“We begin a season,” Ma went on, “that may hold much of fighting and strife. I am here to tell ye, since the chief will no’, out o’ shame and distress tell ye so, he will no’ be able to lead ye through it. He has a fine son.” She indicated Quarrie. “One I mysel’ bore him. I call upon ye to let the torc pass to Quarrie.”
The men began to murmur, a groundswell of muttering at first and then everyone speaking at once. Protest. Acknowledgment—aye, Quarrie was a fine lad, but Airlee remained their chief.
By the time the full of them had their say, Quarrie knew the truth. They were not likely to accept him as chief. Not while Da was still alive.
They would follow him, aye. They might take orders from him if they believed those orders fell within the lines of what Da would do.
But Airlee—muddled or not—would remain Chief Murtray till death.
He stood with an impassive face and heard it out. Ma stood silent also, her expression stricken and her eyes full of tears.
“Go to see him,” she urged when they quieted down. “See him, all o’ ye, and mak’ yer own judgment. If ye wait for your chief to hand off leadership o’ this clan to Quarrie, ’tis a thing he will never do.”
Too stubborn by half, was Da. And no more ready to believe he would never go to battle again than were these men.
But he would not. And the incipient madness, the same Quarrie had witnessed last night, told the truth.
Da would not want these men to see that. By the same token, they could no longer hang back from accepting Quarrie as leader. Not if the worst happened.
“Mistress,” said Fergus heavily, “if the chief will no’ hand off leadership o’ the clan to his son, how can we tak’ it fro’ him?”
The other men mumbled again, in agreement.
One of the tears welling in Ma’s eyes spilled over and trickled down her cheek.
They looked away then. They no more wanted to see her weep than they wanted to see their chief on his back, weakened.
That was the true reason they had not gone to see Da for so long. They would rather lie to themselves.
Quarrie stepped forward. Ignoring the disappointment in his heart, that after nearly a year leading the clan in truth, these men still refused to acknowledge him, he said, “If an attack comes from the sea, we maun be ready. I urge ye spread the word. Talk to yer women. Have them pack up wha’ they may need if we see sails out there upon the water. They may be better off awa’ in the hills than here.” He added deliberately, “Should we fall.”
Unthinkable that women like Norah, for whom, despite himself, he still cared, might be stolen away. That children might be slaughtered. That the huts huddled around the keep might be burned to the ground.
“We will no’ fall,” Ronold declared roundly. “How many generations ha’ we been fending off those bastards? Ha’ we ever fallen?”
“Nay.” Quarrie stared the man full in the eye. “And how many times over the years ha’ our women and children taken shelter out upon the breast o’ the land while we fought for them here?’Tis best to be prepared, wha’ever ye think. For when attack comes, it comes swift and hard.”
He looked from face to face before he added, “I do no’ fear the Norse any more than my father. Gi’ me a chance. I will lead ye against them. But I will first seek to spare every life under my care.”
They nodded. This, they would accept.
They began to file out. Quarrie stood like stone beside his mother and waited. Not till they were alone in the big, echoing hall did Ma slump and say into her raised hands, “They did no’ listen. They did no’ believe me.”
“They do no’ want to believe.” Neither did he. He did not want to accept that his big, bluff father, who could roar with laughter and work hard every morning at training before tending the cattle, had become a man who roared instead with pain and threw things at the wall in madness.
He and Ma had been there. They had seen.
He took his mother in his arms and let her weep, a storm of tears kept in far too long. It needed out, the way a storm needed to break.
“Hush now,” he bade when the worst of it ebbed. “We will carry on as we ha’ been.”
His position in life did not matter. So long as he stood strong.
Chapter Five
They spent acold night out on the water, it still being early enough in the season for a chill to come with the dark. In this case, it felt as if the icy air had followed their longboat down from the north and now gripped them in its claws.
Going viking, as Hulda well knew, was an elemental business, subject to every sort of change in the weather and the sea. Being trapped aboard a boat with a score of males was likewise elemental. They fell subject to their elemental urges—anger, pride, hunger, lust—and seemed to give very little thought to any of it.
