Lord of Fire and Ice (27 page)

Katla sat by Ulf Skallagrimsson’s bedside through the dark watches of the night as his life wheezed out of him. He’d drunk enough mead to send him into a stupor so deep he should have been insensible, but Ulf balanced on the cusp between life and death, fighting for each breath.

“Be at peace,” she told him. If he must suffer a straw death, she wished it would at least be an easy one.

“No, I must wait for Brandr,” he said, his voice a wisp of sound.

Katla turned her face away. She couldn’t let his father see her hopelessness.

“He’s coming, girl. I feel it.”

Katla wished she did. She hadn’t felt anything since that horrific vision. It was as if her heart had gone numb. Like a limb that had gone to sleep, the muscle in her chest felt like a heavy void, taking up space inside her but only as dead weight.

Someone was shouting in the distance, and Katla gave herself a small shake.

“I’ll be right back,” she said to Ulf.

“Hurry.”

She pushed into the main long hall and found all her people stirring. The double doors at the far end of the longhouse swung open and let in the dawn. And her brother.

“Brandr Ulfson,” Finn shouted, slightly winded from sprinting up the hill from the wharf. “He’s returned. Malvar Bloodaxe is dead, and his forces routed!”

Katla’s chest was full of prickles, as if the blood only then began rushing back into her numb heart. She ran down the center of the long hall and out into the pearly light. Brandr and his friends were making their way up the winding path. She drank in the sight of his golden head.

Her people spilled out of the longhouse behind her. Finn was shouting out details of the sea battle and the way Bloodaxe’s force had dissolved before Brandr’s unconventional use of a southern weapon that incinerated the lot of them.

Someone started up the chant: “
Herra
af
eldur!
”

Lord
of
Fire.

Brandr topped the last rise and stopped when he saw her. The way her insides sizzled at the sight of him, she could well believe he was the lord of flames.

“My very own ice princess.”

The rumbling timber of his voice reverberated in her head, and she heard his smile in the warm sound.

“
If
I
was
ice, you have melted me, my love
,” she Sent back to him and lifted her skirts so she could run unimpeded into his arms.

***

Ulf was still alive when Katla led Brandr back to his bed. Her husband’s sadness pressed on her chest, as if it were her own grief.

“Bloodaxe?” Ulf asked between gasps.

“Dead,” Brandr affirmed.

Ulf’s eyes closed in satisfaction, and he nodded. Then he reopened his eyes to fix Brandr with a steady gaze. “Does your brother yet live?”

“I left him alive, but—”

“But I will probably see him again before you do. Is that long face you’re wearing for your brother or for me?”

“Both.” Brandr swallowed hard, and Katla gripped his hand tightly to offer her support.

“In my life, I have done many terrible things. But when I look at you, I see one thing that turned out right.” Ulf’s chest rose in a shuddering gasp. “Despite my best efforts to bend you otherwise.” His blood-stained mouth twitched in a half smile. “So you see, I do not mind to die now. I am joined to my people, knowing I leave a worthy
jarl
in Jondal. Rule long, son.” He reached out a quavering hand. “Rule well.”

***

Ulf would not have liked to be buried, Brandr knew. So, he was sent to his gods in the old way, in a small soul boat built specially to become his floating pyre. Once the craft cleared the mouth of the inlet, Brandr arced a blue flame to it from the shoreline and watched it burn until the last charred spars sank beneath the waves.

He put an arm around Katla’s waist and drew her close. “We need to go home, I’m thinking.”

“I’m already packed.”

“What? I won’t have to abduct you this time?”

“No. I can’t wait to see Linnea again. I’m sure she’ll have grown so while we’ve been gone, we’ll scarcely know her,” Katla said. “Besides, Finn has things well in hand here. The people are rebuilding. Everyone knows what they need to do without me goading them along.”

Brandr kissed her temple. “Don’t fret, woman. You still have me to goad.”

“And don’t you forget it.” She smacked his chest playfully. He caught up her hand and pressed a kiss in her palm. Heat bloomed between them.

“But Finn will want to come with us for this trip. He left Inga at Jondal, and I’m thinking we’ll have a wedding before they sail back to Tysnes.”

Brandr nodded. “A good beginning.”

She stood on tiptoe and kissed him, reveling in the contentment she felt rolling off him. It was like the smell of fresh, warm bread, or the comfortable texture of well-worn linen on her skin.

“
Ja
. Finn and Inga had a rough beginning. I only hope they find the mighty passion as we did,” she said. “Then whatever befalls them, they’ll have a good ending too.”

Here’s a sneak peek at

Sins of the Highlander

by Connie Mason with Mia Marlowe

The peat fire had burned out and the ash gone gray, but Rob MacLaren didn’t feel the least bit cold. Not while his hot-blooded woman writhed under him. Their breaths mingled in the frosty air of the bedchamber. Fiona tilted her hips, welcoming him deeper, and he bit the inside of his cheek to keep from emptying himself into her.

It
was
too
soon.

He
never
wanted
it
to
end, this joining, this loss of himself in the woman he adored.

Rob
raised
himself
up
on
his
arms
and
gazed
down
at
her. The candles had burned down to nubs but still flickered enough to cast her in soft light. He could see his wife clearly. Her strawberry nipples peaked, with cold or arousal he couldn’t be sure, but he loved looking at them just the same.

“What are ye doing, daftie man? ’Tis too cold!” Fiona raised herself up and clung to him for warmth.

“That’s what ye get when ye marry a man on Christmas Day—a cold bridal night.” He gently pushed her back down, and she sank into the feather tick.

“It doesna have to be cold.” Her skin rippled with gooseflesh. “Come back under the covers, love.”

“I canna. I need to see the lass I wed,” he said. “I want to watch ye melt for me, to see your face when ye make that wee kitten noise just afore ye come.”

“Wee kitten noise, is it?” She shook with laughter. “Have a care, husband, lest I bare my claws.”

She
raked
her
nails
across
his
chest, and the sensation made his balls clench.

He
lowered
himself
and
kissed
her, devouring her lips and chasing her tongue. He withdrew for a heartbeat for the sheer joy of sliding slowly back into her slick wetness. Then he raised himself again and reached between them to stroke her over the edge.

“Oh, Rob.” Her inner walls clenched around him, and he felt the soft tremor that signaled the start of her release. “When ye do that, I don’t care a fig if it’s so cold I catch my death…my death…my death…”

Her
voice
echoed
round
the
chamber
and
faded
into
the
distant
thatch
overhead.

Rob jerked awake.

He wasn’t in his bridal bedchamber. He was lying on stone-hard ground with a stone-hard cock still primed to make love to the woman in his dream. Stars wheeled above him in a frigid sky. His band of men snored nearby.

And the fact that Fiona was dead slammed into him afresh.

He’d married her two years ago at Christmas, and she’d been gone by Epiphany. Twelve days, he’d been a husband. Only twelve.

And now a night didn’t pass without his wife visiting him as some phantom, sometimes tender, sometimes terrifying. She lived in his dreams, but always he was powerless to hold her to earth.

She was so vibrant, so real by night, he suffered all the more in the waking world with the knowledge that he’d not find her there.

One of the men in the clearing let out a loud snore and mumbled in his sleep. It was hours till dawn, and even more till Rob could accomplish what he intended in the coming day. But he would not seek sleep.

He couldn’t bear to lose Fiona again so soon.

***

Rob narrowed his gaze at the stone kirk across the glen. The bagpipes’ celebratory tune ended with an off-key wheeze. He and his men, concealed on the edge of the forest, had watched the bridal procession and the arrival of the groom’s party. Now he heard nothing from the kirk. The only sound was the harsh cry of a jay from the branches above him.

The ceremony must have been beginning in earnest. Rob snorted, his breath like a curl of dragon smoke in the chilly air.

“’Tis time, Hamish.”

“I wish ye’d reconsider.” His friend shook his head, his scruff of red beard making him look like an alarmed hedgehog. Hamish never let his beard grow beyond the stubble stage. A metal worker couldn’t chance much facial hair. Even his eyebrows were habitually singed off. “If ye go through with this, folk will say ye’re…that ye’re—”

“Mad? They say that already.” Rob mounted his black stallion. The beast sensed his agitation and pawed the dirt, restive and spoiling for action. “I see no other path before me. Now will ye help me or no?”

“Aye, Rob, ye’ve no need to ask, but—”

“Then get the men ready to ride. I hope to be in a wee bit of a hurry when next ye see me.” He shot his friend a mirthless grin and spurred his mount into a gallop across the glen.

It was possible the next time Hamish saw him, Rob might be in no hurry at all.

He could very well be dead.

***

The smell of incense was so cloying, Elspeth Stewart feared she might faint dead away. But a bride must stand before the altar.

She drew a shallow breath and swallowed hard. That was better. As the priest droned on, she sneaked a glance from under her lashes at the man who would be her husband.

Lachlan Drummond.

Tall and commanding in his dress plaid, he wasn’t altogether unpleasing. His face was tanned, and the lines at the corners of his eyes suggested he’d squinted into countless northern suns. Those lines didn’t trouble her. They proved the laird was a man of action, not like the dainty fops who visited from the English court from time to time.

No, it was the deep grooves between his brows and the hard set of his mouth that gave her pause.

“Dinna fret yerself,” her mother had assured her when she complained that she didn’t know her betrothed well enough to even speak to him if she met him in Queen Mary’s court. “An arranged match is a safe match. Yer father has chosen the Drummond for ye, and ye’ll do well to bide by his wishes.”

The queen had approved too. She’d angered so many of the nobles with her other policies, she didn’t dare gainsay two of them on something as inconsequential as the marriage of one of her ladies-in-waiting.

Inconsequential
to
everyone
but
me
, Elspeth fumed.

An exchange of breeding cattle, a grant of grazing rights, a promise of fealty between their clans; that was really all that was being solemnized now. It was certainly no marriage as she’d ever imagined it.

Or Seen it. Elspeth was gifted with a bit of the Sight, and never in all her prescient dreams had she seen this match on her horizon.

This loveless ceremony was as far removed from the tales of courtly devotion in her precious little book of sonnets as the distant moon.

Yet when the priest asked Lachlan Drummond to pledge his faith to her, his voice was strong, the tone pleasing. He even sent her a quick private smile.

Elspeth jerked her gaze back to her folded hands. Her cheeks burned as if she had a fever.

She wondered if her mother was right.

“Passion,” Morag Stewart had said, “is a dish that flares hot, but then goes cold as a tomb often as not. An arranged match is like a cauldron set to simmer over a low fire. A nourishing broth heated evenly warms a body from the inside out.”

Elspeth wasn’t sure how she could do the things her mother said her husband would expect of her. Bizarrely intimate things. Of course, she’d seen horses mate, and dogs too, but she never suspected people did something as…primitive as the mere beasts.

And now she’d have to do it with a man she barely knew.

Silence jerked her back from her musings. The priest had asked her a question and was waiting for a reply. She blinked stupidly at him. What had he said?

Suddenly the double doors of the nave shattered. A man on a large black horse was silhouetted in the opening for a heartbeat. Then he urged the stallion into the kirk and charged up the center aisle.

“Mad Rob!” she heard someone call out.

Half the horseman’s face was painted with woad, and his cobalt eyes burned as brightly blue. With his dark hair flying and the fierce expression of a berserker on his features, he certainly looked mad.

“The MacLaren,” shouted another.

Her bridegroom was silent, but a muscle worked furiously in his cheek.

Her father reached for the horse’s bridle, but the MacLaren shouted a command, and the stallion reared, pawing the air. Then it lashed out with its hind hooves, and everyone scrambled out of reach of the slashing kicks.

Elspeth watched in disbelief as the man drew a long claymore from the shoulder baldric strapped to his back and laid the flat of the blade across Lachlan Drummond’s chest. Riding a horse into the kirk was bad enough. Mad Rob had broken the sanctity of holy ground by drawing his weapon. All the other men had laid their swords and dirks outside the doors, which now hung drunkenly from the hinges.

Elspeth half expected the Almighty to strike the blasphemer down with thunderbolts from the altar.

“Twitch so much as an eyelash, wee Lachlan, and I’ll take yer head,” Mad Rob said as pleasantly if he’d offered Drummond a plate of warm scones.

Then he leaned down and scooped Elspeth up with his other arm and dropped her belly-first across his kilted lap.

She was too astonished to be afraid. All the air fled from her lungs with a whoosh. Her head and arms dangled on one side of the restive stallion, and her legs kicked on the other. She couldn’t rail at the man, since she was busy fighting for breath, but she struggled to free herself from such an undignified position.

“Hold still, lass, lest my hand slips and I lop off a bit of your groom.”

Now fear sliced into her. She froze and looked at Lachlan. The madman’s blade had slid up to his chin. Her bridegroom hadn’t taken his black-eyed gaze from Mad Rob’s face.

“I’ll be going now, Drummond,” Rob said in the same reasonable tone a man might use to discuss cattle or the weather. “If ye’ve the stones for a fight, ye may collect yer bride at
Caisteal
Dubh
. But dinna show your face till month’s end. Come for her sooner or try to follow us now, and I might have to kill her.”

Elspeth couldn’t look up at her captor’s face, but she heard a wicked smile in his voice.

Kill
her
reverberated in her mind.

And all she’d thought she’d lose when she woke this day was her maidenhead.

The madman wheeled the stallion around, and Elspeth hooked an elbow around his knee lest she fall as the kirk and the people in it ran together in a blur of colors. Her mother keened like a lost soul over the din of shouts. The stallion clattered back down the aisle and shot out into the crisp November air, making a beeline for the distant forest.

With every jarring stride, Elspeth’s ribs took a pounding. Then she felt both the MacLaren’s hands at her waist. He lifted her without slowing the stallion one jot, controlling the beast with his knees and will alone.

“Can ye ride astride?” he shouted.

“Aye.” She threw one leg over the horse’s neck and settled herself before him, matching his rocking movement to keep her seat. She dug her fingers into the horse’s mane. Trying to leap off at this speed would mean a broken neck. There’d be another chance to escape later.

For she must escape. A month, even a night, with this madman would mean ruin.

Lachlan Drummond would surely come for her. He’d be obliged to, according to the contract between him and the House of Stewart. And her father and his men with him.

She twisted and glanced under MacLaren’s arm. Men were milling before the church, not giving pursuit, clearly taking Mad Rob’s threat to kill her seriously.

Once they reached the trees, a shout went up behind them. Rob pulled the stallion to a stop. Elspeth gasped a shuddering breath as his arm around her waist tightened. They turned to see her bridegroom and her father mounting up to follow.

“Apparently, they hold your life less precious than your honor, lass,” the MacLaren muttered. “Hamish! Tell the lads to lay the trails. Now ride.”

A half-dozen other horsemen appeared from their places of concealment in the trees. They circled the small clearing, obliterating any betraying tracks, and then they all hied off in different directions to confuse Drummond’s men and cover Mad Rob’s escape.

Elspeth and her captor rode wildly over hill and down dale, eeling through copses of spindly trees. The MacLaren’s horse was hill bred. Not as showy as the palfrey Elspeth had ridden to her wedding, but hardy and deep chested and apparently willing to run till it dropped if the man on its back demanded.

Shouts of discovery rose behind them. The men in pursuit must have split up, and someone followed their trail. Elspeth’s heart nearly burst from her chest with hope.

“Hi-up!” Mad Rob bellowed at the stallion, and it leaped into a burst of speed as if being chased by a thousand demons but feared the man on its back even more.

The MacLaren leaned forward. Elspeth bent over the horse’s neck, Mad Rob’s hot breath searing her nape, and held on for her life. They dodged trees, leaped over fallen trunks, and splashed through a burn in full spate. The world ripped by her in a green blur.

Her pearl-studded snood peeled off as the wind whipped past them. Her long brown hair uncoiled and fluttered behind her. She hoped it was flying in the MacLaren’s face, but a quick glance back showed it waving over his shoulder like a banner.

When they reached a rise, Mad Rob paused long enough to look back. A dozen horsemen were in pursuit.

“Drummond is a better tracker than I credited him,” he muttered.

Elspeth drew several gasping breaths, trying to still her pounding heart after their mad dash. She squinted at their followers but didn’t see her father’s dun mare in the pack.