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Poor thing. She must be completely mad of pain.

Ian’s vision turned from multicolored to black and red. Everything moved slowly, as though time itself had been wounded and all it could do was crawl. The sounds around him rang painfully loud.

He didn’t have a chance to stop himself. All he could hear was the call of death. He wouldn’t let anyone touch a hair on Kate’s head.

He walked. Without a weapon. Without a shield. Without armor.

In a few broad steps, he reached the man. Ian’s hand went to the handle of the sword that was still in the man’s sheath and pulled it out. With a familiar effort, he made a broad swing, piercing the man’s back and pulling the sword free in one move. The English bastart screamed, but Ian put his hand to the man’s mouth and muffled the sound until he went limp and crashed on the ground.

Without the man between them, Kate came out of her strange state and stared at Ian.

But two more soldiers were coming at him.

“Turn,” he commanded.

She did so, and he cut the rope that tied her hands, leaving the man’s blood on her wrists.

“Step aside from the whore,” one of the men yelled.

“You bloody Scot,” the other said.

But Ian had no more capacity for words. He’d just killed a man after having sworn to never do so again. It was just like in the caliphate.

His ears filled with the bloodthirsty cheers of the crowd; his vision sharpened and intensified. He didn’t feel his body anymore. Pure fire seethed his veins.

“Aaarghh!” He launched himself at the first one.

The sword light in his arms, he met the man’s blade with a clang. Ian slashed again, and again, and again, every time meeting the steel.

The second man came at him now, from the other side, sword raised. Taking stock of his surroundings, he noted another man behind him pressed against a tree. A fourth man with a shield and a sword advanced.

Just like numerous times in the caliphate. Two, even three opponents against the unbreakable Red Death.

He went into another space. A space where he didn’t exist, where he was the spirit of the sword. Where everything around him moved slowly, and he was a deadly lightning strike.

He whirled and kicked and ducked. He cut. He slashed.

He killed.

Two armed men lay dead on the ground. One man still leaned against the tree, but now his guts were spilling out, his eyes staring but not seeing. Ian’s sword pressed against the fourth man’s throat, about to pierce it.

“Stop!” Kate’s voice broke through the red fog of death.

Ian stopped. The point of his sword still at the man’s neck, one hand holding his collar.

His heart thumping in his ears, he panted. The man’s wide eyes pleaded for his life. Ian’s sword dripped with blood, sprays of red on his hands and his sleeves.

“Ian, you don’t have to kill him,” Kate said.

I dinna have to kill him. I dinna have to kill him. The words reverberated in his skull as he tried to make sense of them.

This wasn’t the caliphate. Ian wasn’t a slave anymore. He had a choice.

He glanced in the direction of the rest of the camp. The atmosphere there sounded cheerful. Men spoke in a hum of voices, occasionally bursting out in laughter. By some miracle, no one else had paid attention to them.

Ian looked again at the man. Now that he could think more clearly, he realized he knew the face.

It was the man who’d taken Thor.