Undercurrent (8 page)

She looked past the campsite, beyond the stream, hoping she’d see nothing extraordinary, while at the same time perversely wishing she would. Freaking out over plain old nature with its accompanying night noises might be enough to warrant counseling.

Shafts of sunlight caught random insects dancing jigs in the air, and patches of morning mist left behind diamonds glittering on fern fronds—a landscape any first-year fine arts student might’ve painted. Sure didn’t look like Bigfoot would be mauling her today.

Running her fingers through tangled hair, she wished she could as easily straighten out where she was and how her life had come to this. Though she felt much more clearheaded than yesterday, a clouded veil separated her from remembering how she’d gotten here. The harder she thought, the more her elusive memories darted beyond reach, but the grumble in her stomach had no trouble connecting with her consciousness. She might as well enjoy Fabio’s Atkins’ breakfast.

Her feet complained every step back to the fire. Sandal straps constricted against the swelling caused by yesterday’s trauma. Shooting pains from heel to toe screamed accusations that sleeping with her shoes on hadn’t been the best choice she’d ever made.

As she eased herself down to the blanket, the man removed the roasted meat from the skewers. An enormous oak leaf served as both potholder and plate. She picked at a chunk of the charred food and popped it into her mouth. Crispy on the outside, flaky and moist inside—fish. Of course. The stream. A far cry from her usual yogurt and granola, but surprisingly delicious.

“
This is great. Thanks, uh…” As she chewed, she contemplated the irony of a linguistics expert unable to communicate at even a Tarzan-and-Jane level.

That’s it.

She gobbled the rest of her fish, no longer savoring it. The researcher in her took over like a schizoid personality.

The man had long since busied himself with packing up and retrieving a skin of water from the creek. She rose as he was about to pour it on the fire, placing her palm on her chest. “I am Cassie. Cassie.”

She reached out to put her hand on his chest, but paused mid-air. She probably shouldn’t get too friendly. Instead, she aimed her index finger at him. “Your name?”

The now familiar tilt of his head and the fact that he hadn’t put the fire out yet gave her hope that she had his full attention. She slapped her hand back to her chest, pounding for emphasis. “Cassie. Cass-ee.”

His eyes traveled downward, focusing where her hand rested, and he smiled. Great. Now he’d get sidetracked. She thumped her index finger against his tunic. “You?”

A puzzled crease appeared on his brow as he lifted his chin to gaze at her, but he said nothing.

Frustration churned the fish in her stomach. Gritting her teeth, she counted silently to ten, then jerked her thumb back to point at herself. “Cassie! Cassie is my name. Cassie Larson.”

His eyebrows rose, and a huge grin split his face. “Lar’s son?” A big belly laugh shook through him. “Lar’s dottir! Cass-ee Lar’s dottir, ja? Lar’s son—” Another fit of laughter cut off any more he had to say.

“
Stupid man!” She spun away and snatched the blue wool from the ground, swinging it around her shoulders like a cape. Maybe a good soak in the cold stream would cool her off. As much as her aching feet would allow, she stomped off. The sound of his laughter mingled with the hissing and popping of the fire he doused.

Popping. Laughing. She hadn’t been this annoyed since suffering through Tammy’s perpetual gum wad—

Everything started spinning. She leaned against a tree trunk and held on.

Drew. The ferry. Holy Island.

Everything came back.

She clutched her chest, but no brooch lay beneath her fingertips. It’d fallen in the water, and she had too. She remembered the chill of the North Sea wrapping around her, then nothing more until she’d awoken here.

He must’ve fished her out. Shame cloaked her as tangibly as the blue wool, and thankfulness that he couldn’t understand her replaced the anger. When would she ever learn to refrain from judging someone before she knew all the details? Now she’d have to apologize.

Apologize to a man she’d called stupid.

A man who wouldn’t know a word she spoke.

The one who’d saved her life.

She pushed away from the tree and turned around—just in time to hear the whoosh of a battleaxe sail past her ear and lodge into the trunk beside her head.

SEVEN

Alarik cringed as Gerlaich’s throwing-axe cracked into the tree trunk a hand’s span from the woman’s head. He’d fully expected it to cleave her skull in half, but she’d turned away at a most opportune time. A surge of relief and a fair amount of guilt for not warning her rushed over him, but no time now to examine what might have been her fate.

The sudden crashing of boots tearing up ground had caught him unaware, and he lay flattened against the forest floor. His sword should’ve been at his side, but he’d been too preoccupied with the woman. A distraction that may cost him his life. By now his uncle surely realized that it was only a bit of a woman who wore his cloak.

“
Alarik! You murdering son of a—”

He blocked out the curse, focusing instead on the hilt of his sword. Only a handspan more. Runes inscribed into the pommel entreated Thor for protection, but it’d be by his own strength that he would survive.

If he survived.

As his fingers curled around the leather-wrapped grip, the downward slice of a blade hissed through the air directly above him. He twisted. Cold steel glanced off his ribs, and the tip of a sword bit into the ground, peppering him with pebbles and dirt. Warm blood soaked his tunic, pasting the fabric to him like a second skin. He sucked in a breath. That had been entirely too close.

On his feet in less than a heartbeat, he parried the next blow. And the next.

“
You run like a whelp to your mother’s people, who are less than dogs. Fight me, if you have the guts.” Gerlaich swung like a mad man, ranting of his right to einvigi.

“
I am innocent!” But even Alarik wondered at the truth of his own words.

“
I will sever that lying tongue of yours.” His uncle roared and lunged forward.

A hasty counterattack spared Alarik from getting skewered. Sweat trickled from every pore, stinging the wound in his side. He retreated several steps, noting movement from his periphery on each side. Gerlaich’s men, no doubt. No chance for escape now. “I have no wish to kill you, Uncle, but I will if I must.”

Gerlaich laughed, empty and mirthless. “The only blood to be spilled this day will be yours, as it should have been the day of your birth. You corrupt the noble seed of your father. Half-breed!”

With a fierce battle cry, Gerlaich rushed forward and cut a powerful sweep. Their blades engaged, the clang echoing through the forest. The impact rippled up Alarik’s arm and through his body.

Alarik spun and slashed back. “Think, Uncle, think!” Words came hard now as breathing demanded priority. “What good would it do me to kill Einar?”

“
You stabbed him in the back. Coward! You cut up Ragnar so that I doubt”—Gerlaich’s chest heaved as with each word, the arc of his blade swung wilder—“I doubt he will live. Was Hermod next? Would you have stabbed him while he slept? You will never be jarl of Rogaland. Never!”

Alarik gasped as steel sliced through his forearm, gouging a chunk of flesh. A red stain spread out from the ripped linen. Rage usurped any remorse he might have felt at taking his uncle’s life. “Neither will you become jarl, for this day shall be your last.”

He charged forward with a strong-armed thrust. Gerlaich pulled the distance, and Alarik’s attack fell short. But the quick movement was enough to throw his uncle’s footing off-balance.

Alarik put all his remaining strength into the next blow. Time slowed. With a clarity that would likely haunt him the rest of his life, he raised his sword and plunged it downward. The blade lodged with a sickening thud near the base of Gerlaich’s head, stuck fast and deep into the man’s collarbone.

His uncle stood motionless, confusion working his lips open and closed, like a fish yanked from water.

Regret choked Alarik, but he forced it down with a swallow. He gripped the hilt as firmly as his trembling hands allowed, then planted a powerful kick to Gerlaich’s torso. The blade dislodged and his uncle toppled backward to the ground.

Alarik turned away, panting. The two men accompanying Gerlaich advanced. Hopefully the quivering of his body from blood loss did not show in his blade. “Halt!”

A broad smile split the face of the man Alarik knew to be Eric. He stopped as requested and held out his hand, palm up. “You have won an honorable victory, one we will not challenge. There is the matter of wergild, however, for taking Gerlaich’s life.”

Alarik lowered his sword. He hated the idea of compensating for a man’s life. Justice could not rightly be served by trading gold for breath. “So that is the way of it, then. It mattered not to you who died, for a profit would be made either way, eh?”

Eric shrugged, but his smile reached his eyes.

The only valuable Alarik had to offer was the gold armlet spanning his bicep—on the arm that had been split open. He sheathed his sword and took great care in sliding the band downward, giving as much berth as possible to the gaping wound.

Eric pocketed the costly piece into a fold of his tunic, then spent a great deal of time clearing his throat. Finally, he took a step back but pierced Alarik with an unrelenting gaze. “Did you do it? Did you kill Einar and flay Ragnar to pieces?”

Alarik stared, unblinking, unfeeling. Numb from battle and shaky of voice, he spoke barely above a whisper. “I…cannot remember.”

“
Coward!” The word gurgled from behind, and Alarik wheeled around.

Terrible glassy eyes set deep in ashen skin looked back at him from where the shell of his uncle lay in the dirt. “Let me die…a warrior’s death.”

A sigh shuddered through Alarik at what he must do. To leave his uncle half-alive, half-dead, well…Odin was capricious with the best of noble deaths. If the wound did not kill him and disease were to set in, his uncle wouldn’t stand a chance. Alarik closed his eyes, wishing away the awful task, but it was up to him now to help Gerlaich attain Valhalla. If Valhalla existed. Ragnar would argue otherwise with his talk of Jesu, but Alarik didn’t know what to believe anymore.

“
Do it!” Gerlaich’s voice rasped.

Rote training kicked in, and Alarik slaughtered his uncle as he might a sheep. Better to think of him as a dumb animal than a man who’d lived and breathed and loved—just like himself.

He spun away and stalked toward the brook, calling out as he went, “Bury him.”

The water washed away blood and sweat, but not the stain and stink in his heart. He hated killing. Always had. His uncle was right in calling him a half-breed. A true Northman would boast, not regret.

His forearm refused to stop bleeding, so he ripped yet another strip from the hem of his tunic as he had for the woman. Soon he’d have no shirt left to—

The woman.

He’d forgotten.

He stood, lightheaded at first, and swept a searching glance from tree to tree, shrub to shrub. His cloak lay discarded at the base of the oak where the axe yet lodged.

Cass-ee was gone.

Propped against a support beam near the front of Great Hall, Ragnar scanned the sparse number of men gathered. A poor harvest, indeed. Those present stood arms crossed, eyes darting, lips pressed. Foreboding swelled, bearing down upon each soul.

At the base of the jarl’s dais—a raised platform with an intricately carved chair, upholstered in the finest silks from the far east, and set on a bearskin rug—Torolf’s men squared off, standing grim-faced.

When the front doors swung open, every head turned. Torolf loped down the aisle created by villagers edging backward. Fastened at each shoulder with silver clasps, a brilliant sapphire cape billowed as he ascended to the jarl’s throne.

The odor of fear emanated from each man. Even Ragnar’s spirit was troubled within his breast. He swiped at the perspiration tickling his brow while assessing the terrible glory Torolf commanded.

A curtain of straight, white hair hung as a mantle over his shoulders. White eyebrows, white eyelashes, but no beard nor moustache. His sleeves rolled up over colorless skin that stretched taut against enormous biceps, lending him an overall translucent blue glow from the veins beneath. He gazed out from storm-gray eyes, as if lightning might strike at any moment, daring anyone to turn from his horrible beauty. But the magnetism of the twistedly handsome figure could not be denied.

With a sweep of his gold-banded arm, Torolf displaced the cape and sat in the jarl’s chair. “Brothers, your troubles have not gone unnoticed. I come to offer my assistance.”

“
We need none.” Steinn’s voice rang out, echoing off the mud-plastered walls, but he did not step forward.

Torolf strummed his long fingers against the armrest of the throne. “Perhaps, then, I did not assess the situation correctly. Has not Hermod, Jarl of Rogaland, taken to his bed, babbling as a mad man? Does not his firstborn, Einar, even now lie dead? Is not Alarik on the run with Gerlaich and his men at his heels? Are these things not true?”