Warrior and the Wanderer (26 page)

“What are you thinking about?” he asked, twirling a lock of her hair around his finger.

“The future.”

“Aye? Big subject. Anything in particular?”

“Yer time.”

Ian paused, letting her hair unwind from his finger. “Am I to assume you believe what I claim?”

“I have decided I have no reason no’ to believe ye.”

He wanted to ask her exactly why, but decided against interrogating her. It didn’t matter. She believed him.

“Is there anything specific that you’d like to know about my time?”

“What are the lassies like?” Bess, the woman was asking this, rather than Lady Campbell, Highland warrior princess.

Ian held her in his arms, pulling her on top of him as he lay back on the blanket they had spread on the floor. She snuggled onto his body, as he held her so tight.

“I have seen many women, Blaze,” he said. “But none of them comes close to you in beauty and spirit.”

“I am a simple lass,” she argued. “I have seen but a wee bit of the world. I cannae believe that in a time where ye claim can fly from place to place, where the whole world is laid bare at your whim, that I would stand high and tall above any woman ye’ve known.”

He held her even tighter.

“Blaze, all of that doesn’t mean shite when one walks through the world with a dead heart. You have awakened mine.”

“A man who sings with as much beauty and passion couldnae have a dead heart.”

“I used a thimbleful of passion in my songs compared to what I use when I make love to you.”

She leaned down and kissed him, giving him fully of her own passion.

She broke the kiss and said, “Aye, that I believe.”

He reached up and smoothed her hair back from her porcelain forehead. “Blaze, there has been nothing in my life that made me feel as good as I do when I’m with you.”

“Me as well.” She kissed him again.

Bess then sat up, straddling him. Ian held her hips as she slipped snugly over him, releasing a long sigh as she slipped over him.

“Blaze,” he breathed, arching his neck hard, aiming his chin to the ceiling. “Blaze. Blaze. Blaze. Blaze….”

“Mmmmmm,” she sighed.

This was their own private song, their own special dance. He would never let the memory slip through his fingers when he returned to the world he left behind. The world that he was driving away from searching for redemption, a fresh start. I don’t want to go back, he thought as he made love to Bess beside the fire in a castle.

But he had to go back. Didn’t he? Only some bloody mysterious Dane knew the answer.

Bess collapsed on top of him, her body shuddering as he brought her to the height of pleasure. He held her tight, refusing to let go, just lay there feeling her breathing calm. Then Bess fell asleep in his arms.

He slipped out from under her. Then he gathered Bess in his arms and carried her to the massive bed. He tucked the covers over her and smoothed her hair over the pillow. Ian gave her a kiss. He would be back, but he needed to find the answer to the question that gnawed at him. And he knew where to look for it.

He got dressed and stepped out into the corridor. The first person he found so late at night was a sleepy guard outside of the Queen’s chamber.

“Where’s the prison?” he asked the guard. “The gaol?”

Rubbing his eyes, the guard asked, “Why, m’Lord?”

“Just call me Ian. Not ‘m’Lord.’ Would you point me in the right direction?”

“There isnae gaol,
Ian
. Unless ye mean the post out in the bailey. That’s where we chain prisoners before taking them to Edinburgh.”

“Alright, point me in the direction of the bailey.”

“I’ll escort you.”

“Point the way,” Ian said firmly. “I don’t want an escort.”

The guard did as he was told and pointed to his right down the corridor. After twisting through the castle passageways and getting lost a few times, Ian stepped outside into the castle bailey. He strolled over the cobbles, mud and straw until he reached a pole festooned with iron chains.

Ian looked up at countless stars arching overhead, the pale foam of the Milky Way on the dark sky more vibrant than he had ever seen.

“Why do I want to I leave this?” he asked himself.

“That is not the question you should ponder.”

Ian stared ahead into gloom. “I thought I’d find you here,” he said to the shadow walking toward him across the straw-covered mud. The starlight gave the bailey an odd purple cast.

“How did you know to find me here?” the shadow asked.

Ian gestured to the pole with chains for prisoners destined to be hauled off to Edinburgh prison. “This is a last chance place like the other paces you and I have met, the petrol station in the Nevada desert and Edinburgh prison. My instincts were right that you’d show up here, especially when the balance is threatened.”

The shadow nodded. The hood slipped from the grizzled blonde head. “May I tell you why you must leave?”

Ian folded his arms across his chest, across fine Italian leather and scratchy Scottish wool. He had taken the plaid from before the hearth and wrapped it plaid around his waist, and tossed the swag across his leather jacket. A tribute to this time and place, and to Bess. And oddly comforting to wear around his body.

“Go ahead,” he said. “Tell me.

The Dane cleared his throat. “In a word, retirement.”

“Retirement?”

“I wish to retire, to Valhalla, that’s what you Earth folk call it. But to me it is paradise for life everlasting. I have proved my worth, now I wish the eternal rest promised me by death.”

“You want to die?”

“I am dead. I died in a raid off the coast of Iceland in the year one thousand and three. I have served the earth and its inhabitants for over a millennium. I deserve my reward. If you don’t heed my order and go back to where you are supposed to be, the earth will wobble within and without, disaster will ensue, and I’ll have to spend another thousand years fixing things again.”

“What disaster, exactly?” Ian asked.

The Dane looked about nervously with those ice blue eyes, before replying, “I do not know. Nothing. Everything. No one has asked that before. And
no one
has not wanted to go back.”

“Things have changed since I saw you last.”

“Love, is it?” the Dane asked with a good dose of sarcasm.

“Kiss my arse, you Danish Flying Dutchman,” Ian said. He quickly reigned in his emotions and asked, “Is there another way to keep the balance without sending me back?”

“No…well, perchance…no…but ’tis impossible.”

Ian stepped forward. “What is it? You know something. Tell me.”

“There might be a way, but I don’t think you can do it.”

“Tell me, dammit!” His voice echoed around the bailey. He lowered it. “Tell me.”

“If you can find another, from this time, who is far better suited to take your place in your time.”

“My twin?”

“No. Just someone to fill in the hole you have made in the future by wishing to remain here.”

“Another failed musician?”

“Too specific. One with the ambitions you had before I sent you here. Human ambition keeps balance in the world.”

“Is that all? Why don’t you just ask me to fly to the moon too?”

“I know ’tis been done once.”

Ian sighed. “That’s the only way? I have to find a replacement?”

“
Ja.
”

“Bloody hell.”

“You have four days to find another,” the Dane said. “Think of the man you left in the Nevada desert. Then you’ll know what kind of man to find.”

“What does that mean?” Ian asked.

The Dane darkened into s shadow. And the shadow dissolved into the purple starlight in the bailey.

“What the hell does that mean!” he shouted, not caring if he brought the entire King’s army down on top of him.

Then a voice spoke in his head.
The man you left in the Nevada desert is not the man you are now.

Chapter Fifteen: Unseen Menace

“T
each me to ride a horse,” Ian said.

Bess glanced over her shoulder at him. Ian shot her a grin.

“I’m bloody serious,” he told her just in case she did not believe him. Her stare told him she did not.

“Ye are riding a horse,” she said with a smile. “In case ye hadnae noticed.”

“Ha ha. I mean it. Show me. Let me get in front. You ride in back for a while.”

She slowed her mount. “We’re to Cambuskenneth Abbey in a league. No’ far. We’ll rest a wee bit and continue on.”

“How long is a league anyway?” he asked, watching her slip from the saddle.

She stared up at him and shrugged. “’Tis no’ far.”

“Thanks, Blaze. That makes everything crystal clear.” He slipped forward in the saddle.

She handed him the reins. He reached down and took her by the hand and gave her a boost. She joined him on her mount, behind him.

“Now what do I do?” he asked blinking away the drizzle that fell ever since they had left Stirling an hour or so ago. The horse shifted uneasily under them as if it knew a novice had taken control of the reins.

“Tap the beast’s sides gently with yer heels and snap the reins. Make a sound like this…” Bess clucked her tongue. “…Then the beast will move.”

Ian held the reins in tight fists. One horse. He could handle it. How difficult could it be?

He jabbed the heels of his boots into the horse’s sides.

“Gentle!” Bess shouted.

Too late.

The horse roared to life and raced hell-bent for leather down the narrow path and up a small heather covered rise.

“WHOA!” Ian shouted.

That did no good at all. He and Bess bounced up the rise, bits of heather and earth flying up all around them.

“Pull back on the reins!” she shouted into his ear. “Ye are the one in charge, let the beastie ken this!”

To emphasize her point, she reached around and grabbed for the reins herself.

“I got it!” Ian declared.

“Then pull!”

Ian jerked back hard on the reins. It was like pulling in a swordfish off the Grand Caymans. Something he had done in another lifetime that was becoming increasingly easy to forget.

He sailed off the horse into the air. The soft heath rose up to meet him, and thankfully broke his fall. Bess landed squarely on top of him with a loud “OOOMPH!”

They lay there in an Ian-Bess pile for a moment, before Bess rolled off him.

Ian turned to his side, spitting bits of vegetation from his tongue. He looked at her. “No broken bones?”

She rubbed her hands down her body. “No. Ye?”

“None for me either.”

“Aye, well, next time ye’ll remember no’ to stab yer fine boots into the beast. Take a gentle touch for a good ride.”

“That also works for with you,” he said with a wink.

“Och, ye are a mad man.” She was smiling.

Bess climbed to her feet and walked the three steps to the summit of the rise to where her horse lazily munched the tender green tips of the heather plants. She took the reins, her body silhouetted against the grey sky. Ian propped himself up on his side observing her.

The chance of him staying in this time was bloody dismal. How could he find anyone like himself with similar ambition? And the desires he had that day in the high desert of Nevada at Last Chance Gas were far from the desires he now had in sixteenth century Scotland. He thought wanted his fame and fortune back, but now he wanted a life as rich as the one had experienced ever since he arrived in the past and in the company of Bess Campbell.

He watched Bess look out on the landscape. He had yet to tell her that there was a chance he could stay in her time. It was a narrow hope that he was not ready to share. One of them disappointed was enough if, and it was an unlikely if, he could find a willing substitute to send to the twenty-first century.

“Och no!” Bess gasped.

Ian scrambled to his feet. “What, Bla—?”

He saw it, far down the slope, to the northwest. A thin stream of dark smoke rose against the pewter-colored sky. It was at least a mile or so away.

“The abbey!” Bess gasped.

She leapt up into the saddle, reaching for the claymore on her back and looked fiercely down at him.

The Warrior Princess had returned. She turned her mount to the path that lead down to the abbey and to the smoke. She would have ridden off on her own, if Ian had not taken several long, quick strides and leapt up up behind her in the saddle.

“You drive,” he said.

And that was all. He did not ask her what she suspected lay ahead of them. He just held tight and looked straight ahead over her red hair.

This time was rich with surprises and not all of them good.

Ian drew in a deep breath and held onto Bess’s waist. If she could face the unending stream of challenges that crossed her path, then he could too.