Chapter 16
From the time he was a boy, Waryk had possessed land.
He’d received an inheritance through his mother, and his father had been given lands as well.
It was all good land, if not densely populated or boasting great castles.
It didn’t matter: He loved the wildness, and the peace to be found in different parts of his own holdings, and in all, he had a passionate love for his home, Scotland.
He found the hills and valleys as beautiful as the rugged cliffs; the Grampian mountains were majestic and humbling, the rolling Lowlands were gentle and welcoming.
He had ridden into England with the king, he had fought and been feted by the Norse; he had traveled to Brittany, Normandy, Paris, and into many of the Spanish and German kingdoms for tournaments; he had seen many fantastic things.
But he had never seen anything so wonderful as his first glimpse of Blue Isle.
A week’s ride from Stirling had brought them here, to this high mainland cliff.
They might have traveled much more quickly, but they were accompanied by pack animals and wagons bearing wedding gifts and his personal belongings from his rooms at the king’s court, so the ride had been a long one.
Ten servants accompanied them, eight strapping young men and two maids, and ten men-at-arms, including Angus.
Jillian rode at Mellyora’s side, her constant companion and protector.
Though what Mellyora might need protection from now, he didn’t know.
Certainly not him. He had purposely kept himself as busy as possible, and as far as possible from his wife.
In turn, through the entirety of the long journey, his new wife had been polite, cool, and aloof.
To him. He couldn’t begin to fault her behavior.
He longed to pick her up and shake her—or, with far less chivalry—send her flying.
She was coldly courteous to him; to others, she was charming.
She spoke sweetly, properly with all his men, and was equally gentle and courteous with the servants.
She raced her horse alongside Thomas, teased Garth about his stubble of beard, set flowers in Sir Harry’s hair.
At night, she sang while strumming lightly on a small harp, or moved about, telling more of her tales.
She told of the great Pictish war chiefs facing battles with their flesh all painted in blue, told tales of daring Vikings, and a long story, surely taught her by the king’s seneschal, about Kenneth MacAlpin taking the throne of a united Scotland.
She was wonderful, captivating. His men-at-arms, just like the servants, sat around the fire in stone silence, watching, listening, with all the enthrallment of little children.
She was natural with her stirring tales, she could sway men and women with her words and her passion.
So she must be on her isle, he thought. Revered.
She was her father’s daughter—the child of a Celtic heiress as well.
She was bred to this, she was good at this, and he realized that he hadn’t been generous at all in standing by the marriage even when the king had said that he would set her aside—he had been smart.
Taking this isle without her would have meant slaughter.
The thought did not help his temper where she was concerned. Battle lines had been drawn, and it didn’t matter that he had drawn them. She was waging her war all too well.
The first few days, he had managed to ignore her, riding hard to see that the wagon wheels made it over cliffs and through water, slush, and mud.
At times, he’d silently taunted himself regarding this land he loved so much—it didn’t seem they had come one flat mile.
He was ready to discard his precious bathtub and half his mail, plate, and instruments of war. If he were not in the king’s service …
But he was. And he would be called back into service, because he knew David, and David would press his boundaries against England. David had given him time to establish his hold here, and then he would be called back.
Sometimes, he stood back in the trees as she wove her tales around the campfire, and he watched her, and he thought about the first night he had seen her.
Sometimes, he turned away. She had made them enemies.
If so, he would see their war to the finish.
But it seemed that something painful had begun to plague him, and it made him all the more angry with her, even as she continued with her perfect politeness.
Wasn’t courtesy more than he had ever expected? He asked himself at times.
The days had been long; the nights endless. Camping had been wretched. Each night his men had erected them a shelter in the woods. She had gone in first, and he had walked the forest trails before joining her.
She had slept.
He had lain awake. Beside her. He had never touched her. Always, a breath of space remained between them.
And each day, it seemed that his temper simmered to a greater degree. Still, he thought he leashed it well. But how could he yell at her, and long to throttle her, when she had been soft-spoken and entirely courteous?
But now, this …
Atop the ragged, tufted cliff above the place where the land met the water, he could see far across the horizon. At first sight, all seemed peaceful.
Below him, dozens of farmers’ cottages with fencing and barns and stables lay strewn over a wide area of land that was abutted by the rocky cliffs and naturally protected by them.
Shallow waters stretched out, with huge outcroppings of rocks here and there, to the isle itself.
Like here on the mainland, long stretches of sandy beach gave way to rich green grasses; then the rock seemed to rise to the sky, and the castle itself seemed to be part of the rock, and part of the sky, the high towers all but meeting the clouds.
Angus had ridden beside him.
“I told you, Waryk. It’s a place as beautiful as your bride. As wild, as well, perhaps. Sometimes, the sea rages, and beats against the rock. At low tide, a man can run across the water to reach the isle, and yet, to the protected southern side, there is no finer harbor.”
“No one is about,” Waryk heard suddenly, and he turned to see that Mellyora had ridden to join them at the precipice, and that she stared down the distance between them and the shoreline with distress.
He frowned. “Dusk is coming—”
“There is no one about!” she repeated.
Then Waryk saw the smoke, rising from the thatched roof of one of the cottages below. “Angus, alert the men, we’ve visitors,” he said calmly.
“Visitors,” she breathed. “I have men-at-arms—”
“Aye, lady, and they are atop your walls, yonder, see?”
Indeed, once alerted, they could all see that men lined the high parapets and towers of the castle.
Small boats could be seen northward to the shoreline, and a man in simple mail, waving a staff, came from one of the cottages, dragging with him a young woman whose hysterical cries could suddenly be heard rising even unto the cliffs.
“My God!” Mellyora breathed. And before he could stop her, she was racing down the cliff toward the shore.
“Mellyora!” he cried, and charged after her.
He was glad that no horse was faster or more adept than Mercury.
His wife had drawn her sword as she charged down the cliff, and he swore, furious that his first action would have to be to subdue her when his newfound home was under attack.
But he would not allow her to charge against an unknown enemy, and so he shouted to Angus to lead the attack while he brought Mercury galloping hard in front of Mellyora to cut her off, and when he had so succeeded, she stared at him as if he had gone mad. “Waryk, they are killing my people—”
“My people, my lady, and they will not kill you.”
“I can fight, you know that, I am a Viking’s daughter—”
“You were a Viking’s daughter. Now you’re my wife.”
She was frantic, he saw. All the worse. Fighting he had learned, despite his own successes as a passionate and desperate lad, was best done with a cool head.
She pulled back on her horse, ready to race by him, and he swore, spurring Mercury on so that he could leap from his own mount and bring her down.
Tears stung her eyes now as he straddled her, tears of utter frustration. “Waryk—”
“Lady, you know I can best you, and you know that I can best whatever enemy strikes your doors. By God, will you leave me to it?”
“It’s my home, Waryk, we can both fight, we can both die—”
“You are to be the lady, the bearer of the heirs, and I the protector, madam, it is the way it is done.”
Her lashes covered her cheeks. “That is hardly the situation at this moment.”
“Then practice allowing me to be the one to lead the charge against our enemies!”
He rose, swiftly helping her to her feet, then leaving her there. She wasn’t helpless, she could swing a sword, and he knew it. That frightened him more than anything.
He leapt back on Mercury and stared down at her.
She watched him with frustration still in her eyes.
“My lady, allow me to die for you!” he said, and whirled his horse about.
He saw that Jillian, on her gentle gray mare, had almost reached Mellyora, and so he dared spur Mercury onward.
Clumps of mud and grass flew as he covered the distance to the shore, where he discovered his men engaged in pitched battle with a small, fierce army of attackers.