camp. She waited as long as she could before making her excuses about needing to see to feast preparations and leaving. She stalked up the hill, her breath coming in short huffs as she made it to the front gate of her home.
Annis had the preparations well underway so there was no need for Gwendolyn’s help. Instead, she stormed directly to the practice yard. The warriors spent every morning sparring and she was in need of her sword to work off her anger and frustration. She practically ran to the yard, which was on the back side of the granary. Yet when she turned the corner, she skidded to a halt because Vidar was standing there with his sword strapped to his back, calling out orders to the men. Her men.
He had two score of them lined up in rows of two facing each other. Each of them stood in squares drawn off on the ground with sticks or lines of small stones. At his command, they began sparring with their swords and struggling not to step out of the box. His own men, the Danes, lazed around the edges of the sparring field, watching with amusement.
‘What are you doing?’ she asked before she could think to stop herself, rushing towards them. As she ran, some of the men had already started tripping over the walls of their boxes, hitting the ground with groans as they fell outside their designated spaces.
Vidar spared her a glance over his shoulder before he went back to instructing the men. ‘Good warriors never lose ground. You must learn to fight without backing away from your enemy. Get up and try again.’
‘What are you doing to them?’ she asked. ‘You’ll have them injuring themselves.’
The corner of his mouth tipped up in that smirk that was becoming all too familiar, but he didn’t look at her as he watched the two warriors nearest him battling each other. ‘Then it will help them to learn.’ When the smaller of the two engaged in the sparring contest stepped backwards, Vidar sharply rebuked him. ‘Never step backwards from an armed opponent.’ The man responded by holding his ground with his feet, but he bent backwards as he locked swords with his opponent who was clearly stronger. The smaller man wasn’t able to push the stronger man back.
‘What good is a warrior who is injured?’
‘He’ll be smarter for it,’ Vidar answered. Without looking at her again, he walked away from her and between the groups of men, offering critique where he thought it necessary.
Despite the obvious fact that Vidar was younger than half of them, he commanded them with the authority of a seasoned leader. He wore a leather tunic that left his arms bare so that his shoulder and arm muscles bulged as he gestured. He was definitely stronger than most of them, despite his youth.
Rage prickled her skin, washing over her in a sweep that left her skin hot and tight. It wasn’t only because he’d taken over their training without consulting with her or Rodor. It was that he did it so effortlessly, as if he was accustomed to giving orders and having them obeyed. As if it was already his right to have command of the warriors when they weren’t even married yet. What made it even worse was that her warriors were listening to him as if he was right in all of those assumptions.
‘Halt!’ Her voice rang out over the sparring field with authority.
Vidar whipped his head around to look at her, the smirk and swagger he wore so easily wiped from his face. She had to fight to keep herself from smiling, but she wouldn’t stoop to his level. The men closest to her stopped their sparring, but the pairs further away continued. She called out halt again just as one of the men fell over his barrier and stumbled to the ground. The others who hadn’t heard her clearly before heard her this time and stood down with their weapons.
‘This is not how we train.’ She spoke to all of them, but her gaze settled on Vidar.
‘Perhaps it’s not how they were trained before, but it’s how they’ll train going forward,’ Vidar said, crossing his arms over his chest. He levelled her with a glare that was as cold as it was hot with anger. She had no idea how the two ideas could exist in the same gaze, but he managed to pull it off.
‘That’s not for you to decide.’
That was met with a murmur of voices that made her realise the Danes were watching the display from the side of the field. Behind him, the men who’d been lounging in the grass rose to their feet to watch. Realising that she was quickly making their spat a spectacle for all to see, she inclined her head in the only conciliatory gesture she could muster. ‘Let us talk privately.’
Vidar glared at her. His blue eyes were fierce as he stared her down as if he’d not be sorry to see her engulfed in flames where she stood. ‘After the sparring session is over.’
She clenched her teeth against the harsh words that threatened to spew out whether she wanted them to or not. Despite that he was in the wrong, she was ever vigilant of her role as peacekeeper amongst her men. It wouldn’t do to antagonise Vidar more than she already had, but neither would it be wise to allow him to disrespect her in front of her men. She’d worked too hard to earn their respect—particularly after Cedric’s death—to risk losing it now.
‘The sparring session is over now.’ She made certain that her voice was loud and clear so that it would carry to the Danes at the edges of the field.
Vidar dropped his arms to his sides, his hands clasped into fists. If it was possible, a near tangible wave of apprehension moved through her warriors as silence descended.
Her heart pounded wildly in her chest, but it wasn’t from fear. For the first time since these Danes had arrived on her land, she saw an end, a release, to the impotent rage that had been building inside her. Her heart beat with anticipation of meeting him head on.
The sound of a bell ringing shattered the silence. Gwendolyn blinked to break the spell of the tension and looked away from Vidar to the source of the sound. The bell was hung from a wooden brace near the hall’s entrance. It rang three times during the day. To signal the beginning of morning chores for the warriors, to signal the start of afternoon chores and to call the men to the evening meal. Morning chores for the warriors began after their training. Gwendolyn had been so lost in the battle of wills with Vidar that she’d lost all track of the time.
But as she looked towards the bell, she saw Rodor standing beside it, leaving her to wonder if he’d rang it to end the confrontation. If the disapproval etched deeply into his features was an indication, that’s exactly what had happened.
Her warriors didn’t move a muscle. They stood in their places, watching her and Vidar until the last strains of the ringing had died out. ‘Go about your work,’ she said in a quiet voice.
For a moment no one moved and then eventually, one by one, they slowly filed away, leaving the sparring field. The last to leave was Wulf. The Danes at the edges of the field hadn’t left, but their postures relaxed and a few even sat on their haunches, though they hadn’t looked away. Vidar hadn’t looked away, either. He stared her down with that cold savagery that only he could manage to pull off.
When all of her men had gone away, he took the few steps that would put him in front of her. In a low voice laced with steel, he said, ‘You will not defy me.’
‘I have not defied you...yet.’
The woman hadn’t so much as blinked at a tone that made most men tremble. With her shoulders squared and her chin raised, Gwendolyn of Alvey stared him down. Her eyes shimmered like deep blue pools beneath the long fringe of her lashes.
The woman was mad. Everyone had seen how she’d stormed out on to the sparring field and tried to usurp his authority. There was no denying it and the fact that she tried to deny it only made him angrier. ‘You came out here with the implicit goal of interfering in my work.’
She gave a quick nod of her head. ‘Aye, because your work was interfering with the training of my warriors.’
‘Ah, I see your confusion.’ He smiled as it became clear to him where the misunderstanding