by Amy Faye
It didn't matter much, she reasoned. She would let him think what he wanted. She needed him, after all, if she hoped to get away herself. She wouldn't be able to do it on her own. But if she lacked the speed, the strength, and the stealth to get away on her own, he gave her all of them in spades.
It would be easy for Gunnar to fight his way out. She only had to be faster than him, and if he were injured it would not be hard. If he were uninjured, then it would be easier still. He could just carry her. And with a two-hundred pound distraction, she could sneak out with no one any the wiser.
No, the real problem wasn't that she couldn't find a use for him, it was that she would need to make sure that he was on board with whatever plan she devised. To that end, she would have to make sure that she got on his good side.
She shouldn't have needled him while he was laying there injured. Kicking a man when he was down was the furthest thing from what she wanted to do, and the furthest from what she should have been doing. It was stupid, but she couldn't help it. She'd have to make it up to him when he woke.
The wagon's abrupt stop, though, made her pause. What was happening? Another ambush? Could she run? Without Gunnar focusing on her…
She looked at him, looked at the bright red mark that had already bled through the shirt she'd used as a makeshift bandage. If she left him, if she left these other two, how long would they last? It was one thing to say that if she stayed, more would die. They might die anyways.
How could she know for certain that the loss of a handful of northmen would stop the rest from killing? Perhaps their deaths would only drive the group to greater heights, pushing them in their grief and rage to try to avenge their comrades' deaths.
But these boys lying in the wagon, she knew for certain. Without her help, they would die. Gunnar might make it without her, with his peculiar body. Then again, he hadn't healed from the wound in his side yet.
If they'd applied the poison liberally, he should be dead from that alone, but it seemed that his ability to survive applied to more than just spears stuck through his gut, or they'd been light on poison.
She had spent half her life learning how to use herbs, to help people. Not to kill them. Not to give their enemies weapons to be used against them. She straightened herself and tried to watch out the flap of the wagon.
She wasn't about to let three people die so that she could have a hope of getting home again. Not when she had no way of even knowing how to get there.
The sound of someone outside the wagon, though, sent a shiver down her spine. When an Englishman came into view, for a moment she hoped that he would save her. That he would decide to cut her free. She didn't have time to feel happy to see him before she realized how mistaken she'd been.
With a gleam in his eye he stepped up and into the back, his knife gleaming. It didn't take any magic to see where he was looking and know what he was thinking. He was reaching down to fiddle with his belt when a two-hundred pound blur caught him in the side, throwing him hip-first into the bench seat hard enough to hear wood splintering.
Gunnar was breathing hard, blood already starting to seep through the bandage further, trickling down his side. His hand flashed to his belt, reaching for a knife that had been taken from him. Too late, he saw the English reading his own knife, and he only managed to catch the man's knife with his forearm, turning aside what would have been a bad wound.
A heavy fist hit the man in the chin. Deirdre thought that she saw the man's eyes rolling around in his head, as if he were about to pass out, but after a half-second he had straightened up and another arcing stab made it around Gunnar's guard and the blade caught in his side.
The Northman grabbed for the other's arm, but the Englishman was too quick. He pulled back and attacked again, embedding the point deep in Gunnar's shoulder. The smile on Gunnar's face told the Englishman and Deirdre both what a mistake that had been.
He tried to pull his hand free, but it was no hope. Gunnar wrapped a thick arm around the knife-arm of the Englishman and then twisted with a sickening pop. When Gunnar dropped his arm, the Englishman still crying out in agony, the arm hung limply at his side.
Gunnar took that moment to pull the dagger from his shoulder, wincing just a bit as he pulled it free, and started to drive the blade home in the enemy's chest.
Deirdre watched with mixed amazement and horror. This was who he was, she realized. He wasn't a farmer who had been soldiering on the side. Not like the men that she had seen in her life. Not like the other prisoners.
Gunnar was good at one thing, and it was killing. She couldn't begin to say whether he felt bad about it, whether he thought about the lives he snuffed out. But he was better than a good fighter—if he had been uninjured, how much faster, how much stronger would he have been?
He pulled the knife free and kicked the Englishman back to the ground, sending him toppling. That was a mistake, Deirdre thought, but she didn't want to say anything. Couldn't afford to say anything, for fear that her premonition of someone seeing the body fall and coming to investigate would come true.
She realized a moment later, as two more men climbed the buckboard, investigating the wagon where their comrade had fallen from, how silly that thought had been. A body falling out was enough reason to investigate.
What did it say about how things were going outside, though, that three separate English soldiers had found time to investigate the wagons in the back?
She didn't have time to ask. The wagon was dangerously full, and all it would take was one bad turn for a knife to find her. Her mind immediately flashed to the bottle, the one that no one had come back to collect. She reached down, thankful that it hadn't rolled far.
Her hand wrapped around it, and she gave a silent apology for what she was about to do.
Gunnar's hand started to move, even the easy and practiced movement of stabbing sending a shock of pain through him that would have told him to stop if he could afford to. Then, before the knife hit home, a loud, high-pitched thump rang out and the man slumped to the ground as a wide-eyed Deirdre watched him fall.
The bottle of liquor in her hand fell to the ground and she pulled herself back away from the man's unconscious body, unable to take her eyes off him. Gunnar smiled to himself at the sight as he turned himself to the remaining Englishman.
Unlike the other two he had already pulled his sword free of its scabbard, and though the weapon would be unwieldy in the close quarters of the wagon it meant that he had a considerable amount more to work with when it came to swordplay.
He slapped away a thrust and put his elbow into Gunnar's gut, pulling the sword back again before the Dane could right himself. It would be hard to kill him, but only one good thwack with the blade would put Deirdre in the grave, and Gunnar's hopes of reclaiming command would be dead along with her.
He wasn't sure that he could afford the time to ready his knife again as the sword started to move, so Gunnar used his shoulder again, trying to dive out the back of the wagon before the rope that had been tied 'round his wrists came taut as he breached the outside.
Rain hit him, the drops bigger than they'd appeared from inside, and lightning crashed seemingly only feet away. Gunnar smiled. Thor had decided to join in for their glory, as well.
What could it have meant for the fight he was in now, though? Gunnar's shoulders strained, the twist and pull of the rope causing a bad ache. He could hear the wood straining to keep him up, but even still he tried to pull himself back into the wagon.
He was unable to twist back to face it, so his shoulders just kept pulling, tighter and tighter as he tried to either fall the rest of the way, or get back in. The wood splintered behind him and then with a pop he fell.
The fall itself wouldn't have been a problem, but as he took the drop the English brought his hands up defensively, sending the point of the sword through his shoulder, and Gunnar cried out in agony. The pain brought him back to the present, pushing away thoughts of what the Gods were thinking of the battle that he fought in.<
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Gunnar had no time to think about whether or not Thor supported what he was doing. The way that his vision danced in front of him, he might only have moments to finish the fight. With his hands tied, and the knife held between them, he brought it down hard into the English skull, bringing it down again and again until the enemy soldier stopped moving.
Then he turned and surveyed the battlefield. No casualties, he noted, on the Dane side. That was good, at least. But they all seemed to have their hands full, even as the English bodies piled up. He wanted to join them, wanted to take his share of the glory, but…
He turned his blurring vision on Deirdre. She could protect herself, he thought, smiling at the sound of the bottle coming down on the English head. But not if they had another pair of men come through. He would have to stay, to protect her. As he'd promised.
Thunder rumbled around him, as if in the same moment as the thought occurred to him. He had to get back into the wagon, to protect her. He put his hands on the base, then tried to step up to the buckboard, made it halfway on, and his foot slipped on the rain-slick foothold. Deirdre reached forward, grabbing at his shirt and helping him up.
"Thank you," she said softly. His vision was starting to dim, but he couldn't afford to pass out yet. He had more to do, there would be more men coming.
But more men didn't come, and Gunnar's vision dimmed. More and more, until he could only see for flashes. Thunder rumbled as Thor tore through the battlefield, and finally he could hear the cries of victory from a thousand miles away.
He had to find Deirdre, had to make sure that she was okay. Had to make sure she wasn't hurt. He had to have her, had to keep her safe. Thor had spoken, had told him that she was necessary. And she was important to him.
She was the key to his plans to retake the band from Valdemar. And, as the delirium took her, he added to himself—the most important woman in the world and the only thing that mattered.
Then the world was black and he cursed himself because he couldn't protect her. How could he protect someone when he couldn't even move?
The question echoed in his mind, and then exhaustion and pain wrapped him up and sent him spiraling into the land of sleep.
Twelve
The noise of battle faded long before Deirdre's heart stopped racing. She'd been in the battle before, but only far away. She'd left before she had really felt the effects of the last ambush, and every raid she had known to be happening, she had been far away from—tied to a pole, or stuck sitting in the wagon.
This was the first time that she'd really had to confront it, and seeing the violence only reminded her what she had already learned about Gunnar watching him fight Valdemar.
He wasn't anything like her, not the least bit. He lived somewhere she would never be able to go. Yet, how different were they? She'd hit that man over the head, and he'd crumpled just the same.
The scene in front of her looked all quiet and peaceful, but she knew that it was misleading. The English soldier at her feet could start to wake at any moment. Gunnar lay, delirious, on the floor. If he were to wake up, she wouldn't be able to rely on him.
The knife she had kept hidden kept drawing her attention, kept reminding her that it was ready to go, any time she needed it. But that would mean going against who she was, who she'd always been. She wasn't a killer, didn't want to hurt people. She would like to help people, if possible.
But that didn't mean that she was willing to do anything to save lives. It didn't mean she was willing to die for those ideals. When a Northman's face appeared at the rear of the wagon, making sure that neither of them had escaped, and the wounded were still alive, she was surprised how happy she was to see him.
After all, these were her captors, they were the reason she had suffered so much. But it freed her from the need to choose between death and murder. And the shaved-headed man seemed to put her more at ease than the others, seemed to understand what she was going through. It gave her a certain measure of peace, thinking about it.
He reached in and pulled the English bodies out, to the floor. The one she had clobbered groaned loudly at the treatment, but Deirdre was surprised to find that she couldn't have cared less. He deserved what he'd gotten.
Then the shaved man looked at her. "You are unhurt?"
"Yes," she answered, still breathless. "Gunnar… protected me."
"Is he hurt?"
"I don't—" she struggled to get the words out. "He was hurt, but he…" she looked at him, distracted, afraid, and more than a little bit out of her mind. "Right?"
"He's tougher than most," the Northman agreed.
"I'll take a look at him, though. That's what Valdemar told me to do."
"We were able to see this group coming—no bad casualties. These three, didn't do what we expected."
The apology, if indeed that was what he had meant it to be, wasn't a particularly effective one, but she had to take it. She had other things to do.
Turning Gunnar over was hard, harder than she had expected, and when the Northman came into the wagon to help he noticed the broken bench support, where Gunnar had been tied. He must have realized the implication immediately, that he could have run if he wanted. But he said nothing and between the two of them it was an easy task to lift and turn him.
Deirdre had seen the sword stick straight through him. It was as bad a wound as she'd seen him take, but she knew that it wasn't likely that it would last more than an hour. The way that she'd seen him heal before… She started preparing her poultices again.
The motion was easy and practiced and repetitive. She'd done all the hard work already, gathering and separating the herbs out, made all the decisions. Now she just had to do what she had to do. It was almost meditative.
But the time that she had now, to think and to relax, proved to be anything but thoughtful and relaxing.
He hadn't barely been able to move, and yet he'd killed two men. Two soldiers, battle-hard, one of them ready for him with a sword in hand. Gunnar had done it with a knife, and with his hands bound and lashed to a pole.
The fury in his eyes was hard to miss. It had been terrifying, and yet at the same time, the knowledge that it had been something he did for her, it was strangely… exhilarating.
The man's body moved completely with control. He knew what he wanted, and what he had to do to get it. He was in complete control, and moved with speed that belied his size. Yet she'd seen him hurt, saw him now, delirious and unconscious. A child could overpower him, the way he was now.
She looked down at him, sleeping. He was handsome, for a Northman. Very handsome, she added, then immediately tried to take it back. There were things that Deirdre would allow herself to think and to act on.
The looks of the Northerner were not one of them. Handsome or not, protective or not, he was responsible for her situation more than anyone else. Damn his apology, damn his sympathy, damn his promises of protection.
She took a healthy amount of the crushed herb mixture and pressed it into his wound, harder than she might have liked, and he gave a loud groan of discomfort before going silent and still once more.
The groan immediately triggered a bad feeling in her. She shouldn't have let her frustration take over what she was doing. She was supposed to heal people, supposed to help them.
She had done this to herself, as much as anyone else had done it to her. She knew better than to go into town. Knew better than to trust the people that she had followed there. But they had asked her to help them.
She couldn't refuse that.
And now, just because he had taken her away from her life, destroyed so much… did that give her the right to hurt a defenseless man? No, it didn't.
She looked at him for a long moment, pressing her hand down on the wound in his side.
In a few minutes she would have to pull some out—he would heal too quickly, and what sort of effect would it have if she just left all those herbs in as the wound closed up around them?
She started pulling t
hem free a moment later, trying to ignore Gunnar's still-unconscious protests. It needed to be done. Yet…
To her very great surprise, he bled still. She pressed down hard on the wound, trying to staunch the bleeding. Perhaps it had been her own doing. Perhaps if she hadn't done any of this, then he would have been completely fine. But it was more than a little bit concerning.
He wasn't healing nearly as fast as she expected, after all.
The pain was beginning to become familiar, like a new friend. Gunnar's eyes flicked open, the sky still dark from the clouds, though from what he could see outside the rain had subsided.
Deirdre wasn't looking at him, but she noticed him stirring and leaned forward as much as the rope would let her, pressing in. Ready to mother him to her heart's content.
"How are you feeling?"
He grunted, then thought better of it. "Hurts. But I'll live."
She sat back and he watched her do it. The thoughts that entered his head, looking at the curves of her body shifting and moving as he watched, they were harder to push away. He had other things on his mind, but he couldn't do anything about them. Not without putting her at risk.
He couldn't afford that, not right now. In time, maybe something would change. He'd get his chance to take back the raid when he could, but until then, he had all the time in the world. The arousal he felt, it had been easy to ignore when he had important responsibilities, people to keep safe.
Now, he had nothing more than hours to fill and plans to make and a beautiful woman to lay near. He closed his eyes, hoping to drift back into sleep, to try to escape the pain. The ropes digging into his arms, though, reminded him of the screaming pain in his shoulders, and that in turn reminded him of the dull ache of the pernicious wound in his side and the pain from where he'd been stuck through.
He looked over at her, and watched her watching the road behind them. She looked tired, but something else was in her face, something he hadn't seen before. He couldn't begin to say for certain, but it almost looked as if she weren't so upset any more. What it is that she'd decided she wasn't mad about, he wasn't ready to say.
