Chapter Thirteen
Hulda slept but fitfully that night, and in snatches. Wrapped in her cloak on the deck, she rose from time to time in order to pace before lying back down again.
A clear night; the sky arched overhead with a hundred-score stars, bent like a rainbow. She almost expected Faeir Odin to come striding down that arc to go walking upon the earth, here among men. To mayhap come and sit on the deck beside her and give her advice like a trusted friend.
Tell her how to handle these emotions that beset her.
When she left home, she’d had but one goal, to make those who had killed her brother pay.
She had begged Faeir for the chance. It sometimes seemed she had begged most her life for her place in the world.
There was a force inside her, a desire that said she would allow no one else to fight her battles. To die for her.
A great and terrible force.
She sometimes thought Jute was the only one who understood, her strong and wise brother. He had looked at her and seen more than a girl needing protecting. He it was who had supported and empowered her.
Then he had gone off from her, and not returned.
Unbearable. The very thing she had fought all her life to prevent.
It would not be enough to punish the settlement where he had died. She wanted the man, the very man by whose hand he had died. Had she met him today?
She did not feel certain. Her instincts were good, sometimes uncannily so. And her instincts about Quarrie MacMurtray said—
Ach, but they said far too much.
He might be hiding something.
She got up once more and went to the rail. Most of the crew had gone ashore to sleep and settled on the stretch of land above the rocky shore. She could just glimpse their swaddled forms in the light from the fires they had lit, as the stars began to fade.
Only Garik and Lars had stayed aboard with her. Lars always slept like a rock, in all locations and weathers, but Garik came now and stood beside her, looking out.
“You are worried,” he said, not a question.
She slanted a look at him. Among the youngest of the men he was, but a talented helmsman, and she felt comfortable with him, glad he’d accepted a place among her crew.
“Ja,” she said. “I am worried.”
“What is it that worries you?”
A score of things, but she could not tell him that. A crew must have confidence in its captain.
“Ivor worries me.”
That made Garik grin. “Ivor worries everybody. He is, you understand, like two men in one.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“Ah, well, there is the reasonable, affable Ivor who will sit with you in the ale hall and tell dirty stories. Then there is the other one, who on a raid will split children on his blade with glee. I saw him do it to an infant once, still in its mother’s arms. Down farther south, that was.”
“No wonder they hate us, these people.”
“It is not important that they hate us so much as fear us. It accomplishes half our task, so my faeir says.”
“Rarely do I encounter the Ivor who tells stories in the ale hall. I see only the disagreeable Ivor, all too quick to criticize me.”
“Ja, but it is you, Hulda, who command this voyage. That, you must remember.”
He was right.
“What answer do you think you will get from the Gaels?”
“I think,” Hulda said very slowly, with her eyes on the water, “this leader of theirs, this Quarrie MacMurtray, will turn himself over to me.”
*
A long night passed with agonizing slowness, much of it spent by Quarrie in his da’s chamber, where the man in question strove mightily to disguise his pain. Determined Da was to hand himself over, come morning. And for that, he would have to be on his feet.
Quarrie felt for Ma, who suffered as much as if she shared Da’s pain. He would not take the draught from her, and she got less sleep than Quarrie, and that was not much.
Morning came still and clear. Quarrie went out to walk the walls and speak to the guard, which he had doubled the night before.
“Any signs o’ movement?” he asked the men there.
“The smoke fro’ their fires. Look.”
Aye, if Quarrie narrowed his eyes he could see the thin threads of gray, streaming upward. It must be true, then, the tale of the six ships.
He knew the island well. In times gone by, he and his friends had taken a tiny boat and gone there to fish. To take some time away and pretend at being grown.
He knew the inlet. Was there room for six longboats?
They were clever craft, he knew. Narrow enough to fit between the stony arms of such an inlet, and they did not need much draft. Could sail up rivers, it was said. Floating weapons.
He cursed them one and all.
Borald came up and joined them on the wall, taking the stairs by leaps and bounds. He cast a questioning look at Quarrie but asked nothing here before the guardsman.
Not but everyone doubtless knew everything he and the Norsewoman had discussed by now.
“Signs o’ movement?” Borald asked.
“No’ yet.”
“The women and children will be ready to leave this morn, at your order.”
“Aye.”
“I ha’ chosen a number o’ men to accompany them awa’ to the hills.”
It would not be easy out in the open, especially for women with small children and the men who accompanied them—a hard task, and yet they might be the only men of MacMurtray blood left alive when this was done.
“Send them,” Quarrie decided. “As soon as we see those sails on the move.” Better to be safe than sorry.
Borald nodded.
Quarrie let his gaze stray from the sea and wander over the settlement, blessed by the soft morning light. Would this be the last time he saw all these buildings standing? The place he loved, before fire took it.
He had few illusions. If he handed himself over, it would be to torture. Merciless abasement before a no doubt more merciful death.
Better him than Da.
Da would be up on his feet and moving this morning. If he could manage it. Quarrie needed to go and check on him.
“Stay here,” he told Borald. “Keep watch.”
“I will no’ stir, no’ before we see sails.”
Quarrie heard Da yelling even before he entered the chamber. He hurried in to find Da struggling to get out of his bed. Ma strove either to assist or restrain him, along with the ghillie who served as Da’s manservant.
Da’s agony, though, thwarted his efforts.
Kalen, the ghillie, cast Quarrie a relieved look when he came in. “Best call the healer, Master Quarrie. He is in a lot o’ pain.”
Did Quarrie make up his mind as to what he must do at that moment? Or had it already been decided?
“Ye go for the healer,” he bade Ma, and took her place, attempting to ease his father back down.
Kalen’s appalled eyes turned to Quarrie. “He says, does the chief, he means to turn himsel’ over to the Norse.”
“Get awa’ fro’ me!” Da threw them off with unexpected strength. “’Tis exactly wha’ I shall do.”
“Nay, Da—”
“Am I no’ still chief here?” Da’s eyes burned fierce, and fever seared his cheeks. A determined man, and a very sick one.
“Da, let me meet wi’ this woman first, and see wha’ may be bargained.”
“I will be at that meeting.”
“Nay.”
“The next man what says nay to me will feel my fist in his face.”
Kalen backed off a step, clearly believing it. As did Quarrie.
“Hulda Elvarsdottir,” he said, “is expecting to deal wi’ me.” He had a sudden image of her—that strong, oval face with its sculpted, somehow brutal yet still beautiful bones. The gray eyes, pale as water.
The way she looked at him.
“Son.” Da reached out and seized a handful of Quarrie’s tunic. Since he could not succeed in getting out of the bed, he drew Quarrie to him. “If ye think I will let ye turn yoursel’ over to those savages and pay the price for a deed I committed—”
Gently, Quarrie freed himself from his father’s grasping fingers. “We do as we must for the sake o’ this clan. It does no’ matter who pays the price.”
“Lad…” Agony twisted Da’s features, and he spoke in a low growl. “I am already three parts spent. Nay good to this clan. Whereas ye…”
Whereas he would allow Da to die, if die he must, in his own bed with the woman he loved beside him, if Quarrie had aught to do with it.