Éire’s Captive Moon (36 page)

He swung his legs out from under his furs and shook his head. He had to be awake and alert. Though he had no appetite, he thanked the woman of the house for the stew and ate, tasting nothing. His mind was on the waters of the
fjørd
.

He piled his gear on his bench bed, making sure that the ties were tight, keeping his bedroll and extra cloak together. He then turned and crossed the few paces necessary to reach the other side of the
langhús
to clap Tuirgeis on the shoulder.

“I’ll return shortly,” he informed the war leader.

With a humorous gleam in his eye, the dark-haired man nodded. “I’ll send Lars, here, for you if you’re not back in time.”

In spite of his concern over Charis, Cowan couldn’t suppress a smile. “And you know where to send him, eh?”

“Of course,” Tuirgeis said mildly. “But hurry.”

Cowan nodded, turned, and left to cross the village square. Urgency was now pounding behind his eyes, pushing his feet faster and faster to eat the frost-webbed ground. “Well, Lord,” he whispered, his breath a visible puff in front of his face. “I prayed and you sent cold weather. Thank you. Now if you could just keep Charis and her ridiculous stubbornness here in
Nordweg
for a time, that would be helpful.” That his prior request was at odds with his present one did not strike him at all.

The house of Agnarr Halvardson was just ahead of him. The carved bench, the sloping roof, the close-set planks of the walls, all were familiar to him, from the inside as well as the outside. He approached and called, “Eir? Are you in there?”

He waited for a few heartbeats, but heard nothing. No answer or any voices from within. Calling again, he pushed open the door, since it had been left unlatched. “
Hei
!” He called out the general greeting with feigned cheerfulness as his eyes adjusted to the utter darkness of the interior of the house.

Before his eyes could see, his nose smelled Death in the
langhús
and his heart sank.

“Charis . . .?” he rasped into the utter stillness. “Agnarr? Gerda?” Leaving the door open to provide needed light, he ventured slowly forward. The light did not reveal pale hair the color of moonlight, and the bands around his heart eased. But still, he was cautious and sick in his gut.

Vomit. Body wastes. Wet fur and leather. He wanted to recoil and leave, but he could not. He had to know what had happened.

He had to find Charis, too. If she was not already well on her way, she would be killed when they found her.

Cowan wavered, standing near the door. Follow Charis? See to the needs of those lying here? Were they alive? Dead? His breath came fast as he tried to think. What was best?

“Oh, Jesu,” he rasped, deciding to do both. He advanced to Agnarr first, making cursory examinations for signs of life in each of the six bodies curled in their beds. Mouth flattened in distaste and sorrow, as well as a certain feeling of grim satisfaction, he turned and softly closed the door as he left.

Then he started on a quick walk across the square, back to Tuirgeis’s cousin’s house. Tuirgeis himself was not present, and the women were huddled together, gossiping. This was all to the good.

Without any farewells, Cowan crossed the threshold of the
langhús
, grabbed his gear, settled it quickly over his shoulders, and turned to leave the house again. Forever.

“Fast and far,” he whispered to himself as he nodded to the women of the house. Indeed, he had to cover who knew how great a distance.

Had that daft healer tried to walk all the way to Éire?

He made a straight track for the harbor, eyes squinting as he tried to find Charis in the distance, between the bulk of the longships that had been pulled ashore. He saw what could almost be mistaken for monsters shadowed in the mists. Oddly angled protrusions that looked as if they would escape the
fjørd
and seek the freedom of the sky. But they were only ice. Tidal ice, frozen waves. A haunting reminder of winter, here at the edge of land. Treacherous to cross, but the icy crests would provide cover for someone who had reason to hide.

Cowan’s heart lurched as he reached the edge of land. The water was frozen here at the shore. But the ice would not be thick; spring’s breath was moving over the land and renewal was coming. “Well, Lord,” he said in a bare breath as he stepped onto the ice, “you let Saint Peter walk on the water . . .”

He shifted his gear on his back once more, hesitating to go farther into the unknown. Then he forced out a breath, trying to push all his unease out with it as he took another step, and then another, as long as the ice lasted.

Sweat dripped down his sides underneath his winter clothing. His jaw ached from clamping it shut against expressions of surprise or tension. A mist hung over the ice up ahead. Or did it cover water? What if Charis had fallen in? What if she had drowned?

Sudden fear for her leapt inside his gut, making him ignore his personal safety in his advancement across the ice. He could hear cracking deep below his feet.

But it continued to hold firm. Cowan could only give thanks and keep praying as he moved.

He entered the mists just as a shout reached him from the village. His name, “Kingson!” echoed over the ice. Tuirgeis had found him gone, then. Cowan could only hope the Northman leader wouldn’t pursue a freedman who had left of his own accord.

The mists closed around him and he slowed his pace, avoiding the tidal ice “monsters” that seemed to be both friend and foe. Water or ice? When would it melt? How far had he come from the shore? The man from Éire had no sure idea, only that it seemed to be forever since he had found the bodies in Agnarr’s home. Cold, wet tendrils of air clung to his face, tugging at his hair, slowing him down as he moved.

Finally, beset by uncertainty and fear that his next step would bring frigid water instead of temporary ice, Cowan had to halt. He lowered himself to his knees and scooted, handspan by handspan, in the direction he thought he should be going while the sky remained an opaque white before his eyes. He waved an arm out and down, seeking something solid toward which he could advance. “Oh, Lord, help me,” he begged.

“I still think your god is weak, son of Branieucc,” came an overwhelmingly welcome voice.

“Charis! You’re alive!” Grinning in relief, he came lightly to his feet, to keep the cold as far from him as he could.

A pale shape moved, barely distinguished from the fog in which she sat, as Charis rose to her feet. “Cowan,” she said, her hand coming to join with his. “I’m surprised to see you.”

Trying to regain his balance with her, if that were possible, he shrugged, settling his pack on his back in a more comfortable place. “Surprised? Well now, lass, I always wanted to come away with you. I trust you’re not wanting to send me back now?”

“
Na, na
,” she said, a smile in her voice if not on her face. “You made it this far. In truth, I’m glad to have you.” She stepped closer to him and peered into his eyes. “You can sail a boat?”

“
Isea
,” he assured her. “I can.” He elaborated. “Martin and I—” Odd, how his old friend’s name came so painlessly from his lips. Cowan said a brief prayer for his soul and continued. “Martin and I sailed from the land of the Franks to Britain and then to our land, lass. I can handle a boat.”

He started to ask about which boat she meant to sail, when he heard a scraping on the ice. “Good, then. The salt water starts just up ahead.”

Her voice dropped to an embarrassed whisper. “I couldn’t bring myself to go in alone.”

Impressed but concerned, Cowan reached for her, so that she let the small boat slip from her hand and let him pull her closer.

He sighed deeply for a moment and decided to briefly ignore the sounds on the shore that still reached them. This was a necessary discussion. “So, when did you leave?”

“When it was still dark.”

“Idjit. But after what you did . . . I can’t blame you, lass.”

She stiffened but did not move away. “So . . . you saw them?”

“Yes.”

“And . . .?”

Did she not know what she had done? “What are you wanting to hear?” he inquired, leaning back so their eyes could meet. “How many died?” Part of him could not blame her but part recoiled at the knowing and caring for the type of woman who would poison people deliberately.

“I just want to know about one,” she said. “Maybe two.”

“She’s dead. Magda.”

Charis’s voice was thin. “Good.”

More cracking sounded near their feet. “Come, where’s that boat, lass?”

“Here!”

Together they set it steady on the ice. The length of perhaps two men, there was a center mast to catch the wind. Not too heavy for one woman to move across the ice, but too heavy to carry on her own overland.

He held the prow so she could climb in and then he felt around for her gear as the ice continued to crack and creak ominously and the mists began to lift. Already it was becoming easier to see. The sun was burning off their cover and melting the ice. After helping her load his own gear, Cowan slid the little boat as close to the visible edge of the fissuring ice as he dared. Then he climbed in and waited as water lapped up over the ice.

From the village behind them, shouts of dismay and anger echoed just as the last of the ice under the fishing boat broke with a soft sort of hissing.

Charis inhaled sharply and Cowan took the oars. There was sunlight; he could navigate in the general direction of the southern land anyway.

And the shouting men and women back in Balestrand would not, in all likelihood, try following a slave and a freedman.

But would they try to follow a murderess?

Charis gripped the edges of the boat with white-knuckled hands as Cowan moved their small craft slowly through the water. They bumped against chunks of floating ice and heard the distant sounds of more ice joining the water in the Strait. Ice water. The ocean. Her own personal boundary. It surrounded her. Yet, this old terror had not caused her breathlessness.

Are they following me?
Magda was dead, Cowan had said so, but Charis didn’t know if she had killed the rest. Had she killed . . . him?

“Hurry,” she whispered urgently. “We have to hurry!”

“I know, lass, just be still and let me row.” His voice was tense and Charis tried hard not to snap at him that she could help. She really couldn’t, after all, and she needed to just trust him, even if it was galling.

Forward, forward. The water parted before the pointed prow of the little boat but Charis couldn’t watch. Her eyes saw only Agnarr after he had swallowed the last of his tea and before the Dead Man’s Thimbles had taken their toll on anyone. He had beckoned to her, his smile warm and welcoming. He wanted to couple with her again and he had seemed easily assured that she wanted that as well. She had, too, somewhere inside of herself. She did not find him as repulsive as she had at first. She had long since ceased to fight him, but her vengeance burned always in the back of her mind, vengeance for Devin and Devlin and all the villagers of Ragor. All the women who had been sold into slavery. They cried out to their healer to make it right, to fix what was broken, to heal the wounds they had suffered and were, perhaps, still suffering.

All those voices had been with Charis the night before as first one, then another of the people she had wintered with had become ill. Violently so. She had not been able to restrain a small smile as Magda’s gasp told her that the slight young woman was fatally affected by the deadly plant in her tea. Gerda had vomited and fainted, but had she died? Charis had, by then, been pulling her cloak over her dress and gathering her belt and herb pouches so she could run away.

“Eir!” Agnarr had called, his voice harsh in disbelief as she lurched from him. “What have you done?” He staggered, gripping his gut with one arm and leaning against a supporting pole with the other. “What have you done?”

Tears slid from Charis’s eyes and fell to her furred cloak as the fishing boat moved through icy water. She would never forget the lack of anger on his face, the incredulous sound of his last words to her. But she had answered, as she had promised Devin and Devlin in her dreams.

“I promised vengeance. I promised never to strike you with iron, Agnarr Halvardson. I swore to strike back at the man who killed my people, and I keep my promises.”