by Shana Ab
“Are you certain, lass?” he asked again, almost a drawl.
The earl did not shift beside her, but Lauren felt the insult go through him, a subtle tensing of his muscles. She clearly saw the affronted looks passing back and forth among the English soldiers ahead of them.
“ We both saw it,” she said to Rhodric, trying to put a warning in her tone. “It's almost directly below us. The stern is just barely showing past the cliff. If the seas weren't so rough there, we wouldn't have seen it moving at all. They must have rowed in very early this morning, before our patrol got here.”
“ We need to get down there,” said the earl to her.
“And how to you propose to do that, du Morgan?” sneered Rhodric. There was no denying the challenge in his voice now.
Lauren took a quick step between Arion and her kinsman. Since she was higher on the hill than Rhodric, her head was almost level with his. She fixed him with a severe look. His hazel eyes held scorn, unwavering anger.
“Do you seek to thwart your father, Rhodric?” Lauren asked mildly.
“Don't be a fool,” he whispered to her, darting a look at the earl behind her.
“Then do you seek to thwart the council?”
“Lauren, you have no idea what these men—”
“Do you?” she interrupted, speaking over him.“Do you seek to thwart the wishes of your own laird, my cousin? Is that it?”
“You know that Quinn would never approve of such a—”
“I know that he would!” Lauren flared.“I know him better than you do, I would say! And I also know that our council has approved of this plan, and they speak for him! So if you think to ruin our peace, Rhodric, I wish you would do it elsewhere. I have other things to worry about now. There are Vikings right below us!”
She pushed past him, walking away down the hill a little too fast, her heart in her throat. Rhodric was one of the best swordsmen on Shot, and no one knew it better than he did. If he truly wanted to start a fight here, he would do permanent damage to their relationship with the du Morgans. She could only hope that she had made him understand, and that he was not so hotheaded as to forget that there were more of the English than there were of them.
She went to her horse and listened, hearing nothing but the wind, so she turned and looked back up the hill. Rhodric and the earl were taking each other's measure, two large men, neither of them yielding to the other. The edges of her vision showed her all the men with hands on sword hilts, English and Scots alike, their attention riveted on the scene above them.
Please, she thought frantically, an aimless prayer. Don't do it….
And then Rhodric took a backward step down the hill. Just one step, enough for the Earl of Morgan to walk by him, which is what he did, passing the other man with supreme unconcern, appearing totally indifferent to the threat in the air.
Rhodric turned and stared at the earl's back, a wrathful promise of future conflict.
“ We need to get down there,” Arion said again to Lauren. She had been so worried about Rhodric that she hadn't even noticed the earl coming straight to her. “How do we do that, MacRae? This is your side of the island.”
“Yes.” She raised a hand to her eyes, trying to put her thoughts back together.
“We'll have to go down the tunnels through the opening up here,” offered one of her clansmen, brisk and practical.
Arion looked at the man, then back down at her. He raised one elegant brow, an unspoken question.
“The caves are vast and confusing,” Lauren said, raising her voice, explaining to everyone.“We haven't fully mapped them out, because they are of no real use to us. They are difficult to access, and they narrow and widen unpredictably. Most of them flood with the tide.”
“Could the Vikings find their way up here from where they are?” asked an English soldier.
“Aye,” Lauren admitted.“It's possible. The cliffs themselves are too tall and too steep to scale; we do know that. But there are a few cavern tunnels that rise to the surface of the island. We've gone down through them a number of times, just to see what was there. So the Vikings could discover the same route we did, I suppose, if the cave they are in has a full connection to one of the main shafts.”
“Where is the exit?” Arion asked.
Lauren lifted her hands in the air.“Almost anywhere. We've discovered many shallow openings in the stone around here. But we've found only one that is wide enough for a man to fit through.”
She looked around at the men, all concentrating on her, each one at last considering the same goal.
“I'll show you,” Lauren said to them all.“It's not far.”
HE OPENING WAS MUCH SMALLER than what Ari had expected, and if Lauren MacRae had not paused beside the deep crevice of rock that made a ravine in the earth, he was sure he would have ridden by it without noticing it.
The ravine was worn stone, obviously a flood channel from the rains, and the grass and brush around it grew tall and thick. Ari followed her as she scrambled down the stepped ledge of the trench. A group of soldiers fanned out behind them; Arion had already sent some of them to search the surrounding woods. The two sentries had stayed behind at the ledge of rock overlooking the ocean, keeping vigilant watch on the longship.
Lauren covered the uneven ground of the ravine with ease, he couldn't help but notice. Her steps were swift and almost silent over the gravel that littered the gully. She stopped beside what appeared to be merely a fold in the stone. When Arion got close enough, he could see a strange oval darkness against the rock, almost sinister, thicker than the other shadows around them.
“This is it,” she said, one hand on the curve of the entrance. “Only a few people will be able to go, and you won't have room for that.” She gave his shield a dismissive glance. “The way is deceptive, and most of the tunnel is too narrow to walk side by side. We should leave some men here to guard the entrance.”
“Agreed,” said Arion, and turned to the man nearest him, issuing instructions. Lauren did the same, speaking quietly to one of the Scots. Ari watched the man walk over to his horse and take something bulky from a sack near the saddle. He returned and handed it to Lauren. It was rope, battered and faded.
She noticed Ari's frown.“Some of the drops are steep,” she said,“and this will help to keep us all together. We're going to have to hurry to beat the high tide.” She took one end of the rope and handed the rest to him, then began to duck into the cave.
“Wait a minute.” Arion had her by the arm before she could vanish into that ominous opening.“What are you doing? Have someone else lead.”
Lauren shot him an impatient look. “I'm the smallest of us all. And I know these caves better than most. I spent a whole summer once mapping them with my father. No one here is better qualified than I am to lead.”
He didn't like it. It felt wrong, but to say that to her would be nothing short of idiocy. She would only laugh at him and go anyway. It made Arion irritated, then annoyed with himself for being irritated. It was not his duty to be her nursemaid. If she had no sense, it would not be his fault if she stumbled across the enemy and got killed before she could draw breath. She knew the risks, obviously. She had flaunted her power and her knowledge of this land from the moment he had met her.
Fine. She could lead. If she ended up as a sacrifice to the Vikings, it would be no one's fault but her own.
But what he said was, “We don't have a light. We can't go down without one.”
She looked amused.“Just follow me, du Morgan.”
Lauren stepped into the oval and was immediately engulfed in the vacuum of it. The rope in his hand grew taut. He loosened his grip on it, and it began to slither through his fingers into the cave after her.
The rest of the men were waiting for him. Ari handed the coils of rope to the soldier nearest him.“Take up the rear of the line and hold on to that,” he said,“and don't let go.”
“Aye, my lord,” said the man.
Arion stalked into the darkness.
/> He let his hand drift over the roughness of the rope at his side, using it as a guide to find her—lightly, because it was obviously old, and many of the fibrous strands were separating from the whole of it. His palm skipped over them; he ignored the bite they left against his skin.
It was utterly black inside the cave, a close kind of suffocating nothingness, no way to tell where the walls might be but for the fact that his shoulders kept grazing them. Lauren had been right: It would be impossible to walk down this tunnel any way but single-file.
He heard her ahead of him, her steps still agile and sure. He fancied he could even hear her breathing, slow, steady.
When he sensed he was close enough to her he grasped the rope again, then reached out and placed a hand on her shoulder.
“What are you doing?” Her voice floated back at him, eerily disembodied, yet clearly with a trace of vexation.
“Indulge me,” he said.“Pretend I can't see a damned thing.”
“Can't you, du Morgan?” He heard amusement again.
“No. Apparently unlike you, I do not have the eyes of a cat.”
She gave a soft laugh. He would have missed it had he not been so close to her now.
Behind him came the louder sounds of the other men, none so surefooted as the woman ahead of him. There was distinct cursing and muffled thumps, arms and feet hitting stone. At least he was not the only one blinded.
“Almost there,” said Lauren, whatever that meant.
They walked farther, and Arion sensed they were descending, but for now the grade was gentle enough. Since he couldn't see anything anyway, he closed his eyes, focusing on feeling the space around him, trying to find his bearings by concentrating on his other senses.
Small space, getting smaller. Strange odor, cool and musty, with the tang of salt underlying it. A steady commotion behind him, and ahead …
Heat. Adventure. Sweet curves, firm flesh. A delicately boned shoulder, warm beneath his hand. The whisper of her tartan against the oversized tunic she wore. Confident, airy footsteps, her legs encased in leather boots that laced up the sides, all the way up to her knees, perhaps, and then higher than that would be just softness, just the creamy line of her thighs—
“Halt.” Lauren slowed enough to let her command filter past her, and Arion came out of his daydream with a jolt. He repeated the word, heard it go down the line until everyone stopped. She moved, dropping down so that he was no longer touching her, and he heard sounds coming from where she must be kneeling.
The musty smell was much stronger here, unpleasant but not unendurable. A spark of light took him by surprise, showing him the confining tunnel around them in one quick white flash, and then it came again, only this time it caught on something, and the whoosh of a fire began.
Lauren stood up and turned around, holding up a thick torch that flamed at the end.
“ We keep the light this far in so no one will be tempted to go exploring when just passing by. We've lost several children over the years to these caves.”
Ari nodded, looking around.
“From this point on it gets more dangerous,” she continued. “We're going to have to make a sharp descent. The tide waters fill most the tunnels below this level, so be careful. The ground will be slick. Don't fall.”
“Is that concern I detect, MacRae?” Arion asked.
“Just practicality.” She gave him her cold smile. “If you injure yourself, we'd have to back half the men out of the tunnel to free you. I'd rather not waste the time.”
They stood in a cramped cavern where the shaft they had been following split into three directions, all of them looking uncomfortably small to Arion. He ignored her barb, concentrating on the openings before them. None appeared too promising.
The first was a rough circle of stone, but set up high in the arch of the wall. They would have to climb to reach it. The middle one was lower but had a sickle shape; it looked almost impossible to walk in. The third was too squat for anything but crawling.
Lauren held the torch up high, then bent and picked up the rope again.
“This way.” She chose the sickled tunnel, and had to twist sideways to slip though. Ari watched the flame of the torch reflect back at him on the pale stone around them, a dragon's tail of black smoke beckoning him for-ward. The rope began to slide past his fingers again.
Arion sighed, then approached the stone. He exhaled a little deeper, managing to squeeze into the opening. Cold stone pressed into him on both sides; he had to turn his head to the side and grope the walls with his hands to keep moving. It was almost unbearable. Grumbling voices behind him told him that the other men were experiencing the same problems.
After what seemed aeons, the stone slowly began to release him, though it seemed they were going almost straight down. As the walls grew farther apart, he could breathe a little easier. Eventually, he was able to face forward again, though he had to hunch over to accommodate the lowering ceiling. The smell of the sea grew stronger, and the damp, slimy green leaves attached to the walls they walked past could only be seaweed.
They passed many other openings in the cave walls, but Lauren didn't veer off to any of them, only kept on in this interminable curving shaft, lower, lower into the earth. Even she was going more slowly now, picking her way carefully around the slippery, uneven cave floor.
The ceiling dropped farther. Then it shrank again, and he was almost having to bend double to walk, using his hands on the walls for balance. Since Lauren had slowed he kept right behind her, certain that at some point on this insane journey she would skid and fall into the bowels of the island, though he didn't see how he would be able to help her. Most likely they would go plunging down into some pit together.
She was compensating for the lowering space by tilting sideways, though she didn't have to bend as far as he did to escape the cave ceiling. The muscles in his legs were beginning to ache. He could only imagine how she was holding up.
“Lauren,” he began.
She whipped around and put her free hand over his mouth, silencing him with a fierce scowl. The men behind them bunched up at his sudden halting, and Arion turned and waved an arm at them, indicating that they should stop.
“Stay here,” Lauren mouthed, silent, and handed him the torch.
He didn't understand what she was about to do until she began to wrap the rope around her forearm, all the way down to her wrist. He handed the torch back to whoever was next in line behind him, then grabbed her arm and shook his head at her.
She tried to free herself and he held on harder. He wasn't going to let her go forward alone. It was plain that she thought them close enough now to the cave where the Vikings hid that the light would be a detriment to them, and any noise at all might give them away. Ari came up close and put his lips next to her ear.
“I'm taking the lead now.”
She let out a huff of air, perhaps exasperation, then moved so that she could whisper back, her breath warm on him.“You don't know the way. You don't know the opening. And you wouldn't fit anyway.”
He kept his grip on her firm.
“Be reasonable, du Morgan!” Her words were hushed, but the tension in her was marked.“Let go of me!”
“I'm coming with you.”
He heard her draw in air through her teeth, and he pulled back so that he could look into her eyes, letting her see that he meant what he said.
There was a smudge of dirt on her chin, and the loosened hair around her face had become waving curls that seemed to match the color of the fire. Her eyes deepened to golden brown in this light, very serious. She was so beautiful, even now.
“Stay far behind me, then,” she said, the lightest of sounds.“Don't interfere.”
Arion let go of her arm. She moved off into the darkness ahead.
He turned and indicated to the man there that he was to wait, and listen, and give the rope enough slack. The soldier nodded.
The cave got, if possible, even smaller ahead, but strangely enough, t
hey were moving up again, rising above the level where they had left the others. Eventually Ari was forced to give up walking and begin to crawl blindly, adding bruises and scrapes that stung in the salt water puddled on the stone, silently reciting every profanity he had ever learned. The tunnel went on and on, slowly leveling out.
All his previous fantasies of her had shriveled away; right now all that Lauren MacRae represented to him was pain and a sore back and bleeding palms and a certain faith that she was going to get them killed, probably very soon. He couldn't see her any longer, but Arion considered how nice it would be to catch up with her, so that he could wrap his hands around her swanlike neck and squeeze.
The darkness around him began to lighten—not from torchlight, but something more like daylight, cool blue suffusing the tunnel. He rounded a curve and found the object of his ire lying on her stomach on the tunnel floor, staring down at what appeared to be a hole in the ground. Her face was dramatically lit with the unearthly new light, and she was slowly moving her head, searching whatever was below her.
He was able to creep up beside her by overlapping her, and she shifted over as far as she could, not bothering to look at him.
Fresh air wafted up around him, the promise of the outside world so close.
Directly below them, not too far down, was what appeared to be a significant grotto opening out to the ocean. A small, rocky ledge to the left was all that was not submerged by the pulsing water. And on the water was the rowboat, so close he could make out the sinewy lines of the animal carvings along the prow.
Arion leaned out farther over the opening, so that he could see the whole of the space below them, all the way back to the jagged entrance of the grotto.
He lifted his head and looked at Lauren, and she stared back at him, dismayed.
The boat was empty, and so was the cavern.
The Vikings were loose on Shot.
Chapter Six
AUREN TUGGED ON THE ROPE until she felt it give, then gathered up the slack and began to creep over the edge of the hole.
Predictably, the Earl of Morgan pulled her back.