Chapter 42: The Seer and The Cripple
The skirmish erupted like blood through bandages—sudden, violent, and impossible to contain once it started. Paul crouched behind a supply wagon that provided dubious protection from Frankish arrows while his Premonition Sense screamed warnings that felt like ice picks driven behind his eyes.
"Twenty-seven seconds until Porunn takes the blade to her face. Twenty-seven seconds to prevent a scar that'll haunt her for life."
The small raid was supposed to be simple—probe Frankish defenses, capture supplies, retreat before reinforcements arrived. But simple plans had a way of becoming complicated when they met enemy steel and human reflexes trained by desperation.
Paul activated Odin's Whisper as the clash intensified, burning precious mana to see the battle's deadly choreography with supernatural precision. The world split into reality and perfect foresight—arrows tracing geometric paths through air, weapons moving in patterns he could predict down to the centimeter.
[ODIN'S WHISPER ACTIVATED]
[DURATION: 120 SECONDS]
[MP COST: 100]
[REMAINING: 10/35]
Through enhanced perception, Paul tracked the sequence that would disfigure one of their strongest fighters. Bjorn would charge the Frankish position in eight seconds, shield high and seax ready. Porunn would follow three heartbeats later, moving to his left flank with the flowing grace of someone who'd spent years learning to dance with death.
The Frankish defender with the Saxon longsword would duck Bjorn's overhead swing and pivot right, blade slicing horizontally at face-height toward Porunn's unguarded left side. Without intervention, steel would catch her just below the eye, splitting cheek and jaw in a wound that would never heal properly.
"Modern medical knowledge wrapped in Viking mysticism. Time to save a face and change a timeline."
Paul's shout cut through battle noise with supernatural clarity.
"Porunn! Sword—left side!"
She heard him despite the chaos, years of training with Lagertha translating Paul's warning into instantaneous reaction. Instead of charging straight into the Saxon's blade, Porunn twisted right, bringing her shield across her body in a defensive sweep that turned potentially devastating injury into a glancing cut across her cheek.
Blood welled along a three-inch gash that would heal clean rather than the jagged ruin that would have crippled her permanently. Paul reached her position as she pressed one hand to the bleeding cut, her eyes wide with shock at how close death had passed.
"Hold still," Paul commanded, producing a Minor Health Potion from his belt pouch. "Seer's medicine. This will prevent scarring."
The supernatural healing accelerated her body's natural repair processes, supernatural pharmacology disguised as divine blessing. Within moments, bleeding stopped and torn flesh began knitting itself back together with efficiency that belonged to different centuries.
"System store medicine saves another life. Timeline deviation logged. One more butterfly flapping wings in storms I can't predict."
Bjorn found them as the skirmish ended, his face tight with fear that came from watching someone precious get hurt. When he saw Porunn's wound—painful but clean, healing rather than festering—his expression shifted to something approaching religious awe.
"Your medicine works miracles."
"The gods favor those who serve them faithfully," Paul replied, falling back on mystical reputation that let him help people without explaining impossibilities.
The device in his system inventory recorded the deviation with clinical precision—another timeline alteration in databases that tracked changes across centuries. But watching Porunn's face remain whole felt worth whatever cosmic bookkeeping his interference demanded.
That night, Paul's Premonition Sense tingled with warnings that had nothing to do with Frankish raids or battlefield medicine. Something moved in darkness beyond their camp's perimeter—not enemy soldiers but allied treachery, which somehow felt worse.
Paul activated Odin's Whisper again, spending his second daily allotment to track movement that shouldn't exist. Through supernatural perception, he watched Rollo slip away from the Viking camp with practiced stealth that spoke of previous experience.
"The final negotiation. Marriage proposals disguised as military alliance. Everything I've been dreading wrapped in silk and political necessity."
Paul followed at distance that precognition made safe, watching from concealment as Rollo met two Frankish envoys in a grove that offered privacy from watching eyes. Count Odo's men, unmistakable in their carefully maintained mail and the particular arrogance of people who spoke for kingdoms rather than warbands.
The conversation lasted twenty minutes—Paul caught fragments about titles, land grants, a marriage that would bind Viking to Frankish nobility through bonds stronger than treaties. When he saw Rollo nod agreement to terms he couldn't hear completely, something cold settled in his chest like winter arriving ahead of schedule.
Through enhanced hearing, Paul caught enough to understand the scope of what was being negotiated. Not just betrayal but transformation—Rollo would become Frankish nobility, defender of the very walls they'd spent months trying to breach. Princess Gisla's hand in marriage, vast estates in Normandy, a title that would make him more than Ragnar's brother.
"The price of becoming yourself: forgetting everyone who knew who you used to be."
Paul returned to camp with knowledge that felt heavier than any weapon he'd carried. Some betrayals could be prevented through careful intervention, some fates redirected with sufficient force applied at critical moments. But others were load-bearing events—structural elements in history's architecture that couldn't be removed without bringing down everything they supported.
He found Lagertha sharpening her seax beside their fire, movements carrying the methodical precision of someone who maintained weapons because survival lived in details too small for casual observation.
"It's happening," Paul said quietly, settling beside her. "Rollo's chosen."
She looked up from her blade work, reading confirmation of suspicions she'd harbored for weeks. "When?"
"Soon. During the next assault, most likely. He'll position his section for strategic collapse rather than genuine attack." Paul watched firelight reflect off steel that had tasted Frankish blood. "Forty-three warriors under his command who'll die because they trust him completely."
"Warn Ragnar?"
"He knows deep down. Won't believe until it happens." Paul activated Success Rate Analysis, burning his remaining mana to calculate survival probabilities in scenarios that included fraternal betrayal. "Some threads hold up the entire tapestry. Cut them and everything unravels."
[QUERY: OPTIMAL POSITIONING FOR SURVIVING ROLLO'S BETRAYAL]
[RESULT: 73% SURVIVAL WITH STRATEGIC PREPARATION]
[RECOMMENDATION: REPOSITION LOYAL FORCES, MINIMIZE EXPOSURE]
Over the following days, Paul began subtle repositioning of forty warriors most loyal to him and Lagertha. Not enough movement to alert Rollo to discovery, but sufficient preparation to minimize casualties when brother turned against brother in service of love disguised as politics.
The preparations felt like choreographing a dance where half the participants didn't know the music was about to change. Paul moved fighters who'd proven their loyalty through blood and shared hardship, positioning them where they could pull back quickly when betrayal manifested.
Astrid, the young warrior Paul had trained in tactical analysis, questioned the repositioning with the directness of someone who'd learned to spot patterns others missed.
"Why are we moving away from Rollo's section?"
"Because when the next assault comes, that section will become the most dangerous place on the battlefield," Paul replied, offering truth wrapped in strategic ambiguity. "Trust me."
She nodded without further questions, accepting his judgment with faith earned through months of successful predictions. But Paul caught her studying Rollo with new attention, reading subtext in movements and expressions she'd previously ignored.
"Training people to think tactically means they eventually start questioning everything, including me."
The device pulsed with updates from other users—Sophia's technological integration accelerating across Mediterranean trade routes, Marcus's conquest patterns spreading through Far Eastern territories like infection seeking new hosts. All three timelines showed stress patterns that suggested forces beyond their control were pushing system users toward critical decisions.
A new message appeared from Sophia, text flickering with urgency Paul had never seen from her before.
"Timeline stability dropping faster than predicted. External manipulation confirmed—something's pushing all users toward convergence points. Rollo's betrayal will trigger cascade effects. Be ready for acceleration."
Paul closed the device and tried not to think about how preventing local catastrophes seemed to trigger compensatory disasters elsewhere, as if reality itself was balancing equations he couldn't see or understand.
The betrayal was inevitable. The brotherhood was fracturing. And somewhere beyond the immediate concerns of siege warfare and personal loyalty, countdown timers measured the approach of confrontations that would make fraternal treachery look like minor family disputes in wars fought over the fundamental nature of time itself.
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