Rune King

She was looking at him.

Watching him, more like. The way that her eyes were wide, staring. The fury writ-large across her face. She looked at him as if he had done exactly what Valdemar suggested he had done. As if she were going to take the little seax each night and try again and again until it finally stuck.

Well, good for her. If she could manage it, she should have been commended. Killing him where men had failed, more than Gunnar could easily count any more. There would be plenty of time for her to try killing him.

But he wouldn't just let her, not like he had before. His mind drifted to other things that he would had gladly let her do, and he had to shake the thoughts from his mind. No. He had little time to concern himself with his cock. He had to keep control of the raid.

If he needed something from her, then he would be able to deal with it after the raid tomorrow morning, but it would be better still if he could ignore his need. She wasn't his prisoner because she was pretty, after all. He had to remind himself of that more than once.

If she'd been an old crone, wart-and-pimple covered, then he would have taken her the same, as long as she had the shine of a woman who had touched magic. As long as she could make a wound stick to him, he would have taken a toad.

Three

Deirdre had been on the earth for just short of twenty years, and she had long since decided that men weren't for her. There was no chance of her finding a husband when she lived in the swamp, far enough outside of town that they didn't come for her every time a flu went around.

The way that the Northlander looked at her made shiver. She didn't want him to keep looking at her like that. Did she? She closed her eyes. No, don't think about it. She had to escape, and that was what she had to do.

But with all these men around, how was that even going to be possible? The leader—she could see from the way that he acted that he led them. The powerful man, then. She tried to figure who was whom from her vision, but she had little information to go on.

The powerful man, the leader. The weak man, the one who would stop the bloodshed. Perhaps the thin man with the shaven head and tattoos? But the priest, and the other two, she couldn't begin to guess. No one wore a cross, that much was certain at least.

But that left her with desperately little information.

She shivered at the thought of what would come next as the sun began to set. They had been given some food, tied all to another post erected in the center of the camp. She took a bite, watched the sun sinking and the shades of pink and purple it cast on the thick clouds as she looked out.

A stab to the gut like she'd given, particularly the way she'd cut so rough across like she had… the Powerful man should have died from it, an hour or two later. There was no way to close up a wound like that before the rot set in. If they'd had a gifted physician, he would have died slower, but he would have died.

He certainly shouldn't have been walking around comfortably, leading a band of twenty men or more. Shouting at them loudly. Watching her like a jackal after.

The Weak man came to get her, his tattooed head reflecting the lights from the setting sun and putting a halo around his head like a church painting. He didn't speak much, just one word as he untied her hands.

"Come."

He walked behind her, prodding her past the now-empty wagon that she guessed they must have stolen and to the large tent she had been taken to the night before.

He pulled the flap aside for her and gestured with his head for her to go inside. The night before had been some sort of fluke. She knew that much to be true. But what he had in store for her tonight she had little to guess.

She had long-since given up on having a husband, or being part of the town she had once lived near, even thought of as her home in a way. But that did not mean that she was naive in the things that men wanted with women, either, particularly in their tents at night.

She tried not to think about whether or not she would fight him. She would, but trying to figure out how she would do it when he shrugged off even lethal wounds, that was a question she would need to answer in the moment.

Her heart beat in her chest like a drum, loud enough that she wondered if he could hear it from where he sat, his legs crossed again. That same expression like a hungry wolf on his face, looking at her from under a heavy brow. He didn't stir as she came inside, but she knew that he could have caught her before she made it a hundred yards, were she to run.

She struggled to decide. What would she do, then? She had to wait. Had to have the right opportunity, when his attention was on something else. If she just waited long enough, then the opportunity would come… right?

"Sit," he said softly. He made a wide, sweeping gesture. She saw that the box, the one that she'd imagined to be a makeshift table, was pulled a little away from the wall of the tent. She used it as a makeshift stool, watching him from a distance.

"What do you want from me?"

His brow furrowed, his eyes lightly closed. He had understood her, but only just. She thought about running, for a moment. She would have a few moment's head start as he thought through what she had said, but it wouldn't be enough time.

He would hear the flap, and her advantage would not be near enough. And that was assuming, of course, that no one watched the tent from the outside, which she knew was not a safe assumption by any means. No, she was not done waiting yet.

His eyes opened and he nodded for a moment, clearly formulating a response.

"I can not… ah…" his eyes flicked to the corner of the tent, thinking of the word. "Die."

He stood, lifting his still-stained shirt. A white line marked his stomach, like a years-old wound he'd taken. Where she had cut a ragged line across him only the night before.