I knew the woman was somewhere in front of me, but I had no idea why she called me a slave.

My heart slammed in my throat as I glanced around at the wash of darkness, and when another flicker of lightning sifted through the boughs, I could still only make out the tree trunks and shrubs closing me in.

“Okay, hear me out,” I tried, and I squinted to try and find the woman’s figure amongst the stones. “I don’t know who you are, or who you think I am, but I’m definitely not a slave. I’m just trying to get by, sooo… if you all own this land or something, point me in the right direction, and I’ll get gone. You’ll never see me again.”

A sword unsheathed in response, and I whipped around toward the sound as my grip tightened on my knife. At first, only trees were in view when the next flash of lightning illuminated the area, but another quick flicker came soon after, and I caught a glint of steel beside a shadowy trunk.

“Again, I don’t know who the fuck you are,” I reiterated through clenched teeth, “so why you’re trying to attack me is--”

I didn’t get another word in as a hulking shadow shifted from behind the trunk, and two more Vikings closed in on either side of me before a sword struck out at my left arm.

I jumped aside in time to dodge the blow, but the air whooshing past my ear alerted me to the axe on my right. Then I dove down before the double bit could swing back around for another try, and I rolled and caught one of the men’s legs.

He nearly cut my arm off twice while he wrestled to get free, but I managed to bury my knife in his inner thigh, and his pained roar split the air with a vengeance. Then I wrenched the blade downward, and he crashed onto me in a yowling heap. He must have weighed about two-fifty, but I dislodged myself in time to dodge the axe again, and a sword jabbed straight down at my head a split second later.

All I could do was trip to the side while I struggled to get my bearings in the dark, and the lightning was all I had to reorient myself. Every flash caught on a raised axe or a swiping sword, and I quickly realized both standing men held a dagger in their other hand, too. The man I’d taken down was up on one knee and hacking toward my legs as well, and my palm began to sweat around the hilt of my hunting knife as blades kept striking out at me from all angles.

I was at a complete disadvantage while the Vikings’ weapons gave them a better striking range than me, and the notion made my adrenaline spike as I ducked and stumbled in the pitch black to find any opening.

The storm had built above the trees, and the constant flashes of lightning spared me an axe to the head by a matter of inches. Then I dove to try and take another of the men’s legs out, but they were ready for this move. As soon as I dropped down, a heavy axe buried itself in the soil just beside my thigh, and I shot to my feet as a sword caught my hood instead of my back.

I tried to flee, but the man on the ground hooked my boot with his own, and as I crashed into a knot of thorns, I heard the woman’s taunting chuckle again.

Apparently, she’d just been standing around all this time while these assholes jumped me, and fury ignited in my chest, until I remembered she didn’t have a sword on her by the river.

I clambered through the inch-long thorns, but as a blade sliced across my forearm, I flipped around to jab my knife into my attacker’s wrist.

The man roared in pain and planted his boot in my stomach for it, and the force crushed me deeper into the thorns, but my panic was overriding my pain right now anyways. I just kept rolling across the brambles and came out lower on the embankment, and I dodged another swing of the axe and wove between the other two Vikings.

Then I tried to catch one of them in the gut with my knife, but his thick hide and leather armor blocked my attempt. The maneuver still got me over to the ridge of the embankment though, and as soon as the lightning gave away the woman’s blonde hair, I switched my knife to my left hand and lunged for her.

I already knew she carried one dagger on her right hip, so my hand grasped the hilt before she could get to it, and in seconds, I had her caught against my front with my hunting knife wedged against her ribs and her own dagger taut at her throat.

“Come any closer, and I’ll kill her,” I growled to the hulking shadows below us.

The woman went rigid while her breasts strained against my arm with every breath.

Then another flash of lightning revealed the cryptic sneers on the men’s ragged faces, and they let out filthy chuckles as two Vikings kept prowling forward.

“Do it, slave,” one of them goaded in a gravelly voice. “Your bounty’ll triple for it.”

The woman in my arms shrieked in fury, and she exploded in a heated rant that I couldn’t understand any of. She violently fought to free herself, and her words grated in her throat, but the men only laughed harder at her beratement.

I was honestly too bewildered to move for a second. I never thought these idiots would pull a stunt like this given how skilled she clearly was, but their reaction pissed me off almost as much as it did the woman, and I locked my jaw as I made a snap decision.

I couldn’t fight these fuckers off tonight, but I damn sure wasn’t about to kill a woman like her over their bullshit.

The woman gasped in shock as I threw her aside, and I heard her tumbling into the thorns as the two men dove at me. My heart beat wildly in my chest as I dipped and dodged all of their blades at once, but I managed to drive the woman’s dagger deep into one of their shoulders. I left it buried in him up to the hilt, but the man kept relentlessly swinging his axe with the other arm, and I did my best to stay out of range while I stuck closer to the man with the sword.

The next flash of lightning gave him a clear target, and I didn’t bother lunging aside this time. I twisted at the last second instead and let the blade of his sword tear across my injured arm, and I cried out louder than necessary as I clutched my gut and stumbled backward.

Then I dropped over the embankment, and I braced myself for the thorny landing.

All the air was knocked out of me from the twenty foot drop, and I barely managed to keep from groaning as a shot of pain wrenched through my entire back. The brambles were dense enough to save me from the ground at least, but now the thorns were buried in my flesh, and I struggled to draw a breath while I forced myself to stay completely still.

Warm blood filled my jacket sleeve while I stared up at the darkened ridge above me, but the embankment curved outward enough to block the lightning from illuminating my face. The storm had picked up a fierce gale during my scuffle with the three men, and water was pouring from the thick boughs now. All of this only made it more difficult to tell what was going on up there, but I guessed all the grunting I heard was the men trying to haul their comrade up so they could get him tended to.

I’d definitely torn the shit out of his thigh with that first hit, and I knew he’d been stuck fighting on his knees ever since.

For a minute, I laid there thinking I’d played the final strike off well, and that the Vikings would leave thinking I was dead, but then the three hulking figures appeared at the top of the ridge.

I had to acknowledge these Vikings were rugged as hell.

I stared wide-eyed as one of them wrenched the woman’s dagger out of his shoulder without a flinch, and the man whose leg I shredded only swayed a little on his feet as he looked down into the brambles. The three men chuckled to one another as they exchanged words in the same strange language the woman had used, but when the axe was passed over to the guy I took down, my blood turned to ice.

These bastards weren’t going to just let my body rot down here. They wanted to chop my fucking head off too, and one of them was already limping along the embankment to climb down.

I tried to decide if I should make a break for it and hope axe throwing wasn’t on their agenda, but then the limping man suddenly jolted to a stop, and the axe thunked to the ground. I couldn’t tell what was happening in the dark, but a few seconds later, I saw him keel backward, and this time, neither of the other men tried to haul him up.

Instead, they spoke frantically to each other as they tripped back and stowed their weapons, and they almost flattened one another as they abruptly turned to run. The fleeing men hollered to each other for a ways while their tones betrayed their terror, but their voices faded under a deep rumble of thunder.

I held my breath while I waited to see if the fallen man would reappear, but I had a sinking feeling things were about to get a whole lot worse for me. I couldn’t imagine what would cause such a ruthless pair to take off like frightened deer, but there was a lot of blood out here now, and I just hoped another stealth predator hadn’t shown up to join the party.

Then the Viking woman slowly emerged from the shadows on the left.

She wrenched an arrow from the dead man’s body and swiftly restrung it in her bow, and against a backdrop of lightning, I saw her look down into the sea of brambles. Luckily, the woman only scanned the darkness for a few beats before she turned her head in the directions the others had gone, and then she silently stalked off with her loaded bow still in hand.

It took me all of five seconds to make up my mind about what to do next. I already knew I didn’t have much of a choice at this point. It was dark, the wind was ripping through the trees along with the thunder, and this might be the best chance I had for getting some answers.

Come morning, I’d be an easy target again, and I’d still have no idea where I was or where I should be heading.

I gritted my teeth against the pain throbbing in most of my limbs, and I wrestled to get myself out of the brambles. When I was finally free of the massive thorns, I climbed back up to the embankment, and I dropped to my knees in the dirt as I tore my jacket off.

My entire left sleeve was drenched with blood from the two strikes I’d taken, and I cut the fabric off at the shoulder before I tossed it aside. Then I did the same to my right sleeve, but I split the clean fabric in half down the middle, and I quickly wrapped both of the wounds to slow the bleeding for now.

Once my jacket was back on, I jogged over to the dead Viking on the ridge, and I wrestled to get his sword belt off him as fast as I could. The last thing I wanted was to come up against more of these guys with only a hunting knife to defend myself with, and the dead man had a broadsword and a dagger to offer, so I pulled the dead animals off his belt and strapped the leather below my own.

Then I took off in the direction I’d seen the Viking woman head.

I didn’t doubt she was stalking the last two men for double-crossing her, and I had no intention of interrupting her work. I just needed to get her alone once she was finished so I could find out what the hell this was all about.

I knew the men’s voices had faded further inland from the river, and they’d also torn a few thorns apart while they fled to escape. One of their wrists was bleeding all over the place too, so I was able to gauge the start of their course pretty easily, but the woman couldn’t be far ahead of me, and she would probably fire an arrow into my ass if she so much as caught a glimpse of me.

Luckily, the wind funneled through the sparse forest from my left, and in the direction she headed, I could stay downwind of her. Lightning flashed every ten seconds or so, and the storm was making plenty of noise to help me stay undetected, but I also had decades worth of experience stalking my own prey in the dark days and nights of Alaska.

Now that I knew that was the game, I could use every advantage to my favor.

I clutched the hilt of the sword to keep the steel from rattling as I ran at a clipped pace, and I stuck close to the trunks while I scanned the sodden terrain. I followed every streak of blood on the trunks that I could find, and I figured at least one of the men wouldn’t make it far fast. He seemed to be stumbling into everything he came across, and I ended up only running for a few more minutes before I heard someone hollering up ahead.

Then I slowed my pace and shifted my track to stay downwind of the commotion, and while I swiftly crept along a shadowy path, I finally caught sight of a set of broad, leather-clad shoulders between the trees.

The wounded Viking was staggering several paces behind the other, and he yelled to his comrade while they both barreled through the woods. Not thirty feet behind them, a flash of blonde hair shifted into view, and I didn’t miss the slight smirk on the Viking woman’s lips.

She was in line with me now, so I ducked back to get a ways behind her instead, and I kept a wide berth between us while I tracked her movements. The woman was drenched with rain and quietly jogging between the shadows like I’d been doing, but she didn’t bother quickening her pace to catch up with her victims. She just slowed down to a steady stride as she took aim with her bow, and without pausing, she loosed the first arrow.

I grinned to myself as the asshole who’d sliced my arm up took an arrow to the back of the skull, and he crashed down hard while the other Viking leapt clear over a hedge of thorns. This one was dead in another five paces, and I stifled a chuckle when he flailed in the air and dropped out of view with an arrow in his back.

Then the Viking woman calmly looped her bow across her chest, and she approached her first victim while I crept further along and stayed hidden behind the crops of thorns. She tore the arrow from the man’s skull first, and once it was back in her quiver, she grabbed him by the boot and dragged him around so he was facing the opposite way.

I furrowed my brow when she pulled his own dagger out, but after she plunged the blade into his head where the arrow had struck, I realized she was staging the scene. Then she wiped the blade off and returned the dagger to its sheath, and she did the same with the second man, except he took a sword to his bloody back.

After that, the woman swiped the rain from her forehead and shifted her blonde hair back over her shoulder, and she didn’t spare the dead men another glance. She walked off in the same direction they’d been running when she killed them, and I couldn’t help staring at the sway of her hips while she strolled into the night like nothing had just transpired out here.

This Viking chick was only getting more and more intriguing, and at this point, I was beyond glad I didn’t kill her back at that embankment. Still, I had my own business to take care of now, and she didn’t have any axe-toting buddies around anymore. So I reminded myself this was my one opening, and I dragged my eyes off her ass as I carefully proceeded to track her through the forest.

I switched up my path a few times while I tried to check if she reclaimed her dagger on the ridge, but once I was sure her sheath was empty, I started to gradually move in. I kept to the shadows at her right flank while the wind blew in from her left, and I could tell by her careless stride that she had no idea I was within fifteen feet of her. As long as she didn’t grab hold of her bow, I had a chance of catching her, and I rolled the bottoms of my boots across the ground with every step so I wouldn’t make a sound.

I was within seven feet of her right arm when I heard more voices nearby, and I immediately ducked back a few feet as I caught a flicker of flames through the trees. Then my pulse quickened, and I realized the walls of a stronghold were directly ahead.

Now, several things occurred to me at once, but the most prominent one was I’d only put myself closer to this woman’s fortress when I crossed the river to shake her off my trail today.

The second was I had about four minutes before the guards on the ramparts would be able to see her in the forest, which meant there was no room for error.

I fell back by a few more paces as I silently undid the sword belt from my waist, and I carefully placed it down behind a shard of stone. I couldn’t risk this woman arming herself any better than she already was, but now that I only had my knife on me, I unsheathed it and moved in again.

In a few seconds, I was directly behind her, and just as she whipped her head to the side, I caught her from behind and clamped my hand over her mouth.

The woman struggled hard in my hold as I leveled my blade against her throat, but I kept her locked against me as I dragged her back from the fortress. Then I pinned her front against a tree to make sure she couldn’t escape, and the woman finally stopped fighting me.

“Why are you trying to kill me?” I growled in her ear.

I felt every muscle in her body tense at the words, and she turned her head as best as she could. It was too dark to make out her features, but I could see her eyes flare when she recognized me, and I nodded as her breaths quickened.

“Answer the question, and I’ll release you,” I murmured. “But if you scream, you and I are gonna have a problem.”

I could have sworn I heard her chuckle beneath my hand, but the woman nodded once, and I uncovered her mouth while I prepared to gag her again if need be.

“You know why,” the Viking woman seethed with a murderous glare. “No enemy crosses Hylmrek and lives.”

Then I got an elbow embedded in my diaphragm, and as I doubled over, the woman managed to shove me back and catch me in a neck lock.

I countered her attempt to throw me as I grabbed her by the thigh, and I had her flipped under me on the ground in one swift motion. I blocked my balls from her knee just in time and pinned her chest down with my forearm, but unfortunately, the woman was strong enough to roll me.

As soon as she did, she bolted toward the stronghold while she pulled her bow off her back, and three steps later, she flipped around and took aim.

I tackled her by the hips to bring her down hard as the arrow whizzed right over my head, and after two punches and an elbow to my neck, I finally got her bow out of her hands. I threw it far into the woods while she scratched me across the face and tried to strangle me too, but I managed to drag her up onto her feet once I knocked her elbows down.

Then I slammed her back against a tree to knock the wind out of her, and the woman gasped in pain as I got my hunting knife at her throat once more.

Still, she never screamed, and judging by the fury in her eyes, I guessed screaming like a damsel wasn’t really her thing. I didn’t doubt she could probably figure out a way to kill me even now, so I cut to the chase real quick while I worked to catch my breath.

“I’m not your enemy,” I panted.

“The slave of our enemy is still an enemy of Hylmrek,” the woman hissed.

“I’ve never even heard of Hylmrek!” I shot back. “Back at the river was the first time I’ve ever seen anyone like you. I’m only passing through here.”

“And yet you speak the language of the slaves!” she countered through heaving breaths.

I furrowed my brow in confusion, and as another flash of lightning fell across us, I got a quick glimpse of the disgust etched across her drenched face.

“Alright, I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about, but do I look like any slaves you’ve seen?” I demanded.

I obviously had no idea what slaves looked like around here, but I stuck to my gut instinct on this one, because I doubted there were many Carhartts floating around in a forest of Vikings. Based on her own attire, I had to be centuries away from qualifying, and I kept her firmly in place while I waited for a response.

The woman strained her neck to the side as she eyed my jacket and jeans, and after a long, rainy moment, she finally shook her head.

“I do not recognize this garb,” the woman admitted. “I have never seen a slave wield a hunting spear, either, and I do not believe a slave would spare a warrior’s life as you have done. However, you bear no fur of the clans, so you are a trespasser nonetheless, and all trespassers--”

“Not intentionally,” I cut in, but I narrowed my eyes a second later. “Wait, you were watching me hunt with that spear earlier? How long have you known where I was?”

Even in the dark, I could tell she was sending me a smug look, and I ground my teeth together at the snort she let out. She and her band had been waiting around all evening to catch me in that pitch-black deathmatch, and the notion made my irritation heighten even further.

Then the woman spoke again, and her tone was less hostile this time.

“Where did you come from?” she asked.

I was so struck by how pleasing her voice was that I forgot half my irritation, and her natural tone was softer and lower than I expected compared to her grating shrieks toward the men earlier. Her strange accent made her words flick across her tongue with a slight trill too, and it was much more charming now that she wasn’t threatening me.

I tried to ignore all of this while I kept my blade in place, because I knew this woman could still kill me if she had the chance.

“North, I think,” I answered. “To be honest, I’m not really sure at the moment because I don’t know where I am.”

“Where are you heading to?”

“No idea,” I admitted. “I just need to find a safe place to set up camp without your group hunting me anymore.”

“You don’t know where you are from or going to, and yet you expect me to help you?” she scoffed, and she bucked hard against my hold.

Then her nails lashed out at my arms while she fought to get free, and I winced as she tore at the sword wound on my upper arm. Still, I just pinned her more firmly so her quiver dug into her spine, and I pressed the blade harder against her throat.

“Woman, you know I don’t want to kill you,” I told her in a stern voice as I held her gaze, and she stopped fighting me at once. “I get that this all sounds confusing, but I’m not asking for a lot here. Just tell me where I am and point me in a direction I can head safely.”

“You are in the middle of Raudfýri,” the woman growled as she bared her teeth.

“Raudfýri?” I repeated, and the foreign word didn’t ring a single bell in my mind.

“This is the Red Forest,” she hissed. “No clan will allow a stranger of your tongue to trespass here. You will either be killed, or enslaved. That is your only choice now. Choose carefully. I have no other assistance to offer.”

I stared at her for a moment, but I could tell by her steely gaze that this wasn’t an exaggeration. She meant every word.

“How do I get out of the Red Forest?” I asked.

“Two hundred miles north to where the river flows from the mountains,” the woman answered as she tilted her head in the right direction. “Three hundred east, three-fifty west, or five hundred south. The seven clans own every parcel of land you will cross in any direction, which you surely must know, seeing as you’ve traveled this far. How you have lived this long, I cannot imagine.”

“God damnit,” I sighed as I processed how screwed I was, but then I nodded in understanding. “Look, I have no intention of harming your people. Like I said, I don’t know anything about your clans, and I’m just trying to survive until I figure out what’s going on. What would happen if you brought me to your clan? Would they allow me safe crossing through your territory if you explained--”

“Do you listen to nothing?” the Viking woman demanded. “Two choices. Death or enslavement, and given you have killed three of our warriors, I can assure you Hylmrek will believe nothing of what you have to say.”

“I… what?” I scoffed. “You killed those assholes! I watched you do it.”

“Oh, I doubt that,” she murmured in a deadly tone. “All of Hylmrek know I never bother with blades, and we warned the chieftain about your presence hours ago. He knows you are armed, and that you are capable of evading capture. It is unfortunate you murdered those men as we left to close in on you, but when I return alone and tell my chief you slayed the last of my guards as well, he will ask me what it is I did about all this.”

“And what will you tell him?” I checked.

“I would have told him I avenged my own, but you have chosen to hold me hostage here, so your fate is sealed,” the woman growled.

“Hey, I’m only looking for answers,” I clarified. “You and your men are the ones who tried to kill me back there.”

“You trespass,” she countered firmly. “It is our place to defend our territory, but you have disarmed me and kept me from my stronghold against my will. The man who owns me will kill you for it. The night guards will cross through here soon, and if they find my bow, he will have you skinned by sunrise. There is no other choice for you within the bounds of Hylmrek.”

My pulse quickened as I looked toward the iron gate beyond the trees, and the torchlight cast shadows of burly men pacing the base of the ramparts with axes on their backs. The walls were thirty feet high, so the stronghold had to be extensive enough to house at least a hundred more, and my concern mounted as I briefly considered the breasts I had crushed under my arm right now.

I’d skin a man for this too, if she was my woman. In a heartbeat.

I promptly released her and backed up with my arms held out to the sides, and the blonde woman shifted uncomfortably from the pain in her back as she glanced down at my clothes again.

“You had better hope I find my bow,” she said in a coarse tone. “And if you wish to live, I suggest you leave and never return to Hylmrek. The hunt will begin soon.”

I continued backing away as I heard the iron gate of the stronghold being raised, and a line of eight burly Vikings emerged with axes crossing their broad chests. I could have sworn I heard another low chuckle slip from the woman’s lips as she warned me to run, but I was already bolting in the opposite direction.

The only time I stopped running was to grab the sword belt I’d discarded, and I didn’t slow down again until I reached the river. Even then, I lunged into the water and swam fast for the opposite bank, and after I scaled the ridge, I kept on running upstream. The rain continued pelting my face while my lungs burned with cold night air, but I didn’t let myself stop heading north until my legs were finally tapped out for the day.

Then I staggered to the water’s edge and gulped down another dose of water, and I still hadn’t caught my breath when I found a low branch a ways back from the bank. My hands and boots slipped on the drenched branches while I hauled myself higher into the boughs, and I ignored the birds who squawked and dove at me with their talons bared. Once I found a wide enough branch, I finally settled in with my back against the trunk, and my sides cramped painfully as I eyed the eighty foot drop to the ground.

This was about as safe as I could be in the Red Forest, and I shifted to get more comfortable while my left arm throbbed where my wounds continued to bleed.

I propped my elbow up on my knee to keep it above my heart for now, but then I sighed as I looked around at the stout needles encircling me. The lightning flickering through them cast an eerie red glow all around, but the storm had started to ease back to a steady downpour, so I’d at least pass an easy night out here.

The woman’s advice was still echoing in my ears though, and as I considered the hundreds of miles of woods spanning out around me, I was acutely aware of how many crazy Viking fucks there must be out here.

Seven clans just like hers owned every parcel of land in the Red Forest, and here I was, stuck smack dab in the middle with the wrong language on my tongue.

I shook my head at the thought while I rifled my wet hair out of my face, and I decided I’d just have to get plenty of rest tonight. Tomorrow, I could deal with this headache, but either way, I’d need all the energy I could muster.

Because I had a lot of bullshit ahead of me if I was going to make it out of the Red Forest alive.

I closed my eyes as the rain kept dripping down through the needles above me, but only a few minutes later, they popped open wide again as I sat up.

A deep, throaty growl was circling the base of the trunk, and I recognized the wild cat’s timbre the second I heard it.

“Shit,” I muttered under my breath, and my head dropped back against the trunk. “You better not piss down there, man. I am not in the fucking mood.”