“Ja. I will exchange this one for him.”
“What? Like a ribband you do not like?” Ivor sneered, all the scorn that must have been simmering in him since the beginning of this voyage coming to a head. “He will have to die. He has seen we do not have six longboats, eh? Foolish woman.”
She could not let MacMurtray go back. Not if she were to maintain her ruse, and her leverage.
She could not watch him die.
That last thought shocked her more than anything that had come before. What was wrong with her? Had she not seen countless men die? Women. Children.
Not him.
She swallowed hard, trying to gulp back the emotions on the rise before they choked her.
She could not save him.
One of the crew, Bjorn, who had been so bored since they arrived, said, “Can we not make some sport of him before he dies? See how much pain a Gael can endure.”
Ja, such was their way when they found little else to do. Not this time, though, if she could prevent it.
Couldshe prevent it?
She turned a glare on Bjorn. “And how would that honor Jute?”
“He would have enjoyed it,” Bjorn said sullenly.
“Listen to me, all of you,” Hulda shouted in Norse. “I am still in charge of this voyage, as my faðir placed me. No man makes the decisions here, but me.”
“No man makes the decisions,” Ivor muttered, “and that is the problem.”
She turned on him. “Do you want to return to Avoldsborg having defied me?”
“Nei, mistress. Kill him swiftly, then, and toss his carcass over the side. I no longer care.”
“Fool,” Hulda accused in turn, her mind emerging from its fog and beginning to work again. “He is worth more to us as a hostage. We can ask a price for him or exchange him for the man we want.”
She turned to MacMurtray, who remained as motionless as if carved from stone. The rain had now soaked him—as all of them—to the skin. He did not flinch from it, or from her gaze.
In his tongue she said, “Ivor here was fighting on the shore when my brother Jute was killed. He says you are not the man who slew him.”
Some of her men could follow the conversation, ja. Most of them had slaves.
“Ah,” MacMurtray said. He directed a look of what might be regret at Ivor before switching his gaze back to Hulda’s face.
“You lied to me,” she said, less forcefully.
“As ye did to me. Unless”—he took a deliberate look around—“the rest o’ your boats are invisible.”
“They may lurk behind another island. You do not know.”
“I do not. Though where would be the sense in that?” His eyes met hers, glinting green between dripping brown lashes.
And just like that, she wanted to kiss him. Wanted it with an unprecedented longing that tore through her like pain. Ach, by the gods! By Freya’s heart, she almost knew how it would be.His lips warm through the cold rain. The feel of them, heady and familiar.
She must be going mad.
Shaken, she asked, “Whom are you protecting?”
He seemed to contemplate that, standing tall while the rain ran down his face like tears. He might lie to her again. He might tell the truth. It scarcely mattered, when it came to what she felt for him.
