“I was very fond of my brother.” That did not begin to speak to it. She had laughed with him, teased him, admired him. He had protected her when she was very small. He had taught her all she knew of sailing, of fighting, and of the sheer hard work involved in both. “I come now to avenge him.”
Quarrie MacMurtray’s brows flew up. Now she saw astonishment in his eyes. “I see.”
“I come with a fleet.” The lie flowed from her smoothly. “Mostly my brother’s friends. We can take this settlement apart stone by stone, or I can allow you to buy my leniency.”
“A price? Ye want a price?”
“I do.”
Now she could see his thoughts racing. He had very expressive eyes, did this man. “We are no’ that rich a settlement. We ha’ many people for whom we maun provide.”
“Rich enough. We have sacked, burned, and slaughtered for less. Yet I am offering you a way to avoid the slaughter. We need not redden our swords at all.”
His thoughts reeled, she could see that. This man would not be good at keeping secrets.
“I ha’ never heard o’ your people acting so.”
She shrugged. “We sail for gain. What fool would lose her men to battle if she could get what she wants without? Give me what I seek and we will sail away, trouble you no more this season.”
His hands clenched into fists. “What is your price?”
He expected Hulda to name a measure of gold. She knew very well that gold from Ireland got traded among these isles. Or silver jewelry. He might pay her in weapons, though his smiths could not be so good as her own, who possessed fire magic. In gems. She could beggar his settlement with her demand.
Instead she leaned toward him and said, “But one thing will buy the safety of your settlement. I want the man who took my brother’s life.”
*
Cold drenched Quarriefrom his head downward, a clammy sort of chill such as might accompany a sickness, when the woman spoke. For an instant the air around him wavered, becomingtoo bright even though the chamber remained dim. Through the glare of it, he saw the woman’s face, only her face, and heard a murmur at the back of his mind.
This could not be happening. None of it.
That seemed so irrefutable he expected to awaken in his own bed. To sit up and think,Och, that was a mad dream.
Dreaming would explain so much. The woman in a Norse warrior’s clothing. Her arrival this way. The sense he had that he knew her.
Had always known her.
Impossible, for surely she was like to no one he had ever met. Those uncanny, pale-gray eyes that watched him so carefully, that weighed his every reaction.
She wanted the man who had felled her brother. Without question, that had been his father.
Och, by all that was holy! What were his options? He could refuse and give her safe conduct out of here. Go to battle over it. A total of six ships, she said she had. ’Twould be a battle for the ages, one he did not know he could win.
If he tried, it would be costly. Widespread death and destruction. Even if he did fight them off, what would be left?
He could hand over their price.Nay.
He could persuade her it had not been Da, but another man who had felled her brother.Him.
“How can we be certain who killed yer brother? I remember the battle o’ which ye speak.” He drank deep of his ale, refilled the cup, and drained it again. She had not touched hers. Did she fear it poisoned? “It was mad confusion there on the shore.”
“My brother was the leader of the men. First onto the shore, he would have been. Fiercest in the fight. His friends who were with him said he fought the leader, here.” Her pale eyes met his again. “Do you say you do not remember?”
He could not say that. He remembered the fight, aye, and the Norseman’s axe blade sinking into Da’s leg. The stroke Da had made that took the man’s head.
She narrowed her eyes at him and asked very carefully, “Did you see who felled him?”
“I did.”
