Page 53 of Edge of the Wild

“They’re cowards,” Erik said with a note of finality. “They like to hassle and terrorize, leave you jumping at your own shadow. They’ll sneak into a window and rape a woman at knifepoint, but they won’t put up ladders and hooks and come at you in a proper siege.”

“What do they want?” Oliver asked. “What was last night about?”

Erik and Birger shared a look.

“They want us to turn back, don’t they?” Leif asked.

“And their attempt has kept Kjaran behind, so far.”

Oliver held out a hand and Magnus tossed him the wineskin. After another long drink, he said, “Maybe turning around isn’t such a bad idea.” Every set of eyes swung toward him. “Look, call me a coward, I’m not ashamed. But if this is how it’s to be, how could any good this trip will do outweigh the risks of pressing on?”

Erik glanced away first, muscle leaping in one lean cheek. “Because then they’ll say they frightened the king away, and they will have won.”

Oliver knew he was right, which was why he didn’t say,Yes, but then we’d still all be alive.

Birger sighed and said, “For now, we still have plenty of men and provisions. Redcliff is well-fortified, and Lord Askr keeps a large host of men-at-arms.” Worry shone in his eyes, though; Oliver thought he was reserving the right to change his opinion, should something else happen. “We should be safe enough in the daylight.”

After lunch, a snowball fight broke out amidst some of the young lords in the nearest party, their war whoops and laughing shouts ringing out across the clearing, echoing off the filmy ice of the lake. They didn’t look much older than Leif, cursing and smiling as they doused one another’s heads and shoulders with snow.

“That one had a rock in it!” one shouted, incensed, and turned to pelt his opponent with an especially tight snowball that exploded against his chest.

Oliver noted Leif watching them, and thought, despite his small frown, that his gaze was wistful. Erik was conferring with their guards – sending three of them down to the lake to refill their water canteens – and so Oliver got up and went to sit beside Leif, on his bit of dusted-off rock.

“Not your scene?” he asked, tipping his head toward the action.

Leif’s frown deepened. “It would have been. Once. But after what happened to Rune…it’s time I started acting more like a prince, and less like a fool.”

“But–”

“Your Majesty!” The shout came from the lake.

Oliver scrambled to his feet with everyone else. Erik was in the lead, taking long, half-running strides down the short slope that led to the water’s edge. He skidded, once, righted himself – but where his boot had scraped the snow, red showed beneath.

Oliver stumbled a step, and clutched at Leif’s arm for balance. “What isthat?”

“It’s clay,” Leif said, hustling him along. “The ground here beneath the snow is red clay. It’s where Redcliff gets its name. Come on!”

The three guards stood on the narrow, rocky beach, all staring down into the water, dripping canteens forgotten in their hands.

Erik pushed between them. “What? What is it?”

One of the guards – the youngest, Filip – pointed down into the water. “We had to break a bit of the ice, to dip the canteens in, and we saw him there.”

Oliver stepped up beside Erik, still clutching at Leif’s sleeve, feet slipping on the ice of the rocks. Though the lake rippled and danced far out, closer to center, the ten feet or so off the shore were iced-over, sun glinting off cracks that had frozen and resealed, jagged shards that glinted and blinded. Beneath, the water was clear, rocks visible at the bottom. And in the place where the guards had hacked open a breach with their axes, a body floated, face-down, sodden fur cloak black with water; pale hair waved and streamed amidst the brown reeds.

They all stared a moment.

Then Erik reached down, gripped the back of his cloak, and hauled him out onto shore.

The man’s furs were so waterlogged and heavy that Leif wound up helping. With twin grunts, they pulled the fur boots free of the water, and they turned him over roughly, and let him drop to the beach.

Frost and fish had blurred the specific details, but it was obvious that someone, or something, had torn the man’s stomach open.

Oliver wasn’t too proud to admit that he recoiled from the sight. “Gods. What did that?”

Erik crouched down to examine the body, turning back bits of stiff leather and ruined skin with gloved fingertips. “These marks weren’t made by a blade. Either his belly was cut open, and when he was left for dead, some animal got him – or it was animals who got him in the first place.”

“How did he end up in the water?” Oliver asked.

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