must have
been pumped, because the right hand bar, too, gave way after 20 minutes
of effort, besting her effort on the left bar by 2 minutes.
 
"Now for the center bar."
 
This one would have to bent straight back into the cell.  About 19
minutes later, it, too, was bent enough for Marika to escape.
"Won't they get a surprise when they come in to check on me."
Marika squeezed herself through the opening she had made in the bars, and
stood on the sill of the window outside the cell, sizing up her next
move.