21. Erik

Chapter 21

Erik

P ulling the blade out from his own shoulder was one of the hardest things Erik had to do. Everything after that came easier.

As soon as Rolf fed Cherine to the dogs and stormed out of the room, Erik knew he had little time to act. With his shoulder no longer pinned to the bench—the wound, thankfully, a clean cut—he got to his feet and looked around for the closest weapon. He knew it was a matter of time before one of the men took their cocks off Cherine and noticed him, and he couldn’t afford to run the stairs to his room and get a weapon from there. Sure, he could do some damage with the dagger Rolf speared him with, but it wasn’t enough. He needed something fatal, something brutal, something that would do justice to the intense rage choking him from the inside out.

He only had to scamper to the open hallway to see the weapons displayed on the wall, all courtesy of the now-dead baron. A sword was too boring, the bow and arrow too emotionless, but the axe? Yes, the axe would do.

With the instrument gripped hard in his hands, the feeling of immense power and brutality surged through him. But instead of being scared of this second nature of his, he embraced it. He was going to need every ounce of it to do the things he needed to do.

He ran into the room with the axe above his head, charging like a berserker heading into battle. No one saw him until it was too late. The first man, Mikka, never even knew what hit him. With one swift swing, his head was removed from his shoulders and hit the ground at the men’s feet, rolling to the side.

Now he had their attention.

And, as he felt the dangerously determined presence of Knut and Karst at his side, he knew he wasn’t alone. They were going to rescue Cherine, and then they were going home. They’d do it if they had to murder every single one of their fellow Vikings right there and then.

Half of the Vikings came at them, screaming in horror and outrage, the other half, including Ross, one of the men Erik desperately wanted to kill, having run away. But to his relief, they had left Cherine relatively unharmed, and Erik barked at Knut to rescue her, to get her to safety. He didn’t need to add that the plan was going into effect that night, that they needed to leave with what they needed as soon as possible.

While Knut ran off with Cherine, Erik continued to funnel his anger into adrenaline, fighting with a relish he hadn’t experienced since his glory days. But the feeling was different this time around. Erik was vindicated, acting out of love for Cherine and the life he was happy to abandon.

When there were no men left standing—indeed, no men left with their heads still intact—Erik fought the urge to run through the halls, searching for Rolf like a bloodthirsty murderer. But he couldn’t let his need for revenge go that far. Now that the killing was done, he needed to be civilized again.

He ran his hands along the cool length of the axe, adjusting it, taking in the nostalgia before shutting his eyes. He felt the presence behind him before he heard anything. It didn’t matter where he went; Rolf seemed to carry a force field with him all his own.

Erik didn’t need to find Rolf. Rolf had found him.

He turned, slowly, carefully, keeping the axe tight in his hands. Rolf was standing in the arched stone doorway, surveying the scene. His eyes were blazing with a fire Erik could practically feel, and he wore a small smirk on his face, as if his own anger amused him.

“So, you finally turned on me,” Rolf said.

“I believe,” Erik countered, his voice like steel, “that you’re the one who stabbed me.”

“Not in the back, though,” Rolf said, slowly coming forward. His boots echoed throughout the now-empty room. He stopped a few feet away and drew his sword, the metallic rasp as it slid out of the sheath sounding like a snake about to strike.

“I’ve been nothing but loyal to you all these years.”

“Your loyalty doesn’t change the fact that the old you had died, Erik. Though as…peeved as I am to see you behead half of our crew, there’s a part of me bursting with pride over the return of The Axe. Something tells me, though, that this was a one-time thing.”

Erik didn’t say anything, didn’t take his eyes off his approaching form. Rolf was a large man, but he moved with the stealth of a cat. He was to never be underestimated, and nothing said that like the blood seeping from Erik’s wounds onto the floor.

Rolf’s face softened, his smile fading into his mouth. “You know, this hurts me, Erik. When your father died and your mother couldn’t help you, I was the one who was there. I was the one who took care of you. I practically was your father.”

“And we all know what you do to your sons,” he replied bitterly, not letting Rolf’s words get to him. It didn’t matter that he was right. He needed to remember who Rolf really was.

“I had such high hopes for you,” Rolf went on, as if not hearing him. Another step forward, the blade of the sword glinting in the torchlight. “You were better than everyone, you know that? Every person you killed, you were doing them a favor. And you were one step closer to Odin, to the real reward. We could have had everything, together.”

“It was never you and me. It was always just you. Just Rolf.”

He gave him a lopsided grin. “Because you changed. Now you think you’re better than me . You think you’re too civilized for the things that we do, for the things we need to do to survive . This is survival, old friend. But you can never take back the lives—and the women—you took. You can never redeem yourself. You’ll never escape who you really are. You know that, don’t you?”

“I know I can try.”

“There’s no trying when you’re dead.”

And with that, Rolf began to lunge, sword thrust out. But Erik knew Rolf too well, and the unpredictable could be predicted. He had already gotten into position before Rolf uttered those last words, and he flung the axe at him. It spun in the air, one rotation of swirling steel, before the blade landed right on Rolf’s moving arm. It cut it off just above the elbow, and Rolf’s arm—and sword—fell to the ground in a loud and messy clump.

Rolf’s scream, the agony, the frustration, the complete and utter doom of it all, was loud enough to fill the entire manor. It lived on for a long time after, in Erik’s head, just as the sight of Rolf’s blackened, bloodshot eyes, full of shock and betrayal, would.

He would always see those eyes, the ones of his oldest friend.

He didn’t have time to waste. He left the axe by Rolf’s side, who had now fallen to his knees, staring at his severed arm in horror as he ran off and out of the dining hall. There wasn’t time to grab his chest of possessions, the one that had made the journey from Norway with him, but he knew he at least had Cherine, and that possession was worth them all.

He ran through the manor and out the back door into the butcher’s area. As they had planned, the cart was outside, though it was loaded only with half the items they had planned for the journey. Cherine was sitting on her horse, holding the reins of Erik’s while Knut and Karst drove the cart.

“Erik,” she cried out as soon as she saw him.

He tried to smile, relief spreading over him like a cloak, but he could only grimace over what he had just done.

“We need to leave now,” Erik told them and quickly mounted his horse. “It’s only a matter of time before they come after us.”

Knut nodded and quickly flicked the reins, clucking loudly to the horses until the cart was lurched away at a trot. Erik and Cherine followed behind, the horseshoes muffled by the snow as the four of them rode out of the village of Saint-Martin and through the main gates. Erik kept a vigilant eye on the village walls, looking for any signs of ambush, and didn’t breathe until they were over the moat and heading back down the lane toward the sea.

“You’ll catch cold,” Cherine said, twisting in her seat for her saddle bag. She pulled out a heavy coat and passed it to him, no small feat when their horses were at a trot.

“Thank you,” he said, quickly shrugging it on.

“No,” she said, her voice dipping low. “Thank you. Thank you.”

It took one look at her angelic face for him to realize all the bloodshed had been worth it. He’d lost his old life.

And gained a new one.

They urged their horses to a gallop and left Saint Martin behind in a cloud of snow.