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leg in the least. That spoke of skilled healing, and Agnarr immediately wanted to know who among the men here had cared for this man. He had to have him as a personal healer, because such talent should not go to waste. Nor did he wish to sell the person who could work this well.
    “Who did this?”
    The man said something that sounded like complete gibberish, and looked as if he’d actually spit, but Bran apparently thought better of that. Agnarr shook his head and looked to his own leader.
    “Tuirgeis! I could use a translator!”
    The leader of the raid, and the only man unscathed by the day’s fighting, grinned across the dirt expanse and signaled that he would be there shortly. In the meanwhile, Agnarr tried again to elicit comprehensible information, if that were possible.
    He looked closely at the scar and saw the vague nodules that indicated Bran had been stitched together. Agnarr straightened and spoke again. “Who fixed this?” he said, his hands making motions like someone poking a needle through fabric.
    The captive did spit this time, looking as if he’d bitten into a particularly rotten piece of raw fish. “ Cailleach !”
    The word might have been unintelligible, but the expression told the Ostman that whoever had sewn up Bran had not been appreciated. It made him wonder, and it made him smile.
    Tuirgeis tried his Latin on the men, but they seemed quite confused, so he turned and beckoned to the king’s son with an imperative gesture. The potentially ransomable captive seemed about to refuse, but he didn’t. Instead, he helped his companion to sit comfortably and then made a direct path to where Agnarr and Tuirgeis waited.
    Agnarr decided he definitely had to learn some Latin while listening to Tuirgeis enlist the king’s son’s help. Tuirgeis also gave a running translation.
    “Who are you?”
    “I am Bran,” the dark one said. “This is my cousin.”
    “I understood that much,” Agnarr murmured while Cowan, the king’s son, continued to translate.
    “Who healed you?” Tuirgeis inquired through Cowan.
    “She is a witch,” the dark man said, and Agnarr understood the word this time. Bran called the skilled healer a witch?
    “Why is she a witch?” he asked. “Did she use spells or call upon her gods?”
    “She was not blessed by the monks,” Bran said. “Her healing was evil, and I left as soon as I could!”
    Such venom took Agnarr aback. “She is here, then?”
    “Here? No! She is in the village, there,” came the bitter reply, accompanied by the wave of an arm. Back to the village that had been so noisy. Was this why he had felt drawn to that place earlier? Because there was a gifted healer there? He didn’t know why a man’s life was spun the way it was, but he did believe there was a reason for such an unexpected interest.
    Agnarr pulled the leader aside. “I want to go there, Tuirgeis. It is fated.”
    Tuirgeis’s brown brows rose in amused surprise. “I heard no thunder. Has Thor spoken?”
    “Just a sense of things I have,” Agnarr replied. “Like the warning you sometimes get on the back of your neck.”
    At that Tuirgeis lost the humorous gleam in his eye. “Well, then. Would you like to take a small party to the village while we march the slaves to the boats?”
    It was an outstanding opportunity, bespeaking trust and a belief in Agnarr’s instincts. He immediately nodded and straightened his shoulders. “I would. But,” he turned to Cowan, “how will I know this healer? Is she the local wise woman?”
    Tuirgeis translated that into Latin and Cowan put the question to the other two captives. Cowan actually looked amused when he heard the responses, for both of the men answered. The dark one was just as vituperative in his reply, but the fairer one seemed almost . . . entranced.
    Perhaps, Agnarr thought, the healer had truly been a witch. “What’s so funny?” he inquired of Cowan.
    “Well,” translated Tuirgeis, “apparently the young one, Colum,