by Joanna Bell
But now we had an end. I had an end. Not just the spilling of blood for its own sake, but for the clear and plain benefit of my people, of our strength and health and flourishing there in the land of soft winters and lush crops.
The thought of the prisoner, the image of her rosy lips pursed at something I'd said, came to me again as I walked back through the makeshift camp, soon to be no more, on my way to my sleeping quarters. If I'd been a younger, more impulsive man, I would have visited her before taking to my bed – or invited her into it. But I knew the fire she kindled would be useful to me on my ride to confront the King of the East Angles.
Ten
Sophie
I slept under the stars that night, curled up in the dirt with my wrists and ankles bound, next to a pigsty full of grunting, snoring pigs. There were no lights in the camp, no electricity of any kind, as far as I could tell, and the darkness made it so many of the people who walked right next to me didn't realize I was there. It afforded me the opportunity to listen in on conversations, to get a feeling for what size of a camp I was in, and maybe – hopefully – for any information on where, exactly, it was located.
"He's in Jarl Eirik's camp," a young girl sighed to her companion as they passed me not 2 feet away. "When we settle together for the winter, I'll get to see him every day."
Most of the voices were male. Confident and businesslike, not at all the ramblings of the type of people I assumed would decide to leave modern life and make a home for themselves in the woods.
"I ride north in the morning," one such voice spoke as I lay on my back, stretching my arms over my head to stop them falling sleep. "Eirik's wife is pregnant again, he wishes a private guard chosen from his best warriors to accompany her during all the times he cannot."
There was youthful male pride in that voice, the happy boasting of a young man chosen for an honorable task. There was also something else that caught my ear. Eirik. Eirik. Where did I know that name?
It hit me suddenly, and just as I was beginning to wish I'd brought the piece of dark, tough bread with me as I'd been advised. Paige Renner's baby. His name was Eirik. There'd been quite a bit of press coverage of just the name alone, the unique spelling, whether or not it was pronounced eh-rick or eye-rick. Now someone in this camp spoke of a man with the same name? Paige Renner never did tell anyone who the father of her baby was.
It couldn't be a coincidence. Could it? I had to find out. I had to keep asking questions, maybe of some of the women and young people rather than the men. Wherever I was, I'd gotten there via the Renner property, and there was every chance someone knew something about Paige Renner or Emma Wallis's whereabouts.
At the crack of dawn, a woman shook me awake and, before I could get any answers as to what the hell she was doing out of her, she'd hauled me to my feet and led me to a clearing where a number of horses were being saddled and a strange tension seemed to hang in the air.
I watched as saddlebags were slung over the horse's backs, and men – tall, strong young men in – what the hell, were they wearing chain mail? Some of them were. And most of them wore metal helmets with odd little tabs that came down between their eyes to cover their noses. I'd never seen anything like it and so I stood, mesmerized by the activity around me and the sight of the men, until Ivar himself appeared from the early morning gloom to untie me and lift me unceremoniously onto one of the horses.
"No," I protested, leaning forward and intending to slide back off. "I can't – I don't know how to ride horses."
"Well then it's a good thing you won't be alone," Ivar replied, climbing into the saddle in front of me with surprising ease for a man of his size – and a horse of such a height.
I would have continued to protest, then, if I'd been able to. But everything was suddenly busy and noisy. Horses were mounted and weapons – not guns but swords, bows and arrows, spears – checked at waists. I was amidst a group of men dressed as warriors on horseback. Behind us, I could see from my vantage point on the horse, were more men on foot, most of whom did not have chain mail or helmets.
"Men of the North!" I jumped at the sound of Ivar's voice as he addressed the crowd. "The dawn brings with it new possibilities for glory! Not far south, the King of the East Angles awaits our blades, his men high in number but weak in spirit! It will not be long before new generations of Northern people grow fat on this land, before your sons and daughters flourish on the milk of its cattle and the bread of its fields. Jarl Ragnar rides with us, you are to pay him heed if I am nowhere near enough to give commands – and should any of you come upon the King before I can look into his eyes I ask that you leave his head attached to his shoulders until I can offer him terms of surrender."
Actors. They were actors. There were too many of them, and they were too well-dressed, too well-spoken, to be homeless forest-dwellers. Was I on a film set? A participant in an elaborate and so far unexplained practical joke? And even as the possibilities suggested themselves to me, and the men around Ivar roared their approval and lifted their swords, gleaming in the morning light, into the air, I knew none of them could be true. There were no movies being filmed on the Renner land, and none being filmed in River Falls at all – I would have known about it.
War re-enactors? I'd heard of them, although I associated them with the south. People who dressed in the clothing of the 1800s and re-enacted specific battles and events from the civil war. None of the men around me looked anything like civil war soldiers.
Suddenly, as I was lost in thought, my mind unable to come up with any real explanation for what was happening and where I was, the horse took off and I grabbed instinctively at Ivar's back, convinced I was about to tumble off.
"Hold on!" He yelled over his shoulder over the din of galloping hooves and whooping shouts.
I waited for the pace to slow, for the group to come to a stop, so I could try once more to get to the bottom of what was going on, but it didn't happen. The horse maintained its speed until the animal's sweat soaked through my pants and foam dripped from its mouth. We only stopped when we came to a river, wide but shallow looking, and Ivar told the men, who shouted his words down through the group, to let the horses drink and rest.
"Send the scouts out," he said to one man as he dismounted the horse. "Not too far, just across the river and the near banks – perhaps we're lucky and Edmund the Fisherman King has his hook dropped in these waters.
"Ivar!" I called, when he began to walk away. The horse was tall, and I was not confident I could get my feet on the ground again without falling.
"What is it?" He asked, turning back to me as a group of his men waited.
"I – I can't get down. I don't –"
Without a word he came back and lifted me down off the creature's back.
"Why am I here?" I asked, before he could turn away again. The sun was shining by then, and the heat of a summer day beat down on Ivar's blond head. "Where are we going? I seem to be the only woman –"
He turned briefly to me. "We're going to kill the King, Sophiefoster. And you're here because I thought I might like the feeling of you against me as we rode – which I do. If Edmund is a sensible man, he'll be amenable to a deal – perhaps you'll be part of it?"
I didn't realize until Ivar had left me behind, standing next to the horse as it drank noisily at the river's edge, that he probably meant 'part of the deal' in the sense that I was goods to be traded, and not 'part of the deal' in the sense that he needed me to help negotiate it.
The men had leather pouches, stopped up with wooden plugs, from which they drank. I had no such thing, and I was thirsty enough to have begun fantasizing about cold, sparkling glasses of water. I looked down at the river as the horses drank noisily. Who knew what germs and chemicals were in there? Still, I could almost taste it. I knelt down on a rock and dipped my hand into the river before bringing it to my nose, sniffing. It didn't smell of anything in particular, although I knew that didn't mean anything.
"You're as fussy as my wife," a vo
ice came from behind me just as I was about to lick a drop of the river-water off one of my fingertips. I looked up, shielding my eyes from the sun. It wasn't Ivar, but it appeared to be a man of his stature, his hair braided and pulled back off his face and the hilt of his sword inlaid with gems.
"Am I?" I asked, eager to talk to as many people as I could. "She doesn't like sharing filthy water with horses, either?"
The man chuckled. "No, she doesn't. Refuses to drink anything unless it's been boiled twice and made into day ale."
"Day ale?" Why was I talking about drinking? It was making me more conscious of my thirst.
"Aye," the man responded. "Day ale is weak, it won't keep a man from his work. And it won't cause sickness, which my wife spends a good deal of her time worrying about."
"Do you have any?" I asked. "On you, I mean? I could pay – uh, actually I can't pay – I don't have any money on me. But I could –"
"I've no day ale on me. Just water. You can have a sip of it if you like, but I don't know how –"
"Oh!" I exclaimed. "Yes! Please. I would love some. Thank you!"
I waited, anticipating the feeling of the water sliding down my throat, as the man untied one of the leather water-bags from around his waist and handed it to me. And such was my desperation that I removed the stopper and took a few large gulps before I realized that the water was quite warm – and that it had bits in it. I barely managed to turn away from him before barfing it all back up, gagging loudly.
"Ugh!" I groaned, wiping my mouth and already regretting getting sick – I was really thirsty. "It has – it has –" I paused and pulled a small piece of what looked like some kind of grass or vegetation out of my mouth, staring down at it on my hand and fighting the urge to gag again – "bits in it. Bits of – dirt or I don't know – just bits. Where did you get it?"
The man raised one eyebrow at me. "I got it from the river next to camp."
Oh that was just great. I'd swapped one river – and one that didn't appear to be situated next to any camps of people who needed somewhere to wash their dirty clothes and dirty bodies – for another – one that did. "Why didn't you tell me?" I asked, not wanting to be rude but still thoroughly disgusted.
"I tried to tell you."
"What? No you didn't."
Annoyed, the man took his water pouch back and re-tied it around his waist. "Voss, woman," he said, before starting to walk away, "you do remind me of Emma."
"Wait!" I cried, scrambling to my feet. "Wait! What did you –"
But suddenly Ivar was there, frowning at me in such a way as to make it clear I wasn't to go chasing after the man who I was 90% sure had just mentioned a wife who, at the very least, shared a name with one of the missing girls.
"Drink," he warned. "We won't be stopping again soon and you've been sick. You need to drink."
I opened my mouth, intending to ask him if he had any bottled or otherwise clean water, but I could see men mounting their horses again. We were leaving. Just before Ivar grabbed my wrist to lead me back to his horse, I quickly leaned down and scooped a few handfuls of river water into my mouth. It tasted like dirt. Not foul or stinking but simply of earth, and faintly of vegetation. I hoped I wasn't going to be crouched in the bushes in a few hours, pants around my ankles and cursing myself.
We traveled more slowly after the break at the river, and Ivar rode at the very front. I was tired, and as the rhythm of the horse's walking began to seep into my bones, I found myself slumping forward every few minutes, against the muscle-bound back of the man who'd taken me from the beach the previous day. It hadn't even been 24 hours, but I knew my mother would be freaking out not being able to get hold of me. Hopefully she was keeping Ashley in the dark about her mom's unknown whereabouts.
I must have fallen asleep. I didn't know how long for. All I knew is that when I jerked awake, we'd stopped moving.
"They're close," a man was saying. "We killed one of their scouts, but they haven't realized it. When they do, they'll be expecting an attack."
"Then we have to attack them before they expect it," came the reply, from Ivar. "The path forked a short way back, past the stream. We will ride back and wait for the King there, off the main way. The men on foot are not far behind. I don't suspect we will need them but if we do they should arrive in time. Send a scout back the way we've come, to bid them hurry."
The man I recognized as the one with a wife named Emma nodded and immediately turned his horse around, bellowing to the men that we were headed back to prepare to ambush the King.
Who was the King? I tried to tell myself it was a mock-enemy, an actor. But when Ivar turned his horse around and headed back the way we'd come, the fact that the weapons were real disconcerted me even as I told myself there wasn't going to be sword fight. It was impossible. Sword fights didn't exist anymore – not real ones.
A short time later I found myself among a very large group of mounted men that had split in two to wait out of sight of the main path, half to the left of it and the other half to the right. No one spoke. The only sounds were the horses hooves as they shifted positions and snorted, and, when a man suddenly appeared with breathless news of the 'King's' imminent arrival, the clatter of weapons – swords, spears, arrows – being readied. I looked back over my shoulder, still half expecting the entire group to burst into laughter at any moment and reveal the joke.
But none of the men laughed. Ivar himself, as I could feel the tension rising in his body, suddenly turned to one the young men waiting to his left, on foot.
"Take her," he whispered, nodding to me. "Take her to the back, behind the archers. Take her now! Go!"
And before I could say a word, I found myself lifted down off the horse and led back through the silent, threatening crowd by a boy who looked no older than 17. No one – not even the young man – was focused on me. I could have escaped. I knew I was only feet from the path that had led us to where we were, I knew I could follow it back to the camp. But I still didn't know if the 'Emma' referred to earlier was Emma Wallis. I still didn't have anything of value to take back to Jerry Sawchuk. And I still, as I was mere moments away from finding out, had no idea how much danger I was in.
Eleven
Sophie
At first, I couldn't tell if the shouting I could hear was argumentative or friendly. The men standing all around me stiffened at the sound of it, though, glancing worriedly at each other as they pulled arrows out of the canisters made of woven grass they wore strapped to their backs.
"What is it?" I asked, only to have those closest to me turn and shush me fiercely.
"Quiet, woman!" One whispered, and when I looked down at his hand, the one holding the bow, I saw that it was shaking. I looked up again, questioningly, as a wisp of fear crawled up the back of my neck.
"Why is your –"
But I didn't get to finish my sentence, because the shouting suddenly became much louder, much closer, and the sound of metal on metal filled my ears.
They're playing. It's a mock battle. Like those teenage boys you see in the park sometimes.
But those teenage boys in the park had cardboard swords.
I jerked my head up and felt the tingle of adrenaline surging through my veins as the sound of screaming started up. Not one scream, from one man, but many screams. Some of the screams stopped suddenly, halfway through. I stepped backwards off the path and tripped over a log, but no one was paying attention to me any longer.
To my right, the mounted men suddenly drove their horses forward, and I shrank even further back into the trees as instinct took over almost completely. It no longer seemed to matter that swordfights didn't happen anymore. What mattered in that moment was the fact that I was hearing what sounded like men fighting – like men dying – and I wanted to be as far away from it as possible.
As I crept backwards, a sudden commotion drew my attention. Someone running in the woods. Someone running towards me. I froze, clapping my hand over my mouth to stifle a scream, as a man emerged in
front of me, covered in blood. We stood briefly, staring at each other, my brain commanding my feet to run even as they refused and then he fell face-down in front of me.
"Hey," I whispered, nudging him with my foot. "Hey. Please. Hey – this isn't funny. This isn't –"
And then there were more footsteps, more men. Two more. They emerged behind their fallen friend and looked down. None of them were dressed like Ivar or his companions. These were the enemy. These were the men Ivar was fighting.
It's amazing how little it takes, in dire circumstances, to affix the label of 'enemy' to one human being and 'friend' to another. The men who stood in front of me, staring down at their fallen brother, were enemies. And as I watched their expressions curdle into snarls, something deep inside me, something I wasn't even sure was human, suddenly made sure my feet were working. I turned and ran. The men gave chase, and it didn't take long for a hand to close around my hair and yank me, shrieking with terror, back towards them.
"NO!" I screamed, as I looked up to see a raised hand just above me, clutching what looked like a dagger. I rolled to the side at the last minute, scrabbling at the earth, trying to get back to my feet. But someone had a hold of my ankle, dragging me back.
There were two of them. The thought that I was going to die entered my mind quickly, unremarkably, almost separate from the struggles of my body. Ashley's face flickered across my consciousness.
Something whistled past my head, close enough to send a few strands of hair flying back. I didn't know what it was – I barely even noticed it – but I did notice that one of the men trying to subdue me was suddenly no longer there.
"Woman!" A voice came from in front of me – one of Ivar's men. "Get down!"
