The brown-haired man stepped up behind her. He spoke in very rough Gaelic, no doubt for Quarrie’s benefit, “He got but a taste of what he has coming.”
Hulda sprang to her feet and faced him. “I gave you an order, Ivor.”
He shrugged. “He will have to die, either way. And we are bored. Kill him, mistress, so we can go home.”
Hulda said nothing.
“This has been a bad venture from the first. I should have known. Be assured, I only came with you because your faðir asked. Him, I respect.”
Implying that he had no respect for Hulda.
“I thought you wanted vengeance for Jute, your good friend.”
“That too. Now I am bored. Let us kill him and pull anchor. We can drop the corpse on the shore of the settlement as we pass.” He bared his teeth. “Without its head.”
One of the men, listening to this, spoke in Norse. Another chimed in.
“Ja,” Ivor agreed, and added in Gaelic, “After we find out how much pain he can endure.”
“In the morning,” Hulda thundered. “I need time to think if this is the best plan.”
“It is the only plan. He deserves to die.”
“Does he?” Hulda drew herself up to face Ivor. “He has shown courage.”
“Not yet, he has not. Mayhap he will, though I doubt it. See?” He looked around at the crew. “This is why it is a bad idea having a woman in command. They are not hard enough, eh?” He made a lewd gesture, pumping a hand at his own loins.
Hulda said something to him in Norse. The crew stood down.
For now.
Come morning, it would be a very different story. Quarrie had only the night ahead to live.
*
He did notsleep. The voices of the crew kept him alert in case Ivor argued his point and they came for him sooner. Came to take him. But he did let his mind wander away from the deck of the boat, back to the place he loved.
Mayhap if he thought hard enough on Scotland, that was where his spirit would linger once he died. For he wanted no other heaven.
He called up memories of days he had known, all he would have now. Shivering against the mast, he relived them. Bright mornings setting out for the hills on a hunt with the scents of salt air mingling with wild thyme all around him. Bonfire nights when the flames leaped from hilltop to hilltop and the connection he felt with his ancestors flared strong. Times under the stars when a visiting harper came to tell stories of allthe places he had been, and played music with the power to transport Quarrie like magic.
He wanted all that. He wanted it all his life. But a warrior could not choose how he died. And a warrior did not always fight with a sword in his hand. Sometimes his only weapon remained courage.
He needed to remember that when they came for him. When they cut him or flayed him or set whatever challenge they desired. He would die like a warrior.
And when the agony ended, he would fly home.
Dimly, he heard the guard change—the men who had been standing went to their rest. Others, only dimly seen, took their places.
A shadow moved beside Quarrie, close. His whole body jerked to life, his heart beginning to pound sickeningly.
“Be silent,” a voice hissed at him. “Hold still.”
A knife. It glinted in the dim light, and he thought,Och, so it ends here after all. Quick or slow?
The rope binding him to the mast was cut with haste. A sharp blade it was, as he found when it moved to his bound hands, nicking his skin but only out of haste, with no intention to harm.
He gasped involuntarily. He’d been bound a long while, and it hurt to move.
