“Bring him,” he told his men.
“Are ye hurt?” Borald yelled at Quarrie when they reached the gate.
Quarrie did not know. The rain had washed away any blood.
No doubt, though, that he was.
*
They were wounded,all of them. In the great hall where they gathered, the healers scrambled trying to determine the worst of them to be tended first. Two men died under the healers’ hands.
Quarrie was dismayed to discover his ma had not gone off with the other women, as planned.
“I sent them,” she told him while she herself tended his wounds—numerous cuts to his arms, his knuckles laid open. A slice to one leg that he hoped would not hamper him if they had to fight again.Whenthey had to fight again. A long slash to his chest, right through his armor, that hurt when he breathed.
An axe had done that. If not for his chest plate, he would be dead.
Do ye think they will pull off?It was the question on every side.Do ye think they have had enough?
Quarrie doubted it. He kept an ear peeled over the rain for a cry from the walls where the men still kept watch.
When he met up with Borald, the hall being filled only with groans, he said, “Let us ask the prisoner.”
The man was being held in a stone shed, well-guarded by some of the older men, and had not had his grievous wounds tended. He sneered up at Quarrie and Borald when they went in, looking more a maddened beast than a man.
“What is your name?” Quarrie asked.
“Loki take you,” the man replied in broken Gaelic.
“Wha’ is your commander’s name?”
The man—large, fair-haired, and covered in blood—spat at him.
Borald bent and laid the blade of his dirk to the prisoner’s throat. “Ye will answer the chief.”
“Chief?” The man’s half-crazed eyes focused on Quarrie. “Are you the one who killed Jute?”
Ah, so Ivor’s menhadreturned to avenge Hulda’s brother. Och, but he must have been as well liked by the men as by his sister. All at once, Quarrie could almost feel Hulda beside him.
“Is that what this is about?” he asked the man. “Your commander wants vengeance?”
The man bared his teeth. “You do not deserve to live.”
“Will the attack resume?”
The man did not answer, but Quarrie already knew.
It would resume. And battered as they were, they would need to stand and defend.
Chapter Fifty-Five
“Iworry forthe women and bairns up in the hills,” Ma said fretfully, pacing the floor of what had been her husband’s private quarters at the rear of the hall, “in this vile weather.”
At least the women and bairns were alive—for now. More than could likely be said for the rest of them, when the attack resumed.
Night had fallen, an uneasy night during which few slept. Many were awake nursing their wounds. The rain had let up, and when morning came…
When morning came the Norse would attack, and hard. Quarrie could feel it at the root of his soul.
