Page 97 of Fortunes of War

Ragnar said, “Well. I stand corrected.” His grin was shit-eating, but he stepped back, head dropping a fraction in deference as Leif drew up alongside him.

Leif moved to elbow him, but Ragnar didn’t need to be told; he stepped neatly around so he walked on Leif’s other side, leaving the space at Amelia’s knee open for Leif to slot into.

“Prince Leif,” Amelia greeted, a bit stiffly.

“Lady Amelia.”

Ragnar gave a low hiss of amusement through his teeth, and Leif did elbow him, that time.

It was awkward. It was unbelievably awkward. All his mother’s careful court training gone to waste.

Up close, he could smell sweaty horse and sweaty girl. Oiled leather, sand-cleaned mail. And he could smell that she was…not aroused, not really, butinterested. She smelled of interest, and curiosity, and the faint spice of possibility.

Enticing as it was intimidating. He was reminded, momentarily and unwelcomely, of Estrid’s aggressive advances, the expectation in her gaze when she presented herself before him with a nod as if to say,Here I am, what shall you do about it?He’d done nothing, just as he’d done when Náli swung a leg over his thighs and wobbled drunkenly in his lap, begging Leif for a distraction from his thought-unrequited love with his lead Dead Guard.

But this wasn’t that.

For starters, rather than polite distaste, he felt the hectic flutters of butterflies in his stomach, unwanted, but unavoidable, apparently.

He searched for something to say…and searched…and searched…

The horse snorted, loudly, and Leif distanced himself from the beast a fraction on his next step, which caused Amelia to snort as well, as his arm bumped Ragnar’s.

Ragnar turned his laugh into a cough. He said, “Amelia was asking about Erik’s Great Northern Phalanx, but I admitted I knew little of its inner workings, being naught but a traitor, spy, and clansman besides.” The last was said pointedly, and Leif sent him a pointed look in return.

Undeterred, Ragnar tipped his head a subtle fraction Amelia’s direction. “I told her you were the one to ask instead, seeing as how you’ll inherit some day.”

Leif stared at him a moment, as they walked, until Ragnar’s brows jumped.Go on, his face said, and he realized Ragnar was offering him a conversational opening. That he washelpinghim.

“You do remember your uncle’s army, yes?” Ragnar prodded. “You’ve not gone totally wolf-brained yet?”

No thanks to you, Leif thought, sparing him a dark glance, before he wiped his face smooth and turned to Amelia.

“Right. Yes. Well.” He linked his hands behind his back – mostly to keep them to himself, because his wolf was wagging its tail eagerly and he didn’t trust it not to make a grab for the trouser-clad leg at his shoulder – and fell back on palace training. “It travels in two columns on the march, with Erik in the very lead. We don’t have bannermen,” he said, and belatedly realized his tone had gone insulting.

Amelia laughed, though. “I told Reggie not to bring his bloody flag-bearers with him on a reconnaissance mission, but he never listens. He’ll die properly clutching a teacup, his pinky out.”

When Leif glanced up, her smile was as bright as the sun overhead, and he felt his own smile threaten.

He cleared his throat and faced forward. “Northmen die with swords in their hands. Or old and gray in their beds. Nothing in between,” he said, and heard his voice mimic Erik’s tone, as he repeated words said to him since he was a boy. “The Phalanx, though,” he continued, “might march in twos, but it’s named for its fighting formation, when battle is underway…”

It was easy, then, talking of first the army, and then Aeres, and then of his family. Of Erik’s stern façade, but the gentle way he’d lifted them back to their feet as boys, when he’d knocked them down while training. Of the way Mother could outride, and outmaneuver half the men in the palace, when she felt like it.

Before he knew it, the words were flowing easily, and his tone had gone light and conversational; he could feel no tension in his brow, or his jaw; no strapped-down impulses, or barely-suppressed urges. The scenery around them had changed: the road had widened, and veered farther from the trees; small crofts and homesteads had cropped up, fearful, curious faces peering through windows in need of cleaning.

“And Mother is…” Leif trailed off when he smelled the acrid stink of wood burned some time ago, and swung his head around to search for the source.

His wolves had joined them, in human form, now, walking not on the road, but a distance from it, a loose clump of large men with wild hair, laughing and talking with one another, conversation dying away as they caught the scent, too, and lifted their heads, noses testing the air.

Ragnar gave a low growl, and Leif fought not to echo it.

Several hundred yards ahead, incongruous against the pale green of spring grass, hunched the blackened, burned-out wreckage of what had once been a small cottage, and a large barn. Nothing but husks, now, all human and animal scents buried beneath the reek of char.

“Ah,” Amelia said, and must have followed the direction of his gaze. “There’s many like it. Connor’s brother was acting duke at the time of the Selesee occupation in Inglewood. They hanged him, killed his wife, and then went to terrorize the countryside. Most families have fled to the manor to join our camp. A few stayed…many didn’t survive.”

He heard the sharp edge of anger in her voice, and when he glanced up, saw the flex of her jaw, as a muscle tightened there.

“That’s the way of war,” he said, and she whipped her head around to face him, fast enough she didn’t have time to disguise the helplessness she felt on behalf of a people who weren’t her responsibility, but whom she’d taken on all the same. “The terror and suffering are a part of it,” he said, with regret. “Most wars are not won by soldiers fighting soldiers. Eventually, one side wants the suffering to stop more.”

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