Viking Sword: A Fall of Yellow Fire: The Stranded One (Viking Brothers Saga Book 1) (12 page)

He ripped into the succulent flesh of the bird, the restrained violence of his action echoing the rage in his heart. His Lissa would not have willingly warned them of the pursuit. What had they done to force her to tell? The darkness of his thoughts threatened to overwhelm him. Only the strict discipline he demanded of himself kept him from imagining the worst. She was alive, and Wat had found no further traces of blood since the day before. His tracker believed the droplets came from one of the men, insisting the víkingrs would never bother to drag a wounded captive on a difficult journey. They would have killed her, instead. He accepted the logic of the argument, for he would do the same. That did not mean they had not beaten her, or worse. Abuse took many forms, and he well knew it was possible to torture a man to death without ever spilling a drop of his blood.

He finished the meal and flung the bones, picked clean, across the camp. They plopped into the fire, sending sparks flying and startling the men. They recoiled and reached for their weapons, then offered chuckles at his jest.

He wiped his hand across his mouth, grabbed his skin of ale and rose. Walking to the rill trickling nigh the camp, he washed the hadseax used to chop apart the bird. Moving still farther from the fire, he stopped to have a word with the guard, then dropped to the base of a tree and leaned back. On the morrow, when they learned more about the probable route of the Northmen, he would consider the merits of a plan that simmered in his mind. But there was time, for now. He could afford to wait for the right moment. He swallowed the last of the ale and listened to the night. Soon, the clean darkness closed over him, and he slept.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Suppressing a groan of sheer pleasure, Lissa scoured away days of grime with crushed soapwort leaves and sand. She could not remember when simply being clean had felt so wonderful. Lady Eadgida had insisted her servants bathe once every cycle of the moon, and Lissa had learned to appreciate the feeling of stepping, refreshed, from the bathing tub, but it had never felt like this.

When they arrived in the clearing Sindre mentioned, the two men had dropped everything and gone downstream to clean up while she made camp. They splashed and laughed like boys while she boiled the clutch of partridge eggs Sindre had poached from a nest earlier in the day. For the evening meal, she set out the eggs with the last of the smoked beef and fish salvaged from Yriclea.

The men returned, scrubbed and smelling much better than she did. It made her uncomfortable and once she served them, she moved away to eat. Brandr’s eyes had laughed blue fire, but as soon as the meal was over, he ordered her to gather what she needed, and escorted her to this spot.

The stream was wide and crystal clear with a gentle current. Little more than knee-deep, she could not immerse herself without lying down, but she could certainly sit and be covered almost to her shoulders. As she lathered her hair, she shivered and ignored the cold bumps on her skin. The air was quite warm for early evening on a day in the month of reaping, but the water felt like melted ice.

She ducked under to rinse and came back up, gasping and sputtering. From beneath dripping strands, she cast a watchful eye in Brandr’s direction. Her guard reclined with his back to her on a boulder not far away, one knee drawn up with his arm resting across it. Despite the relaxed posture, his bearing gave the impression of unusual tension, but he had promised not to look and so far, his word held. Still, while she had removed and washed her syrce, she had refused to take off her cyrtel. It would wash, well enough, with her in it.

A sinuous movement in the deep shadows beneath the far bank caught her attention and she froze. Fat fish hid among the rippling strands of brook moss in this stream, but what of sleeping eels? The nocturnal creatures were not normally aggressive unless provoked, but she did not know if bathing in their territory constituted goading. Perhaps it was time to get out.

“Are you not yet finished?” Brandr growled the words over his shoulder, as if in echo of her thoughts. “You will melt and wash completely away if you stay in there much longer.”

His tone was huskier than normal and she wondered why. She hoped he was not catching the ague.

“I have been in the water less than half the time you took.”

He rose and swung round to stalk toward her, determination in every step. “And I have decided you have had long enough.”

She shrieked. “What are you doing? You promised!”

“What you are screeching about, woman? You are fully clothed. Get out and dry off.”

“But I have to change out of this wet cyrtel. I cannot sleep in it.”

He rolled his eyes, but turned around again. “You have until I cease counting, to change. If you have not finished by then, I will do it for you.”

Sure her face was redder than the sunset, she lunged through the reeds at the bank of the stream, stripped off the wet garment and dried off with the clean cyrtel as fast as she could manage. But getting the thing on after using it as a towel was quite another matter. She struggled with the damp fabric, fearing it would get caught around her shoulders. All the while, she heard him murmuring. He had not said how
long
he would count.

“I am turning around.”

She nigh ripped the fabric, jerking the hem over her hips. By the time the very interested blue gaze flicked over her, she was breathless from the race, but she was covered.

His lips twitched. “I like the new blue tone to your skin. Perhaps, it will become a fashion among the ladies.”

She shivered again and threw her wet cyrtel at him.

He plucked it from the air and wrung it out, then handed it back.

She pulled on her boots and gathered her meager possessions. “You know our meal this eve was the last of the food.”

He caught her upper arm and guided her back toward camp.

“I know. Sindre hunts.”

She glanced at him. “I thought he was asleep.”

“We have to eat. It must be done before dark, and it is almost that, now.”

For the first time, she realized the shadows had deepened. “Brandr. Have you anything with which to trade?”

Curiosity limned his look. “Why?”

“We have passed several villages. They look prosperous enough. If you had coin, besides the gold, that is, I could go into the next settlement and buy the supplies we need.”

His face closed. “Nei.”

“Why not? I am familiar with the price of many things. I could say I am traveling to a distant town with my husband, but that he has fallen ill and sent me to fetch food. None would question it.”

He shook his head and his face was now cast in hard lines. “Nei. Do not mention it again.”

“You do not trust me.”

He made no answer, but she knew. She could not think why it should hurt. Had she not planned all along—aye, and especially after learning of his true intent to raid Yriclea—to leave when chance came, and make her way to some place far from Talon and the bitter, painful memories of her home? But such a place would also be far from the man who stalked beside her, and that thought upset her more than she understood. In truth, she no longer knew what she wanted.

∞∞§∞∞

It was full dark by the time Sindre returned to camp.

Brandr, polishing his ring-shirt, grinned as his uncle held up two large trout and a skinned hare, all threaded on a sharpened stick. Using the stick as a spit, Sindre set the meat to cook over the fire.

“Good eating for a day or two,” Brandr said, his voice quiet, for Lissa slept.

Sindre leaned against his rolled up húdfat to keep watch on the roasting meat, his eyes gleaming in the firelight. “Já. But it will be difficult to find time for hunting when we must move so swiftly. Have you given thought to stealing clothing from a peasant, so we may enter villages to buy food? We are both fluent in the language.”

He flicked a look at his uncle from beneath raised brows. “Our intent is to stay clear of the people of this land, to give that tracker no more sure path to follow than can be helped. Two strangers purchasing supplies would be as a signpost declaring our presence. As well, they would take one look at you, Uncle, and know you were no Saxon.”

Sindre grinned. “You however, begin to look straggly enough to pass as a hearth companion, separated from his fellows and seeking to meet up with them.” He paused and switched to their tongue. “You could take the female with you and pretend she was your wife, that you are traveling to a new village, seeking work.”

“Nei.”

“I begin to grow weary of hearing that word from you.”

“Then make no more suggestions you know I will reject.”

“She is a thrall, Brandr, and one of little use. She holds us back. Today, much of the work required to cover our trail was of her making. Our chances of getting the gold home would be markedly better without her.”

“She stays.”

“You do not trust her.”

“She stays!”

Sindre’s expression darkened. “Since you seem wakeful, keep watch on the food that it does not burn.”

He unrolled his sleep sack and stretched out upon it. His snores followed a short while later.

Brandr set aside his ring-shirt, his gaze falling on the slender form cuddled close under his hand. Lissa seemed to prefer sleeping nigh him. Já, and during the day, she spent half her time trodding upon his heels as if she feared he would leave her behind. Or perhaps, it was only that she rightly feared Sindre.

His jaw tightened. Listening to the soft sounds of pleasure she made as she bathed earlier this day had incited a singularly unpleasant response. All his efforts to control his imagination had been for naught. When it became too much to bear, he decided to end it, only to find her in the clinging wet cyrtel. The sight had been more arousing than had she been naked, yet she was so much an innocent, and unaware of the effect she had on him.

Then she had curled up by the fire and combed out the cropped, spiky strands of her hair. It was the first time he had seen it free of dirt and ash, and was reminded of the fall of yellow fire that tumbled from Sindre’s hand when he first found the gold. She followed that with sewing up the slit seam his knife had made in the shoulder of the old brown cyrtel. The domestic scene, coming so quickly after the one at the stream, had given rise to uneasy visions of things he had not yet earned, of his own lands and home, of a woman by his side and children of his loins.

The fire crackled and hissed as fat dripped from the cooking meat. He turned the spit to let the pieces crisp on the opposite side, then stared into the flames.

It was not that he wished for Lissa as his wife. He grimaced, uncertain why he allowed that unsavory thought to form, even fleetingly. Lesser warriors sometimes wed thralls, but nobles did not, though he remembered a tale of days long past when a great warrior jarl had married the beautiful princess he captured. Lissa, while bright and lovely, was no princess, nor of noble blood. When he took her from Yriclea, her life became of no value except that which he made of it.

Even did he set her free, without legal residence of her own, she was unworthy of aught but his lust. If he could not control that, he would make her his concubine. He knew now she would not fight him, for the strength of her passion for him matched his own. She could even bear him sons without condemnation. He would keep her in his home until time came to take a noble wife, then he would build a house, close by, for her and their children. Já. That was the sensible course. It was but a matter of firming his will in line with what was right and proper.

With the matter resolved to his satisfaction, he waited for his unease to abate, and was surprised when it did not. Abruptly, he became aware he had let his vigilance slip. Silently cursing the unforgivable lapse, he relaxed, setting his senses free to seek the threat. The hair on his nape rose and he fought the clamor of nerves that demanded he leap to his feet, Frækn in hand, to meet the danger. Somewhere in the dark, a watcher lurked. Maybe, more than one. Had the Yriclea hearth companions found them, or others?

That he and Sindre were not yet riddled with arrows was a good sign, for it meant the enemy might wish to take them alive. Keeping his movements unhurried and natural, he removed the meat from the fire and offered the spies a huge yawn. He scratched a non-existent itch and got to his feet, then turned in the opposite direction from the source of the intent regard. He moved away from the fire, unfastening his trousers as if he meant to relieve himself, expecting with each step to feel the agony of a lance or a shaft embedding itself in his back.

He melted into the relative safety of the darkness without mishap, then flitted from tree to tree, silently circling the camp. None challenged him, and he felt no presence but his own and that other. Perhaps his initial impression of a solitary watcher was correct. He neared the place where he believed the man hid and halted. He let his gaze roam among the various shapes of the undergrowth until it came to rest on a shadowy hump that did not belong. He waited.

His patience was rewarded when the hump moved restlessly, leaning away from the tree trunk. The profile of a man’s head, with the unmistakable upthrust of a hunting bow slung across his back, was briefly outlined by the light from the fire. He was now certain this intruder was alone.

The figure squawked and froze when his fingers tangled in his greasy hair and jerked his head backwards to expose his throat. The blade of his sax caressed the skin, slicing just enough to emphasize the warning.

He spoke in a whisper. “Why do you spy upon us?”

The fellow shook as if caught in an ague-induced fever. He stammered a response three times before it came out intelligible. “I, I…I am hungry!”

The answer stunned Brandr. It was the last thing he had expected to hear. He dragged the man to his feet by his hair and was further startled by the fellow’s small size.

The knife sliced a fraction deeper, eliciting a strangled yelp. “Beg pardon, leóf! Please, do not hurt me! I meant no harm. It was the smell of the meat cooking. I could not help myself.”