On a Highland Shore (14 page)

When he found a child, he told Rignor, who went to look. He waited with the others, Margaret wrapped her arm around Nell. Tiernan gestured Gannon away from the sisters.

“D’ye think they took the boy?” Tiernan asked. “Any nephew of the Earl of Ross would be worth much in ransom, four would be worth four times. Why not take them all?”

Gannon watched Margaret push her hair back from her face, saw her turn and see him and shift her gaze. He shrugged. “The youngest would be a hindrance, and perhaps the older fought them. An eight-year-old is easily managed.”

He thought of the stories he’d heard, of women and children abducted and taken to the Orkney Islands as slaves, some taken to Norway and Kiev, to Constantinople and even farther east, where Scottish and Irish women and children brought high prices. And beauty, whether male or female, was always salable. If Davey looked like his sisters, he would be valuable.

Rignor returned, shaking his head, then going into the next house.

If the sisters had been home during the attack, the best they could have hoped for would have been to be taken as well. And if they had been taken, where would they have landed? In Orkney, serving in a household? Or in a far different place and capacity? Beautiful and virgin, or portrayed as such—the combination would command a high price. He looked at the curves of Margaret’s waist and hips and thrust aside the images that came to him. She turned to find him watching her again and looked away.

“Perhaps they took no one,” Tiernan said. “Perhaps he went for help. Perhaps they dinna kill everyone. Perhaps some of the people escaped, and they’ll be coming back.”

“They killed everyone they could reach in Antrim and did the same on Ross’s land,” Gannon said grimly. “I’m not thinking we’ll find many who escaped. And,” he added, as a new thought came to him, “if they took the boy to ransom, they’ll have questioned him. They’ll now ken that his sisters were left behind. If ransom is part of their plan, they’ll come back for them.”

“We have to take them away from here.”

“Aye.”

Somerstrath’s village had never seemed so large. The search took forever. Each moment that Margaret waited for Rignor seemed an eternity of fear and horror. And each time he reappeared, shaking his head, she fought the wave of relief that Davey had not been in that house, then the subsequent dread that he might be in the next. The search went on, no one speaking; there was nothing to be said. Gannon and Tiernan were entering the houses as well again now, and Margaret moved away blindly. Or not so blindly, for she found herself standing before Fiona’s doorway. She put a hand on the doorjamb and pushed the sagging door inward.

Nell clutched her arm. “Dinna go in, Margaret. He won’t be here.”

The roaring in her ears drowned Nell’s voice. She shook off her sister’s hand. She had to know.
Ye’ll die here in Somerstrath. Don’t think. Don’t feel. Don’t remember two young girls, laughing and dreaming of the future. Don’t remember standing here just days ago and seeing her with him…Ye’ll die here in Somerstrath, Fiona
.

She stepped inside, ignoring Nell’s cry of distress.

Fiona lay on her bed in the corner, her clenched hands and staring eyes mute testimony to the agony of her last moments. Hers had not been an easy death; the signs of her struggle were obvious, not just on her person, but on her home. The loom was shattered, the fine wool her father had woven for their wedding gift was gone. The table was in pieces, the clothes that Fiona had kept neatly hung on their pegs gone as well. Fiona’s father’s bed had been smashed apart, only splinters left where it had stood. Even the cooking pots were broken.

Did I do this? By wishing her ill…did I do this?

She moved across the floor, now strewn with ashes instead of the fragrant rushes Fiona had used, to stand beside her friend. Fiona stared at the bones of the charred roof, her jaw clenched. One hand gripped the side of the bed, the other the wall. Her neck, Margaret realized, was at an odd angle.

Why?
She heard a keening sound, a wordless moaning, high and frightening. The room swam before her, and she swayed. Strong hands clasped her arms, a face leaned close to hers.

“Margaret, lass! Here, let me help ye. Come away, come away.”

It was Gannon’s voice, his hands holding her upright. He pulled her against his chest, wrapping his arms around her, but it was not her in his embrace. Someone else was weeping wildly, her breaths rasping through her tears. Someone else was gripping his arms, feeling the golden bands there and the hard muscles under the linen. Someone else was pressed tight against him when her knees began to buckle. Someone else was staring at the torque around his neck, at the carved ends that were now visible.

Dragons. Beautifully carved, in fine detail. Dragons. She felt an urge to laugh wildly, to throw her head back and scream until she had no voice. You’ll face dragons, the old woman had said, and here they were.

None of this was happening. It was a dream, a nightmare, from which she’d waken, trembling. She caught sight of Fiona, and her laughter faded, replaced by deepening sobs. He held her while she wept, turning her slowly so she faced the door, where Nell stood waiting, her eyes huge.

“Shhhh,” he whispered. “Ye’re a’right now, lass. Ye’re safe now.”

He stroked her hair. She took a deep breath, then another. His tunic was soft beneath her cheek, the rhythm of his heart fast but even; he smelled like clean linen, like soap, like the sea. When he turned, his hair fell over his shoulder, golden against her dark. Safe. Her head began to clear further, and she leaned away from him. He loosened his arms, but kept her in his embrace, looking over her shoulder at Fiona.

“Who is she?”

She pushed away then, and he released her, letting his hands fall to his sides.

“Who is she, Margaret?”

“My friend. My enemy.”

She stared at Gannon, his pale hair in stark contrast to the burnt wood behind it, his eyes brilliant blue. At the dragons at his throat. She looked at the sword at his side, Norse runes on its hilt. At the axe he wore. The men who had done this would have looked like him. The blade that had killed her mother and her brothers and Fiona would have been wielded by a tall blond man like this one. He was alive, and those she loved were dead.

“What kind of men kill a helpless woman?” she snarled. “Or a woman large with child? Or wee lads who are terrified? Norsemen did this. Yer people did this!”

He took a step back. “I’m Irish, Margaret. My father was born in Ireland.”

“And his father?”

He paused, then answered coldly. “Norway.”

“Norway. Of course.” She nodded. “Where else do the wolves of death come from?” She turned away from the anger she saw in his eyes.

They did not find Davey in the lower village, nor at the harbor. Gannon had said that they’d found no one alive, but what he’d not told them was how many had died, and how dreadfully. Somerstrath was known for its deep and sheltered bay, for the rocky headlands that stretched into the water from the north and south like arms around a child, protecting the harbor and the people who depended on it, who had prospered because of it. But Margaret saw none of that, only a beach littered with the dead. There were no wounded to tend to, no people coming out of hiding to greet her and tell her of their terror. Margaret’s hopes, that many had escaped, were gone. She stood at the top of the shingle watching Rignor and Nell turn over bodies and say the dead men’s names to each other. Her father’s ships and every one of the fishermen’s boats had been burned to their bones. The destruction had been complete.

The Irishmen who had accompanied O’Neill stood on the shore—her father’s shore—or on their ships, pulled high onto her father’s beach as though they had a right to do so. One of them laughed at something, and she wanted to grab him and force his gaze over her dead, to scream at him that this was sacred ground, a tomb made of stone and sand and sky, and it was not to be desecrated. She tried to be reasonable. He’d meant no harm, the stranger who had laughed. She turned her head away. And found herself looking into Gannon’s eyes.

She jumped, startled; she’d not heard him approach. His sword was sheathed, his shield pushed behind him, but he still was intimidating. He was motionless, but tension and emotion radiated from him. Was it the way he stood, straight and vigilant? Or the way his eyes missed nothing around him? He was a warrior, bred from generations of warriors.

He looked away from her, across the beach, where Tiernan stood talking with men near the Irishmen’s ships. She followed his gaze and willed her emotions to quiet. It was all that had happened this day that unsettled her, not this man, not his size, nor his face, almost beautiful, with his strong features and long-lashed eyes. He was very male, handsome in a way that would be attractive to most women, even to her in normal times. But she was not most women, and these were not normal times. And his heritage made him one of them. Still…he had been kind this day. And she had not.

He held her gaze for a moment, then lowered it to pull something out of the bag at his waist and held out his hand. A small knife lay across his palm, the handle tooled in fine leather. “Do ye ken this?”

She took the knife from him and held it up, turning the hilt to read the inscription engraved there in Norse. She could only read one word of it: Skye. Skye, one of the largest and most important islands off the western coast of Scotland, not far from where they stood. It was ruled by Leod, the son of Olaf the Black, king of the Isle of Man, and of Christina, the daughter of a former Earl of Ross. Leod had held Skye for years, had increased his holdings when he’d married a Norsewoman. But deep as his ties with the Norse were, Leod also had agreements with King Alexander of Scotland.

She handed the knife back, looking from his hand into his very blue eyes. “Where did ye find it?”

“In the room with yer mother and brothers. Did it belong to one of them?”

“I’ve never seen it before.”

“What was yer father’s relationship with Leod?”

“Civil,” she said. “We had few dealings with him, but Leod and my father respected each other. He’s been a fair man to deal with.”

“Aren’t ye related to him somehow?”

“Aye, through my mother, through the Rosses. I canna believe Leod would attack us without provocation. Or Antrim either. Don’t O’Neill and Leod have an agreement?”

“They do. As Leod does with my uncle Erik at Haraldsholm in Antrim. The lands attacked in Ireland were his. Banners from Orkney were on the ships, but one of the men wore the colors of Skye.”

“Skye, which means Leod,” she said.

“Or someone on the island. Perhaps he’s simply looking the other way.”

“But why attack my uncle’s lands in Ross, or your uncle’s in Antrim? It makes no sense. Why would Leod start a war?”

“We dinna ken that he did, only that we found a knife with ‘Skye’ on it.”

They were silent then, while the waves stroked the sand and the men on the Irish ships went about their tasks. At each end of the shingle Irishmen stood, their weapons at the ready. Guards. She’d not seen them before, but now she realized that they’d been at the periphery of her vision all along. She wondered if they were guarding Somerstrath—or the man next to her. She stole a glance at him, at his stern profile and lips pressed together, at the fineness of the weave of his clothing and the gleam of the leather of his boots. At the golden torque he wore around his neck. He held himself like a man accustomed to command.

“Are they all O’Neill’s ships?” she asked. “One is mine.”

“Which?”

“That one,” he said, his voice full of pride.

He pointed to the closest one, a long, lean ship, its railings decorated with carvings painted with gold. Its hull was broad, beamy, and shallow, its prow and stern each curved from the hull to rise high above the railings to end in—what else?—a dragonhead. Its sail, furled now, was barley-colored and sagged heavily from the single mast. It looked well tended, the vessel of a wealthy man.

She looked again at the dragons on his torque. “A dragonship. Of course.”

“It’s not a dragonship.”