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She did pray earnestly that she would never meet him again.
    She remembered him then as she had seen him first from the parapets, even as the host of death had borne down upon them. She had seen him standing there, as if not even nature’s fiercest bolt of lightning could strike him down. Insolent, arrogant, he brought destruction to those she cared for. She had wanted so desperately for him to die; she had sensed that without him his men would falter.
    He had even stood still while her arrow had aimed for his heart, but at the last second he had stepped aside and thus lived. She despised his pride and his supreme confidence, and the bloodshed he had brought to her home. She should have run more quickly, but she had seen him in the yard and the horror of death had been with her; she had wanted, desperately, to kill him.
    She had come so close to death herself!
    A heated trembling swept through her, and she remembered the sheer towering size and fury of the Norseman. His hand upon her had been like a manacle, his muscle had burned against her and into her, and she had never known such vehement hatred or such terror. She would never forget those eyes. Ice and fire, they seared and they scorched, seemed to rape her very soul. Because of him, a town lay in ruin, people made slaves. Egmund lay in a pool of blood, along with dear Lord Wilton—her champion, likeEgmund, for years. Brave Thomas was dead too. And so many others.
    She paused again, clutching her stomach, fighting the pain that seized her. She gazed up at the smoldering heavens and prayed that Adela had escaped inland. Adela was her cousin, the widow of a noble thane of Wessex and ever with her now—her servant, her friend. Adela could not have survived the cruelty of the Norsemen, Rhiannon was certain.
    “By all the saints and Father in Heaven,” Rhiannon prayed, “see her safe!”
    She paused in sudden panic, hearing a rustling from the brush ahead, to her left. Her heart raced and she dropped down upon her knee, seeking shelter behind an oak. Fear seized her, and all that she could see before her was his face … muddied and covered with the coarse flour but hard and chilling and striking still. She felt the sheer power of his touch, the vibrancy of his barbarously muscled form. “Pray,” he had told her. “Pray that we do not meet again ….”
    A scream played against her throat as a mad thrashing sounded. Hell had come alive in those bushes. Her breath faltered.
    Then a sad-looking roan horse tripped its way out of the bushes.
    Rhiannon burst into laughter. Her laughter came more quickly, and then she burst into tears.
    So many were dead! The Viking had cost her everything, and she could not even go back, could not offer her good friends and companions and champions a Christian burial. The vultures and wolves would come to feast upon them.
    The roan stared at her as if she had gone mad, andshe did indeed wonder if the Danes had not at last made her insane. She staggered back to her feet and realized that she needed the roan. With the horse, possibly she could reach Alfred by morning.
    She called out to the animal. It had no intention of bolting. It had come from the battle and its reins trailed upon the ground.
    Rhiannon wondered who had ridden the horse and had died. The saddle was slashed and torn. Gritting her teeth lest she start crying again, Rhiannon freed the cinch and cast the saddle into the bushes, then lifted the hem of her tunic and vaulted onto the roan’s back. Night was falling, and yet it mattered little. She would have to pray that the moon would guide her, for she could not stop.
    As the roan moved contentedly along, Rhiannon thought of the years gone by. She’d had to flee London once when her mother and father still lived, for the Danes had been close. She’d been sent from Alfred’s manor and Waringham, and she had run once before from the coast, but that time the invaders had been a small party of foragers in three ships, and her