Rune King

What he wanted was to let that fire burn hotter, not to snuff it completely. She had a strange sort of understanding with him, the knowledge of what he wanted and why. She was surprised how easy he was to understand after only a few evenings spent in his camp, talking for an hour or two.

He hadn't spoken much about his feelings, but Deirdre felt as if she knew them instinctively. He was a soldier, down to his very core. The way that he could take wounds, and recover from them—it wouldn't have been long before he realized that he could use it to perform feats of courage that few others could boast.

There was the problem, though. What did courage mean, what did glory mean, when it was at no risk? She didn't need to be a genius to realize that it meant nothing at all, not to him and not to anyone else.

Valor only meant as much as you risked to achieve it. To a soldier, the greatest glory was to be able to sit in their strange heaven, telling stories about their deeds to the heroes of old. Stripping their sleeves and showing their scars and saying how they won them.

But for a man who bore no scars, whose body told no stories except for the power of a man who kept himself in peak physical condition—even if he were to have died, what stories would he have to tell?

She took a deep breath. Poison wasn't the sort of way that he would want to go, and it wasn't the way that she wanted to win her freedom. But there was more blood in the soil than she could be responsible for. If she had to choose between letting more men, women, and children die, and giving a man a dishonorable death, it didn't matter how she felt about him.

The needs of the many had to come before doing the right thing for one Northlander. Deirdre had to consider her people first and foremost.

Gunnar must have seen something in the way that she sat, because after an hour of silence, he finally spoke.

"What have you seen?"

Deirdre hated to lie, after the surprisingly easy treatment that she had gotten since she had allied herself with Gunnar. But she couldn't tell him, he wouldn't have accepted it. And that wasn't an option for her, or for her people.

"I've found your answer," she said, finally.

Gunnar felt strangely numb when Deirdre had finally told him that she had his solution. And to hear her tell it, the solution was a fairly simple one. Damn his utter lack of medical knowledge, he might have been chewing this foul herb for the entire raid.

Perhaps, though, it was better that he hadn't. Who knows what sort of damage the archers could have done if he hadn't been able to simply withstand so many hits taken from their arrows? So if there was one consolation, it was that he hadn't been vulnerable when he needed to be who he was.

The question wasn't one that he enjoyed entertaining. What would have happened if she had been that little bit quicker in her solution? What if he'd asked her sooner how to solve his predicament? Would he have died there, along with the rest of his men? What did that mean for their future?

He remembered the first raid they had gone on. Before he had known what he was. The arrow that he'd taken to his lung, the one that had found him wheezing and slowly leaking out every bit of breath in his body.

It hadn't been until that moment that he had realized what death was, what he had to be afraid of, and once he had tasted it, and come back from it, he had told himself that he would never taste it again. My, how things had changed in the years since.

The usual double-time toward the town, he was filled with doubts. It seemed unlikely that they would make it out of this raid unscathed; this town wasn't like the others. They were large, and a wooden fence had been hastily erected in preparation. Three deep, men stood at the only entrance, spears ready.

The risk of death made Gunnar's heart race. This wasn't the sort of wall that you run straight onto, but he had learned more than how to take a spear through his gut in the years since that first fateful raid.

He'd learned to be quick, to be accurate. And more than anything, he had learned that moving forward was always the safer option compared to sitting back and waiting. He ducked his head and let his shield knock a spear-point away, then ducked further and stepped inside the wall as his compatriots rushed up beside him. Valdemar smashed in between two of them like a great stone, sending men sprawling to the floor.

Gunnar hit one with his shoulder, but his focus wasn't on knocking them down. His sword came around and cleft hard, sending a spear-man down, and the sword came around again, hacking through a second. He caught an incoming blow on the shield, returning it with a push-kick that sent the man onto his back.

Another man went down under the sword, and then another. Gunnar kept moving. There was plenty of glory for all of them, but he couldn't afford to waste his time here. There was loot to be had, and Valdemar had yet to be dealt with. If he could ensure that he wouldn't have any trouble in the future...

It was cowardly, he thought to himself. Not at all the way that he wanted to approach the situation, but it was how it had to be. If the band split, then they would all perish. Valdemar should hav

e waited for his coup until they were back on Danish land, where there weren't thirty other men relying on leadership to keep them safe.

He stalked after Valdemar as he turned a corner at a run, the sounds of battle from behind them starting to spread as more and more of the guards at the gate fell and the men started to get through.

He would have scant few chances to put Valdemar into a position like this again. No one would see, no one would have to see. If he was lucky, Gunnar could simply distract him for the half-moment that it would take to be laid low by a swordsman. Murder was not looked kindly upon by the Gods.

But if he had to do it himself, then he would, and that was how it would have to be. When he turned around the end of the brick building, though, he couldn't see where Valdemar had gone. Down the street, or down the alley?

It wasn't clear, and he couldn't begin to say for certain. But he didn't have time to question himself. Take a guess, and stick with it, because this was about more than just the loot from a single English town, this was about the survival of the band.

He ducked down a narrow street, and the sight of the berserker, his ax already swinging, confirmed that he had chosen the right path. As he passed a small door, though, it exploded out, catching him hard in the side. Whoever was inside, whoever had seen Valdemar go by, had apparently decided to make up for the mistake of not stopping him.

Gunnar sprawled to the ground, scrambling to his feet as quickly as he could as the Englishman lunged out of the low house. His blade was already back, the swing already beginning. Gunnar was not the fastest in the camp, but he had learned more than enough to turn the blow aside.

He was already readying his response when he felt the jab into his side. Right under his shield arm. Until the last moment, Gunnar hadn't noticed, and then it was too late.