Chapter 35
The second the door shut, the pasted smile on Lord Kollungr’s face vanished. And there he was. The side the king never saw, haunting her every nightmarish moment. He was present once again and staring right at her! Raging hell! She swallowed the acid bile burning her throat.
The falcon advanced a step while glaring at them both.
“Do you truly consider you could defeat me?” he said in a telling not asking tone.
“You are not mistaken, my lady, the reach I harness is beyond compare. I find your actions this day rather shocking. For a time, I thought perhaps you would forever lack the courage to face me with your golden prize.” Kollungr’s eyes strayed toward Aonghus behind her.
“’Tis your doing, Scotsman. Getting her back up, a trait I worked years to stifle.
’Tis the damn Scottish in her blood, and you have dragged it back onto the surface!
I will have a heavy-handed task to strangle it out from her once more.
” He paused to return his fiendish attentions to her while her Scotsman’s fingers tightened on her as if he were trying to keep them from throttling the Northman’s neck.
“Again, do you truly consider you could defeat me? Me?” Kollungr sounded the same as a devil making a promise.
“ME! By this time upon the morrow I will have you screaming in my bed and your knight’s massive hide mounted upon my wall! ”
Oh. My. Word. What had she done by bringing them here?
At the threat, a noise rumbled from Aonghus’s chest pressing her shoulders when he began to move her toward the side.
He is advancing to kill the Northern tormentor!
She clasped her fingers over his circling her waist in silent plea: No, lad, don’t.
He paused when the cabin’s door burst back open, with King H?konsson and his guards re-entering.
“Lord Kollungr,” Haco of Stein, the king’s guard, advised impatiently. “Remove them to your ship.”
Aonghus spun her about so he stood like a shield between Lord Kollungr and her. “Nae! You will not take her again.” His voice held a deadly promise.
Think, dammit! There must be a way to air the falcon’s deceit.
Kollungr was cunning, but his evil always reflected an ulterior motive in all he did.
She kicked the panic waves washing over her to the shore.
King H?konsson had spoken on the dowry’s return.
Had…had he mentioned the amount? Pouches, shite, how many full leather pouches had been in the dowry?
The conversation she had overheard the night they thought her asleep right after retrieval. Think dammit, the pouches!
Her stare locked on King H?konsson stepping back toward his throne, she questioned boldly, “How many leather pouches did Lord Kollungr set at your feet upon return?”
The king halted, gazing up at her halfway on his advance to his throne. “Lady Keirah,” the king replied, “three brimming with gold coin.”
DONE FOR ALL TIME, KOLLUNGR!!
She wiped a sweat bead off her brow while quietly stepping from behind Aonghus, giving him an assuring look. “Lord King,” she spoke, then locked her eyes on Lord Kollungr – she would see his reaction. “Nae, there were five.”
The falcon’s eyes flashed fear a mere second. Wings clipped for all eternity! No other will ever be hurt nor deceived nor threatened again!
“King H?konsson” – she turned back toward the king’s roughened features turning the same color as the red wine in the goblet upon the table – “there was a conversation I beheld the eve of the treasure’s seizure.
” She nodded toward Torsten, who appeared flushed.
He was the weakest of Lord Kollungr’s warriors, forever worrying for his hide.
Sv?rn wasn’t present to prop him up like always.
Stay on Torsten. “Lord Kollungr advised Torsten to take the gold into safe keeping till the time shown true. My belief is that the ‘true’ is a higher ambition upon Lord Kollungr’s aspirations to follow in Duke Skule B?rdsson’s footfalls, who challenged your authority for the crown. ”
“Torsten.” The king’s tone was low, with his fingers gripping the back of the chair before him, the knuckles white as Torsten’s face had turned. “I will ask this question only once, and if you speak true, I will let you live. Is there merit to what Lady Keirah has of spoken in my presence?”
Torsten looked twice at Lord Kollungr, who now had his own sweat bead gracing his brow.
Shuffling his feet twice, Torsten mewled, “’Tis true.”
“You are a dead man!” Lord Kollungr lunged at his warrior, enraged.
Keirah heard the king order, “Seize him!” She turned her attention to whom he gave the order to. What the hell? Did King H?konsson just give the command toward Sir James?!
Sir James charged forward, being the closest to Kollungr, and grabbed him by the scruff of his fur-covered neck, withdrawing a hidden dagger from his waistband.
Sir Brayden gasped at the shocking events, yelling over the chaos belonging to the squealing by Lord Kollungr when two more of the king’s royal guardsmen stepped into the room, seizing Torsten.
“Sir James,” Sir Brayden accused, “you are the infernal traitor while you have been laying the treachery at Lady Keirah’s feet every step! ”
“You,” Aonghus accused, hate weighing his voice, “are the one who told King H?konsson of the knights gathering.”
Sir James shoved Lord Kollungr toward King H?konsson’s royal guardsmen before he turned to face her and took a step closer.
“Aye to both accusations,” he said only at her.
“How could you, Sir James? Our lord king held you in highest honor,” she asked softly, fury-driven tears blurring her gaze.
“I wished you had chosen me.” He skipped her question a moment while glaring at Aonghus.
“You took a bastard to your bed in my stead. We could have been the Duke and Duchess of the Isles, as King H?konsson has promised me once the battle is done. A promise made when I set foot with the delegation in Bj?rgvin.” Never-ever.
“It will never be a promised fulfilled,” she vowed.
Sir James replied arrogantly. “It will be done. ’Twas the main purpose I refused any more efforts upon King Alexander’s life after the taster failed in his poisoning duties I considered needed in that moment.
You stayed the attempt, only to have lost your talent as a fate-seer in his arms” – he curled his lip at Aonghus – “giving yourself to a lowborn, and now, my lady, you are worthless.” He re-focused his attention on her.
“I decided that King Alexander will live and will see his lands taken. Just as his late sire failed, so shall he.” His face turned dark.
“Twenty thousand Northmen against a handful of Scots – it will not be a battle but a slaughter. To the promise never being fulfilled? Ha! I will not be on the losing side; you are staring at the one who will ascend as the next Duke of the Isles.” Absolutely not.
“See them to Lord Kollungr’s ship. Make certain Kollungr is walked before all his crew showing his deceit.
Find Sv?rn – he is to be sequestered alongside Torsten and Kollungr,” King H?konsson’s guard ordered.
“Then return. Our lord king’s summons which took him a moment ago from this cabin was for the purpose appearing upon the horizon.
A storm is approaching with an oddly fierce pace.
We are to see our lord king safely to the closest isle – Cumbrae. ”
Keirah met her knight’s eyes. Aonghus! The storm!!
***
As she reached the decks belonging to Lord Kollungr’s ship, her hair blew over her lashes after her wimple had become loose then sailed away into the night air turned violent.
She darted her eyes again, then again, then again, toward the horizon.
Was her mind playing tricks? How could such a massive storm appear as if simply conjured on a whim?
Astonishing. There it was. The lightning danced across the heavens in Mother Nature’s deadly show.
The ship smelled the same: stale odors from those working the lines in a tizzy while seeing to the sails with haste.
All the crewmen – she blinked, yep, their jaws were still on their toes at the sight of Kollungr, their lord, bound and being led by King H?konsson’s royal guard before they were stuffed under the doorway leading below deck.
They had to be taking them to the cell. Only one ship in the fleet had such a feature.
Ack, how it showed Kollungr’s true devious nature.
The nasty place was specifically set below deck for anyone risking insubordination, thus the need for a cog and not a longship.
Sir James saw them onto the passageway after passing Kollungr, who was being led to his quarters in the opposite direction but still in their sights. The falcon stared at her.
Sir James bellowed at the guard leading Kollungr, “His crew saw the result of his traitorous acts against King H?konsson?”
“If you’re asking did they stare at the binding upon his wrists? Yes, the deed was done,” the guard called back over his shoulder, ducking when a lantern swung violently from the rafter.
“Excellent,” Sir James approved, then ordered, “See he is held without food or drink and remains bound even in his cabin. Place a guard with him on watch with another directly outside his door. Sv?rn, once fetched, is to be bound then tied to the post here, while Torsten shall be near the casks tied to that post, where they will both be in the door guard’s line of vision.
A final guard is on the exterior door to the cabin-turned-cell for his former lordship. Two guards present at all times.”
The pair of guards hollered in unison, “’Twill be done!”
To her surprise, Kollungr didn’t address his captor, Sir James, but her. “This is not over, my lady.” Kollungr spat the words while glaring over his shoulder. “It has only begun. You would have preferred my bed to what I will now have planned for you.” Never-ever.
“Widow Inga would beg to differ upon that accord, Northman,” Aonghus ground back at the adversary, whose eyes widened when he discovered she had told him the perverse deeds the Northman had inflicted upon Inga.
“Have you already forgotten my promise at the great hall? You will not be leaving these shores. The gold chain my lady won will be wrapped around your strangled neck by my bare hands. You know the lady I speak of? The one you worked so very hard to smother her spirit, only to have her kick that same spirit straight up your northern arse. Tell me, Northman, how does it feel to be bested by a Scotswoman twofold now?”
Despite the dire circumstance, she stood taller; Sir Brayden gave a low chuckle, and Sir James shoved Aonghus forward.
“Move!” Sir James ordered them toward the next passage doorway when the ship gave a pitch at the waves growing taller outside.
***
The cell was meager, dark, and full of fumes from rat piss. Wonderful. The slam from the square cell door and key clanking seemed a very final sound unto their demise.
She heard Aonghus challenge Sir James one last time. “If the storm takes this ship, why not bind us to the mast and give a chance for survival?” he asked, furious.
A grin the devil would wear marked the Scotsman’s traitorous lips. “Why would I care for such an outcome, Sir Aonghus? If I could seek a lower deck to place your lowborn hide upon, that is where we would be at this moment. May you drown in the bowels of this ship like the three rats you are.”
As soon as the shadow belonging to the devious knight vanished, Sir Brayden stated wryly, “He does not know he is the rat, right?”
“Nae,” Aonghus replied, “he considers arrogance to be the same as glory.” She watched her knight quickly dive onto his knees before her, proceeding to rip up her skirts. He is going for the daggers – their lifeline.
“Um, Aonghus,” Sir Brayden stammered on the watery boards while her cheeks blazed when his fingers began traveling up her calf, sending fire surging through her, “while truly, I admire the vigor you harbor in your passions for your lady, perhaps this moment should keep till we are on solid soil, not surrounded by nearly twenty thousand battle-ready Northmen?”
The ties gave on both blades; her grin matched his when he stood with both weapons in hand.
“Daggers?” Sir Brayden gasped in a hushed tone. “Brillant!”
“The lock you picked for the guard at the Stirling dungeon a year past?” Aonghus reminded.
“Aye.” Sir Brayden sprang forward, took the smaller dagger, and bolted for the lock to commence the quest for their escape.
“Do you consider Alec has reached Deidre upon his own quest?” Her question was weighted with worry while a scrape from metal on metal filled the air.
His somber tone told of his heavy heart as he replied, “I do not know, Cluaran.”
Ouff. She gasped when the ship gave a rough pitch, but before she slammed into the wall, Aonghus’s arms caught her, pulling her safely to him. Looking up into his eyes, she asked, “Once free, where shall we seek?”
“You catch sight of the bark supply ship tethered directly beside King H?konsson’s vessel in between us and the king?” Aonghus cocked an eyebrow. Oh, you wicked knight.
Her grin reappeared. “The initial plan by our lord king,” she said approvingly.
“Aye,” Sir Brayden agreed over his shoulder. “Starve the northern wretches from our shores!”
CLICK! Advance!