And every wolf was a mile up the hillside. The drakes, too. Ragnar was here alone with the flunkies, and the handful of Strangers Lord Connor had told to stay back.
“Gods,” he muttered, hunkered down to a crouch, and ran that way, keeping to the scattering of shrubs that grew up through the stunted trees. He had no weapon save his two bare hands, and he wasn’t anxious to join the ranks of those bellowing and screeching just yet.
The atmosphere shifted again, as he scuttled along: the portal, or portals, however many there were, had closed.
But the Sels remained. They smelled of clean sweat, and pure gold, and the sharp, stinging scent of the paint they wore beneath their helmets.
Ragnar didn’t care how strong he was, how quick, how honed his instincts: he wasn’t getting tangled up with Sel soldiers without a sword in his hand.
Movement to his right snapped his head around. Pine needles crunched beneath two sets of feet. When he saw who approached him, ducked low, white-rimmed gazes snappingbetween him and the tumbling shadows through the trees that marked a skirmish, Ragnar rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands to be sure he wasn’t hallucinating.
Lady Leda walked bent forward at the waist, so her tits nearly spilled out of her gown. Her skirts were so long and ornate and layered that she’d gathered them up in one hand. A dagger winked in the other, bright blue flashes in the moonlight.
The man walking ahead of her, toting a blood-darkened sword, was so pale he seemed to glow in the darkness: hands, throat, face, and, most of all, his hair, a long spill of molten silver. The Sel prisoner, Cassius.
Portals had opened, Sels had poured into camp and ambushed them, and now the prisoner was loose, and absconding with a woman.
Ragnar held still, half-crouched behind a screen of holly, and debated his course of action. They’d already spotted him, and were even now making their way toward him. The Sel had a sword, but lacked armor, and Ragnar outweighed and outmuscled him. He could tackle him, take his sword, defend the lady’s honor. Did hecareabout the lady’s honor? No. She was of no importance to him. If Sels had opened portals here, who was to say they hadn’t done so up the hillside? Even now, they could be encircling the pack, encircling Leif. Driving a sword through his—
The vision was so painful he closed his eyes a moment, and warred with his wolf, pressing it down, down, his airway narrowing as the torq warned against a shift.
“Ragnar,” Leda hissed.
When he opened his eyes, they were nearly on top of him.
He couldn’t shift, but he could still move faster and surer and deadlier than a regular man. Already crouched low, coiled and ready, he sprang.
In the moment before he landed on top of the Sel, his pale eyes bugged with shock, and Ragnar had the satisfying thought that either the Sels weren’t the worthy swordsmen they claimed, or maybe this one hadn’t expected to be tackled. Either way, he didn’t lift his sword, or otherwise defend himself. Ragnar’s hands struck him first, squarely in the chest, and his weight and momentum toppled him backward. The breath left his lungs in a loud whoosh as his back slammed down to the ground, and Ragnar caged him in with hands and knees. He gripped his wrist tight, and twisted until his fingers went slack around the sword handle.
Something bashed Ragnar in the side of the head. It didn’t hurt, but it snapped his head to the side, tilted him off balance, and he nearly lost his grip on the prisoner.
“What are you doing?” Leda demanded, furious and too-loud, and when he glanced at her, he saw that her hand was raised and ready to deliver another slap.
“What areyoudoing?” he countered. A growl built in his chest, and he pushed it out through his teeth. “The prisoner’s loose!”
“Says the prince’s thrall! He saved me! Let him up!”
“Are you daft, woman?”
Her arm reared back, slap incoming.
It hadn’t hurt, exactly, but it hadn’t feltgood, so Ragnar snorted at her and climbed up off the Sel. “Suit yourself. Don’t cry to me if he throws you down behind those shrubs and bloodies his other sword.”
“Bloody your own sword,” she said, not with the pinched and offended tone he’d always expected from a Southern lady, but with heat and ferocity and an expectation of his obeyance. Her eyes flashed, and her delicate jaw clenched, and she still gripped a dagger in her non-slapping hand, poised likeshe meant to thrust it toward him. “What’s happening?” she demanded.
“Do you think I know? Ask your friend.” He gestured toward Cassius, who climbed to his feet, and brushed himself off, expression unbothered. He’d been stunned in the moment of Ragnar’s attack, but now his face was the portrait of serenity again. Ragnar wanted to topple him all over again.
Ragnar’s eyes were keen enough to make out Leda’s frown in the dark as she glanced toward Cassius, and then shook her head.
“Could they have come from behind us?” she asked him. “Have they been following us?”
“They came through portals,” Ragnar said. “Like they did on the road.”
Leda whipped around, and finally lowered her dagger-wielding arm. “You saw them?”
“I smelled them.”
Her brows jumped. “Right. You smelled them.”
