by Hazel Hunter
“Aye, just as you might slide off a slope and break your lovely neck before I can catch you.” He felt her grasp him and swung her up to settle behind him. “If anyone crosses our path, press yourself against my back and stay quiet. Remain thus until we are clear of them.” When she grumbled something he added, “If you’re unwilling, we can return to my chamber and sit there for twoday. I’ll no’ have to report for duty until sunset on the morrow.”
“Yes, all right, I’m willing.” She sounded resigned now. “Where are you taking me?”
“You wished to see where you might live if you stay. It is there we go now.” He glanced either way before he started for the trail entrance.
Halfway to the trail Jema said, “Wait a minute.”
He felt her turning back toward the stronghold, and wheeled the mare around. “’Tis what you wanted, lass.”
“No, I mean give me a minute.” Her voice sounded softer now. “Gods, Viking. You live in a castle hidden in a volcanic crater.”
“Aye.” Belatedly he recalled she had never yet seen the outside of Dun Aran. “’Twas built here to keep our enemies from finding us again.”
She made a hmming sound. “Your ancestors were clever men, and very talented builders. Using the native stone as camouflage was ingenious. Even from this close it looks like part of the mountains.”
“Quarrying the rock ’twas a monstrous task, and the hauling it up the slopes was–” He stopped, silently cursing himself for nearly revealing his immortal nature. “Such work.”
“It’s very old. Over a thousand years, I imagine.” She sighed. “Promise you’ll give me a tour of it one night before you kick me out.”
“I dinnae kick wenches, no matter how oft I am tempted.” He touched his heels to the mare’s side, and turned her back toward the trail.
Reaching the village required riding down to the glen, where Tormod had to stop again so Jema could admire the fairy pool and the old stone bridge. He couldn’t see her expression, but from the hushed awe in her voice she seemed thrilled by the exact things he’d hoped would bore or dismay her.
“We’ll walk from here,” Tormod said, and helped her down before he dismounted.
“So the red deer keep to the ridges, and the pastureland is reserved for cattle, sheep and goats?” Jema asked as they followed the path to the village. “Does the laird demand a tithe from the villagers, or does he give them a percentage of the meat, wool and dairy products?”
If nothing else made it clear that Jema was from the future, her questions did. “Why does any of that matter to you?”
“I’m going to live here, so I should know what to expect. Feudal system demands can be brutal on vassals, especially during famine or plague eras when…” She reappeared as she stopped in her tracks. “Tormod, if I’m from the future, how do I know all that?”
He wasn’t going to admit that he didn’t understand half of what she’d said, or how fetching he thought she looked dressed in skirts. “Mayhap you heard it in an old saga. Vikings must still sing in your time, surely.”
“I don’t know. I can’t remember.” She blew some air through her lips, startling the mare into making a similar sound, and then laughed. “But I can make funny noises, so maybe they do.”
From the glen Tormod walked with her to the outskirts of the village, where he stopped to tether the mare to a road post. He pulled up the edge of the scarf to cover Jema’s hair and most of her face.
“Dinnae speak to the villagers,” he reminded her. “They must think you a maid come to walk with me.”
Her smile slipped. “Do you go out with maids so often?”
“Not for walking so much,” he admitted. When she started to speak he held up his hand. “Be a maid, no’ an inquisitor.”
Jema scowled but nodded.
Tormod had seen her future world with its towering strongholds of glass and silver. From the strange lighted machines to the gleaming horseless carts that sped along the enormous web of roads, it was filled with endless marvels. He knew once she saw how hard the villagers worked and what little they had she would change her mind about returning to her time.
The first mortal they encountered was the village cooper, Tarven, who drove a cart filled with finished barrels.
“Fair morning to ye and yer lass, Marster,” the cooper said, scowling as he touched his brow. “A grand day for a stroll, for them what can spare the hour.”
“Are you for the stronghold, Tarven?” When the cooper nodded Tormod said, “Look in the kitchen when you’ve a moment. Cook wants new kegs for pickling, and I told her yours never leak.”
Tarven’s sour expression sweetened a little. “Thankee, Marster.”
Once the cooper drove on Jema whispered, “What if he tells your cook about me?”
“He’ll no waste time gossiping when he can wheedle Cook to order new kegs,” Tormod said. “Tarven loves coin above all, so now he’s counting in his head what he’ll make. By the time he arrives he’ll have forgotten you.” He nodded at the first cottage hemming the road into the village. “The people have to build their own houses here. Wattle and daub for the walls, and willow thatching for the roofs. You can hire help for it, but ’tis costly.”
Jema glanced at the small, dingy house, and then at the two women working in the back of it. “Can you bid them fair morning?”
“Here men dinnae approach married women or their daughters without first asking permission of the man of the house.” He pointed to the man scattering corn on the ground inside a pen filled with chickens. “Females have to be protected.”
Jema regarded the husband. “Scottish women aren’t taught to defend themselves?”
Tormod shrugged. “I cannae tell you that. But if you mean to stay here, lass, you’ll be expected to wed and have bairns.” He could do neither and would have to watch her with another man. He grit his teeth and ignored the bile rising in his throat. “Red tells me women of your time dinnae do so until they wish, and some never do.”
Her expression grew thoughtful. “Why don’t you have a wife or children?”
It was good that Jema hadn’t pressed him about what she’d heard Diana say about him not seeming to age. Unless she was sworn to the clan, he was forbidden from telling her.
“I cannae have bairns, and I have naught to offer as a husband.” He turned away from her. “Now come.”
He took her first to the flax yard, where the weaver’s wife and daughters turned the fibrous plant into strands.
“They let the flax ret there,” he explained, pointing to the trench filled with stalks immersed in filthy, scum-covered stagnant water, the stench of which permeated the whole yard. “When they turn to tow, they are hung and dried until ready to separate. Beating them against iron hackling combs, over and over, forces the strands part. ’Tis bone-cracking work.”
“But then they spin the strands into linen thread,” Jema murmured. “This is something I could do. I’ve got strong arms, and organic linen is an amazing fabric.”
The weaver’s wife came out of the flax barn to bob before Tormod. “Are ye needing thread or wool, Marster? We’ve fine.”
“Will you show my lass your hands, Mistress?” he asked.
The woman wiped them on her stained apron before holding them out. Thin white and pink scars latticed her palms and fingers, along with thick calluses on her fingertips from spinning. A fresh cut slashed across the pad of her thumb.
“I just gashed meself on the spindle,” she explained, wriggling the wounded thumb. “We’re all of us spinning for the loom now. Only tell Lady McDonnel she’ll have her cloth by week’s end, as promised.”
“’Tis hard on the hands,” Tormod said, and placed a coin in the woman’s palm. “Our thanks, Mistress.” He gave Jema a little push to start her walking.
“And ye want naught for it?” the weaver’s wife called after them. “Well, then, Marster, ye might gawp at me any day.”
“I don’t have as many scars, but my hands show that I
work,” Jema pointed out. “In fact, it’s driving me mad to stay in your chamber every day all alone. Work will be good for me.”
“Can you remember how to bake, and butcher? Did you work at a garden to grow food for your table, and herbs for medicine? Do you ken how to lay a fire?” When she said nothing he took her hand. “Jema, ’tis no’ your willingness I question. ’Tis what you’ve no’ done. You’ve no memory of your life, or how you worked, or what you ken. You have no people here to care for you.”
Now she wouldn’t look at him. “Show me the rest.”
Tormod didn’t spare her, but walked her to the butcher’s slaughtering pen, the fish monger’s gutting tables, and the baker’s blazing hot outdoor ovens. Rather than show revulsion, each time she found something to admire. At last he went to his final stop, a tiny hut that had been cobbled together on the very edge of the road from the village.
Jema grimaced. “What’s this place, and why is it all the way out here?”
“’Tis another future you should see. Only watch it from here, at the door.” Tormod knocked, and waited for the old woman to call him before he entered. From his pack he took out a loaf of bread, a pot of jam and a bottle of cider, and placed it on the table beside the bed. “How do you fare today, Mistress McCallen?”
“As I ever do. Weeping and wretching up me lungs.” Her toothless mouth stretched into a pained smile. “Never say ye brought me pottage again, ye rascal. The last pot ’twas so salty, it fair brined my gullet.”
“I brought bread and jam, and the first press of cider from the tree by the fairy pool.” Tormod touched her brow to check for fever, and then took her gnarled hand in his. Her fingernails had blackened, and open sores cratered the thin skin on her arms. But when he looked at her wrinkled face, he still saw the sweet, open-hearted lass she had been forty years past. “You dinnae have to be alone, Colblaith. Let Meg send a maid to care for you.”
“So I might give a youngling the water elf sickness? I have me guards, and they’re a-plenty.” The old woman turned her head away and coughed into a rag, wheezing loudly before the spate abated. “The healer too comes every morn in his beaky mask to dose me and scold.” Her gaze shifted. “Now there be a stunner.”
He smiled a little as he used his dagger to slice the bread and spread some jam on it. He put the slice within her reach, and poured a cup of the cider.
“You’ll eat and drink for me now,” he ordered.
“Aye, I’d do anything ye want, even still. I loved ye, lad.” Colblaith grimaced. “I promised meself I’d never say such, no’ after ye told me how it would be.” She sighed and began to drift off. “How many like me have ye had? Dozens, hundreds?”
“One.” As she closed her watery eyes, Tormod leaned over and kissed her brow. Beneath the sickbed odors she still smelled of the fields where she’d once tended the clan’s sheep. “Rest now, Colblaith.”
He covered her carefully with the blankets before he walked out and closed the door.
“That woman needs a doctor,” Jema said flatly. “How can you just leave her in there like that?”
“This is where the villagers come to die,” Tormod told her. “Colblaith came when the first spots appeared. She’s well aware that she cannae survive it, and if others tend to her ’twill spread like fire. ’Tis a sickness that favors the young above all. Every bairn in the village could fall sick and die.”
Jema looked over at two boys chasing after a dog with a stick clamped in its teeth.
“Even so, it’s not right. No one should have to die alone.”
“’Tis the way of it here. We’ve no medicines or doctors, no heart monitors or intensive care rooms. No clean white rooms or so many medicines we must stuff cabinets with them.” He nodded grimly as she stared at him. “Aye, I saw such things in your time. The people of the future kept Red alive until we came for her. They’ve armies of healers to look after the sick and hurt. The hospital, it’s a castle built for them and their care.”
“But I’m not sick,” she protested. “You’re talking as if I’ll keel over any moment.”
“How do you ken you willnae? In your time you may live to be twice Colblaith’s age. Here?” He pointed to the hut. “’Tis all you can hope if you are afflicted. That you die alone so you dinnae take others with you. I cannae save you from that, Jema. Naught can.”
Chapter Ten
NOW THAT GAVIN knew how to kill the undead, following the Romans deep into the forest didn’t trouble him. He kept his dirk in one hand and the long spade in the other. He’d also taken the sword belonging to the soldier Fenella had killed and strapped it to his belt. He suspected he’d soon have to use both blades, judging by the sullen, hate-filled looks the men directed at her. She seemed oblivious to the danger she was in, something they would have to discuss once he dug up the treasure from the Viking’s grave.
The Roman leading the others stopped at a wall of trees that had grown into each other. “This is the place, Prefect.”
Gavin took a torch from one of the men and escorted Fenella up to the front of the formation, where she inspected the widest opening.
“The mortal and I will deal with the grave,” she told the Romans. “Go raid that village we passed in the west valley. We shall need a dozen blood thralls for the journey back to Staffa.”
Gavin’s temper simmered as he watched the Romans march off. “They resent you, Mistress.”
“I killed their leader. They want me dead.” She looked up at him. “You neednae be afraid for me, lad. I’m too fast for them. Come now.”
He followed her through the narrow entrance into a flower-covered space with a deep pit in the very center. It looked almost the same as the pit Jema had been working in just before they’d fallen through. And why did thinking of his sister make his head pound and his heart ache?
“There was no treasure buried here in my time,” he said.
Fenella gave him an odd look, and walked over to the pit. She skirted around the edge until she saw something, and jumped down. “Here ’tis.”
Gavin hoisted himself over the side, dropping down beside her. He buried the spade in the ground, and held up the torch to inspect the crumbling earth around them.
“There’s nothing here,” he said.
“’Tis what the Norse wish you to believe, a false grave.”
Fenella swiped at the dirt wall in front of her, revealing thin, slotted stones. She pointed to the center, where the edges formed a starburst, and then slammed her fist against it. Broken chunks of thin stone pelted Gavin, who watched as the orthostats collapsed like a house of cards to reveal a second, deeper pit protected by an arched stone roof.
“How did you know it would do that?” he asked.
“A Norseman told me, before I ate him.” She took his torch and ducked under the arch.
Gavin followed her into the crypt, which contained a long, low platform of logs surrounded by bundles of rotted cloth. Atop the platform lay a form covered by round shields that had rusted into each other.
“They didnae like this one,” Fenella murmured as she lifted one of the shields. “See, thus? The body is chained to the logs. They feared this warrior would return from the grave.”
Gavin only saw that Fenella was beautiful, even in this dismal place. He kicked at one of the bundles of decaying wool, from which a dusty object rolled. He bent to pick it up, and found it to be a curved choker of finely-worked gold set with polished ovals of amber, carved to resemble eyes.
Such a thing of beauty should have been placed on the Viking’s body, not left on the bottom of the grave. The eyes looked so real he expected them to blink.
Fenella crouched and shoved the shields away from the chained skeleton. The anchors gave way from the spongy logs as soon as she tugged on them, but all that was revealed were gleaming ivory bones.
“Where is it?” She pushed the bones away to look beneath, and then hefted the skull to look inside it, and finally dropped it. “Facking bastart lied to me.”
>
In a rage Fenella blurred around the room, tearing apart the rest of the cloth bundles, which appeared to contain broken spear heads, seashells and a white sparkling powder.
Gavin wanted to comfort her and, as soon as she stopped, he brought her the jeweled neck piece. “Here.”
Though he tried to give it to her, she waved it off. “Away with that. ’Tis no’ the one.”
But before she could turn from him, he gently slipped it around her long, pale neck. “A treasure befitting you, my lady.”
Fenella shoved him away, ignoring the neck piece, and stared down at the skeletal remains of the Viking. “I cannae return to Staffa with empty hands. Quintus must have the map disc.” She drove her boot into the pile of bones, crushing them.
Gavin saw a wisp of white dust rise from the shattered remains, and then another. “There is something inside them.”
“Aye, death.” She stomped on the skull, and then went still as a stream of dust fountained from the crushed eye sockets and swirled around her. Through it she stared at him, her eyes filled with horror. “Gavin.”
He wanted to go to her, but his legs had gone numb, and the screeching sound inside his head was deafening him. Bile rose in his throat as he watched the dust cover her face, pouring into her ears and nose and mouth, until all of it had funneled inside her.
In the silence that followed the amber stones of the golden choker came alive and blinked at him, their gilded eyelids covered with sparkling amethyst crystals.
Dark brown streaks painted themselves in Fenella’s bright hair, and when she opened her eyes they were no longer black, but a reddish-brown. She looked around her as if she were puzzled, and then focused on Gavin for a few moments. She glanced down at the shattered bones before she touched her face and gazed down at her body.
“This shall serve me well,” she said and regarded him. Her voice had changed from Fenella’s lilting soprano to a crystalline contralto. “Are you Pritani, guardsman?”
His paralysis vanished the moment she spoke, and his mind cleared. Gavin blinked and shook his head. “What did you do to Fenella?”