by Amy Faye
"They've each gone their own way," he confessed. "I think that Ulf and Leif have a bet going to see who can find more valuables. I think they'll find that they have a great deal of disagreement about what is valuable, and I think you should make sure that they don't cause too much trouble with it."
"That's good advice," Gunnar agreed. "Will you not go to glory, as well?"
"No," he answered. "It's not time yet. This wet… Odin weeps. No, I'll not go into battle until it's time."
Even still, Eirik turned the haft of his ax in his hand, as if the weapon itched for battle. There would be time for that, Gunnar agreed. Time later, once he had secured the small woman who could wield magics. He could see it when he looked at her, something unusual in her face. There were children in the room he'd found her in, and women as well, packed in like they'd bought a boat too small.
He felt a tugging doubt that the building would escape unscathed. English boys, no doubt they would come after the party if they could, but it would be years before that happened. Gunnar and his men would have moved on by then. Back to Denmark.
"Eirik," Gunnar asked distractedly as the pair of them stalked through now-empty streets, the smoke of burning buildings filling the air. "What say the Gods on the killing of children?"
Eirik was a thin man, with long limbs, but he was every bit as fierce as any of them. Gunnar did not watch him as he turned, instead shifting the girl to his other shoulder to balance the burden. But the fire in his face was one that he recognized as soon as he had seen it.
"They bear no love for it—and for that matter, neither do I. Do you know of children here?"
He didn't like the fact that he had to nod his head. Yes, he did. Better that their parents had shouted at them to run and hide in the hills. It made the whole thing more palatable when he only had to face men with blades in their hands.
Even still, it would have been worse to lie. Eirik wasted no time. "Where are they? Take me, now. We need to find them, and we need to ensure that nobody sullies himself there, is that understood?"
"They were hidden away, but I found them. With this," he said, pointing with his eyes towards the woman in his arms, who still struggled fruitlessly. "While we walk—can you help me with this? It stings badly, and I'd have it gone."
He turned, the point of the shaft stuck through him swinging through the air. "I don't know. Having it gone could bleed badly."
"I'm sorry?"
"I was saying," the tall, slender man said, a little louder, "that it would kill most men to have this through them, never mind to remove it."
"I am not most men."
"No, I suppose you are not, Gunnar. I suppose you are not."
A woman ran past them, nearly falling when she saw the two men. Their weapons never rose, just watching her pass by. There would be time later, if the need arose.
The largest building in the square was obvious before they were close, and it was more obvious still that Gunnar had been there. The door was covered in score-marks, a hole large enough to put the large man's shoulder through. And it hung loosely on the frame.
The rain and muck made it nice to get inside, but both knew that their fight was not inside. They would have to go back out, once they were sure.
A young man was there, one that Gunnar recognized but couldn't name. A last-minute addition to the party. He had put his sword back into its sheath, and the knife that each of them carried at his hip had come out. It took the both of them only a moment to realize what he intended to do with it.
Gunnar rolled the girl off his shoulder, slowing her descent with his arm even as he pulled up his sword. Eirik was quicker, his ax already swirling.
"Put that away, boy," he called out.
He was still too young to know what he was doing in the raids, but he wasn't too young to kill. There was no glory to be had killing children.
"They're all right here," he said. Gunnar noted the woman at his feet, no older than seventeen. He would have split the boy's head if not for the fact that Eirik's ax came down hard through his shoulder, splitting down straight through the boy's middle. He fell away, and Eirik put a foot on his body, pushing down to pull the ax free.
Then he entered the hidden room, half of a door hanging loosely across the entrance. A vicious growl came out, like a bear's, and a moment later a dozen screaming children ran out as fast as their small legs would carry them. Gunnar chased after them.
They were running as fast as their legs could carry them, but he could have caught them easily with his long, powerful strides. As they made the edge of the village, and towards the green hills, he slowed and stopped. He checked the edge of the houses to make sure that nobody would come after them. Then he turned back. He hoped she hadn't run. It would only make it worse.
Two
Deirdre was worried about what was going to happen next. She was surprised at the lanky man's calm demeanor after the man who grabbed her ran off. Who was he? Was he one of the men in her vision? Was he the weak one? She wondered. He had split the raider boy practically in half.
It was only after a moment that she noticed Alice in a pile on the floor. She hadn't been in the room before. Deirdre had hoped that she would keep her distance. If she'd just stayed away—
There's no reason to assume she would have been alright. Deirdre tried to to remind herself of that. The only person in the village who'd spent more than a moment talking to her lay dead on the floor in front of her.
She'd seen the big man chasing the little ones out of the room, screaming like a madman. Practically frothing at the mouth, she thought. She could still hear the screams of battle, of fear. All the death around her. She shivered.
The time seemed to pass strangely. When she wanted to think, it was going too quickly. Yet, now that she wanted nothing more than for it to be over, it seemed to last forever.
When the raid was over, she at least had her own two feet on the ground, and had all her limbs. That was more than many could say. The dead littered the ground, and the few who had been spared were barely able to walk. She wasn't surprised to find that they had more captured when they walked her and the others back to a makeshift camp.
The big men were perhaps thirty or forty, and they moved with the easy grace of men who knew how to use their bodies. The one who had been speared through walked in the front, not looking at her. She wondered if she could have run, but two men flanked the group of captured. They would have chased her down before she made the treeline.
Deirdre let out a soft breath and waited. It was all she could do. Only, they didn't bring her to the post where the others were tied up. She came to it, saw them looping rope thongs around the pole and then tying up the rest, but she was taken past. She didn't fight.
There was a larger tent, toward the outside of the camp. Strange. It seemed important, yet it wasn't near the center. When she went inside, part of the question was answered. Her hands, to her great surprise, were freed. She could already begin to guess where this was going.
She'd dropped her knife in town, and now she wanted it more than anything. She wasn't about to let some Viking barbarian have his way with her. She'd kill him before she let that happen. She'd kill herself.
There was a roll intended for a bed, and what might have passed for a table. She had to remind herself that they were carrying all of this, and that sometimes comfort would be sacrificed for portability, because the tent, though large, was practically empty.
She heard the flap of the tent open, heard heavy footsteps coming up behind her. Deirdre tensed, ready to fight at any moment, but then he passed by her. The big man who had carried her out. Who had chased away the children. He was caked in blood, blood that she didn't want to think about.
Had he caught them? He had a blade in a sheath that he laid against the wooden crate against the tent wall, leaned a wooden shield against the other side, and turned. She wanted to run, wanted to escape, but something rooted her to the spot.
Every instinct in her body sc
reamed out to fight that instinct, to run away. As he turned to face her, she finally found the strength to turn and start to run. With a long, loping step he caught her around the shoulder with one powerful arm, turned her round, and sent her tumbling to the bed.
She didn't like the way that he looked at her. He wanted something from her, and she didn't have to wonder what it was. Men like that only wanted one thing from women like her, she knew. That was the way of the world. She wasn't going to let him have it.
A knife handle stuck out of his heavy leather belt, tantalizing. He caught her looking. She reached up to take it, but he was faster. The big man put a knee on her chest and kept her pressed to the ground with all his weight. Still, she could reach it. He slapped her hand away, the weight on her chest taking her breath. With it, her fight.
"Let me be!" She shouted the words, knowing that he spoke a strange language she didn't recognize. He shook his head.
"I need you."
"I'll kill you," she answered. She readied herself to grab at the knife again.
"You can't," he said. She reached for the knife again, and again he slapped her hand away.
Then, as if he were reconsidering, he pulled his weight back off of her. She gasped for breath. She definitely didn't like the way he looked at her. Then he pulled the knife free from its sheath. Deirdre felt strangely numb about it. What was the point of killing her now, if not before?
No, he wasn't going to. As he flipped the knife around and handed it to her, she frowned. There was a plan at work, surely. He'd stop her somehow. He stood and reached down a hand to help her up off the ground. She took it, but instead of standing she used it to pull herself into a lunge forward, pulling him in towards her.
When she stepped back, his knife was buried inches-deep in his stomach.
And then he did something that surprised her. He laughed. She gripped the knife again, twisting the blade, and he groaned out in pain. The laughter continued. She pulled hard, trying to carve a large hole in him.
He pushed her back off him, onto her back. The knife came free of his stomach easily, leaving a red mess on the white shirt he'd worn, beside the red bloody hole left by the spear that had gone through and through.
She couldn't have missed his guts, unless it was some sort of trick. It was absolutely impossible, absolutely. He would be dead, whether it took a day or a week, it was as sure as anything. So why did she feel so sure that he hadn't been the least bit effected?
The wound in his gut had bled badly—for a moment. Then, like most, it had closed up, and now, after a long day's march he wasn't sure that he felt it at all.
If he twisted hard, he could feel some tightness, he thought. But it could have been his imagination. He imagined himself to feel pain from most of his wounds, but few of them even left a scar for more than a week or so.
Gunnar sucked in a breath through his teeth, replaying the night before in his mind. What had he wanted when he had her taken to his tent?
He'd wanted what he had always wanted. He wanted to have the damn 'blessing' lifted. He wanted to live like his brothers, to take scars, like a warrior.
Yet, there had been a thousand other things in mind when he'd seen her there. He'd wanted—Gods above, he'd wanted something very different from her expertise as a witching woman. The way that her dress, torn from the morning before, had let just enough of her spill out when she was pushed onto her back. He blinked the memory away.
The primal feeling he'd gotten when he put his weight down on her, knowing that he could have taken whatever he wanted. The thought set him on edge. What he wanted had nothing to do with a woman's body. He was leader on this raid, and he wouldn't let anything distract him.
That he would never join his brothers in Valhalla, that concerned him. Concerned him enough that he had to see it rectified before another failed expedition sent him home alone, carrying only the memories of his comrades.
He refocused his sights on the horizon. There it was, another village. They were only a few miles out, now. Best to make camp here, where they wouldn't risk being seen. He stopped abruptly, letting the men behind him stop in their own time. Valdemar walked past, brushing shoulders with Gunnar.
It was probably intended as a slight, he thought. But better to ignore it than to let him see any chink in the armor. Valdemar had always been a gifted fighter, that much was without a doubt.
But he was too aggressive. He couldn't make the right decisions under pressure. He was clever enough, true, but he always raised the stakes too high. Gunnar smiled. He sounded as if he were describing himself. Dangerously similar. And if they were dangerously similar, Gunnar knew what would come next.
Did he want to stop it?
Gunnar let out a long breath. "We'll make camp here for the night. Get to making your tents, get a fire going."
He looked back at the men, at the group of prisoners. He did a quick head count, saw that two had found their ways to freedom. No matter, so long as the witch was with them.
In the distance, over the rolling hills he could still see a thick chimney of smoke from the town they'd left earlier that day. He smiled mirthlessly. The Gods would be pleased with them tonight, to be certain. It had been a narrow thing, with the boy acting as mad as he had. But between Eirik and him…
Valdemar was beside him when he spoke. "We are too far out," he said, loud enough for others to hear.
So it began.
"We can't risk being found before we march," Gunnar said. Now their argument was a show for the entire band, a position he'd rather not have been put in. "Or can you go into your berserk trance at the snap of my fingers? It seems it usually takes you the morning march to find yourself, to me. Perhaps you would benefit from having a little bit more distance?"
"Worry about yourself," he growled. "They're weak. We will march right through them, like we have the last three towns."
"All the more reason that we shouldn't risk being taken by surprise. No man here would like Thor to see him embarrassed like that."
"Perhaps you would be caught by surprise." Valdemar shot it out like an accusation. Gunnar could see the frustration, even anger, in the lines of his face.
"When have I ever been caught unaware, Valdemar?"
"When have you ever been rutting with English savages whores on a raid?"
Gunnar's mind flashed to the woman's ruby red hair, spread out below her after he'd put her to the ground. The way that her breasts heaved as she struggled to get at him. Futile, but so energetic nonetheless. Then his jaw tightened.
"Are you trying to question me, Valdemar?"
"Yes," he said plainly.
"Then challenge me to a duel. I won't refuse! Or are you too much of a coward?"
"You've said it yourself. There's no reason to risk injury the night before a raid, dear leader. There will be more than enough time for us to come to an understanding in the future."
He shucked the pack off his back, letting it fall at his feet. Well, his tent was marked, Gunnar thought. Most would want to choose a spot more carefully, but not Valdemar. He was too obstinate to be reasoned with; he would let it fall where he stood, and wouldn't move it for any of them.
Gunnar knew how Valdemar saw him. Weak, retreating. He would place his own tent last, and it was usually to the outside. It was easier to make sure that the stolen horses were kept, that the prisoners didn't escape. Nobody would be able to avoid putting up a tent, but that meant nobody could watch.
He would, and that was part of being a leader: recognizing when the group would have troubles, and finding a way to fix them in advance. Valdemar had never seen the value in safeguarding others, and it was why Gunnar would not simply let him have his way. A good leader needed to be able to put the needs of the group first.
He sat down on the ground with his legs crossed, his sheath pulled away from his belt and put on the soft earth. The rain from the day before had begun to sink into the soil, leaving it firmer, less muddy. Nicer.
Gunnar had to
confess that he couldn't keep his eyes off of Deirdre as he watched the prisoners. There were perhaps a score of them, and he'd taken his measure of half of them before this. Now he should have been keeping an eye on the entire group, looking for the ones who might have some fight left in them. Instead he focused on her.
Once they were identified it would be easy to see it beaten out of them. But all he saw was the prisoner with the most fight of all. He should have made sure that he saw her attitude corrected immediately. He could have done it himself.
Instead he found himself thinking of her like a doting father. He didn't want to see her lose it. Why was he thinking of that now? Valdemar had gauged the situation wrong, but only by shades. It was no time for him to be finding time for a woman. There were more important things to be taken care of.
She stood out compared to the rest, her red hair. Her clothing, brightly colored even with the dried muck covering it. She seemed… different. More different than he had realized. He took in a deep breath and checked on the camp from his seat on the ground. They were making it well enough.
He had to force himself to stand, pace a little bit away, and only after a long moment did he turn back to face the prisoners. The whole lot of them were still there, seated on the ground.
He did a head count. Eighteen was a good number, but more would come. Some would die, or escape. He expected they would have more when the time came for them to go back. The raid was to be a large one, compared to what he had done before. Going up and down the coast was easy, but the English had gotten wise to it.
Marching inland, on the other hand, cut them off from the sea, something none of them wanted desperately. But it was the right decision to make. He hadn't needed to wait for Valdemar to make the suggestion, though he had made it.
Most looked afraid. The fourteen who had been found in the villages over the past week had already learned what happened to anyone who tried to leave. The new arrivals were the only ones with any spirit left, but… he looked through them.
None with enough to try anything, not unless it were a sure thing. None except her. As he looked across the group, she caught his eye again.