Page 30 of The Outlaw Viking

“’Cause I was a bloody halfwit,” he grumbled. “I went back to the camp fer my woman, and she did not want ter travel in the dark. The dark! Hah! We got a heap more than dark to fear now.”

“I’m sure everything will be all right once Selik returns,” she assured him.

“Are ye The Outlaw’s wench?” he asked, edging away from her a bit.

“No, I helped him escape from the battlefield and—”

“Ye helped the beast escape?”

Rain stiffened. “Don’t call Selik a beast. I don’t like it.”

The man’s upper lip curled contemptuously.

“I mean it, Edwin. He is no more a beast than you or any other man.”

Edwin’s eyes narrowed speculatively as he studied her while she knotted the thread and covered his stitches with a clean linen bandage. “Have you ever seen a man after he’s been scalped by a heathen Viking? Only a beast would scalp a man. And I warrant a man as vicious as The Outlaw would be no different than any other bloody Norseman.”

At first, Rain couldn’t comprehend Edwin’s meaning. Then she gasped and tears welled in her eyes. “You’re lying. Selik would never do such a barbaric thing.”

“Am I?” Fury turned Edwin’s filthy face into an ugly mask. “Know this, my lady, the beast had best kill me, and soon, ’cause I would rather die than be a slave to him.”

The guard, already pushed past the limits of his tolerance, wouldn’t let the prisoner stay in the tent with the other injured men. In a daze, Rain led him back to his place in the rope chain. When she was about to retie him at Gorm’s command, Edwin grabbed her and twisted her body so that her arms were pulled behind her back and the fingers of his right hand held her throat in a strangle hold.

“Do not move, wench,” he warned, pinching her windpipe until her knees collapsed for lack of air. “I would not hesitate to kill you in a trice, but methinks yer lord holds ye in favor. Mayhap he would release me in exchange fer yer life.”

“And what about your woman?” she asked, glancing down at the young woman who was still bound near her feet, gazing up at her and Edwin with horror and fear.

“Blanche kin manage on her own. She be a crafty wench with a talent fer the bed sport. No doubt she will soon have another protector,” he said dismissively, ignoring Blanche’s cry of protest.

“And you call Selik a beast?”

Edwin squeezed again, and Rain lost consciousness for a second. A moment later, she heard a sharp cry behind her, and Edwin released his hold on her neck. But she had only a moment to wonder why when he fell forward against her back, knocking her onto the ground. When Rain finally shoved him off her and looked down, she saw a battle-ax imbedded in the back of Edwin’s head. Blood gushed from the wound, and it was obvious even before she checked his pulse that he had died immediately.

She cried out, “Oh, my God! I’ve landed in a Dark Age Bedlam.”

Looking behind her to see who had thrown the ax, she was surprised to see Ubbi standing with his legs spread in a battle stance and hands on his hips. The gentle little troll had been transformed into a fierce warrior. Fury clouded the little man’s face, but he inquired gently, “Mistress, be ye hurt?”

She shook her head, confused and disoriented by all that had happened in just a few short moments. Blood had been shed at her expense, and she needed to come to terms with that horrendous thought.

“’Tis her own damn fault,” Gorm told Ubbi angrily. “She never should have released the bastard. All Saxons be the same—deceitful to the core.”

“What did you expect him to do, you brute?” Rain lashed out. “He was desperate, and I was his only chance to escape.”

Gorm and Ubbi both looked at her as if she was crazy. “He would have killed you,” they both said at the same time.

“That’s no excuse,” Rain countered, the words sounding lame even to her.

“Well, thank the gods, ye be safe,” Ubbi said. “Why don’t ye go back to the tent now and rest from yer ordeal?”

Rain looked at the prisoners staring at her in awe and shook her head. “No, I can’t.”

To Ubbi’s chagrin, she sat back down and retied her bounds loosely at the ankles. Gorm mumbled, “Bloody bitch,” while he dragged Edwin’s body off to the trees, ordering some men to bury him “afore the stink of Saxon blood ruins me appetite.”

That reminded Rain that she hadn’t eaten since the day before. She looked at the motley group sharing her rope and realized that they probably hadn’t eaten for a much longer time.

“You have to feed these people,” she shouted to Ubbi, who had returned to the cookfire. He stood whistling blithely while he performed his domestic chores as if he hadn’t just killed a man.

Without looking up, he called back to her, “The master left no instructions fer feedin’ his captives.”