Page 73 of Edge of the Wild

Erik smiled. “You probably could.”

“Ha.”

“You could argue with a fence post, I think.”

Oliver flicked him lightly in the chest with the backs of his fingers – but a smile threatened. “A kinganda comedian. You should do taprooms.”

Then his smile fell away. He tipped his head back and examined the sky. “It’s nearly time, isn’t it?”

“Yes.” Erik offered his arm again. “Shall we?”

As they completed the circuit around the garden, and headed back for the staircase, Erik’s gaze was caught by a figure on an upper balcony, leaning out over the edge: Ragnar.

~*~

Of the Úlfheðnar, only Ragnar had attended the morning’s council, and even then he’d kept his distance. The rest of his men had stayed hidden in whatever accommodations Askr had afforded them.

Before Erik donned his mail, he sought out his cousin, and found him where he’d last seen him, on the third-floor rear balcony, staring out across the winter garden, and the mews, and the kitchen garden, all heaped with snow.

“You know,” he said, the moment Erik set foot on the flags, “I’ll give you fancy lords this: the view’s always much better from a castle than it is from the door of a longhouse.” He half-turned his head, smirking over his shoulder. “But I think being this high up leaves you all thinking you’re more important than you are.”

“Or,” Erik said, leaning on the rail beside him, “one could argue that a man with a perspective much closer to the ground tends to feel the need to overcompensate and prove his worthiness compared to that of a lord – and winds up making an absolute dick of himself instead.”

Ragnar gave a dry, humorless chuckle. “I forget how good you are at sparring, sometimes. No one expects a king to be clever.”

“And no one expects a man of the Waste to seek shelter with hissoft,Southernrelations,” Erik countered. “Will you leave before nightfall?”

“Leave? I’m to take my company to the western fields, we decided.”

“I saw your face during that council.” Erik turned to face him, met with his frowning profile. “You have no intention of staying and clashing openly with the Beserkirs in our company. You don’t want to be seen as on our side. So you will slip away quietly: either before we depart to our posts, or after. Which will it be?”

Ragnar sent him a darkly affronted look that Erik didn’t find at all convincing. “This is bigger than Waste politics now. They killed my men in an ambush, like cowards, and I don’t even know why. We’ll go to our posts, and we’ll stay there, and we’ll fight. Your doubt is offensive, cousin.”

Erik stared him down, searching for the lie, searching for cracks. He knew they were there, but he couldn’t see their shapes, yet. “For your own sake.” He stepped back, prepared to turn. “You’d better hope you’re telling the truth.”

When he was at the door, Ragnar said, “You’ve done nothing but threaten me lately.” When Erik glanced back, Ragnar’s expression had shifted to one Erik had never seen him wear before. Something that spoke of old, deep anger tempered with some new emotion. “You might want to be careful about that, once we get past your borders.”

“Is that a threat?”

Flicker of a smile. “No. A friendly bit of advice.”

~*~

If there were any watchers in the trees, squirreled away behind rocks and stone walls and low spots, waiting to see if anyone moved into or out of Redcliff, they would have spotted two farmer’s carts loaded with hay, moving out of the village and off toward the sheep and cattle pens on the hill. Pulled by heavy draft horses, they made their way ponderously over snow, the studded iron shoes of the animals leaving deep red crescents in the wet clay beneath. Both carts pulled into an open-sided hay barn, and cows and sheep gathered on their respective sides of the wall, lowing and bleating in turn. Anyone watching would doubtless have lost interest in this bit of mundane agriculture by the time the farm hands climbed down from the wagons and began forking hay into the pastures.

That was the hope, anyway.

Erik brushed hay from the front of his tunic and grimaced as he felt more of it inside his clothes, pricking at his bare skin. Hay was insidious like that. When he glanced up, Leif was grinning at him. “What?”

“It’s all in your hair.”

When Erik patted the top of his head, it crinkled.

Chuckling, Leif plucked a long stalk from the side of his head and flicked it over his shoulder. His own hair was coated with a fine layer of hay dust, a few wispy stalks scattered amongst his own braids. Smiling as he was, carefree for the moment, he looked incredibly young, and Erik knew a shiver of worry. As important as it was for Leif to become a proper warrior in his own right, there would always be a part of Erik that wanted to spare him that necessity; that wanted him safe back at the keep with Oliver.

Frowning, he said, “Get it out of your system now. You’ll have to hold your tongue for hours.”

Leif rolled his eyes, but nodded.

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