Rune King

He'd wanted his hand to appear empty, but the Englishman held in his second hand a small dagger, and he'd driven it all the way to the hilt in Gunnar's side. He could feel the same sense of deflation, the same wheezing that he had felt, all those years ago. He knew instinctively that he'd had his lung punched through.

Gunnar tried to ignore the pain; he wasn't going to go down without making an accounting of himself. He reached up and grabbed the man's head with his shield-hand, pulling him close as his sword drove through the man's torso.

Then the energy sapped out of him, and the both of them slumped to the ground. Gunnar spit out the bitter herb that Deirdre had given him to chew. If it would work, it had already done its job.

With what little remained of his strength, he pushed the English body off of his legs and tried to stand. There was more fight to be had. But his foot slipped on the stone street.

Why wasn't his leg working properly? Had he simply forgotten how to use it? What was wrong with him? He took a grip on the windowsill above where he'd fallen and pulled himself up. With a tentative step, he decided he could move. A second step sent him to the ground. The blade fell free from his chest, the blade clanging on the ground.

Was this what dying felt like? His vision started to dim. If it was, if that was what he was fated for, then he welcomed it. Welcomed his entry into Valhalla. Death during a raid—how else could a warrior choose to go?

The blood that pooled under his chest was hot and wet, and it seemed to stain everything it touched. If Valdemar wanted the band, then one of them had to go. That was how it would be. Well, perhaps it was better this way.

Gunnar's vision dimmed, what little energy he had left flowing out the hole punched in his side. And then, all at once, his vision was black, and he wasn't thinking anything at all.

A voice echoed in his ears, somewhere in the distance. "Gunnar!"

He tried to open his eyes, but he couldn't. What was the point? He was already dead. He'd felt himself dying, felt the last vestiges of strength leaving his body. Felt his lungs emptying themselves even as he tried to fight for breath.

A second voice. Further away, indistinct.

Something pulled on his arm, and then his other arm, and the hard, cold stone pulled away from his face. Was this what it felt like to be taken away by the Valkyries? What were the voices he heard? Why could he not open his eyes?

He fought to open them, fought to see himself leaving the battlefield, carried in the arms of battle-maidens. Finally he did, but the brightness blinded him. Gunnar had to close his eyes to make the pain go.

His side hurt, badly. What was this? How was he supposed to feel about this? He tried to breathe, felt the same wheezing leak that he'd felt before.

He opened his eyes again, saw the ground moving below him. His feet dragged behind on the hard pavement, but he wasn't being pulled away from the ground.

He forced his head to turn, the effort almost too much to bear. A man's face. Leif. Eirik on the other side. They'd taken him by his arms, pulled up onto their shoulders, and they carried him.

Was he alive? How could that be possible? He had seen men take wounds like his. They lived for minutes. He breathed in the smell of smoke and burning around him. Whatever had happened, he had missed a lot. The raid, as far as he could tell, was complete.

And somehow, what must have been at least a half-hour after taking a wound that killed men in minutes, he was still alive.

Eight

The sight of Gunnar walking back to the camp, even as he leaned on the shoulder of the shaven-headed Northman, brought out all the wrong feelings in Deirdre. She should've been excited. Elated, even, knowing that she would get her freedom.

Instead, all she could think was that she was the one responsible for this. That she'd given Valdemar exactly the cure that he had wanted, and now it had worked out exactly wrong for him.

If she was lucky, then she would be set free. If she wasn't, and something told her that she wasn't, then she would see everything falling down when he realized that the herbs hadn't done a damn thing. She'd set him up, and though she hadn't bothered to try to find out how he'd done it, Valdemar's plan had had failed to kill him.

If it were just the poison working its way through his veins, he could make it hours—days, weeks, even, if he were particularly sturdy. But he'd be weakened quite a bit.

A thought flashed through her head. What if he didn't die? What if he healed from it, entirely? What if he was just taking his sweet time in healing? She hadn't given either of them what they wanted, and she had used the only idea that had come to her.

She closed her eyes and tried to think quickly. How could she turn this to her advantage? It was hard to think when her thoughts only ran over and over again how dead she was if she were suspected. He wouldn't have any trouble with it, and certainly wouldn't hesitate. She would have her head neatly separated from her shoulders.

That was how they dealt with traitors, right? And she had betrayed him, sold him down the river to a man who was obviously his rival. Treason if she'd ever seen it. She shivered and tried to forget about it. There was nothing to worry about right now.

Deirdre slumped back against the post and tried to ignore the pain in her shoulders, waiting for the answer to what she was going to do.

The shaven-headed man carried Gunnar past her, to the tent. A dark-haired man a few paces behind stepped up and cut her loose. "He's hurt, you have to come with us."

She was in luck. Whether they knew or not, they had apparently decided that she had a use after all, in saving Gunnar's life. As she followed behind, working the soreness out of her shoulders, she watched him.

He was walking almost entirely on his own, she saw. His knees gave way every few steps, the only sign that he was suffering at all. His back was straight, and he was moving only a little slower than normal, to her eyes.