Page 75 of Lord of Fire and Ice

A slovenly croft spread below him. Movement drew his eye. A watchman.

The man walked from one outbuilding to the next, stopping from time to time to scan the surrounding hills. Finally, he stopped to relieve himself against a sagging cattle byre.

Brandr had run his quarry to ground. But as he crept closer, Orlin’s advice rang in his head.

“No animal is more dangerous than the one you hunt in its own den.”

Chapter 26

“Katla.”

Even though she was still sitting up, she’d been feigning sleep, hoping it would lull her captors into forgetting about her for a while. When she heard her name, her chin jerked up, and her gaze swept the common room.

The other women were still asleep. Tryggr and one of his companions were tossing knucklebones against the low bench. When his underling threw well, Tryggr scowled so fiercely Katla suspected his pinch-faced friend began to hope for ill luck.

She bit back her disappointment. She must have skimmed the surface of sleep and only dreamed she’d heard Brandr call her name.

“Courage, love.”

There. She hadn’t imagined it. She was wide awake, and his voice sounded as clearly as if he’d spoken directly into her ear.

Except he wasn’t anywhere near. She glanced up at the smoke hole, half expecting to see Brandr peering down at her. Only sluggish fumes escaped into the black night.

“I’m coming.”

The voice was so close she flinched. The woman beside her on the wolf pelt didn’t stir. Tryggr didn’t stop the dice game mid-toss to leap up and grab his sword.

No one else heard Brandr speak.

Either Katla teetered on lunacy or…

Old Gerte’s words about her grandparents and the special bonding of inn matki munr resurfaced in her mind.

“It mattered not how distant they were from each other,” Gerte had said. “She could hear him, and he her.”

Was it possible? It was worth a try.

I heard you, Brandr. Now hear me. She scrunched her eyes shut and thought, clasping her hands so tightly her knuckles went numb. Everything in her wanted to shoot a plea for him to hurry and come for her, but if the arrow of thought was limited, she tried to concentrate on something more practical. There are three of them, one outside, two in. Have a care.

She swallowed hard, straining her ears for a reply.

There was only the click of dice, the occasional crackle of the smoky central fire, and a rustle of skin and fabric as the women on the other bench shifted in their sleep.

No reply came to her from the dark.

***

Brandr smacked the man’s cheeks, trying to bring him around. He’d held him in a choke hold only long enough to render him insensible for a short while. Now the fellow’s eyes were rolling around, and his head lolled back, but he was aware enough to respond to questions.

“Blink once for yes, twice for no,” Brandr said to the man who was trussed up and gagged before him.

It had been a simple thing to sneak up on him, since the man had lowered his trousers and started to mount one of the sheep. Brandr could have killed him with a quick jab of his dagger under the man’s ribs, but he might have raised an alarm with his dying breath, and Brandr judged the information he might glean from the sheep molester was more valuable than a corpse.

Besides, Brandr wanted to be sure he deserved killing for more than buggering livestock.

“Did you and your scurvy friends take a woman captive this night?”

The man’s lips pulled back from the leather gag, revealing teeth that had been filed down till there were vertical ridges on each of his upper choppers. The indentations were stained with permanent blue dye in an attempt to give him a fierce appearance. The gag rendered the effect more comic than terrifying.