Stars twinkled in his eyes as his head lolled back and forth. Absolon was going to crush him. He readied to slam him again. His spine was going to break. He couldn’t get the breath to plead for his life, even if it could have infiltrated Absolon’s berserker fit. Absolon readied him for another blow.
Here it comes.
The dog’s whining and whimpering shut Absolon’s mouth and paused his throttling. He dropped Ragnar and ran to the animal, but it fled from his master’s hand and out the door as fast as it could run, tail tucked between its legs.
“Trogen?” Absolon called softly and ran after it, leaving the door ajar.
Collapsed in an aching heap on the floor, Ragnar rolled towards the exit, spying the lantern that illuminated his prison and his only way out, but the door may as well have been locked and barred for the impossibility of him being able to use it. Dull pain trundled through his body like a wagon, kicking up sharp stones that made him twitch. He took shallow breaths; it hurt to breathe too deep and too long. He didn’t move.
And in the distance, Absolon’s voice grew softer as he begged for Trogen’s return.
Chapter 3
There was no greater torture than an open prison door that could not be walked through. Absolon did not return that night, neither to seal the door nor strike Ragnar for losing him his dog. No sound that Ragnar heard indicated Absolon had returned at all. He did not call out for help. In fact, he barely moved from his position, finding the smallest comfort before exhaustion refused to let him keep watch any longer.
When the next day dawned and Absolon had still not appeared, he called out, but no assistance came. He had been abandoned. But Absolon had to return, didn’t he? There were still twenty-nine days until his execution. Absolon wouldn’t just leave him there.
Not like I did.
He pushed himself away from the ground and the thought. He cringed from each movement. He peered beneath his shirt at the purple bruises spreading across his chest. Had Absolon broken his ribs? The wound on the back of his head had reopened during the assault and blood had dried around his neck. He scrubbed it off, but it only stained his palms.
He saved his breath and his throat, and leaned against the stone wall, hissing against the dull pressure in his back. Absolon had rattled him as if he weighed nothing more than a child. How was that possible?
He scoffed. How was any of this possible? Absolon had killed thirty men with touch alone, had imprisoned him with a strength beyond comprehension, and no order he gave could make the man stand down. He’d tangled with Absolon often enough in the past that his strength, although worthy, had been surmountable.
Absolon had liked being mounted, that was for sure.
And Ragnar had liked it when Absolon mounted him in return.
That had been part of the problem. He’d liked it too much, and it had been a distraction from his revenge.
As those memories now proved. He had to focus, though that was hard with no food in his belly and his tongue drier than lutefisk. The door was open, but how to get through it? As the day wore on, he tried to break free, not caring for the noise he made, though always wary of any sound or shadow that crossed the doorway.
Meanwhile, the question of Absolon’s power kept presenting itself. How had he gotten so strong? How had he become so deadly? What would Ragnar do if similarly blessed?
He could slaughter those generals who had ridiculed him and cast him aside. He could exact vengeance on his father and his brother and make them kneel before him like the cowards they were. He could lead the King’s armies and cut a swathe across Europe, decimating the forces of Denmark, Russia, and France, all for the glory of Sweden. Then none would ever hold sway over him again. He would be Ragnar the Red.
Those fantasies stalked his mind while his weakened body searched for escape, but they were both for naught. For that whole day and the next, Absolon did not return. And without Absolon there was no freedom, let alone new power.
Two days and three nights passed. He forgot his hunger, but his thirst raged, his tongue sticking in his mouth, his throat dry and raspy. He licked the stones clean of whatever dew bloomed on them in the morning, but it wasn’t enough. He would die of thirst. He dreamed of water, a crisp, clear river running in the distance, so full he could smell it, but no matter how fast or how far he ran, he never reached it. He heard it so close, but he fell, his leg twisted and caught, before he crested the hill.
He was so close…
A waterfall came out of nowhere and drenched his face. He woke coughing and spluttering from the water that had been thrown over him, cold and icy in the new morning. He swallowed reflexively and gasped from his need.
More!
He wanted more, but fear overrode his thirst, and his vision cleared to reveal Absolon standing in front of him with an empty bucket in his hand.
“I should kill you now and be done with it.” Absolon’s voice sounded like it tumbled with rocks. His fist closed hard around the bucket’s handle. The dog was not by his side.
“We both know you’re not going to kill me.”
“Don’t test me, Ragnar. I have killed plenty of men. Taking your life will not be any harder.”
“Then why not do it now? Why wait?”
“Because it’s not the right time.”
“Oh yes, what are we now? Twenty-seven days from my execution. Has someone put you up to this? Is that why you’re waiting? My father perhaps? General Lundgren? Is that what this is about? You’re doing this for them, so they’ll let you back into the army?”
Absolon shook his head. “You understand so little.” He said it so softly it was like he spoke only to himself. “None of them care about you, Ragnar. They didn’t then; they don’t now. What I do, I do for myself.”
“Then at least have enough honor to put me out of my misery.”
“You dare to talk to me about honor? You think you know misery?” Absolon laughed but it wasn’t the sound Ragnar was used to. Then there’d been joy in Absolon’s voice. Then there’d been life. Now it was full of bitterness and a tone of death. “You tied me up in a dungeon with no means of escape and left me to die.”
“Yes, I did tie you up, but I sent someone to free you. And it looks like he reached you.”
When he and his band had gone a suitable distance, Ragnar had secretly paid a peasant to free Absolon from his bondage.
“You sent him?” This fact seemed to upset Absolon more than anything else. “You sent the Devil to me? It was you who brought this curse upon my life?”
“What devil? What curse? He was just a peasant, missing a couple of fingers on his left hand, but otherwise no different from any other man.”
Absolon’s jaw tightened. “It was not he who found me.”
Then who had?
What did it matter? Absolon had been freed and sought his revenge.
“If that is so, then it was not I who brought you misfortune, merely God or fate.” He tried to say it with strength, but a child’s breath could have knocked it over.
Absolon knew the flimsiness of his argument too and glared with an intensity that closed Ragnar’s throat.
“It is your weakness that has brought us here, Ragnar. I am just a weapon of justice.”
“Blather! At least admit this is all your own doing, and I am to die because of your hurt pride.”
“My pride?” Absolon’s voice lowered until it rumbled with a growl. “This has nothing to do with my pride, but what you have done to my life.”
Ragnar would not keep his voice in check, however. “And what about what you have done to the lives of those men in the forest? You took them all with not a moment’s thought, even men who had never done you wrong. What had Malik ever done to you? Or Åke? I tell you he was better with the horses than ever you were.”
“If he was as bad with your cock as he was with the horses, you should be grateful I killed him.”
Ahhh, old jealousy reared its head. “Åke knew more than you ever did because
Åke knew his place.”
“And it was not in the cold confines of your heart.” Absolon stabbed at the air with his finger. “You shed no tears for his disappearance, no sadness at his possible treachery. He was merely a plaything for you to discard. Like I was.”
Only Absolon had not been so easily discarded, and when he went, he took a piece of Ragnar’s heart with him. But no matter. It had shriveled. Absolon was his enemy now and all enemies must fall.
“Would that you had stayed discarded and accepted you were unwanted and unneeded.”
Absolon rushed towards him until his face was a mere inch from Ragnar’s own. “You needed me then as you needed me at the beginning, only your ambition became my undoing. Now it will be yours as well. Finally, that cold and wicked soul you keep locked inside your body will do some good, and its poison will be my elixir. Mark your remaining days well, Ragnar, because they will be your last.”
Absolon vanished out the doorway. The door slammed shut behind him and the lock turned. Ragnar didn’t move; Absolon’s hate had turned him to marble. His hot breath on his face, the grimace of his vitriol, the rage quivering through his body, all swamped Ragnar’s own with terror.
Absolon hated him, truly, utterly, deeply, and there was no end to what evil he could visit upon him.
When the fear drained from his body, he sucked the water from his shirt and realized that Absolon’s passion would be his greatest weakness. He sneered at the hurt his former lover so readily displayed, at the pathetic performance of it, but thanked the opportunity it presented.
A berserker’s fit and a lover’s spite were both made of the same volatility and so could be fashioned to another’s designs. If Absolon’s head had not been filled with woe over past wrongs, he would not agonize so over killing the one who had done him such injustice. If he were calm, Absolon would have slaughtered him in the forest because death was the only certainty. Instead, he waited and allowed his passions to be stoked.
Absolon didn’t want him dead at all. He wanted an apology. Why else keep him alive for another month if not to wring a confession he so obviously and desperately needed? What else could the curse he spoke of be? Ragnar’s abandonment had been the curse and now Absolon wanted it lifted.
If it meant freeing himself from these shackles, then Ragnar could do it, as unheroic as it was. Not that it mattered. Once he was free, no one but he would be left alive to know the tale.
Absolon stayed away until midway through the next day, bringing with him two buckets—one with water, the other empty—and a loaf of bread. No plate.
Absolon’s nose wrinkled from the stench; Ragnar had grown used to the stink of his own body and he’d shit as far from himself as he could. He would not apologize for it and stayed seated with his back against the wall to be the first thing Absolon saw when the door opened.
He placed both buckets at the edge of his reach and held out the loaf of bread. “Here.”
Ragnar would not crawl like a dog now that Absolon’s had run away, even though his hunger had sharpened, and his thirst had brought him close to delirium. He struggled to his feet, wavered a little as he found his balance, and walked towards his former subordinate. He took the bread out of Absolon’s hand, surprised at finding it soft and fresh.
“Thank you.”
He couldn’t keep the emotion of his gratitude escaping his mouth and turned from the shame of it. He stuck the bread in his mouth to stop anything else coming out. His stomach growled from the smell and he barely chewed before swallowing. Maybe he’d choke on it before Absolon could do his worst.
Absolon slipped from the room and returned with a shovel and another bucket to clean what Ragnar had left behind. Like he was a stabled horse.
“You don’t have to do that.”
“It’s for my comfort, not yours.”
Ragnar closed his jaw tight. Absolon never used to speak to him in such a manner. The younger man had been nothing but reverent, thankful for everything that Ragnar had given him, every encouraging word, every firm stroke, every deep ploughing. He could not let it rankle him.
“Thank you all the same.”
Absolon stopped and studied him with a quizzical frown. He picked up the bucket and walked towards the door. Of course, he would be suspicious. Ragnar knew enough of himself to know he was not one to show gratitude. But damn, did Absolon mistrust him so much? If so, then he had a long way to go to win him over, and he may not have enough days left to achieve it.
Absolon left the bucket outside and leaned the shovel against the wall opposite. He began to pull the door closed. As the light retreated, it wrenched Ragnar’s words from his body.
“I’m sorry, Absolon.”
He stopped.
“I’m sorry for what I did to you, and I’m—”
“Say it.”
“What?”
Absolon opened the door a little wider. He straightened his spine and broadened his chest. “Say what you did to me, so I know you understand.”
“I’m sorry I locked you in that farmhouse and left you behind.”
“Wrong answer.” His hand tightened on the door.
“I’m sorry I left you for dead,” Ragnar blurted. “I’m sorry I didn’t come back for you. I wanted to. I did. I never wanted to leave you there in the first place.”
Absolon filled the doorway. “No one has ever made you do anything you didn’t want to do. You think I don’t know that? You think I don’t know you? Tell me why. I want to hear the truth.”
“It was the right thing to do.”
“Lies. Try again.”
“They wanted you dead, Absolon. It was the best I could do.”
He flinched but pressed on. “Your best was not good enough. One word from you and that notion would have flown from their heads. They were all cowards, but then again so are you. Now, again, why did you do it?”
“I don’t know what other truth to tell you. They wouldn’t have stood for you remaining with us.”
“Why?”
“You know why.”
“Say it!"
“Because you didn’t fit into my plans.” His mouth twisted on the words, wrung so forcefully from his heart. “I’m sorry.”
Absolon approached. “You don’t know the meaning of the word, but you’ll learn. When your time comes.” Absolon crouched in front of him, well within Ragnar’s reach, but the scowl on his face was warning enough to not attack. “I had wondered if the deaths of thirty men would make you see, but you have overseen the deaths of hundreds. I was blind to think it would make a difference to your heart, but you are Ragnar the Heartless.”
He was wrong. He held onto Absolon’s gaze as the shame in his wary heart grew heavy. His men had wanted Absolon dead, as proof of his commitment to their band. It would have assured his place above them.
Ragnar the Heartless.
But he couldn’t go through with it. He had been stuck between following his goals and succumbing to his heart. He had compromised and from then, his authority had never sat easy. He had fought them to leave Absolon alone and alive. He’d paid for his abandoned lover’s freedom and had worried whether that peasant had completed his charge. He’d passed more sleepless nights than he could count hoping Absolon were alive.
Absolon didn’t understand what he had been through. How could he? He was young, carefree, low born, and knew nothing of the pressures of leadership. He only cared for his own selfish ends, one of which Ragnar had enjoyed many times. But no matter how many nights of passionate rutting they shared, the dawn light still came and shone on all of Ragnar’s failures. His ambition did not tolerate distractions, and he would not suffer another.
Ragnar had given the apology Absolon sought, but if he didn’t recognize it, that was his own foolishness and Ragnar’s boon. Absolon would keep returning until he got it and the more singular his focus became, the more he would become blind to a surprise attack.
He fought Absolon’s expectant gaze and relinquished nothing until the for
ce of it drove his captor from his cell with a curse. The door closed and locked, but it would not stay so forever.
Ragnar considered starving himself to death and stealing Absolon’s victory. There was always something aggravating about a prisoner who went to his death willingly, as if it were their choice all along. Where was the justice in that? He’d hanged a soldier who refused to fight another war—against the Danes, against the Russians, against anyone. He didn’t resist when they took him, didn’t cry when the noose went around his neck, didn’t even ask for a bag over his head, though they’d put one on him anyway. He called them cowards but had died just the same. To that hanged man, death was not punishment but triumph. Ragnar couldn’t remember his name, but he’d taken his lesson.
Only death was not an option. He wanted his freedom. And with Absolon’s considerable strength and the cursed touch of his hands, there was little hope of besting him in a fistfight. He would have to sneak away. But to do that he had to win Absolon’s trust.
Before, he had earned it in his bed, but that now seemed an unlikely option. He had time, limited though it was. He could find a way. All heroes needed some skill at diplomacy, at wringing secrets from their foes, and dripping poison into their ear. He already knew plenty of Absolon’s: his need for companionship, his tenderness for weaker things, his trust in those who were his betters.
Only he didn’t know who or what Absolon had become. He had to find out. That would be the key to his freedom.
He passed the hours listening to the sounds beyond his cell, using a concentration that started aggressive in its nature, but later softened to a meditation with each noise passing through his awareness. Much of the day was silent. Again, no people. Again, the wind. Again, the caw of ravens. But as for the sounds of farm life, there were none. Whatever Absolon was doing out there, it wasn’t much. For someone who craved the love of others, he had chosen a strange abode. It appeared the dog had been his only companion. Where was he? And why did Absolon live such a winnowed existence?
Warlords, Witches and Wolves: A Fantasy Realms Anthology Page 18