by Amy Faye
His lips drew a line straight across his face, showing his discomfort—but he didn't deny it.
"What do you expect me to do? Protect them with my magical safety bubble?"
"Just stay with them, try to save as many as you can. Please. It's not fair—"
"No, it isn't," she hissed. She was seething with rage, and it seemed the madder she got that the quieter she spoke, like a knife-edge being honed.
"I can't leave them to die."
"So warn someone about it."
"I have warned someone."
The damned silence again. If he wanted her to figure out a solution to this, then he'd tell her everything. If he wanted her help then he'd ask for it. Instead, he'd already decided what the right answer was, and he'd be damned to change his mind.
Deirdre took back every good thing she'd said about him. Gunnar was a bastard and a fool and she'd be glad to see him gone. Just as soon as she was able to get back home, she'd be alone again and she liked it just fine, thank you.
She cursed and stood back up, straightening her clothing.
"I'm sorry," he said weakly.
"That's not good enough. I told you, Gunnar. I just want to go home."
"And I'll take you home. I promise."
"When? It's always just more promises with you, Gunnar. Always just something else that needs dealing with, and I'm tired of it."
She watched his temper flare at that, and watched him reign it back in. Good. Let him get angry. Maybe he'd understand one-tenth of what she was going through. She felt the fire of rage in her eyes, fought to snuff it out.
This wasn't a time for throwing a tantrum. No, that would come. Right now she had to be smart, had to talk him out of this. Had to secure her freedom before he snatched it away from her a third time.
He was so upset about her little play at getting him kicked out, but what about his betrayals? What about his broken promises?
She held herself back from saying it, but then thought bitterly that she shouldn't have. She should have let him have it. But she wasn't going to do that. She needed him to see reason, and cutting words weren't going to win her any arguments, regardless of how much she wanted to say them.
"Promise me. When do I leave? And if you lie to me, if you change the deal again—"
His face sank just a bit, and for a moment Deirdre almost felt sorry for him. She knew what he was thinking. He was trying to do the right thing for his men. She couldn't let that matter when it was her life that he was weighing that against. She had to look out for herself.
"I don't know—"
"You say it's two hours away? If they're going to be able to be saved, I can do what I can tomorrow. Tomorrow. You take me tomorrow. Promise, or take me now, because I won't go along with them forever. One day, or none."
His jaw tightened as he weighed the options. One day wasn't much. He knew it, though he couldn't be sure how much she could get done. Truth be told, neither could she. But she was willing to gamble that she could get anyone who was close to death away from the brink in the hours after they broke through the ambush.
He'd have to take those odds, if he wanted anything from her at all. Finally he nodded.
"No more changing your mind?"
"I swear it," he said. "Tomorrow night. Be ready."
She swallowed her frustration. Twenty-four hours was a long time. A lot could go wrong in that time. Then again, a lot of things could go right.
If he'd put his words in the right ears, perhaps they would be able to skirt the entire thing. Perhaps there would be no need for her to stay. She could be totally safe, without a doubt.
Something in her gut told her that thought was optimistic, and she didn't doubt it for a moment.
Gunnar didn't look back as he left. He couldn't. It burned him to admit, but Deirdre was right. He'd promised, and then he hadn't delivered, not even the tiniest bit. It wasn't comfortable for him to have to change things on her.
If she thought that he wasn't trying, though, then she was sorely mistaken. She'd find that out soon enough. Until he could follow-through on his promises, it didn't matter a whole lot what he wanted or thought. So he'd let her mistrust him. After all, it was a small price to pay.
Gunnar took a deep breath. Well, it wasn't ideal. But she was right to try to force him, or at least he understood why she did it. He wasn't going to get upset over a woman doing her best.
Nobody stopped him as he left. There wasn't anyone to stop him. They had all gone to join the fighting. The way that things had gone, he wondered whether or not anyone could have heard them, even with the noise they'd made.
He pushed the memory out of his mind. There was a time for that. There would be plenty of time in the future, when he brought her home. The question of whose home crossed his mind, but he dismissed it. What did that matter, in the long run?
Whatever happened, though, tomorrow was the last day. He'd been forced to lie twice to her already. Whether she would bear a third time or not didn't matter. He wouldn't stand for it from himself.
Gunnar swung himself back up into the tree, ignoring the pain in his leg that his vigorous lovemaking had only worsened. Stretching out, leaning back against the trunk, he settled in and started to watch the camp stirring again after their fight.
He couldn't afford to sleep, not yet and certainly not heavily enough to get much rest. There wasn't much chance that anything would happen early, but Gunnar couldn't afford that risk. He started to sing to himself, his voice low and soft.
A tune he'd learned from his mother, when he was little. The old memories threatened to come flooding back, but he held them back. No point in getting sentimental over nothing, after all. Thinking about his childhood, about his mother, only ever made Gunnar confused.
He didn't need that sort of distraction right now, not when he needed to keep focused. But without the song, without something to keep his mind and his body occupied, he would fall asleep.
So he tapped a rhythm on a branch of the tree that propped his arm up comfortably and hummed a song that brought back memories he didn't want to think about, and settled in to watch.
The moon was already more than halfway through its trip across the sky. In a few short hours, the sun's rays would start to peek through the trees. But until then, he had a long night ahead of him. And a longer day to follow.
Gunnar saw the camp moving before his brain knew what he was seeing. He'd let himself relax, and let himself slip into the twilight dangerously close to sleep as the morning started to break. Too little to do, too little to see, and he had barely been able to sleep more than a few hours a night the past week.
If he was lucky, then Leif had found a way to tell Valdemar what was coming.
No, he mentally corrected himself. Leif was more responsible than he was petty. He'd have given the message if he'd had to do it with his dying breath. If he was very lucky, then they'd managed to subdue his old rival. But Gunnar knew better than that.
He took a deep breath and let himself down from the tree slowly, keeping himself in a good position to watch which way they went, tracking west until he was able to move alongside them.
The pace was easier than the one he'd taken to catch up. Moving at a slow march was more comfortable than he'd remembered, and he slipped into the old routine easily, even as he tried to keep himself hidden. Two hours.
The question wasn't whether or not the camp knew. That was no question at all. They knew.
The real question, the one that made Gunnar's hairs stand on end, was whether or not the knowing would help. Valdemar was many things, but subtle had never been one of them.
Half an hour out, Gunnar had started to have high hopes. They doubled their pace, then tripled, and then they were moving at a dead run, the horses cantering behind to keep up.
He'd long-since given up on the idea of going around the camp. There was no way of knowing which way was the right one, and they knew that they'd been seen. They could just as easily have decided that they ne
eded to move, to maintain the surprise.
Or perhaps they would expect that the scout had gone back and reported. The English might expect them to go around, and circle around. Gunnar knew it wasn't likely, but he allowed himself some hope. If he was lucky, indeed.
If he weren't lucky, then the only option would be to punch through. There wouldn't be any winning an open fight, but if they had momentum, the Danes might be able to get past before they suffered losses too heavy to bear.
And Valdemar had built up the momentum well. If they ever stood a chance, then they did now. The English line came into view from where Gunnar stood, elevated and in a position to see as far as the thick trees would allow him.
Valdemar led. The distance was far enough that he couldn't make him out clearly, but the body language, the distance to the second place, the choice of weapon all left little doubt in Gunnar's mind.
But instead of punching through, the camp smashed into them, broke the defenses, and then…
Gunnar cursed. They should have known better. But then again, he should have known better, too. The chances of the men turning down a fight, even one that they couldn't win—Gunnar realized quickly how foolish he had been to hope against hope that they'd do what he wanted them to.
If he didn't get down there now, it would be a bloodbath. But worse than that—Deirdre was there. If he was lucky, then the English soldiers would recognize her as a prisoner. They'd let her go.
Gunnar had just seen first-hand, though, that he couldn't hope on being lucky.
At best, he would have to make his own luck. He put his hand on the unfamiliar English sword and let out a roar. He'd need all the strength he could get to cross the distance in time to make a difference in the fight.
And whether he made a difference or not to his men didn't matter, either, he realized.
He had a promise to keep.
Twenty-Four
Don't go any faster, Deirdre prayed. Whatever happened, everything would be fine if they could just keep going slow. Slow meant there wasn't any danger. Slow meant everything kept going as expected.
Slow meant that Gunnar had been wrong about what was waiting for them in the trees.
She looked nervously to see what sort of signs she could see. If she was lucky, then she had all day to herself, and then in the evening she'd be taken away. If she wasn't lucky, she had at least an hour before trouble was going to start. She didn't feel lucky, that much was certain.
The time gave her plenty of space to think about the night before. About what had happened—the first thought to jump into her mind brought a heavy blush to her cheeks. She blinked the thought away.
He'd said something else. Asked her about the poppies. If she believed him, then he had seen someone putting up flowers that marked their trail. But it hadn't been her. She still had all of them—well, those she hadn't used.
That meant that either someone had been trying to leave a trail for Gunnar, or for someone else entirely. Deirdre wondered at it for a long moment. Eirik, Ulf, and Balgrouf—they were certainly Gunnar's allies. She couldn't consider them helpful to her, but they had at least both wanted him to make it back.
But she couldn't just let herself think that things were going to be alright. That would be all well and good, but it wasn't remotely safe.
Could it be that they marked the way for someone else? Every friend that the Northmen had was in that camp right now. Even Gunnar was dubiously friendly. Anyone else, they wouldn't be following to help out.
She couldn't know for sure, but it seemed unlikely that they had someone else coming along for backup. Gunnar certainly hadn't thought so.
The wagon lurched hard, nearly sending Deirdre sprawling onto the floor, and they kicked into higher speed. No luck after all, she thought frustratedly. It was a good thing that she'd known to expect it, or she might be afraid.
Gunnar had warned her that they were going to find an ambush. He hoped they'd circle around, but she didn't find that likely. The next best outcome would be that they broke through without too much fighting. From what Gunnar said, there was no hope that they were going to fight to a victory.
Deirdre knew Valdemar, though, and she didn't have any illusions. More than likely, he thought he alone could fight the battle—and win. It would be an ugly realization that even if he did, his men most certainly couldn't.
The Northmen, who had continued pretending injury through the morning, sat themselves up and braced against the sides of the wagon. Seeing them moving so easily brought the blush back to her face when she realized that if anyone heard her the night before, it was those two.
If they had heard, they gave no indication of it, holding on tight to the seats and the front-side of the cart and waited to see what would happen. Seeing them holding on so tight, Deirdre realized that they had exactly the right idea. If the wagon were to tip, or flip, she'd be in a world of hurt.
And then the cart bounced hard as it went over a large stone. Deirdre's view out the back immediately told her that her assessment had been wrong. That wasn't any sort of rock. An English soldier lay on the ground, his head caked with bright-red blood.
He wasn't moving.
She had a moment to worry as the cart slowed, and then stopped seemingly on its own. Fighting was going on all around them, on all sides. It was a strange place to choose to put a cart, she thought at first, until she realized that whoever had been running the team had likely either died or jumped off to join the fight.
A young-looking Northman, brown hair worn long, went down under the attack of a pair of English soldiers who seemed to then decide that their pairing hadn't been as much use as it seemed, and split off.
One of them saw the tent and seemed to realize what it meant. She had to hope that he was going to be intercepted before he arrived to ruin her last hopes. As she felt the wagon dip to the rear with a man's foot, she knew that her hopes had been in vain.
As he came in Deirdre pressed herself back against the canvas side, trying to get herself as far away as she could, but it was no use. He ducked his head and came through. He looked nothing like the others that Deirdre had seen. Nothing like the men back in Malbeck. This wasn't a farmer who had been handed a sword.
His nose looked twice-broken, and never set properly, and he had a scar on his cheek that she guessed wasn't left by an overzealous lover. His sword, though, was still a dull steely gray—no blood on it, yet.
Both the wounded Northerners started to raise themselves up to meet the attack. Seeing one armed, the soldier turned his attention to the other in the moment of surprise and thrust his arm out to catch him square in the chest.
A movement, almost reflexive, sent the blade wide into the younger Viking's shoulder. He might have been able to respond, if not for the English boot that came down hard on his head, sending him back to the ground. The blade didn't miss a second time.
The one with the knife—the one Deirdre hadn't disarmed, she thought glumly—gave him a little more trouble. By the time he'd dealt with the other, the English soldier had a fight on his hands. The knife-wielding Northlander had made his feet, and his blade was streaking towards the Englishman's face, left uncovered by the metal cap he wore.
A quick duck back and the blade was past. The English abandoned his blade in the dying boy's chest and planted a steel-clad fist into the Viking's nose, which came away pouring blood onto his face.
To his credit, the Northman didn't let up. He pulled the knife back in and made another stab, this one trying to arc wide before darting into the Englishman's armpit. The Englishman stepped in and jabbed his forehead into the man's face again. This time he couldn't keep his footing and stumbled back, then hit the bench and fell onto it.
Deirdre felt the movement, felt it jar her back to reality, and remembered the knife that she had kept secreted, reached for it with her tied hands and hoped that she wasn't seen doing it.
The Englishman took the opportunity to pull out a little dirk of his own, more suitable for th
e close quarters of the wagon. Another thrust missed badly, the Viking's vision completely ruined by the repeated hits to the head. The Englishman didn't miss his own riposte.
Last he turned on Deirdre. She had the knife in her hands, now, tucked to hide behind her arm.
"Please don't hurt me," she begged, her panic very real.
Where was Gunnar now that she needed him? He was supposed to protect her. This wasn't supposed to happen.
She could see the Englishman's eyes move up and down her body, lingering for a moment on where her dress now hung open lewdly.
"Got no sympathy for a Viking whore," he said, and spit. "But I'll make it quick."
Deirdre saw him hesitating, turning the knife over in his hand, but she knew that he wouldn't hesitate forever. She felt the wagon dipping just as his hand started to move, and she moved herself. Leapt into the Englishman's chest, knocking his stab wide, and then she used both hands to push the knife in as deep as she could.
Then the flaps separated again, and she pulled her little knife free of his ribs, slick with blood to deal with them as well.
Gunnar's lungs already burned with the exertion, his legs moving as fast as they could carry him. Each stride felt as if he might not be able to move his feet fast enough to catch him before he tumbled to the ground. Yet, like clockwork, they fell in place just as he needed them to. That was how it had to be.
He could see the English descending on the Danes, and could see that there were fewer than he had seen the night before. Perhaps, seeing him, they'd anticipated a move to skirt around, and spread their forces.
It might have been enough to save them, but he didn't have time to worry about it. He saw the cart driver slump down, in spite of the distance. Could see clearly that he was dead. No use in worrying about him.
He had promised her safety. She'd been right to be upset with him when he thought that he could keep his promise. Now he had no such illusions. There was no way for him to keep her safe if he weren't there. He pushed himself harder. No time to worry about that any more, he had to get there.
