The Viking's Heart

“Aye, of course,” she said. Agravar helped her dismount. His nearness was as disconcerting as it had been before. She wriggled away from him once her feet touched the ground. His hands fell to his sides.

A screech split the air and Hilde came charging toward Rosamund from the other side of the glen, arms outflung, skirts flying. Rosamund braced herself.

“You are safe, ah, praise the saints and the sweet Lord in heaven!” Slamming into her mistress, Hilde squeezed until tiny pinpoints of light began to dance on the periphery of Rosamund’s vision.

“Hilde,” she choked, pushing the woman away. Hilde pulled back, took another look at her and swept her to her bosom for a second strangling clinch.

“Come,” Agravar said, wrapping strong fingers about Rosamund’s arm. He managed to get her away from the effusive maid without a struggle, mostly because the woman gaped at him with a mixture of awe and terror that made her grip go lax. As polite as any courtier, Agravar led Rosamund to a good-sized rock. “Take your rest while the men water the horses. It will be but a moment to prepare them for the short ride back to the castle.”

Rosamund kept her eyes averted, fighting a flush of shame at his surprisingly gentle attentions. She stared at his boots and gave a perfunctory nod. The boots turned and she lifted her gaze, watching him walk back to the horses and untether his prisoner.

The man with the red hat—that affectation now stuffed unceremoniously into the top of one battered boot—was awake now. As he was led to the opposite side of the glade, just along the edge of the brush that formed a semicircle behind them, she saw his eyes were on her and they blazed bright and vigilant.

She lowered her lashes again, thinking fast. After a while, she said to Hilde, who was engaged in a manic monologue about the dreadful events that day, “I am thirsting. Please fetch me a tankard of water.”

“Yes, my lady. Oh, certainly, my good lady. How happy I shall be to do it, my sweet, safe lady.”

Agravar gave his report to Lucien as Lady Rosamund’s guards were rounded up, their wounds seen to as best as could be arranged before they got to the castle. Agravar overheard one of them saying, “The man had me down. He could have slain me, but he rode on.”

Stopping, he inquired, “Do you claim these bandits showed mercy?”

“Not to me,” another, older man grumbled, showing three stubs where the fingers had been severed. “Dicky here was lucky enough to get a young one. You get ’em young, an’ they don’ have the taste of blood yet.”

Thinking of the single member of the bandits they had managed to capture, Agravar asked, “What is the significance of that ridiculous hat? Did others wear one?”

“Nah. He’s the only one I saw, bloody cur,” the grizzled soldier said, turning his head to spit, as if to illustrate his opinion of the whole lot of them. “The rest of them scattered, like they knew these woods.”

Agravar frowned. “Local thieves.”

A woman’s voice—an annoyingly familiar woman’s voice—startled Agravar. “Oh, Lord, she’s taken again. Ah! He’s got her!”

Muttering a curse under his breath, Agravar turned to Hilde. “What is the matter now, woman?” he demanded.

“My lady! She’s gone again, and him as well—the bandit. Fine ones you are at protection when an innocent lamb gets stolen out from under your very noses. He took her, I say. They’re gone!”

“God’s breath!” Agravar swore. “That woman has proved to be a great deal of trouble this day. Lucien! She is missing again.”

Hilde leaped up and hung on to his arm, holding him as steadfast as an anchor. “Oh, no, sirrah! She is the most darling, sweet child, she is.”

The woman clutched so desperately as she regaled him with the many virtues of the Lady Rosamund, Agravar feared he might be forced to strike her to disengage himself. He did finally manage to get away without resorting to such measures. The woman’s plaintive wails followed him as he trotted up to his men.

“Pelly, go see to that servant,” he ordered, ignoring the other knight’s sudden pallor. “Put the guard on alert. The rest of you, with me!”

Swinging up into his saddle, he paused and nodded to Lucien, who himself was already mounted. “A-Viking,” he said. It was their old war cry.

Lucien nodded, yanking his horse around to follow. “A-Viking,” he agreed.

Agravar and the others raced into the woods.

The man in the red hat veered down into a gully, ducking under a tight weave of low-lying shrubs. Behind him, Rosamund plunged, hissing in pain as tiny branches tore at her hair and the delicate wrists exposed by the trailing sleeves of her dress.

“Here, my lady,” he said, reining in his steed to point the way. “The meeting place is up beyond the ridge. I arranged it just after we separated for escape. The others shall be waiting there.” He paused. “At least, they should be. I paid them well enough.”

Rosamund drew her horse up beside him, taking note of the path to which he pointed. When she saw him pitch forward slightly and put his hand to his brow, she reached out a solicitous hand to his shoulder, “Davey, are you well?”

He shook his head as if attempting to rid himself of a cobweb in his brain. “That cursed Viking knocked me but good. My head’s a thick one, I was always told, but it’d have to be made of iron to withstand that mighty fist.” He shot a sheepish grin at her. “Come to think of it, ’twas my lord, your brother, what told me that most times.”

“Then it must have been true, for Harold never lied.”

Davey tried to laugh, but it turned into a wince instead and he pressed his fingers hard against his temple. “Come. It will not be long until they find we are gone. You have earned us one slim chance at escape, though I do not know if it was brave or foolish. Let us not waste it in conversation.”

“I couldn’t let them hold you, not when you have done so much for me.”

He looked at her with adoring eyes. “All that and more, I do gladly.”

Noises behind them spurred them into action. They came out of the gorge and began climbing a ravine.

Rosamund’s heart began to pound heavily with excitement. Almost there! The top of the ravine was just ahead. Once they cleared it, they would be out of sight. She was thinking they were actually going to succeed when Davey fell off the horse and rolled back down into the fertile gully.

She reared her mount when she turned it too sharply, but was luckily not unseated. She raced down to Davey’s side and slid off the horse.

He was dazed. Whether from this recent tumble or still scrambled from Agravar’s blow, it was difficult to tell. He pushed away her frantic hands. “Go without me. Go! This is your only chance.”

“No, Davey. Come, please. That Viking beast will kill you if he catches up with us.” But as she helped him to his feet, she saw he was in no condition to outrun a band of trained soldiers—two, for her own guard would be on them as well as the men from Gastonbury. With a sinking feeling, she knew they were outmatched.

It was over. There would be no freedom for her.

The daring escape, cleverly disguised to seem an abduction, had seemed a brilliant inspiration. Now it seemed merely desperate and not inspired at all. A folly to cost a dear friend’s life, for Davey, who had been her only companion through her years of solitude after her brother had died, would almost certainly be killed.

That made her decision easy. “What—?” Davey murmured, for he was slipping into confusion again as she helped him into the saddle and lashed his hands around the horse’s neck with the reins. Giving the beast’s hindquarters a strong whack, she watched as man and horse disappeared into the brush, still verdant in these late days of summer.

He would find his way out of the woods later. For now, he need only be hidden. As for herself, her independence would have to wait another day.

She began to run, this time back the way they had just come, in the direction of the soldiers.

It might be of helpful effect if she were to scream, she thought, trying to imagine how Hilde would do it and set about in a fair imitation of the chubby maid’s hysterics.

In a trice, they found her. De Montregnier arrived and was about to dismount when he was eclipsed by the massive Viking. Agravar swung his leg over his horse’s head, dropping to the ground by her side before the huge beast had come to a full stop.

His gaze raked her from head to toe. It was all she could do not to flinch from his searching eyes. His closeness made her feel trapped. Could he suspect she was false, she wondered, or was that merely conscience pricking her?

She drew in a shaky breath. “The man…he was taking me away when he fell into the water, on the cliff path that runs along the river.” She was hopeful her very real anxiety would help her appear convincing. “The current took him. It was horrible. I saw him only for a moment, and then he and his horse went under, never to reappear.” She shut her eyes and feigned a shiver. “I was afraid I would fall as well, so I dismounted and ran back here.”

She had seen such a place on their way, and thus knew it was a feasible tale she told. There was a pregnant moment while she waited to find out if they would find it so.

Lucien said, “We will watch for the body to wash up when the tide comes in. Let us go home. It is a long enough day without dredging a river.”

Rosamund bit her lips to keep from crying out in relief. Davey was safe, she thought. But she was as cursed as when she had started this dreadful journey.