The scrape of two swords being drawn echoed through the tent, although Temris remained unarmed. Fendur sounded as angry with himself as with me when he said, "Damnation, Lyra. Put it down. You know we can't let you hurt him."
My strategy had worked. A reluctant enemy was a hundred times better than a hateful one. Even Bevan wasn't in a hurry to charge me.
"Stand down, both of you," Temris ordered. He stood a few paces from me, his weight on his heels so I wouldn't feel trapped and do anything rash. I had often used the same tactic on spooked horses.
"Tem, you can't expect us to -"
"I said stand down," he snapped again. He didn't want anyone's help dealing with me. No, this rivalry had been going on for far too long for external intervention. An entire afternoon. Fendur fell silent, but I could feel his eyes on me, watching and waiting.
The warlord took a careful step forward. My axe flashed out and bit empty air. Again and again, I swung at him and every time he moved out of the way with unnatural ease. When my swings inevitably began to slow, his hand snapped up to catch the axe just below the blade.
Shit. I wrenched backwards, but Temris was completely unyielding. He used the axe to pull me closer, then shoved me backwards with his free hand. It didn't escape my notice that he waited until the bed was behind me. I fell onto a soft mattress, sinking down into the blankets. He twisted the axe from my grip, threw it out of reach and seized my belt to hold me in place.
I didn't stop thrashing when Temris pinned my legs down with a knee and retrieved the chain from his belt. Cold metal clamped down around one ankle and then the other. One of my desperate punches caught him where he had been injured earlier, and I winced in sympathy. Temris drew in a sharp breath, but that was the only sign that I might have hurt him.
If his ribs were indeed broken, that careless blow could have punctured a lung. The seriousness of that set in, and I found my will to resist diminishing. Killing him wasn't quite fair - not after everything he had done for me and everything he could still do if he turned against the king. So I let Temris chain me, even as I plotted ways to free myself of this new restraint.
When the chain was fastened, he stood up, leaving me to fling curses at his retreating back. I couldn't provoke any sort of reaction, so instead I sat up and examined the chain. It was far longer than I had expected - five handspans, perhaps. "These aren't going to stop me running. You know that, don't you?"
Temris sat back in his chair and took a swig from a flask which probably contained ale. "Oh, I know. I don't care how far or how fast you can run. Nightmare will be able to run twice as far and twice as fast. No, the chain is meant to stop you riding. Hard to escape on a horse side-saddle."
And that would work, in theory, but he wasn't nearly as clever as he thought he was. I was getting an idea. It would have to wait until darkness fell, when I would doubtless be thoroughly exhausted. A few hours more and I would be able to get the hell out of here. That forced me to ask myself the question I had been dreading - did I even want to run?
I came out of the bedroom slowly. Bevan had returned to the bench, sword safely sheathed, but he wasn't meeting my eye. Fendur, however, swept into a low bow and gestured to the second fold-up chair. "I think putting up that sort of fight earns you the right to your own seat."
"Thank you," I replied, claiming it. "What are you going to do? Sit on his lap?"
Fendur broke into a sniggering fit. "No. Tempting as that sounds, I think I'll stand."
In the silence that followed, I made sure to glower at Temris as much as possible while pointedly fiddling with my chains. There wasn't much else to do. I didn't want to pick at the scabs on my wrists, some of which had cracked in the struggle and now throbbed at every touch.
Bevan shuffled in place. "You know, it's Solstice next moon."
"My favourite festival," Temris replied with a grin.
"It's everyone's favourite festival," Fendur said.
It wasn't mine. I had never heard of it.
"All I'm saying is we had better damn well get to celebrate it."
Fendur laughed at that. "Relax, stripling. The battles will be planned around that date. Even the Ragnyr isn't suicidal enough to stop the men celebrating Solstice."
Temris had taken to tossing a knife - the same knife I had held to his throat - in the air and catching it. "I'll take that as a compliment. Bevan, did I tell you? You're off horse duty as of tomorrow."
"Why?" He sounded suspicious. "Are you going to put me on latrine duty instead?"
"Actually, no. But if you ever start a brawl with the Creitons again, I will seriously consider it. I've been encouraged to take on a new... What is the Anglian expression for a tyro, again?"
Bevan shrugged. "Don't look at me. I'm not Anglian."
"Minion?" Fendur suggested, rather unhelpfully.
"Squire," I interjected, remembering what the captain had said earlier.
"Yes, that's it. Anyway, one of the prisoners will be joining us tomorrow. We have to give them something to do," Temris explained.
I felt a spark of hope. "Which one?"
"The one Anlai warned me away from. I'm told you are friends?"
My mouth broke into a grin. Although we hadn't got off to the best start, I couldn't help liking the overly-friendly slave boy. If I had thought hard, I might have realised it was because he reminded me of my awkward, tactless and bright-eyed younger brothers.
"What are you doing with the others?" I asked.
"Anlai is finding them jobs as we speak. Armoury, cookfires and so on. I cannot release them without offending the king, so we will have to find uses for them," Temris said.
My eyes narrowed. "What about me? What use will you find for me?"
He just started laughing. "Relax, Lyra. You're a real she-wolf sometimes. What sort of person do you think I am?"
"I would answer that if I could think of an adjective foul enough," I muttered. The truth was, it was easy to like him. Easy to like all of them. They were clearly fond of each other, and they were being kind to me, and I didn't think they were as loyal to the king as they would have him believe. I wouldn't let my guard down, not yet, but I didn't think I needed to be on the attack either.
Ignoring me, he continued, "I've decided you can stay with us - there's no end of work around here. We'll find bedrolls for both of you tomorrow."
Surprise surprise. Whatever secret purpose he had for me, it would be best fulfilled if I was kept close.
"I'm hungry," I whined suddenly. It was a lie. I had struggled to keep down the game pie from earlier. Twice while washing in the river, I found myself on the brink of throwing it back up. Now, the pit in my stomach was gaping wider than ever, unwilling to be filled by any sort of food.
Temris rolled his eyes. "Of course you are. Bevan, do you think you can rustle up some supper before you sleep?"
Bevan peeled his backside from the bench with a heavy sigh and strode out of the tent. Once he was gone, I relaxed a little. One down, one to go. Fendur would be the difficult one to get rid of. He took his duties very seriously. But my best chance would be getting Temris alone - he was injured and unarmed, although he had still managed to thrash me earlier.
"So I assume Bevan is a tyro?" I asked. Making small talk was not one of my talents.
"Gods, no. Not anymore. After his sixteenth birthday, I took him on as an underling instead. He has spent the year following me around, learning how to lead in preparation for his own command."
He was seventeen, then. Younger than me, which was a nice change.
"And you? Were you ever a tyro?"
Those cool blue eyes settled on me, an emotion I couldn't quite identify stirring in their depths. "Yes. For the last warlord."
"How long ago?" I was prying, but I didn't care. There was something off about this.
"It must have been four years. If you need help with the numeracy, that makes me twenty now."
"I know," I grumbled. "And what was he like?"
"A harsh man. He was fond of beating me, and for good reason. I was an awful tyro - always picking fights and mouthing off." His voice had a new edge of tension: this was a sensitive topic.
I realised that the mindless trouble-making didn't sound like the Temris I knew. His ways of amusing himself were far more sophisticated than throwing punches and swearing. What had happened in four years to make him grow up so fast? My curiosity had only grown. "Did you challenge him or win the melee?"
Temris stiffened almost unperceivably, and Fendur chewed on the inside of his cheek, looking like he would rather be anywhere else. I had touched a raw nerve.
Northern customs were strict. For a new warlord to rise to power, the last one had to die. If that death occurred in combat, a free-for-all arena fight - the melee - would determine the successor. The rarer alternative was a challenge on the warlord's authority, which would be settled with a fight to the death. I only knew any of that because there had been an elder in my village who had fought for the Sierran warband, and he had loved to tell stories.
"It was a challenge," Temris said quietly. So he had killed the last warlord himself. It was hard to imagine Bevan doing the same to Temris.
"You two should turn in," Fendur suggested before I could ask another question. "Long day tomorrow."
Temris nodded, snatching at the proffered change of subject. He let the knife fall onto the table with a clatter. "Bevan won't be long now. We might as well get ready to sleep."
It felt early to go to bed. At the height of summer, the sun didn't set until the tenth hour and so it was still half-light outside. And the mystery surrounding Temris's challenge had me all worked up. If I tried to sleep now, it would be hours before I could wrench my mind away from its latest interest.
But Temris was stood up and waiting for me to join him. I left my chair, trying not to snarl as the chains clinked with every movement. They weren't heavy or sharp, so it was more disgust than discomfort. He let me lead the way to the bedroom. Once inside, he pushed me into a sitting position beside the bed. I tried to rise again immediately.
"Stay down," Temris warned me, his grip tightening on my tunic.
Too tired for another fight, I leant back and showed my palms in surrender. He then lifted the bed to loop my chain around one of the posts. I could lie down easily enough, and I would be able to stand, but there would be no leaving the bedroom. The sheepskin bundle of weapons was definitely too far away.
"Well, there goes my plan to smother you in your sleep," I muttered dryly. It really had spoiled my idea for escape. "I can still reach you, idiot."
"You forget - I have a guard dog."
Yes, and Fendur would hear if I turned over in bed, let alone tried to strangle the warlord. I wouldn't be able to kill him, and I wouldn't be able to escape.
"I bet you won't chain Rory up," I muttered.
Temris grinned and threw me a heap of blankets and pillows from his own bed. "Rory hasn't tried to kill me. Twice."
As I wriggled around to make myself comfortable on the rug, I tried one last attempt to annoy him. "A real gentleman would give up his bed for a lady."
"You're right, Lyra. If one walks in, I'll join you on the floor."
Fair enough - I had asked for that one. More like demanded it.
My eyelids were heavy. I didn't even have the energy to snap back. Nestled in a cocoon of soft blankets, the exhaustion kicked in all at once and I had only time to realise I'd been wrong about my drowsiness before I slipped into a dream.
Every night, I watched my village burn. I watched the people I loved bleed and die while I lay helpless, memories blurring seamlessly with my imagination. In my dreams, I died a hundred times over alongside them. That was how it should have happened - all of us, together, not all but one.
So what purpose did the gods have for me? Why was I still alive and so, so alone?