Page 56 of Edge of the Wild

7

Oliver came to wet and shivering, his teeth chattering, his muscles knotted all over with cold. He struggled to open his eyes – his lashes seemed glued together – and then a warm, callused thumb smoothed across them, and they came apart. Erik’s face hovered above his, braids and cold beads tickling at Oliver’s cheeks. His expression was thunderous – but Oliver could read the flash of worry in his blue eyes.

“I – I – fell–”

“In the gods-damned water,” Erik snapped.

“…did-did – I? Oops.”

“Here.” A flask was pressed to his mouth. He opened – and found himself choking on a few sips of strong spirits. Mistress. It burned all the way down, and immediately began to warm his stomach.

When Erik pulled the flask back, and capped it, he reached for the furs bundled all around Oliver – he realized he didn’t have his hands free – and folded them in even tighter around his chin.

“Wh- where – am I?” Oliver managed to choke out through the trembling of his jaw.

Erik pulled a fold of fur up over his head, so he was thoroughly cocooned; the afternoon sky shone eggshell blue over his shoulder. “In a sleigh.”

He craned his stiff neck to try and see around the fur. “Oh.”

“You fell face-first in the lake,” Erik said, voice biting. He continued to fuss with the furs, moving down to wrap them more tightly around his feet, which he couldn’t feel. “I toweled you off, and put you in dry clothes, but you need to be in front of a fire. Now.”

“You – you–” Oliver struggled to sit up, horror-struck. His spirits-warmed tongue and lips finally started to cooperate, just as the heat in his belly began to spread to his limbs. “Youundressed mein front of everyone?”

“No, I did it here. Birger helped,” he admitted, and then his frown deepened to an outright scowl. “Lie still! You’ll be lucky if you don’t catch your bloody death. Stay covered. We’re moving toward Redcliffright now.” He straightened.

“Erik–”

But he was off, barking orders. “Mount up,” he ordered, voice hard, commanding, kingly. “Everyone. We’re leaving this moment, and you’ll be left behind if you dawdle.”

“Dictatorial ass,” Oliver muttered, and was gripped by a hard shiver.

A guard jumped in beside his huddled form to take the reins. He heard shouts and orders, a slap of the reins, the snorting of the reindeer, and then the sleigh glided forward.

~*~

Erik kept pace alongside the sleigh on his horse; if Oliver turned his head inside his fur cocoon, he could see his stern profile trotting beside them, hair streaming back, brow furrowed. He looked like coinage, or a marble bust: implacable and fierce.

Oliver was cross with him – on principle, mostly. He loathed the idea – one that he knew must be true – of being toted along like a swooning maiden, undressed and redressed, bundled up as though helpless. But hehadbeen helpless, and he wouldn’t love Erik so much if he wasn’t the sort of person who cared deeply enough to use all his kingly authority to guarantee someone’s safety and wellbeing.

And hewasfreezing.The initial flush of alcohol had abandoned him at this point, as the sky grew steadily dimmer and cold winter air chafed at his face, finding gaps in his coverings and stealing down to touch ice-chilled skin. His clothes were dry, but Erik was right: he needed a fire, perhaps even a hot bath. A meal, and a towel with which to thoroughly dry his hair, the roots of which now felt crunchy as the last of the water there began to freeze. He couldn’t stop shaking, whole frame wracked with the occasional hard chill.

He stayed silent for the last leg of the journey, listening to Erik call out to his riders on occasion. But then, the sleigh slowed.

Erik called, “Halt! Riders approaching!”

With great effort, hands and feet swaddled up like a child’s, Oliver managed to wriggle his way upright in the seat, so he could see, disturbed by the way his vision swam and spotted – not the blue unconsciousness this time, but a good old-fashioned warning that a bout of fever wasn’t far off.

The sleigh he was in appeared to be at the head of the whole procession of caravans, Leif, Birger, Magnus and their guards riding to either side of it. In the distance, he glimpsed a dark, upthrust shape that was the unmistakeable profile of a mansion, surrounded by the low humps of a village.

Closer, moving toward them, a half-dozen men on horseback, followed by a larger contingency on foot. When they were near enough that Oliver began to wonder if archers would nock arrows, Erik jerked up straighter in his saddle, said, “Ragnar,” and spurred his horse forward to meet him.

The two cousins reined up beside one another, too distant for their voices to be heard. Ragnar’s mount, Oliver noticed, was short and shaggy, with a tangled flaxen mane – and three deep, fresh gouges on its flank. The blood had dripped and dried, and the horse dropped its head low when they halted, nostrils flaring as it caught its breath.

Ragnar wore a countenance nearly as stern as Erik’s, and none of the charm and slyness of the Yuletide Feast. He had a bruise on one cheek, and his hair looked not merely wild, but tangled, crunchy with dried sweat.

After a moment’s conversing, Erik nodded, and trotted back to the sleigh. He looked even grimmer when he pulled up. “Those were his men we found this afternoon. He’d left his main company here when he came on to Aeretoll – they didn’t want to come. When he returned, he found some missing, others dead. If we’d kept searching the forest, we would have found more bodies, he said. He waited here for us, just outside of Redcliff’s border, to meet us and ask for a night’s safe rest with Lord Askr.”

“Who attacked them?” Birger asked.

---