Sandra Hill - [Vikings I 05] (3 page)

“Actually, ’tis not uncommon for highborn women to make such demands.” Bolthor had been speaking while Rurik’s mind was wandering. “Remember Gyda, daughter of King Eric of Hordaland. She refused to wed with Harald till he defeated his enemies and united all Norway. And Harald did it, too, but not afore making a vow to never bathe or cut his hair till he completed his mission. Thereafter, he was known as Harald Fairhair.”

Everyone knew the story of King Harald, and each sat or stood contemplating Bolthor’s words. Moments later, one by one, they turned to gape at Rurik, as if wondering why he had not made such a vow. But then, they knew that Rurik was prideful of his personal appearance, and was known to wear only the best crafted fabrics for his tunics and overmantles, adorned with embroidery and precious brooches of gold or silver. Colored beads were often intertwined in the war braids at the sides of his long hair. Never
would he go for an extended period without washing the silky black tresses. They did not call him Rurik the Vain for naught… a title he disdained, but had earned.

“Methinks ’tis time for a saga,” Bolthor announced.

Everyone groaned… softly, so they would not offend the gentle giant.

“What happened to your idea of embarking on odes?” Rurik made the mistake of asking.

Everyone except Bolthor scowled at his lack-wittedness, as if they at least knew not to encourage the fellow’s less-than-artistic efforts.

“Sagas, odes, poems, eddas, ballads … I am willing to try all of them,” Bolthor answered optimistically.

Oh, God!

“This is the saga of Rurik the Great,” Bolthor commenced.

“I thought Tykir was the one you called ‘great’ in your sagas,” Rurik said. “You were always saying, ‘This is the saga of Tykir the Great.’ ”

Bolthor waved a hand airily. “There can be more than one great Viking.”

Rurik did groan aloud then.

“Well, if you insist.” Bolthor apparently decided to change his opening. “This is the saga of Rurik the Greater.”

“Greater than what?” someone mumbled sarcastically.

Rurik was about to throw a wad of peat moss at whoever it was who had spoken, but everyone stared at him with seeming innocence.

Bolthor had that dreamy look on his face that he
always got when he was inspired to create a new poem. Then he began:

Disgusted, Rurik tossed his knife to the ground, giving up on removing the peat sludge from his boots and wool braies. Instead, he stood and stomped off to a nearby lake… or what the Scots referred to as a
loch. It was a strange land, Scotland. At times, its barren, mountainous landscape could appear soulrendingly bleak, and at others, beautiful, almost in a spiritual sense. Not unlike his own harsh Norway.

The weather was often dreary and dismal. A mist, which the Norse referred to as
haar
, poured from the North Sea, even on warm, clear days, like today.

Hearing a loud screeching noise, Rurik glanced upward to see a large golden eagle soaring lazily over the moors, a young red deer in its powerful talons. No doubt it would make a tasty meal for the birdlings left in some lofty aerie. At times like this, he missed his dog, Beast, a wolfhound that he had left behind at Ravenshire in Northumbria to breed with one of his friend Eirik’s bitches.

Yea, there was a beauty of sorts in this stark land he had come to hate so much.

Rurik waded, garments and all, into the icy water. Then, with a teeth-chattering exclamation of “Brrrrr!” and a full-body shiver, he dove underwater and swam till the water cleansed him.

When he finally came up out of the water, he heard Bolthor call out to him, “Dost think it wise to go into the lake without a weapon? The Scottish legends speak of huge monsters that reside in the depths of their lochs … monsters that resemble a combination of fish and dragon. Hmmm. I recall one of their epics that relates the story of
Each uisage
, which means something like water horse, and…”

Rurik didn’t wait for more. He dove underwater once again. He would rather risk fierce water dragons, or freezing some precious body part, than hear another of Bolthor’s horrible sagas.

But Rurik did wonder as he swam.

Would his quest ever end?

Was he doomed to wear the blue face mark for life?

Why had the witch cursed him so?

And where was Maire hiding?

Hah! She was no doubt living the soft life in some Highland castle chamber, uncaring of all the havoc she wreaked. And she
was
fully aware of his fruitless search for her, he would warrant, and laughing joyously about the idiocy of it all.

The same day, nearby at Beinne Breigha

Maire was living in a wooden cage … a
cage
, for the love of St. Colomba! And she was so miserable she felt like weeping.

“Puir lassie! The old laird mus’ be rolling over in his grave at yer sorry state. Tsk-tsk,” Nessa, her maid and companion, said to her.

Sorry
state
didn’t begin to describe Maire’s predicament. She was locked inside a wooden cage that hung suspended high in the air from a long plank fixed to the parapet above the courtyard. Far below, a large pit had been dug and filled with snakes, the top covered with a huge woven mat. If she jostled her cage too much, or someone tried to rescue her, there was always the danger of falling into the pit, cage and all.

Thus far, she’d been in the cage for five days, and would remain there till she agreed to betray all that was precious to the Campbell clan … something she would never do. All her people—crofters and fighting men alike—had fled to the woods, at her orders, taking her son with them. Other than the MacNab guards stationed about her keep, the only ones left were a
few servants and those too old or frail to leave their homes. Duncan MacNab showed up periodically to shout at her and issue threats.

Maire didn’t even look up from where she sat now, her back pressed against the wooden bars of her “prison,” as Nessa clucked and tutted at her while she leaned out over the parapet, passing her a bowl containing her one meal of the day—boiled neeps and flat bread. By her doleful tone, you’d think that Nessa was an elderly servant and not a young widow a few years older than Maire’s twenty-five.

“Well, my father has rolled more than once over my problems these many years he’s been gone.”

“Doona be disrespectin’ the dead. Yer father was a good man, despite the troubles that seem to flock yer way,” Nessa chided, the sympathetic tenderness on her face belying her reprimand.

Maire was not in the mood for arguing. In fact, she was not in the mood for anything other than a hot bath and a soft bed. But she had work to do …
Magick
, if you will… if she was going to reverse the bad luck that had befallen her people.

“What? What are ye about, Maire?” Nessa asked curiously.

Maire was standing in her cage now, facing east, and was preparing to center herself with legs shoulder-width apart and two hands wrapped around one of the wooden bars. She wished she had her staff with her, but the wooden bar would have to do.

“Ooooh! Doona tell me. Yer gonna try the witchly rites again, I wager. One thing is for certain … if ye try that whirling dance nonsense, yer gonna land yer-self in a snake pit. I swear, my heart canna take much
more of… Blessed Lord, why are ye lookin’ crosseyed? Is it the evil eye come over ye?”

“Shhh! I need to focus if I want to bend my bars so that I can escape.”

“The last time ye focused—two days past—it was on the MacNab guards below. Ye said yer spell would cause ’em to run off. Instead, ye gave them a bad case of the running bowels. Not that some of us did not find humor in that mistake. And then there was the other spell what was gonna give the MacNabs flight, right off Campbell lands. Bless the Saints! We had two dozen roosters and hens a-squawkin’ and a-flappin’ their wings. None of the hens would lay today, by the by.”

Maire sniffed. “Sometimes, I don’t concentrate hard enough, or I get the spells a little mixed up.”

“A little mixed up! Lassie, when ye tried that wind-riding bizness the first day the MacNabs took ye captive, ye promised ye would end up on the other side of the glen come mornin’. The only one ridin’ the wind was Grizelle, and I swear she will ne’er forgive ye fer that affair… her falling off the parapet like an eagle about to take flight, with her gown blowing in the wind, exposing her bare rump. Good thing that young MacNab lad caught her, though he was laughing so hard they both fell to the ground.”

It was true. Maire was not a very competent witch. In truth, she probably wasn’t a witch at all, despite having studied with the old crone, Cailleach, when she was a young lass. But Cailleach was long gone now. What choice did she have? There was no one else to rely on. She had to try.

“Either be still, or go away, so that I can concentrate.
You’re not helping at all. At least I’m trying. What else would you have me do?”

“Pray,” Nessa offered with dry humor. She shifted from foot to foot, still not leaving.

“Well, what else did you want to say? I can tell you have something on your mind.”

“Aye, that I do. I hate to burden ye with more troubles when yer up ta yer oxters in troubles as ’tis, but there be darkness on the horizon …
again
. The Viking is back.”

“Let him come,” Maire said with a sigh of surrender. She knew, without questioning, which Viking Nessa referred to. That scoundrel, Rurik, had been scouring all of Scotland for her these past few years. Little did he know that the clans, which fought each other over the littlest dispute, stood together when a hated Norseman was involved. They’d been more than willing to hide the location of her Campbell clan-stead,
Beinne Breagha
, or Beautiful Mountain, which was located high in the hills. The neighboring clans enjoyed leading the Vikings on a merry chase, in full circles at times. Until recently, that is.

When she’d engaged the wrath of Duncan MacNab—her brother by marriage and the most evil man who’d ever walked the Highlands—Maire and her clan had developed a whole new set of problems. There was no longer any time for worries about irate Vikings. The very future of
Beinne Breagha
was at stake now.

“Let him come? Let him come?” Nessa practically squealed. “After all these years, we should invite him in like a welcome guest?”

Maire shrugged, then waved a hand at her surroundings.
“You ask why I no longer resist meeting the Viking? What can he do to me now?”

Immediately, Nessa’s countenance softened. “Och, sorry I am to have raised me voice. Ye be a good girl, despite all that dabblin’ in the witchly arts. I don’ mean to hurt yer feelings, Maire, but ye are the sorriest witch the Highlands ever saw. Ye are no Cailleach. Mayhap ye really should take up prayer. Have ye e’er considered a nunnery?”

Maire lifted her chin in affront.

“Oh, girl, doona be gettin’ yer feathers ruffled jest ’cause ye can’t get a spell right. If ye want to be upset, be upset over the sad scrape we are in … the worst of all the Campbell bad times. ’Tis not fitting that ye should be the one to suffer most. That Duncan MacNab is Lucifer’s brother, I warrant.” She was staring woefully at the horrible cage as she spoke. “Who but the devil hisself would do such a wicked thing to a woman?”

“Who indeed?” But wait. Here they were blathering when a more important worry assailed Maire. “How is Wee-Jamie?” she inquired anxiously. Her four-year-old son’s well-being was of highest concern. And not just because of her maternal love. If the MacNab got his hands on her boy, she would be forced to give all he demanded. And that would spell doom for what remained of her clan.

Nessa’s worried brow relaxed. “The boy is fine. Old John and the others have hidden him well in a cave in the forests. The MacNab willna set his filthy paws on Jamie, even if there be only one Campbell left standing.”

Maire nodded.

“I ken you have other dilemmas, dearie, but ye mus’ be careful. And doona be discountin’ the danger posed by the Viking. He is closer than he’s ever been afore,” Nessa pointed out. “He’ll ne’er give up till he finds ye.”

Maire shrugged, though inside she was not so calm as she pretended to be. It wasn’t that she didn’t feel justified in putting the blue mark on Rurik’s face. He’d taken her maidenhead, then spoken blithely of going off the next day to his homeland, as if she had not just given him a woman’s most precious possession. But that was not the main reason for her taking such drastic action. She’d asked him to take her with him, foolish wench that she had been. At the time, she’d had good reason to want to be absent from her homeland … for a while, at least. But what did the brute do when she’d asked? He’d laughed at her.

Well, she’d gotten the last laugh.

But she was not laughing now.

“Mayhap ’tis time to face the Viking. Mayhap my marking him was the start of all our troubles. Mayhap I need to remove the mark in order to reverse the curse that seems to have struck us Campbells.”

“Hmmrn,” Nessa pondered. “But what if he … the Viking … hurts ye?” Nessa asked.

“He won’t,” Maire answered. For some reason, she did not think he would do her physical harm.