“Nay, Kol is awake, as is Bein, and the horses are kept close, you know that. We will go on foot. We can hide. Hurry, else he will awaken and catch us!”
Zarabeth wanted to kill him. She stood uncertain for a moment, then quickly gathered together the leather cross-garters he’d ripped from his shoes and tied his hands behind his back. Then she tied his ankles.
“Hurry!”
She stood over him for a moment, staring down at him. “He is mad, Ingunn.”
“I care not, come along! He will kill me as well as you if he catches us.”
Ingunn grabbed the leather belt and shoved the sword back into its scabbard. Then she stared at it as if it were a snake to bite her. Zarabeth grabbed it and wrapped the belt around her waist and cinched it. It hung low on her hips, but it held there.
She had no shoes, but it didn’t matter. She ran, Ingunn at her side. They were deep in the forest before they halted, each holding her side.
“A moment,” Zarabeth said. “A moment, Ingunn.”
Zarabeth leaned against a tree, the pain sharp in her side, air ripping painfully through her throat, and she felt light-headed. Her stomach cramped from hunger. She raised her head to see Ingunn on her knees, her head lowered.
“Why did you save me?”
Ingunn sucked in great gulps of air.
Zarabeth waited. She could hear her own breathing, sharp in her ears, and Ingunn’s as well, both harsh and ugly in the stillness of the forest.
“Why, Ingunn?”
“I came to realize that he had changed. I had refused to believe my father when he told me of the things Orm had done. You see, I thought Iknewhim, and I loved him.” She shrugged. “Whenever I met him he made me believe in him, even though I began to guess that something had happened to him. I don’t know what it was. But he used to be so... happy and gentle in his ways, at least toward women. He changed, Zarabeth.” She rose then and looked back the way they had come.
“He will come after us any moment now. To kill me. To kill you as well, after he has raped you. If you want to live, we must hurry now.”
Zarabeth staggered forward. It was dark now, finally, and they were running across a narrow strip of swampland that gave into another thin forest of pines, then stopped at the edge of the viksfjord.
“Faster,” Ingunn said from behind her. “He will find us, by all the gods, I know it.”
“Nay, we will beat him.” She prayed as she ran, prayed to her Christian God, to each of the Viking gods in turn. The pain in her side was unbearable, but she merely ran hunched over, holding herself, her breathing hoarse, her throat burning.
They stumbled in the boggy ground, falling several times, helping each other up, only to run and stumble again.
When they heard the horses coming they both slammed to the ground, uncaring of the mud and wet. Zarabeth’s hands were filled with swamp mud. Her face was pressed into the wet earth. She thought of the last time she’d lain on the ground, waiting helplessly for Orm to come capture her. And he had come, and he would come again. The sword was heavy, dragging down at her side. She wasn’t helpless this time.
The horses were coming closer. There was no long grass in this boggy swamp to hide them, only short marshy reeds, and Zarabeth knew that at any moment Orm would see them.
“I won’t wait this time, damn him!” She jumped to her feet, pulling the sword free from its scabbard as she tried to keep her balance in the muddy earth.
“Zarabeth! You fool, lie down, quickly!”
“Nay! He won’t take me back again. Not this time! This time I will fight him.”
Magnus was keeping Thorgell to a steady pace. He didn’t want to kill his prized animal. The moon was bright overhead, the meadow was narrow and long. They were close, he could feel it. Suddenly he saw an apparition rise from the floor of the meadow. He felt a tremor of sheer terror choke in his throat. The vision, or whatever it was, was waving a sword like a demented thing. It was a woman—demon or flesh?
The stallion didn’t falter even though his fist tightened on the reins. He heard Eines cursing, heard Ragnar’s breath draw in sharply, heard the other men muttering.
“What is it?”
Then he recognized his wife, her flying hair, streaking down her back, thick and tangled. She was wearing a man’s tunic and a wide loose belt that hung low on her hips.
She was challenging him, sword raised above her head, legs apart, her body ready.
Zarabeth brought the sword down in front of her and held it there with both hands. She waited, her heart pounding, beyond fear. It wasn’t Orm. It was Magnus. A sob caught in her throat. She dropped the sword and began running toward him, the filthy swamp mud sucking at her feet, all the pain in her body forgotten.
