Callum turned, then kicked a wooden leg clear off a chair. “Hell! My past emotions have poisoned our present. Your lady isnot mistaken. Wee brother, I was blinded, but by another who clouded my judgement.”
“A lady of your own,” Aonghus guessed. “Thiswas why you never have sought another’s affections, then told Alec he would be carrying on the line of Clan MacCade’s heirs with Deidre.”
Callum lowered his eyes again. “Keen as ever, wee brother. This was the reason I snapped so when you turned your back upon Deidre. I thought you had betrayed her as I was once betrayed by a lady I was prepared to give up everything for.”
His eyes turned wider. “A lady.Youwere to leave the clan for a lady?”
Callum began scrubbing his face again, this time at his eyes, which had grown misty after he raised them. “Aye.” His voice broke. “I knew you would be an exemplary chief for Clan MacCade. Truth be told upon my part, I would have left or done anything for her, as I loved her with all I was! She turned her back upon me the eve we were to steal away…”
BANG! BANG!
A knock sounded at the oak doorway. “Lady Keirah, the time of dawn is almost upon us,” Lord Kollungr barked. “The bishops are standing in the great hall; Torsten is waiting by the ship. I will not tolerate insolence such as this. MOVE!”
Callum cussed some Gaelic curse under his breath before preparing to stride toward the door. Aonghus gripped his brother’s arm, halting him.
A heavy silence stretched between the two clansmen. “You have the gold chain?” Callum asked in a low voice, the message a cloaked meaning to kill the Northman when the time presented.
Aonghus gave a dark inward grin. “Aye; once she has her vengeance seen to, the chain will serve its purpose.”
“Good.” Callum nodded; his gaze held as much worry as his tone. “Wee brother, you are goin’ to be in the center of over a hundred ships within enemy waters. There is something else I wish to say…”
“Wait till after we stand back on Scottish soil,” Aonghus broke in, a determination lining his voice like iron.
Callum bestowed on him a rare grin. “Aye, wee brother, give my regards to King Håkonsson and tell him the Scots are coming with a force the likes he has never seen.”
Chapter 34
The eve on the first day of October
in the Year of our Lord twelve hundred and sixty-three
If only the gentle sway from the waves or the sound of them lapping the hull or the salty air ticking her nose would soothe her like always. Raging hell, all of them served as a reminder regarding those she was about to encounter while they bobbed over the waves.
The pace had been maddeningly slow through the day after having paused a long stretch farther up the rocky shoreline, waiting what seemed forever for Svørn, who vanished, then, when reappearing, brought with him a Northmen cluster she didn’t recognize.
Gestir, they had to be – spies for King Håkonsson hidden among the Scots providing information. Brazen traitors! Aonghus had told her once after their loving that he thought her to be this when they first met. Perhaps one of the odorous warriors boarding the barge was the cause of King Alexander’s forces being revealed at the assembly?
Following the gestir retrieval, they had shed the bishops onto their longship.
Sir Brayden’s body next to her became stiff as the board they sat upon when he spotted King Håkonsson’s massive ship looming next in the distance at twilight, the gold-plated dragon’s head on the bow gleaming proud as if the sun was still high in the sky.
“Shite,” he whispered, shocked. “’Tis King Håkonsson’s, the ship carrying the gold bowsprit?”
She nodded. He asked with disbelief for her ears alone: “Whose and what vessel is that just across?”
Turning her eyes, she discovered his beheld the numerous-decked cog with a mast which appeared to reach the heavens.
“’Tis a cog,” she whispered at him and Aonghus, who leaned in closer. “Freshly built. A ship which is foretold to change the seas for merchants in times yet to come. The owner is nae merchant,” she said bitterly and paused to nod toward Lord Kollungr. “He sought more cargo space for his own devious means.”
She observed the sheer number of ships’ lights shimmering in the darkening distance. Swallowing suddenly became difficult; it looked more like a star’s cluster across a midnight sky than ships belonging to the entire Northmen’s fleet. Her stomach sank. Somanymore then they had left Bjørgvin with!
“Four Scots among twenty thousand Northmen,” Sir Brayden murmured under his breath toward the three other Scots at the foreboding sight to finish dryly, “What could possibly go awry?”
One Northman heard his dire comment. “You may still swim for the shore, Sir Brayden,” Lord Kollungr taunted, raising his fur-clad arm gesturing toward the shoreline, which was all but a stain on the horizon.
Nerves and coordination – never her strong talents. When they arrived at King Håkonsson’s ship, while bobbing alongside, she fell off the rope ladder a few rungs up. Ugh!
“Ouff,” she puffed when thick arms caught her midair before she crashed onto the barge. She met the eyes belonging to her knight.
