The king’s men were overrun; he could hear their death cries all around him. He knew he should—he must—jump deeper into the fray and lead his men, bring them together in a push forward. He was their leader now, with Eadric dead at his feet. But he couldn’t leave his wife’s side.
Astrid fought madly, striking down any who came for her—and fighters from both sides came. No one knew where she stood. Leofric didn’t know where she stood. He only knew she must survive, or he would not. He couldn’t lose her as well.
Her friend, the big blond, stayed near her as well, and even in the midst of such chaos, Leofric knew raging jealousy. The blond man was as protective of Astrid as he was—fighting off the king’s men from her just as Leofric fought off the raiders. Had she been his woman? Was this for whom she had pined?
Leofric knew Astrid had been experienced with the pleasures of the flesh before him; underneath the trauma left by the Black Walls had been a considerable understanding of the ways men and women pleasured each other and themselves. Was this the man who’d given her that understanding?
Then he wanted to cut this man down before this fight was over.
But already it nearly was. His men lay dead and dying all around him, and the air shook more with the sounds of their suffering than with the clang of swords and shields. It was time to call a retreat, to lift Eadric’s body and fall back, to return to the castle and mount a defense until reinforcements could arrive.
As he opened his mouth to call the order, he heard Dunstan shout near his side—a sound of great pain. His attention swung from Astrid, and he saw his oldest and dearest friend down, lifting his broadsword with one hand, trying to hold off a looming raider.
Leofric lunged forward with a whoop and slashed the raider across the back. He roared and turned, and Leofric slashed again, sinking his longsword into the man’s head and pulling it through. The top half of his head slid away on a slant, and the raider fell dead.
Leofric ran to Dunstan. “You’re struck!”
“A flesh wound only,” Dunstan gasped with a strained grin.
Not a flesh wound. He was open from ribs to hip. He would die if he wasn’t seen to right away; he would likely die regardless.
“RETREAT!” Leofric bellowed. “RETREAT!” He heard the call move through his men and could sense them already pulling back, glad for the permission. This battle was badly lost.
Crouching to lift his friend, he heard a wild, feminine roar, and a shadow fell over him. He twisted and saw Astrid right with him, her axe held in both her hands, crossways, blocking a blow from the giant raider.
The man’s blood-drenched face was twisted with rage and hatred, and his fierce blue eyes were focused on Leofric. The blow Astrid had blocked had been meant for him. She was far smaller than the giant, but she held him off, straining against his force.
“Nej! Nej, Vali!” she grunted, and the giant shifted his attention to her. He backed off. They exchanged a few words Leofric didn’t understand, and the giant stalked away.
There was shouting going on all around. Leofric swung his head back and forth, seeing his men retreating. The raiders seemed to be allowing it; the blond man so devoted to Astrid seemed to be calling them off.
Astrid crouched at his side. Her head and gown were splashed with blood. It dripped from her hair and down her face. “Go! Go now!”
“Come with me! Come home!” He grabbed her hand. She still held the axe that Eadric had dropped at the blond man’s feet the year before. Her axe. “Astrid, please!”
She stared hard into his eyes. “I love you,” she said.
He heard her farewell in her tone. “Come home, my love. Come home.”
With one last hard look into his eyes, she stood. Turning her back to him, she walked toward the camp. To the blond man.
Dunstan groaned, and Leofric set aside his heartbreak and lifted his friend to his feet. As he dragged him toward the woods, few of his men were still near the camp. He had no choice but to leave his brother’s body behind.
There was more heartbreak in this day than he could withstand.
~oOo~
The king took the news of Eadric’s death and the realm’s loss with stony calm and then sent out riders to neighboring kingdoms with requests for aid. The men who’d been stationed away from the castle, keeping the harbor and borders secure, had been called back and were arriving, but the losses in the battle had been so drastic that their own soldiers wouldn’t be enough.
The raiders could not even be faulted. One of the king’s own men had made the first strike, breaking a parley. Even the barbarians seemed to understand the sanctity of a parley, and to know the dishonor of breaking it.
They were not barbarians, in truth. Knowing Astrid, Leofric couldn’t see them as the savages he’d believed them to be. They had a deep honor not unlike that which he himself held dear, and they had tight bonds among them. Those bonds were now tearing him apart.
Dunstan was inside the castle, still alive but on the very cusp of death. Winifred was on her knees in the chapel, doing her wifely duty by praying for his recovery. A true wife would have been at his side.
Until this day, Leofric had believed that Astrid would have been at his side, had he been injured. But she’d turned her back. She’d left him.
If he allowed the black thoughts to have sway in his mind, he would have been unmanned. So he kept his focus on duty and locked his losses away to be felt at another time. For now, he had to amass a force that could defend the castle from without. He turned his attention on the map before him, trying to anticipate how the raiders would move through the wood.
They would have Astrid to guide them, and Leofric had shown her all the secrets of the forest during their rides together. Those rides had been among the few times she had shown true happiness.
“Your Highness!” one of the officers called out nearby. When no one responded, he called out again, “Your Highness! Sir!”
Remembering that it was he being hailed, that he was now the Crown Prince, that his brother was dead, Leofric felt a chill through his heart. He looked up at the officer—a young man of noble birth, a third son. Officer of the King’s Army was a worthy and honorable vocation for such a man.
“What is it?”
“A rider approaches. It is Her Gra…Her High…It is Astrid of the North, Your Highness.”
He was at the man before he’d realized he’d moved from the table. He grabbed his arms. “Is she alone? Does she bring the raiders with her?”
The officer blinked. “I—she—”
“Answer!”
“She rides alone, sir! But she pulls a litter. She brings Prince Eadric home.”
Around them, the men had gone quiet. Leofric looked west, the direction of the raiders’ camp, and saw Astrid approaching. She rode his grey charger, and she had not cleaned the blood from her face.
Men lined up as she rode past. They didn’t brandish their swords, but neither did they bow. The men who’d been in the battle had seen her fight for no side but her own survival. No one knew where her loyalty lay, so no one knew if she was still due the respect of a member of the royal family. But when the litter passed them, they dropped to one knee in honor of their fallen prince and commander.
Leofric walked into the path so that she rode directly at him. She pulled up his horse. He took hold of the reins as she dismounted.
She’d come unarmed and alone. He didn’t know whether that was arrogance or trust.
He didn’t know if she was staying.
“Are you here? Have you come home?”
In a rare gesture for her, she brushed her fingers over his cheek. “I bring Eadric home. Other dead wait for you to come for them. We not stop you. If you not attack, we not.”
We. The pain he’d held off stormed inside him. “Astrid, are you going back home?”
“I not know where is home.” She dropped her eyes, and Leofric saw that she was in almost as much pain as he was.
“With me. It’s
with me.”
She turned and looked at all the men staring at her, their expressions carefully blank, but their hands on the pommels of their swords.
“Is it?” she asked when she turned back to him.
He hooked his hand around the back of her neck and dragged her close. She fought against his kiss at first, but he ignored her wish and claimed his own.
After a moment stiff in his arms, she gave in and returned his passion. She tasted like blood and sweat, and the memory of the battle swirled around them and made him feel desperate.
“It is,” he whispered against her mouth. “It is. If there is a question in your heart, it’s because you fear to make the choice. This is your home now. With me.”
Her eyes held raw anguish, and Leofric’s heart bled. He knew where her loyalty lay: in both places. With her people, and with him. She had no bond to his world; in his world, she had suffered horribly, and she was still, even with a crown on her head, a source of gossip and judgment. But she loved him. In her world, she was a leader, and she was admired. Her whole past was there. Her friends. Her life.
She had lost it all forever, and then it had been returned to her.
But she loved him.
He’d never lived anywhere but in the castle. He’d never known any other world but this one. His family, friends, memories—his life—were all part of the earth on which he stood. He couldn’t imagine how the pull between her home and her love might rend her, but he could see in her eyes that it did.
The solution was to keep her with her love and return her to her home.
If he went with her—but no. He was the Crown Prince now. Even if he might have entertained such an idea before, even if her people would allow him to go to their world, now he could not. He was his father’s only heir. He couldn’t leave Mercuria.
So it was an impossibility, and the only solution.
“Come to the castle with me. We’ll bring Eadric home together.”
She nodded, and Leofric considered that a small victory. As long as she was with him, he had time to find a solution. There had to be one.
~oOo~
Winifred had fled from the chapel as soon as she saw the prince being carried in. When the king entered and walked slowly down the aisle toward the body of his son, Leofric and Astrid were alone with him.
He regarded Astrid’s bloody face for an endless time, and Astrid stood quietly, her eyes on his, and let him. Leofric tried to interpret that silent stare. He could see no malice in it, from his father or his wife. Only sorrow and uncertainty.
“You are our only hope, Astrid,” his father finally said. “You made a vow before God and are wedded. I know that you feel torn, but the answer is there. You have chosen your home. You have chosen this family. In this place, where we now stand, you made a sacred, unbreakable promise.”
“Many promises broken here. Pretty words mean nothing here. You tell many lies.” Her speech had lost some of the precision she’d achieved during recent weeks, almost as if she were shedding the duchess she’d become.
“Did you lie, Astrid? When you swore to love and honor my son and to be with him until death will part you?”
Leofric held his breath. He knew she’d spoken an empty vow at her baptism, but he didn’t believe the words they’d said to each other had been empty, no matter if they’d sworn them to a God she didn’t believe in. If she said now that she’d lied, he’d know that she’d decided where her home was.
Elsewhere.
She didn’t answer his father. Instead, she turned her eyes to Leofric, and he saw that agonizing conflict. He took heart in it; in the deep pain in her beautiful eyes, he saw that her love for him was just as deep as his for her. She had made him a true promise at this altar.
But to be true to him, she would have to give up this magnificent gift that had landed on their shores: her past. Her friends. All the things she’d mourned so hard for throughout the year since Eadric had knocked her senseless and carried her away.
At the thought of his brother, Leofric turned and studied his body. The raiders had treated it well, setting his mail chestpiece so that the gaping wound in his throat was not so vicious to look upon. His face had been washed, and his eyes closed.
Astrid had done all of it; he knew it without asking. She’d treated his brother with good care. With loving care. And now, as he sighed at his brother’s body, thinking of all that he’d lost, that he might still lose, Astrid came to his side and took his hand, sliding her fingers between his.
He could feel her sapphire ring, still on her finger.
“I not know how I give up my people. Or you. I not know how I can,” she murmured, her eyes on Eadric.
“I know, my love. I don’t know, either.”
The king came up and stood at Leofric’s other side, near Eadric’s head. “You are all that is left of my family. You are all that is left of my hope. Astrid, you’ve felt powerless and exploited here, I know. But do you understand that you hold the future of the realm in your hands?”
She turned and looked past Leofric to his father. “Unless you kill me, ja?”
Leofric winced. It was a cold statement to make, especially here before Eadric’s body—and it was the truth.
“A wise king would kill you rather than allow you to sail away and leave the death of his line in your wake. But I will not. You haven’t forgiven me. Perhaps that is the penance you require—the true end of us.” He smiled. “I would like to have quiet with my sons now. Will you wait without for Leofric? I would ask that you not leave without a proper farewell, if leaving us is what you intend.”
“Night is fast upon us in any event. Stay the night, Astrid. At least that.” Leofric squeezed the hand he yet held.
She squeezed back, but she shook her head. “They come, if I not go back. I must go, or they come to fight.”
This was when he would lose her, then. Everything inside him seemed to die at once. “Astrid…”
Her other hand came up and cupped his cheek. “Love.” It was with that single word that she’d told him she loved him for the first time. And, it seemed, for the last time.
She blinked, and tears dropped from her eyes. Then she unwound her hand from his and walked away.
When he would have gone after her, his father put a restraining hand on his arm. Leofric stood and watched her every step away from him. When the chapel doors closed with a hollow echo, he closed his eyes and let them swim in tears he couldn’t shed.
“All is not yet lost, my son. As much as we’ve lost, even with Eadric gone from us and his body cold before us, the Lord shines a light in my mind and shows me hope. Let us leave the priests and women to attend the preparations for Eadric’s rest. You and I must speak now and consider.”
~oOo~
Late that night, his mind reeling and his heart aching, Leofric went to Dunstan’s chambers. Elfleda answered the door, and curtsied deeply. Winifred was nowhere to be seen.
“Where is the countess?”
He saw the moue of contempt before the old woman could clear it from her wrinkled features. “The sight of suffering upsets her, Your Highness. She is in her room, at prayer.”
“Ah. How is he?”
“He is blessed, sir. The wound did not cut deeply enough to rend inside. The hours to bring him back to the castle wore hard, and the wound will take long to heal, but there is a chance for him to be well again.” She patted him on his arm—a more familiar gesture than was appropriate, but one Leofric appreciated nonetheless. “He has times of wakefulness and has been sorry to be alone. If it please Your Highness, he would be happy to see a friend’s face when next he wakes.”
On impulse, he caught Elfleda’s hand and held it between his own. “You are a good woman, Elfleda. All my life, you’ve been here to take care of us all, and you’ve done so more than ably. Thank you.”
The old woman’s cheeks went bright red, and her eyes glittered with sudden tears. “It’s a true honor to serve this family, Your Highness.” A
s he let her hand go, she added, “Might I ask after your princess?”
“I think Astrid has left us.”
She swallowed and took a deep breath. “Ah. I’m sorry to hear that. The poor dear.”
“You’re not angry?”
Elfleda gave him a quick study before she responded. “May I speak plainly, Your Highness?”
“As I’ve said before, you speak more plainly with your face than most people at court ever speak with their tongues, so please. Indulge yourself.”
That earned him a secret smile. “She loves you true, but I don’t think she ever understood how to cast off the Black Walls.”
Soul's Fire (The Northwomen Sagas Book 3) Page 29
