Ulfric had bid his farewells to his King before they left. When Ragnall had entrusted his message to Ulfric and he, in turn, had accepted his King’s trust as the gift it was.
Ulfric would guard it with his life.
It was Leif who rode out with them in the morning and stayed with them until the sun reached its midday height.
“I will see you again, cousin,” Ulfric had said gruffly when the time came for his cousin to go his own way.
“If the gods allow,” Leif replied with his usual laugh. “And even if they do not in this life, it is a certainty we will drink together in the next.”
They pounded each other on the back and then Leif had headed away. Not back toward Jorvik, but farther north on another of their King’s errands.
“Will he become Ragnall’s favorite?” Eithne asked. “Now that you and your brother are no longer at his side?”
“He is already one of the King’s favorites,” Ulfric replied, gruffly.
But then he relented, because she sat before him on his horse. And that was a temptation in itself, delicious beyond measure. He could feel the way she shifted, no doubt trying to find some comfortable way to sit on a horse between his thighs, with all the welts she had sustained and the way he’d reddened her bottom anyway.
Just imagining the beauty of those marks pleased him well. It made his cock press against her, which in turn made her squirm all the more. He cast an eye over the trees at the side of the road, thinking how easy it would be to take her behind them and gorge himself on her anew...
And yet he intended to ride hard this day. He told himself that waiting would make it all the sweeter when they stopped and he could enjoy her fully.
“My cousin heads north,” he told Eithne as he rode on. “For where there are enemies of Wessex, there, too, is the possibility of new friends.”
And that was one benefit of Edward of Wessex’s endless march to claim the whole of this island. He made more enemies by the day.
Eithne made a low noise. “How far north?”
He could hear in her question the usual fear of the Scots.
“Of all of us, Leif is the most diplomatic.” Ulfric found himself smiling, and was as glad she could not see it. “Too many mistake his laughter and think him unthreatening. If anyone can weave a peace with the vicious Scots, it is Leif.”
Eithne twisted around to look back at him, her eyes wide. “And if he cannot?”
Ulfric kicked the horse beneath them so she had no choice but to turn toward the front again, then hold on, her question left unanswered.
But he thought of little else that day. He and his brother and cousin had been together always. Even now Thorbrand might well be lost at sea, as so many were, on the passage across the brooding sea to distant Ísland. Though Ulfric knew his brother to have both a way with ships and the gods’ favor, that was no guarantee. There were no guarantees, ever. Leif headed to certain death up north. Thorbrand headed for uncertainty abroad. Ulfric, too, could do nothing but Ragnall’s bidding, for these were the oaths he’d taken. This was how he lived. And neither his brother nor his cousin would thank him should he attempt to sway them from their duties, nor shame them by neglecting his own.
But no one had ever said that the right thing to do, the honorable thing to do, would also be the easy thing.
He rode hard. And when he stopped, late into the long evening, he set up their camp quickly in a protected clearing in the forest. He fed them both dried meat from the pouches he carried, and then took advantage of their isolation and the forest to indulge himself in her, long after darkness fell.
The next morning, he was near enough to cheerful that he hardly recognized himself. But then, this was how he recalled Eithne. These were his fondest recollections—long days of travel, longer nights in his tent. Such had been their earliest time together. So too were these days bright and long, summer fair and sweet. And the nights yet a greater gleam.
On the third day of their ride, the weather began to change and by that afternoon, the rain began to fall.
Ulfric had been avoiding the villages and he suspected she knew why, though she declined to ask. The fewer who saw them, the better. For there could only be secrets between dead men, or none, as Ragnall liked to say.
He tried to push on through the storm as he would have done alone. And Eithne did not complain. Perhaps that was why he stopped early, throwing up his tent under the cover of the thick trees in the forest.
She crawled inside while he made his horse comfortable, then he crawled in after her. Then paused, because she was lying on her back, her hands thrown over her head, smiling as the rain pounded against the roof of his tent. She looked over at him and smiled wider. As if she had forgot who they were.
He liked it far more than he should.
Almost as if he wanted—
But he thrust that thought aside.
“I love the rain,” she said. “Particularly in the forest.”
He started to ask her what she knew of forests and rain, but stopped himself. Once again, he’d forgotten. All those many months he had been without her. He wore her mark on his face and yet still he forgot, when it had near to ruined him before he’d discovered her in Jorvik.
Yet he could not seem to work up his usual temper about these matters today. With that smile on her face and her arms thrust over her head, like an invitation to joys he could not quite name. He wanted to reach for her.
He could not have said why he did not.
Eithne’s gaze moved over his face. She turned over on her side, propping herself up so she could look at him.
“Osthryth and I would forage in forests just like this one. And we had no tent, so I became used to being fair sodden whenever the weather turned. It’s only the getting wet that irritates. Once you are already soaked through, what does it matter if you become more so?”
“I would not have thought foraging would be to your taste.”
She wrinkled up her nose as she looked at him. “There cannot always be meat in the pot, as my mother used to tell us. Yet God still provides. If you are a good forager, there will always be a decent meal to fill the belly.”
Ulfric reached over and traced the rope beneath her dress. He tied her into it every morning now, taking his time over the placement of the knots. Some days tightening in one place, some days another. They did not discuss it. He was not sure why he thought they ought to. It was no more than another ritual, and well did they both honor it. He liked knowing that he held her at all times. She liked feeling it. He knew this in the flush of pleasure that overtook her each morning as she ran her hands over the harness, as if memorizing the placement of the ropes, before she pulled on her shift. And again when he took the ropes off her each evening did she reach for the red marks the ropes left on her fair skin, smiling slightly.
In this way, that spark between them danced ever higher, all the time.
Still, it was an odd thing to realize that he thought of her only as the slave he had so carefully trained since the day he’d bought her, when he knew well that there was more to her. For this dance of theirs revealed character above all else. He knew she had fortitude. He knew she had a deep, abiding fire in her, not only the one they shared between them. She was not afraid of him, for one, which distinguished her from most. More, she was not afraid to provoke him to get what she wanted—and while he laughed at that and punished her for it in as delectable a fashion as he could, he recognized her for who she was.
Formidable in her own way. A warrior by rights, though perhaps only he knew it.
Maybe she is wasted as no more than a concubine, something in him whispered.
“I find myself surprised by you,” he told her, though the words felt forced from within him. Surely he should have known better than to speak them aloud. “I cannot say I like it.”
“It is not your fault.” Her voice was soft and yet serious, as if she, too, had forgotten her place. “I am surprised by you, also. It is because, though we spent years together, we did not speak. So the things we feel we know of each other may be true enough, but there are many details missing that only words can fill.”
He tugged a little on the rope, pinching it between his fingers through her dress and smiling faintly when he heard her breath change. “My ears must deceive me. I thought I was nothing to you but the cruel Northman who bought you in a Dublin market.”
She laughed, and he did not mistake that for anything less the momentous thing it was.
Because she was in fact his slave, and he knew well that it could not matter how close he felt to her. Given the opportunity, and enough rope, she would always tie him to the bed and cut him on her way out.
He even understood it now.
Ulfric couldn’t say when that had happened. Now, as the rain fell down all around them, he fingered that scar on his cheek and knew only that the deep temper that had lived in him all the time she was gone had subsided. Not as if it had disappeared entirely, or ever would, but it had changed. It had shifted.
He was not sure he wanted to dig into that any deeper.
“You are cruel,” she agreed, but with that gleam of heat in her gaze. “There can be no denying that.” Almost idly, he pinched one of her nipples and she made a satisfying squeaking sound. “But I already knew that. Lately I have come to know other things. I knew that Thorbrand was your brother and Leif your cousin, and that all of you were kin in some way. But is only of late that I truly understood that you were essentially all raised together by Ragnall.”
“We will ever be on opposite sides, little slave.” He pinched her nipple again to watch the bloom of red flowers in her cheeks. “The Northman scourge your kings tossed out of Ireland are my family and friends.”
“And the Irish your family and friends killed on your return were mine,” she replied softly.
“But this is the way of it,” he told her, yet not as if he was handing down a judgment, as he would have done before. It was different today. Perhaps it was the rain, the drum of it, working its way beneath his skin. It made him wish for her to understand above all else. “This is the world we live in. We claim what we can and make the best of what we have. There is an honor in that, I think. If you do your duty. If you keep your vows.”
“Free men make vows,” she said softly. “A slave girl has ropes in place of them, but I take your meaning all the same.”
He felt the change between them, too sudden for his liking. For she had laughed only moments before, but now the spark had flared and then turned, and he could feel the cut of it.
For it occurred to him that in all the ways he knew her, in ways most men could not dream of knowing a woman, there was one thing he could never know. He could make assumptions. He had. He could discern what her body wanted, what it craved and desired, feared and longed for at once, and so he did. He still believed that she would never have set foot in Jorvik, knowing he was there, if there was not some part of her that did not wish for him to find her.
Yet of all the things he could know about her, he could never know one simple truth: whether or not she would ever come to him of her own free will.
That moved through him like a thunderclap, though the rain that fell outside gave no hint of that kind of storm. The rain poured down, but it were not Thor riding into battle, his chariot pulled by Tanngrisnir and Tanngnjóstr and his hammer, mighty Mjölnir, flashing bright light across the heavens and defeating his foes with every throw.
That was only happening within him, perhaps a message from the gods he did not wish to receive.
Eithne’s gaze went quizzical, and he knew every shade of green there. Yet he still could not know the answer to that one question.
When he knew, then, that truly, it was the only question that mattered.
He lifted his hand and set it to the side of her face. And something crested in him, some kind of frantic wave like the North Sea in winter, filled with rage and fury yet more beautiful for it.
He had no idea what he meant to say, only that it needed saying, that it burned in him like a new hunger. A need within him, sharp like breath.
Yet even as he opened his mouth to say it, he froze.
“Ulfric?” Eithne asked, her voice hushed.
But he was already moving, for he had heard a sound that did not fit with the rain-soaked forest on the other side of the tent’s walls, with or without the intrusion of the gods. He was already moving and his sword was in his hand as if it drew itself. He pushed his way through the tent’s opening and out into the wet and damp.
He saw nothing, but he knew what he had heard. And he melted into the trees, keeping his ears pricked, his footfalls so light it was as if he made no sound at all.
As if he was a part of the rain, as one with the trees.
He waited.
Behind the trunk of a tree, he quieted his breath. And with it the pounding of his heart, already anticipating the coming fight.
He waited.
And then he heard it again. The faint, yet unmistakable sound of a foot touching down in the undergrowth.
Ulfric moved again, everything in him going still and unforgiving. He picked his way toward the sound, tracking his quarry with deadly intent.
And then, at last, he saw the figure in the damp, moving from behind a tree with a stick in its hands and all its attention focused forward.
On the tent where he had only recently been lying down, heedless, as if asking for an ambush.
He melted his way closer, as if he were no more than another bit of rain, yet as he did, he saw movement at the entrance to the tent. His jaw turned to steel. Surely he had ordered Eithne to stay put, but even if he hadn’t, did that not go without saying? That she should remain safe when any and all enemies lurked nearby? He wanted to call out and order her to remain in the tent but if he did, he would alert the ragged, filthy creature he saw before him to his location.
In the clearing, Eithne pushed free of the tent and stood. He watched her with no small part of his attention—and dismay—as she looked around, taking in their would-be attacker and Ulfric not ten paces behind.
Her eyes widened in alarm. Ulfric lifted his sword high, prepared to handle this threat decisively—
But Eithne screamed.
“Ulfric!” she cried out, already throwing herself across the clearing. “No!”
And though he could not credit it as a possibility, this woman he continued not to know at all lunged into the forest. Did she think to rescue him?
But no, she was about a greater madness—throwing herself between the creature he had every intention of cutting down and his sword.
It took him a long moment to understand she meant to ward him off.
“Eithne,” he bit out. “Step aside.”
“This is my friend!” Her hands were outstretched, palms toward him as if she could hold him back herself, with all her puny strength. “You cannot kill her!”
Ulfric scowled at the creature she protected, that he had thought no more than a desperate troll, whether a person or not. But then the rags and dirt seemed to rearrange themselves, and he realized that this was the old woman from the market square. The true crone.
No troll in truth, but a woman who dared to glare at him with an equal amount of the disgust he felt sure were all over his face.
“Step aside,” she cried, her eyes bright with hatred aimed straight at Ulfric. “I’m going to kill him.”
“With what?” Ulfric demanded. “Dirt and fleas?”
The old woman sneered at him. “I hear you take a dagger well, Northman.” And as he watched as she produced, from the depths of her ragged garments, a crude dagger of her own.
Ulfric but laughed. He stood straight and sheathed his sword. Then he lifted both hands out before him as if in surrender. “I bid you try, hag.”
“Ulfric!” came Eithne’s voice, but now she struggled as much to keep the old woman from lunging at him as to keep him from swinging his blade.
“Some call me a witch,” the old woman said, with a cackle. “I need only nick you with this dirty flea of mine. No need to posture and pretend and wave a great blade as if it might make up for the tiny dagger betwixt your legs. The poison will do the rest.”
He only shook his head. “You think highly of yourself indeed, witch or no, if you think you might do a single thing to me without my wishing it.”
The woman only laughed again, in a manner Ulfric knew she meant to unnerve him. He would not describe himself thus, so much as watchful. Careful. For one thing he knew well was that women, while never the warriors men were, because of the limits of their size and their strength, could nonetheless be surprisingly deadly. For they were ever unpredictable. Almost as if they did not expect to win and thus, perhaps because of that, had nothing to lose. And so would do things a man would not.
“Stop taunting each other,” Eithne bit out, but she seemed now flushed with temper more than fear. She turned her glare on the old woman and was yet still glaring when she turned back to him.
Ulfric did but lift his brow, and she flushed. As he watched, she fought to adjust her expression, but he would still describe the look on her face as a frown. At him, which could not bode well for her.
“I will kill him,” the older woman was saying, as if Ulfric, four times her size and more powerful than ten of her, was not right there before her. “You escaped him once, child. You can do it again. And this time, you and I will make certain he will not rise to claim you once more.”
Ulfric dropped his hands. He crossed his arms, then watched his slave’s face. Too closely, perhaps.
For he had never considered himself a sentimental man. Not even when he was deep in his cups, though some men drank themselves to misery. But he found his chest felt tight as he saw the indecision in Eithne’s gaze.
And there it was, yet again.
He wanted her to want him. He wanted her to choose him, even here, when there was no real choice to be made. This old woman was no threat to him, no matter if she had anointed her puny knife with every witch’s poison in the land. He could disarm her, snap her neck, and end the situation without even breaking a sweat.
And would have, would it not upset Eithne.
Eithne. His slave. And yet there was that tightness around him, as if he wore his own ropes yet made of steel, and he thought he would die before he let Eithne know such a truth. He had half a mind to gut himself, here and now, for the treacherous thought alone.
“Ulfric,” she said, and much as he liked his name in her mouth, there was another name he liked better. He found his temper far thinner that ought to have been in the face of this game. “Osthryth is my friend. Were it not for her aid, I would have died. She found me wandering the woods, cold and wet, and she nursed me back to health.”
“Did she indeed.” He swept a gaze over the old woman, who bared her teeth at him in return, then looked back to Eithne. “And why was it you were in those woods in the first place, I wonder?”
She had the sense, or the shame, to flush a deeper red. “It hardly matters how I came to be there.”
“Does it not? Are you sure? For I will tell you that few things matter more to me.”
The old woman spat. “Well did I teach her a thing or two, once I saved her from certain death. This time, she will gut you like a fish.”
Osthryth made as if to hurl herself at him, but Eithne moved with her and struggled to keep her from it.
“Please,” Eithne said, urgently. “Please, Ulfric. I cannot leave her behind.”
His head tipped to one side. “And what is it you ask of me, little slave?” He ignored the growling sound the old woman made at the name he called her. “You want me to let this creature travel with us? Will I sleep with one eye open, waiting for her poisoned blade to sink between my ribs? Will I suffer her insults day and night? No man would stand against me were I to strike her down where she stands. For she is here for one purpose only. To steal what is mine.”
The old woman launched into further invective, but Ulfric saw only Eithne. He saw the misery in her green gaze, and how she implored him. And how, too, she clearly knew what a risk it was to even ask him things. To stand against him in any way.
She was a slave. She had no right to anything he did not give her of his own hands. There were some who would have been outraged that she dared ask at all. Some would already have killed the old woman for her temerity and beat the slave who dared ask that he consider her feelings at all.
A beating that would not end in her moans of pleasure, her body open and willing.
Ulfric knew there were no rational reason he should even consider such a request. For there was no benefit to him. There was no reason he should suffer another moment of the hag’s noxious company.
Yet he could not help but think that if he let this happen, it might...gain him the favor of the slave girl whose favor was surely irrelevant. He had already bought it. He already owned her.
Still, there was that hunger in him. He wanted more. Not just her surrender on his terms, for he had that. He had always had that.
He wanted her surrender on her terms, too.
He told himself it was simply more of the same thing, and this would only make it deeper. Better. For him, which ought to have been his only concern.
It was possible that Eithne had bewitched him after all.
Before him, he could see her tremble faintly, for she must know that she would pay for this—and how. In her eyes, that impossible green, he read the kind of begging he liked best and a hint of resolve, too. As if, were he to demand it now, she would fling herself at his feet.
Ulfric knew it was her pride that kept her from it, and a new truth dawned in him. For he discovered that he liked well how proud she was. He had glimpsed it that day in the slave market and it had never left her. He loved nothing more than watching her swallow her pride—for him. Only and ever for him.
He did not wish to see her humble herself before anyone else. Ragnall was one thing. This old woman was another, and he did not need her to tell him that it was this that would hurt her more.
There was only one sort of hurt he liked to inflict upon her. This was not it.
Slowly, Ulfric inclined his head, giving her his assent.
He watched her breath come then, big gulps of air as if she had gone without.
“It will cost you,” he told her, his voice hard. Only then did he shift his gaze to the old woman. “And if this creature does not find herself some manners, the cost will be dear indeed.”