by Lola Rebel
Twenty-Seven
There had to be a good reason that Gunnar hadn't found her. No doubt at all. She pushed herself up out of the dirt and the pain that racked her shoulders was immediate and severe. She shouldn't have slept slumped over like she had and now her body ached badly where muscles had bunched up through the night.
Deirdre took a moment to center herself. There was a lot wrong right now, but she needed to keep moving. Needed to find a way to keep going home. If Gunnar was going to find her at all, he'd know where she went. She had been asking for it since practically day one, after all.
She pushed away the doubt that swelled up in her chest. The fear that whatever she did, she might never see him again. That her only safe way home was gone and lost forever. She didn't have time to think that way.
Her feet still ached from the day before, and she could feel how sensitive parts of them were, where they'd been rubbed raw without any support. She would have liked shoes, but they'd been lost weeks ago.
The forest's noises around her, though, were an odd sort of comfort. Even if she wasn't home, and wasn't particularly close to home she had to admit, the sounds were familiar. It reminded her of what it was like to be human, what it was like to be back in that little cottage, raising melons and growing herbs.
The problem, though, was that she was quickly realizing the limits of her feet, and of her ability to walk. It was easy to pretend that she could get home, to say the words that she wanted to go back to her home, but saying and doing were two very different things. She tried to hold back the swell of self-doubt.
She held it back better than she held back the tears from her eyes as she realized the enormity of the task ahead of her. She couldn't do it without someone or something helping her. She could find work, if she had to, perhaps buy her way onto a cab. Any sort of work would do. She would even be satisfied with a few days' rest to let her feet heal, and a pair of sturdy shoes.
But she couldn't keep going through the forest like this. She took a deep breath and kept moving. She would find signs of life somewhere. Civilization. Then she would go in. She didn't do it often, but she wasn't some country bumpkin who was afraid of towns or cities. She wasn't.
She heard the sound of a river before she saw it. It was a welcome sound, if for no other reason than that she could cool her feet for a bit before she kept going. But towns meant water. They needed it near enough to walk, to get the wash.
Or they could have a well, she reminded herself, but the point was moot. Somewhere along this, if she kept going and kept her bearings right, she'd find… something.
The water was as cold as ice, but after a long moment Deirdre was able to push past it. Her feet needed something. The day itself was warmer than it had been, so she didn't find herself shivering, but as she soaked her feet she was getting colder.
A quick look up and down showed something on the other side of the river. It was too far away to be sure what, but it was some sort of building. Deirdre pulled her feet out of the water, pale with the cold, and started to walk unsteadily. Her feet were a little numb and it made it hard to keep a solid footing. At least they didn't hurt any more.
As she came closer she saw the wheel. A mill. That meant a town as sure as can be. There was a bridge, and a little foot-path. Nothing like a road, but it would get her where she needed to be. And, as she recalled, they'd crossed at least one river on the way out. This might just put her on the right side and save her having to retrace their steps exactly.
Something stopped her. She looked down at her clothing. She could imagine how she looked, though she hadn't seen a looking-glass for a month. Like she'd been raised by wolves, no doubt. Especially after having slept on the hard ground the night before.
And she knew how the people in towns had always treated her before. No, going back was not exactly an experience she wanted to repeat. But at the same time, could she afford not to?
She was already feeling the needs of hunger, and as she padded her way through the grass and feeling started to return to her feet, so did the pain. If this was how she felt after only two days of walking, how was she going to make it all the way back home? And how could she even know that she was headed the right direction?
Deirdre took a deep breath, clenched her teeth. The decision was made, and now all she had to do was follow through with it. The bridge was narrow, barely wide enough for two to walk abreast, the cool wood worn smooth over years of use.
As she stepped off the bridge, a huddled mass of children, perhaps five or six of them no older than ten, turned to regard her. Apparently a newcomer was more interesting than whatever it was they had found. She didn't mind it. She'd expected people to find her unusual, particularly with her clothes as ruined as they were.
A girl and her mother walked down the street. Deirdre didn't need intense powers of observation to see the girl's shoes looked brand new, and the cobbler's shop gave hints as well.
The place seemed to be not much larger than Malbeck; she guessed that, like as not, they had only a few dozen households in town, another couple dozen in scattered farms nearby. It was big enough, though. At least she'd be able to find some work, for a little while, if the need arose.
If she was lucky, then they'd heard something about the Vikings in the area. She could convince them that she'd been a prisoner and barely escaped. It would be easy and painless.
When she came back to her senses, though, Deirdre couldn't help noticing the girl had stopped in her tracks, turning to stare at her. A pretty girl, Deirdre thought. Dark hair fell in loose curls around her face, and her eyes were a light brown that immediately drew Deirdre in.
What didn't draw her in was the out-and-out concern on her face. Fear, even. The girl's mother didn't notice at first that she had stopped, until her arm pulled tight a step or two later. She turned to tell the girl to keep moving, but when she saw Deirdre she stopped herself.
There had been a long time for Deirdre to deal with town-folk who didn't approve of her. Long enough that she couldn't just lie to herself. That wasn't an expression of concern or worry. She needed to leave here before things went all sorts of wrong.
Deirdre picked up her pace. She had to find someplace to be, and she had to make damned sure that she wasn't there when the woman got back with the constable.
The rope was tight, and it was strong. He found his muscles flexing involuntarily, testing the bonds, and no matter how he tried Gunnar couldn't get them to budge a hair's width. There wasn't much hope of escaping, and if he hoped to get away with any of his comrades, the chances were lower still.
They were tied together in a long chain, connected at the wrists with their arms bound behind their backs. Their legs, on the other hand, were free. It was a matter of convenience rather than a lax attitude, because it saved the English the effort of having to transport them somehow. Instead, they marched single-file, flanked on both sides by horsemen whose horses seemed to be enjoying the rest that they were getting.
Gunnar had lost the least of all of them, in a sense. He had already lost control of the only thing he really thought of as his, and Deirdre was free. She would be home in a week or two, and then he would never see her again.
But if she was safe, that was what really mattered. He ignored the sting of loneliness and longing. He had already made his decision; this was just the fallout of what he had already decided. There was no use in worrying himself over what couldn't be changed.
They'd already left the forest behind, and had walked for another day through an open, rolling field. In the distance, he could see a hill, and it seemed to be covered almost completely with buildings.
Yet, it wasn't until he started to get closer that Gunnar realized the full scope of what he was looking at. From a distance, there could be no doubt that some lived here, but as he grew closer it became more and more obvious that the hill itself loomed high over them, and the buildings near the top seemed to stretch all the way into the sky.
This was where Val
demar had been leading them. Gunnar didn't doubt it for a moment. The place was like nothing he had ever seen before, not even in Denmark, and being able to lay siege to it would have been the greatest glory of all.
They had a military to match their magnificence, though, and that was where he had been foolish. Dangerous, even. They would need more men than they had brought if they were going to raid here, unless it was to be a long, drawn-out affair.
The second thing that he noticed as he closed in was how open these buildings were. Not farms, but still they had no walls, not even the short stone walls that had laced so many of the towns they had raided, or wooden walls that took too long to hack down when you were attacking.
He barely saw any barricades. They would have been routed, with a military force this size—but they would have gotten fat on the villagers that weren't protected, first. The cogs in Gunnar's mind turned and turned on it. Easy pickings indeed. Too easy; no one would have such a large city with no defenses, certainly.
Before he could divine a solution they passed into the streets. The English folk lined the sides of the street, two or three deep in some places, speaking in hushed tones among themselves.
Their gaze was equally split between the cavaliers in their bright-polished uniforms and the Vikings they escorted, though Gunnar could not hear what they said. He could guess well enough from their faces. They were afraid, but at the same time seeing them all subdued gave the townsfolk a measure of courage that they'd not have had otherwise.
He turned back forward. There was nothing here but distraction. Gunnar had a job to do, and he couldn't let himself get distracted from it. This entire surrender had been a distraction. He had to get back to Deirdre, had to make sure that she would be safe.
There was no room for regret, now that he was already here, but he realized dimly that he should never have stayed. He should have gone with her. But he hadn't. Instead, he'd chosen to stand and fight, and though he'd made his mark on the English troops they fought, the cost he'd paid was far too high.
Something red streaked through the sky, slapping into the side of Arne's head. He stumbled a step, yanking Gunnar's hands. As he stood back up, he had what little remained of a tomato dripping, and he stunk to heaven.
A brown muck that he hoped was mud smacked into another of them, and then the entire crowd had gone mad throwing things, cursing at the Danes as they walked. The mounted soldiers let it continue for a moment before the one at the head turned and gave a signal.
Two of them peeled off from the group and rode up the sides. "Order, order!" they cried, using their height advantage and sheer radiance to convince the peasants that it wouldn't be wise to argue, and aside from a scant few more mud-pies they stopped. Gunnar took a deep breath and kept his back straight, kept his eyes forward.
He could feel something drying on his shoulder, a substance just sticky and unpleasant enough to worry about its origins. He shouldn't have stood for the insult. They should have been terrorizing these people, taking their things and burning their homes.
Proving to them, and to the Gods, how overwhelming their superiority was. But instead they endured this humiliation at the hands of men whose hands had likely never held a sword, who had never been in a serious fight. Men and women who knew nothing about what it was like to risk your life for something.
He held back the urge to turn and spit on the ground to show them exactly what it was that he thought of them. He had to control himself. The walls surrounding the inner city were a welcome sight, if for no other reason than that the entire place wasn't completely absurd.
They were thick stone, and as he crossed beneath, he saw that they were wide enough for four men to walk side-by-side without fear of falling off. There was no way that they could have gotten through.
On the other side of the stone wall were a pair of wooden doors, and the leader, his white-and-red feathered cap making him look at once handsome and foppish to Gunnar, stepped down off his horse with the help of the young man who rode beside, and rapped his steel-gloved hands against the door.
A sliding click, and the door opened to reveal a grubby-looking little man who gestured them inside. The entire line of them were taken inside of a small room caged in with metal bars, and only when they had been locked inside were their ropes loosed.
The iron bracelets, on the other hand, continued to tie them all within a few feet of the walls, so they couldn't hope to break out by force.
There were a hundred questions running through Gunnar's head, but one question, the most important, he already knew the answer to.
They needed to get out of here, and they needed to do it soon. How they would do it, he didn't know. Who would be with him, he wasn't sure. Some might have refused simply because he wasn't in charge any more.
But if he knew one thing, it was that if they hoped to escape with their heads, it had to be soon.
Twenty-Eight
Five minutes. Deirdre didn't count to the second, but the constable couldn't have been far because within five minutes the girl's mother had returned with a uniformed man, too old for soldiering but with the body of a man who'd been in that life.
"She was right here, she threatened me and my daughter! She had a knife, and—oh, you should have seen her. She was soaked in blood, from her head down to her toes!"
Deirdre looked herself up and down. There was more blood than she'd imagined, but nothing like 'soaked,' and she hadn't threatened anyone. Whatever the woman had experience, it wasn't what Deirdre had done, but there was no question who she was talking about.
"Now, Millie, calm down and tell me what you know."
The woman wasn't calming down. She kept repeating herself, over and over. Blood-soaked, had a knife, threatened her and the girl. As if he would finally understand if she just used different words.
Deirdre couldn't keep watching around the corner as the constable started scratching his head. She was in danger here, that much was clear. How had things gotten off to such a bad start?
The question of whether or not she could even reveal herself if she wanted to pulled to the forefront. Now someone said she was a dangerous mad-woman who was brandishing a knife at a young girl. She'd have to dispel that notion before she even started to explain the very real danger she found herself in, and it wasn't clear that she would get the opportunity.
She had to get out of this place, get herself cleaned up somehow. A change of clothes, perhaps, though it seemed unlikely. And she had just come in the way she was headed. East and south. If she went back the way she'd come, she risked as much as going straight through, only she was going the wrong way entirely.
The gamble was whether or not she could make it in the delivery alleys between buildings all the way out of town, or if she would have to brave one of the wider streets proper. And if she could get lucky enough to avoid anyone seeing her.
Time seemed excruciatingly slow as she tried to walk. The ground was packed hard, here, and the earth was cool, but she ignored the cold that had worked its way into her feet. There wasn't any time for that. The alleyway jagged right, and she followed it.
It didn't just dead-end, and she was thankful for that, but to her disappointment it terminated in a street, and even as her view opened up as she approached, there didn't seem to be an alley entrance on the other side. Either she would have to go back the way she'd come, and risk the constable, or she had to hope that nothing would find her before she could get out.
She kept herself crouched low, like she'd seen Gunnar do. It was day-time, but she might be able to risk it. If she was lucky, that is. Closer, closer. She'd be able to come around the side of the next building, and then see what was coming up.
A quick peek, and then checking the other directions. The road stretched a few hundred paces before petering out into grassland. Not ideal, but she could make it. She counted the doors on each side, tried to calculate the risk that someone might come out while she walked by. But the risk didn't matter any more when she
heard a woman's voice behind her.
"You there."
It didn't sound violent, which was a surprise, but Deirdre turned so quick that she lost her footing and fell on her butt. The woman behind her looked good. Well-dressed and manicured. Like a proper lady, really. "I—I just want to go home. I'm just passing through, please, I don't mean no trouble."
The woman's face bunched up in confusion, and then her face brightened with understanding.
"Come with me, let's get you inside." Deirdre didn't move. "Come on, I'm a friend. You can trust me."
The way the lady winked at her made Deirdre's skin crawl. She clearly wasn't understanding something, and the lady did little to explain, but when she started to move, waving a gloved hand for Deirdre to follow, she decided she had little choice. That, or face the constable and hope he'd listen to her story.
The house was nice, no bigger than the others that Deirdre had seen in town, but larger than the cottage by half. The garden out front was full of flowers and herbs, a collection that drew Deirdre's attention as much because of its lush beauty as because they were all herbs with a decidedly medicinal use.
When she was ushered inside, the lady called out and a young maid, younger than Deirdre, came out.
"This poor woman is absolutely freezing! Fetch a blanket, and get some hot water for a bath drawn immediately."
Deirdre hadn't told her so, but looking at her toes she could see that they'd turned a deep shade of purple. Perhaps it was more obvious than she'd hoped. The lady took off her hat and gloves, hung the woolen coat on a hook by the door.
"You must be Deirdre."
Deirdre blinked. "I'm sorry?"
"Oh, I'm sorry. Brigid must not have told you, I'm Amelia. Your teacher and I go back quite a way, she's told me so much about you."
Deirdre's teeth were clicking together as she started to regain warmth, her limbs starting to burn with returning heat and blood. She couldn't decide what to say. If this woman and Brigid went back so far, it was odd that she wouldn't have mentioned her.