Chapter Three
When they reached the harbour, Rand surveyed the swiftly burning buildings that were the former hall of Sigmundson and the church and swore under his breath.
Flames appeared to be coming out of the church’s roof, but the hall was where most of the raiders were concentrated, beating their swords against their shields and taunting the people trapped inside both the church and the hall.
The sole purpose of their mission appeared to be to burn people alive. Rand tightened his jaw. He refused to understand how anyone could wish to do such a thing. It pained him that most were from the North, although he was aware that Gaels could also behave without pity.
The number of the raiders failed to alter his hastily formed plan. In fact, they were fewer than he’d initially feared. Further indication, if he required it, that this was a raid meant to discredit Sigmundson and to serve as a warning, rather than an open declaration of war.
He narrowed his gaze, surveying the scene, particularly the well-blocked doors of the hall and sheer number of warriors poised to capture whoever emerged.
Who was the real target? Sigmund or someone else, including Agthir’s dowager Queen?
Whoever was behind this had calculated Sigmund was unlikely to be in the church.
In his years as the high king’s chief enforcer, he’d learned to keep an open mind on how assassins behaved. Caution, rather than jumping to premature conclusions.
He needed to focus on the task at hand, namely vanquishing the raiders or giving them a reason not to remain for any length of time and taking as few prisoners as possible in their departure.
He’d done this sort of thing countless times for the high king—ensuring any raiding Northmen died or departed was part of the price the high king had demanded for giving permission for him to marry the king’s daughter.
He pulled his heavy leather gloves on, settled his helm more squarely, and unsheathed his sword. He surveyed the battlefield for a final time. The attack obviously had been meticulously planned, but the planning had not accounted for him and his men.
‘What happens next?’ Svanna asked, putting a hand on his arm.
‘What do you mean?’
‘I presume you’re not just going to stand watching those Northmen with your sword raised. I presume you will act to distract them and allow the people to be rescued. Strategy is all.’
Despite the sing-song quality, her words were sensible. Most women, including his late wife, would be openly weeping. He winced slightly at the disloyal thought and then pushed it away.
‘Watch.’
He signalled his men to give their battle cry, which they roared out and allowed to echo. As he’d hoped, his other men heard it where they were trying to free the people trapped in the church and answered in kind. His men joined in, and the air reverberated to the sound.
At the combined roars of the full-throated battle cry, the raiders glanced at each other and started to run, presumably back towards where their boats were waiting. He motioned for half of his remaining men to follow.
‘Impressed, my lady?’
She rolled her eyes and crossed her arms. ‘They’re running? Forgive me if I doubt your assessment, but nothing is that easy.’
‘It was planned,’ Rand said, knowing that she needed to understand before they went any further.
‘In and out. They’re not going to stick around and fight, having delivered their message and wrecked Sigmund’s coronation.
They came to sow doubt. They want the surviving petty kings to slip away in the night, disillusioned. ’
‘I hope you’re right about the not-sticking-around part.’ She tilted her head to one side. ‘But all they have done is to make me more determined to resist them. Lord Sigmund will feel the same. We will not cower in fear.’
He could tell from the way her nostrils quivered that she was very frightened, but she kept that fear under control. Most women would be gibbering wrecks when confronted with such chaos, but Svanna seemed to be forged from hard tempered steel. A useful ally at a time like this.
‘What would be the point? They must have assumed that some warriors will escape from the burning church. They want to send a message. To do that, they need those kings alive. No, the real test will come in a few weeks, after they have destroyed any show of unity.’
‘What sort of message? To whom?’
‘That’s what we need to find out.’ He gestured to the warriors who were now rapidly leaving the scene of their crime. ‘Did you recognise any? Any at all?’
She shaded her eyes with a hand, then stiffened and shrank back.
Her face drained to whiter than fresh milk.
‘Turgeis, Drengr’s youngest son leads. I recognise his shield.
He is waving at them to hurry. Wait. He’s stopped.
He’s saluted me. Why me? It is almost like he knew Queen Astrid and I were on Islay. How did he know we were on Islay?’
‘You’re both from Agthir.’ He nodded with grim satisfaction. ‘He wants his message taken back to the new King and Queen. He wants them to know the sons of Drengr have returned to power and will seek vengeance.’
She put a hand on her throat. ‘Returned to power? What is next for Agthir? For this battle?’
‘Those men of mine will follow them and hurry them on their way, but there is little point in engaging them in a pitched battle. Máel Sechnaill will deal with them soon enough.’
Genuine fear shone on her face. ‘Was the church their true target? Or a feint because Turgeis wanted to harm the Dowager?’
‘As you said—how would they know?’
‘I’ll bear that in mind.’ Her lips turned up in a little smile.
A small curl of attraction grew within him at her continued bravery. He dampened it down. It was not the time for such things when he had this delicate mission to complete.
‘Now, shall we go rescue your mother?’
‘To risk repeating myself—the Queen has been my foster-mother for many years, never my actual mother. The difference and explanation is there, if you care to see it.’
He inwardly rolled his eyes. He’d little time for game-playing, particularly at a time like this. A foster-mother in the North had much the same responsibility as a birth-mother. ‘But you will not deny you are normally called Ingebord in Agthir?’
‘We can discuss this fantasy of yours later, but right now we must ensure people are safe, including the former Queen of Agthir, a woman who did not give birth to me.’ Svanna strode off towards the blazing hall.
Rand stared in confusion at the woman. With his salute, Turgeis had obviously indicated that Svanna was the dowager Queen’s daughter, but she swore she was not.
He’d normally leave it, except something deep inside told him that the truth was somehow linked to the mysterious beating he’d received at the hands of Turgeis’s father back in Agthir.
Figure out the mystery and he could finally uncover who had set him up.
She glanced towards him. ‘Are you coming? Or must I do this myself?’
‘We will find her, Svanna,’ he said and internally added that he hoped she was alive, maybe even in the church or escaping through the tunnel, but he doubted anyone could survive that inferno.
He hated to think about what they would uncover when it cooled.
To even attempt a rescue would require a special sort of madness and disregard for personal safety.
But he refused to deny her even the smallest shred of hope.
A smile trembled on her lips. ‘I’ll hold you to that.’
‘You do that, because it is one promise I intend to keep.’
* * *
It seemed to take a lifetime for the barriers to be removed from the hall’s doors.
With every breath Svanna took, she hoped that she’d see the Queen marching alongside Halfr, having escaped from the church, but each time her lungs emptied, the conviction that the Queen was trapped in the hall grew.
And that somehow the sons of Drengr were bent on exacting revenge for their father’s exile and ignominious death.
A shiver went down Svanna’s spine. She’d nearly been sick when she saw Turgeis Drengrson.
Where he was, his two brutish brothers lurked.
She hated to think what would happen to any woman they captured.
Only her dog Tippi and then her nurse’s timely appearance in the herb garden had saved her from Turgeis’s violent embrace that day after Rand vanished.
Ever after Turgeis had occasionally muttered what he intended to do to her once the world went his way, appearing to enjoy her discomfort.
Svanna tightened her fists until her knuckles turned white, trying to beat the panicked thoughts back down inside her.
Collapsing in a heap of fear over his mocking salute would be wrong when she had to find a way to avert a greater disaster.
But right now, she had to allow the men to clear the heavy debris from the doors and break them down.
When the doors were freed and finally flung open, several people stumbled out, dishevelled and gasping. But none of them was Astrid.
‘Where is she? Where is the Queen?’ Svanna asked, grasping the nearest servant’s arm. ‘At the church?’
The man was coughing too much and shaking his head but managed to raise a trembling arm back towards where he’d come.
‘In the hall?’
He nodded, tears coursing down his cheeks.
‘No!’ Svanna heard the cry and knew it had come from her throat. She also knew that her foster-mother was probably severely injured or dead, or she’d have stumbled out with the rest. A faint hope remained if someone was prepared to search.
She couldn’t ask anyone else to do it either. It had to be her. She owed Astrid her life for all the years Astrid had protected her, first taking her under her wing after Svanna’s mother died and then doing her best to keep them both safe while the usurper ruled.
Without giving herself time to hesitate, she plunged in.