“Where are they, then? Where were they last night, that they did no’ attack? Their leader has given her word we are safe fro’ them.”
“A woman,” his applicant said nervously. “A woman wi’ a sword.”
“As if our own women ha’ no’ picked up a blade a time or two, to defend their homes. List to me, all o’ ye.” He gazed round at his audience. “Even if the Norse do break their word and come attacking, they are few enough in number that we can fall upon them and leave their blood on the rocks.Ourrocks,” he added deliberately. “’Tis an alliance, like any other.”
“No’ like any other, chief,” one of the guardsmen said. “Our other alliances are wi’ Scotsmen, no’ our enemies.”
“Aye, Lohr, but it has no’ always been so. In the past we ha’ had alliances wi’ other Gaels who wanted to take our land, and we ha’ fought against them also. We ha’ had alliances wi’ the Pictish in the old days. Most o’ those ha’ proved advantageous. I hope this will also.”
An uneasy silence fell. They did not agree with him, but they would not push it. God help him if their Norse guests did put a foot wrong.
*
It rained forthree days straight, the waves of moisture blowing in across the sea in every possible guise, from a fine mist that gathered on the hair and skin to fierce pounding. No one heard further from the Norse. Indeed, no one would know they were still there had spies not gone stealing through the soaking gorse and bracken to take a look.
On the afternoon of the third day, Quarrie could endure it no longer. With all his immediate tasks seen to, he donned his good cloak and weapons and walked up the shore.
He would be followed, as he well knew. But the watchers would have to keep to a distance, for he made sure to glance back often in order to keep them honest.
The Norse had forsaken their longboat, which rode at anchor with mist gathered in her rigging, for a camp on the shore. It looked wet and miserable, with a number of skin tents set up in a rough circle and a fire in the middle, which smoked badly.
Hulda had indeed set a guard. Two men came loping toward Quarrie as soon as he rounded the headland, weapons on prominent display. One was fair and one darker, but they gazed at him with identical hard expressions.
“Chief Murtray?” said the fairer uncertainly.
“That is right. I would ha’ words wi’ yer leader, Hulda Elvarsdottir.” He would see her, touch her pale hair, breathe in her essence.
They exchanged glances. “Ja, come.”
By the time they reached the circle of tents, Hulda was climbing out into the rain. She wore no armor, and her slender form looked more feminine than he’d ever seen it, even if clad in a man’s tunic and leggings.
She gave him a blazing look from her pale-gray eyes.
“Chief Murtray. Is something amiss?”
“I need words wi’ ye, mistress.”
“Ja, well, come in out of the wet.” She shot a look at her men, all of whom now gathered. “Back on guard, ja?” She added words in her own tongue.
“Come,” she said to Quarrie, and ducked back into the tent.
A small space, poorly lit, that smelled of her. She would have slept here on the furs in the center of the floor. Her weapons lay close at hand, a sword and two good knives. She wore a third knife in her boot, as he saw from the corner of his eye.
She pulled the tent flap closed behind him. He expected her to invite him to sit. Instead, her task done, she stepped up to him where he stood and gazed into his face, a storm in her eyes.
Before he could draw breath to speak, she seized hold of the front of his cloak and kissed him. Her lips claimed his and her body slammed into his, all heat. All heat and desperation.
For several endless moments, he lost his mind. He forgot where he was and who he was. A number of bright images tumbled through his head. A golden-haired girl standing in bright sunlight leaning to him in order to kiss him just so. A brown-haired beauty claiming him with her lips and her soul. He had done this before, not counting those other kisses they had shared out on the longboat, on the shore.
“Hulda,” he said into her mouth.
She returned to him a word, or perhaps it was a sob. Her arms clenched him so tight it hurt. “So long,” she said against his lips. “It has been so long.”
It certainly seemed so. An age, those three days.
“I had to see ye,” he told her, failing to regain any of the sense that had flown. He cradled her head between his hands and gazed into her eyes. “I ha’ nay excuse, though.”
“You need none. No excuse to see me.” She kissed him again, so hungrily it rocked him back on his heels. “Have you thought of a place?”
