Chapter 2 - Ride of the Red Wolves

The primal call that drove Gann to respond at an instant makes the way of uncertainty and contained desperation coiling behind his strained furrowed expression. He rests fingers on Magan's neck to search for a pulse and looks into his eyes for any glimmer of movement but then hastily makes way for Eadwyn as she rushes past him and kneels nearby. He tears the sheet into long stripes as instructed. When Gloyn takes over assisting, Gann stands up and steps back, breathing heavily as the adrenaline leaves his head and cools his hands. His left leg bushes against the polished steel of the mailed warrior's sweord; though he registers it, it takes a bout of mental effort to take his eyes off Magan and take it. You had to leave him there in the open field, didn't you? You had to prove yourself like a whelp rather than guard and cover with your back. You had to act on your accord than do what you were bred to. This is all of your making. Gwnewch yr hyn a ddywedir wrthych a dim byd arall. Gann lets the first icicles of guilt make way through his unguarded mind, but the need of the moment pulled him out of this. He runs to his horse nearby and unbuckled the saddle, then came back with it and set it on the ground so Magan's head would rest against it raised. 

Calix follows Egon, handing out the blades and blunt weapons he'd collected to eager and gnarled hands alike; all the while he continues to look over his shoulder, watching their liberators. Handing over the last seax, he's still considering them as he rejoins Egon.  "Which is their leader, have you seen?"  

Egon looks carefully at the group as they frantically try to save the arrow-shot man's life. "I do not know for sure," he says, slowly. "I would imagine it's him." Egon gestures to the dying man. "The Valkyries  will be here soon for him, I think."

Calix gives Egon a bemused glance before looking back to the others, agreeing slowly,  "Someone will, by the looks of it." He restlessly adjusts his grip on his blade, scanning over the group. "I am trained in healing, of a sort. I too think he looks beyond it, but we have few other things to bargain with. At the least, their response to an offer would tell us what sort of men they are."

Egon nods. "I have no such abilities. But yes, I think an offering would be prudent." He judges the direness of the situation and gestures. "You should probably act quickly."

As Eadwyn works to save Magan’s life, Goewyn becomes acutely aware of several armed individuals watching them closely. By their emaciated looks and soiled clothing she judged them to be freed slaves, but she did not know their intent. She takes her warseax, not knowing if friend or foe and nudges Gann before addressing the two warriors in the Mercian tongue. “Be you friend or foe? If friend, gather all the other slaves here. And do either of you know of a young boy named, Gruffyd?”  There is a desperate intensity to that last question that betrays any attempt to mask it as she stares at you both.

For a moment Gann appears completely lost in the gravity of the moment. He looks up absentmindedly and then nods to Glöyn when she pulls him out of it with a nudgle, then he stands up and follows her. His eyes burn from the salt of the dried sweat as he approaches the group of men standing in front of the crowd, all of them freed, armed and confused. He lets Glöyn's speak and lets his quiet presence add weight to her words. He still holds the sweord in his left hand that burns with the deep cuts from when he disarmed it from the warrior's grip, but he feels numb to the pain. His eyes scan past the crowd to any nook and cranny among the buildings around, but he remembered seeing no child. 

"We will gather no one until we know of your intent,"  Calix says curtly in accented West Saxon, looking over the pair addressing them with his gaze lingering on the sweord before cutting back up to the woman. " If your Gruffyd was here, know at least he was better cared for than those you see now.  All the children were taken yesterday – none remain."

The look in the flame-haired woman's eye was unmistakable. He had worn a similar one in the past. One of desperation and sorrow. This Gruffyd was a family member, no doubt about it. Or at least someone close to her.  "Peace, Calix,"  he says, lowering his weapon. "They're not here to enslave us."  He turns to the red-haired woman. "Who was Gruffyd to you? Son? A brother?"

When one of the men challenged her, Goewyn's eyes flash with anger and defiance; just another fool who would refused to do as he was told likely for no other reason than she was a woman. She sets her jaw and prepares to launch into a verbal tirade against the man when his next words deflate her bravado immediately. She visibly shrinks down, collapsing in on herself as that ever present pit forms in her chest and her proud shoulders fall. She was vaguely aware of the other man's words when he speaks. "...he is my brother..." She turns from the others, not even registering their presence any longer as everything around her fell into pieces. How would she find him now? She looks over her shoulder towards this man, Calix, the other had called him. "Do as you wish, I care not..." She was in a horrible torrent of awful emotions that threatened to break the facade of calm she always strove to maintain as her feet carried her away from the freed slaves as hot, angry tears began to flow and stream down her face. She falls to her knees and screams, pounding her small fists into the hard, bloody ground! Frustration as such she had never felt before coursed through her... no, not frustration... Anger. Rage. How dare they do this! She looks up to the unconscious form of the slaver that Gann had dragged back through the gates. All thoughts of Magan, the freed slaves, the sniper in the hills outside... all of it was gone. That man was a lone burning wick in her mind as she leaps to her feet and storms over, immediately grabbing his shoulders and hauling his huge form over to one of the pillars of the towers with screams and grunts of frustration! He would know. He would tell her everything she needed to know from him before she was finished. She would do whatever she needed to get what she wanted. The boiling rage felt good against the numbing sense of failure and regret. She allowed that anger to burn away any concerns of morality in what she was prepared to do to this man to get the answers she needed... She was already looking about for tinder for the fire as she lashed him to the tower post...

Gann notices the change in Glöyn, the sudden extinguishment of hope. He makes way for her, meeting her empty glass eyes for a moment with his guarded concern, then looks after her as she stumbles and falls on her knees and then all anguish and despair are released out of her sunken heart. He felt the urge to go there and help her to her feet and lend her his strength but he knew loss, and he knew one must find strength in themselves first. He was once again enthralled by her force of character, but he shook that thought away. Before he turned back to meet the two men eye to eye, he reconfirmed the oath he had given to her a week ago while drunk on being recognized equal, it felt so old and distant in this very moment and in his tired mind.   "The men who took the children." Gann moves closer to the two released men. His voice rasps in very crude Mercian spoken with heavy nasal Pictish drawl. "Did any of you see them well? The number of armed men, how many carriages? How many... children in there?" He expected little more than few fragments that fit together, but maybe there were signs left that would confirm the route they took among the buildings or the private trappings of the slavers.

Egon gestures towards the rear of the compound. "They likely took them down to the pier, and then away by ship." He turns towards one of the other buildings. "Perhaps they have maps. Unlikely, but worth looking." 

Magan's mind drifts across a void, beneath where his feet float and all around him a vivid tapestry of colours, vaguely aware or a presence that feels as though it must be Kara at his side, he grasps at the sweord at his side but knows only pride for a moment. That moment is brief though, a voice fills his mind as the grip of steel against his palm becomes real.  You shall know no rest. His feet that had been floating not feel like lead as he is sucked back. The voice repeats itself in his mind, louder and louder until it becomes a bellowed order. Finally it is replaced by panicked voices, instructions, conflict. The sharp pain in his chest is joined by pressure as his eyes snap open and he sucks in a breath of air. His eyes take a moment to focus but then, Eadwyn's face fills his view. He looks up at her in a brief moment of confusion before his brow settles. "I will know no rest until your will is done." He reaches up to grasp at the wound where the arrow was, feeling it closing still further beneath his fingers. He looks over to see Goewyn with the mailed warrior and Gann looking on helplessly as he discusses something with two disheveled strangers. The memories gradually refill his mind as he looks around. He fixes Eadwyn with a look first. "The bowman. We must send out to hunt him down. Send riders to the carriage too, Theli, Isolde and Branok must be brought here safely. And find Kara." He raises his voice, fighting his way up as far as his elbows. "Gather your released brethren, they must hear me speak and make their choice."

Gann's distinctly casts a frown when a slaver ship is mentioned. It is one thing to charge one beast against another for a beast inevitably has to rest, but the spirits of the river are fast and fickle and wait for no one. He nods to Egon for he also thought of man-made tracks and maps might be present, but before he commits to a search he looks back to check on Magan, and then call out Hrothgar and a few of the riders to assist as well. All such plan is immediately snuffed out when he sees Magan stir in the hands of Eadwyn. Gann lifts his hand to alarm Egon and cut off any response from him, then approaches Magan to hear him well. In a moment where all was lost, the Great Elk that guards life from death found a way to give them a glimmer of hope.   "You have heard your liberator!" Gann, invigorated to see Magan back, roars so all men in the compound can be alarmed and hear him clearly. He inhales deeply for his air easily depletes when his voice is raised. "This man bled so you all walk free. His name is Magan. Gather around. You will all listen to him now."

Calix shifts his grip on his narrowseax but otherwise stubbornly stays where he is, gaze cutting between the frenzied woman building the pyre, the man with his sweord, and the injured one he'd called Magan. He cares little for the way the man with his sweord had so summarily dismissed he and Egon and waits tersely to hear what sort of ultimatum they are about to be given; if it is to be chains again, as he half-suspects no matter what Egon had said, he at least takes comfort in that the slaves are now armed and it won't be done so easily.

Egon senses the tension and does not head off to the building to begin his search, but turns back to look at the man they called Magan. He spoke well, especially for one so recently shot in the heart. But his voice carried a distinctive West Saxon accent. Egon makes a conscious effort relaxes his grip on the langseax in his hand as he steps closer to listen to the man. "Speak your piece, Saxon. But know that these people will not be shackled again. We will die first."

Calix's grip notably does not loosen as he add a promise to Egon's.  "And we will not do so alone."

Magan waits for the freed men to gather, ignoring the murmurs and warnings being called out at him as he pulls himself back up to his height. The wound clearly bothers him, though not as much as it should and he leaves the brand and the arrow wound on full display between the halves of his open tunic. "Hear me. I am Magan Aethling, hand and mouth piece of Vidarr. I have freed you from your shackles in his name, that you may fight for him. We face a challenge to the ways of our gods and that of our ancestors. These lands come under threat from foreign, silver tongued invaders of the evil and false god of the southern lands. I have fought them in their lands, and now I ride to fight them here. With Vidarr within me, I will not seek, nor shall I have rest until his will, the will of all the Aesir, is done. For this monumental task, I require an army, one I began with your brethren." He gestures around at the slaves freed from the wagon. "And my companions that have been with me when I was entrusted with this task. With them I have freed you, that you may also have chance to join me, in search of glory and a place in Valhalla, so that those who come after us shall still know the old ways and have chance to join us in the great halls. Perhaps you prefer to go home, to deny the call of the gods, if that is so, I will not stop you, I do not want my ranks filled with such, but if you stay, I offer you the surest way to honour, glory and Valhalla, a fight for the gods themselves!"   He sits down. "I leave you this night to feast your freedom and to decide. In the morning, I will hear oaths of loyalty should you wish to swear it, and give blessings and prayers of blood." He turns aside. "Now somebody go and bring the wagon in here, and get that spineless bowman, he should know Vidarr's vengeance."

As soon as Magan opened his eyes Eadwyn sat in the mud with a sigh of relief. She then helped him to stand and nods, walking with him to talk to the freed slaves while looking around trying to see who is in good shape enough to go and carry Magan's orders.  "That pig could had us pinned here but I think we could open an alternative exit on the other side of the palisade and go hunt him. Let's see how many of your new recruits are up to the task" she says " I will go to search for the wagon and the bring the others back." 

"There's an exit on the other side of the palisade," Egon says, hoping that the other woman's voice doesn't carry too far on the cool night air.  He approaches Magan slowly, as to not drawn any alarm from the man's followers. "What is your quarrel with the Christians?" he asks, trying to gauge the man's reason for his fight. One could have many reason to hate the new faith come to this island. 

Calix's shoulders are tense as Magan speaks, his jaw set in a hard line. The speech has barely concluded before he looks over his shoulder for those in the compound he's heard speaking his mother tongue, feeling the need to get to them before panic does. Instead, his attention finds the woman still constructing a makeshift pyre, and just a beat after it, Egon's question on the wind. He pauses, taking a few steps after Egon to hear the answer, his gaze pulling from the woman to fixate intently back on her leader.

Magan looks oddly at Egon. "My Quarrel? Did you not understand me? It is the quarrel of the gods. They demand this war. Vidarr demands it of me as his instrument. Do you not hold hatred for them? Or hold a desire to do the work of the gods and fight your way into a place in Valhalla ?"

Egon holds Magan's gaze. "I heard what you said. And yes, I do not enjoy the presence of their faith on this island. But I did not ask about the gods' quarrel. I asked about yours.  What did they do to you ?"

Gann stood aside by Egon and Magan and listened. He only once took his eyes away from Egon's companion who emits a tensed presence that he instinctively became aware of. Magan had just recovered, and Gann felt compelled to not leave him alone with strangers. He only once took the liberty to look at the makeshift pyre where Glöyn poured all her anger and anguish. There was something about her display of strength that always caught him unaware, but Egon's last question pulled him out of it. 

Magan fixes Egon's stare. "I am their vessel, I have no longer have any quarrels but those they give me. Vidarr must have his vengeance and I am his arm." He pulls his tunic open further so that the brand on his chest is more visible, covered in drying blood from the wound that still closes above it as he chants a little under his breath. "Once perhaps, I had my own causes. Deep in their lands fighting for survival and coin and for glory and a chance to reach Valhalla. Now those times are done, and there is only their will and I will know no rest until it is done and I am taken to their halls."

Looking unsatisfied with this answer, Egon nonetheless shifts to a less threatening stance. He would think this Magan  to be rather full of himself if he hadn't seen the man with an arrow in his heart mere minutes ago.  "Alright, Magan," Egon says. "Then your eventual goal is Canterbury, yes?" He pauses, considering his options. What a stroke of fortune to find someone with motivations such as his! But even still, this Magan seemed vengeful. He did not want to give Magan the opportunity to kill his friends... "For the moment, I will give my blade to your cause, if you will have me. If for no other reason that I owe you and your friends a debt for freeing me from this prison."

Magan nods. "Very well. We will welcome you on our journey with us. Cause no trouble and bring no harm upon us without warning and you will find a home in our ranks."

"Welcome to the flock lads!" says Eadwyn "Now about that other exit and the archer... who feels like hunting..."

Gann still felt the sting for being responsible for not covering for Magan and had yet to reason with the divine hand in his immediate recovery. Once he saw the God-chosen Norse woman, it made all the sense of the world that those among her would be touched and driven by the same force of will. When Eadwyn breaks the tense exchange between the two men, he feels his cue to make himself useful. "Ei'd come." He tells her, then approaches Magan and extends his arm to pass him the sweord. It was more than a trophy and it beheld Magan to lay claim on it.  Gann looks around and notices Thrydwulf walking around the corpses of the slain slavers. They were of similar build and he was. He called him by name and walked to him. " Ei must have your leather." He shared few words with the man to explain, and Thrydwulf glanced back to Eadwyn and Magan then he started unbuckling his armor. Gann started doing the same. He felt the deep sting in his left leg as his weight shifted during undressing as he looks down at the darkly clotted gash deep into his thigh, but ignored it. It wouldn't stop him to ride a horse.  He passed his own mail coat for storage until the wagon would arrive, and then talked one of the wounded scout women to part with her bow and arrows. He tested the strings with ease, his arms made of the same steel as the weapon he wielded. He simply felt his aim rusty but it had to do. 

Magan looks over the sword, a fine blade, but not his own. "Thank you. We will decide later what to do with it. For now we have more pressing matters."

While Magan is giving his speech and talking with the released slaves, Eadwyn sits and leans against the pole of one of the tents, taking some sips from her waterskin and cleaning the scratches and small wounds after the fight. She studies the new recruits, so to speak, and she is glad to see that the time under captivity doesn't seem to have break their spirits. That's good, they will need it if they decide to follow Magan on his crusade.  Once they finish she stands and finish to organise the hunting party for that sonn of a whore archer, if he is still there, but they have to be sure.

Calix's attention is hard on Egon and Magan throughout the exchange, metal restless in his hand as the rest of his body tenses. There had been a thought, for a moment, that perhaps Egon was like him - that something that clearly needed to be a secret might in fact be shared. It dies quickly. He had not been so ignorant when he was dragged to this wretched island to think he would be amongst like-minded kin, but even so the intensity of Magan's vitriol strikes him unpleasantly. Canterbury.  That can only have one implication, and had he been well-fed or at all rested or even remotely patiently-minded perhaps he'd ask more about it - but all he can feel is the thudding urgency beneath his ribs and the singing need to do  something as he watches familiar steel pass hands. His first instinct is to demand it. His second is to swing. His third remembers chains, and it's this that forces him in the opposite direction, Magan's words still ringing in his ears as he tells the vengeful man stiffly,  "I will speak with my kinsmen on your offer." He is quick again to scan the crowd for the sight of those he's heard speak his mother tongue, but once more his attention is instead caught by the feverish woman seemingly intent on burning a man Calix himself has prayed countless times would suffer. Her anguish of only moments ago is still fresh in his mind, somehow familiar; a devastating incarnation of the same fury that had swept through him when he had seen Fabian fall on the grass in front of him only weeks and yet simultaneously a lifetime ago. His steps take him towards her instead of towards Franks, and he pauses at the corner of her vision. "This man took your brother," he observes in too-smooth, accented West Saxon, looking from the brutalized man to her and noting he will be incapable of speaking any time soon. "If you seek to question, or to kill, I will gladly offer aid. I have wished him pain a thousand times for all we have suffered, and know something of healing him enough to provide the answers you seek."

Goewyn had stripped the warrior of all his armor and clothing, down to his small clothes while the others talked. He was lashed securely to the post of the tower and she had started piling wood around his legs by the time she heard a voice addressing her. She spins quickly with a wild look in her eyes which quickly turn dismissive as she realizes the owner of the voice. She throws more wood onto the pile of fire around his legs, however, his words catch her attention. She stops and looks long at this man, thin and dirty from his time shoved into a cage like a wild animal. "I can heal well enough, but not this." She gestures towards his face. "If you can, do so. You can have you way with him once I am done. I need him to be able to speak."

Calix looks from the mangled man back to the woman, his grip loosening on his narrowseax for the first time since he'd grabbed it.  "I can. I have no use for him, and care little what you do to him after – but I would have your aid elsewhere." He looks over his shoulder to Magan with his sweord and then back, saying bluntly,  " That sweord belongs to me now.  You care for family, that much is clear. I will help you find your brother, if you would help recover something of mine's."

Goewyn looks at this man for a long moment, gauging his character and whether or not she believes him, but something about the way he carried himself... that strong presence he seemed to exude. She felt something, a little twinge of something, but it was so far buried beneath the torment of rage and despair that buffeted her emotions that it could not take root. "If what you say is true, why not just speak to Magan?" She looks again at the man at her feet and the cowed expression of the slaves she recalled from the caravan they only recently freed, then back to this man before her. "I will do this for you, if you do this for me. But I will not be in your debt. I owe no man anything. Understand?" She straightens her back proudly, tilting her chin upward to look down slightly at him and defying him to say otherwise.

"I will. But I am not fool enough to think he would take me at my word. Or not my word alone."  Calix looks anew at the woman, taken aback by the strength in her assertion, startlingly different than the women he'd known in Brittany. Still, with single-minded determination, he doesn't hesitate. "I would not bind you to something against your will. I have spent too much time here to do that to another. Aid for aid is all I ask."  Crossing to the man tied and ready to be burned, he lays a dirty palm on the slaver's mangled face, hard and callused from horrible days spent rowing. It would be so easy to deliver retribution for all the injustices he'd been dealt; just one brutal pull of an already decimated jaw. Instead, he forces his fingers to flex and slowly soften, closing his eyes as he begins to hiss a familiar litany low beneath his breath. "Gloria Patri, et Filio, et Spiritui Sancto..." Beneath his hand, blood dries and hardens beneath callused skin, and as eyelids begin to shift to consciousness Calix's gaze in turn grows cold.  "You will answer her questions, or I will put your jaw back where I found it," he promises curtly, forcefully dropping his hand from the man's face before stepping back to make way for the wild-eyed woman to begin.

The man's head lolls, swaying left and right as consciousness slowly finds him. "Wha... ?" He begins in West Saxon, squinting as he struggles to focus his vision on Calix and Goewyn. The half-word is followed by a fit of coughing and a sticky wad of saliva and congealed blood lands in the dirt at his feet. "What do you want?"

Goewyn nods her respect and watches carefully as this man leans in and places his hands upon the slaver’s face. She continues to watch in awe as the wounds began to heal beneath his touch. ‘He is a healer?! Mother used to speak about those with the healing hands.’ Without realizing it, she had leaned in to watch closely with her mouth handing slightly agape. Her respect for this man rose significantly; he was not just an ordinary fool—-  " You will answer her questions, or I will put your jaw back where I found it," She sighs in annoyance and glares silently to his back as she pushes her way between him and the slaver. “ I do not need you telling him to answer my questions. He will learn this himself.” She leans in close to the man, seax on one hand with the blade held before his face. “ You have lost the battle, your men dead or fled. You will tell me where I can find the person I came here for. Where were the children taken? I know that they left on a ship the day prior. You will tell me where they were taken. You will tell me, or I will take you apart piece by piece, then I will burn you, but not before I cut off your cock and shove it down your throat. I will laugh as you die choking on your own cock. Now speak!”

The man hacks another choking cough, glaring back at Goewyn with bloodshot eyes. "The children? They're long gone. Chad's taking them to Canterbury with Edgar. You'll never catch up to him now."

Egon stiffens as he hears the prisoner's words. Canterbury?  He had just said he would aid these people, and now it seems that their journey was taking them to the one place in England that he could not...or should not...go.

Dressed lightly and armed with a strung bow across his shoulder, Gann feels his glance drawn towards the pyre made for the surviving enemy. Again there was this part of him that pulled him to approach and be by her side as the fit of rage subside, yet he finds her side busy in the company of a stranger already busy to assist her. That helps him focus again at the matter at hand and Gann walks back to Eadwyn. His neck and bristly beard are still crusted with the cherry-black specks of someone's blood.  "Who else do we need, and what is the plan?" He was far his woods when it came to hunting a human quarry. He had been hunted himself thrice, he recalled, and the gravity of that experience made him trust the experience of others. 

‘Canterbury.’ That place, once again, has become the focus of their journey. It would indeed seem that her path was intrinsically tied to that of Magan’s now. Was this the will of the gods? She should speak with him about this, but first... Goewyn kicks the man hard in the ribs to drive her point home and waits patiently for the gasping and coughing fit to subside. “Why Canterbury? Is it his plan to sell them to the Christians?”

The prisoner wheezes and nods his drooping head. "Augustine wants them. Don't know why. Not my job."

Eadwyn looks to Gann and nods.  "Well, not the experience hunter myself but I guess that we sneak trought the other door and keep our heads low and try to reach that hill from behind and catch that coward and see how he does in a real fight. That if he or she hasn't flee already. Let's take a peek before shall we? "  She looks back to where the others are making their interrogation and an idea starts to form in her head.  She climbs to the wall and peeks towards the direction from where the arrows came in the frist place, trying to see something in the dark sky.  "How on earth could he even see us?" she wonders to herself in loud voice, enough for Gann to hear her " I can barely see the end of the wood wall..." 

Goewyn studies the man for several minutes, seeming to believe his words. “How many men went with this Chad and Edgar? How many soldiers? Are they going straight to Canterbury? Or will they stop along the way?”

The prisoner shifts a little and flexes his muscles against his bonds. He's built even bigger than Gann. "Half a dozen or so and as many thralls to serve them. They're sailing all the way up the channel. No other business."

Gann looks up at the moon-cast silhouette of the wall paling, grimacing with frustration. He had no answer for Eadwyn, neither one for himself. It was as if the hysbrydyon of the night crafted that arrow from darkness strands and strung it towards Magan's chest. "It's no use." He spoke hoarsely, shaking his head. Time was wasted like warm blood through a weak hand. Any man would be already third a mile away, with the word of their doing on his lips. Still, he felt responsible for what had happened. Gann turns around and walks through the midst of the yard, calling people's names as he does. He saw many of the women from the scouting party wounded or with tired eyes, but he appealed to them as well. The new men they freed, he glanced at the one who spoke as equal to their leader but the rest he did not know and they were yet to step forth and make a word with Magan. He counted little on them, but he was not in a condition to turn away any help.  "Listen. We are not yet done." He raised his rasping voice so he can be heard by all, then took the bow off his shoulder and raised it up to get people's attention. "We gather a hunting party. Anyone with sharp eyes and steady hands, grab a horse and bow and come with us. There's this thrice-damned dog of a bowman in the wilds, the last one of those scum. He is just one man. Let's hunt him down and have his skin."  Gann had no time nor the right words to appeal to their allegiance to Magan or the blood rush of newfound freedom and iron taste of revenge. Much time had been wasted already. If none stepped forth until his eyes would tire facing around, he would turn and hurry up with Eadwyn on their own. 

Egon listens to the man petitioning the former slaves to go on the hunt. He looks at where Calix and the brown-haired woman, where they interrogated the surviving slaver. He didn't want to split up their tentative alliance of two, but he felt compelled to help all the same, if for no other reason than because he owed these people a debt. He approaches the man and proffers the borrowed shortseax, hilt first, as a peace offering. "If you have a horse for me, I will ride with you. But be aware, these men have been relishing the comforts of small cages for weeks. They have more will than ability."

Gann gladly accepts his blade back and sheaths it on his belt. "Ei know. But they have to do," He agrees to the fair wisdom of the man, yet his face remains firm and only his gaze is filled with resigned determination. "Grab a beast and all you need will be given to you. We have to go now, or we ride for naught."

Once again, so close, and yet too far. She swallows back against the knot of rage in her throat, but she finds it still remains. She could not fight the current any longer. No more than a leaf could stop the spring floods from sending it down the hillsides. She looks back at the man behind her, nodding to the weapon in his hand before she turns back to the slaver. “You speak truthfully and do not try to cower. You have earned your honor back. I will allow you to die with a weapon in your hand so that you may go to Valhalla. It it time for you to die. Die with honor.”  She steps around and places her seax into his bound hands as she nods to Calix. “Do as you will.”