by Sandi Layne
A knife caught the light of the moon, and Cowan abandoned his whimsical introspection. Weapons made him serious. “Can I answer any questions?” he asked the man in the language of the Franks.
The man planted his feet shoulder-width apart and leaned forward menacingly. He smelled of fish oil and salt. Not unpleasant, but not inviting. “Why are you here?”
“I fished them from the harbor, Alfonse,” Geralt volunteered with a self-deprecating bow. “They were in a fishing skiff. It capsized and sank.”
Monsieur Alfonse grunted and the tip of his knife wavered a bit. He glanced briefly at Charis. “The Northmen do not bring women with them,” he remarked, the knife lowering a bit more. “Yet you have yours,” he challenged.
Cowan drew Charis more closely against himself, trying to look as harmless as possible. “We are not Northmen, but we did winter with them,” he said. So far, his words were true. But then he had to create some falsehoods. “This is my wife. We are just trying to get home to the kingdom of Ulaid, on the Green Isle.” It was a good thing, he realized, that Charis did not speak Frankish.
“You are not spies?”
Cowan spread his free arm expansively and smiled. “We have nothing with which to be spies, I assure you. We are just weary and wish to be home before summer.” He thought he would try something that might prove beneficial. “Our boat has disappeared, as Geralt has told you. Can we seek passage with one of the sturdy vessels here?”
“You have gold?”
Cowan allowed his worry about this show on his face as his shoulders slumped. “No. Only our skills. My wife is a gifted surgeon. I speak all the trade languages from Nordweg to the Califate.”
Strangely enough, the guardsman put his knife away and smiled broadly. “Well, then. Come with me. I might be able to help you.”
Untrusting, Cowan didn’t see any choice in the matter, so he cautiously followed Monsieur Alfonse as he made for a wide, stone-paved road that led to the walled city of Flanders.
The Northmen had raided this harbor. It was evident in the heavy fortifications and watchmen who kept an eye on the coast. Surely that was how Alfonse knew to come before they were well and truly on their feet after their dunking. Along the walls, made of rock and wood, there were torches sending acrid smoke to the sky. These were a justifiably suspicious people, and the Franks were known for their clannishness.
Geralt stopped at the gate, bowing and scraping to Alfonse, who tossed the toothless man a few coins. The older man melted into the shadows near the wall and Cowan felt a bit lost as the rest of them went through the gate.
“What is happening?” Charis demanded, tugging on his arm. Cowan patted her shoulder, trying to keep her silent. The dip in the harbor had not, alas, made her any less stubborn and she shrugged his hand off roughly. “Cowan! What is happening? Why are we not going home?”
“We will,” he assured her, praying that it would be true. “This man will help us.”
He prayed that it would be so. Jesu, protect us!
A small building, crafted of wood and stone with oiled cloth to cover the rounded windows, sat like a warden on the right as they passed the gates. It was to this place that Alfonse led them, brusquely indicating they should precede him inside. A tallow candle sputtered on the middle of a rough-hewn table off to one side of the room. Around the one-room house, Cowan saw a few chairs, two cots, and a large wooden chest, sturdily chained for security. Bribes, perhaps? Cowan sighed again over his gear, which had held a meager stash of coin—a stash he could have increased had Charis only waited on her escape—that he could have used to pay for passage.
“Sit down, then,” Alfonse directed.
Cowan did so, gesturing for Charis to sit close beside him on one side of the table so he could see the door and two of the windows. Charis shifted uncomfortably on the wood-slat chair, but she didn’t protest.
Alfonse went to a shadowed trestle table that Cowan had not seen before the candle’s light glanced off it. “Ale,” their host stated, bringing two wooden cups back with him and setting them down before turning for his own. “For bargaining, ’tis best to start with a wet throat,” the guardsman declared. “We will see which ship can accommodate you,” he went on, picking up a board. “I have a chart here of the next vessels to leave port. Where were you bound?” He waved a mug at Cowan. “Drink, man, drink.”
The board was a map, and there were ship shapes carved into the wood, each with a peg of a different color lodged in a sail. It was a fair enough representation for an illiterate shipping director or a harbor guard, Cowan supposed.
“We seek to go here,” he said, pointing to Ulaid, the northeast kingdom of Éire. “We can work for passage,” he stated again, in case the man had missed that detail when they had been at the water’s edge.
“I’m sure,” Alfonse said expansively, pulling at his lower lip. “Drink up, we’ll talk.”
Hesitant, but afraid to offend the man and ruin any chance for passage, Cowan kept his eye on Monsieur Alfonse and tilted the cup to his lips.
“Good, good,” Alfonse said, bringing his own cup to his mouth for a full draught. “Always good to start on fair terms.”
Cowan took one long swallow and set the cup down.
“Spiced ale? It’s different than I’m used to,” he allowed, smiling in what he hoped was a friendly manner. To his left, Charis sniffed at her own cup and got very still.
He didn’t manage to inquire as to the reason, for the room began spinning and Cowan remembered nothing more.
The good wishes of the villagers of Balestrand echoed alternately in Agnarr’s ears with the despondent leave-taking of Els as the old man left for his relatives in the north. On the one hand, there was much to look forward to this summer morning. Tuirgeis was taking a fleet of thirty ships on this journey and Agnarr himself had been charged with overseeing a third of them. It was a great honor, a fine responsibility, and should yield much gold if all went well. Agnarr knew that the trick would be getting some of that gold himself before the ships sailed back to Nordweg. He himself had no plans of returning this summer. He had not told Bjørn or his mother, but he would send for them as soon as he had claimed land on the Green Island. He could go for them himself, perhaps, in a year from now.
But at present, his focus was directed west. Orkney. Tuirgeis had made trading arrangements with their countrymen there last year. The winds were fair and Agnarr grinned with fierce anticipation as he stepped from the bow of the ship to the stern, maneuvering over booted feet and ducking around the snapping sail.
“Take good care of that helmet, Erik,” he advised the young warrior with a chuckle. Yes, Erik the Hardheaded was a good name for him. A man’s name, one won in battle—in a twisted path—but won nevertheless. Erik had won renown, too, as a victor in the battle against Vigaldr last winter. Yes, Agnarr mused again, he is much like myself at his age.
“Thor’s priestess blessed this helm, Agnarr,” Erik boasted with a decisive lift of his red-bearded chin. “It shall not fail.”
Agnarr nodded shortly, but his thoughts flew to the village where he had found Eir. She had thrown the spear that had robbed him of his own Thor-blessed helm, something neither of them had ever forgotten. Eir. She would be home by now, he thought. The sea would not stop her. Men could not strike her. She had Kingson to guard her, and he was a proven berserker. Yes, surely she was safely among her people by now. Or perhaps she had gone with Kingson to his people?
The thought made his muscles tighten. Had that other man dared to claim her?
He stiffened his shoulders and glared into the west. No matter. If Kingson had claimed her, he would just take her back again. She had not killed him, he reminded himself with a grin. She could have, but she had not. That was important.
“She will be mine again,” he promised himself. And he would give her sons. “Ja. It will be so.”
“It’s the truth,” Charis said to Captain François Perot as the trading ship approached the Kentish coast.
The sun caught in the captain’s silvering hair, reminding her of Achan before he had died. She waved the memory off with a subtle motion of her hands. “I told Monsieur Alfonse and I’m telling you, here in the light of day, that Cowan is the son of King Braniuecc of Ulaid. If you take us to our shores, Braniuecc will pay gold for him.”
She spoke slowly to the captain, but sincerely. Between their mutual knowledge of Norse and his spare knowledge of Gaeilge, they were managing to communicate. Cowan, the fool, had awakened ready to take heads from bodies this morning, and had been knocked senseless by this same captain. Idjit. Drinking a full draught of ale from a strange man. Had he not smelled the nightshade in there? Had his father taught him nothing about self-preservation?
Captain Perot stroked his grizzled beard and looked her over again from head to toe. She cocked her head, wondering if he was going to try that again. She decided to head him off. “Don’t,” she advised him, her voice calm and quiet.
Yet he sensed menace in that word, and evidently remembered that she had drawn his own knife on him before dawn. His lust had dampened considerably when she had threatened his manhood. Devin and Devlin’s lessons remained with her.
“A prince of Ulaid,” the trader captain mused aloud. “Not a bastard son?”
“No,” Charis stated firmly, remembering the stakes in this bargaining session. Home. Freedom! Her own people and the wellbeing of Ragor’s children. “He is the king’s acknowledged heir,” she went on with a decisive nod, “and is worth much to his father.”
Perot inclined his head slowly, thoughtfully, and hummed a little under his breath. Charis laced her fingers together in front of her, resisting the urge to say more. Around them, the sailors went about their tasks, checking lines and keeping debris off the deck. Perot stared at the sea and the mild waves that caressed his ship.
At last, he spoke. “Fair enough. You promise a ransom for this prince of Ulaid. I need his back to work. Can he sail?”
“Yes.”
“Good. And you, you are a doctor?”
Charis had heard the term when she and Cowan had been forced onboard this vessel. “Yes, I am a—a doctor,” she said, struggling with the unfamiliar word. “I can heal your sick and wounded.”
Perot’s voice was sharp. “Good. You can see to him, first” he said, indicating Cowan’s prone body with his booted toe, “and then come to me and I will take you to those of the crew who need doctoring.” With a dismissive nod, the captain turned, shouting something to a man who was headed to the under-deck storage area.
Charis smiled to herself. She had done it all on her own.
Cowan would be proud of her, she was sure.
“You told him what?” Cowan demanded, squinting up into the sun. She was kneeling over him, trying to clean the wounds on his head. “That my father is king of all Ulaid?”
“Hush!” she said, swiping his open mouth with the salt water she was using to clean him. “I said what needed to be said to get home.”
“But he’s not,” Cowan rasped, sitting up. “He’s just a minor ruler.”
“He’s a king and that’s enough!” Charis glared at him. “You don’t have to worry further. Your only job is to help sail this ship,” she told him. “I did the bargaining.”
In response to this, Cowan just stared at her, mouth agape. Well, he should be surprised. She had told him all that had passed since he had drunk that ale back at the harbor guard’s house. He should be pleased, blast his eyes!
Those same bright green eyes darted back and forth, as if seeking a way out of their predicament.
Charis clucked her tongue at him. “Whatever you do,” she advised, “don’t try to escape. Idjit. Drinking ale from a strange man . . . ”
“Enough, woman,” Cowan countered, glowering at her from narrowed eyes. “So you smelled the herbs in the ale before you drank. Good on you,” he concluded. “Some of us can fight and some of us can smell. Aren’t you the lucky one?”
Charis smiled to herself, letting her hair fall forward to hide the expression. “Isea, I am that,” she agreed smugly. Then she returned to the business of cleaning the wounds he received when he’d returned to awareness after having drunk the “spiced ale”. With only a few airily disappointed sounds, she checked the bandaging around his head. “They’re doing well,” she remarked. “Achan always said that the salt water was good for healing.”
“Hmph,” was all he said.
She smiled again, more warmly this time, and caught his chin against the back of her hand so that he looked her in the eye. “When I’m done here, I have to go below to help others. I am going to try to find some herbs in their cooking supplies. You only have to wait,” she reminded him.
“Go below?” Cowan repeated. “What kind of help are you providing?” His expression was anxious. “They haven’t, ah, hurt you, have they?”
Charis felt her pride in herself give way just a bit in the face of his concern for her. “No, they haven’t.” With a sly smile, she recounted her method of persuading the captain to leave her alone.
Cowan laughed, a full laugh and a healthy one. It gladdened her mind. “Good, then,” he said. “I can work for a man like that.”
“So, you trust me, then?” she asked, feeling a smile linger on her lips.
He chuckled once more and this time reached up to touch her hair. “Isea, lass. I do. For all that I shouldn’t, I do.”
Seven mornings later, when they had sailed up the coast of Éire and up to the fog-beset shore of her birth, Charis felt that, at last, she had redeemed herself in her own eyes. She had gained vengeance on those who had hurt her, had repaid the man who had sailed her away from Balestrand, and had returned to Ragor’s shore, less than a year from the time she had been taken.
Now all that remained was finding her people.
Her personal triumph and future plans were interrupted when Cowan placed his work-roughened hands on her shoulders and whispered over her head. “Well, lass, you’ve taken us this far. Now what?”
The shouts of the sailors—
“Anchor down!”
“Anchor is down, captain!”
—drowned her answer at first. “Now you get us off this ship and into the fog.”
“Me? Ah, so you’ve left me something to do then?”
She heard the resigned laughter in his quiet question. “You’ve said more than once that you’re the fighter, son of Branieucc.”
His hands left her shoulders, taking warmth with them and leaving her feeling the chill of the heavy fog. The white-gray mass moved from land to sea, as if it, too, would aid in their escape. Charis was reminded, suddenly, of Achan’s story of her own birth. It had been a foggy morning . . . her mother had been of an unknown people . . . Who was she really? Did she have special abilities? Where did they come from? Was she truly of the sidhe, as the villagers had whispered since she’d been a girl?
If so, could she call the fog to her? Or was it just a trick of her mind that made it seem almost alive?
Cowan made a thoughtful sound behind her and she shook off her unearthly contemplation. “Isea, Charis,” Cowan breathed into the morning mists. “I have had to be a fighter. I can be one again.”
“Watch the rocks!” Captain Perot called, his voice seeming cloaked by the thickening fog.
“Aye, sir!”
“Secure our hostages!”
Charis turned, alarm making her heart jump inside her chest. “Cowan?”
She would remember this moment for the rest of her life, she was sure. The fog beading in Cowan’s beard and hair, like small gems against cloth. Eyes flashing. The fierce grin of a warrior of her people.
Two sailors moved quickly toward them, and Cowan called the name of his God as he brandished his knife—his only weapon—and prepared to fight.
Chapter 29
What a joke. A knife against two muscled, wiry men of the sea. But Cowan’s laugh was joyful even as he positioned himself to do battle. From somewhere, he had the awareness t
hat Charis was slinking along the side of the deck, but he did not pay her much heed. He had to deal with men who would—once again—take him captive.
Fog slipped to the mast of the ship, sliding down to the deck as Cowan angled his body. He had no shield, but the seamen were not well-armed. It seemed a fair match.
“Get him!” they shouted, grins on their salt- and sun-roughened faces. The others shouted encouragement to them, which Cowan barely heard, but it made him laugh anyway. He remembered when the Oran Mór, the Song of Life, had sung to him, remembered the dance of battle, and he was confident that under Jesu he would be victorious this morning.
One sailor with inky hair and a drooping mustache jumped up and came down, one foot forward, to catch Cowan in the gut. He moved easily aside, plunging his knife into the bald man who attacked on his right.
A splash, shallow in sound, caught his ear as the bald fellow went down, blood pouring from his hip, staining dark trousers.
“The doctor jumped ship!” Cowan heard. He nodded his satisfaction with that and edged to the side of the deck to follow.
Hands reached for him, staffs and even oars were thrown at him, but Cowan still progressed, handspan by handspan, to the railing of the ship. A slice to this man, a thrust at that, and he incapacitated those who would have kept him from the foggy shore of his country. A kick to the middle sent Captain Perot slamming against a brace of water barrels, gasping for breath. This last obstacle overcome, Cowan shouted his thanks to God and leapt without inhibition over the side into the shallows, having slain no one, but gaining his liberty.
“Cowan!”
His name snaked to him from the near-enveloping fog, curling near his ear and reminding him of his mission to protect Charis. He splashed through the water, ignoring the water soaking his boots and much-patched trousers. Over the rocks, up the slight incline to the right of the sharp wall of the cliff of Ragor, he kept his footing over the welcoming green grass. Ahead the fog was a thickening length of cloth, hiding the trees, the distant view of the village to his left, and even the ground itself. It clung to him, drawing him forward, coaxing him to find safety in its thick blanket.