CRACK! He threw his arm over her, covering her as a blinding flash seared his gaze. Hearing a whimper beneath him, a tingling took his bones. Shite! A lightning bolt had struck the mast. Looking up, he discovered the bolt had sliced the mighty beam she had been tied upon into two. A groan echoed alongside a thump which rattled the ship when half the mast landed onto the bark ship.This was why she untied herself; she knew the bolt would have struck her.
The flames on the mast sizzled from the water drops. His eyes narrowed in the downpour. Was that a tidy bridge for them to cross over to the supply ship’s deck made by the mast falling after the lightning strike? Aye.
Keirah shivered. His arm grew tighter. The axe still tethered them onto the deck. “I have you, Cluaran,” he reassured with a voice gruff from salt.
“Aye, Aonghus, ’tis not over,” she declared before lifting her head to scream toward…“Sir Brayden! Step back! Step back right NOW!”
The robust knight battling a pair of Northmen with daggers and oars and ropes and fists in makeshift weaponry jumped rearward at her warning right before another bolt hit the ocean near the top deck, causing the remaining pair of crewmen to be thrown into the water when the ship pitched and the top deck’s wall splintered, falling away.
Buzz!It was as if a bee’s hive had nested in his ears. “Keirah?” he asked through the strange sound.
“Aye, we take the bridge, unto the supply ship,” she spluttered through another dousing wave crashing them.Cough, cough.
He glanced up to find Sir Brayden flopping across the deck toward them, appearing more fish than knight – but…“Kollungr, Svørn, where the devil did they vanish to?” Aonghus questioned out loud.
Had a wave taken them, or had they fought their way back into the safe passageway, or were they lurking behind the fallen sail? Only bare deck met his blurred vision where he had last left the collapsed Northmen. Shite.
“Aonghus,” she muttered, hearing his questioning thought. “Leave them.”
“I cannot, Cluaran, they may have been swept overboard but I must check the passage…”
Her grip tightened on his mantle, and he met her determined eyes gazing up at him, red and puffy from the salt’s abuse as well. “Nae, let the ship and sea have them. Scotlandforemost. This is grander thananyof us. We must banishallof them from our shores. Supply ship, my knight,” she said, conviction lining her soul.
He continued to lock with her gaze. “Sir Brayden?” he bellowed at the staggering friend in his periphery.
“Aye?”
“Venture for the makeshift bridge before a wave disturbs the connection!”
Chapter 37
“Are you steady?” Keirah heard Aonghus ask while strapped onto his back.
“Aye, charge forward!” she hollered, her ears still ringing like bells belonging to a church tower dinged in her head after the lighting strikes.
With a snippet from the rope off the broken mast, he had tied her much the same way as when they had boarded King Håkonsson’s ship. Her one arm lay across the top on his shoulder, the other tucked underneath his ribs, with both tethered by the rope before his torso as he crawled on all fours like a bull across the bridge. He was using the axe’s blade to stab the mast’s wood every few lengths to keep them steady.
Sir Brayden yelled behind them. “WAVE!” Oh hell, not again!
All leaned low; a whimper crossed her lips as she tightened her arms on her bull.Cough, cough,she spluttered then listened to him gasp. Even if the axe held the name Vengeance, he had given up the personal desire to seek this in honor of her demand. This is what they were here for. Kollungr…if the falcon still lived, he would have to keep. Did Kollungr still live? Hard to tell; the way his face had appeared a red berry at the pressure Aonghus had been applying with the gold chainseemed to demonstrate the falcon most likely had flown into a tide’s watery death after she had looked away while feverishly untying the rope before the lightning strike.
Were they almost there? Through her burning eyes, all she saw was a few lengths. It was awfully quiet behind them. She had relinquished her dagger to the knight, so Sir Brayden was using the pair of blades as a way of steadying himself by stabbing the wood as they crossed.
“Sir Brayden?” she asked, worried.
“Aye, still present! The daggers are working well; blades are sharp,” he called out, then grumbled behind them, “The infernal kelpies have not taken me for a ride yet.”
Aonghus gave a lone chuckle at the quip; she found a hint of smile on her face till the seawater tried to gush into her lips. The friend’s humor about kelpies, the mythical horses who showed people to watery graves, was correct.Cough, cough. She glimpsed back up. Was the edge belonging to the supply ship there? Her soaked lashes narrowed. Aye, they had made it!
She looked down at Aonghus’s shoulder wound. The chain mail had done its task, taking the blunt force, but the sharpness of Svørn’s sword had ripped the woven metal and wool tunic beneath. Aonghus would need tending. Did she see bone? No. Her muscles relaxed a bit; even with the strain from his effort to see them across, the gushing blood had slowed.Thank all!
He ordered, “Cluaran, you stay strapped to me.”No problem with that request.The memory of nearly being swept overboard when she untethered herself was fresh in her mind’s eye.
Smack! His feet hit the deck; she peered over his shoulder. Her breath halted.
Oh. My. Enemies.
Over two dozen Northern warriors scattered across the colossal deck, looking the same as a pack of northern wolves giving a collective growl preparing to hunt three lone Scots who were but a tender morsel for the munching. It seemed Sir Brayden was of the same mind after he landed beside them to groan, “Aw, shite! Appears we have traded kelpies for northern wolves.”
