Come the Morning (2 page)

Michael alone held his sword when a tall man, clad in chain mail and leather, strode through the doorway. Lord Renfrew. He ran his fingers through his short-cropped russet hair, smiled, and reached for the youngest of old Fergus Mann's sons, catching the lad by the hair in an instant and placing his small sword to the boy's throat, flush against the vein. He held the boy and stared at Michael, the chieftain.

“Ah, now! 'Tis Michael, himself. Laird of these lands,” Renfrew's dark eyes narrowed even as his thin lips curled into a cruel smile, and he mocked the pattern of the Gaelic speech. “Throw down your sword, Michael. Do so. The lad will live.”

“It's a trick, Michael!” the lad, Patrick, called out.

“What terms?” Michael demanded.

“Terms?” He nodded to his men around him. “Bind the men's hands, now, and be quick and thorough. You've got to take great care, you know. They're the result of years of tribal invasions. They've even got enough of your good Viking blood in them, eh, Ragwald, to fight like wild creatures.” He glanced at the Norseman who had either killed Thayer or left him grievously wounded; then he stared down at Thayer. Thayer could not say; he was slumped to the ground. Renfrew looked back to Michael. “Your sword, Michael. Now. Or I kill the lad.”

“He'll kill me anyway!” Patrick stated gravely, swallowing down his fear to make the statement.

Perhaps the lad was right, Michael knew, but in their current situation, it seemed to make no sense to hasten Patrick's death. Michael cast down his sword.

Renfrew smiled with a nod, acknowledging his pleasure. “Bind him,” Renfrew commanded, indicating Michael.

The Norseman at Renfrew's side did as commanded. Michael didn't fight as the man tied his hands behind his back. He looked at Renfrew.

“What now?” the Viking asked Renfrew, having finished binding Michael as commanded.

“Bind them all,” Renfrew said, “for they will submit to me. They will be my prisoners.”

One by one, the men were bound, and when the task was completed, it was Michael who asked once again the question that Renfrew's Viking had already put forward.

“What now?”

Renfrew smiled. “Now? What now, indeed? You are worthless, the lot of you, as hostages. Could I keep you, working you men as slaves? I assure you, many a once-proud Saxon lad still serves his master in England. Ah, it's a fine thought, such proud, noble warriors enslaved to me! But, alas! I'd be ever wary of my back. There's little choice in it, I think. Now, I let my men amuse themselves. Now, I hang you poor savage bastards, one by one. Take him first!” he commanded, indicating Thayer. “He's half-dead already, but such deadweight should make a good fall, eh? We can test the rope for the others.”

The attackers filed out of the cottage, kicking and shoving the bound Scotsmen, laughing as they struggled to manage Thayer's great bulk. The last of them departed through the cottage door; it was the Norseman who had so swiftly skewered Thayer. He paused before leaving. “You'll pardon us, good Scotsmen, eh? We'll not leave you hanging long.”

Laughing with pleasure at his own deadly humor, he exited the cottage.

“You should have kept your sword, Michael,” Patrick said glumly. “You'd have brought down at least one of the great, ugly bastards.”

They could hear deep, guttural laughter in the night as the enemy struggled still with Thayer's body. Then suddenly, they were startled by a thumping sound within the confines of the cottage. A large dark shadow fell behind Patrick, who had been pushed closest to the rear thatched window. Patrick gasped, then held his tongue.

“By all that's holy—” Michael began, but Patrick threw up his hands, freed from the leather ties that had bound them. The shadow rose. It was Great William's lad; Michael had seen him fall in battle, seen him crumple atop his father. He'd been sure the boy, Waryk, was dead. But he lived. Streaked with mud and blood, he was a length of darkness. All that was light of him was the blue fire in his red-rimmed eyes as he stared around himself at the men left to their turn at death in the cottage. Not fourteen yet, he stood well above many a full-grown man with the breadth of shoulder that would eventually fill out with power. This had been his first test of arms, but Michael had seen him work with his father often enough in the open fields, learning his swordplay.

“Sweet Jesu,” Michael breathed.

The lad started toward him. “Your father, your brother,” Waryk said quietly to Patrick, indicating the bound hands of the others in the room. “I'll free Michael.”

Yet even as he approached Michael, the Viking warrior appeared in the doorway once again. “What's this, eh? A nit left alive among the dead lice! A young one for the hanging, this now!” he declared.

Waryk reached down for Michael's discarded sword. The blond giant laughed. “A cub would fight with wolves, eh? Have it your way. May not be so merciful a death as the quick snap of a rope, for I'll slice you from stem to stern, my fine boy!” he claimed.

The muscled warrior laughed and used his great strength to swing his battle-ax. Waryk watched him for no more than seconds, then let out a cry. The cry filled the night, like something unearthly, borne on the wind. He charged the man straightforward, and before the man's ax could fall, the “nit” had pierced him through the gullet with his sword. Lord Renfrew's Nordic mercenary fell to his knees, shock lighting his eyes 'til death glazed them over.

All in the room stared. Patrick paused in his attempts to slice his father's bonds. Michael forgot that nooses still awaited them all.

“What goes in there?” came a cry from outside.

“Quick!” Michael ordered.

Once again, Patrick and Waryk set forth to free the men. They worked in swift silence. When another of the enemy came to the door, Waryk spun around again and, this time, met a swordsman. The clash of steel alerted those outside that there was trouble in the cottage, where the last of those they had conquered should have been making peace with their Maker.

Now it was the Scots who had the advantage, for as each attacker crossed the cottage threshold, he was set upon. Soon the blood ran thick beneath the firelight, and men tripped upon the bodies of others as they fought. Renfrew's men began to back away, stumbling in their haste now to be free from those so intent upon vengeance. They were followed by the Scots.

Out in the moonlight, Michael was so fiercely engaged in battle that he was unaware at first of the sound of horses' hooves pounding against the earth as a troop of men approached them. He hammered the head of a combatant with his battle-ax, then swung quickly to see who was riding down upon them as at last he heard the thunder of hoofbeats.

The king. The king had come. His warriors pitched themselves into the battle with the enemy.

Their enemy
. Now outnumbered. Dead and dying on the field of those they had slain before.

Yet David was commanding mercy; the survivors were casting down their weapons. The sound of a single fight was all that remained, steel clanging against steel in the night.

Michael saw that it was the lad, Waryk, son of the man they had called Great William, known as William de Graham. The boy had Norman and Viking blood of his own in his veins; his father had traveled northward with the king from borderlands farther to the east, lands invaded time and again by the Vikings, and ruled by them for a time as well. “From the gray home,” or so the name—according to both the Norman and the old English. But the name might have been borrowed from the lad's mother as well. Legend had it that the most ancient of the Scottish people, the lad's mother among them, had introduced the name Graeme into the borderlands. The boy's maternal border kin might have come from a family with an old and illustrious Scottish history. A Graeme had been a general with the armies of an ancient king from the very early years of Christianity, King Fergus, and this Graeme who had served him had led the king's army when it had breached the Roman wall set against the “barbarians”—the old races of Scotland. Graeme's Dyke still existed at the remnants of the old wall. God knew. Names came from anywhere. Some men were just Thomas, Michael, Fergus, or so on, and some took on their father's names, which became their family names. His own great-grandfather had been Innish, and now, he was of the family, clan MacInnish, just as a Norseman might be Eric, Olaf's son—though with the Norse, he was more likely to become Eric Blood-Mace or the like. Even the king's family name, Canmore, had come from his father, and the old Gaelic Caenn Mor, meaning big head.

It had become a noble name.

Whatever the ancestry in the boy's name, it didn't much matter. Today, the lad was showing his worth as a man.

His worth, and his pain. Anguish that created raw courage and defied fear and even death.

Men fallen all around him, the boy fought still. He had taken on Lord Renfrew himself, and no matter how the skilled, hardened, and experienced Renfrew attacked, battered, and countered, the lad was there.

Waryk had found his father's sword; he fought with it. When Renfrew dared breathe, the boy charged him. Renfrew was skilled. He charged, and charged again, his onslaughts merciless, but the Graham neither lost his balance nor his sword. What advantage Renfrew had in power, the lad countered with speed and subtlety. Still, it appeared that the boy, battered, black-and-blue, and crusted with blood, must eventually give. Renfrew attacked with a practiced, relentless aggression, his great muscles swinging his sword again and again with grim determination. He would not cease until he had killed.

Yet right when Renfrew lifted his sword above his head to slice down with the coup de grâce, Waryk de Graham used Renfrew's bid for momentum against him. He swung his sword upward with a startling, eerie force, impaling Lord Renfrew just below the ribs.

Renfrew clutched the sword, dying. He stared at the lad, still arrogant, stunned, and in disbelief.

Yet there was no denying death. When the man fell at the foot of the lad, the boy didn't move. He didn't reclaim the sword. He stood there shaking.

Michael hadn't realized that the king, still mounted, sat his steed just to his own back. The king nudged his horse forward. “My God, who has bred this lion pup?”

“Your own man, sire,” Michael said wearily. “Great William who lies yonder.”

“Ah!” David said with understanding.

“I shall see to the boy,” Michael promised. “William was married to the last of an ancient family. The lad's mother was my own distant cousin, Menfreya, who is now long deceased. The lad has no more real kin, so his friends must be his family.”

“Nay, good man. Be his friend, and his family, but I shall see to him, I will be his guardian now, and I warrant that one day he will be a great warrior—and then he will be my champion.”

David, already a mature man, virile, a king of whom the united Scots claimed themselves proud, walked his great steed to the center of the carnage, where the boy still stared down at the dead man, shaking.

“Young Gra—ham!” the king called. He was well versed in all three languages that might have been spoken among his peoples, the old “Scottish” or Gaelic, the “Teutonic” or English, and the Norman French brought over by William the Conqueror and the fruitfully reproductive knights who had accompanied him. Now, he spoke the Scottish tongue, placing a heavy Gaelic accent and burr upon the syllables. The lad did not at first respond. “Graham!” the king repeated.

The boy looked at him at last, as if realizing it was his name now being called. David—tall, lean, handsome in his saddle—looked down upon the lad, who had promise of an even greater height and physical power. He assessed the lad carefully. David was no fool. He'd had years to study the art of kingship; he'd seen the power of the Norman kings. He'd seen their weaknesses, and he knew their strengths, and strength, he had determined, lay with people.

Though he learned much among the Norman-English, he was the king of Scotland, and he was loyal to the Scots. This was his kingdom. He weighed all men, friends and enemies, carefully. He was a good judge of character, quick to find both the frailties and virtues within a man. Now, he weighed the lad.

“You are the Graham,” David said gently.

The boy's shoulders jerked in a spasm. He moved at last, turning to look at the place upon the battlefield where his kin lay dead.

“I am,” he said. He fixed his piercing blue eyes upon the king. He had just slain a giant. His lower lip trembled, his eyes glistened with tears. His family lay dead. “I am, sire. I, alone.”

“Your father was a fine man. A great man. I cherished him, as a warrior, and a friend.”

“Aye, sire.”

David looked around at the men who had survived both battle and treachery. In silence now, they watched the scene unfolding. David dismounted from his horse. He drew his own sword. Nothing so gained the loyalty and love of people as pageantry, and recognition of heroic deeds well-done.

“Kneel, boy!” he commanded.

At first, the boy did not seem to understand. Perhaps he thought David meant to slay him.

“Kneel!” the king commanded.

The lad Waryk fell to one knee. The king set his sword upon his shoulders. “I, David, by the Grace of God king of this united Scotland, do knight thee here and now for incredible valor upon the field of battle.” His sword still set upon the lad's shoulders, he looked around at the fighting men of the field and his own escort of armed men and nobility. “Waryk, son of William, you are now Sir Waryk Graham, in honor of your father's kin, and your mother's. All here have witnessed your courage, and these events. They will know that from this day forward, Waryk, son of the great William de Graham, that though I can give you no such title now with lands to support it, you shall be known as Laird Lion, you will be my champion, and I will look out for your interests in the years to come for this night's work. When the time is right, lad, there will be much to be gained, perhaps through advantageous marriage. Sir Waryk de Graham, Laird Lion! Your father's honor lives on in you.”