Then there was the kiss. Even the memory had the ability to make her stomach swirl pleasantly. How could she have responded so completely to him? When she closed her eyes, she could feel the weight of him above her, the heat of his mouth on hers.
What could she do?
The question followed her into a fitful sleep where she dreamed of that stolen kiss.
Rurik had very nearly bellowed his thanks to the gods when his foot had encountered the metal of her seax. The slim weapon had been lying on the floor of his cell, still warm from where it had been secured against her body. Their wrestling must have loosened it so that it had fallen free when she had been lying on the ground. Rurik had promised to offer up a proper sacrifice to whichever god was responsible for his good fortune when he was free. Then he had spent hours using it to work the lock on the cuff around his wrist. For something so obviously aged as the restraint was, it had taken a long time to break the mechanism holding it closed. Once that had been taken care of, he’d had to do the same for the lock on his cage and the lock at the top of the stairs.
Most of the night had gone by then, but that did not matter. His only objective was to find Wilfrid. The home was quiet and so dark that he had to stand very still for far longer than was comfortable for his eyes to adjust to the lack of light. A series of doors opened off a large atrium, each one appearing to guard dark chambers. The only light came through a crack between a large set of double doors. The wood was cold, nearly freezing, so he knew that they led outside.
Taking a deep breath and holding the seax in front of him, he pushed one open very slowly to find himself entering a garden. A single torch lit this area, revealing chambers along two sides. All seemed quiet, but one set of doors showed flickering light beneath. It was behind this door that he found an old man muttering to himself over a game.
Rurik knew immediately that it was Wilfrid. His age and the status indicated by the comfortable fabrics and appointments in the room told Rurik as much. Whether Rurik lived or died, at least he had found the man at least partially responsible for his father’s death, for Gilla’s death, for Ingrid’s death. So many dead.
‘Wilfrid?’
The man looked up, his snow-white hair an unruly mane. Rurik knew a moment of shock at his obvious age. While he had expected a man of Sigurd’s age, this one appeared at least a score of years older. The ruthlessness needed to kill innocents was generally found in younger men, or so Rurik had thought.
Though Wilfrid’s eyes sparkled with intelligence, there was a childlike innocence about him that had Rurik proceeding with caution. He refused to kill innocents in his pursuit for revenge. It was possible he was wrong about the man’s identity. As he approached, he found himself hoping that he was. There would be no joy in killing this strange man.
‘Are you Wilfrid?’ he asked again to make absolute certain, his fist tightening on the small dagger.
The man gave a jerky nod that had his head moving awkwardly. Rurik looked for an injury that would cause him to move like that, but could not see one.
‘Welcome,’ Wilfrid called out as if meeting a beloved friend, a hand raised in greeting. Whether he did not see the small dagger Rurik carried, or if he simply did not care, Rurik did not know. ‘Come.’
The man’s words were slurred. Having learned a bit of the Saxon tongue from his mother’s servant at a young age, Rurik was adequate, but not advanced in the language. He could barely make the words out. It was Wilfrid’s raised hand that bid him come forward. That and the man’s obvious lack of a weapon.
‘Sit,’ Wilfrid said, gesturing to the chair opposite him.
Rurik let himself fall heavily into the chair, momentarily concealing the weapon in the folds of the fur cloak draped over his shoulders. In all his imaginings, he had never thought to meet Wilfrid this way. His fingers trembled with suppressed anger.
‘Do you know who I am?’ Rurik asked, knowing the man would not.
Wilfrid seemed not to hear as he leaned over the game, selecting a wooden figurine and moving it to an adjacent square on the wooden board set on the table. This man was not a warrior. He seemed hardly more than a child for all his white hair and wrinkles. He was simple-minded.
Rurik had allowed anger and the promise of revenge to fuel every decision he had made for almost two years, only to come to this end. If Wilfrid even remembered the murders in Maerr, he would likely not even be able to talk about them, much less answer Rurik’s questions. His grip tightened again on the dagger. Did it matter that he was simple-minded? He had been involved in the murders. He deserved to die.
As the man leaned over the table, blissfully unaware that his death was imminent, Rurik stared down at the baby-fine hair on his pink scalp. He raised the dagger, but could not bring himself to allow it to descend to its natural conclusion in the man’s neck. It did not seem fair. He had come for a fight, only to find this. He lowered the dagger and several long moments passed with
