The night was quiet.
Even the wind had calmed, the only sound the ever-present tossing of the sea, the night’s tide slapping against rocks. The ones that edged the narrow beach beneath this tower’s cliffs, and the jagged, half-submerged skerries that waited to tear out the bottom of ships that came too close to Seacliffe’s shores.
Alanna frowned and pushed up on her elbows, wondering how the night could feel so ordinary, yet so odd.
Sheknewshe hadn’t just wakened.
She’d heard a noise.
Was Boyd making his rounds this late? His footsteps always echoed in the stair tower or caused floorboards to creak when he strode along the corridor outside her door.
And slight as Aunt Nettie was, she slipped about like the ghosts she didn’t believe in.
Everyone else would be sleeping – like as not, even the doughty old souls who served as night patrol on the battlements, just another reason the King surely wished a stronger garrison for such a strategically-placed castle.
Sure her own sleep was ruined, Alanna slid from her bed, threw her night cloak about her shoulders and went to the room’s row of tall, arch-topped windows. She stared out at the sea, still lit by the moon, and just as empty as earlier.
Resting her hands on the edges of the window arch, she inhaled deeply, glad for the familiar tang of cold northern seas. She supposed she should prefer the more delicate scents of old roses, lavender, or even heather, but it was wet stone, brine, and the crispness of icy winter air that made her heart pound.
Still…
Something else stirred her. And whatever it was came from deep inside her, a tingling in the roots of her soul. Need swept her, a connection with the dark, frosty night, as if she just had to peer harder at the distant horizon.
But all she saw was a light snow falling, windblown flurries across the night-blackened water.
Did the snow waken her, silent as it was?
Winter was her time of year, though she couldn’t say why.
She’d always felt more at home in rough, end of the world places and wintry weather, the colder and more raw, the better. Blankets of deep snow and howling winds gave her greater joy than if someone offered her a barrel of gold.
A Grant weakness, or so many claimed, recalling how this or that ancestor gave up power and position to cling to an ancient stronghold rich in sweeping sea views, dark, boggy moorland, and vast emptiness, but poor in coin and grace.
Aunt Nettie swore that failing was a reason the family was aye so cursed.
Alanna, in particular.
She’d inherited more Grant oddities than most. No doubt a reason something had disturbed her sleep. She heard and saw things others didn’t. Even so, the noise was probably just an overlarge breaker crashing onto the shore. Whoever meant her ill, didn’t seem bold enough to harm her within the castle walls.
She was safe here.
But when she leaned out to look down at the rocks, she drew a sharp breath.
Shadows moved at the far edge of the beach, just where the headland jutted out into the sea.
And not just any shadows.
Hardly trusting her eyes, she stared as moonlight flickered over the long dark shape of what looked like a Viking ship just flashing round the cliff – but she couldn’t hear the oar-splashes and, even more startling, no one appeared to be working the oars.
The rowing benches were empty as was the ship, save for the tall, fierce-looking warrior standing in the ship’s bow.
Clearly a leader of men, his helmet and mail shone brighter than the stars, and his fine blue cloak billowed in the wind, giving glimpses of the long sword at his side and – she gulped – the wicked, broad-bladed ax in his hand.
Her mouth bone-dry, she leaned farther out the window, now seeing the carved bust of a woman adorning the ship’s high-stemmed prow. Or so she thought until a swirl of sparkling green sea spray blew across the bow, spoiling her view.
Then everything around her stilled, the heaving sea and falling snow seeming to freeze as a shimmer of green lit the prow, illuminating not a beautiful woman of wood, but a fearsome serpent head, its jaws wide as if to shout a warning to any and all foes to flee from the wrath of the warship’s master.
Alanna’s eyes rounded then and she clutched a hand to her cheek, for the woman whose carved likeness she’d seen now stood wrapped in the warlord’s embrace, his powerful silver-banded arms holding her tight as his words drifted across the frozen, white-capped waves…
