The Reluctant Berserker Read Online Free PDF Page A

every turn in the one, single thing he had set himself to do this day—and he did not take the hint of their vinegar looks.
    Outside, the autumn evening had grown chill and a dew was beginning to rise from every flat surface. A green haze hung about the silver-blue moon and bruised all the shadows that fell around him. The day’s voices had fallen silent, and now the town was filled with the whispering of the sea.
    Finding an angle between two walls, Wulfstan hauled up his skirts and relieved himself swiftly. This was not a time of night to be out of doors, alone in a world that sunset had handed over to the powers of darkness. They drew close, at night, the things that lived in the wilderness and listened with envious hearts to the laughter of men. At that thought he adjusted his linen, tightened his hose and turned back, no longer annoyed. Better Cenred and Aelfsi, Ecgbert and Alfric. Better Manna, than whatever might lurk out here.
    Coming in to the porch, a little too fast, his eyes dazzled from the light indoors and his mind mazed with thoughts, he didn’t hear the other man until he collided with him. The breath went out of him in a round thump. There was a brief impression of long limbs, slim and bony. Then a resonant voice went “Oh!” without any of the apology or the instant deference Wulfstan knew himself entitled to.
    He didn’t think before grabbing narrow wrists and holding on, but he did twist so that the light of the fire fell on his companion’s face, and he did breathe in, hard, to see he had finally caught the fish for which he had been angling all night. For this young man had the sheepskin bag of a lyre on his shoulder and a bone whistle clutched in his right hand.
    Loose curls the colour of Byzantine gold bounced absurdly around a face as thin as his master’s. Hard to see it clearly in the leap and cower of firelight, Wulfstan only got glimpses, enough to believe he saw beauty, sharp and fine. A gazehound of a man, built for speed. In the shifting bars of radiance through the door, his eyes looked full of fire, so that Wulfstan couldn’t tell the colour, though he tried.
    The harper breathed out—a sigh that was also a laugh, and the ends of his lips turned up. Wulfstan couldn’t be sure, but he thought the smile mocking. It lit something in Wulfstan that snapped into sparks with a crack.
    “I’m waiting for your apology, churl. Then you may step aside and let me pass.”
    The laugh was a little louder this time, and the mockery more certain. “You ran into me. It’s you who should apologise.”
    He couldn’t believe it. The creature had only an eating knife at his belt. He was as frail and thin as straw, and a beggar in the hall. Wulfstan had never been so affronted in his life. “Men like you get out of my way.”
    He really thought the man’s eyes were that colour—all madder red and gold with fire. The thin mouth twisted up, and underneath the laughter there was pride like a coiled snake. The snap of it took Wulfstan by surprise, no more so than the shove in the centre of his chest. At some point he must have let go of those sinewy wrists, for now he found himself pushed back into the join of door and joist and pinned there, all the other man’s weight crowded against him.
    He saw stars over the harper’s shoulder shining down on him like spear tips, and he knew he should push back—that this man didn’t have either the weight or the training to hold him. He should push back, and hit and hit again until the little nobody was taught how to deal with his betters. A profound helplessness seemed to have come over him. The man was beautiful in the darkness, and his body and his anger were hot against Wulfstan, and the thin fingers with their calluses that had risen to yank at his hair in childish spite were slowly ungripping and sliding down to bracket his face.
    Here there was less light, their combined weight holding the door shut, the fire inside. The harper’s eyes were dark