Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

The forest was a blur around him, there was pounding in his ears and a wheezing sound from a chest that felt like it was about to burst with every painful breath. His mouth tasted of blood.

He had no idea how he was on his feet at all, let alone still running, but fear pushed him in the back and forced phantom strength out of stick thin legs, pushing him beyond pain and fatigue.

Branches rushed toward him but he only managed to duck a few, the rest whipped him in the face. There weren’t time to watch his step and his bare feet seemed to find every sharp twig, pinecone and jagged pebble in the woods. Again and again, he stumbled and nearly fell at agonizing pain shooting up his legs as he stepped on something else, but somehow he kept going.

He had to. If they caught him, they would hang him, burn him; whip him to death...

The two men who hunted him shouted to each other somewhere behind him, their horses crashing through the same branches that seconds ago had lashed his cheeks, coming closer and closer.

Hanging, burning, whipping; hanging burning, whipping... He had to run, run, run...

He came to such a sudden and brutally jarring and painful stop that at first, eyes blinded with tears, he thought he’d run into a tree trunk, the wind completely knocked out of his agonized lungs, but it wasn’t a tree.

Someone had stepped in his way and grabbed at him, a huge strong arm wrapped around his chest.

His feet slipped away underneath him and he fell heavily on his back in the cool damp moss, his vision blurring. As his lungs screamed, the world swayed and rocked, but no matter how his mind yelled at him to get back on his feet and keep running, he stayed down, sprawled on the ground like a discarded ragdoll at the unknown man’s feet. He couldn’t get up; he couldn’t even move his arms. There were no more strength to find inside of him, and he would burn, hang... die.

He closed his eyes to the nauseatingly spiraling treetops above him; he was almost too exhausted to care.

The men on the horses reached them only moments later.

“You caught our runaway,” he heard one of them say to the man who had stepped in his way, and who obviously wasn’t a member of their hunting party. “Much obliged.”

His captor didn’t answer.

“Well,” the man on the horse continued, a slight note of insecurity in his voice at the lack of reply, “we’ll take him from here then.”

His captor finally spoke up. “You will, will you? How so? Does he belong to you?”

“Uh, no... He ran away from one of the farms in the valley, we only offered to find him and bring him back.”

“Oh, I see,” his captor said. “And you’ve come all the way up into the hills only for such a little rabbit? Is there a reward for the trouble then?”

“There is... a... moderate reward, yes, so, we won’t bother you further, but take the boy and be off.”

“Now, now,” his captor argued. “That wouldn’t be right, now would it? I think it has already been established that I caught him first, so this ‘moderate reward’ should rightfully be mine, don’t you think?”

There was stunned silence at this declaration. “Now, look here,” the men finally protested. “We were given this job, and...”

“Well, it doesn’t much matter, does it; who was given the job, when I still beat you to it.”

Again, there were no words exchanged between the men standing above him, no doubt trying to stare each other down over the sound of his labored raspy breathing. He didn’t even open his eyes to this silent fight over him, still too exhausted to care who would call victory in the end.

The outcome would still be the same for him.

“Well, have the reward then,” the man from the valley finally spat. “Just looking at you, it’s clear you have greater need for those measly pennies than my brother and I.”

“Yeah,” the other one added. “You want the trouble of dragging that little shit all the way down to the valley; then by all means, have those pennies, mountain trash!”

Again, his captor didn’t answer as the two men steered their horses around and he heard them depart. He was relieved they were going, but he wasn’t less terrified. A mountain man had caught him, and had alone chased two men on horses away, just by staring them down?

He hardly felt in better hands.

Järv leaned over his catch and shook his head. Such a little rabbit, indeed, trembling all over, chased to near collapse it seemed, his heart nearly beating out of his skinny chest and his lungs wheezing still. He admitted he had rarely seen a need to run himself into such a depleted state, but he still knew what it felt like when it hurt to breathe, your mouth tasted of blood and your legs numbed with exhaustion, running after deer... or from bears.

He gave the boy a few moments.

While his breathing stilled but the boy was still malleable from exhaustion, Järv turned him over on his stomach and grabbed at his shirt, tearing it almost all the way down to the boy’s waist. He winced, he really hadn’t meant to rip the little rabbit’s already tattered clothing, but the threadbare fabric was like cobweb in his strong hands.

Well, there it was, a large, ugly, pale brand burned into the boy’s shoulder blade. A farmer’s slave from the valley then, just as those men had claimed, which probably meant they hadn’t lied about the existence of a reward either.

Järv paused, feeling how the boy trembled under his hand, as much from fear as from exhaustion, he suspected, and he was of a good mind just to let the poor thing go.

However, something told him this reward wasn’t as ‘moderate’ as those men had claimed, and he had to admit their contemptuous observation of his lack of means had been on point. The hills were a cruel mistress, beautiful and wild she offered all the freedom you could crave, but none of the riches and securities. Those men, valley men, well fed and well clothed by the looks of them, had come all the way up here only for this scrap of a slave; the reward must be quite substantial.

He could use the money, he really could.

Järv found a piece of string in one of his many ‘this and that’-pockets, pulled the unresisting slave’s hands behind his back, tied off his wrists and then helped the boy to his feet again. The rabbit swayed still with exhaustion and bled a little from a few ugly scratches in his face, but didn’t seem otherwise harmed.

“Well, seems like you have to come home with me then,” he said, taking the boy by the arm, and steering him deeper into the woods.

Though there had to be some spark of rebellion in the rabbit, or he wouldn’t have run away in the first place, Järv gathered, the slave kept his mouth shut at this and followed meekly. He wouldn’t himself have gone so quietly to an unknown fate, but slaves might be different when it came to such things, he assumed, used to quiet obedience since birth, or maybe this one was simply smart enough to know when he was beaten... or to bide his time.

Well, the boy might be trouble, but a rabbit was a rabbit and a bear was a bear and it wouldn’t hurt the bear to house a rabbit for a few weeks.

Yes, Järv would venture down to the valley in a few weeks time anyway, for the annual spring market, to sell the pelts he’d trapped for during the winter, and the boy would have to endure his hospitality until then. He wouldn’t make the long walk twice.

The farmer... Well, the farmer would have plenty of slaves; he was sure; the man could wait.

Darkness had fallen.

Järv sat at his crudely hewn table on his only chair in his low-ceilinged cabin and ate his evening oatmeal porridge out of a humble wooden bowl.

He had placed a bowl of the same content next to the boy he had found, as well, but the slave hadn’t touched it, so far.

The rabbit was hugging his knees in the corner between the fireplace and the log wall, not having uttered a single word since he’d been taken, staring at the floorboards between his dirty and battered feet only. Not that he could do much else.

Coming home, Järv had realized his houseguest would mean certain practical problems. Wouldn’t the rabbit try to run again? Most likely. It would present no bigger challenge for the boy either. Järv had to sleep, after all. He came and went, too, and could not sit here day in and day out and watch the boy, nor could he take the slave with him on hunts and hikes.

Well, in the end he had solved it in the simplest and easiest of ways, by simply chaining the boy to one of the iron bars of the fireplace.

The boy wore a chain around one of his bare ankles now, and couldn’t walk more than a few steps in either direction. Not that he had tested the length of the chain. After crawling into the corner, he had not moved an inch, adding a seeming indifference at being chained to his overall sulky demeanor.

He had accepted water offered to him, that was all. Järv’s hard-earned food was going to be further ignored it seemed.

Well, go hungry then, Järv thought, giving the boy a displeased glare. Himself, he intended to go to bed and get a good night’s sleep.

The small cabin only had one room, but Järv had built a screen wall surrounding the corner he preferred calling his bedroom and after taking a piss outside he now retired to this grand ‘master bedroom’ of his. It might be simple, but it wasn’t at all uncomfortable. He’d collected enough goose down to fill a mattress fit for a prince for his simple bed, and he’d kept enough nice pelts for himself to have more than one cover to keep him warm.

Those pelts sure came in handy at this time of year. Even if the spring sun warmed up the hills more and more each day, the nights were chilly still, frost covering grass, moss and leaves in the morning. It turned quite cold in his little cabin toward those frosty morning hours, after the last embers had gone out in the fireplace during the night...

“Damn it!” he swore, as he threw the covers aside and put his naked feet back on the cold floorboards. He grabbed one of the extra pelt covers and rounded the screen to drop it over the boy still hunching in the corner.

“Good night,” he muttered, before going back to his own bed.

Not much had changed in the morning.

The boy had wrapped himself in the pelts, but was still sitting silently in the corner, showing him the same sullen expression in a face slowly scabbing over. Only the dark shades under his eyes had turned deeper. Hadn’t he slept at all?

The bowl of porridge was still left untouched at the slave’s side, too.

It was finally the sight of the ignored food, which made Järv angry. You didn’t waste good food, mountain people, if any, knew that, and he would have thought a slave would too, not least considering how starved the boy looked. He wanted to starve himself further then, thought death just another escape, perhaps? Oh no, Järv wasn’t going to let the rabbit off himself, or reject what he was given. He was not rich, he couldn’t afford to waste food on the ungrateful, and he would have that reward, damn it!

Trying to rein in his anger, Järv crouched down before the boy and held up the bowl of porridge. “You’re not going to eat this, are you?” he said.

The boy was not fooled by his attempt at restraint and the badly repressed anger in his voice, obviously. His eyes were enormous pools of pure fear in a thin face and the chain rattled under the pelts in his trembling. Still… he shook his head.

Järv was not going to stand for such defiance. He pulled the pelts down and grabbed the boy’s wrist, forcing him to take the bowl with the now cold and stale porridge. “I’m only going to tell you once,” he growled. “If I give you food, you’ll eat! Get it? I’ll go fetch more firewood, and when I come back, I want to see an empty bowl, or I’ll push the rest down your throat with a fucking broom handle, do you understand?”

The fearful eyes didn’t blink, thin fingers shook around the rim of the bowl, and the pale scratched face bobbed up and down in jerky nods.

Oh, he understood, all right.

Järv returned a few minutes later, arms full of firewood, to see the boy desperately sucking porridge off his fingers, half of it already gone. Seeing Järv coming back inside, the boy tried to stuff himself with ever more hurried movements, hardly having time to swallow before he pushed even more into his mouth.

He put the firewood on the floor and walked up to the boy, watching him cowering and shaking over the bowl, still pushing fingers with sticky globs of porridge into his mouth.

Järv couldn’t help the chuckle. “Calm down boy! I don’t want you to choke on it, or throw it all up again. I’m not going to force feed you the rest. I just don’t want you to waste my food, that’s all. This was a tough winter and I have precious little of it, you see?”

The boy did slow down at this, and Järv let him eat the rest in peace and quiet while he warmed water over the fire to do the dishes, finally reaching down a hand to the boy in the corner, wanting the empty bowl back.

Large eyes turned up to him as the boy reached up with the bowl. “Thank you, Sir,” he said. “I- I’m sorry, Sir, I didn’t mean to waste your food, Sir.”

Järv raised an amused eyebrow at the slave’s timid voice. So, the rabbit could talk, after all. “Oh, that’s all right, boy,” he graciously declared, taking the bowl and returning to the dishes.

He could feel how the boy watched him while he was sloshing his few bowls and spoons around in the warm water, cleaning them with a coarse root brush, and after a few minutes, the slave seemed to have worked up the courage to speak again.

“Sir, could I… Could I… ask something, Sir?”

Järv grinned a little. “By all means,” he answered, still feeling gracious and amused in equal amounts.

In spite of this, the boy again remained silent for several minutes before he spoke the next time. “Are you…? I mean… What are you going to do with me, Sir?”

Järv’s amusement died out at this simple question. He could hear the fear and despair in the slave’s voice and he wondered not at it. The boy had no idea who he’d ended up with, after all. He rinsed off the last bowl, dried his hands on a coarse piece of cloth, and opened the door to empty the dishwater outside, before he returned to the boy and crouched down before him once again.

“I mean you no harm, boy. I’m only going to take you back to where you belong. Apparently, there is a reward for your return, and if those two valley idiots weren’t fooling me, it’s a big one, I could tell. It seems someone is missing you quite much, boy, and really want you back, and I really need that money. I’ll take you home again, safe and sound, that’s all, boy.

“It’s only it’s a long way to the valley from here and I’m going down to the spring market in a few weeks anyway, to sell my pelts, so I’m afraid you’ll have to stay with me until then. As long as you don’t cause me trouble, though, I won’t be hard on you. You see? No harm will come to you, and you’ll be just fine, boy, don’t worry!”

The slave kept shaking his head to every word Järv was saying, his eyes as wide and miserable as before. “No, Sir,” he said. “No, I- I won’t be all right, I won’t… They’ll kill me, Sir; I swear they will. They- they… Please, Sir, don’t take me back, please.”

Järv shook his head back at the boy, displeased once again. Why would anyone offer a big reward only to then kill the boy? No, as useless of a worker as the thin boy seemed to him, he was obviously valuable to someone.

He knew it wasn’t uncommon that masters slept with the slave girls they owned and sometimes there were offspring from such unions. The law didn’t permit you acknowledged this offspring, but such a slave could still be dear to an owner. Maybe this boy was born from such a union. Most likely he was. What value could he otherwise have?

Yes, Järv thought, the boy might fear punishment being brought back, but he surely wouldn’t risk anything worse than a proper hiding, the kind that would leave no scars. What kind of man would kill someone of his own blood? No, the slave was only trying to manipulate him here, and Järv wasn’t stupid.

Those valley men hadn’t fooled him, and neither would this boy.

“Oh, be quiet, boy,” he barked. “Stop whining! I will take you back and that’s that. I’ll have that reward, damn it, if it’s the last thing I’ll do, you hear? I’m warning you, don’t make trouble, or annoy me, or you’ll regret it! Now, tell me who your master is, so I’ll know where to take you.”

The slave swallowed his begging in a frightened gasp, but if Järv thought there was no more defiance in the boy, he was obviously mistaken.

“I- I… I’m not going to aid you in my own fucking death,” the slave swore at him, even as he lifted his arms over his head in protection. “Go-go seek the bastard out yourself!”

“Why, you little…” Järv shook his fist at the boy, but let his hand sink to rest at his knee again. He wasn’t going to hit a chained boy, half his size, who obviously couldn’t defend himself. There were other ways to handle stubborn and troublesome creatures around you, whether it was a hunting dog, a market seller, or a slave... Always better to waste the strength of your mind, than the strength of your hands, Järv thought.

“Well, if that’s the way it’s going to be,” he said. “It doesn’t matter, boy. You’re branded. Was it so painless that you’ve forgotten it? There will be people in the valley recognizing that mark, I’m sure. I’ll find out soon enough where to take you.”

The boy’s arms sank from his head, but there were no more defiant words. Instead, the slave let his face sink into the pelts Järv had given him and burst out crying pitifully.

Järv startled, finding neither words nor action to try to stem the deluge of tears before him. Feeling awkward, he rose to his feet again and backed away from the boy. He was only leaving the cabin, to let him finish his crying in peace he told himself. Truth be told, a miserably howling dog Järv would have petted to soothe, a crying woman he would have put an arm around, but that boy, he really didn’t know what to do with.

Maybe, the slave was still only trying to manipulate him anyway.

Järv had to admit, after that first morning the slave really wasn’t giving him much trouble. By all means, the boy wasn’t the cheeriest person around, but, Järv had to admit further, neither was he.

The boy obeyed orders without protests; rarely spoke unless spoken to, never smiled, but, thankfully, also didn’t beg or cry again, which reinforced his belief the boy had only tried to make Järv pitying him into letting him go. Well, the boy had learned fast enough Järv wasn’t going to fall for such transparent tactics, thus the improvement in behavior.

Eventually, the slave had even answered a few of Järv’s questions. He had told Järv that the other slaves at the farm called him ‘Thistle’ because of his unruly hair, and as far as he knew, he’d never had a proper name apart from that. He also informed Järv that he was sure he was not younger than eighteen but not older than twenty and he was sorry he wasn’t able to be more precise than that. He claimed to have no idea who his parents were.

When Järv asked what work he’d done at his master’s house, though, he’d only replied ‘menial tasks’, and had given likewise vague answers to other such questions, as well.

Järv didn’t demand further details. The slave had not wanted to reveal whom his master was and was still determined not to give Järv clues, it seemed. Järv didn’t care, Thistle still had that brand, after all, and he was in no hurry to find out.

He opted to talk to the boy less, and put him to work instead. The slave soon chopped his firewood, fed his donkey, stirred his porridge and fetched water from the well on a daily basis.

He’d even put the boy to take care of the entire spring laundry, the boy scrubbing his clothes and cloths in the cold water of the creek nearby until his arms were red and wrinkled up to the elbows. It was hard work, and something that Järv truly hated doing, so he was only too happy to have the boy do it for him. He felt only a little bit bad at this. The slave was eating of his already very meager rations; after all, surely he was in his right demanding Thistle worked for it.

Järv still ended up taking the laundry basket out of those red cold hands, watching the slave struggle to haul it up the steep creek bank, hauling it back up himself, knowing the mass of wet fabric would weigh more than the boy did.

A week passed like this, then another, and they fell into a sort of quiet, almost peaceful, routine, that Järv had to admit wasn’t entirely unpleasant. He’d lived alone for such a long time, up here in these wild hilly woods; he’d forgotten how nice it could be to have some company.

Thistle might be some kind of company, even as sullen and quiet as he was, but a companion he was not. Järv was reminded of this every time he left his cabin to roam the forested hills, and had to lock the heavy chain around the boy’s thin ankle.

The slave never protested the chain, only crawled into the corner, wrapped the pelts around his slight shoulders and leaned into the warm stones of the fireplace with a faraway stare in those large dark-shaded eyes.

Järv always ruffled his bristly mop of hair with a smile and promised he wouldn’t be long, but he never got a reply.

It weighed on his heart, it did, thinking of the chained boy in his cabin while he roamed the hills as he pleased, freedom such a natural part of his whole being that he’d never, until now, given it a single thought.

Well, Thistle was born into it, after all. The boy had never had any freedom to begin with, and wouldn’t know what it was that he was missing. That chain… Thistle wouldn’t take it as hard as Järv would have… Would he?

Thistle endured the mountain man’s large hand in his hair, and didn’t react to his promise to come back soon, pulling the pelts closer around him as the man left.

It was such a big and strong hand, it was hard to believe it hadn’t been used in violence against him… so far. Watching how the large man had to bow to walk out of his door, and how his broad shoulders nearly scraped the doorframe, it wasn’t hard to believe he’d scared off those two men from the valley so easily.

Who in their right mind would start a fight with such a bear of a man?

Thistle sure knew to keep quiet and not annoy the big man that had captured him. He’d been stupid that first morning, when he had still been in such despair he hadn’t been able to behave, but it had changed into the more resigned kind of despair that he was used to, and he could control himself better now.

Turning and twisting in the pelts, he tried to find a more comfortable position, prepared to wait hours for the mountain man to return. The chain rattled at his movement and weighed so heavily on his leg, but his captor had given him cloth to wrap around his ankle, so at least it didn’t chafe.

He was deceptively kind at times, this bear of a mountain man; sharing food from rapidly diminishing winter rations. Making sure the chain didn’t chafe, giving him pelts to wrap in for sleep, so warm and soft he had never felt the like in his life, not beating him for his defiant words and sullen manners, taking heavy burdens out of his hands to haul up a steep and slippery creek bank...

Of course, it wasn’t kindness; it was keeping the goods in decent condition so that the reward would be paid out at its return to its rightful owner.

Being on his own, Thistle did what he always did at such thoughts… gave in to anxiety and despair, and cried brokenly into the warm pelts.

The heavy and humiliating chain didn’t matter, the warm pelts and the seeming kindness didn’t matter either, and trying once more to beg his captor not to take him back would be futile. That the mountain man obviously was not prone to cruelty and violence didn’t mean he was going to listen to a mere walking and talking tool, and the man needed the money for his own survival. Begging wouldn’t matter; tears wouldn’t matter…

He was going to die.

They were chopping and stacking firewood in the early morning, Thistle putting logs on the block, raising the heavy axe over his head and letting it fall, the cleaved parts dropping to the ground around his feet. His mountain man captor picked them up and stacked them artfully in ever-growing piles, while Thistle reached for another log to put on the block.

His shoulders ached from lifting the heavy axe again and again, but he’d already denied it once, claiming he was fine with going on a little longer, when the mountain man had suggested they trade work for a while.

The man had only shrugged, smiled and let him. He was probably insane, constantly turning his back on a runaway slave with a heavy axe. On the other hand, the mountain man was just as probably convinced the pathetic slave he’d caught would never dare attack him, which he, sadly, was damn fucking right about.

It was still oddly satisfying to exhaust himself in this way and it was well worth the aches to get to slam the thick and heavy blade repeatedly into the tough logs. It was strange how you could imagine faces in a log, making eyes, noses and twisted mouths out of bark, knots and twigs. Faces like the brutal overseer on the farm, like the hateful mistress of the house, the valley men who’d chased him, the mountain man that had caught him... the face of his master and owner...

Thistle’s arms trembled, and he let the axe sink, that particular log suddenly spared his splitting rage. His gaze dropped in shame, even imagining his master’s face in a log scared him so much he didn’t dare raise an axe against it.

The mountain man turned to him. “Oh, just let me take over, will you,” he said, taking the axe out of his shaking hands. The man patted his shoulder when Thistle passed him to take over the stacking instead and smiled at him. “You’re very good with an axe, boy, you really are,” he said, putting a log on the block.

He was so deceptively nice…

Their work was interrupted though, at a rustle in the bushes surrounding the small cabin, and a man stepped out onto the yard, grinning and raising a hand in greeting.

His mountain man captor obviously knew the man, and gave him a wide grin back. “Björn,” he said. “Long time, no see.”

The visitor grinned wider, as well, revealing several missing teeth, his tanned face crumpling into a myriad of wrinkles, not unlike the bark on the logs. He was both smaller and older than his own mountain man was, but was otherwise hard to distinguish from any such man Thistle had ever seen, dressed in the same coarse fabrics and leather, a bow at his back.

Björn turned to Thistle and grinned at him, as well. “Have you gotten help in the house, Järv?” he said, peering at him curiously.

Thistle cringed at the man’s intense scrutiny.

“Help?” his captor said. “Yes, by all means, he’s quite good help, actually, but it’s only temporary, I’m afraid. He’s a runaway from a farm in the valley. I’ll return him when I’ll go down for the spring market.”

“Oh?” Björn kept grinning, never taking his squirrely eyes off him. “Who lost this tiny critter then?”

“I have no idea. He refuses to reveal that much about himself it seems,” his captor answered, grinning in return.

“So, what stops you from squeezing it out of him then?” Björn asked.

“Nothing, really, I suppose,” his captor replied, casting Thistle a quick glance, “but I don’t want to hurt him for that information when I can so easily find out anyway. He’s branded; someone in the valley is bound to recognize the mark.”

Björn nodded.”Oh, I’ll know it,” he said, looking cocksure. “I’m in the valley much more often than you, I’ve traded with the lot of them, and I have an excellent memory, if I do say so myself. Can I have a look?”

Thistle gasped and backed into the stack of firewood behind him, shaking his head in a mute plea.

“By all means, help yourself,” the mountain man said, gesturing to his visitor to come closer.

The visitor, Björn, walked up to him and stared demandingly, as if he expected him to just pull his shirt over his head and show the man. He wouldn’t. He wouldn’t obey them in this, they could beat him if they wanted, they could…

“This is a badly trained one, isn’t it?” Björn said, scowling at him, grabbing his arm.

He fought it, as much as he had ever dared fighting anyone or anything, he fought this, squirming in the visitor’s hold, digging in his heels, and desperately trying to jerk his arm free. Not a begging sound came over his lips but he fought every step of the way over to the chopping block, where the man finally pressed him face down over the wood and pinned him in place with a frighteningly strong hand, completely ignoring his struggles.

Even to an old mountain man he was too fucking pathetically weak, and in the end it was tears of humiliation spilling over, not tears of pain at his stomach pressing into the sharp edge of the chopping block.

Bastards! Fucking bastards, the both of them.

Björn pulled his shirt down from his shoulders and ran his fingers over his brand, making his skin crawl. It seemed an eternity before the man finally released his harsh grip and let him go.

Thistle stepped away, red in the face, pulling the shirt up over his shoulders again, not looking at them.

“Well?” his captor asked.

Björn grinned. “Oh, I know that mark, all right,” he said.

Thistle froze. He wanted to throw up; he thought he was really going to throw up…

“You do? Who is it then?”

Björn kept grinning. “I’m surprised you don’t know it, too. That’s the brand of one of the richest men in the valley, and one of the biggest bastards, too, if you’re to believe all the rumors, and there’s plenty of them, believe me!”

The red of Thistle’s face deepened.

His captor frowned. “What kind of rumors?”

“All kinds. He’s the Devil, they say, totally ruthless in business, looks down his nose at everybody, stingy as all hell. His wife is a good woman, though. She’s of noble descent even, but he married her only for her money.” Björn made a dramatic pause. “And I suppose he’s far from the first man who has taken a woman for her riches, but this one, this one they say is not interested in women, at all... Not in the least, if you know what I mean?” He winked at them.

His captor only shrugged his shoulders at this. “Bah, it’s not like he’s alone in that either. I was to the big city over the hills in my youth. They have a brothel there, with only boys in it.”

Björn grinned even wider. “Oh, that might fly in the big city, my friend, but down in the valley… It’d be a huge scandal down there, you know. Oh, he’s mad at those rumors, all right, really, really mad.”

Thistle swayed on his feet, fighting the nausea. He hadn’t told, he would swear to the gods he hadn’t told anyone, but there were still rumors?

He was dead… He was dead, dead, dead…