The Norse fleetof four ships—for Quarrie no longer doubted they were the same boats that Hulda and her crew had helped chase away—had decided to play games with him. Late in the season as it was, and vile as the weather looked to turn, they set up a game of hide-and-seek among the offshore islands, allowing the watchers in the settlement to get glimpses of them and then moving off again.
They might show but one sail, or two. The four of them might sail past at a distance and away again, only to circle back around. Like wolves around a wounded hart, or sharks in the water scenting blood.
He was angry, the Norse commander, or so Quarrie decided. At the very least, frustrated at being turned away by Hulda and her crew. He had wanted revenge, had the man called Ivor. Remembering his own encounter with Ivor while being held captive, Quarrie knew him for a man with little mercy. Here at the end of the year, he meant to have the revenge he’d been denied.
Did Ivor know that theFreyahad gone home to the north? Did the first few passes seek to draw her out, if yet she lingered?
Quarrie did not know. But the presence of the Norse ships out among the islands played havoc with the settlement. Men who watched from the walls and the shore were continually at fever pitch. And the women waited by the day for orders totake their children off and away to the wild hills. Not hospitable places at this time of year.
All Quarrie knew was that if this group of four longboats attacked, it would be a battle for the ages. The kind of which bards would sing in the halls, someday.
If they survived.
The strain began to show on everyone. Men were grim and silent and women wept if anyone looked at them the wrong way. Quarrie barely slept. When he was not on the walls keeping watch, he was organizing weapons or in hastily called, panic-filled meetings with his advisors.
His longing for Hulda became a wound at his heart, and that, even though he could spare less heed to it, refused to heal.
“It would almost be better,” Borald said to him once, “if they would just attack and get it over.”
“Do no’ say that.” Quarrie had seen such battles. It sometimes seemed he’d been born with the dread of them. The clash of weapons. Dead strewn upon the shore. The smell of burning in the air. The separate, individual battles on which such an attack could turn.
It could go either way. He could not be sure they would prove victorious.
“Aye, but,” Borald told him, “the waiting is killing us all. Whatarethey waiting for?”
The weather, mayhap. For aye, it had been wicked with cold winds and snarling rains in which a man would be fortunate to see his opponent. Quarrie figured if they got a bonny day…
Blood would flow.
So, must he be grateful for the bad weather? Not easy to be glad of the things that hurt. Even if they were intended to provide protection.
One morning when the sun refused to rise and clouds raked the sky just as dark combers raked the shore, Quarrie’s ma cameup on the walls—something she had not done of late, seeming prepared to leave that to her men.
Now she stared out at a world that, if one believed in such things, looked like end times, and said, “Son, I ha’ a bad feeling in my bones.”
Borald stood close by—Quarrie had just been speaking with him—as did other members of the guard, the walls always being crowded these days despite the weather.
They all gazed at her.
“Wha’ sort o’ feeling, Ma?” Quarrie asked. Foolishly, for he knew.
She frowned at the scene before her. Rain danced on the far ocean and the wind blew her hair out in a banner. She looked fey and almost like the girl she must once have been.
“I think I should send the women awa’. And the bairns.” For she had been in charge of preparing them. “I think, despite the weather, the attackers will come.”
“Tired o’ the waiting?” Borald suggested, and all Quarrie’s uncertainty hardened to iron.
“Aye, Ma. Send them awa’. Borald, circulate word to the men—”
Quarrie stopped because a sail had appeared out beyond Oileán Iur, black against the deep gray sky.
“Go,” he shouted. “Go.”
*
There would beno talking, no negotiating. This, Quarrie knew. No discussion with the men on those four longboats that sailed so inexorably around the island and headed for shore. There would be only raised swords and axes. Death.
He had to trust that Ma would get the women away. Already she ran down the stairs at a pace that terrified him. He had no time to spare a thought for her falling.
