The hunters looked at Njal, who frowned and shook his head. “No, they were looking for a younger boy. Around four years old. And the reward they are offering is substantial. Well worth your while if you do see them.”
“I will most certainly keep a look out,” Arne said. He smiled at the hunters, but kept a close eye on them as they headed off, continuing their journey southwards. One man at the rear of the group lingered, however, and turned back. Arne glanced at him,edging his hand to rest on his sword. The man seemed familiar, although he couldn’t place him.
“Given what happened the last time you got involved with a woman, Arne, I’d consider leaving her to someone else. You don’t want to end up with more scars.”
Arne tried to suppress the shudder running through him. While he didn’t recognise the man’s face, he did recognise his voice. Njal had paused a short distance away and was looking back, puzzled.
Arne tightened his grip on his sword, but the other man laughed.
“Come now, there is no need for you to end up with more injuries. Besides, it did not even take a sword to bring you down before. You followed Ingrid into her trap so easily. How is your son, by the way?”
Arne drew his axe and pointed it towards the man. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Oh, I think I do. And I think that not many others know. Wouldn’t Jarl Tormod be interested to find out—”
“Orm!” shouted Njal. “We have no time for personal feuds. It is important we remain on good terms with Jarl Tormod’s settlement. And one such as you would not fare well by taking on the Brothers of Thunder.”
“There are no brothers here. Only one man. Alone. At least this time there is no woman to betray him.” Orm smirked, and it took all of Arne’s self-control to lower his sword.
“I don’t need the help of my brothers to defeat someone like you,” Arne said.
Orm’s sneer suggested he believed otherwise, but Arne let him turn and walk away. He wouldn’t take the risk of fighting him or even challenging him here and now. Keeping Gemma and Caelin’s presence a secret was important, and now there was another problem. He had thought that was a secret which Ingrid had taken to her grave, but Orm had been there when he was tortured,although he’d clearly left before Tormod, Ulf and Björn arrived. He sighed. A reckoning was coming. That much was clear.
He stood and watched as the group walked northwards, his knuckles white on his axe. Snowflakes fell faster and faster, soon obscuring them from view in a swirling blanket of white. Arne wished he could erase their meeting from his thoughts as easily.
Orm’s mocking voice took him back to a time he usually tried to block out of his memories. He’d loved Ingrid and believed she had loved him in return. And although he had tried to warn his cousin, there was no reasoning with him, as he was besotted with her. When Einar had been born six months later, full-grown, he’d known the child was his and not Tormod’s. By then he had seen Ingrid for what she really was and didn’t want to risk his own relationship with his cousin by telling him the truth.
At least now he was a father to his own son, even if it remained a secret. And maybe one day he would tell Einar the truth. He remembered Gemma’s comment—she had noticed the resemblance between them. How strange that it took a woman who barely knew them to notice something that none of his friends or family had. Especially when she had only ever seen him scarred, while they had known him as a boy of Einar’s age.
He struggled to push the memories away. He’d woken to the sound of Ingrid shouting, and it took him a minute to realise he was in pain. In agony. His clothes had been cut from him and when he tried to open his eyes, they were full of blood. He heard them, though. Talking and laughing while they cut him repeatedly. Shallow cuts all over his body.
They were drinking, and sometimes they splashed the drink onto his bleeding skin. After a while, he couldn’t prevent himself from screaming, and it was most likely that which saved him. Although they had never said it, he assumed it was his screams that had led Tormod, Björn and Ulf to the abandoned hut. They had found him. Until today, he’d thought that not a single man hadleft that cabin alive except for him. He remembered nothing of the journey back to the village. He had only a vague memory of his brothers rushing into the hut, the sound of metal clashing on metal.
By the time he had recovered, Arne had learned that when he had followed Ingrid out of the village as the attack began, she had known exactly what was about to happen. Had it been successful, she would have never returned, but her father and brothers had been killed. This had left her with nowhere else for her and her son to go. The numbers of men in her home village had been severely reduced – assisted by Ulf, Tormod and Björn’s slaughter of the men who had hurt him – and Tormod’s father, Jarl Lief, had sent one of Tormod’s older brothers to take over their village as reparations for the attack.
So, Ingrid had returned to their village. Ulf had told him much later how she had begged and pleaded for her life. He’d been shocked to discover Ingrid had been pardoned. Although he was less surprised to discover the intricate web of lies she had woven to persuade Jarl Lief to pardon her. Tormod had been furious, but as much with himself as with Ingrid and her schemes. His cousin had always been a proud man, refusing to admit his mistake in public and divorce her. Instead, he took her back, trying to fool himself as much as anyone else, that his own wife could not planned to have him hurt in the way Arne had suffered. Tormod had even taken her back into his bed.
Arne, however, could never forget nor forgive. As soon as he was healed enough, he had left the village, travelling north and living alone for more than a year until he had almost come to terms with his changed appearance. By the time he had returned, Ingrid had died birthing Tormod’s child and Arne could not feel sorry for her. And the fact that he could not be sorry about it made him feel worse rather than better.
Einar had been another complication. When he had first seen Einar, Arne’s only thought had been of the way Ingrid had betrayed him. Tormod had never denied publicly that Einar was his son, but nor had he ever been able to bring himself to have a relationship with the boy and had left him behind in the Norselands when they had first settled in Kirkjaster. But Jarl Lief had sent him over with one of the boatloads of settlers, clearly expecting Tormod to deal with the boy.
As soon as he had seen him step ashore, his own feelings had changed. While Einar was, indeed, a constant reminder of everything that had gone wrong in his own life, he was only a child and deserved to know what it was to be loved. Einar was not responsible for the sins of his parents. Arne had fostered another boy by then, knowing that he would likely have no more children of his own. What woman would want a man as scarred as he was? And as he got to know Einar, his feelings towards his natural son had at last started to form. Arne’s life would be emptier without Einar in it, even if the boy never knew the truth. But now, with the knowledge that Orm knew his secret, Arne wondered if it was better to tell Tormod himself, rather than risk him hearing the news from someone else.
The wind gusted around him and he opened his eyes to a much whiter world. He should head back before Gemma thought he had abandoned them. It was even more important now that they were not seen. Someone was searching for her. Whether that was indeed the king or whether it was Marcant, once more attempting to gain control of her and her son, he neither knew nor cared.
He was tired of Strath Clut. He had come here hoping for a new start, far from the memories of the past. It had not worked out as well as he had hoped. He sighed. And now he knew there was at least one man still breathing who had been there when he’d been tortured.
He contemplated the empty whiteness where the men had disappeared. How many others had there been? How many others knew the secret he thought only he and Ingrid shared? Did it matter?
He turned back towards the shieling. Any footprints he had left earlier were gone. The snow was falling faster and faster, and he hoped he had got enough wood in to last them through the night and the next day at least. It never usually lasted more than a few days here, or at least it hadn’t in the past, although they were higher on the moors here than at the settlement down at the side of the loch.
When he got back to the shieling, there was still smoke coming out of the chimney. He smiled. She had kept the fire burning, at least. At first, the shieling appeared empty despite the fire burning in the hearth. His heart started to race but he could smell the venison cooking, and it had not yet burned so she could not have gone far. Had the hunters got here before him? He should have come straight here after his confrontation with them. What had he been thinking? Wallowing in the past was not going to serve him well in the future.
“Gemma?”
“I told you it was only Arne,” Caelin’s voice came from under the bed and Arne watched as the two of them pushed themselves out and dusted themselves off. Gemma sneezed.
“We heard voices.”
