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I took a single step outside, and was slammed against the wall.
A host of stars burst in front of my eyes, and I struggled to keep standing. A hand was clamped across my mouth, and the crook of an arm wrapped around my waist. I was half-crushed, but still breathing. I could feel the wild rhythm of Erik’s heartbeat, pounding against my back.
There must be forty men.
It was a conservative estimate, and they weren’t just men, they were soldiers. The pending arrival of the king had prompted a steady influx of his troops since late in the spring. We had often seem them training; I knew the company Erik had been referring to, and was not surprised they’d been sent to march beyond the southern gate. And yet, they weren’t marching. They were right here.
I chanced a look behind me, seeing the wild panic in his eyes.
“I don’t understand,” he breathed, staring in astonishment. “They are not supposed to be here. They were given orders to—”
This time, it was me who squeezed his hand, a command for silence.
They hadn’t seen us yet, but that was only because we’d slipped through the eastern door. Even then, it was something of a miracle. If we’d been coming through the main gate...?
“Alright, this is...” He trailed away, muscles tensing with apprehension as the men started drilling our way. We slipped further around the curb, clinging to the shadows. “This is going to be fine. I just need to...” His eyes swept wildly across the courtyard, coming up blank. “I just...”
It’s not going to be fine.
It was quiet a few moments, then I turned suddenly, twisting around in his arms. He glanced down in surprise, pale as the moonlight, to see me leaning against his chest. His eyes were so bright, they looked almost fevered. They widened ever so slightly, as I reached for his belt.
And unsheathed a blade.
“You’ve got one now.”
It took him a few seconds to understand what I was saying. Even then, a stubborn part of him refused to believe it; staring with a deliberate lack of comprehension at my face. It wasn’t until I took a step back, that he reached for me suddenly, an iron hand wrapping around my wrist.
“Liv—”
“Don’t,” I interrupted softly, barely a whisper, “you’ve done enough already.” The troops were marching back across the tower, and we drifted silently to the other side. “You got me out of there, Erik. You saved me from...” My eyes flicked to the space that was waiting for the pyre, unwilling to say the word another time. “I am grateful for this,” I stressed, easing back. “It is a better death.”
To be honest, even then, I wasn’t quite sure what I intended. Would I make a dash in whatever direction the company didn’t happen to be facing? Would I simply kneel on the cool earth and carve quiet slices into my wrists? No matter what I chose, neither option seemed particularly likely. They would each require some degree of time, and I would be spotted long before I could finish. Even if I slipped back into the tower, did something there, it would only be a matter of minutes before the guards failed to signal and another patrol was sent to check the prison.
And I could not return to the tower. That place was finished for me now. It would have to be here, with the guards in the courtyard. A scenario that could implicate nobody other than me.
Erik’s face tightened painfully, as he imagined the next few moments; the warriors with their long swords, me standing there alone, gripping a tiny blade. When I tried to drift even further, he shook his head fiercely, tightening his grip upon my wrist. “Liv, they will hack you to pieces—”
“It’s still a better death.”
The men were rounding the opposite corner now. We would soon be forced to move into the light. Unwilling to debate it further, I yanked again on my hand, only to be held back.
“Would you just wait,” he hissed between his teeth, trying to keep hold of me. “There isn’t a reason to go running off to Valhalla. The whole point of this—”
But he never got to finish that sentence. He never got to come up with another plan. It wouldn’t have mattered if he did. There were forces moving now, bigger and beyond our control.
I’d thought my eyes were playing tricks, but there was no mistaking the blaze.
The brothel was on fire.
* * *
Trina.
I stood with my back against the rough wall of the prison, staring with wide eyes at the plumes of smoke rising into the sky, listening to the frantic screams of the villagers as they roused from their beds, to their quick footsteps as they raced into the courtyard. The fire had started so quickly, I could not believe how well the flames had spread. It was as if some dark force had propelled them, coaxing and nudging. In a matter of seconds, the entire brothel was enflamed.
My people were slow to react. Ours was a land of rain, fires were uncommon.
The men and women who lived in the square were still swarming around the village well, fastening their clothes and hauling up slopping buckets. It would make little difference. No sooner had they dragged them across the length of the courtyard, than they were driven back by the heat.
I watched as they cringed away, throwing the buckets from a distance, hands raised in front of them to avoid the blistering of skin. There wasn’t movement from inside, not a single scream, a single cry for help. It was almost as if the girls had been warned in advance, had slept in their beds.
Trina.
I thought her name again, like the chime of a bell.
It was an answer, a reassurance.
And a whole tangle of other things all at the same time.
It seemed my beloved aunt hadn’t trusted me to keep my promise. Nor had she waited to see what the king would decide. For all her extremes and whimsy, there was a decided pragmatism at the core of Trina. They wouldn’t recover any bodies. There was nobody inside.
And she accuses me of setting fires.
Erik had frozen beside me, pressed against the tower.
When the fire had started, his first instinct had been to run towards it. I’d seen the sharp change in his expression, the quick unbuckling of his sword. Vikings were fierce as they were loyal, and had been programmed with a slightly distressing lack of fear. It wasn’t until the soldiers did the same thing, casting down their weapons and barreling towards it, that he suddenly remembered himself and melted into the shadows. We watched from a distance, silent and hidden in shade.
“Erik,” I whispered, glancing towards him.
There was no visible reaction. His eyes were enormous, I could see the reflections of the flames dancing within. When I touched his arm, he jumped. His skin was cold and pale.
His gaze swung to mine, stunned and breathless.
“We need to go,” I prompted, reaching for his hand.
He jumped again, staring down at our fingers. A kind of paralysis washed over him, and for a split second, he didn’t seem capable of doing anything more. He’d been separated from the rest of them, unable to fall into line. He was holding onto the hands of a witch. There was a terrifying moment when I thought he might run from me. Then his fingers tightened on my hand.
“The alley will be swarmed,” he answered, barely a whisper. It was incredible how clearly I heard him, amidst the rising din of the crowd. “We cannot go that way.”
It was at this point, he would have offered an alternative. But he was from a land leagues away, and had only been in the settlement a few days. The crowds would help us. But to escape...?
I considered for the length of a heartbeat, then looked in the opposite direction. “There is another way.”
With our hands clasped firmly together, the two of us bolted away from the tower, peeling the shadows from our backs and streaking past the massing crowds towards the eastern corner of the square. It was quieter there, relatively speaking, but we didn’t slow down. The village was in chaos; no one noticed two people running. Most of them were running themselves.
My head ducked everyone we passed, I kept my face turned and my eyes darting. It would take just a single shout, and the game would be over. Those within earshot would swarm, and Erik and I would be torn apart by a frenzy of jackals. We must simply get past them.
Faster and faster we went. Our feet pounding the packed earth.
The only thing I had in my favor, was it had been a small ring of people around us in the courtyard. Most had been servants who would not try to stop us. There had been a few dozen more, at best. The rest of the settlement had known about me only through other people’s stories, and those are not precise. Perhaps a few others would recognize me from our shared time in the village, but it was true—what those callous girls had said. Even after sixteen years, there were very few people here who would know me by name. I supposed that should have made me sad.
It was a blessing.
We rounded the corner, and I knocked straight into the chest of a man who was stepping out of a tavern. He’d risen at the noise, and was coming to investigate the commotion.
He was the approximate size of an ox.
“I’m sorry,” I gasped, knocking backwards.
I half-dragged Erik with me, clasped as we were by the hand. Our arms broke apart, as the giant lowered his eyes from the flames to the trembling girl who stood in front of him. He seemed to make a vague connection. When I tried to step quickly around him, he caught me by the arm.
“There’s a fire,” he declared.
He also wasn’t very bright.
“Yes,” I panted, trying to catch my breath, “excuse me, I must go—”
“I recognize you,” he interrupted, forgetting, for a moment, the best whorehouse in the settlement had caught alight. “You’re one of the girls who serves in the Great Hall.” He paused in recollection. “Haven’t seen you there for a while.”
“Come, sister,” Erik called pointedly behind him, “we must tell the watchmen of the fire.”
I nodded quickly and moved as if to follow, but again, the man stepped into my path. His grip on my arm tightened, and a cloud of ale wafted into my face. He’d been drinking, heavily.
...and he’s already recognized me.
My chest seized in panic, as a freezing jolt of fear shot down my spine. I did my best to keep it from my face, but I should have known better. The man might have been consumed enough ale to stun a team of oxen, but at the core, he was a predator. Such things could sense fear.
My eyes flashed to Erik.
Run!
He did, but in the wrong direction.
As the pieces clicked together and the man’s eyes dilated in anticipation, he flew out of his periphery, landing a disorienting blow across the head. It was enough to have felled a normal man. It was quite nearly enough to have killed a normal man. But the giant merely lifted a hand to his brow.
It pulled back, wet with blood. His eyes slowly lifted. “Do you wish to die?”
RUN!
I raced forward myself, but my wrist was still trapped in the man’s hand, and he yanked me onto my back, turning his terrifying bulk onto Erik. I tangled in a pile at their feet as the two came together. There was no hesitation; only a concerted effort by one of them to angle the other way.
I scrambled from the ground, nearly tripping a man who was sprinting up the street behind me. It was another wayward blessing—nothing spread faster than mayhem. The roads that had been quiet were thicker now, and it was easy to get lost in the fray. By the time I looked up, the two men were locked together. I froze in the street, petrified, desperate to be running the other way.
Twisted hells!
I’d half-expected for Erik to have reconsidered. At some point, self-preservation takes over, and there was a strong case to be argued for retreat. The man didn’t have it in him. It simply wasn’t there. He didn’t just fight back. He was the aggressor.
I watched in a moment of almost serene unreality, as he grabbed hold of the man as though they were the same size, flipping his body weightlessly through the air, and coming down on the other side. It was so quickly done, the giant was still turning when he lifted a slab of wood from the ground, striking it violently across the side of the man’s head.
Two strikes, in the same location. His strategy was becoming clear.
My eyes flew between them, trying to keep pace, as the rest of the settlement came to life around me. No longer were the screams contained to the courtyard, the night had shattered into a hailstorm of sound, as a rolling layer of smoke billowed into the sky. People were shouting back and forth. A donkey was being dragged stubbornly by a leash. The doors and windows of every building had been thrown open, and people of all ranks and ages were pouring into the street.
I blinked in a daze, taking in the scene.
Ironically enough, it was the kind of thing I’d always been secretly jealous of, growing up on the other side of the wall. Not the tragedy of it, but the collaboration. That sense of community was the thing you missed. Sometimes, it felt nice to be part of a crowd. Even a crowd like this one.
My eyes drifted across their milling faces, frenzied and flushed.
Well...they wanted a fire.
There was a sharp impact behind me, the bright spattering of blood. Erik was moving quickly, moving in such a way it was clear he wished to simply end the fight and move on. But the giant had been breaking people’s bones since he was old enough to stand. The fire was a mere afterthought now, and this boy was too quick and pretty for his own good. He must be taught a lesson. And the best lessons Vikings knew, were the ones that involved the most pain.
With a single hand, he reached down and simply caught the young bannerman by the back of the neck, holding him still long enough to lean back and smash their heads together.
Gods alive!
There was a painful cry, and Erik staggered backwards—lifting a hand to his brow and blinking quickly as a trickle of blood poured down from his hair. The image was tilting, and he lowered a hand for balance. The man was moving closer, then closer. I was about to scream a warning, when he gathered strength and senses, and leapt suddenly into the sky. There was a moment where neither of us could see him, then he landed a punishing kick in the man’s spine.
“Odin’s beard.” The giant chuckled, spitting blood from his mouth. There was a chip of something inside it, maybe a tooth? “You have talent, I’ll give you that. Did you fight in the arena?”
Even amidst the madness on the street, the riles of color and flashes of light, I saw the shifting of expression on Erik’s face. It wasn’t the fight, that much was clear. He was the one who’d initiated the fight—suicidal as it might have been. It was the conversation. The question.
It was the fact that the man recognized him.
My face stilled in a moment of understanding.
He intends to go back.
Instead of answering, Erik threw himself forward again—ignoring the clear path that had opened behind us, and turning his entire focus onto the man. With a speed it was difficult to fathom, the speechless fugitive fell away, and I saw the man I’d watched in the arena. The rising champion that had charmed the crowd and caught the eyes of any gods watching above him.
It was as breathtaking as it was deadly. A twirling homily of limbs and pain.
He struck out with his fists, and I felt the vibrations in the ground beneath me. The man tried to swing back in retaliation, but the young bannerman was no longer there. There seemed an actual weightlessness to him, like a bird about to take flight. Every movement was swift and precise, planned and executed, marked with a grace that somehow defied the violence of the act itself.
They twisted together, as I stood there staring—the smoke rising in a cloud behind me, pieces of ash and debris catching lightly in my hair.
It made sense to me now, the quiet string of casualties that had followed since he’d opened the door to my prison cell, the stack of bodies in the closet, the candle-maker—each of them debilitated in the same way. A quick blow to the back of the head. One that would leave them reeling, but unharmed in the morning. One that would erase the events of the night before.
He can’t have anyone recognizing him. He needs them to forget.
I’d warned him, the others would know he’d helped me. After his conversation with the king, how could he not understand such a thing himself? To spare my guilt and save my far-flung brethren, he’d actually conjured a key—just to ensure I couldn’t be accused of using witchcraft to break out myself. I’d warned him, yet some part of him hadn’t believed it. The boy had a plan, and it was to deliver me safely to freedom, then return to his people. In order to do so, there couldn’t be any witnesses. My eyes drifted again to the open pathway behind us, before returning to the fight.
It was getting harder to follow now. The smoke was growing thick, and the streets were crowded with those racing in the direction of a fire. Ironically enough, several other fights had broken out—trivial qualms, to be dealt in passing—and no one noticed the violent scene unfolding beneath the awning of the tavern.
The giant would swing his mighty fists, Erik would duck beneath them. The man would scream in frustration, and he would counter with his own. There was a strategy in him now, I could see it, a vague direction the fight had taken. He was coaxing the man towards the building, though it wasn’t until the last possible moment that I understood why.
“Enough,” the giant cried, eyes flying between us. His nose was smashed, probably broken, and there wasn’t an inch of his face that wasn’t smeared with either dirt or blood. The ale coursed through him and he swayed mightily, trying to stay on his feet. “That is the same girl—”
But he never got to finish that sentence. The moment his foot passed some predetermined point on the ground, Erik shifted his momentum and leapt suddenly towards the tavern, vaulting off the post on the deck with enough rising altitude to land a kick across the man’s brow.
I saw the second it happened, the series of expressions that crossed the giant’s face.
First he was surprised, then he was insulted. By the time he’d mustered the sense to be anything else, his legs had crumbled beneath him. He lay in a pile, blood trickling from his mouth.
Is he...?
Erik grabbed my wrist while I was still staring, tugging me forward and away from the writhing crowd. “He’s not dead,” he panted, chancing half a look behind him. “None of them are dead. Only stunned. There’s nothing that’s happened that can’t still be undone.”
The words sank like a rock in my stomach.
You can’t actually believe that.
“Erik.”
I pulled away suddenly, stumbling to a halt behind one of the abandoned merchant booths that were lined along the grassy arena. It was darker there, with half the settlement between us and the fire’s light. The people still running past never saw the pair of us, standing in the shadows. Still, it was suicide to stay anywhere near them. Our only chance for survival was to get out.
My only chance. He’s apparently going to stay.
“What’s the matter?” he asked breathlessly. “Why are you stopping?” He cast a look over his shoulder at the same time. “Liv, we need to go—”
“I’m going,” I interrupted, feet rooted in the shadows, “you’re going to stay.” This was no longer up for discussion. I didn’t know why we’d been pretending it ever was.
I was a witch, bound for the pyre. He was a bannerman, destined to wear a crown. The gods themselves could not have found two more different people. Never could our fates entwine.
He stared back at me, clouds of smoke swirling behind. “We have been through this—”
“And you helped me escape,” I interrupted swiftly. “You’ve done all I could have asked, and more. I owe you my life, Erik. I will never forget it. But this is where we part ways.”
I was backing away, even as I said it. No matter how imperative the lesson, there wasn’t time to press the issue. The moment the flames were under control, people were going to notice what was happening in the tower. He must be standing among them when it happened. I must be gone.
He reached for me, ears ringing from the screams of the crowd. “Liv—”
“I’m death to everyone—that includes you. You must go back. Say that I bewitched you, and go back. They will believe it. They may make you suffer for it, but they will believe.”
I nodded a little, forcing myself to believe it as well.
If he hurried to return, enough people would see him to bolster the story. If he got injured in the fight to save the brothel, so much the better. He’d already disposed of anyone who might speak against him, and thanks to his merciless fists, they would not remember what he’d done.
The gods have blessed him. They will not abandon him now.
“You must stop this,” he said impatiently, reaching for me again. “We have discussed this already, and I’ve given you my answer. Now you need to—”
I lifted a hand between us, backing away. “I have given my answer as well. You must return, Erik.”
You were always meant to return.
Looking back on it later, I’d always wonder what might have happened next, what things he might have said. His mouth had already opened, and he looked as angry as I’d ever seen. As angry, and as determined. Looking back on it later, I’d always wish I’d been paying better attention.
Then I might have seen.
Thwack!
There was a horrible cracking sound, and Erik’s eyes widened in surprise. They stared at me, vacant, before he dropped suddenly to his knees. I watched in horror as a boot kicked him down the rest of the way. He slumped forward into the grass, and my eyes lifted to the man standing behind him. Of all the people in the settlement, it was quite possibly the last I’d have expected to see.
“He needed that.”
The lieutenant flashed a dark smile, stepping over the body. He looked much the same as the last time I’d seen him, standing behind the king; same uniform, same weapons. Same leering grin.
It sharpened when his eyes met mine, into something darker and sinister.
“Hello again, sweetheart. Going somewhere?”
