Fin closed his eyes and rubbed his forehead. Wolf wasn’t due back for another few hours. He couldn’t wait. This woman—what had Camelee called her? Genevra. This Genevra was no spring maiden. She could not keep up. He had to leave her here.
“The chief will return to camp. Tell him what happened, and that I went to find her and bring her back.”
“Dane—”
“I must go,” he interrupted. “He will not forgive me this—and I do not want to see that in his eyes.” He said the last part in more of a mumble and more to himself than to her.
“I just wanted you to wait while I—” She bent to the nearest fallen warrior and removed his jacket and cloak. She hurried to bring them to him. “Put these on before you freeze to death.” Her gaze shifted everywhere but to his bare chest.
Her skin looked like the petals of a pale peach flower. Fin wondered if it smelled like a flow—no! She was old enough to be his mother—though he never knew his mother. He’d killed her being born. When he was told the tale by his father’s servants, he knew he was cursed. His life and his thirst for war and blood proved it.
“It would be difficult to freeze to death in this heat.”
“Heat?” She looked at him as if he’d just grown another head.
“In comparison to Denmark’s winters,” he clarified and forgot the urgency of what he needed to do.
“Is it desolate and uninviting?” she asked, looking worried. Wolf must have told her his plans.
The thought of Wolf returning home pricked his soul. They would separate. Wolf was giving up. Fin had waited and trained all his life to fight with his brother, and he was already going back?
“No. Its beauty is breathtaking, soul-stirring. It is mountainous, untamed, and uncharted. Winter there is freezing.” He set his cool green gaze on her. “Truly freezing. Now I must go.”
“Well,” Genevra offered him a tender smile and a pat on his bare arm, “take the clothes anyway, please.”
He received the offering and left, dressing as he went. He turned to look over his shoulder at her once after he slipped into the clothes. He would have smiled at her, for she was sharp and thoughtful, and oddly comforting. She looked like a slightly older version of Wolf’s woman, with the same hair color, and the same spark of life in her large silvery-blue eyes.
He found his horse and searched for hoof prints in the light blanket of snow. It took him some time to find anything, for the snow had picked up and covered the ground and any tracks. His belly sank. They could have gone anywhere.
He felt ill. Wolf left him in charge of the camp. Everyone was dead. The chief’s woman was gone. Taken…along with the child. He had left his post for a tumble in the bed of a woman whose name he didn’t even know. Wolf was going to be angry. Very angry.
As children, the brothers had gotten along well. Wolf was the oldest by five years. He loved Fin immensely, having raised him alone with their father. Fin worshipped the dirt beneath his older brother’s boots. When their father wasn’t teaching Fin to farm, Wolf was teaching him how to fight. When Wolf left to fight for Cnut, Fin counted the days, the years until he was old enough to join the warriors.
“Someday, you can be chief, too,” his brother used to tell him.
“I do not want to be chief, or anyone in power,” he had replied. “Who wants all that on their shoulders?”
Wolf didn’t like such talk. “It is not about you, Fin.”
To which Fin would often reply with clever words and a playful smirk. But he had grown harder and more serious after twenty-one battles and killing hundreds of men. If a man didn’t go hard after living the life he had lived, he would go mad—or maybe he never had a heart to begin with. He lived with the guilt of his mother for as long as he could remember. He was no good. Evil.
Wolf had tried to reassure him that he was not such things, but coming from his brother, whom many thought was a merciless monster, his reassurances held no weight. Still, Fin knew better. Wolf had been a monster only once and he was only merciless in battle with his enemies—and with men who took what belonged to him. When the Mercian army killed their father, Wolf went berserk and killed fifty men with just his sword.
Fin knew many Saxons would die by his brother’s hands for what took place today. He might not stop until everyone involved was dead—possibly including him.
He buttoned the jacket to keep the cold off his skin. The icy air was affecting him more today. He didn’t care. His only concern was his brother finding him before Fin found her.
*
“Let me holdthe girl,” Camelee demanded the Saxon in front of her in the saddle. Aethelwold.
“There is no room in the saddle for me, you, and the girl,” Aethelwold answered, looking over his shoulder at her.
She hated when he looked at her for there was no compassion in his gaze. She wanted to inform him that if he jumped off the horse when they reached the next cliff, there would plenty of room.
“Why are you wearing such strange attire?” he asked in his annoying voice that sounded like he was snarling even when he wasn’t.
Over thirty men followed behind them on horseback. Another thirty had broken off and gone south with Leofric, who Camelee deduced was Aethelwold’s older brother. One of the men who moved with her group had Hild with him. She was crying and wouldn’t stop even when the brute gave her a shake and threatened to strike her.
