But he cuts me off. “We see this to the end. All of us, for this bastard also threatens my future if your kingdom were to be overthrown. Aedan will return from Ireland soon. He will find us. For now, however, we endure the wrath of this skítugr útragi. And hope we don’t die in the process.”
Ulf isn’t one to mince words, for he is right.
“What of Sigrith?” I ask, and Ulf’s face instantly changes.
It seems she still captures his heart.
“I have not seen nor heard from her,” Skarth confesses, his sadness apparent.
Ulf’s silence, however, alludes to something else.
“Her silence is because of you?”
Ulf runs his fingers through his beard as if attempting to find the right words. “You know the fire which possesses your sister.”
Skarth shakes his head. “I also know she has no sense when it comes to you. Perhaps we can send word to find her?”
That is a marvelous idea.
“Who of our people hunts us?” Skarth asks and is greeted by laughter from Ulf.
“I think the better question is who does not hunt us. Our enemies are vast. Inga, Bodil, and the many Danes whose families we killed. The Danes who have turned their backs on our gods and now worship a false god who wears a woman’s frock. No offense,” he adds, but I brush it off.
Skarth sighs.
Our circumstances are dire. But we have no other choice but to go on.
“We cannot trust anyone then,” he says, looking back and forth between us. “Ulf, now is the time for you to leave if you’re having second thoughts because the likelihood of us getting out of this alive is slim to none. You owe us nothing. This doesn’t have to be your war. You can find Sigrith and reunite with Aedan. Come find us when you have an army behind you.”
Skarth is right. But I know that Ulf will not leave me. His loyalty to me will not allow it. And Skarth knows it too.
“She isn’t yours to protect,” he bluntly states, not at all caring that I am standing within earshot.
“And it seems she is not yours either,” Ulf smartly counters.
A twitch beneath Skarth’s eye hints at what brews. Before I can get a word in edgewise, Skarth punches Ulf in the nose, and blood instantly pours from it. Ulf wipes it with the back of his hand, a crazed smirk spreading from cheek to cheek.
“Oh, I see you have finally found your balls. I thought perhaps they were lost in your old age.”
“Fuck you.”
I jump out of the way as they charge at each other, punching and kicking, intent on nothing but death for the other.
“Enough!” I scream, watching the flurry of fists and curses in Norse. “You are behaving like Neanderthals!”
“You forget that is what we are, ástin mín. If memory serves me well, you did not mind my Neanderthal mouth and hands all over your?—”
He never finishes his sentence because Skarth punches him in the face so hard, he staggers back three steps, dazed. But Skarth doesn’t allow him a reprieve and drives the butt of his sword straight into his manhood, winding Ulf.
“If your disgusting cock goes anywhere near her, I will?—”
“Oh, it’s been all over her!” Ulf wheezes, hands over his injured genitals.
“You lying sod!” I cry out because that is not, in fact, the truth. “It has not been all over.”
“Just touched the sides then,” he corrects with a grin.
Skarth doesn’t appreciate his cheek and kicks him in the stomach. Ulf is wounded, but it appears Skarth is intent on killing him as he swings his sword, primed to slice off Ulf’s head.
