crystal gaze.
“My ship,” he mouthed, unable to make the sounds.
“Lost,” she said, “and every man with it.”
A searing pain twisted his gut, and he squeezed his eyes shut. “Nay, it canna be. My…my brother?”
“All.”
The backs of his eyelids blazed with horrific visions of the shipwreck. The storm had come upon them in the night without warning. Biting sleet and lightning, gale-force winds the like of which he’d ne’er known in the Highlands. The howling haunted him still—a high-pitched railing, the shriek of the devil himself. The hull of their ship had shattered like a child’s toy against rocks that had no reason to be there. At least not from the charts they’d carried.
His brother. His men.
All dead.
“May God have mercy on their souls,” he whispered.
The woman snorted and tightened her grip on him. His eyes fixed on the hard set of her jaw as they bore him up a steep hill. She neither faltered nor slowed her pace, ignoring the labored grunts and winded breaths of her male companions.
He was vaguely aware of the landscape around him. Rocky and barren, with a chill deadness about it that was reflected in the woman’s eyes. She didn’t look at him, not once, until the thatched roofline of a long, low house came into view.
They stopped outside the stone structure. He sucked in a breath as his bearers dropped him unceremoniously onto a bench in the courtyard.
“You’re a Scot,” the woman said, and eyed him speculatively.
He nodded, trying to focus on her face. “Grant. George…Grant.” His head throbbed as the white winter sky spun above him like a dervish.
“Grant,” she said. “An odd name.”
“I…I am…The Grant.”
“A chieftain?” Lawmaker said. “Well, then, Ulrika, he is a good choice after all.”
The woman slid a wicked-looking dagger from the scabbard at her waist. He tensed as she cut away his sopping plaid. God knows what had happened to his weapons. Likely lost at the bottom of the sea.
He was too weak to struggle, or even protest. In a matter of seconds he lay naked before her, shivering uncontrollably. Her gaze roved over him coldly, eyeing a sheep for the slaughter. Aye, well, if he wasn’t already dead, he would be shortly. He mouthed a silent prayer.
“He’ll do,” Rika said, and sheathed her weapon. To his astonishment she covered him with a thick woolen blanket.
“Do for what?” A vision of pagan sacrifice flashed in his mind’s eye.
Lawmaker stood over him and arched a peppered brow. “For her husband.”
“H-husband?” His stomach did a slow roll, his head throbbed in time to the dull aching in his bones.
“Sleep now, and regain your strength,” Rika said.
“We’ve much to prepare before the wedding.”
He watched her as she turned and walked away, the short hauberk clinking with the gentle sway of her hips.
Her companions lifted him from the bench.
“Wh-what’s happening?” he breathed, and met Lawmaker’s stoic gaze.
“Something I never thought to see.” The older man smiled cryptically, then followed the woman warrior, Ulrika, daughter of Fritha, into the haze of the longhouse.
“Vikings,” he mouthed.
A band of bloody Vikings.
Rika sucked down the draught of mead and cast her drinking horn aside. “So, old friend, what think you of my plan?”
Lawmaker toyed with the end of his beard and looked at her for what seemed an eternity before answering. “You’re sure you wish to do this?”
“It’s the only way. You know that as well as I. The dowry my marriage brings with it will buy Gunnar’s release.”
“So it would. But we know not where your brother is held.”
“Dunnet Head,” Rika said. “On the mainland. I heard Brodir’s men speak of it.”
“You are certain?”
“Ja.”
Lawmaker nodded. “Brodir will not be pleased. He expects to come home to a bride—and a dowry that will buy him fine goods and timber for ships.”
Rika looked away and swallowed hard. She did not wish to think of Brodir. Not now, not ever. True, they were betrothed in the Christian way—her father had arranged it when she was a child—but Brodir had gone a-Viking months ago, and she prayed each day that some evil would befall him and he’d not return. Absently she twisted the bronze bracelets circling her wrists, and mustered her resolve.
“Brodir will return to a penniless divorcée who will no longer be of interest to him.” So she hoped.
“And her brother restored to his rightful place as jarl,” Lawmaker said, finishing the thought for her.
“Exactly. It will work. It must.” Her brother, Gunnar, meant the world to her. He was the only family she had left. Her estranged father didn’t count, of course. All she wanted from him was the dowry.
She’d do anything to free Gunnar. Anything.
Lawmaker eyed her again, silently, while she fidgeted on the bench, impatient. She must have the elder’s blessing and his help. The henchmen Brodir had left behind to watch her were dangerous men. Without Lawmaker’s consent, her plan was doomed.
Finally he said, “It will be dangerous—and complicated.”
Rika flew off the bench in elation, ignoring the warning in Lawmaker’s implied consent. “I’m prepared for danger. As for complications, I leave those to you.”
“Ja, well…” Lawmaker’s gaze drifted to the bed box at the end of the longhouse where the Scot had thrashed all day in a fitful sleep. “He might have something to say about it.”
Rika smirked, triumphant. The Scot had little choice but to comply. “He’ll do as I bid him.”
“He is a chieftain, a laird. Think you he’ll agree to wed you just like that?”
“Chieftain, indeed.” She made a derisory sound.
“He’s a weakling. Look at him.” Her gaze washed over George Grant’s unremarkable features. “Why, he doesn’t even have a beard.”
Lawmaker cast her one of his ever-patient smiles—the kind he reserved for children, and for her. “Don’t underestimate the man. A beard is not the quintessential mark of virility among all peoples, Rika—only ours. You’ve much to learn about the mainland and its folk, should you think to venture there.”
“Perhaps,” she said absently, and continued to study the Scot. He was more formidable than she’d first thought. Broad of shoulder and well muscled, though she hadn’t seen him on his feet yet, so it was hard to judge his height. Surely he wasn’t taller than she. Few men were.
Her gaze fixed on his long, tousled hair. Rich and tawny, it spilled across the pillow like a river of honeyed mead. Thin braids, like a woman’s, graced each temple. Never had she seen a man plait his hair so.
She smiled inwardly. Ja, this chieftain would be easy to control.
George woke with a start, fumbling for weapons that weren’t there. “What the devil—?” All at once he remembered—the voyage, the shipwreck, the Viking woman.
He blinked the sleep from his eyes as a barrage of peculiar sounds