Rune King

Deirdre nodded and considered it.

"Couldn't you just lie down and pretend?"

Gunnar's face split into a broad smile. "Not in the least! I'm terrible at pretending."

"So… hm." She sat back, thoughtful. He watched her, entirely different thoughts on his mind. Thoughts that, he admitted, had nothing to do with pretending to be injured. Thoughts that had very little to do with retaking control of the band he had put together for this raid.

"I could be re-injured," he offered finally, managing to

pull his eyes away from her enchanting body. "If that helps."

The look Deirdre gave told Gunnar that he hadn't been particularly helpful, but then she seemed to change her tune. She turned, reached behind her seat, and a moment later came up with a knife.

"We take this," she said softly, "and then…"

He took the meaning immediately, and nodded.

"Definitely. Okay."

He lifted his arms. When he didn't feel the knife stabbing into him he turned to her. The expression on her face was one he hadn't seen before. It seemed to happen more as he got to know her, the opposite of what he was used to seeing in women.

They usually became easier and easier to predict, but Deirdre seemed to change and shift, so that predicting her moods was like trying to wrestle a snake.

"I can't. What if I—"

The knife slipped out of her hand and clattered to the ground.

"We'll see how pretending goes, then," he said. He tried to make his smile warm and comforting, but he knew well enough that it probably hadn't worked.

He picked the knife up, and considered for a long time whether or not to take it for himself. If he reclaimed control, then it would be meaningless to keep it. If he failed, then it would be taken from him. If he never challenged Valdemar, then what use would it be?

Instead he leaned past Deirdre, her smell leaving his head spinning, and found the cubby where she had hidden the blade, and dropped it point-first down. She could grab it in an instant, if she had the need, and as he sat back Gunnar decided that it was well enough hidden. Even knowing it was there, he couldn't see it from the outside.

She looked upset, practically panicking. What was he supposed to do in these situations? Gunnar frowned, tightened his jaw. There were things he knew how to do, and things he didn't, and dealing with women's problems—like it or not—were something he had no experience with.

"What's wrong?"

She gave him a wide-eyed look, as angry as any she had given him, but it slipped away as she was retaken by melancholy. Gunnar thought about pressing the matter, but then he decided against it. When she was ready to talk, when she wanted him to know what she was thinking, then she would tell him.

Until then, he'd just wait and watch the road pulling slowly away as the sun started to dip toward evening.

Fourteen

As soon as she saw the gleam in his eyes, Deirdre knew that she had a problem. If she were to let him run off and fight, it didn't much matter whether she won or lost. If she were freed now, alone, what would be the point?

She pushed aside the sting of being apart from Gunnar. She had more important concerns than love. How would she get back to her little hut? How could she? She'd be alone, and this far from home, it would take a week or more… if she ran into someone on the road, what would happen to her?

She didn't need to wonder. It wouldn't be pleasant, and there wouldn't be much avoiding it. Hitting a man over the head when his attention was divided, that was one thing. But could she really fight someone off if he were committed to hurting her?

She knew the answer without even having to think about it. She would be a dead woman, no doubt about it.

No, an escort would do very well. And if there was one thing that she knew, it was that if he weren't so damn obsessed with all this fighting and killing, Gunnar would have made a perfectly good escort.

He would protect her. He'd told her that, and she was surprised to find that she believed him, but that didn't count for much if he let her go alone.

If he won, and he didn't let her go, or even if she chose to stay, it was only a matter of time. Could she go back to his home country with him? Not a chance, she couldn't speak the language, had no place in his society. What would she do, living in some foreign land, near foreign cities?

Raise goats? Wait for him when he went raiding, hoping that he would be able to come back to her again this year? It was a hopeless idea, and it was immediately obvious how bad it was.