Other seasons. Other lives. Future turns on the wheel of existence that spun them through time.
Hard to wait, to have faith, when his very heart had been torn from him.
He said with no harshness at all, “I maun deal with what is before me, and that is the welfare o’ this clan.” He gripped Borald’s shoulder briefly. “Thank ye for your concern, man.”
“I ken fine ye be a braw chief like yer father before ye. But…’tis painful to watch what ye are going through.”
“Canna be helped. Thank ye for speaking to me. And if I ha’ been difficult—”
“I suppose we are all difficult fro’ time to time. We will keep a watch for sails, aye?”
“Aye.”
If that conversation was not enough to convince Quarrie he needed to take himself in hand, the one with his ma that came soon after was.
She found him at midafternoon in the armory, assuring himself they had sufficient weapons ready if the worst came, and her breathlessness convinced him she’d spent some effort hunting him down.
“There ye be!”
He looked at her in alarm, as did the young armorer’s assistant with whom he’d been counting swords and shields.
“Wha’ is it? Sails?”
Ma shook her head. “I wanted a word wi’ ye, just. Come, let us walk.”
They paced up the shore, one of the old tracks that led to the heights. Long ago, this holding had come to Quarrie’s ancestor by marriage, it belonging to the grandfather of a distant ancestress. Well-guarded, it was, over the intervening centuries.
Quarrie knew every rock along this shore. Had run it as a child. Was prepared to die for it, just like those selfsame ancestors.
“Wha’ is it, Ma?”
“People ha’ been coming to me, Quarrie. No’ wi’ complaints,” she added quickly before he could speak. “Ne’er that. But wi’ concern. They worry for ye, as do I.”
Quarrie said nothing. He did not know what to say.
“Is it that woman?” Ma asked. “The Norsewoman?”
Och, and was he that easy to read? First Borald and now Ma. Clear as glass, he must be.
“Does it matter?” he returned. “She is gone.”
“And ye walk about here like a man wi’ a mortal wound. Quarrie, wha’ did it cost ye to see her go?”
“My wounds do no’ matter,” he told her savagely. “All that matters is the safety o’ the clan. Surely Da’s sacrifice taught me that.”
“Aye, and yet—”
“Hulda’s leaving came in exchange for the safety o’ the settlement,” he told her. And he prayed, even as he paced by his mother’s side and sought to reassure her and perhaps himself that the price he and Hulda paid would at least buy the safety of his clan.
It did not, a fact that became evident when sails were sighted beyond Oileán Iur, and not those that in his very soul Quarrie wanted to see.
With a damaged heart, he accepted it and prepared for war.
Chapter Fifty-Two
With nowhere elseto go, Hulda took refuge onFreya. It had the advantage of removing her from the main part of the settlement, the longboat now being anchored back in Frode’s small harbor. There she could, perhaps, lick her wounds. Hide for a few days, if she would admit to that desire.
They had returnedFreyaso that the old man could give her a proper overhaul, but he had not yet begun the work, and she stood as she had come in, battered from a season’s sailing. By then, Hulda scarcely cared. She stowed her belongings and sought the bed she’d used while aboard, which smelled of salt water and musty furs.
