Chapter 30 #2
The door at the top was barred from the outside—oak reinforced with iron bands. Ragnar gripped the bar, wrenched it free with a force that ripped the brackets from the wall, and shouldered through.
Small room. Dim. A single arrow slit letting in grey morning light.
Isolda knelt against the far wall, wrists bound behind her, dark hair loose around a face that was pale but unmarked. Her grey-green eyes found his across the room, and the sound she made was not a sob—it was quieter than that.
Ragnar crossed the room in three strides. His broadsword clattered to the stones beneath as his hands found the ropes at her wrists.
The ropes fell, her hands came free. He drew his dirk and pressed the hilt into her palm, closing her fingers around it.
“Stay behind me,” he said, his voice scraped raw. “Dinnae leave me side.”
“Ragnar.” Her fingers tightened on the dirk until her knuckles went white. “I kent ye’d come.”
Only then did he allow himself one breath. Two.
Now finish it.
They descended into a courtyard that smelled of smoke and copper. Douglas’s garrison was breaking—men throwing down weapons, stumbling for the gatehouse, tripping over the bodies of comrades. Erik held the walls. Magnus and Harald’s warriors poured through the western breach.
Then, his eyes spotted movement along the eastern wall. A lean figure in dark leather, climbing toward the lower section where the curtain met the cliff’s edge. Moving fast and deliberate, like a man who’d planned his exit long before the first blade was drawn.
Ragnar turned to Isolda. “Stay wi’ Erik. He’s at the gatehouse.”
Her mouth opened.
“Please.”
She searched his face, then nodded and moved toward the gatehouse without looking back.
He ran.
Douglas had nearly reached the wall’s edge when Ragnar’s closed the distance. The wind off the headland hit him in the face.
“Graham.”
Douglas stopped. His hand found his sword hilt before he turned—a lightweight blade. His narrow eyes found Ragnar’s.
“The Stag himself honorin’ me with his presence.” Douglas’s voice carried the cold composure of a man accustomed to watching other people’s worlds collapse. “I’ll admit, I expected ye tae send one of yer pets me way. Would’ve made things simpler.”
“Naethin’ about this is goin’ tae be simple fer ye.”
Douglas struck first. He was fast, the lighter blade coming in low, angling upward, aimed at the gap beneath Ragnar’s guard arm.
Ragnar turned it aside, but Douglas had already pivoted, shifting the parry with a screech of steel, his second cut whistling toward Ragnar’s exposed flank
Steel bit into leather, stinging like a brand.
Ragnar adjusted, planting his feet on the wet stone, his eyes focused.
“She screamed fer ye, Ketilsson.” Douglas circled, his breathing controlled. “On the ship. Yer name, over and over. Dae ye ken what that sounded like? Pathetic. Screechin’ like a—”
Ragnar’s grip tightened, something raw surging through him. Then, his sword crashed into Douglas’s with a force that drove the man backward three steps and nearly knocked the weapon from his grip.
“Keep talkin’,” Ragnar said quietly. “See where it gets ye.”
“The Pact is still a lie, Ketilsson. Ye’ve proved naethin’ except that a Norseman can be led by his cock tae—
Ragnar stepped wide. Not wild. Not reckless. He stepped toward Douglas’s next cut before the blade could build momentum, caught the lighter sword on the flat of his own, and shoved. The impact drove Douglas’s blade wide and threw the man off-balance for a single heartbeat.
That was all he needed.
Ragnar denied Douglas the angle and brought his sword down in a crushing overhead that shattered his guard entirely. The lighter blade skittered toward the cliff’s edge.
Douglas staggered. His hand went to his belt for a hidden dirk. He lunged.
Ragnar caught the wrist and twisted. Bone cracked.
Douglas screamed, and Ragnar gripped his sword with both hands and raised it above his head.
“She screamed me name because she kent I’d come.”
Then the Stag of Uist drove his blade straight through the centre of Douglas Graham’s chest.
The blade punched through leather, through muscle, through the cold ambition that had driven a man to burn villages, murder innocents and steal a woman he’d never seen as anything more than a lever to pull.
Douglas’s hazel eyes went wide. His mouth moved—but whatever final cruelty he’d been crafting died with the breath that carried it.
Ragnar held him there, pinned on steel, and watched the light leave. He withdrew the blade, and Douglas Graham crumpled to the stone. Ragnar stood over the body. His chest heaved, his ribs burning while the gash seeped into the ground beneath.
Below in the courtyard, the last resistance guttered out. Weapons clattered to stone.
‘Tis over.
He found Isolda at the gatehouse, his dirk still gripped in her fist, standing apart from Erik’s men with her shoulders squared and her chin raised. She watched him cross the courtyard, her gaze tracking every step, every bloodstain, every line carved into his face.
When he reached her, he took the dirk from her hand sheathed it at his belt before he pulled her against his chest.
Her fingers twisted into his leather vest. Her face pressed against his throat. He felt the dampness of tears she’d never admit to and wrapped his arms around her so tightly that nothing could fit between them.
She pulled back just enough to look at him, her eyes red-rimmed and fierce, her face pale beneath the grime.
“Ragnar, I… I need ye tae ken—”
“I ken.” His hand covered hers where it lay against his chest, pressing her palm harder against the frantic beat.
The words he wanted to say felt too sacred for a blood-soaked courtyard.
So he pressed his forehead against hers and she nodded against him, a small, shattered movement that told him she understood.
“Ye’re bleedin’.”
“‘Tis naethin’.”
“‘Tis never naethin’ with ye.”
But she pressed closer instead of pulling back, and her fingers curled tighter into his vest, and that was answer enough.
Around them, four jarls’ banners rose over Mingary’s tower where Douglas’s had flown an hour before. Warriors moved through the courtyard with quiet efficiency, securing what remained.
And Ragnar held his wife in the center of it all, his chin resting on the crown of her head.
Douglas Graham was dead. The Pact stood. The war was over.
But all Ragnar could think, standing there with Isolda’s heartbeat hammering against his ribs, was that he’d nearly lost the only thing worth keeping.
And he would spend every day he had left making sure it never happened again.