by Faye, Amy
"How soon do you need us to be?"
"I could tell him that you told me you would steal it tonight. If he believes me, then he'll be waiting. All it would take would be one of you to break in. The other two could lay in wait. A double-ambush."
"How do we know he'll believe you?"
"Leave that up to me," she said, trying to hide the fact that she wondered the same question.
She wasn't even sure how to get him to talk to her on her own schedule. She would have to hope that he had an agent watching, and that he would call her soon after they left. Otherwise, she would have to get creative and find a way to signal him.
She closed her eyes as they left, took a deep breath. This was going to be quite a plan, and she had to hope to heaven that it would go off without a hitch.
Otherwise, someone was going to get hurt.
She was surprisingly calm about the fact that she knew it would be her.
Gunnar's first instinct was to go in, but he tempered it. He'd learned a long time ago that his instincts needed to be guided by his mind. That was the only thing that made him a good leader, the only advantage he knew that he would have over Valdemar.
He shifted on his perch and looked around. How far would he have to go to escape the English ambush completely? He could still hear, at a distance, what sounded like people padding through the forest. They would find his horse a mile to the north. Perhaps they'd already found it.
Then they would decide that he would be in the area. But how far would they range, and how close would they look? He had to gamble that he was in a good position; up in the tree, he could just see the camp.
If the English approached it from any direction, he would see it easily. When he approached himself, anyone with a good view would be able to see it just as well. It was too early for sneaking.
He'd picked the spot because they had already marched where the line of torches would be. He would be approaching straight toward one. Anyone in a good position to see him would be looking from the light into the dark—barely able to see a thing in the thick inky black of night.
If he were caught, though, or the English were to find him and signal the rest, then it wouldn't mean anything. He couldn't warn anyone of anything, and he wouldn't make it in to get his answers.
He regarded his options, considering and turning the problem over in his mind. If he moved, he only opened himself up to more people seeing him. He couldn't risk it, so he would have to wait. He looked around, trying to move as little as possible, until he could see where the sun sat low on the horizon, already dipped nearly completely below.
But it was not time yet. He took a deep breath, waited, and watched. No one came or left. He was thankful for that, at least. No sign of treason, based on a few hours' watch. It wasn't conclusive, not in the slightest, but it was some comfort at least.
As the sun continued to circle around the other side of the world, and darkness fell, the sounds of English looking for him diminished until all was silent save for the faint sounds of voices coming from the Dane camp.
But still Gunnar waited and watched. Men came out to stand watch, and he examined their position and where they swept their eyes. How much they were paying attention, and to what.
Something was going to happen in camp, he was sure of that. Though three men stood at the corners of camp they looked over their shoulders too often. Things were tense, and something was going to happen soon.
Gunnar could easily wait all night, wait until it happened and use the diversion to slip in without a lick of trouble. But without knowing what might be happening, he couldn't afford that risk. It was possible that what Gunnar had feared had exactly happened, that the band had split internally.
It didn't take long to put together a list of the men who would be upset to see him left behind, add to that the forced marches and the fact that as far as most of them knew he was injured for the first time they'd known of.
Then take the ones who wouldn't think that way, Valdemar's lackeys, and… the sides weren't hard to figure. Not at all. If that was the case, it wasn't hard to believe that Valdemar might find the opportunity to apply pressure in just the right place. A knife might find the right throat in the darkness.
He couldn't keep waiting, not any more. Gunnar kept himself low, and moved slowly. Painfully slow, through the grass. It was only twenty yards from the treeline to the camp, but it took him the better part of ten minutes to cross the gap.
Taking care was important. He couldn't afford to be caught before the time was right. Not before he'd warned Leif of the danger lurking ahead of them, and even then being caught was only a last-resort effort.
He took a deep breath and started moving again, having to force himself to move with an aching, unnatural slowness. But when he made it past the distracted guards, he already had his reward.
He heard the sound of footfalls from around a tent, coming towards him. A patrol? Suddenly the time for slow moving was gone in an instant, and he had to take a few quick, loping steps until he was around another tent.
With luck they wouldn't have been listening for him and they'd not take a quick jag over to where he now crouched, waiting. The question of which tent he wanted hadn't crossed his mind before, but now that he waited for the footsteps to pass by, he realized that he had no idea.
They weren't marked, after all. Everyone knew, because you saw the man set it up. But not Gunnar. He cursed himself for the oversight. Most men would still be in the middle of camp, of course. The drinking and relaxing, what little they had of it, would go on for a little while longer at least.
But he couldn't risk showing himself there. Perhaps a peek would at least tell him if he was right to worry. A quick glance to either side told him that no one watched him at the moment, and then he was across the way, and a short few seconds later he had a good line of sight.
Not as many as normal, he decided, but it didn't take more than a moment to realize that he was only looking at half of them. All of these were Valdemar's loyalists. A quick look around showed nothing of those who would chafe under his leadership.
It was too odd, and yet he hadn't seen any sign that the other half had split off. They'd just all, in a bunch it seemed, gone off to their tents. Gunnar listened closely for a minute to see if he heard the sound of stirring in the tent beside him.
Then he moved on to the next, and the next. Some sign that someone occupied it. Finally he caught one, and ducked down to look inside through the bottom edge, but—nothing. Magnus wouldn't have the authority to help him, but he sat on his bedroll, legs crossed and his sword leaning against his shoulder.
He looked ready for a fight.
Then Gunnar did the same again, listening then looking. A second wrong guess, but on the third he was lucky. He pulled the bottom up a bit and slipped himself inside. It made plenty of noise, but by the time he was in Leif had already realized who it was.
"Gunnar!" He whispered. The surprise wasn't hard to hear in his voice.
"Back from the dead," he answered, though the jest didn't touch his expression.
"Very much so! What's happened to you?"
"That's not important, right now. You have to know. There's an English ambush waiting for you. A hundred strong, at least."
Leif cursed under his breath. "You are sure?"
"I've seen them myself." He touched his thigh where they'd grazed his leg, but it hadn't healed yet. He didn't have time to worry at it right now, he had important things to take care of yet.
Leif nodded silently. "You should join us," he said after a long moment. "Tonight, we rid ourselves of a thorn in our side. Valdemar has a plan to ambush him, but we've tricked him."
"How have you tricked him?"
"Your witch gave him false information, or so she says. We've got more men waiting. When things get ugly, we give the signal, and nearly a full score of men descend on his little ambush."
Another question that Deirdre would have to answer, he thought. She'd been a busy little bee since
he had been gone. If it wasn't already certain, his next stop had just been decided for him.
Gunnar shook his head. He had things to take care of.
Twenty
Deirdre laid with her eyes closed and tried to sleep. Her ears strained to hear the noises outside, the sound of the Northmen speaking their strange Northern language. It distracted her, made it harder to sleep, but she couldn't stop herself, either.
Any minute, a shout would go up. Surprise and alarm, it would overtake the camp, and then everything would go to hell. She'd been too lax. She'd let things follow the course that everyone else wanted and now that she wanted to play she found boogeymen in every dark corner.
The entire force was arrayed against her, and she'd given them all the time in the world to choose their positions, to hide their traps. Finally she sat up and rubbed the sting from her eyes. She wasn't going to sleep. That much was clear. So she might as well look out at the stars.
That had always calmed her down, no matter what had happened to her. Nothing was nearly the equal to what she had to deal with now, but it was something. More than she had before, at least.
She slid her feet off the back and sat. Her feet kicked forward and back, swinging naturally, and she craned her head back. There was the archer, there was the snake and the ladle. She counted off the constellations. The sky was unusually clear, and it gave her an amazing view of the stars.
But even that wasn't enough. She was too focused on everything else, too impatient. Something was about to happen, everyone could feel it. Their voices told her so, even if she couldn't understand their words. More than likely nobody would talk about it even if she could have understood them.
It was something that each of them would ignore until it was just too late. Or until something happened that they could react to. She could imagine them all waiting, each trying to look as if they were casual, but all of them thinking of what would almost certainly come next.
Certainly, Valdemar would have put the word out, at least to a few, of what his plan was. Even if things went exactly the way that he wanted, then Leif and Ulf wouldn't go quietly. Eirik was an odd one, unpredictable.
So some of them were waiting for something, maybe they knew what to expect, maybe they didn't. But the tension of the night would tell them that whatever it was, they would need their blades for it. And the others would pick up on their tension, and it would only make things that much worse.
Her mind drifted to the question of what would happen next. At some point, one of the three would sneak into Valdemar's tent. They'd probably find an excuse to get him out, first. That would be the smart way, but she couldn't begin to say if they would. It was safer to assume they would.
He would let it happen, because his plan needed to move forward. Then the sneaking would happen, and then the curtain would fall, and then a second and a third until the cards were all on the table.
Who would be holding the trump, at the end of it, she wondered? It was an unpredictable situation to say the least. If she had succeeded in her little play, and Valdemar was deposed, then she'd gambled the right way this time.
She cleared the thought out of her mind. There wasn't time to think about the good outcomes that might happen. She had let herself grow slack. She needed to be planning for when things went wrong. The less that she thought through the future, the more that they would go wrong for her.
She had to make up for it by thinking ahead, by making plans. There was the question, of course, of what happened if they got rid of Valdemar, but something went wrong. It wouldn't take an incredible deduction to realize that she was behind it, and it would leave her in the same position that she'd been in before.
A knife in the dark, all that they have to do is let their protection slip for an instant and she was dead. Would that bother them? Perhaps it would wound their pride, but Deirdre doubted that they would lose much sleep over it. No, she couldn't rely on any sort of charity coming from the Northmen. It was safer that way.
If that happened, then she would have to find a way out, and fast. The boys, who continued to pretend quite valiantly that they were injured, slept behind her. She might be able to use one of them to free her, now that their wounds were healing.
She could cut herself free, and in the confusion of the split camp she could be gone. It would be easy, but then she would be in the same position that she'd been in before Gunnar left. A hundred miles or more from home, and nothing to stop someone from waylaying her on the road.
Preferable to death, though. Infinitely preferable to death. She had to keep thinking. Had to keep moving through the problem in her head. Slow, methodical, patterned thinking. That was how she was going to overcome this.
She wasn't good at it. She'd never practiced, never wanted to. She had never faced a challenge like this one before, and now she was beginning to regret having never given a good deal of thought to it before, when her teacher had hounded her endlessly about it.
She pursed her lips. If Valdemar was caught off-guard, it would be a quick thing to have him die before he could alert anyone. More likely, he'd see it coming at least a moment or two before the lethal blow, long enough to give a cry and start things going in the camp.
She followed the logic to its conclusion. What if she was wrong, though? What if he wasn't caught off-guard? What if he didn't see it coming a few moments before the critical moment?
What if he saw the whole thing coming? What if he'd thought a step ahead of her, and had allowed her one out? That out was simple, just tell them about the trap. She'd be doing exactly what they wanted, exactly what he wanted, and she would think that it was clever.
It put her back into his pocket, as deep as she could go. So deep that she'd never be able to get away from the appearance that she was loyal to him. The thought was jarring, but she had to keep herself in check. There was no time for worrying about whether or not she had stepped into a trap.
Now she had to figure out what she was going to do to get out of it, if she had. Deirdre closed her eyes. No time for looking at the stars now. She turned, pressed her back against the bench seat and pulled her feet back up into the wagon.
If that were the case, he would have planned for it. She was supposed to think that she had duped him. He would act shocked and betrayed when the hammer came down on the rebellious Northmen. Then the threats would come.
But would he mean any of it? Not likely. She'd done his work for him, rounding up any and all dissidents in the camp and serving them up on a silver platter. He should be thanking her.
If that happened, then she would be alone again, and up against a much more worrying opponent. Someone who had seen through her more than once. She would be lucky if she managed to make it out. She certainly wouldn't be able to keep ignoring her role in all of it, wouldn't able to keep pretending that it wasn't her responsibility to make moves for herself.
Finally she was beginning to feel the sides, all pressing in at once. She should have started this sooner. Should have thought all of this sooner. Now she was trapped in a corner, and everything was pressing on her.
The worst situation of all to be in, if she was dealing with a smart opponent she may well be doomed no matter what she did. The only options available to her would be ones that led to her own ruin. She had to hope against hope that there was more to it than either of them realized, because without it she was already a dead woman in the worst case scenario.
It was always a worst-case scenario.
It occurred to her that she hadn't heard any movement outside for a while. The voices continued in their strained conversation, though fewer and fewer seemed to be speaking. It felt as if an eternity was passing.
Some time tonight, it had to happen. They'd planned it, the whole thing had been agreed on. If she had given Valdemar bad information, would he punish her for it? How badly? She had to assume that he would. It was the only safe thing to think.
The noise of someone moving beside the wagon was soft. She almost did
n't hear it, but with the tension of the night, her ears strained for even the tiniest sound.
And then someone came around, his face twisted in a mixed scowl of frustration and concentration. Deirdre couldn't keep silent as the wave of relief swept over her.
"Gunnar."
The cart wasn't hard to find. The prisoners were kept in the front wagon, with the medical wagon tied back behind. Not much different from how he had set it up himself, he thought. Good.
He kept himself low, even as he moved past them. Nobody would be watching, here. What was the point of guarding them closely? The prisoners were all spineless, and if they tried to escape then the perimeter guards would see them easily.
But if he were found before he was ready, Gunnar knew, he would be in a good deal of trouble. He turned the corner silently, came around, ready for whatever he saw but most prepared to shake Deirdre awake.
He needed his answers, and he was going to get them, regardless of whether it ruined her beauty sleep. Why had she betrayed him? Why had she then left behind the signal flowers? Why was he taking wounds again, and why had he been healing before?
When he saw her, though, he wasn't prepared for the feeling that shot through him. Relief surged through as he saw her face, as he saw that she was still sitting upright. She wasn't hurt, not too badly. He felt the frustration and the hardness fading away.
He wanted nothing more than to get his answers, and then he would move on. Painless and easy, no problems. He could hardly keep the smile off his face, but he forced himself to stay silent. As he put a foot on the buckboard and swung himself up, ignoring the pain of the cut in his leg and the soreness in his body, she spoke his name.
"What's going on here," he began. Simple, direct. It was the right way to go, he thought.
"Everything's gone crazy since you left," she said, her eyes frantic as she searched for the words.
He sneered at the choice of words. Since he left, indeed. The hard edge that he had felt waning sharpened again, reminding him what exactly he had been upset about. Yes, he had left. That was the right way to put it.