Come the Morning (33 page)

The thought did not help his temper where she was concerned. Battle lines had been drawn, and it didn't matter that he had drawn them. She was waging her war all too well.

The first few days, he had managed to ignore her, riding hard to see that the wagon wheels made it over cliffs and through water, slush, and mud. At times, he'd silently taunted himself regarding this land he loved so much—it didn't seem they had come one flat mile. He was ready to discard his precious bathtub and half his mail, plate, and instruments of war. If he were not in the king's service …

But he was. And he would be called back into service, because he knew David, and David would press his boundaries against England. David had given him time to establish his hold here, and then he would be called back.

Sometimes, he stood back in the trees as she wove her tales around the campfire, and he watched her, and he thought about the first night he had seen her. Sometimes, he turned away. She had made them enemies. If so, he would see their war to the finish. But it seemed that something painful had begun to plague him, and it made him all the more angry with her, even as she continued with her perfect politeness. Wasn't courtesy more than he had ever expected? He asked himself at times.

The days had been long; the nights endless. Camping had been wretched. Each night his men had erected them a shelter in the woods. She had gone in first, and he had walked the forest trails before joining her.

She had slept.

He had lain awake. Beside her. He had never touched her. Always, a breath of space remained between them.

And each day, it seemed that his temper simmered to a greater degree. Still, he thought he leashed it well. But how could he yell at her, and long to throttle her, when she had been soft-spoken and entirely courteous?

But now, this …

Atop the ragged, tufted cliff above the place where the land met the water, he could see far across the horizon. At first sight, all seemed peaceful.

Below him, dozens of farmers' cottages with fencing and barns and stables lay strewn over a wide area of land that was abutted by the rocky cliffs and naturally protected by them. Shallow waters stretched out, with huge outcroppings of rocks here and there, to the isle itself. Like here on the mainland, long stretches of sandy beach gave way to rich green grasses; then the rock seemed to rise to the sky, and the castle itself seemed to be part of the rock, and part of the sky, the high towers all but meeting the clouds.

Angus had ridden beside him.

“I told you, Waryk. It's a place as beautiful as your bride. As wild, as well, perhaps. Sometimes, the sea rages, and beats against the rock. At low tide, a man can run across the water to reach the isle, and yet, to the protected southern side, there is no finer harbor.”

“No one is about,” Waryk heard suddenly, and he turned to see that Mellyora had ridden to join them at the precipice, and that she stared down the distance between them and the shoreline with distress.

He frowned. “Dusk is coming—”

“There is no one about!” she repeated.

Then Waryk saw the smoke, rising from the thatched roof of one of the cottages below. “Angus, alert the men, we've visitors,” he said calmly.

“Visitors,” she breathed. “I have men-at-arms—”

“Aye, lady, and they are atop your walls, yonder, see?”

Indeed, once alerted, they could all see that men lined the high parapets and towers of the castle. Small boats could be seen northward to the shoreline, and a man in simple mail, waving a staff, came from one of the cottages, dragging with him a young woman whose hysterical cries could suddenly be heard rising even unto the cliffs.

“My God!” Mellyora breathed. And before he could stop her, she was racing down the cliff toward the shore.

“Mellyora!” he cried, and charged after her. He was glad that no horse was faster or more adept than Mercury. His wife had drawn her sword as she charged down the cliff, and he swore, furious that his first action would have to be to subdue her when his newfound home was under attack. But he would not allow her to charge against an unknown enemy, and so he shouted to Angus to lead the attack while he brought Mercury galloping hard in front of Mellyora to cut her off, and when he had so succeeded, she stared at him as if he had gone mad. “Waryk, they are killing my people—”

“My people, my lady, and they will not kill you.”

“I can fight, you know that, I am a Viking's daughter—”

“You were a Viking's daughter. Now you're my wife.”

She was frantic, he saw. All the worse. Fighting he had learned, despite his own successes as a passionate and desperate lad, was best done with a cool head. She pulled back on her horse, ready to race by him, and he swore, spurring Mercury on so that he could leap from his own mount and bring her down.

Tears stung her eyes now as he straddled her, tears of utter frustration. “Waryk—”

“Lady, you know I can best you, and you know that I can best whatever enemy strikes your doors. By God, will you leave me to it?”

“It's my home, Waryk, we can both fight, we can both die—”

“You are to be the lady, the bearer of the heirs, and I the protector, madam, it is the way it is done.”

Her lashes covered her cheeks. “That is hardly the situation at this moment.”

“Then practice allowing me to be the one to lead the charge against our enemies!”

He rose, swiftly helping her to her feet, then leaving her there. She wasn't helpless, she could swing a sword, and he knew it. That frightened him more than anything.

He leapt back on Mercury and stared down at her. She watched him with frustration still in her eyes. “My lady, allow me to die for you!” he said, and whirled his horse about. He saw that Jillian, on her gentle gray mare, had almost reached Mellyora, and so he dared spur Mercury onward. Clumps of mud and grass flew as he covered the distance to the shore, where he discovered his men engaged in pitched battle with a small, fierce army of attackers.

Boats—Viking longboats, so it seemed—had come ashore on the isle as well, and quickly assessing the situation, Waryk realized that the inhabitants of Blue Isle and the shore had been surprised by a whirlwind attack that had come strategically from the sea—the boats had crept dead close to the shore until the attackers could come in force and first overwhelm the inhabitants of the cottages, then turn to the business of the castle with its people demoralized by the slaughter of their land mates. Men hastily prepared counterattacks at the parapets of the great stone castle. The gates had been closed against the attackers, and he saw that no troops had left the walls to fight because opening the gates to allow warriors out would make the castle vulnerable to the attackers.

Many of the attackers were in mail. They carried shields and wielded axes, maces, swords, and more. The farmers on the shore were fighting back with nothing more than shafts and pikes, knives, and an occasional small sword. Men lay scattered about; women screamed. A baby sat in the midst of the melee, crying and muddied. An attacker bore down upon the infant, his mace raised to swing at the child's head.

Waryk raced Mercury toward the scene, gripped with his thighs, swept up the babe, and turned just in time to avoid the mace. Angus, quick to fight in perfect unison with him, saw the action, and rode in where he had been, his blow against the man so ferocious that the would-be child murderer was nearly decapitated.

His men, trained warriors, had turned the tide of the attack at the cottages. The invaders were shouting to one another, turning toward their boats. Waryk saw the young woman who had been seized and torn from the smoking cottage; he passed the crying babe down to one of the women who had come from a burning home, and tore after the offender. He rode the fellow down; he and his captive fell into the dirt. His claymore drawn, and swinging the double-handed weapon with all his strength, he felled the Viking before he could be axed down himself. The young woman was screaming and shrieking; the dead Viking fell at her feet. Waryk drew her to her feet, and directed her back toward the village on the shore. “Go!” he commanded, and she turned and fled as told. He leapt back upon Mercury, turned his attention toward the men trying to escape now in their longboats. They had already shot away from the shore. They were experts in their boats, and pursuit would be futile.

He stared across at the castle, looked at the water, and judged the tide.

“Cross the water!” he cried, as he saw Angus riding to join him. “Divert the attackers so that the castle's warriors can open the gates to join in the fighting!”

“Aye!” Angus cried, and turned to do as told.

Waryk urged Mercury into the sea. The water rose up two feet, three feet, four feet … and then no more. White foam spewed around him as he forced his great warhorse toward the isle. The others followed in his wake. He burst upon the shore, and immediately took advantage of his mounted position, charging the Viking foot soldiers and bearing down on them with a fury. Men fell down before them. He heard cries from the walls, and then the sounds of the mechanism as the gates opened. Others would be joining him.

Suddenly, men-at-arms from within the castle burst from it. Ten mounted men were followed by a score or more of foot soldiers. Waryk paused, seeing that the men were led by a helmeted horseman in a distinct tartan. The MacKinny, he thought briefly, but could give the matter little thought. The man was an able soldier, so it seemed, warning the warriors behind him that they must circle the enemy before they could escape.

The attackers began to take flight. Still enraged by the destruction and wanton carnage he had seen among the village on the mainland shore, Waryk rode in hard pursuit. He caught up with one boat before it could shoot out into the water. Three men were aboard. He weighed his odds, furious but intending to live, then dropped down from Mercury, stepped out into the surf and rushed the few feet to the boat, and leapt into it like a berserker himself, claymore swinging hard with all his strength behind it. He sliced through the middle of one unarmored man, dodged a battle-ax, and rose to rip into a second man, catching him beneath his metal breastplate. He met the last in a grim, hand-to-hand battle, steel clanging against steel again and again. The fellow was burly, huge, well muscled, and missing all of his front teeth. He kept grinning as they fought. Finally, Waryk caught him in the throat; he caught hold of his neck with both hands and stared at Waryk in surprise as he died.

He felt the air as someone lunged at him from behind. He turned, ready to fight his attacker, but before he could raise his sword, the man fell.

He looked to the shore and saw the man who had led the others from the castle walls. He was still mounted; his horse stood in perhaps two feet of water. He held a crossbow, which he had used against the fallen man. He was a somber, serious-looking young man with tawny hair and hazel eyes. Still a wee bit green, perhaps, but steadfast.

Waryk stepped from the Viking boat to the water and walked through white foam turned red with blood toward the mounted man. The fellow dismounted as Waryk approached him. He bowed, inclining his head. “Laird Waryk.” He looked up, a slight glint of wry humor in his eyes. “Watching you, sir, I did not know if you needed the help or not, but it seemed that such a man being dead sooner than later would not be a bad thing.”

Waryk grinned in turn, surprised and not entirely pleased to sum up the man and determine that he certainly had his merits. “You're the MacKinny?” he said, though he did not need to ask the question.

“Aye. And we do beg your pardon, Laird Lion, for such a homecoming, but the raiders came from nowhere. Such an attack has not occurred here since …”

“Since Adin took the isle himself, I imagine,” Waryk said.

Ewan MacKinny shrugged. “Strange. We've guards on the walls, always, as you can imagine. Such a fortress as Blue Isle is only strong when her gates are closed. In times of trouble, naturally, we bring our people and livestock within the walls of the fortress. This assault began, as you surely saw, with incredible stealth. They came from the bend, around the cliffs, and straight to the village. We were sickened within the fortress to watch, but I couldn't order men out—”

“You would have jeopardized the entire isle, aye, man, I could see that.”

Ewan nodded, relieved, apparently, that Waryk didn't think he should have risked all to dive into the fray.

“Your coming as you did saved many people. We're grateful. We didn't expect you until tomorrow—as your last messenger had estimated your arrival.” He inhaled and exhaled on a strange sound. “My own sister was among those you saved,” Ewan said.

“Aye?”

Ewan smiled. “The great bearded giant stealing the woman from the cottage. She was Igraina, my sister.”

“Shall we see to the damage?” Waryk suggested.

“None here, sir. We were able to bring in those on the isle; it was only across the water where the villagers were at the mercy of the attackers.”

Waryk nodded and whistled for Mercury. His horse came obediently, and he mounted the animal. Angus was almost instantly at his side, nodding in acknowledgment to Ewan and waiting for Waryk's instructions. “Cross the water; we will see what ails we can fix.”

Across the rising water, they met with Thomas, who quickly gave a report. “We did arrive most opportunely. Two dead, four injured, five houses sacked, three burned.”

“The injured are—”

“Being tended, sir. Lady Mellyora has seen to them with her priest, a man called Phagin, who is well versed in healing herbs.”

Waryk dismounted from his horse. “Where is my wife?”

Thomas pointed toward one of the cottages. Waryk nodded, then instructed, “Much is in stone here, the burned-out homes can be rebuilt. Have the masons and workers come and do what repair can be done before the night.”

“Aye, sir, these are all MacKinnys, MacAllistairs, and MacMahans here, Laird Lion. They'll work together for one another.”