Stonewing Guardian

by Zoe Chant

  He sounded less pleased than a person normally would about the prospect of being rescued.

  "What is this?" Thea asked, starting to pick up the leather pouch.

  "Don't touch anything," Mace said sharply. "There's no telling what sort of booby traps or magical defenses he might have."

  Thea dropped it. It wasn't heavy anyway, even soaked with water. From her brief glimpse inside, it looked like its contents consisted mostly consisted of dried leaves in small ziploc bags, herbs of some kind.

  Mace picked it up, glanced inside, and threw that over the side too. He handed her the crossbow and darts, which he had wrapped up in a piece of canvas. "Here, take this inside and see if Tor has anywhere to lock it up, would you?"

  "Do you think it's a good idea to keep it?" she asked, taking it with great care, as if it contained a grenade. After what she had seen happen to Gio, it might as well have.

  "I don't want to, but it's our chance to get a sample of whatever toxin they're using. I might be able to work out an antidote. While you're there, can you ask Tor if there's somewhere around here with a secluded anchorage where we could hole up for a little while? I don't want to go straight back with this guy on board."

  Thea nodded, then got up and went into the pilothouse. It was unlit, with just the faint glow of the instrument panel. By now her eyes were dark-adapted enough to see Stieg sitting against the wall with a coat wrapped around him. She realized with some embarrassment that she had nearly forgotten about him.

  "How are you feeling?" she asked him.

  Stieg groaned and took a pull from the thermos of coffee sitting on the floor beside him.

  "So," Tor said from the pilot's chair, "I have questions. Starting with why you appear to have taken a hostage."

  "I'm sorry," Thea said. "I don't think I can answer your questions. At least not without asking Mace what's okay to tell you." She glanced over at Stieg. "You'll notice I haven't asked any questions about your dad turning into a polar bear."

  Tor was silent for a moment; then he gave a short laugh. "Okay. Fair. You know one thing, though?"

  "What's that?"

  "My kid brother owes me a hundred bucks. We've had a longstanding bet about the island's resident gargoyle and Mace MacKay."

  Thea's cheeks heated. "I don't know what you're talking about."

  "Just like you don't have any questions about polar bears."

  "Nope," she said, and bit her lips fiercely to avoid asking. Is this common? Is it just your family or other people too? Did the VIKINGS turn into polar bears? That might explain a lot, actually ...

  "You still look like there's something you want to ask," Tor said.

  Thea held out the wrapped bundle of crossbow. "Mace wanted to know if there's somewhere in here to lock this up. Be careful, there are darts with toxins on the tips."

  Both Tor's eyebrows went up. "Do I even want to know what you people are involved in?" He nodded under the control console. "Lockbox down there with a combo lock, for tools and stuff. The combo is 3-2-9. It ought to fit."

  Thea crouched and tucked the canvas-wrapped crossbow among a variety of metal tools. "I also need to relay a question from Mace. He wants us to pull into the shore somewhere."

  "What, along here? In the dark?" Tor shook his head. "Way too dangerous. You may as well just take an axe and chop a hole in the boat's hull. Cut out the middle-rock."

  Stieg grunted and struggled to his feet. "I know a place," he ground out, his voice sounding hoarse.

  "Dad, you're drunk," Tor protested, putting up resistance as a mostly-naked Stieg attempted to shoulder him away from the boat's controls.

  Thea averted her eyes and backed away. The coat was a little too small for him anyway and was covering absolutely nothing that needed to be covered up.

  "I can navigate through these waters drunk and blindfolded, boy! Who was it taught you everything you know about sailing along this coast?"

  "Well, actually it was navigation charts mostly—you know, the ones that say there are rocks and shipwrecks along here—"

  "Charts! Bah! Not worth the paper they're printed on! Give me good old-fashioned dead reckoning any day."

  "Key word there is dead, Dad, which we're gonna be if you run us onto a rock in the dark!"

  "I know what I'm doing, boy!"

  The boat swerved as the two of them continued to jockey for control.

  "Fine," Tor grumbled, giving up the controls as his dad slid his naked ass onto the seat. "Ah, God, Dad, at least put a towel down or something."

  Thea looked nervously at Stieg as he settled his big, callused hands on the boat's controls. She sidled closer to Tor, who had gone to pick up and stow the thermos and other loose items around the cabin. "Are we going to, um ... crash?"

  Tor glanced at his dad and leaned closer to her. "Don't tell him I said this, but he's actually damn good. He knows this stretch of coast like the back of his hand. If he says he can get us into a harbor, he'll do it."

  "I can hear you," Stieg snapped from the pilot's seat. "Ears like a bat!" He patted at his bare flank. "Anyone seen my flask?"

  "The last thing you need right now is more booze," Tor said. "Dad ... are we heading out to sea?"

  "Told you I knew a good harbor around here. Didn't say it was on the main island." Stieg waved a hand at the moon-flecked ocean. "It's on one of the outer islands. Good place to shelter from a storm. Known about it for years."

  "I just got done telling her you weren't going to kill us all. Don't make a liar out of me."

  Stieg snorted.

  "He's not actually as drunk as he's letting on," Tor murmured to Thea. "Shifters—that is, our family have an extremely high alcohol tolerance. Still, please try not to let him drink anything else." He picked up a coil of rope. "I'm going to go find out why my boat is being used in a kidnapping. Excuse me, please," he added pleasantly, and left the cabin.

  "Wait—!" Thea took a step after him, and then the boat hit a wave and rocked under her, nearly knocking her off her feet. She caught herself on the side of the cabin.

  "You get seasick?" Stieg asked over his shoulder.

  "No, not really. At least not so far."

  "Good." Stieg looked out at the water with a slight smile. "Waves get a little deeper away from shore. Hey, look under the shelf there and see if there's a bottle, will you? Tor thinks I don't know about it, but he keeps a stash there for long cold nights."

  "Nope," Thea said, planting a hand on her hip. The deck was really swaying now; she had to keep her other hand on the wall to stay upright. "I'd rather not crack up on a rock, especially since unlike some people, I can't turn into a partly aquatic animal."

  Stieg's eyes, light blue in the glow of the instruments, flicked sideways at her. "Saw that, huh?"

  "It was awfully hard to miss."

  Stieg laughed and scratched at his stubbled jaw. "Well, you're right about that, I guess." He rubbed his temple. "If you won't find that bottle for me, think you could find where that son of mine hid the coffee? And see if there's any aspirin while you're at it."

  That part was easy, at least. She had seen which cabinet Tor had stowed the thermos in, and when she opened it, she also found a first-aid kit, lashed behind a secure strap.

  Glancing outside, she saw Tor and Mace in quiet conversation on the deck. The prisoner was propped up on an elbow, watching them.

  "I hope all this is worth it," she muttered under her breath. She closed the cabinet and took the coffee and a small handful of aspirin over to Stieg.

  "Ah. Manna from Heaven." He washed the pills down with a gulp of coffee. "Not even a shot to warm me up, eh?"

  "Mr. Nilsson, from what I saw earlier, you've had enough shots to warm up an entire Army platoon."

  Stieg laughed again. It was an easy laugh, deep and strong. "I like you." He winked at her. "So I hear you're looking for the old mine shaft in the rocks, are you?"

  "I'm amazed you were sober enough to remember that."

  Stieg took his hands
off the wheel, steering with his elbow, to tap his forehead with a thick finger. "Mind's a steel trap. Nothing gets out."

  Thea magnanimously didn't make the several comments that came to mind. "So you know where it is?"

  "Better than that. I'm taking you there now."

  "What?" She glanced quickly out of the cabin window, but she couldn't see any way that anyone on deck could hear what they were saying inside, not with the engine rumbling and the wind screaming past the boat in a shower of ocean spray. "I—I appreciate the offer, Mr. Nilsson, but I don't think it's a good idea to do that right now."

  "Why not?"

  "Because it's night, for one thing!" And because we have a prisoner who might be able to lead his friends straight to it.

  Stieg shrugged. "Up to you. It's a good place to lay by for the night, though. There's a good deep little bay, and an old warmup cabin, built before my time, but solid made. I've sheltered through more than one storm there."

  He gazed out at the night, looking thoughtful.

  "It's an odd place, this island. You'll see when we get there. Nothing lives there but sea birds now. But there were people there once. You find things sometimes. Old marks carved in the rocks, that kind of thing."

  Thea's heartbeat quickened. "What kind of marks?"

  Indigenous petroglyphs were well known along the Atlantic coast, including many in Nova Scotia and a few in Newfoundland itself. So there was little chance that he was talking about Viking runes. But still, it's possible, she thought. Could we have found an unknown Norse landing site?

  Maybe there really is something to this mine shaft theory after all.

  "Too badly weathered to really tell. Just a lot o' lines. And it looked like someone had moved the rocks around, old houses maybe, battered down by time."

  That hadn't been the local tribes; they had never built stone houses. But it could be a lot of other things, she reminded herself. This coast had been heavily traveled for a very long time. Stieg could be talking about almost anything, a collapsed weather station or old WWII fortification, some Basque or French fisherman's attempt to live as a hermit on the island in a past century, even a modern-day illegal hunting blind or some tourist's weekend project.

  "And this is the same island where you found the mine shaft?" It was a very odd place to dig a mine. What could they possibly have been mining? That sounded more like an old war-era fortification, she thought, resolving once again not to get her hopes up.

  "Could just be a cave," Stieg said. "But there was a stair up to it. Looked like men's hands had made it." He gave her a quick smile. "Or women's hands."

  "Thank you, I appreciate that. How big?" she asked. "Did you go in?" She had pictured a vertical shaft, but a cave sounded like something different.

  Stieg shook his head. "Not far. Didn't have a light with me, and it was dark as the inside of Satan's cat in there. Also, I wouldn't say the roof might not cave in any moment. But it was old. If somebody built that, they built it to last."

  "Is it easy to find?"

  "There's a path that goes up from where the shack is, and when you find the stairs, you know you're on the way. I'll show you."

  Whether or not it was what Mace was looking for, Thea's heart was pounding now.

  She had almost forgotten this feeling, this excitement. This was why she had become an archaeologist in the first place. For all she had said to Mace about how the archaeological profession wasn't like the Indiana Jones movies, there wasn't a single person in this job who didn't daydream about being the first person to find some incredible vanished city or famous artifact. Everyone knew the job was mostly about sifting dirt through screens for fragments of old bone and wood, but there wasn't a man or woman among them who didn't want to be the one who found Alexander the Great's tomb or the ruins of Atlantis.

  And now, perhaps, a new piece of the puzzle that was Viking exploration of North America was right at her fingertips.

  She couldn't believe she had come so close to losing touch with this fundamental part of herself. She had closed herself up in a safe, cozy life at the university offices and convinced herself that she could be forever content with teaching classes and writing papers.

  But that wasn't her. That had never been her.

  She was a person who craved travel and adventure. She wanted to make new discoveries, excavate ruins, learn about the past firsthand. She was a hands-on person.

  Even the idea of going into a tunnel in the earth didn't give her the all-over feeling of terror that she would have expected. She was afraid, yes. And what she feared most of all was getting there only to find herself choking on actually going inside.

  But realistically, intellectually, she told herself there was nothing to fear. With Mace by her side, she could safely enter the most unstable cave.

  Actually doing it would be a different matter, of course ...

  "Thank you," she said. "You're really going out of your way to help us, and I appreciate that."

  Stieg waved off her thanks. "It's a pleasure. Anyway, it gives me a chance to learn a little more about the lady on the hill." He glanced at her sideways. "Whole town wants to know about your relationship with our neighborhood hermit."

  "Oh no," Thea said faintly. She had chatted lightly with the locals while exploring the town, but it hadn't occurred to her that ducking their questions would make them even more curious about her.

  "Strictly business arrangement, or ..."

  "None of your business, is what it is!"

  "Ah." Stieg smiled a little, but it was wistful this time. "Like that, is it?" He let out a gusty sigh and swallowed more coffee. "Ah, to be young and in love."

  "I think you might have an inaccurate idea of what's going on up at that house on the hill," Thea said. "We're two adults having ... companionship, that's all."

  At the same time she was thinking of how much more time she wanted to spend with Mace. Her internal protests that she had a life back in Toronto got weaker by the day. She hadn't spent a single moment missing it.

  Stieg smacked a fist on the console. Thea jumped.

  "Always the same," he said, shaking his head. "Young people. You don't know what you have until you lose it. I would give anything to have my mate back."

  The vehemence startled her. "I'm sorry," she said. "Did she—die?"

  "Have you learned about true mates yet?"

  “Mace and I talked about soulmates a little, yes."

  Stieg pulled in a breath between his teeth, and Thea was shocked to realize that the old fisherman's eyes were swimming with tears before he got himself under control and blinked them away.

  "It was a very long time ago," he said quietly. "My Anna was a human woman, but a strong one, a fit mate for a bear. She was tough. It wasn’t her fault. None of it was her fault."

  "What wasn't?" Thea's voice was barely above a whisper.

  "Automobile accident." Stieg stared out at the moonlit waves, and she saw, suddenly, the ravages of it on his face, the reason why he went out to bars at night. "In St. John's. Not her fault. She was the only one in the car. Maybe if I'd been with her ... but I was home with the cubs. Our daughter, Sigrid, was only a few months old. There was an ice storm—she slid—I know she did everything she could. Northern girl. My Anna. Always good at driving in the winter. But all it takes is a moment of inattention. If I had gone with her, perhaps with two of us ... but I'll never know now."

  There was a silence. Thea had no idea what to say. Her parents were both dead, but she knew that losing a spouse would have to be a far greater blow. No wonder he went out on days-long benders.

  "Shifters should not survive it," he said finally, eyes still locked in that long-distance stare. "But I had to ... had to stay. There were the kids—Tor was the oldest, and he was only eight. Three little kids. I couldn't leave the kids alone."

  "No," she said quietly. "You couldn't. And you didn't."

  She laid a hand across his gnarled one. He wasn't that old—in fact, she thought he wasn't muc
h older than her father had been when she was a kid. Early sixties, maybe. But the hard life he'd led on the cold Atlantic sea had swollen his knuckles and brought out the veins on the tanned back of his hand.

  "We're alone, though," he said, and darted a glance at her. She caught a bottomless loneliness in his eyes that shocked her. "A shifter who loses his mate—or her mate ... we're not supposed to. It doesn't happen often. There's no going back from that. The better part of us dies when our mate dies."

  "I—I don't mean to disparage Anna's memory," Thea offered. "I know you'll never stop loving her. But you could fall in love again. People do."

  He gave his head a firm, hard shake. "Shifters don't. There is only one for us, ever. Anna is gone, and I am alone forever. She was not supposed to go before me."

  "I'm ..." Thea didn't know what to say. Sorry seemed inadequate.

  Stieg put out his hand and closed it over hers. His fingers were warm, rough with calluses, and very strong.

  "I'm saying you should hold on to what you have, while you have it," he said softly. "Don't be like an old fool and end up with a head full of memories and a heart full of regrets."

  Mace

  After Thea left, Mace found a bucket on deck, and used gargoyle strength to lean down and fill it with sea water.

  "What's that for?" Javic asked warily when Mace set the bucket on the deck beside them.

  "Just making sure you don't dry out too soon."

  Javic huffed out a small, tired breath. "Soaking me for too long will kill me. Maybe I shouldn't be telling you that, but if you want information out of me, I'll soon be useless to you."

  Mace frowned at him. It was impossible to tell if he was lying. "Must be inconvenient taking baths then."

  Javic gave him a tight smile and leaned his head back against the side of the pilothouse.

  "The feeling of the waves has changed," he said. "We're going out to sea."

  Where in the hell ARE we going? Mace wondered, trying to keep his doubts off his face. Although he had spent his entire life on the coast and a good deal of that on boats, he was never entirely comfortable this far from good solid stone.