LITMIR.BIZ

      Elspeth’s soft snore simply reminded Margriet that she was not asleep. Turning to her side away from the woman next to her, she barely stifled a groan as the hard ground revealed another place injured by the hours on horseback. Her hip spasmed and she tried to stretch her leg to ease it. Tempted though she was to try to walk some of the cramping away, the loud snore just outside the small tent spoke of the impossibility of doing just that. When her back joined in with its own aches, Margriet decided to try.

      Since the tent was meant to give them a small measure of privacy, it stood only a few feet tall and two paces wide. Trying not to disturb Elspeth, she crawled out from under the blankets they shared and shimmied to the flap of the tent. Since they slept in their clothes, dressing was not a problem, but her hair would be.

      Margriet suspected that her vanity over her hair would unravel her disguise, especially since the men and their leader had seen it when she panicked and ran from the convent with it uncovered. Women taking their vows cut off their hair before donning the veils and the presence of hers raised a suspicion about her truthfulness. And that was dangerous. After she braided and wrapped her hair, she reached into her bag and took out a woolen shawl. Draping it over her head, she peeked outside.

      The man guarding the tent slept so close that she would have to step over him to get out. His loud snore, now alternating with Elspeth’s gentler one, covered her movements. Her back and hips and legs screamed in pain as she crept over him and took a faltering step away…and into the one called Sven. Luckily, he grabbed her hands and helped her to stand up before she landed on the ground.

      “Sister, are you well?” he asked in a soft voice. He glanced at the tent and then back to her. “It is the middle of the night and you should rest while you can.”

      At least he seemed to understand how inexperienced and uncomfortable she was on this journey. Not like the brute that led their group. He drove them on and on with a single-mindedness that shocked her. She was used to being in charge and the change in her circumstances was most likely the cause for her troubled state of mind. It was also the condition that kept thoughts tumbling around inside her mind and kept any hope of sleep at bay.

      Sven cleared his throat, catching her attention, or rather her inattention, and she nodded her head.

      “I need to walk a bit to work out some of the stiffness in my legs, if that is permitted?” she whispered back, trying to assume a meekness she did not feel. Men, she’d learned, liked women to act as though they had not a thought or plan in their heads.

      Sven glanced across the camp and then back again. Their leader, Rurik, slept sitting up, wrapped in a dark cloak with his back against a tree. If Sven had not looked in that direction, Margriet certainly would never have spied him there.

      Probably his intention.

      When Sven held out his hand, she suspected Rurik had given some unseen signal granting his permission. Margriet leaned on Sven’s muscular arm as she let him guide her away from the tent. At first, they said nothing, but as they walked a short distance from the sleeping men, she could not contain her curiosity.

      “Your leader does not seem happy about taking me back to Kirkvaw,” she began.

      Sven snorted and then answered. “Rurik is not happy about going back to Kirkvaw.”

      “What do you mean, sir? Will he not be rewarded for carrying out this task for my father?”

      “Aye, he will be rewarded, but not by your father.” Sven leaned in closer as though to share some confidence with her, but his disclosure was halted by a voice from the dark.

      “Sven, you should not speak of such personal matters with Gunnar’s daughter.”

      Margriet jumped at both the softness and the menace in his voice. Sven merely smiled and nodded at Rurik…and walked away as though silently ordered to do so.

      Leaving Margriet in the company of the one person she would rather avoid.

      He held out his arm and she placed her hand there. Without a word, he led her in a circle around their camp. Each step seemed easier than the last and finally the cramping in her back and hips ceased. Rurik did not stop guiding her until she drew to a halt when they passed her tent for the third time.

      “My thanks, sir,” she offered quietly as they stood next to the sleeping guard. She wondered why he did not rouse or reprimand the man for sleeping through her “escape.” He must read thoughts, for he answered the question she did not speak aloud.

      “He is there for your comfort, not your safety. If I thought there was true danger in this area, none would sleep.”

      “My comfort?”

      “Aye. If you have need of anything, you should tell him.” ’Twas then she noticed that the man did not sleep, but watched her and Rurik from his place on the ground. But the tone of his voice drew her gaze back up to Rurik’s face.

      The moon’s light was bright that night, making it easy to see his expression, but that did not make it easy to understand it. Margriet would be willing to swear that he jested, but nothing she’d seen so far in his company spoke of a temperament familiar with anything less than complete seriousness.

      “So, I should not step over him the next time I need to walk in the night?” The guard listened to their every word, but said nothing himself.

      “Nay, Sister.” He shook his head. “The next time you should wake him to say farewell.” The guard now made a grunt that sounded much like a stifled laugh.

      Perplexed by this change in his attitude and more curious than she’d like to admit, she decided to risk asking him the same question she’d ask Sven before he interrupted.

      “So, ’tis true then? You do not wish to return to Kirkvaw?”

      Actually, this was only her first question—she had many, many more about him and Kirkvaw and her father. This was only the beginning.

      “I would ask you the same thing, Sister. Why do you not wish to return to Kirkvaw?”

      She opened her mouth to argue, but the answer she would give and the one she should give were different and not something she wished to discuss with him. And her words would reveal, she worried, more than she wished anyone to know. Again, as though he read her thoughts, he replied before she could.

      “Just so, Sister. Just so.”

      All Margriet could do was grit her teeth to keep from saying something, and she knew that whatever she said, ’twould not be good. Accepting defeat for the moment, she skirted around the guard, who had not moved, and crept back into the tent. When she adjusted the flap, she could see Rurik still standing outside, arms crossed over his chest, with his long cloak flowing over his broad shoulders and nearly reaching the ground.

      In a low voice—one too soft for her to hear all the words exchanged—he spoke to the guard, who now did more than grunt. He spoke in the Norn of the common folk of the Orkneys and she struggled to understand. Although the lands around the convent had come under the rule of the Scottish lord Alexander de L’Ard a few years ago, Earl Erengisl was the primary sponsor of this and several other convents in Caithness. And people at his court spoke in the formal Norse of the royal court. Mother Ingrid, herself with origins from some other part of Scotland, had instructed her in the Gaelic tongue spoken here, but Margriet’s talents lay in numbers and organization and not in skills with other tongues.

      Rurik’s words were calm and without anger and ended with a short, shared laugh, which she suspected was at her expense. When she leaned forward enough that he noticed her,

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