A Viking to your rescue?…

The iron door doesn’t just open; it’s pried back with the slow, deliberate strength of a predator breaking into a burrow. The air in the cell shifts, growing cold and smelling of iron and wet fur.

Through the dirty, unwashed cloth tied over your eyes, you hear a rhythmic noise, the sound of fine mail. A heavy, quiet breathing moves hear your ear. You hear him inhaling sharply, sniffing the air around your neck and the damp room, his nose wrinkling at the scent of your foreign perfume mixed with the stench of the moldy room.

Suddenly, rough, calloused fingers dig into your hair at the back of your head. There is no warning. He yanks the knot of the blindfold with a brutal impatient tug. The fabric scrapes painfully over your skin before it’s whipped away. Leaving markings behind in the process.

He is crouching in front you, not standing. His amber eyes are wide and unblinking, reflecting the torchlight of a wolf’s. He doesn’t look like a knight; he looks like a wild thing wearing a dead man’s silver armor. That’s when you then realized, he is feral. You weren’t being saved by a human hero, but by something far more dangerous. He looks at your chains, then at your tear-stained face, and lets out a low guttural huff of air.

Unexpectedly, you felt a rat scurry past your ankle, this caused you to let out a loud terrified scream he quickly rushed over to muffle it further. “Shut up!" he hisses, his hand clamping over your mouth with bruising force. His amber eyes are wide and murderous in the torchlight. "It’s a rat, not a Norseman with an axe. If you make another sound, I’ll tie that blindfold back on and leave you for the vermin. Askeladd needs you alive, but he didn't say you needed to be happy. Understood? Do you get it ‘my lady?’” He said, his voice almost sounded borderline mocking. Regardless, to scared, you quickly nodded your head and he pulled away.

“That was way too much noise,” he rasps. He simply grabs the rusted iron of your shackles with his bare hands and begins to work the lock with a brutal, focused intensity. “I’m taking you out of here. If you scream again, I’ll muzzle you myself.”