His dazed eyes scanned the crowd anxiously. When he found Ruby, he smiled. At least he tried to smile. It seemed to hurt him to do even that.
Ruby bled inside at the pain in Thork’s bleak eyes, the unhealed scars on his forehead, chin and arms, the bleeding chest wound. Then she saw his fingerless hand, with only a thumb left. She gasped and closed her eyes briefly for strength.
Oh, God, just let him live. That’s all I ask. Just let him live.
Tykir ran to his father and wrapped his arms around his waist, sobbing pitifully. Thork patted his shoulder with painful effort.
Ruby walked up then and put both hands on either side of Thork’s head. She kissed his cracked lips gently, tears streaming down her cheeks. She tenderly stroked the cuts on his face.
“Seems to me you are blubbering every time I see you, wench,” Thork teased in a shaky voice. There were tears in his eyes, too. “I told you I would come back. Did you doubt me?” Then he pulled her brusquely into his arms, burying his face in her neck.
Her body shook with sobs. She could not speak.
Thork pulled away and examined her face, alarmed at how haggard she looked. His eyes sparkled sadly as he tried to joke, “You look a sight, woman. Mayhap you have had no one to tweak your sweet arse whilst I was gone and that has turned you weepish.”
“Oh, Thork!” Ruby smiled weakly. “Come with me. Let me take you home.”
Several men, including Selik who now had a horrendous scar down the side of his face, helped Thork to the straw-filled wagon which would carry him to Sigtrygg’s palace, there being no room for invalid care in Gyda’s home. Thork’s wounds would never withstand the trip to Dar’s home.
By the time they got to the palace, fever racked Thork’s body. In the days that followed, he alternated between delirious fever and weak consciousness. When he was lucid, he insisted on talking to Ruby, who stayed by his side.
“Thork, we’re going to have a baby,” she told him the first chance she could. “I know you didn’t want any more children, but—”
“Oh, Rube,” he said incredulously, twining her fingers in his good hand, “we made a baby together.”
“You’re not angry?”
“Nay, sweetling,” he said, a gentle smile tilting his lips upward. ” ‘Twas inevitable that some of my seed slip in your womb. I visited so often.” He squeezed her hand to show he jested. “Truly, ’tis wondrous that you and I made a child together. The babe will be magnificent, I wager.”
Even those few words strained his strength, and he fell back on the bed, closing his eyes. But a slight smile relaxed his lips as he slept. Ruby hoped it was dreams of their child that pleased him so.
The next day he told her, “If I die, my brother Eric should relent. No, Ruby, you must listen. Eric would have no reason to pursue my sons if I am gone.”
The next time he awakened, he exclaimed feverishly, “I love you, sweetling. I did not realize how much till I left you. If I had it to do over, I would take your advice and cherish the moment. We had so little time together, Ruby. So little time. There should have been more.”
King Athelstan arrived on the third day, totally unannounced. He and his resplendently clad guard strode through the palace with Sigtrygg to Thork’s chamber. Luckily, it was one of Thork’s lucid periods.
Athelstan sat in a chair next to the bed, nodding first at Ruby, then taking Thork’s fingerless hand in his. “My friend, I am so sorry. ‘Tis my fault the boy was taken whilst in my care. Whether you live or die—and God willing, ’twill be the former—Eirik is welcome back in my court, and this I promise, I will guard him with my own life this time.”
” ‘Tis the boy’s decision.” Thork’s words trailed off, and he slipped back into his fever.
Eirik had been a remote, solitary boy before he left for Athelstan’s court. Now he stood vigil silently at his father’s bedside, a ten-year-old boy but no longer a child. God knows what he’d been through while held captive by Ivar.