“Just the one?” he asked Lohr. “Ye ha’ seen only one sail?” A vital question. One boat, and he had a chance. A flight of them—
The very thought turned his stomach.
“Aye, only one,” Lohr said grimly. “So far.”
What did it mean?
Quarrie narrowed his eyes against that reflected light. The keep faced west and the sun rose behind them, stretching over the hills to the east. The sail—most of what he could see of the boat—showed black. Unmoving.
Borald came pushing in beside him. “He wants for us to see him, aye. That’s deliberate, that is.”
“Aye.” Quarrie breathed it. But why? Such attackers came swift and hard. They did not float there like something out of a dream.
He thought again of the dream he’d had, of the woman with the brown hair. No ordinary dream, that. But he could not waste time contemplating such things now.
To Borald he said, “Mobilize the men. See everyone armed. Spread word among the women for them to be ready. Keep them fro’ panicking, if ye can.”
He spared a fleeting thought for Norah and her wee boy. His every instinct was to protect them, despite the pain.
Borald rolled his eyes. If a group of Norse boats hung over the horizon, there would be no holding back the panic.
He dashed off. Another body came pushing in beside Quarrie.
Coban. His former good friend.
Coban was as fair as Norah was dark, with a rough-hewn sort of face and a wide mouth now set in a grimace. Arguably one of the last people Quarrie wanted to see.
“Are they movin’ in?” Coban asked.
“Nay. No’ yet. Just hanging there.”
“Why?”
“The devil knows.”
“They must know we can see them.”
“Aye.” A game it was, Quarrie decided. He would much rather deal with what was, terrible as that might be.
The men around them began to mutter.
“I do no’ see any other sails.”
“Is he movin’ to attack??
“Nay.”
It seemed unreal as the moments trickled by and trepidation grew. The sail on the horizon continued to hang while more and more men and, aye, a few women crowded the walls.
“He’s moving!” cried someone who must have very sharp eyes indeed.
Was he? Quarrie’s gaze narrowed instinctively and then—the sail was just gone.
Men exclaimed. They cried out. To be sure, the sail could not possibly have disappeared.
He had moved back behind the island.
A game of cat and mouse, it was. He had waited there till he was sure the light was strong enough that they would see him from shore.
