She did not feel certain. Her instincts were good, sometimes uncannily so. And her instincts about Quarrie MacMurtray said—
Ach, but they said far too much.
He might be hiding something.
She got up once more and went to the rail. Most of the crew had gone ashore to sleep and settled on the stretch of land above the rocky shore. She could just glimpse their swaddled forms in the light from the fires they had lit, as the stars began to fade.
Only Garik and Lars had stayed aboard with her. Lars always slept like a rock, in all locations and weathers, but Garik came now and stood beside her, looking out.
“You are worried,” he said, not a question.
She slanted a look at him. Among the youngest of the men he was, but a talented helmsman, and she felt comfortable with him, glad he’d accepted a place among her crew.
“Ja,” she said. “I am worried.”
“What is it that worries you?”
A score of things, but she could not tell him that. A crew must have confidence in its captain.
“Ivor worries me.”
That made Garik grin. “Ivor worries everybody. He is, you understand, like two men in one.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“Ah, well, there is the reasonable, affable Ivor who will sit with you in the ale hall and tell dirty stories. Then there is the other one, who on a raid will split children on his blade with glee. I saw him do it to an infant once, still in its mother’s arms. Down farther south, that was.”
“No wonder they hate us, these people.”
“It is not important that they hate us so much as fear us. It accomplishes half our task, so my faðir says.”
“Rarely do I encounter the Ivor who tells stories in the ale hall. I see only the disagreeable Ivor, all too quick to criticize me.”
“Ja, but it is you, Hulda, who command this voyage. That, you must remember.”
He was right.
“What answer do you think you will get from the Gaels?”
“I think,” Hulda said very slowly, with her eyes on the water, “this leader of theirs, this Quarrie MacMurtray, will turn himself over to me.”
*
A long nightpassed with agonizing slowness, much of it spent by Quarrie in his da’s chamber, where the man in question strove mightily to disguise his pain. Determined Da was to hand himself over, come morning. And for that, he would have to be on his feet.
Quarrie felt for Ma, who suffered as much as if she shared Da’s pain. He would not take the draught from her, and she got less sleep than Quarrie, and that was not much.
Morning came still and clear. Quarrie went out to walk the walls and speak to the guard, which he had doubled the night before.
“Any signs o’ movement?” he asked the men there.
“The smoke fro’ their fires. Look.”
Aye, if Quarrie narrowed his eyes he could see the thin threads of gray, streaming upward. It must be true, then, the tale of the six ships.
He knew the island well. In times gone by, he and his friends had taken a tiny boat and gone there to fish. To take some time away and pretend at being grown.
He knew the inlet. Was there room for six longboats?
