Chapter Fifty-Five
“I worry for the women and bairns up in the hills,” Ma said fretfully, pacing the floor of what had been her husband’s private quarters at the rear of the hall, “in this vile weather.”
At least the women and bairns were alive—for now. More than could likely be said for the rest of them, when the attack resumed.
Night had fallen, an uneasy night during which few slept. Many were awake nursing their wounds. The rain had let up, and when morning came…
When morning came the Norse would attack, and hard. Quarrie could feel it at the root of his soul.
The warrior in him knew.
He turned to his mother. “Ma, why d’ye no’ go and join the women? There is time. Before morning.”
“Nay.”
“They need your guidance, your leadership.”
They would need her strength when they returned after tomorrow’s battle to find what they would find. Their men dead, their houses burned—if he, their chief, did not fight hard enough.
She turned and looked him in the eye. “Nay.”
“Ma, they look to ye. If—Ye must lead them to Chief Radoch at Dunbeg. He will give ye refuge, and since they are farther inland—”
She gasped. “Ye think we will fall to defeat!”
“I do not. I canna tell what will happen.” He had spent half the night totting up numbers in his head. How many wounded. How many dead—people all that he knew and liked. How many warriors he thought the Norse had left.
Ivor wanted revenge. He would not quit.
“You expect me to go off not knowing if ye live or die? Having already lost your da?” To Quarrie’s surprise, his ma pulled him into her arms, a fierce embrace. “I canna.”
He cradled her tenderly. “Ma, if the keep does fall, ye will no’ stand a chance. Ye ken fine what the Norse do to female captives.”
“The keep will no’ fall.”
Quarrie wished he could be so certain.
“Meanwhile, I can tend the wounded. All hands are needed there. Mayhap some o’ them might return to fight. Son, let me battle in my own way.”
What could he say to that?
Borald came to him soon after first light to report that the Norse prisoner had died, and the longboats were on the move.
They had withdrawn under cover of the rain back to Oileán Iur, but by the time Quarrie reached the walls, they rounded it with that almost otherworldly grace they possessed.
Above them, the sky cleared slowly, dark clouds splitting upon pale blue.
It would all end here, today.
*
Urgency crept up through Hulda’s body in a steady progression, increasing as they skirted the Scottish coast and slipped through the offshore islands. The weather had been vile and the voyage a difficult one. She wondered if her crew regretted their hasty decision to back her.
But they were young men with more eagerness for adventure than good sense. Moreover, they looked upon most everything as a jaunt. The time spent at home had bored them. Though they cursed the bad weather, their spirits remained high.
The babe inside her—Quarrie’s babe—had settled in her belly and no longer caused her such sickness, even aboard ship. She’d been able to eat her breakfast this day that would end…only Faeir Odin knew how.
Would she see her love? Would he welcome her with open arms?
The morning was a gloomy one, heavy with cloud, but at least the vicious rain had stopped. Hulda held a place beside Garik at the tiller, but as they passed Oileán Iur, she started forward, the better to see.
It appeared before her eyes like something unveiled in a dream.
The settlement huddled there above the rocks of the shore, looking stark in that ugly morning light.
The four longboats—all of which she recognized—ranged in the water, and the mass of men fighting on the shore were engaged in dire struggle.
The men around her began to exclaim. But Hulda, assailed by horror, fell into what she could only call a vision of the past, a waking dream.
She approached the holding from the sea, ja, only she rode in a tiny boat, one propelled by the oars of the man she—
Loved.
Ja, Quarrie was here on this shore, anchored soundly to her heart, and ja, she carried his child.
But they were together also in this vision, in this leaf of a boat on the water.
The settlement she saw in the vision appeared much different, smaller, but it was the same stretch of coastline.
Her lover’s place. His home under attack.
Seeing it doubly, then and now, she knew the outcome. They would put ashore. He would go to fight. She risked losing him.
What manner of woman must she be to deserve the risk of losing him again and again?
“Hulda? Hulda!” Someone shouted in her ear, taking her out of the vision that left her weak with misgiving.
Helje stood beside her, bawling. “It is Ivor! What do you want to do?”
Fight for him. As he had fought for her, life after life.
From the shattered pieces of her past, she reached for sanity. “Put ashore in our old harbor.”
She was no longer a helpless girl. If he fought, she would stand to fight beside him.
Helje called the order to Garik, who gave a yell. They turned to the shore.
Hulda faced her men. “I will go to fight with Quarrie MacMurtray. For all of you who do not know—he is the faeir of the child I carry. The rest of you, I understand this is not your battle. You may wait in the bay or leave me here and sail off. It is yours to choose.”
The deck of Freya grew silent so they could hear clearly the clamor of battle, the cries of men dying on the shore.
Then Varg said, “The battle does not look to be going well for the Scots. Ivor and his warriors press them hard.”
“Then MacMurtray will possess one more sword. Mine.”
Garik called out, “I have never much liked that Ivor, me. He is a snake.”
“And his crew,” Brynjar added, “forever looking down on us.”
“A score of swords,” called Varg, “will do more good than but one.”
“I am up for a battle,” Helje declared. “And mayhap we can earn a berth here for ourselves.”
“Then put ashore,” Hulda told them, “and we will go.”
Surely this too was familiar? Surely the tiny boat had come ashore, long, long ago, at nearly this same place, with the clamor of desperate battle echoing over the rocks, turning her stomach sick with dread. She had crept through bracken and gorse in this same way, on the tracks of her lover.
Who had gone to fight. To die?
Now they went in a silent mob, not just herself, who had been alone but for the gray hound at her side. The ghost of the hound seemed to accompany her now, as it had in the past.
Quarrie might already be dead.
That did not occur to her until their group paused amid the rocks to eye the battle. Ja, and fierce it was.
Most of Ivor’s men had come ashore. Hulda could see but a skeleton crew on the four boats, one of which appeared to be afire.
Fighting was intense on the shore and up the rise to the keep. Once again, Hulda’s view flickered. The stone keep disappeared, replaced by a sturdy roundhouse where men fought at the very door. Where her love fought.
Was he there now?
Ach, but the roundhouse flickered in turn and stood there no longer. Now there was a gate, one being stormed by Ivor’s men. Indeed, she thought she could see Ivor there, his dark hair flying as he struck, and struck.
The old events, the place, the people, all came round again and again as if borne upon the rim of a wheel, until the lessons were learned.
What was she meant to learn?
No time to wonder now. The men around her were muttering.
“Where?”
“Hulda, where do you want us?”
“At the gate. Ivor is there. But we do not want to be cut down as attackers. When you go in, cry Murtray. Murtray! Do you understand?”
In a howling mob, they ran.
*
The battle had not gone well. The four longboats had swooped in soon after dawn, the Norsemen once more pouring over the sides like a dark tide.
Quarrie thought his defenders were ready.
He had a stand of archers on the rise, and they took out a number of the attackers as they hit the rocks of the shingle.
But once the fighting there became hand to hand, it was too risky to shoot.
They fired on the longboats instead.
Aye, at first Quarrie thought they were holding their own. Keeping the battle to the shore, cutting the invaders down. He saw Borald wounded—along with far too many others of his men—but his captain fought on.
It emerged, however, that the Norse commander had not yet brought all of his men ashore.
The second wave, when they came over the sides of the longboats, drove the defenders back from the shore. Up the rise, fighting and dying every step of the way.
Now Quarrie and what was left of his defenders stood at the very gate. Behind him, more Murtray warriors stood ready to keep the Norse out, if he fell. Others occupied the walls, firing down what arrows they could aim with accuracy.
One of the Norse boats was aflame, struck with burning arrows earlier. Quarrie just hoped those ships had no more warriors to vomit up.
His back to the gate, he had his eye on the Norse leader, prominent in the knot of howling men that faced him. Aye, the very man he recognized from the deck of the longboat where he’d been held captive.
Ivor.
The brown-haired Norseman had wanted to kill him before Hulda put him over the side of the longboat. Had wanted revenge for Jute’s death.
He did still.
By the way he fixed his half-maddened gaze on Quarrie, he wanted to be the man to kill him.
Mayhap he would.
And if Quarrie died here, if he spent his life with his back pressed against the oaken boards of the gate—it would be well worth it, so long as these savages did not gain admittance.
Surely he had been born to defend this place.
A warrior’s ancient skill flowed through his veins.
So long as he killed that bastard who wanted his head before he died.
But that meant he would never see Hulda again.
Borald, bleeding heavily yet still fighting beside him, gasped desperately, “Chief, I donna think the gate will hold.”
The Norse came at them with axes. The damage they could do to wood—and to flesh—was prodigious.
Quarrie pushed forward. “Fall back,” he told Borald. “Behind me. If I fall, do no’ let them in.”
That was when he thought he saw Hulda. A vision surely, a gift here before he died.
She appeared like a warrior, all in her armor, pale braids flying. She came with a group of others, attacking the Norse from behind, a single cry tearing from their throats.
Murtray!
There amid the fighting, Quarrie’s gaze met hers. And time itself stood still.