“Aye. We see to our defenses.”
Hulda knew what that meant. The gates guarded. Every man armed. The women and children quite possibly sent off to shelter in the forest.
She could not go to him. He would not want to see her now, nor would his folk.
This—this was the reality of their situation. When the monsters arrived from the ocean, she would be seen as one of them.
“I understand,” she told the man, and he went pelting off as if a howling horde pursued him.
As it did.
Chapter Forty-Six
It had takennearly all summer. Most of the killing season, anyway. It had been a time apart, aye. A time of dreams. From the moment Quarrie first spied Hulda’s sail on the horizon, his life had acquired a mystical quality that defied the ugly truth of his world.
Truly, so he thought as he stood on the wall above the keep, staring out across the sea, he should have known better.
Life was all about ugliness, endurance, loss, and dying. Had his da not perished so in ugly agony after months of suffering? Had Quarrie not lost his own brother and countless childhood companions, grown into fine warriors, in these years just past? Was he not himself first and foremost a warrior?
Standing there with his eyes narrowed against the descent of the afternoon sun, he no longer knew quite who he was.
The man who’d been born for this place, who would likely die in defense of it? Or the man who lived to be in Hulda’s arms? The two had become so twisted, as had the emotions of loyalty and desire, that he could no longer tell them apart.
But with the appearance of dark sails on the horizon, Hulda had once more become the enemy. No more, for his folk, of an imposed alliance. No more the uneasy tolerance of Norsemen, and one woman, in their settlement. They knew death when they saw it coming.
As did he.
The Norse had been clever, coming out from the distant islands when the glare of the westering sun would be in the defenders’ eyes. Four ships, there were.Four.
Could they defend against so many? And would the Norse attack now, or wait for morning? The gloaming would last long enough, as the men aboard those boats well knew, to afford a battle straight away.
Such a battle, against so many invaders, would be crippling. They might well lose.
Someone pressed into place at the rampart beside him. His mother, it was.
“Ma, ye should no’ be up here.”
“Nay? Where should I be?” Without giving him a chance to answer, she asked, “How many?”
Too many.“Four ships.”
“By God!”
“If ye want to be o’ help, go organize the women. Get them ready to flee for the hills.”
For the briefest instant her eyes met his, and he beheld her distress. She had seen her beloved husband take his mortal wound in just such a battle as would now come. And, Quarrie reflected, if there could be one thing worse than fighting such a battle, it would be standing by and watching, as good as helpless.
“Already underway,” she told him. “I am sending three o’ the older men wi’ them along wi’ the harper. He is far too precious for us to lose.”
Quarrie’s head swam. This too seemed familiar. Had it all happened long ago? Aye, it had, all his life fighting against the Norse. He should not have a moment to think of Hulda, not at such a time, yet she held a place in his mind. What would she do when the settlement came under attack?
He could not worry about that now. He could not worry about her.
He could not seem to do anything else.
But aye, he thought of that as, leaving the ramparts in Borald’s hands, he ran down the stairs with Ma at his heels into the confusion. Men hurried everywhere, bristling with arms. Women and children flooded the bailey, many of the bairns crying and the women trying to find their men to speak a farewell.
He was not the only one who risked losing his love.
