‘Where is my wife?’
The sun had not yet crested the horizon, but Rolfe hadn’t been able to wait any longer to take Elswyth back. He’d spent a fitful night in their bed, barely able to find any sleep because every time he drifted off he’d reach for her and become aware of her absence all over again.
It was only a slight exaggeration to say that he felt as if he’d been waiting for her all his life. In the short time he’d been with her he knew what would make her laugh and what would make her only smile, and somehow he knew just what to say to make her eyes go very fierce before her temper flared. He could hardly credit the thought, and he’d never give voice to it, but it was as if the gods had meant for her to be his. She was his and he would do everything in his power to keep her with him, even if he was forced to keep his distance from her.
If only he knew where she was. As he stared down at the empty place near the embers of the fire where she should have been, Godric and Galan roused in their blankets.
‘She won’t be your wife for long,’ Galan muttered as he sat up.
The anger that coursed through Rolfe’s body was so spontaneous and fierce that he was on top of Galan before he could think better of it. ‘What have you done with her?’
‘Nothing.’ He didn’t miss the way Galan looked towards the place where she should have been.
‘She’s gone, you fool.’ Rolfe stared into the distance, hoping she’d merely walked away for a bit of privacy, but genuine panic was started to rise within him. The warrior tents were back towards Alvey’s wall, but there was no sign of her wandering among them. He briefly wondered if one of them had taken her inside for his pleasure, but none of them would be so stupid. She was his and everyone knew that. He twisted towards the forest, but her form wasn’t visible through the dim light of the waning moon. He told himself that she’d merely gone into the forest to relieve herself, or to walk and think things over, but he knew—he knew—that she was gone. There was a great void inside him that said she was already far away from him.
‘She’s gone.’ Godric’s voice, still harsh with sleep, broke the silence. ‘She chose her family over you and she left to go home.’
Pain as sharp as a knife’s blade slashed through his chest. The man couldn’t have found better words with which to wound him. ‘You lie.’
Galan sneered, standing next to his father, ‘We have no need of lies when you’ve made certain she hates you. She found out who you really are and she left.’
Anger surged through Rolfe, so hot and furious that it propelled him across the glowing embers of the nearly dead fire. He swung his fist and knocked Galan to the ground. ‘What sort of brother are you to tell her about her friend in that way?’ he shouted. She should have been told in soft, gentle words that would take into account her deep grief.
Wiping the blood from his mouth, Galan smirked from where he’d fallen to the ground. ‘What sort of husband are you to have killed him?’
The words were meant to wound and they did. They hurt deeply, nearly bringing Rolfe to his knees with the agony. Stifling a groan of anguish, he ran back to the safety of Alvey’s walls hoping that he would find her there, but one quick search of the stables proved that Gyllir was not among the other horses.
Elswyth was gone.
He couldn’t move for a moment as that horrible reality pulsed through him. She must have really left for Banford. There was nowhere else she could go. She had chosen her family over him. The devastating pain of that was enough to make him stumble, his hand grasping for the wall.
‘Grim!’ Rolfe shouted for the boy who guarded the horses at night.
He poked his head over the railing of the loft, straw in his hair as he rubbed his eyes. ‘Aye, Rolfe?’
‘Have you seen my wife? Gyllir is missing.’
The boy’s eyes grew round and when he shook his head, Rolfe’s heart sank. He didn’t bother to berate the boy for not watching as well as he should have. There was no time. He had to get to Elswyth. Whether she had chosen her family or not, he needed to talk to her, to hear her tell him herself. By the gods, he might just bring her back anyway.
The blow of the horn sent another shard of terror through him. A blow this early meant something was gravely wrong. ‘Ready my horse,’ he ordered Grim and ran to the gates to figure out what was happening.
The Saxon Aldred stood heaving for breath, his horse beside him lathered in sweat. The men on watch had gathered around them, listening.
‘What’s happened?’ Rolfe asked, and they relayed the story to him. There were Scots in the north. Aldred had come upon them during his routine ride through his assigned territory. The area Aldred described wasn’t directly on the path that Elswyth would take, but it was close enough to make Rolfe fear they might find her. Turning to the men of the night guard, he asked, ‘Did any of you see my wife leave on Gyllir?’
‘Aye,’ one of them said. ‘Around midnight she came and took the mare out.’
He stared at them, incredulous. ‘Not one of you stopped her?’
They looked at each other in discomfort before one said, ‘Should we have stopped her? Is she a prisoner?’
‘Nay, but she was alone at night. Did you not suspect anything? You could have sent for me.’
They shuffled in discomfort again. ‘She said that she was staying with her family tonight. We didn’t know that you had forbidden her to leave.’
He hadn’t forbidden her to leave, but neither should she have gone. He wanted to yell at the helplessness he felt. ‘Send for Jarl Vidar and Aevir. Tell them we leave within the hour.’
That hour seemed endless. If Rolfe could have gone, he would have, but he couldn’t simply ride out with the threat of the Scots lingering. They needed to assemble the warriors and prepare for battle. Finally, Rolfe had gathered his men and took Aevir, leaving before the allotted hour. He’d leave Vidar to take the other warriors in boats up the river. They’d make faster time and come from the west.
Rolfe set a brutal pace, the horses of more than forty warriors tearing up the ground in his fervour to find Elswyth. The Scots would have to come second to that. He’d never felt such an obsession in his life as he did now, needing to know that she was safe more than he needed his next breath. His only goal was to find her and take her in his arms. She could hate him for ever, but he was never letting her out of his sight again.
They had ridden hard for over an hour—the sides of his horse were already lathered in foam and he heaved in deep breaths—when they broke through the edge of the trees to see a single horse on the path ahead. The gathering sunlight glinted off its golden coat as it grazed on the grasses of the valley floor. Even from this distance, Rolfe could tell that it was Gyllir. His heart gave a leap in his chest as he urged Sleipnir even faster.
As soon as he approached, he vaulted down before his horse had even stopped, landing hard on his feet. He ran past Gyllir, expecting to see Elswyth resting in the tall grasses, but she wasn’t there. A quick survey of the small valley found that it was empty.
‘Elswyth!’ He yelled her name over and over, but there was no response.
‘Rolfe!’ Aevir’s hand on his shoulder finally got his attention, but Rolfe could tell from his expression that it wasn’t the first time Aevir had called his name.
‘She has to be here,’ Rolfe said.
Aevir shook his head, then said very carefully, ‘She’s not here, Brother.’ He led Rolfe back to Gyllir where it was obvious she was wounded as she favoured a foreleg. Dried mud caked one side of her as if she had fallen. She must have thrown Elswyth as she fell. An image of his wife, hurt and broken on the ground, came to mind.
With more than a day’s travel to Banford ahead of them, there was no chance she’d reached the village and sent the horse back on its own. Something had happened to her. Either the horse had spooked and thrown her or she had come across the Scots.
Fighting nausea and a bone-deep fear he’d never felt before, Rolfe gave the order to keep riding.
They had been forced to a slower pace, so it was a few hours later when they reached the area where she’d been taken.
It was obvious a skirmish had occurred. Horse hooves had made deep prints in the mud left from the snow earlier in the week. There were at least a score of horses, maybe more, it was difficult to tell. One horse had taken a tumble, probably hers given the mud on Gyllir’s side and her injury. The disturbance in the mud where the horse had lost its footing and slid on to its side was unmistakable. It appeared that Elswyth had been ambushed or had run right into the unaware Scots. Either way, they had her. He couldn’t think too deeply about what that might mean. He only knew that he had to find her.
Elswyth had been lucky. Her arm had been scraped when Gyllir had fallen, tearing the sleeve of her underdress, but she’d managed to jump free to avoid the horse landing on her leg. It had been small consolation, because she’d had no chance to gain her footing before the Scots had captured her. It had happened so fast that she’d not even had a chance to pull her axe. One moment she’d been racing through the trees and in the next she’d come upon them. Her impression had been that they had been just as surprised as she had, but it hadn’t changed the fact that they had taken her.
They had stuffed a cloth into her mouth to keep her silent. She hadn’t made it easy, fighting until one of them had boxed her ear, sending her into a world of pain and stars. When she’d regained her senses, her arms had been tied to a horse and a Scot rode behind her. Struggling only sapped her strength and bruised her body, so she’d resolved to wait until they stopped. Turned out that struggling with the Scot behind her had hurt her worse than falling from the horse.
She had counted a group of seventeen. All men. All warriors. She didn’t know what they were doing this far south. Were they scouting? Had they become lost? Surely they hadn’t come for battle with so few men? After they had taken her they’d travelled fast, as if they were afraid of pursuit, but after a few hours it had become apparent that they’d succeeded in their crime so they’d relaxed. A few of them had even given eerie calls of victory that had made her blood run cold.
If she had to guess, she would say this was no sanctioned jaunt to the south. They had probably escaped their leaders, hoping to return home with a Dane prize. They reminded her of adolescent mongrels testing their boundaries with the way they jested and spoke to one another, and they all seemed fairly young. The oldest and apparent leader was probably only a few years older than her. He was clean and well dressed, making her think he was someone of power. It was only later in the day when someone had spoken his name that she realised he was Domnall, the King’s son. Though the most frightening thing about him was that he wore the bloodstone she had stolen from Rolfe on his cloak. She recognised its size and the gold filigree, though it was missing its chain.
She had debated if it would be better to tell them her identity or to keep quiet. Not that there was much time for talking. It appeared they were trying to make it back to their own territory with all possible haste. They had stopped only briefly a couple of times to water the horses and eat a little bread. Night had long since fallen and they’d shown no signs of stopping to camp, which was a relief. She feared what would happen to her if they made camp. But she was also starting to fear what would happen if they didn’t. Snow had begun to fall the farther north they travelled and as day had become night a layer of it had accumulated on the ground. Somewhere during the struggle she’d lost her fur so her limbs were numb from the cold and the Scot at her back showed no signs of taking pity on her.
Light of a new dawn was just beginning to crest on the horizon when a shout from behind them drew the attention of Domnall. He pulled up short and all the other men stopped to watch as he doubled back. A figure rode out of the darkness and she recognised him as one of the group who had dropped off some time back. Apparently he’d been left behind to watch for Danes. She’d been so tired that she’d drifted in and out of sleep on the horse, so she wasn’t entirely certain where they were. She’d guess they were north of Banford, perhaps already in the Scots territory.
Domnall shouted back to his men and she cursed herself for not being able to understand his words. There was no mistaking the change in momentum that ran through the group, a potent mix of anticipation and bloodlust, but all of it was tinged with fear. The fear was in how the men darted glances from one to the other as if attempting to draw strength from their own arrogance. A battle was coming. Her heart pounded and she knew the man had brought news of the Danes coming. It was Rolfe.
Domnall rode back, dismounted and walked straight towards her. She tried to keep her fear in check, but she couldn’t control the shaking of her limbs as he cut the bonds attaching her to the horse from her arms and dragged her off. He set her on her feet, but they were numb from the cold and the hard ride, so she sank down before she could find her strength. He left her there and walked back to his horse. Her heart leapt as she thought that maybe he’d decided to leave her. Perhaps he thought she wasn’t worth the risk and if he left her here the Danes would halt their pursuit. Her hopes fell when he walked back to her holding another set of rope and she realised he meant to tie her up again.
By this time she was able to get to her feet and she tore the cloth from her mouth. ‘Let me go and I’ll make sure you are not followed.’
He grinned and spoke in her language. ‘How will you ensure that?’
‘I am Elswyth. My father is Godric from Banford and I am the wife of Rolfe from the Danes of Alvey.’
He paused in his approach, but his smile only widened. ‘Godric’s daughter.’ Then he tapped the bloodstone affixed to his cloak. ‘I’ve you to thank for this. Those Danes killed my brother and took this from his dead body. Your brother, Galan, says that you retrieved it from them. He did not say that you had married one of them.’
She hesitated, uncertain how much glory she wanted to accept for an act that she despised. ‘Aye, I took it,’ she finally said. ‘But only because you had Baldric. I did it to save him, not to help your cause.’ The last thing she wanted now was to help the Scots. All she wanted was peace.
He watched her curiously, his head tilting to the side. ‘Baldric? The boy?’
She nodded and a feeling of unease came over her as she remembered her father and the peculiar look on his face the previous night when she’d asked about Baldric.
‘We never had Baldric,’ the man said easily. ‘Godric secured the bloodstone as a gesture of his loyalty.’
Her knees nearly went out from under her again as the pain of her family’s betrayal tore through her. Baldric had never been in danger. They had told her that to make her steal from Rolfe. She’d betrayed Rolfe’s trust for nothing. For a foolish test of loyalty to a king she had no love for.
‘Your father lied to you,’ he concluded, taking a menacing step closer to her.
Despite the fact that she knew she would get no help from his men, she looked for it anyway, only to see that they were all busy scurrying in every direction. They were planning to hide and lie in wait for whoever was coming.
‘Tell me, Elswyth, to whom do you give your allegiance? Your father or your husband? You cannot serve both of them.’
She flinched from the question. Dear God, was it meant to follow her always? But what else had she expected? She was a Saxon who had married a Dane. Tangled loyalty and distrust would haunt her for ever.
Her family needed her and Rolfe...even thinking his name brought physical pain. He’d spent hours worshipping her body, but that alone wasn’t enough to earn her devotion. Nay, he’d earned that with his noble strength, his sense of honour and gentle teasing. He’d earned that with the way he had always made her feel safe and protected. The memory of the way he had looked at her as he’d spoken the words that would make him her husband came back to her, as if she were the only woman he wanted, as if he had truly meant every one of them.
It was all those tiny moments added up to create a bond that she had known would only grow stronger in the days to come. Until it had all come crashing down around her.
‘What does it matter to you?’ she asked him coldly.
‘It doesn’t, but we’re about to find out whether it matters to your husband.’
His eyes gleamed cruelly as he came for her. She screamed, hoping that the sound would warn Rolfe and the others, but it was cut off short by his open palm against the side of her head. It hadn’t been terribly hard, but the strength hadn’t yet returned to her legs so the blow knocked her to the ground. Her knees landed with a heavy thud on the hard ground, followed by the nearly dead weight of her exhausted body. The cold wet snow seeped through the fabric of her tunic and leggings. He tore the cloth from her hand, intending to tie her mouth again, but she refused to make it easy.
Drawing on the last of her reserved strength, she lashed out, catching him in the groin. He groaned in pain and fell to his knees, but he was only momentarily slowed, enough to allow her to rise, but not escape him. He grabbed her arm and with his greater strength was able to pull her beneath him so that he could tie the cloth behind her mouth and then wrench her arms in front of her to tie them. She fought him mercilessly so that by the time he’d finished, galloping horses could be heard coming up the slight hillside.
Her heart gave a leap of joy the moment she saw Rolfe’s beloved face in the pale sliver of the coming dawn. His hair had come loose from the usual way he wore it pulled back from his face to swing in a wild mass around his shoulders. His eyes widened with visible relief when he saw her. In that moment everything became clear to her. She hated what he’d done and she despised the coldness with which he’d treated her, but she should have stayed and talked with him. Anything to keep him from danger. The rest of the Scots were out there hiding. One of them might even now be waiting to jump him.