There was a silence.
“We’re not in Shanghai now,” said Crane eventually.
“No, we ain’t. But if we was there, and you started going mad all on a sudden and off again, you wouldn’t be sat there whining, would you? You’d be right out—”
“To see Yu Len.”
Merrick cocked his head in agreement.
“But we’re not in Shanghai,” Crane repeated. “This is London. Yu Len is half the world away, and at this rate I’m not going to make it to next quarter day.”
“So we find a shaman here,” said Merrick simply.
“But—”
“No buts!” The words rang off the stone floor and tiled walls. “You can go to some mad-doctor and get thrown in the bedlam, or you can sit there and go mad for thinking you’re going mad, or we find a fucking shaman and get this looked at like we would back home, because hereditary my arse.” Merrick leaned forward, hands on the table, glaring in his master’s face. “I know you, Lucien Vaudrey. I seen you look death in the face plenty of times, and every time you either ran like hell or you kicked him in the balls, so don’t you tell me you want to die. I never met anyone who didn’t want to die as much as you don’t. So we are going to find a shaman and get this sorted, unless you got any better ideas, which you don’t! Right?”
Merrick held his gaze for a few seconds, then straightened and began to tidy up. Crane cleared his throat. “Are there English shamans?”
“Got to be, right? Witches. Whatever.”
“I suppose so,” said Crane, trying hard, knowing it was pointless, knowing he owed it to Merrick. “I suppose so. Who’d know…” His fingers twitched, calling up memories. “Rackham. He’s back, isn’t he? I could ask him.”
“Mr. Rackham,” agreed Merrick. “We’ll go see him. Ask for a shaman. You got any idea where he is?”
“No.” Crane flexed his bandaged wrist and rose. “But if I can’t find him through any of the clubs, we can just hang around all the filthiest opium dens in Limehouse till we meet him.”
“See?” said Merrick. “Things are looking up already.”
Manhood is about more than who’s on top.
The Reluctant Berserker
© 2014 Alex Beecroft
Wulfstan, a noble and fearsome Saxon warrior, has spent most of his life hiding the fact that he would love to be cherished by someone stronger than himself. Not some slight, beautiful nobody of a harper who pushes him up against a wall and kisses him.
In the aftermath, Wulfstan isn’t sure what he regrets most—that he only punched the churl in the face, or that he really wanted to give in.
Leofgar is determined to prove he’s as much of a man as any Saxon. But now he’s got a bigger problem than a bloody nose. The lord who’s given him shelter from the killing cold is eyeing him like a wolf eyes a wounded hare.
When Wulfstan accidentally kills a friend who is about to blurt his secret, he flees in panic and meets Leofgar, who is on the run from his lord’s lust. Together, pursued by a mother’s curse, they battle guilt, outlaws, and the powers of the underworld, armed only with music…and love that must overcome murderous shame to survive.
Warning: Contains accurate depictions of Vikings, Dark Ages magic, kickass musicians, trope subversions and men who don’t know their place.
Enjoy the following excerpt for The Reluctant Berserker:
Coming in to the porch, a little too fast, his eyes dazzled from the light indoors and his mind mazed with thoughts, he didn’t hear the other man until he collided with him. The breath went out of him in a round thump. There was a brief impression of long limbs, slim and bony. Then a resonant voice went “Oh!” without any of the apology or the instant deference Wulfstan knew himself entitled to.
He didn’t think before grabbing narrow wrists and holding on, but he did twist so that the light of the fire fell on his companion’s face, and he did breathe in, hard, to see he had finally caught the fish for which he had been angling all night. For this young man had the sheepskin bag of a lyre on his shoulder and a bone whistle clutched in his right hand.
Loose curls the colour of Byzantine gold bounced absurdly around a face as thin as his master’s. Hard to see it clearly in the leap and cower of firelight, Wulfstan only got glimpses, enough to believe he saw beauty, sharp and fine. A gazehound of a man, built for speed. In the shifting bars of radiance through the door, his eyes looked full of fire, so that Wulfstan couldn’t tell the colour, though he tried.
The harper breathed out—a sigh that was also a laugh, and the ends of his lips turned up. Wulfstan couldn’t be sure, but he thought the smile mocking. It lit something in Wulfstan that snapped into sparks with a crack.
“I’m waiting for your apology, churl. Then you may step aside and let me pass.”