Rune King

The English sorted themselves out first, and then everything started moving at once. Gunnar wheeled the horse back around and kicked it into a hard gallop, heading into the wrong direction.

This was bad. Very bad. He heard an arrow thud into a tree, another barely missing. A third, though, hit home, deep in his leg. He managed to keep his composure, didn't cry out, and pushed the horse harder, the wind blowing through his hair.

This was bad. No matter how good they were, the men that they had remaining, some thirty-odd, couldn't take on a force this size. Even if they were poorly organized. After they'd seen Gunnar, they would report back to whoever commanded them, and more troops would be sent.

Troops less likely to react as slowly as these had. No, they absolutely couldn't go this way. They'd be killed to a man. Gunnar couldn't afford to keep waiting. He'd have to go back, and it had to be tonight.

Nineteen

Deirdre tried to calm her breathing and settled down with her legs dangling out of the wagon. The boy hadn't been as careful as perhaps he should have, but she wasn't about to complain.

The feeling of the air on her face, the wind in her hair, was oddly comforting. If he was going to let her feel it, and all it cost her was some juvenile looks, then she was perfectly ready to let him look. Any more, and she'd have to stop it.

Just like she needed to stop being passed around from one side to the other, used as a pawn to position the other side. She had waited far too long to start trying to use her connection to Gunnar to her advantage, and once she had, it had been easy to start thinking that she was done.

That mindset was exactly what had gotten her into this situation in the first place. She needed to start thinking again, start strategizing. What would her teacher have said if she saw Deirdre trying to make herself as scarce as possible?

'Always think three steps ahead,' she had said. Here Deirdre was, risking everything on a single gamble, and wiping her hands of strategy like it wasn't something to worry about.

Well, she was over that. It was time for her to start thinking hard, and do it before Leif and Eirik came back to hear what she'd found out.

The thing that bothered her was Valdemar's threat. If he was going to poison Gunnar as soon as they saw each other, then why did it help him to have them learning about it first? He was right, in a way. There was little, if anything, that they could do to stop it.

But what did that matter? He wouldn't have done it just to boast, she thought. He seemed to be thinking, to have planned and connived. He'd waited until Gunnar was at his weakest to strike.

When Valdemar had seen that Gunnar wasn't going to have a moment of weakness in a timely fashion, he'd gone out of his way to make sure that one would happen for him. No, he wasn't just boasting. He wouldn't just boast, not when things were tense. Not just before the critical moments.

So what was his plan? They would have to react to a threat like that. No avoiding it, they would have to. They could find Gunnar, warn him. But how could they, unless they knew where he was? Perhaps that was Valdemar's plan—to see if they immediately reported it.

But Deirdre knew better. He wouldn't bide his time one instant longer than necessary. If Gunnar was near, lying in wait, then he would have already struck. If Valdemar didn't know that about his former leader, then he was a fool, and he had known Gunnar longer than Deirdre.

No, it couldn't be that. So what else?

They could warn Gunnar, certainly, or they could prevent the stabbing. But if someone could stay his blade, then Gunnar himself would be the man. He was as quick as anything that Deirdre had ever seen, and he'd been on battlefields since she was barely waist-high.

To stop it at the moment of the strike, then, wouldn't make any sense at all. They wouldn't be that foolish. To stop it before? They could attack Valdemar in a gang, overcome him with numbers. But more than a few would stand with him because they were loyal to him in particular, and as many more would defend him because he was the leader.

What, then? They would try to take the poison, or at least learn the truth of the poison. An ambush waiting for them, they could be painted as traitors and trying to sabotage equipment. That would be enough to effectively and permanently silence any rebellion on their part.

Deirdre watched the sun setting, the purple streaks spreading through the sky. They would be coming by soon, and she had a decision to make. They would come to the same conclusion she had. That much was clear.

If she told them that he had planned a poisoning, then they would realize that there was no way to warn Gunnar, no way to stop the blade at the point of impact, so they had to remove the threat of poison. It was why Valdemar had come up with the plan.

If she didn't tell them, then Valdemar would know. That would be a problem in itself, because as much as they promised to protect her, they weren't ever-present and they weren't capable of perfection.

With Valdemar's servants constantly surrounding them, it would only take a short moment for her to find a knife in her breast. An instant of slack attention, and she could be a dead woman.

She had another gamble to make, then. Another choice. Would she trust them, or would she make the choice for herself? She'd already made that mistake once. She needed to get out of here, and the first step to that was making sure that she was still alive for Gunnar to come and rescue her, when he caught up.

She heard them coming a long time before they walked into view. Heard their voices as they tried to play the part of casually inspecting camp, giving themselves an excuse for being near the medical cart and the prisoner.

"You met with Valdemar," Eirik began, waiting for her to fill in the blanks.

"He's planning to ambush you," she said softly. "When you go into his tent to steal something."

r /> Leif raised an eyebrow, translating for Ulf. "It's a good thing we weren't planning on it, then."

"You have to," she said softly. "He's discovered a poison. If Gunnar takes a wound with a weapon coated in it, he's as mortal as any man."