Page 7 of Salt in the Wound

He glances up at the healer, who is watching him very carefully with a dusting of pink across his nose. Those dark eyes are tracking Eskil's every movement with a vigilance born from years of reading the moods of dangerous men. But there's something else there too, a flush that doesn't quite match the fear, and Eskil feels a rush of heat in his belly that has no place in this room with a beaten servant.

Three weeks at sea and he's eyeing the first warm body he comes across with all the restraint of a newly recruited soldier. Although there's a voice in his head, the one that sounds annoyingly like his better judgment, that says this one is unlike any other he's ever met. Startlingly brave in the face of danger despite not having a weapon to his name. Composed enough to look a foreign conqueror in the eye when men with swords couldn't manage it. And so gods damned gorgeous it makes Eskil's skin tight.

Get a fucking grip, he tells himself.

He directs his attention to Erlan, who is watching the exchange with calculating eyes, clearly trying to determine if he's miscalculated the value of his offering.

"How long," Eskil says, his voice flat, "has your king been beating the only man keeping him alive?"

Erlan blanches. The color drains from his face so fast Eskil might think him ill if he didn't know better. He stutters something about discipline, about insolence, about the boy being slow to answer summons, and Eskil stops listening. He doesn't need excuses. He doesn't need justification from someone who stood by and watched it happen and said nothing because the boot wasn't on his neck. Or, worse, participated.

He gives the healer a nod. Something small, something he hopes reads as reassuring across the gulf of language between them. The young man is looking up at him with an expression Eskil can't quite parse, not quite fear, not quite trust, something balanced on the edge between the two, and Eskil places a hand on his shoulder. Brief and careful. He leads him out of the room.

In the courtyard, Bohdi, is overseeing the removal of crates from the treasury, his red hair making him impossible to miss. He's directing men with one hand and holding a manifest in the other, but he looks up the moment Eskil emerges, and his eyes go immediately to the young man at Eskil's side. Surprise registers on his face, clear as day, because Bohdi has never been good at hiding his thoughts, and he crosses to them.

He raises an eyebrow at Eskil. "I thought we weren’t taking anyone onboard?"

The words are low, meant for Eskil's ears, but the judgment in them lands where it's aimed. Eskil doesn't answer with words. Instead, he gently pushes the young man forward until he's standing before Bohdi, then grips the healer's jaw carefully, thumb and forefinger, no pressure, just enough to guide, andtilts his head so that Bohdi can see the purple that trails down his face, down his neck, under his shirt.

The young man is tense in his hold. His entire body goes rigid, bracing for something violent to follow the grip on his face, and Eskil is careful. Lighter than he needs to be. Gentler than he's ever handled anything. There are other bruises too. One on his elbow, visible where his sleeve has ridden up. Another on his wrist, a dark band in the shape of fingers that wrapped too tight. He watches Bohdi's eyes find those. Watches the way his second-in-command's expression shifts, the surprise draining into something harder, something colder.

Bohdi looks at him with different eyes. Understanding. He nods. "As you say."

Eskil releases the healer's jaw. "Take him to the camp and get some food in him." He can practically see the young man's ribs through the loose shirt, the angular jut of his collarbones, the hollows beneath them. "See if you can get a name out of him. And Bohdi," he adds, when his second turns to go, "we're leaving in the morning, come hell or high water. We don't have enough ale to weather more than one night in this shithole."

"Do we have enough ale to weather the night we've got?"

"Barely."

"Then I'll tell Gunnar to water it down before the crew riots." Bohdi gestures for the young man to follow. "Come on, lad. Let's get you fed."

The healer doesn't understand the words, but he seems to read something in Bohdi's tone, or maybe in the easy way his body moves, lacking the rigid authority that large men so often wield. He glances back at Eskil, just once, just enough, those dark eyes finding his across the growing distance, and Eskil's blood heats in a way that has nothing to do with the sun overhead. It's a look he'll remember. Uncertain and searching and somehow, impossibly, not entirely afraid.

Then the young man turns and follows Bohdi toward the camp.

Eskil watches them go. Watches the slight figure move through the courtyard beside his towering second-in-command, satchel clutched to his chest, dark hair catching the morning light. Something in his chest settles and refuses to dislodge.

He is probably going to want to throttle himself later for this decision. Taking a foreign healer with them across the sea is not a straightforward proposition. There will be questions from his brother, from his council, from his people. There will be logistics: housing, integration, trust that will need to be earned on both sides. He is adding a complication to an already complicated homecoming, and for what? A feeling. An instinct. A refusal to leave beauty and talent in a place that would destroy both.

But right now it feels impossible to leave the young man behind.

Eskil turns on his heel and heads back into the castle. There's still work to be done, stores to be loaded, a treasury to be emptied, and a wretched king to be dealt with before they sail with the morning tide.

He does not think about dark eyes. He does not.

Fuck.

Chapter 3

Indrie has inadvertently met back up with the warrior who knocked him over in the hallway.

He's still tall, impossibly so, towering over Indrie by more than a head, and still holding that giant axe, resting across one shoulder, effortless. Still covered in those fearsome tattoos that disappear beneath his furs, patterns Indrie has never seen before, all sharp angles and interlocking lines that are probably meant to show he’s killed six thousand people and drank their blood. And still, despite all of that, he’s strangely kind.

Indrie is following him. He's not sure what else he was supposed to do. The blond man had handed him off, the advisor had washed his hands of him, and the castle he'd spent five years surviving in was being systematically emptied behind him. His options, as far as he could tell, were: follow the tattooed warrior with the axe, or stand alone in the courtyard until someone decided what to do with him.

He’s afraid of what that decision might be, so he follows.

The camp is set up near the shoreline, a sprawl of tents and firepit rings and stacked provisions arranged in an organizedfashion that surprises Indrie. He'd expected, well, he doesn't know what he'd expected. The stories he'd heard about the Northmen painted pictures of chaos and carnage, of blood-soaked camps where captives were chained to posts and the ground was littered with the evidence of brutality. This looks more like a well-organized merchant camp. There are supply lines, cooking stations, a section that appears to be dedicated to weapon maintenance. Everything has a place. Everything is in its place.