Deirdre was sitting on the edge of the bed with her hands crossed in her lap. She had had no opportunity to escape. There had been two guards on her door from the moment the warriors had thrust her into the guest house. She had not slept, eaten or bathed since her arrival.
She had not had the will to do anything.
Naoise was dead, probably still lying in a bloody puddle, only without his head, which would be adorning the doorpost of whoever it was who ambushed them.
Deirdre had no idea where she was. The guards would not speak to her. Not that she had tried to speak to them beyond the initial questions when she first came awake. She did not care where she was, not really. Life without her man had no meaning. What use eating? What use bathing? She doubted sleep would be possible after watching Naoise gasp with the blade in his guts and the realization of imminent death in his eyes. Any sleep would be invaded by the horror of reliving that moment, she was sure.
She heard a commotion of warrior jocularity from outside the roundhouse and assumed her captor had come to claim his prize. She thought it would be Mac Nessa. It would fit if it were. She had warned Naoise not to trust in the pardon, public proclamation notwithstanding, but Naoise had been too caught up in the meaning of the warrior code to listen. Like Fergus, he had believed that even the king of Ulster would not dare publicly breach it. She now realized he had not publicly breached it, and had never had a need to. They were accosted by brigands, it would seem, and none sorrier than The Deceiver to have lost a comrade in arms.
It was not Mac Nessa who came through the door, though. It was a man she did not know. He was tall, shaggily bearded, with unfathomable eyes staring out from the roughness of his facial hair. She could smell mead from where he was standing beside the door admiring her. She dropped her head and looked at her hands resting in her lap.
“Do you know me?” he asked.
Deirdre neither looked at him nor responded.
“Answer me,” still received no response. “You will learn obedience, woman. For now, it is no matter, but in time, you will respond to your master’s every whim.”
The man took off his cloak and threw it over a chair beside the roundhouse door. “I am Eogan, chieftain of Monaghan. It was I who took you in ambush. It was I who gutted your man.”
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Deirdre looked up at the words. The man was a brute, easily a head taller than Naoise had been. A large belly was hanging over his belt. Deirdre suspected it would not be as flabby as it appeared. And at his belt, the hilt of a dagger.
“Ulster promised that were he satisfied, I could name my price. You, Deirdre, are that price.”
“Come then and claim your prize,” Deirdre said, eyeing the hilt and opening her arms in welcome.
“Ha, that did not take as long as I expected,” Eogan guffawed as he strode over to the bed.
He was by her side and had pulled her to her feet before Deirdre could react. He took hold of the neckline of her bodice and ripped her dress from her with one pull. Deirdre did not react. She stood before him, naked, with her arms loosely by her sides. He towered over her. His breath was rank and his body odor was not much better. She could see his eyes almost breathing in her nakedness.
She kept still, willing him to give her a single opportunity. It came when he bent to kiss her breasts. With his head buried in her cleavage, Deirdre saw her opportunity and snatched the dagger from his belt. Before Eogan could react, she plunged the knife into his gut. She expected him to drop to the ground clutching his wound, but he did not. He just grunted and backhanded her across the face. The swipe was so powerful that it knocked Deirdre to the other side of the bed, where she landed in a tumbled heap.
She was dazed but managed to sit up and look across the bed at Eogan. He had hold of his gut and she could see blood seeping from between his fingers. He was grinning at her. His eyes were alive with mirth.
“I love a little feistiness in a woman,” he said as he held up his hand and looked at the blood smirched across his palm. “Only a little, though. I will teach you, woman, to respect your master. Sticking me with a toothpick will gain you nothing but grief.”
In that moment, Deirdre saw the reality of her future. She was to see out her days as a plaything for a monster who stank. She had felt the loss of Naoise acutely and nothing could ever replace him, but she felt the despair of an eternity at the feet of Eogan far more acutely. She looked down at the dagger she was still clutching in her hand. She could see that it was a sharp blade, designed to kill where sword and axe might be too unwieldy. She knew what she would do. All it needed was a decision of where.
Eogan saw what she was looking at and intuited her intention even as he saw her stab the blade in and draw it up her arm from wrist to elbow. There seemed to be a heartbeat’s delay before the blood fountained out of her arm in time to the beat of her heart. Eogan stood and watched. He knew there was nothing to be done. The cut was deep and long and could not be bound in time to save her.
“Foolish, girl,” he tutted before walking from the roundhouse. Eogan’s back was the last thing Deirdre saw as she slumped against the roundhouse wall.