The Reluctant Berserker (20 page)

There was a laugh above his head—Hunlaf’s, he thought. He could almost feel the sharpness of Deala’s arrowhead as though it pressed into the back of his neck, and he wondered, his bowels twisting within him, if this was to be his last moment on middle earth. If it would hurt.

Tatwine made a noise too quiet to be called a laugh, too exasperated for a sigh, and hunkered down next to him to say, in his own low whisper, “If you had humbled yourself for me when I asked, we would not now be having this unpleasantness. Why now and not then?”

It was hard to speak, with the corner of his mouth pressed into dry grass and dirt. “This is not what you asked of me before, my lord, and you know it. Do you really want to broach this subject
here
in front of the very doors of a house of God?”

Tatwine stood up and looked. Relieved of the burden of his notice, Leofgar raised his head, saw the sisters clustered around their gate, watching. A dull resentment crept out of his secret heart at the thought that he had been shamed in front of the same gentle souls who last night had been full of smiles for his rescue of Wulfstan.

At the thought of Wulfstan, the resentment became shame again, and pain, for there he was, framed in the archway of the door, the bridle of his horse in hand, his shield arm in a sling. He had a redhead’s half-translucent skin, and as Leofgar watched—wishing to be anywhere else, wishing that this man out of all men should not have seen him abase himself like this—the blood flooded into it in a furious tide, and his red-brown eyes glittered. “Eala! What is this?”

Hunlaf wheeled his horse and set it between Wulfstan and his companions. Tatwine leaned down again and pulled Leofgar to his feet by the hair, shaking him. “What this is is none of your concern, friend. I have no quarrel with you. Be gone about your business ere you make it otherwise.”

Wulfstan slapped Hunlaf’s horse hard on the nose. As it danced away from him in surprise, he pushed his way past, making Deala retreat a dozen paces so that he could cover them both with the same arrow.

“The harper is a friend of mine, and I want to know by what right you abuse him as you do.”

Dragging Leofgar behind him, Tatwine stalked to his own horse and took from his saddlebags a braided leather rope that he twined hard around Leofgar’s unresisting wrists. Tatwine shoved him at the saddle, an unspoken command to get on. Deala’s attention was divided—one arrow, two targets. Perhaps he could run…

If he did, he knew that Wulfstan would take on all three of them to give Leofgar time to get away. Wulfstan was wounded, and these three were no half-trained wolfsheads, such as he had found in the forest. It would be a bitter match, and one or more of them would be killed, and Leofgar would not have that, his own pride be damned.

He got on the horse.

“This man is my faithless and renegade servant, whom I shall punish as I see fit.” Tatwine mounted behind him, crushing him up against the saddle horn. He leaned down, and in a soft, disappointed voice whispered in Leofgar’s ear. The heat of his breath made Leofgar’s skin shrivel beneath it. “Tell him not to get in the way. Unless you want him killed. These days I would not put that past you.”

Leofgar looked down into Wulfstan’s face, seeing puzzlement and fury. Disappointment too. He mourned.

“My lord speaks the truth,” he managed, trying to accept his wyrd with the bravery he had advised last night. “I will not be able to accompany you on your pilgrimage after all.”

Damn his training. He was already making this sound inevitable, adding a little rueful laugh to his voice. “I did tell you I was no kind of holy man.” There—flippant, reassuring, when what he wanted to say was
Don’t let them take me! I don’t think—I don’t think I can—
He couldn’t even finish that sentence in his own head.

Perhaps it wouldn’t be so bad, after all. Perhaps they could talk, he could plead. He could even submit. Captives of battle, taken for slaves, they learned to live with it. Surely he was no weaker than they? The thought made his eyes burn and prickle. He blinked them furiously and sniffed, managed to smile again and looked down to see a Wulfstan gone white, white knuckles clenched on his sword-hilt, his lips bloodless.

“I hoped for mercy from the Maker of Men, but I deserve this, Glede. May you at least get what you wish and not what you have earned. Farewell.”

Wulfstan did not move as Tatwine and the others rode past him, though Leofgar hoped, feared, wanted, did
not
want him to do so. He stood in the road motionless behind them and watched as they broke into a trot. When the path took a right-hand turn to avoid a loop of river, and Leofgar could look back, Wulfstan was still there, gazing after them.

Leofgar did not feel altogether abandoned until they passed into the trees and lost both the sight and the hope of him.

Chapter Eleven

They rode all day at a gentle pace, save for breaks to let the horses graze and one for the warriors to eat. At these times, Leofgar sat by the side of the road with his gaze on his bound hands, and said nothing, happy—in so far as the word happy could apply to his mood—to be utterly ignored. It was a state that could not last.

Nor did it. By the time the summer’s light was fading, they turned off the road and into a thicket surrounded by strips of fields. There, Hunlaf and Deala set up tents—Tatwine’s campaign tent, that he had used in better days on the disastrous hunt, and a single felted woolen sheet that reeked of sheep-fat. This they strung between two trees. Deala crawled beneath it. Wrapping himself in his cloak, he either fell asleep at once or did a good job of appearing to.

Hunlaf delivered Leofgar to the door of Tatwine’s dwelling, and his grey-green eyes had never looked more like amused stones as he pushed him inside. “He’s been a fucking bear ever since you took off. What you face is of your own making. Hope it’s good and hard, boy. Hope you make it worth our while, having to chase you down like an errant bride.” The second shove was harder, in the middle of his back. It knocked the air from his lungs, knocked him forward, through the entry porch of the tent and into the central chamber beyond.

Hunlaf laced up the door, and Leofgar heard him retreat, scuffling down the bank of brambles to stand guard, facing the road. There was enough light in the sky for his shadow to faintly be guessed on the tent wall, standing at rest, pointed helmet, pointed spear and all.

Leofgar swallowed and straightened his back, taking his eyes away from the distraction and looking to where Tatwine sat on a low stool. At his feet lay a mattress stuffed with straw plundered from the nearest field, piled with pillows and coverlets of fur. “Sit,” he said, and indicated it with a brawny hand.

One man outside, Leofgar thought, one in here. Could he get out, run, before either caught him? What? When the door would take minutes to unlace, and he had no knife to cut through the walls? Could he do it by wriggling between the pegs? No—Tatwine would be on him before he got his head out, and that kind of wrestling was exactly what he wanted to avoid. He turned it over in his mind a little longer but could see no alternative. He folded up and sat down, cross-legged, in the centre of Tatwine’s bed.

“Why?” said Tatwine again. His hands were cradled around a cup full of steaming wine, and he had taken off his mail, was shown forth as a man neither old nor young. The bulk of good living hung on a frame hardened by war. His silver hair was the colour of steel, but his beard and the hair on the backs of his hands were black as coal. He was not a man who could easily look gentle, even when—as now—he was trying.

“You cannot truly not know.”

“If I knew, I would not ask. Tell me. Tell me why you fled from me, as though you had never called me lord.”

It didn’t help, at all, to look at that scarred and grizzled face and see hurt, genuine, puzzled, heartfelt hurt. Leofgar washed his face with his bound hands and tried, again, to smother the choke of dread in his stomach. This was his lord—he deserved the truth. So he began with the easier of the two things. “Part of it was the Danes, my lord. We came back from hunting and…and everyone was dead. It was, under God, your task to save them—you and your hearth companions. Your task, and you failed.”

No other man would dare say this, Leofgar knew. That he would say it now, disgraced and in bonds, spoke well of his trust in Tatwine not to deal out random violence to one who had the right, by law and custom, to speak his mind. Still Tatwine gave a sharp bark of shock, and the wine in his cup leaped up and sloshed over his fingers. “I know. I know I failed. That is why I desired comfort from you.”

“I had none to give! How could I praise absence, abandonment, ignoble death? I had no words! I didn’t understand how everything I had been taught to trust in could prove so
worthless
.” He shook his head, trying to force the revolt of a whole soul into speech. “I told myself that God would make all clear to me, that he would unstop my mouth, and I fled. I fled
to
him, not
from
you. I saw your need and I had nothing to give. I was struck dumb.”

Gently, Tatwine set down his cup and slowly he slid from the stool, one knee, and then the other onto the bed. He was taller than Leofgar, three times the width in fat and muscle, and his rough hand eclipsed the whole side of Leofgar’s head when he tried to cradle his cheek. “I do not mind you silent, Harper. For words were not the comfort I wanted.”

Leofgar flinched away, trying to suppress the overwhelming lurch of nausea and terror, while his mind—his damnable, curious, poet’s mind began throwing up questions and confusion as a smoke screen, or perhaps a distraction. Why? Why was this so terrible? He would not deny that if it were done in secret, never to be revealed to man nor beast, he would be willing to try it with Wulfstan, should he have had the fortune to travel with that warrior a little longer. So why not make it easy on himself, yield, get it over with as gently as could be done, and be forgiven into the bargain?

His body and his mouth had other ideas. “Don’t. Please.”

Tatwine paid no heed, slipping that cradling hand into Leofgar’s collar, grabbing at tunic and undertunic both and pulling Leofgar towards him.

He turned his face away from the kiss. “My lord, you cannot ask this of me. It is forbidden by Holy Church. You imperil your soul, and mine.”

Tatwine laughed and reached down with the other hand to flip up the skirts of Leofgar’s tunic and grope for the tie of his trousers. “So many things are sins—anger, covetousness, lying, yet we all do them and expect to be forgiven. Why is this sin so different?”

Leofgar had to struggle to get the words past his teeth, they had locked together, grittily grinding. And yes, that had been merely an excuse, and he knew it. Many a lord kept boys for his use as they kept mistresses, and were yet in good odour with the church—sins of the flesh being, after all, far less grievous than sins of the spirit.

He grabbed Tatwine’s wrist, tried to force it away from him, but it was like trying to push away a plough horse. All his strength did nothing but slow it. The man’s fingers found the bow of his waistband and slipped it undone.

Leofgar’s lungs were going like bellows, now. He felt lightheaded and sick to his stomach. Abandoning pious excuses, he tried the truth. “Do not do this to me! I am a man as you are and no boy. I will not submit to being used like a—”

“If you are a man”—the meaty hand pushed down his trousers and tightened bruisingly on his undefended arse—“then stop me.”

A part of Leofgar’s mind was detached enough to note the irony of this.
What do you think I’m trying to do? Words are my weapons of choice. Always have been.
But that rough, possessive touch choked off any possibility of saying them.

Panicking, using the lift Tatwine’s hold gave him, Leofgar got his feet under himself again. He clubbed his bound hands down on Tatwine’s surprised skull and at the same time lunged upwards with a bony knee, catching the warlord on the bridge of his nose. There was a crunch as it worked. It worked—he had time for a fierce thrill of triumph as Tatwine reeled back in surprise, and the crest of it, like a wave, carried him on as he leaned down and plucked the eating knife from its sheath on Tatwine’s belt.

Throwing himself backwards off the bed, he rolled, knife tucked in-between his bonds, leaped to his feet by the tent wall, stabbing. The little knife was good sharp steel, pattern welded like a sword, and it bit the heavy wool of the tent like a wolf biting on a sheep. He sliced it down with all his strength. There, a door, a way out!

Tatwine, recovered from his shock, threw himself across the space between them. He was smiling widely, the blood from his nose reddening his teeth. His eyes were alight with enjoyment as he caught Leofgar’s ankle with his left hand, punched him behind the knee with his right, and yanked.

Leofgar’s legs slid out from beneath him, he found himself lying on his stomach, being dragged back bodily onto the bed. The smell of cornflowers from the mattress was the needle-thin point that broke him open enough to beg—enough to forget whispering and lowered voices outside. Tomorrow he might care that Hunlaf and Deala must be close enough to hear, to know what was going on. A half hour ago he would have cared. For now he let go his last restraint and yelled it: “NO! No, no, no! Let me
go
.”

The knife-hilt was hard in his hand. He could turn, drive it into Tatwine’s throat or between his ribs. He could do it…

And kill his lord? The man who had given him everything? The man who was only acting on custom, to claim that which was his due. Just because Leofgar was some kind of freak was no good excuse for a sworn man turning against his master.