Free The Reluctant Berserker by Alex Beecroft

everything that I am. We are bound together by obligations and gratitude that can never be undone.”
    “This I understand,” Tatwine said kindly, “and I admire. It is a little like my wife and I—though she was scarcely more than a child herself, and I so much the elder, yet in a marriage these things count for little.”
    He began to amble away from the jetty, letting the slaves who had been watching them both from the shadow of the trees drift back and take up their fishing places once more. Since he had not let go of Leofgar’s arm, sick and sore at heart or not, Leofgar had to follow, back up to the graveyard and the little wreath of holly like spilled blood on the ground.
    “The hurt of her passing would have been greatly eased, for me, if you had been here,” said Tatwine. “And…” he sighed, “…you must be aware that your master is very old and not at all well. The time is coming fast when he will join the saints in glory. At that time, I will be to you the comfort I myself wished for, when death came ungently into my house.”
    “I had thought…” Leofgar wrestled with the desire to kick the grave marker or to kick Tatwine or to pull his dagger and declare himself entitled to single combat to clear his name. All three were choices he could see leading to his own grave. “When that unhappy hour arrives, I had thought to go on pilgrimage after and offer the silver we have earned over the years in prayers for his soul. After that…I am a wanderer by inclination, lord. I hoped to cross the sea and visit the Emperor in Byzantium, to see the warm places and the wonders of the world.”
    Tatwine laughed as though this were a child’s dream. “We will go together, perhaps, once you and your master have sworn fealty to me. This summer, should he still have the strength in him to travel. The heat would do him good.”
    “Sworn fealty?” It was the ultimate prize for a scop—a place in the lord’s retinue—and Leofgar felt the impact of it as though it had been a punch to the throat. Only his surprise must have come across, not the dread, for Tatwine beamed, like one who sees a generous gift lavishly appreciated.
    “Indeed. I spoke to your master about it before church, and he wept over my hands in gratitude. You need have no further fear of what may come, for your days without protection are over. You can swear to me tomorrow night, and henceforth you will both be mine.”

Chapter Three
    Outside the shut door, the rains of Solmonath drizzled and trickled from the thatch, making a musical whispering that pleased Saewyn as she whispered words of power over the apple in her hand. Last of the winter store, the skin was as wrinkled as her own, but the sweetness of the thing would be that much greater for its age.
    “It does seem smaller.” Beorthread the potter glanced up at her from his bed-shelf with hope and faith, and looked back again at the weeping sore that covered his right flank from armpit to hip.
    “It will,” she said, serene in the knowledge that—unless God chose to take this man, which no one could forestall—the power of the chant and the salve would soon make him well. “These nine plants have might against powerful diseases, against the flying venom and the running venom, the red poison and the bright poison, and the pale. Now let me make the salve a second time, and you will see the sore flee away. By the third time it will be gone.”
    With the hallowed apple in one hand, mortar on her knees and pestle in the other hand, she was in no position to stoop down and scrape up ash. Where was…
    She tried not to sigh, disappointed, as—looking up—she found her son crowding the potter’s daughter into a corner. Cenred’s straw-straight hair looked golden in the light of the single oil lantern that hung flickering from the house’s central beam, and there was something about it, something about the hunched shape of his shoulders, the tensed arms and face turned away, that