Adrift chapter 35) The sight of Wrath
.-.-.
Valerie walked away from the fire with her spine straight and her steps unbothered, as if nothing monumental had happened at all. Her jaw still ached where his hand had been. Not a bruise, just a wrongness, a lingering pressure. The end result of her pushing the wrong lever.
A branch shifted under her weight, the horse snorted softly as it settled for the night. Ordinary sounds, too present for what had just happened between them. Valerie flexed her fingers and felt the faint shake she hadn’t given permission for. She stilled them all at once, tucking her hands into her sleeves, refusing the evidence.
She told herself she’d been threatened before. Men raised their voices and their hands. She knew that terrain. Men wanted, and once they wanted, they were predictable. That was the rule she had lived by and if she played well, survived by.
She’d treated him the same way. Of course she had. Same tools. Same confidence. The same lazy certainty that want would always do the work for her.
And now, it hadn’t.
That was the part that scraped. Not that he’d been angry. Not even that he had scared her. But that she’d offered herself; the one currency she’d always trusted; and he hadn’t reached for it.
No, he’d done quite the opposite. He shut her down like she was noise. Like she was in the way.
She told herself she misread him because she had been too eager to play the game. Because it was easier to believe every man broke the same way than admit she might have found one who didn’t.
His threat replayed in her head, stripped of drama, stripped of heat. No grabbing for power. No hunger underneath it. Just control; cold, exact, unarguable.
What unsettled her wasn’t the outburst, no, it was the restraint. Ivar did not want to frighten her into submission. He didn’t want to take anything from her at all, not even when offered. What he wanted was for her to stop, to create space, and he was willing to enforce it. That realization lodged deep.
The cart waited in the dark, canvas pale as bone. Valerié climbed inside carefully and lay down beside Piglet, who slept curled inward, dark curls defying her head scarf, breathing slowly and at ease. Completely unaware of what occurred just moments ago on the other side of the canvas. Valerié lay rigid, staring at the low ceiling, the space suddenly too small for all her thoughts.
.-.-.
Valerié woke with her body already alert, breath shallow, thoughts half-formed but sharp. The canvas ceiling loomed low above her. For a moment she lay still, listening to the movements on the other side of the canvas. Purposeful sounds. Packing sounds.
She turned her head.
Piglet sat at the edge of the cart, scarf secured, sleeves rolled back, folding one of the blankets with careful, methodical focus. “Slept well?” Piglet asked when she noticed Valerié staring. “Yes,” Valerié answered at once, a little too quickly. She steadied her voice. “I’ll help with packing up.”
She swung her legs over the side of the cart and climbed down, boots crunching softly against the ground. The fire pit nearby was nothing but grey ash, cold, abandoned for a while. No smoke. No attempt to coax it back to life. They were leaving, then. Already in motion without her.
The horse was harnessed halfway, tack laid out neatly on the ground. Piglet had clearly done what she could, though the heavier work remained. Valerié reached automatically for a strap, then hesitated, her attention snagging on movement near the cart.
Ivar crawled into view from behind it with his hands and knees in the dirt, movements unselfconscious. He hauled himself upright enough to adjust one of the straps along the cart’s side, fingers working the leather with familiar ease.
Valerié felt it immediately; that subtle tightening under her ribs, that instinctive calculation she learned to make. The quiet inventory: distance, mood, risk.
He looked at her once. Just a nod with nothing in it; no apology, no warning, no warmth either.
Then he turned away and continued what he was doing as if the moment had never existed.
She stood there for a heartbeat too long, unsure where to place herself now that the old rules no longer applied. Men were supposed to react after a night like last; lash out, soften, leer, posture. Ivar did none of it. He behaved like a door shut and bolted.
Valerié swallowed and moved at last, forcing her limbs back into usefulness. She gathered the remaining items, tied knots that didn’t need tightening, folded cloth that was already neat. Her hands were steady; it was the space between them that felt unstable.
Piglet climbed up to the front of the cart when the reins were ready, settling into place with quiet determination. Valerié joined her without comment, choosing the seat beside her instinctively. Piglet’s presence grounded her in a way she hadn’t anticipated; familiar, safe, uncomplicated.
Ivar dragged himself into the back of the cart last, movements heavier than usual, shoulders rigid. Valerié noticed the untouched waterskin near his knee. The way his jaw stayed clenched, as if holding something back.
The white raven took flight as the cart lurched forward, wings cutting through the pale morning air. The bird circled once overhead and cried out; sharp, accusing. Valerié’s spine tightened despite herself. It felt like judgment.
Piglet clicked softly to the horse, urging it onward. The road opened ahead of them, trees closing in on either side.
Valerié kept her eyes forward, posture careful and her mouth shut.
For the first time in a long while, she wasn’t trying to control the shape of the day.
.-.-.
The first sign of danger was the sound of Utstott. A harsh, throaty caw rolled across the treeline, not a usual impatient ‘feed me’ shriek, but a deeper one; a warning. The bird circled tight above the cart. The humble bit of comfort that had dared to creep back into Valerié’s body vanished. Piglet’s hands froze on the reigns. From the back, Ivar lifted his head; senses tightening like bowstrings. Smoke. Thin, dark, rising in a steady column far off the path.
“Hide the cart,” Ivar ordered in a low, hushed voice.
They pulled off the road into the high grass, wedging the wheels between roots and bush. When stopped, Piglet jumped and scattered handfuls of dry leaves over the tracks. Valerié skittishly stepped down the cart as Ivar reached for his axe.
“What are we-” Ivar ignored her. With his axe between the band of his tunic he dropped on his hands and knees beside her; crawling fast and quiet.
They approached the smoke carefully and silently, until they reached what used to be a woodsmen’s lodge. What remained was ruin. The roof had collapsed inward. The walls were charred and skeletal.
Flies swarmed thick over the bodies sprawled around the clearing; throats cut, faces blistered from heat, limbs twisted in the positions of their final terror.
Piglet’s breath hiccupped by the sight and spun on her heels. She turned aside and retched into the grass.
Valerié shared Piglet’s horror and placed a steadying hand between her shoulder blades, eyes locked on the carnage with a practiced, weary stiffness. Her jaw tightened, a flicker of memory she buried quickly.
Ivar crawled straight toward the nearest corpse.He didn’t flinch at the stench; the rotting opened guts. Didn’t recoil at the flies lifting from the flesh in a buzzing cloud. He only studied the body with calm focus.
“Bandits?” he asked without looking back.
Valerié exhaled slowly through her mouth.
“No, worse.”
She pointed to a scorched patch of fabric still clinging to one of the bodies; a heavy blue wool, trimmed in dull metal thread.
A soldier’s sleeve.
“Soldiers,” she said.
Piglet wiped her mouth with a shaking hand.
“Soldiers did this to their own people? Why?”
Valerié’s expression darkened with something old and bitter.
“Because they can. Because it’s easier than collecting taxes one farm at a time. Because fear keeps a village obedient.” She shifted her gaze across the ruin. “Because they felt like it.”
Ivar’s eyes narrowed. “Cowards.”
“Worse,” Valerié replied. “Men with orders.”
At that, the forest seemed to breathe differently. The wind sharpened. Every rustle felt too loud. Every distant snap of a twig felt like a threat.
They backed away from the clearing in silence, each step and move deliberate, each sound felt one too many. When they reached their cart, no comfort came. They dragged the cart deep into a nest of trees, shrouding it under low branches, pushing bush against the wheels until it looked like nothing but a wild tangle.
By the time the sun began to sink, tension sat between the three of them. They didn’t set camp. Didn’t risk a fire. Piglet and Valerié huddled inside the cart, hands linked so tightly their knuckles blanched. Piglet’s breaths were quiet and uneven. Valerié’s were shallow, almost silent.
Above them, Utstott circled once, twice, then settled high in a pine.
Ivar took position just past the cart, half-hidden in a veil of leaves. His hands rested lightly on the hilts of his axes. His legs useless, but his arms ready, his senses prowling outward.
The night pressed in slow. None of them dared to say it out loud. But they all felt the same truth crawling underneath their skin.
If soldiers came… They wouldn’t stand a chance.
And so they listened breathlessly in the darkness of the forest, waiting for danger to show its face. Praying for dawn to arrive.
Valerie sat up rigid against the crates. Piglet lay curled against her thighs, their hands still loosely linked from the moment panic first clawed at them. The night crept by dreadfully slow.
She could see Ivar from her spot. Crouched low beside a thick knot of bushes. One axe clutched tight against his chest, the other within immediate reach. His body stayed coiled ever since he positioned himself, no shifts of comfort, no softening of his posture. Only vigilance; a predator turned pray, refusing to blink.
Valerie’s own body hurt from the stiffness of staying still, but she didn’t move. Couldn’t. Because while Piglet drifted in and out of a whimpering half-sleep, Valeriés mind kept replaying the smoke. The corpse. The carcass of the lodge.
And then, worse; her past.
Soldiers, the kind who didn’t need a reason to destroy a life. The kind who burned her brothel to the ground.
She closed her eyes, but the memories only sharpened.
She could still smell it; the tang of pitch, the burning flesh; the perfumes of the girls turning to poison in the heat. The crack of timber giving way. The screams.
And the laughter. God, the laughter of so-called men of honor.
They hadn’t come to collect debt, they simply didn’t want to pay.
A group of drunken, armored men flushed with booze and coin; had burst through the doors. Furious when Madame mentioned the prices. And Madame, stubborn as stone, refused to drop them.
Their argument lasted minutes.
The fire lasted hours.
Valerié could still hear the sound of Mirelle; tiny smart-mouthed Mirelle, running through the street. Her dress ablaze; hair crackling. Stumbling blindly toward the church steps as if sanctuary might save her.
Valerié had screamed for someone, anyone, to help her. But no one came to their aid.
Mirelle collapsed at the foot of the stone stairs, a smear of flames and agony. The church bell tolled the morning hour moments later, cold and hollow.
Ironic, Valerié always thought. A holy place watching a child die, doing nothing.
Her cheek throbbed, as if her skin remembered too. Being scorched by burning cinders as one of the soldiers dragged her away by her hair. His face came back to her with ease; drunk, careless, irritated that she scratched him as he hauled her across the street toward a back alley.
That was the night she learned that men in uniforms were no men of honor. No protectors. Not guardians, just predators with permission.
She reopened her eyes with effort, the past still clinging, and blinked hard to clear the tears it had left behind.
As dawn approached the color of the sky changed from black, to bruised blue that crept over their hiding place.
Piglet was still gripping her hand. She shifted slightly, pulling Piglet closer, protective and silent.
Her eyes moved to Ivar, he was still crouched, unmoving. He sensed her, because his head lifted the slightest fractional gaze slicing through the shadows to meet her.
Something passed between them then. Not words, not reassurance, but recognition.
They both knew what soldiers were capable of when there were no witnesses. And they both knew dawn did not promise safety, only visibility.
.-.-.
Valerié woke up on instinct. Her body snapped upwards from the thin edge of sleep; breath caught halfway in her throat. Piglet still slept beside her, breath soft and unaware of the approaching danger; hands entwined somewhere along the haze of rest.
The sound came through the ground first; a dull, rhythmic tremor; then through the air.
Hoofdbeats, not wandering, not distant, coming straight toward them.
With her heart drumming against her ribs, Valerié crawled to the cart’s flap. The moment she pushed it aside, her hands started shaking. Their horse was pacing, reins jerking against the post, ears sharp, aware of the upcoming danger.
“Shh!” she whispered, sliding down into the tall grass, “Shh, please-”
But it was already too late. Shapes emerged between the trees. Four riders, armored, spotting her. Valerie’s breath thinned into nothing.
The early morning light crawled over their helmets; their eyes dragged over the cart. Over her. The first soldier; their leader scoffed, liking what he saw.
When he spoke his voice was low with satisfaction. “Off.” The others obeyed, boots thudding into the earth as they dismounted their horses.
The sound of iron hitting soil cracked something inside Valerié’s chest; memories struck like lightning. Cold cruel hands in her hair; firelight on metal; her cheek scorched and scarred for life.
Her knees locked, her ribs caged her breath. “Valerie?” Piglet whispered from behind the canvas. “What’s wrong-”
One of the soldiers approached with speed, ripped the canvas flap wide open and dragged Piglet out by the arm. Her scream tore through the trees.
In reflex Valerié whirled towards her, but a hand seized her wrists from behind, wrenching them upwards. Hard. Too hard.
She cried out herself, the pain slicing down her shoulder blades.
“Quiet,” the soldier snarled, twisting her arms tighter, “you’ll bite your tongue soon enough!”
Her heartbeat hammered against her throat and bile rose up. She willed herself to move, to fight, to flee to anywhere but here; in this nightmare repeating itself. But her body remained frozen, locked by terror, fully aware of what was coming.
Piglet screamed her name and Valerié tried to answer, but she couldn’t breathe.
And then she heard it. A scrape beneath the cart, a shift of weight.
Ivar.
He slid from beneath the cart like something the soil itself expelled. Dirt smeared across his chest, axe gripped so tight his knuckles bleached white. Teeth bared like he had been waiting for this exact moment.
Relief should have come. It didn’t. It was his eyes that stopped her breath completely. Something moved behind his blue eyes; not a flicker, not emotion passing through; but a presence settling into place. Like a door had opened inward and something vast had leaned close to look out through him.
Her stomach dropped.
It was the same stillness she had glimpsed before; in flashes. When she revealed to Piglet their dirty little secret. The moment she’d called him God’s personal joke. In the split second before he’d grabbed her jaw.
But this time, there was no hesitation in him. No conflict. No guilt pulling at the edges. Whatever part of Ivar doubted, softened, restrained; it wasn’t there anymore.
The soldier holding Piglet laughed, shifting his grip.
Ivar’s gaze moved to him. Not fast. In no rush.
And Valerié felt it then; fear. Not fear of him, but fear of what would happen to anyone he chose to look at like that.
The forest itself seemed to pull tight. Even the horses were still. Like the animals around her had learned to recognize a predator dressed as a man.
Valerié’s breath came back in a thin, shaking thread. She didn’t know what she was seeing. Only that something inside Ivar had stepped forward; and it was made to destroy.
A soldier finally turned. “What the-”
Ivar launched. Crawling with terrifying speed, each pull of his arms jerking him forward, palms ripping through dirt and roots like claws made for soil. He hit the man’s leg with the full force of his body.
His axe bit before the man was fully down. Steel punched through leather, muscle, and the hard resistance beneath. The impact shuddered up Ivar’s arm as bone gave with a muffled cracking pop. The scream that followed was raw enough to make all birds hush from the trees.
The first soldier wasn’t even given the chance to register what happened. Ivar ripped the axe free and hacked again, low and sideways. The back of the man’s knee opened under the strike with a sound like soaked fabric tearing. He dropped instantly, leg folding wrong, armor slamming against roots as dark blood sheeted over the moss.
The leader screamed: “GET HIM!” But the soldier hesitated. Because Ivar didn’t rise.
He pivoted on one palm, dragging himself through the blood-slick leaves with horrifying control; not thrashing, not wild. Hunting.
The nearest soldier drew his sword.
Too slow.
Ivar slammed into his shins, shoulder driving into the armor without any hesitation. The man’s teeth clacked together as balance vanished. And in that awkward, helpless sway-
Crack
The axe swept low. It smashed through the front of the boot. Leather burst, toes bent where they shouldn’t. The soldier collapsed; a thin, animalistic wail leaking out of him as he clutched what was left of his foot, blood pumping hot between his fingers.
“Saint’s persevere-”
“Stay back!”
But panic among them already spread like wildfire.
The two soldiers let go of Valerié and Piglet and lunged together, a dreadful mistake. Ivar wanted them close. The first blade whistled overhead as Ivar rolled, mud smearing across his teeth. His hand shot out, fingers locking around an ankle. He yanked hard.
The soldier dropped face-first, breath blasting from him as his armor crushed him into the forest floor.
Ivar’s axe came up.
There was a thick, resistant thud; the metal collar split, revealing the soft flesh beneath. Ivar raised his axe again. The blade wedged deep into the side of the man’s throat. His scream drowned into a bubbling choke; hands clawing at steel as blood pulsed between his fingers; then slowed. Then stopped. The leader; the last man standing stared in horror.
“This…this isn’t human-” Ivar’s head snapped towards him. And the look he gave him held nothing hot. No frenzy, just depthness, violence, hunger. Wrath.
The soldier ran.
Valerié’s breath caught. If he called for help…
But Ivar was already moving. Hands digging into earth, nails tearing, breath dragging in low wet pulls. Each haul of his arm launched him forward with brutal, ground-hugging speed.
The fleeing soldier looked over his shoulder, a grave mistake.
Air snapped. The axe left Ivar’s hand with a heavy spinning hiss. It struck between the shoulderblades with a meaty final sound. The man jolted mid-stride, momentum carrying him two more stumbling steps before his legs forgot how to work. He hit the earth hard, face-first and did not move again.
Silence spread slowly, like spilled oil.
Ivar exhaled once. Low. Steady. He dragged himself across the forest floor, leaving streaks behind him, mud, blood, crushed fern. He planted a hand on the dead man’s back and wrenched the axe free. The sound was thick, reluctant.
He turned the blade, studying the edge with unsettling calm, chest rising slowly.
Valerié’s legs finally gave in as if her bones had simply decided they were done holding her upright. Her knees hit the earth and stayed there, skirts tangling in wet blooded leaves, hands hovering uselessly at her sides as if she’d forgotten what they were for.
The world seemed to be spinning. The sour taste of bile sat at the back of her throat. Her wrists still throbbed where she’d been held, bruises blooming already.
A sound pushed through the ringing in her ears. It took her too long to understand it was crying.
Piglet.
Valerié’s head turned slowly, as if it weighed too much for her neck to carry. Piglet still lay where they had thrown her, skirts twisted, scarf half-loosened, palms scraping uselessly at the soil as her arms shook too violently to obey her.
“By Allah… by Allah…” Piglet sobbed, the words breaking apart between breaths. Her dark eyes were wide and unfocused, fixed not on the bodies but somewhere beyond them, as if the horror had grown too large to fit inside sight.
A dragging sound pulled closer.
Valerié looked up.
Ivar crawled toward them.
Blood smeared his forearms, his chest, his jaw. Mud clung to him in dark streaks. His face was almost unrecognizable beneath it; not wild, not frantic, but terrifyingly calm. His chest rose slow and even, like a man cooling after hard labor.
None of the carnage seemed to trouble him. But his eyes held a glint she couldn’t place. A shimmer, brief, almost imagined. Like the last echo of lightning behind the clouds. Gone if she stared too long, but enough to make the hairs along her neck stir.
When he reached Piglet, he stopped.
His hand rose; blood-caked, trembling only from exertion, and hovered above her shoulder. Not touching. Not yet. Then, slowly, like he remembered himself, he lowered it again.
His voice came low, rough as gravel dragged over stone. “Are you hurt?”
Piglet couldn’t answer. She only stared up at him, eyes huge, locked on his face: the mud, the blood, the man who had just torn others apart. Her lips parted, but no sound came.
His gaze shifted to Valerié. “And you?”
She shook her head. Too fast. The tremor running through her gave the lie away.
Something in his expression eased. A fraction of softness returning, just enough to prove it was still him beneath the blood.
That was when she understood. He hadn’t fallen into the violence. He had unlatched it. Taken the leash off something that lived behind his eyes.
For them.
Piglet moved suddenly and threw her arms around him, fingers gripping tight as if he might vanish. The sob tore out of her, raw and shaking, her whole body folding against him.
For a second, Ivar went completely still. Like a man who knew exactly how to break bones but not how to hold something fragile.
Then a long, uneven breath left him, the first crack in the iron stillness wrapped around him.
“We need to move,” he muttered, voice lower now, the edge worn down. “More might come. And if they see this…”
But Piglet didn’t let go.
Not yet.
And in the hush of cooling blood and the fading echoes of screams, Ivar didn’t make her.
He let her hold on.
.-.-.
A/N: So, basically if you shove all the blood and carnage under a rug it’s basically a very dandy hurt/comfort chapter. Right? This act of violence wasn’t supposed to happen this fast but storyline yeah I have a little on and off relation with that. I felt the need to write something about standing up against powerful men in armor who do wrong, since a lot of wrongness is happening in the world right now.
Therapeutic for me to be honest. And maybe necessary. I once more wanted to shine some more light on Valerié's past. And I felt the need to remind everyone what Ivar can be, because we haven’t seen this part of him in a long time.
Also, interesting to know, previous of this chapter the acts of violence have always been in Ivar’s POV. This one was in Valerie’s POV and she saw something. You might want to re-read this chapter from Changing Course : https://archiveofourown.org/works/25182580/chapters/67991992
Love to read your thoughts,
Xoxox Nukyster
The kickass beta: @sarahh-jane
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