Zedekiah. Ere much longer you will be home, your injuries properly tended and—”
“Home,” he said low, the sorrowful light in red-rimmed eyes and his strained smile silencing her. “I think you are right, and that never again will I know pain like this.”
Struggling to keep her voice from reaching Vitalis, she said, “That is not what I meant.”
“But that is what will be.”
“You must not think like that. You must believe you will heal, that the morrow will be a better day than this, and the day beyond even better. Do you yield to—”
“I do not yield. I accept what comes. And you, Vitalis’s vixen…” The catch of her breath gave more strength to his smile. “Aye, remain that to my friend, even if he pushes you away and faults you for what even more he will fault himself.”
“Cease,” she beseeched, a glance at Vitalis confirming he remained fixed on guiding the boat and watching for danger.
Zedekiah set a hand atop hers gripping his shoulder. “No matter how great his anger, stay his side. Make him keep his word to return you to Lady Hawisa. She…” He closed his eyes, opened them wide. “…will know how best to aid in reclaiming what remains of the life William stole from him.” His swallow was dry. “Your brother, Guarin, will aid as well. Vitalis was good to him—kept others from slaying him when he was held by the resistance.”
This Nicola had learned after Vitalis delivered Guarin to Stern Castle. When she had seen how near death her brother walked, anger had caused her to name Vitalis a Saxon pig, but that emotion had been swept away by joy upon learning the red-headed warrior was not responsible for her brother’s injuries.
It had not been the first time Nicola looked upon Vitalis, though none would know it for how stealthy she had been when earlier another of her brothers captured him and a number of his rebels and secured them in a paddock inside Stern’s walls. Upon hearing Vitalis led an assault on one of own his men for injuring a Saxon woman, curiosity had drawn her to the inner wall where shadows allowed her to remain out of sight.
No one had to tell her which was Vitalis whose lead his men had followed when he set upon the rebel who did not survive the assault. Then she had been a girl who thought herself a woman, and all the more for a stirring in her breast for the mighty Vitalis. Regrettably, no matter how much more he stirred her now, perhaps still she was more girl than woman, as evidenced by her being here with Zedekiah who believed he approached the end of his life.
The knock of the boat against the dock jolted Nicola and the injured man. And further she was jolted when Zedekiah set his face near hers. “Be the vixen, not the termagant, Nicola D’Argent. The vixen is the one he shall need. You hear me?”
The desperation in his voice and tears in his eyes made her throat tighten. Though she did not believe Vitalis needed her, vixen or otherwise, she nodded.
“Make haste, Nicola,” Vitalis commanded.
Glancing past Zedekiah, she saw he jutted his chin at the dock.
“Should ill befall you, Zedekiah, I will do as bid,” she whispered. Then she stood and reached for the post around which Vitalis secured the boat’s rope. With her other hand, she raised her skirts, then briefly stepped on the boat’s railing. When her feet landed on the dock, she was reminded of her lost slippers as aged wood attempted to press splinters into her tender flesh. Until she gained footwear, she would have to bind her feet in cloth.
“Carry what you can,” Vitalis said and tossed the first pack on the dock. There were five in all, four of which she could carry, but not the last that required some of what would remain of Vitalis’s strength and balance once much was lent to Zedekiah.
That pack was long and weighty, and as she knew from when she found the dagger there, it held another, a bow and arrows, and two swords in addition to the one Vitalis now slid into its scabbard. If she slipped one of the swords beneath her own belt beside the dagger Vitalis had returned to her when they evaded the Danes on the day past, less his burden.
As she removed a sword, he paused in assisting Zedekiah from the boat. “Leave it, Nicola. I will carry it.”
She wanted