Sunder (36 page)

“Blood for blood, you Christian bitch!”

The demon’s hiss filled her ears, only slightly muted by the gurgling—the horrifying, sickening tearing of gristle—erupting from her son’s windpipe as the dagger tore through it. Sealing her eyes shut did nothing to shield her from the hot cascade of sticky droplets spewing onto her face, a high-pitched squeal overwhelming her ears, her body, her mind.

***

The howling screams echoed through the trees, jolting Isabella’s diaphragm and clamping off her already labored breath. She quickened her pace, opening and closing her hands to bring some feeling back into her fingers. The jail was within sight now and from this distance, nothing looked amiss. But that sound... though she did not know who was screaming, Isabella had a dreadful feeling someone was dead in there.

Withdrawing an arrow from the quiver and holding her bow out at the ready, Isabella ran as fast as she could toward the jail, straining her fingers to keep the arrow placed to fire. The screams became louder as she neared the door, already hanging open in a grotesque mockery of Thorstein’s door.

The smell of blood and straw pressed against her as she burst into the jail and her eyes narrowed against the darkened gloom. Her breath already in short supply, Isabella’s ragged gasp of horror blurred her vision and she stumbled back a step, gagging. The scant light allowed in by the windows gathered over Annis, crouched down on all fours over Wyrtgeorn’s red, writhing body. Fresh spurts of blood splashed out of his neck, staining Annis’s dress ever redder. The boy was still alive.

“Stick your fingers in his neck!” she screamed at Annis. “Stop the bleeding and we can save him!”

Infuriatingly, Annis paid no attention to her screams, just continued rocking back and forth, singing a song Isabella did not know in a language that was not quite Saxon. Throwing down her bow and arrow, Isabella flung herself at Wyrtgeorn to help him, to do something to stop that  fountain of crimson, noticing too late the movement to her right.

“You must be her.”

The voice echoed all around her as her knees skidded across the straw, bringing her to a soft landing against Annis, who did not even register the impact. A shadowy outline of a horse-mounted man hovered over Isabella.

Jamming her fingers into Wyrtgeorn’s shorn neck flesh, Isabella hardened her face into a scowl as she tried to pinch off the spurting leak. Gathering her courage, she raised her eyes to this man she had spent the last twenty-four hours in terror of; all fear drained from her taught muscles as her eyes focused on his face.

He was not a man, but a boy. Just a silly teenage boy. Were it not for the blood-stained knife protruding from his belt, she could have easily mistaken him for one of the swaggering high schoolers who passed her house every day. He had the same ridiculous assurance in his face, that knowledge of his own superiority. Isabella was never afraid of boys when she was a girl. She was certainly not afraid of them now.

“Give me your belt,” she spat. The smile that crept onto his face infuriated her, even as she registered there was no hint of a pulse beneath her fingers.

“What will you do with it? Wrap it around his neck?” he smirked back at her. “If you had a keen mind, you would wrap it around hers. She released me to kill you,” he said in thickly accented Saxon, jerking his head at the still catatonic Annis.

“I don’t harm people who are no threat to me,” she seethed at him, at that little shit who sat on his horse, looking down at her as if he had won something. As if he was right. “Her madness is not her fault.”

“She was mad enough to kill my countryman and then gloat to me about it. Aye, she is mad. Blood for blood.” The sting of betrayal in his voice pierced the veil of arrogance ever so slightly.

Isabella hadn’t known Thorstein spoke to the prisoner. Is that how he acquired the keys in the first place? Had he felt moved to visit the only other Dane in town, even an enemy?

“Thorstein is alive, and this boy has done nothing to you. Nor did he do anything to impede your escape. Is this what your people call honor? Is that how a Viking holds his head high?”

The boy on his horse looked momentarily taken aback, then shook his head once, as if she were an irritating fly in his ear. “How long do you reckon he will remain alive? Was he not your friend as well? You only see her son’s blood on her now, but she was already soaked with it when first she entered. Thorstein will see his nailed God before the day is out and that whelp,” he nodded to Wyrtgeorn, who was no longer writhing, “will be there waiting for him.”

Feeling Wyrtgeorn’s stiffening flesh beneath her fingers, the embodiment of her failure to protect him, Isabella let out a ragged breath and rose to her feet, resting the boy’s head on the ground as softly as she could. The stink of his blood clung to her nose.

“You had no right!”

“I had every right. This is war, Woman! Do they not have that in your land? I would kill her infant if it served my purpose and unless you move from my path, I will happily kill you too.”

Her palms squished in a sticky mess as she curled her hands into fists, determined to charge that horrible boy, yank him off his horse, and drive her heel into his throat until there was nothing left of it. She was so sick of these people, sick to death of always feeling in danger, of this constant war that seemingly excused their abominable behavior. She had had enough, and it was going to stop today.

He had the dagger to defend himself. But she had something else… something better than brute force.

“I have no quarrel with you,” she inhaled as she spoke, the breathy consistency of her words concealing the rage. “I have to get back to Thorstein as soon as possible. Please be on your way.” She shuffled to the side, not breaking eye contact with the boy.

With a strange smile—possibly one of reassurance—he kicked his horse, sending the animal bolting out the open door. Stupid, arrogant, self-assured boy.

Bearing down on the throbbing in her weak ankle, the searing sting in her back, and the numbness in her fingers, Isabella dove across the floor, snatching up her bow and lacing her fingers around the arrow as she sprinted out the door after the horse and rider, away from the building, and threaded through the thickest path of trees, giving her a clear shot of Einar’s back, now 50 yards away on his galloping horse.

Her muscles and not-yet-healed flesh screaming at her, Isabella lifted the bow, hearing the yew strain as she bent it back on the draw; she focused her vision on the center of her ever-shrinking target, and, on the natural pause between breaths, let fly.

The arrow hissed in her ear as it flew away from her, disappearing from her sight as she continued to stare at Einar, now more than 100 yards away. Then 200.

Then he dropped from his saddle, landing hard on his side. She was too far away to hear him, but from the angle he landed on his neck, she knew there had to have been a sickening crack. The horse continued to gallop away, unbothered by his rider’s demise.

The city was silent once more, allowing Isabella to hear the faint sniffling coming from behind her, back inside the jail.

“Come back to me, my love,” the whispered plea assaulted her ears as Isabella trudged inside the jail entrance, the knowledge there was no more reason to hurry crushing her chest.

“Help him,” Annis moaned out, her glassy eyes focusing on a spot past Isabella.

There would be no help for Wyrtgeorn. The child lay flaccid in his mother’s arms, his face a waxy pale mask of open-eyed terror, the long gash across his throat still dribbling into the massive puddle on the floor.

“Are you happy now?” Annis hissed, seeming to return to herself and aiming her eyes directly at Isabella’s. “You have taken everything from me. You… You did this.”

The tears that had so precariously brimmed in Isabella’s eyes immediately dried as she felt her pulse quicken with revulsion.

“No,” she whispered through gritted teeth. “You did. You did all of this.
You
drove your husband away.
You
made your children miserable, and now
you
got Wyrtgeorn killed. You did it. All of it. Don’t you dare look to me for someone to blame for your own—”

With a guttural howl, Annis launched herself at Isabella, the totality of the shorter woman’s weight landing directly on Isabella’s chest.

“Die!” Annis screamed, her fingers snaking around Isabella’s throat as she was propelled into the wall—prompting a distinctive, loud clunking noise.

The knife.
The knife Selwyn had given her was still tucked into the back of her belt, concealed beneath her cloak. She had slept with it there all last night and had completely forgotten about it.

Winded from the force of Annis’ body combined with her tightening grip on her throat, Isabella drove her knee into Annis’ bloated belly, returning the favor of short breath.

A loud groan erupted from Annis’ mouth at the force of the kick, but her fingers only dug harder into Isabella’s neck.

White hot rage exploded behind Isabella’s eyes and, just as she had when she was fifteen in her first-ever fight, she reached out, grabbed Annis’ left breast, and twisted with all her mind.

With a yowl reminiscent of a stray cat, Annis let go and shoved herself away from Isabella, allowing her to reach into her belt and pull out the dagger, holding it high above her head.

“That won’t save you from Hell, you demon!” Annis screamed as she continued to move backward, her bearings completely off kilter, until her heels ran into Wyrtgeorn’s lifeless body, pitching her backward over his torso.

Still holding the knife high above her head, Isabella looked down at Annis splayed out beneath her, her entire ugly face painted red by blood—whether Thorstein’s or Wyrtgeorn’s, she did not know. 

You could kill her, you know.
The nasty thought snaked into her ear and down her throat.
You could say the Dane did it, and no one would ever know
.

It was almost as if that realization was spoken aloud. Perhaps the hateful voices that always rang through Annis’ head spoke the very same words to her, because Annis, without diverting her eyes from her dead child lying beneath her sprawled legs, rasped out, “Let it be done then. Kill me.”

A relieved smile tugged at Isabella’s mouth for just a moment—the single moment in which she imagined her life without Annis, without being afraid. A life that included Sigbert as her husband and Thorstein as her friend and Redwald as her employer and no one
ever
threatening her again. A life in which maybe Cædda took Saoirse back and even freed her so they could make it official. A happy life where the weight of this toad of a woman was lifted.

Annis angled her head up and stared hopelessly at Isabella, and that shameful hint of a smile dropped from Isabella’s face. She had seen Annis’ facial expression once before. On that last horrible day. The day she had come home to strobing police lights.

“I love you, Isa.” Mama looked up at her from her crumpled seat on the floor, the mascara streaks on her face giving her face a ghoulish quality. She was being dramatic again. Isabella had just come into her mother’s room to let her know she was leaving for school, and somehow it had devolved into a screaming match about her doing a science project with Bianca Sequeria. Just because Bianca’s mother was mean to Mama that one time did not mean Isabella had to stop being friends with her. And now she was late. She could hear the phone chirping in her back pack—Bianca wondering why she wasn’t outside for the bus yet.

Isabella shuddered as she looked at Mama one last time, turning her back to walk out the door.

“Isa? I love you!” But Isabella was already out the door, on her way to school, away from her needy, nagging mother.

Now 18 years later, or 1500 years before, this horrible woman, this bully, was giving her the same face.
I do not want to be here anymore
, the face said.
I want it to be over
.

Isabella had never envisioned a life without her mother, just as Annis had no doubt never envisioned a life without Wyrtgeorn. But she had three other sons, little boys who needed their mother, two of them old enough to remember her if she were to suddenly be gone. A righteous person, Isabella knew, would value Annis’ life on its own merits. But she was not that person. She was just the person who understood her place in the universe. And it was not her place to punish Annis, not for anything.

“I’m not going to kill you Annis,” she smothered a sob as she tucked the knife back into her belt.

“Yes you will,” Annis hissed, scooting backward away from her son’s body, letting her back come to rest against the wall. “You will do it. Or I’ll tell them you killed my son. I’ll tell them you killed Thorstein.” Her words shook as the pitch in her voice rose by an octave, desperation overtaking her as she, no doubt, was imagining the reaction when Cædda returned to the city.

“Thorstein is alive. And he will continue living. Long after you.” Her voice held a certainty that Isabella did not feel. Was she trying to comfort herself or Annis?

“Then leave me the knife,” Annis shrieked. “I’ll do it myself if you haven’t the stomach, you black manky whore!”

“I will do no such thing.” Isabella took a step back, about to leave the jail. But letting her eyes drift around the room, she saw them—all the things Annis could use as weapons to harm herself. The length of rope, the hoof pick, the damn branding iron.
What is that doing in here?