by Hazel Hunter
He could guess how Thora’s men had guarded against grave robbers. The path would lead to a cleared patch of land with a square of carved runestones inside a larger ring of oak stumps. The stones, carved with the four harpoons of the Svefnthorn, would be imbued with the power of a shamanic warrior. Svefnthorn cursed anyone who stepped into the clearing to sleep forever.
“You canny bastarts,” Tormod muttered. He ignored the path and continued north, his steps quickening.
As expected the trees grew thicker, and then became tall white oaks deliberately close-planted so they would graft together. Their pleached limbs formed a living barricade so effective that his torch flame barely flickered. But he also knew that her men would have returned to honor her. He slowed his pace around the wall of oak and still almost missed it. A small, baffled entrance appeared, cleverly set back and barely deep enough for him to step in. Nose almost on the inner wall of boughs, he side-stepped along the barrier, the torch illuminating the new narrow corridor—until he was in.
A broad oval of sweet woodruff spread out before him, its tiny white flowers perfuming the air with the scent of newly-mown hay. He grinned at the familiar aroma. If they had buried Thora here, they would have first put down a layer of bedstraw. But his tribe had also used dried sweet woodruff to stuff their mattresses. He’d gathered it for his mother every spring. The weed sometimes sprouted inside the ticking. Like his tribe, it was almost impossible to kill.
Tormod Liefson, son of Arn and Gilda, map-maker and immortal warrior, would always be a Viking.
Pride bloomed in his chest at the thought that Thora had earned a warrior’s burial. She’d led devastating raids against the Caledonians, the Britons and even the Danes, making her warriors some of the wealthiest men in Norrvegr. Her greatest triumph had come just before her death, when she had destroyed an entire fleet of enemy ships after they had destroyed hers.
But Tormod remembered the greatest female Viking warrior not as a shieldmaiden, but as the child she had been. To him Thora Liefson would always be the impish little sister who had put frogs in his boots.
He stopped short of the center of the little meadow, and lowered his torch, moving it from side to side until he caught a glimpse of smooth stone.
“I vowed to find you, and bring you back to sleep beside our parents. Permit me to keep my word tonight, Sister.”
An owl answered him with a hooted cry before flying off into the oaks.
He planted his torch and knelt down, pulling back the flower-spangled runners until he found the first ship stone.
“Much has changed since you fled Skye, Thora. I was captured and enslaved, but the Pritani didnae treat me cruelly. Some years later I fought with them against Romans hunting druid kind. For my efforts my master freed me from slavery.”
Though he knew she couldn’t hear him, the telling of his tale was somehow comforting. He described the ugly end he and the McDonnel clan had met, but then how they’d been wakened to immortality. As Tormod unearthed more stones he rambled on about his life as a guard and map-maker to the clan.
“We’ve a thought-reader at Dun Aran. She and Evander married last winter. That was long after he turned traitor but just after he saved the clan. He’s Captain of the Guard now.”
After a thousand years he knew that little would remain of her, but his vow did not permit him to stop his search. None of the McDonnels knew of his quest, and the laird would hardly approve. But as the last reminder of what he had been before his enslavement, bringing his sister’s remains back to Skye would help keep him from turning into a facking Scotsman.
“What more would you have me tell you?” he asked the ground as he cleared off the final stone. Along with the others they had been arranged in the shape of a ship’s hull, but now lay in a tumbled pile. “I could tell you of the druid women from the future who keep falling into our midst and bringing their strange ways to the clan. Diana, our cop, has me running through the Black Cuillin like a hunted stag every morn. You’d like her. Red doesnae suffer fools or kiss arse. If she hadnae given her heart to Tharaen Aber…but she did, and that’s done.” He sat back on his haunches and pressed his hand to the ground. “I only wish I could bring you back, little sister.”
The moss shuddered under his palm.
Tormod jumped to his feet as the oaks around the clearing stirred. Under his boots the ground rumbled, and then shook, nearly felling him. The stones marking the grave began to glow like miniature moons, and then the clearing exploded with a fountain of rock and earth.
“Jema,” a man’s voice bellowed from inside the grave.
Reaching up to cover his head, Tormod instead caught a body that hurtled out of the ground and into his arms. The impact knocked him on his arse, and he bowed over the form as soil and broken stones rained down to pelt them. At last the madness stopped, and he straightened to look down at an unconscious woman in his grasp.
Blood from a gash on her brow trickled into her long hair, which streamed from her head and over his arm like a small silken river of fiery gold. She wore a thin bodice with the words I’D RATHER BE DIGGING printed on it, and trews made of faded indigo cloth. Her boots were a marvel, but Tormod couldn’t stop looking at her face. Even covered in blood and dirt, he could see that she wasn’t his sister brought back to life. Thora had been dark-haired and brown-eyed, like their mother.
This woman was fashioned from his dreams.
Gently he placed her on the ground, and hoisted himself up to go over and look into the ragged pit in the ground. Huge tree roots laced the perimeter of the deep pit, which contained nothing but mounds of dirt. Since Thora’s men would have buried her with weapons and other grave gifts to serve her in the afterlife, the stones must have been a lure to another spell trap.
But why would a woman be flung through it? He glanced back at her and then back at the grave, thinking on the women he’d just been describing. Had the trap been laid atop an ancient oak grove, and activated a time portal?
Tormod heard the woman choke, and went back to kneel beside her. “’Twill be well, my lady.”
She convulsed, coughing and writhing as she tried to push herself upright. He helped her into a sitting position, and brushed the soil from her face. She had silvery blue eyes framed by dark gold lashes, and an angular face with the whitest, most flawless skin he’d ever seen.
After another spate of coughing and blinking she focused on Tormod’s face, and her fine brows drew together.
“Where am I?” she whispered hoarsely. “What happened?”
“I wish I could tell you,” he said. She sounded Scottish, which perplexed him. All the other women who had crossed over had come from a place called San Diego, and spoke with the same, blunt accent. “You were flung up from that pit into my arms.”
Her eyes shifted toward the jagged hole in the ground. “I was?” She stared at him. “Why?”
“I cannae tell you, but know that you…are safe here, with me.” Tormod felt like an addled boy for staring at her, but he couldn’t stop himself. “I’m called Tormod Liefson.” She squinted at him, as if trying to make sense of what he said. “Map-maker of the McDonnel Clan,” he added quickly. “I came here to…map the place.”
“Ah, it’s grand to meet you, Tormod. I’m…” She winced and lifted her hand to gingerly touch her wound. “I’m hurt.”
“Aye.” He shifted with her so the light from the torch better illuminated the gash, which still oozed blood. Using his sleeve, he blotted the worst away and inspected it again. “’Tis no’ so bad. It wants cleaning and bandaging is all.” He’d have to attend to it, and quickly, for the smell of mortal blood could attract the undead.
“That’s good,” she said but didn’t sound relieved, only more worried. She looked around them again. “What did you say this place is?”
The forest had no name that Tormod knew, and to tell her she’d crossed through time to land in the distant past would only frighten her.
“You’re in the highlands, in th
e woods.” Suddenly he recalled the word he’d heard shouted from the grave. “Are you named Jema?”
Her mouth worked, shaping the name in silence, and then panic flooded her face and she clutched at him. “I don’t know. I can’t remember. My name, where I was, how…” She shook her head a little. “I can’t remember anything.”
Tormod covered her hands with his, and still felt them under his palms as her face and body grew insubstantial. He could see through her to the torn sweet woodruff under her, the tiny white flowers showing plainly through her face. A moment later he still held her hands, but could not see her at all.
“What is happening to me?” her voice asked as her invisible hands tightened on his tunic.
Chapter Three
GAVIN MCSHANE CAME out of darkness into darkness, and instinctively waited for the pain to blaze up his legs into his groin. The damage ALS had done to his spine caused near-constant muscle contractions in his calves and thighs, which triggered cramps so intense he often vomited from the pain. Any unusual amount of physical activity, like hobbling out to Jema’s dig, aggravated the spasticity attacks. He’d be in agony any moment.
Except there was nothing. All he felt was dirty, chilled, and a little disoriented.
Sitting in the facking dirt, and yet feeling grand as a brigadier. It had to be the adrenalin. Soon it would wear off and he’d pay. Oh, how he’d pay for the fall. He took in a deep breath of frigid air, and felt his chest expand like a huge bellows. He hadn’t been able to breathe like that since… No, it couldn’t be.
Not after two years of living like an old man.
Gavin’s eyes adjusted to the darkness. Even ill he’d always had excellent night vision. What he saw when he looked down at himself made him utter a short laugh. It was ludicrous. Yet when he stretched out his arms—his long, strong arms—he felt the power he’d once possessed coiling in his muscles. He drew up his forearms and saw his biceps bulge. The biceps that had vanished on him entirely were now as big as melons.
Accepting that he was sick, diseased, beyond hope—a dying man with no chance of improvement or recovery—had been a battle. This transformation was insanity.
Gavin brought his hands to his chest, which stretched wide under the ragged remains of his shirt. His wasted legs felt like unshakeable marble columns as he rose to his feet. Even in the dark he could see his body now looked exactly as it had when he’d been in the best shape of his life, during his military service as a captain in The Black Watch.
But as he gazed down at his new form, a thought gave him pause.
Am I dead?
He’d fallen into that trench, where he must have broken his neck, and now he was beyond all that. Was this his reward, his afterlife?
He took a stride, and then another, stopping only when he nearly smacked face-first into a tree. Turning around, he peered at the woods surrounding him, which looked nothing like his sister’s dig site.
Jema.
“Jema!” he screamed, his voice echoing as if he were standing in a giant cavern. “Jema!”
When no response came he went back to the spot where he’d woken. The ground appeared slightly hollowed, as if he’d dropped there, but he saw no sign of his sister or her dig. The entire area appeared heavily wooded and untouched. He remembered the ground shaking and Jema screaming.
His hands balled into fists and his temper frayed like the last strands of a rotted rope. Where was his sister?
Something wet splatted on Gavin’s face, and when he looked up a curtain of icy rain poured over him, knocking the breath out of his lungs. He ran for cover, ducking under the thick branches of a tall oak and pressing himself against the rough trunk. His anger billowed, and then his big body seemed to heat up like a furnace. He felt raindrops sizzling on his skin, and glanced down to see his chest now covered in oak bark.
“Shite.”
He reached for his chest, only to see his hand covered in the same rough material. Fear surged through his fury, and he shoved away from the tree to run back out into the icy rain. As lightning flashed overhead, he watched his flesh return to its smooth dark tan—a tan he’d lost three years back after being discharged from the military. What was happening to his body?
“Hell’s fucking bells,” he muttered as he looked up at the bleak night sky. His eyes filled with rain as he shouted at the God he stopped believing in long ago. “What more have you done to me now, you evil old bastard?”
He didn’t wait for an answer. Whatever had happened, he would have to sort it out later. Now he had to find his sister. He trotted in a search pattern, moving in an ever-expanding circle around the spot where he’d regained consciousness. Frosty rain pounded over him, but Gavin barely felt it as he looked for any sign of Jema or the dig. As the sky lightened and the storm abated he studied the trees. The wide trunks, heavy coverings of moss and deep layer of leaf rot on the forest floor told him this area hadn’t been disturbed for decades, possibly centuries.
His big body may have been restored to its former physical perfection, and no longer suffered from wet or cold, but Gavin could feel the burn of the unaccustomed exertion in his muscles. He’d be of no use to his sister if he dropped from exhaustion. Using the North Star as a marker for true north, he headed in that direction.
Though the rain stopped, the cold wind made his soaked clothes feel like a shroud of ice. Even so, it didn’t seem to affect Gavin’s body temperature. He wondered if he’d grown feverish, and stopped at the first stream he found to splash his face. Drinking the water without a filtration and sterilization kit was beyond foolish, but he was thirsty. If he was already dead, it wouldn’t matter. He cupped his hand to drink from it, and the water tasted so icy it made his teeth ache.
When he looked up he saw a gray-faced red deer on the other side of the stream, watching him with its big dark eyes. Its ears flicked as it lowered its muzzle into the stream and drank.
“I can’t be your afterlife,” Gavin said, and then watched the deer bound into the trees, just as the first rays of dawn sparkled on the water.
On the other side of the stream stood a rough-looking cottage that he recognized as a hunting lodge. Jema had shown him countless pictures of one she’d helped reconstruct during another dig she’d worked on as a student. She and the other helpers had built it based on measurements taken from a few rotted stumps they’d uncovered around a pile of animal bones.
“Hello?” Gavin waded across the stream and went to the door of the lodge, hammering on it with his fist. “Anyone in? I need help.”
After several minutes of silence, he used a shoulder to force in the door, and stepped inside to find the only room inside deserted. A primitive table and chairs sat to one side of a huge fireplace, in which a blackened caldron hung over a cold pile of ashes. Another table held a collection of crude tools, sharp-ended pegs, an uneven roll of cording, and bits of leather and hide. The door to an apparent cellar was off to one side. What he didn’t see was any telephone, lights, switches or appliances. The one window had no glass in it, and was so narrow it bordered on a slit.
The place appeared too well-built to be a shelter cobbled together by a drifter or poacher. Could it be one of the university reconstructions Jema had worked on?
Gavin retrieved an old blue and green tartan from a pallet made of rope and branches that had been piled with straw. The coarse woven wool of the plaid smelled musty, but it worked well as a makeshift towel. While he dried his hair and body, a small brown mouse scurried out from under the pallet. The little creature sniffed the air, eyed him, and promptly ran back under the bed.
“Mice in a mockup.” Gavin slung the tartan over his shoulders and rubbed his eyes. “I’m thinking no.”
He felt a painful gnawing in his gut, which he’d never suffered with his ALS, and then went still as he realized what it was: hunger. His disease had been slowly robbing him of the ability to swallow, giving every mouthful he took the potential to choke him to death. Depression and side effects from his medi
cations had killed what was left of his appetite. Now he felt as if he could eat a deer from hoofs to antlers. Carefully he prodded his neck, and swallowed several times before he reached the only logical conclusion he could.
“I’m cured.” His vision blurred for a moment, and he glanced up at the cobwebbed roof beams. “Sorry for calling you evil and old. Though you’re still and will ever be a bastard.”
A more thorough search of the lodge turned up a number of archaic but useful items: a bone-handled dirk, a half-empty sack of oats, some crockery, a jar of rendered animal fat, a bucket made of pitch-covered wood, and a stack of split, seasoned logs.
If some poor student had tried living here as if it were the Dark Ages, Gavin thought, roughing it must have proven too much.
He’d watched a few shows on the telly where people went back to living as if they were Edwardians and Victorians and such.
“I’d have tried my hand at being a highlander,” Gavin muttered as he stacked firewood in the hearth. “They never took any shite from anyone.”
He looked for matches and instead found a cracked leather pouch containing a grooved stone, a rusty curl of metal, and a wad of dried fungus. He’d started enough camp fires in the service to know a tinder kit when he found one. Dimly he remembered his sergeant bragging of starting a blaze with flint, and tested the metal and stone. A spark jumped from the rusty curl as he struck it against the groove in the stone. A few minutes later he’d built a respectable fire and used the caldron to heat water and oats into porridge.
While he waited for the oatmeal to cook Gavin rinsed the dusty crockery, and used the dirk to whittle one end of a kindling stick into a flat oval. In his mind he kept running through his spotty memories, hoping to recall something that would explain his situation. Nothing did. He’d watched Jema; the ground had shaken; he’d been blinded for a moment; the trench had collapsed under her just as he’d fallen in; and then he’d blacked out. That was all he had to go on.