Chapter 15 #2
Her heart thudded a little harder against her ribs, and she could feel his heart doing the same. Beating harder. Faster. Whispering for them to stand just a bit closer because they had gone through so much together.
She lunged away from him, heading toward a small outcropping with a scraggly tree on top of it. “This seems like a good place, yes?”
“You have good eyes, Priestess.”
“I’m afraid that’s all I’m good for. I don’t know how to start a fire.” She tried to stabilize herself with what she could control. “Wood. You’ll need wood, won’t you?”
“I will gather some.”
“No, I can do that.” She looked back to see Bjorn standing in the same place she’d left him, with his hand still over his heart. “I have been doing nothing for days on end. It will be good to use my legs.”
He nodded slowly, a frown crossing his features. “Stay close. I want to be able to hear you if you scream.”
“Unsettling,” she muttered as she headed off in search of wood.
She just needed to get her head screwed on straight again. This was a very classic case of her not knowing what to do and how to do it right. This was why she had to have control.
Astrid didn’t have feelings for anyone. That wasn’t how she functioned. She was calm and collected. She was the person everyone went to when they were struggling because she flourished in chaos. She knew how to control herself.
Picking up an armful of wood, she added more and more sticks to her bundle. They probably weren’t big enough, but he hadn’t given her any specifics on what size to get. Likely, he knew that she needed some time to herself.
“You were bound to get distracted,” she muttered as she bent and picked up more. “You were plastered to him for days on end. That’s all. Physical contact isn’t something you’re used to.”
It was an excuse she could get behind, after all.
Priestesses might look like objects of sexual desire, but that was the point.
They were untouchable creatures who were made to be looked at.
That was all. If she had wanted to, she could have had lovers across every single town or kingdom, but she had chosen to remain focused on her own lord.
Perhaps that had been foolish of her if she was getting confused by the touch of a troll.
She flinched and flattened herself to the ground as another voice crackled through the air. Deep and low, it was not a voice she recognized.
“Listen to me. I’m telling you that we’re fine. The trolls down there don’t come up here. And the trolls in the mountain stay in the mountain.” Rougher and with an accent she didn’t recognize, she feared these men would find her.
Scream, Bjorn had said. He needed to hear her scream, and he’d come running. But she didn’t want to let the men know where she was.
Astrid couldn’t see them. But she was a lone woman with blonde hair in a white shirt. They’d see her far sooner than she would catch them.
Crawling over to a bush that had seen better days, she pressed herself into it. The twigs dug into her skin, tearing at her flesh until there were red lines dripping down her arms and legs. She didn’t even feel the pain and terror that lanced through her.
She could hear their footsteps now. Another man, this one with a higher pitched voice, said, “Yeah, but we have trolls with us. You don’t think they track their own kind? I heard the last raid was attacked by a whole warband. No one made it back.”
“Then how did you hear they were attacked?” The sound of a smack echoed through the night. “Dolt.”
Orange light illuminated the two men as they walked toward her.
She could see now that they were in clothing that looked as rough as they did.
The clothes on their backs were threadbare and worn, but they wore many weapons.
So much glinting metal at their hips, strapped to their thighs, covering their entire forms in a way that made her wonder just how confident they were that they were going to be attacked.
The torchlight drew closer and closer to her hiding spot, and she could feel in her gut that they were going to find her.
She pulled at the wells of her magic, tugging it into being so that she could send it at them like arrows from a bow.
They wanted to return to their camp. The darkness was frightening, and the sound of skittering rocks could easily be trolls hunting them down. They were safer together.
The man holding the torch shuddered. “Perhaps we should return. It would be safer.”
But the man next to him, the one with the high voice, froze. She realized he was staring right at her. And that was when she realized the torchlight had reached her feet.
He could see the leather straps around her feet. She hadn’t tucked them in enough.
Astrid’s heart skipped in her chest. She slowed her breath, forcing herself to remain silent and quiet. She was in control. She wasn’t terrified. She wasn’t going to... to...
A roar split through the air. She could feel it vibrating the stones around her as pure rage sliced through them all. It was the sound of an animal who had finally found the creature it was hunting, and all who heard the sound should scuttle away into their hiding places.
“What was that?” the torch bearer said.
The other replied, “Troll.”
He was still staring at her. Looking at the bushes like he knew there was something that needed to be done here, but he didn’t know what.
Should he attack her? She could feel his thoughts stretching across the short distance between them.
Whoever was in the bush, it was his duty to find them, report them. .. kill them.
She pushed harder at the fear in his mind, stretching it like spun sugar. Then, as his friend turned toward the sound, she allowed her face to emerge into the torchlight.
Pale and ghostly, she used his own fear to warp her features. She wasn’t just a woman in a bush. She was a specter, a warning.
She whispered, “Run.”
And the two men did so as another angry roar split through the air, shattering what little calm she had left. She knew that roar. She’d heard it in the labyrinth before.