Beyond a Darkened Shore

by Jessica Leake

  I watched him for a moment more, his long fingers making quick work of the saddle’s cinch, but he never looked up.

  “May God keep you safe,” I whispered, and hurried toward my own horse.

  I threw open the stall door to my horse, Sleipnir, a stallion as black as pitch. I named him after the Norse god’s eight-legged horse, mostly as an insult to Northmen I defeated, but also because if any horse had the personality of a god’s horse, it was Sleipnir. He charged out of his stall, impatient as always for war. Despite his massive size, he pulled himself to a dead halt in front of me. With a fistful of his long black mane in one hand, I leaped astride.

  After my short, painful conversation with Séamus, I wanted nothing more than to touch my heels to Sleipnir’s sides and gallop until every thought in my mind disappeared. Instead, I held Sleipnir in check until the men rode out ahead of me, their chests bare and their faces painted. The smell of sweat, metal, and paint from the battle-hungry men, and the sweeter smell of horses, filled my nostrils. It was better than the coppery tang of blood, which would be all I could smell soon.

  I took up my position in the rear after everyone had passed by, and Sleipnir tossed his head in annoyance at being behind the other horses. It couldn’t be helped, though—my power was more useful after the enemy had already been engaged.

  I kept my eyes on the sea as Sleipnir descended the steep, rocky slope. Small stones dislodged beneath his heavy hooves as we wound our way down. There were two cliffs near my father’s castle: one that was closest to shore with an easier climb and a second with a much more treacherous path. It was on this second cliff, one that jutted out into the sea itself, that the castle was located. Between the two cliffs was a small valley, and it was at this descent that we found ourselves. Our horses were used to the cliff that was our home and protection, but any other army would find it difficult not to break a leg.

  When we climbed to the top of the outcropping, which allowed us to view the length of the shore, I pulled Sleipnir to a stop and surveyed the twenty men before me. Compared to the Northmen, our armor was practically nonexistent: light leather leggings, soft leather boots, and no helmets. Unwilling to join my fellow clansmen in simply covering my chest with paint, I wore a leather chest piece over my linen tunic. Most of the men had broadswords, though a few fought with axes. The Northmen would come with their chain mail and their shields, but we would be faster, and more agile.

  The waves viciously beat against the worn rock, sending sprays of white water into the air. It should have been deterrent enough, but the Northmen were relentless. Their longship had already landed. Men poured from its side like a wave of death. As I took in the square sail—white with a skeletal crimson dragon—my heart beat a furious rhythm in my chest. I’d fought countless Northmen in battles throughout our kingdom, but the sight of that sail still made every muscle in my body clench in warring fear and anger—and memory.

  My clansmen’s blood staining the earth red—

  —my sister’s hand in mine as we tried to escape—

  —her eyes wide as the blood trailed down her throat, and me, screaming, screaming—

  I shook my head, banishing the memories before they could weaken my mind further. Sleipnir snorted and pawed the ground in response. Like other horses, he could sense my emotions. But unlike other horses, my apprehension only made him bolder.

  Fergus wheeled his horse over to me and spat on the ground. “Let us pray the blood of the raiders will flow this day.”

  I glanced at the men assembled beside me and frowned. A Northman longship of the size of the one on our shore could hold at least sixty men, far more than our own crew. “The battle can go no farther than this cliff—not this time.”

  “I will cover you as best I can,” Fergus said. “You search for their leader.”

  I tightened my grip on the hilt of my sword. My arm muscles tensed, and my heart pounded. Anticipation of the battle was always the hardest: the prickling adrenaline, the torrent of memories, the cold dread. I endured it all because my sisters and mother were huddled in fear in their room. We were the only things preventing them from being killed.

  I snapped my attention back to the battle. The Northmen had begun the treacherous climb to our stronghold. With any luck, we would pick them off as they emerged at the top of the cliff. The Northman raiding strategy was always to ambush. Instead of recognizing such actions as dishonorable, they seemed happy to live to fight again. They wouldn’t expect us to be waiting for them, and if we could defeat their leader quickly enough, they might retreat. There was no dishonor in retreat in their eyes either, not when their strategy to ambush meant they were usually slinking into a castle and catching its warriors unawares.

  Holding the high ground was our advantage. We had to make it count.

  With a shout, the first man made it to the top. He showed a momentary flash of surprise that we were lying in wait for him, but he recovered quickly. Battle-axe raised and shield in front of his chest, he charged. More of the enemy followed, their armor and long beards making them indistinguishable from one another. My clansmen made rivers of their blood.

  Still, more made it over the rise, until there were two of them to every one of us. I swept my gaze over the battling men for their leader—usually the one with a shield guard. It was my job to kill him, but that would come later. After he had outlived his usefulness to me.

  The chaos of the battle overwhelmed my senses as men swarmed us. Sleipnir reared when one of the Northmen came dangerously close. His flinty hooves smashed the pitiful shield the light-haired man used to protect his face. I met his axe with my sword. The clash sent painful echoes all the way to my bones, and my muscles strained.

  Our eyes met—my dark with his muddy green. And in that moment, he was caught, as helpless as a fly in a spider’s web.

  Pain flared behind my eyes, intense but brief—nothing like the first time. I reached out—an invisible extension of my mind, but as natural to me now as extending my arm. His axe fell away as I took possession of his mind. A torrent of emotions washed over me like a sudden driving rain: bright surprise, hot anger, but most of all, sickening fear.

  He was mine to control.

  It was a monstrous ability to take possession of someone else—to control them as though they were merely an extension of my own body. Still, it was a strength I wasn’t afraid to use on the battlefield because while I knew I wasn’t the strongest fighter, nor the fastest, what power I did have made the difference between life and death for my clansmen. For my family.

  I forced my new bodyguard forward. His will rebelled against mine, straining for independence. My will was stronger.

  You aren’t the leader, but you’ll do for now, I told him in his mind, and felt a surge of answering fear and impotent rage. I ignored it. Protect me from your comrades until you fall.

  Two enemies charged me, their faces grimly determined. My Northman bodyguard met them with his axe. As their weapons clashed, confusion slowed their movements. They halted in their attack, their disbelief paralyzing them. Despite the angry hum of protest within my bodyguard’s mind, he raised his axe again and brought it down upon his comrade’s head. The other I killed with my own sword.

  It had taken years, many battles, and many training sessions to be able to divide my attention so totally as to be able to control someone while still maintaining my sense of self. It wasn’t unlike being able to sword fight while still holding a fully engaged conversation. Difficult, but not impossible.

  As I fought, I searched for the leader, but there were so many men locked in combat I couldn’t pick him out.

  Another Northman attacked from behind. Sleipnir aided me once again, biting and kicking. I swung his big body around so his haunches slammed into the man. My guard was engaged in a battle of his own. This was one of the weaknesses of my ability: I could take possession of only one man at a time.

  I was vulnerable to attack.

  The man’s hand grabbed my thigh, an
d I kicked in reflex. He must have been as tall as Sleipnir and almost as broad. He tugged again. I tried to bring my blade down on his head, but he met it with his axe. He smiled, his teeth the color of old leather.

  Instead of fighting the Northman, I leaned into his hand. Surprised by the sudden loss of tension, he loosened his grip. I kicked again, and he lost his hold entirely.

  All the while I could feel my guard at the other end of my mental tether—he had taken one of his own men by surprise and was currently fending off a second.

  When the leather-toothed man came at me again, I smashed the hilt of my sword into his nose. He bellowed and swung his axe wildly. I deflected as it came dangerously close to cutting into Sleipnir’s side. Anger blazed within me at the thought of my horse being injured, and my control slipped. Sensing my distraction, my guard struggled against my mental hold. His desperate fear and frustration hit me with such force that my eyes closed against my will. I had to focus. I brought to mind the lessons my father had drilled into me: when in a desperate situation, take the enemy by surprise.

  I wrenched my eyes open again just in time to see the leather-toothed Northman striding toward me, his nose spurting blood.

  This time, his eyes were on my horse. I surged into a standing position on Sleipnir’s broad back. The man’s eyes widened. I launched myself at him, bringing my sword down at the same time. He brought his shield up, but the blade smashed through it, into the soft flesh of his neck.

  The big man fell to his knees before falling face-first into the rocks. Blood haloed around him, but I wouldn’t stop to think. I wouldn’t let myself absorb the carnage around me—both of my fallen clansmen and of Northmen. I needed to find their leader.

  My gaze landed on the corpse of a man cleaved in two. It was Cormac, one of the few who would greet me with a kind word. He had a new babe at home, a bright-eyed boy who would now be raised with no father. The pain of his loss stole my breath away.

  And then I felt it: the severing of a connection, like the tautness of string suddenly gone slack. My guard was dead.

  Arms grabbed me from behind. I forced my elbow into my assailant’s gut. The grunt I heard in response sounded too youthful to have come from one of the burly Northmen. I spun around and came face-to-face with a boy who couldn’t have been older than thirteen years.

  For a moment, all I saw was my sister Alana. Why had these monsters brought a child to battle? I was many things, but I wasn’t a murderer of children—even a Northman child. The rage within died down to a pulse.

  He raised his sword, and I couldn’t help but laugh. “Run along, boy,” I said, sure that if he couldn’t understand my words, he would understand my meaning. “The battlefield is no place for a child.”

  His eyes narrowed. “No place for a lady either,” he said in heavily accented Gaelic.

  I laughed again because he had a point. My smile faded when he charged.

  He was quick, I had to give him that. He met every blow of my admittedly half-hearted attacks. But when he knocked my legs out from under me, my amusement disappeared entirely.

  He leaped on top of me, kept me pinned to the ground. He slashed my face with his sword, and I tasted blood. Still, I couldn’t bring myself to kill him.

  I scanned the bloodied cliff. Where was their leader? I shouldn’t be wasting my time with a boy. If I could take possession of the leader, force him to turn on his own, I’d learned from experience that his men would be so taken by surprise that they were easier to kill. Sometimes it so disturbed them that they turned on the leader himself.

  An approaching Northman distracted me from my search. I was running out of time. The man shouted and the boy stiffened, but he didn’t stop trying to cut my throat.

  With my left hand, I felt around for one of the stones that littered the cliff. I wouldn’t kill the boy, but I had to stop him. As my arm swung the stone into his skull, my eyes met the Northman who had appeared behind us.

  His expression almost stopped me. His features were twisted with panic.

  The boy slumped, knocked unconscious. Lucky for him, to my clansmen, he’d appear dead. I might be willing to spare his life, but the others wouldn’t.

  I pushed him off me and scrambled to my feet to greet the Northman who now towered over me, his shield bearing the insignia of the skeletal red dragon—the same as the one on the sail. Instead of an axe, he carried a massive claymore. He wasn’t surrounded by his own personal shield guard like most I’d battled, but still, I was sure. The leader had found me.

  I held my sword at the ready, and as I tried to reach his mind, I studied him. This Northman was different from the others. Surprise trickled through me as I realized how young he was—perhaps only a year older than I was. He was tall, but it was his lightly muscled form that suggested youth. Beneath the splatters of blood, his face was a handsome one with a straight nose, unmarred by multiple breakings like the other men’s. A strong jaw, full lips.

  His ice-blue eyes cut to the boy at my feet. When we both watched the boy’s chest rise, the leader’s attention returned to me. Our eyes locked, and once again, I bore the intense pain as I tried to take his mind.

  But my power slammed into a wall, as real as the stones surrounding my father’s castle. I took a step back in surprise. Gritting my teeth, I pushed with my mind. Nothing. He didn’t even blink.

  But he did swing his sword.

  I brought my own blade up at the last moment. The impact was so jarring I felt it in my bones, the metals of the swords coming together in an earsplitting clatter.

  Before I could formulate a plan of attack, he was on me again. His blows were powerful, and yet there was something about the way he wielded his sword—almost a hesitation every time he brought it down upon mine. It was as though he was holding himself back. But why would he do such a thing? Because I was a girl? Or because he’d seen me refuse to kill the boy?

  When next he attacked, I dodged and swung my sword, hoping to catch him off balance. He deflected it easily with his own blade. I was by no means a novice swordsman, but it was clear his skill far outshone mine.

  I circled him, all the while seeking some way of gaining control of his mind. My every effort was met with an impenetrable wall. His repeated attacks made it impossible to concentrate. Was he toying with me?

  Who will stand between these barbarians and my sisters if I fall? I thought. All around me, my clansmen continued to fight. But our limited numbers meant if I didn’t end this soon, we would all die. They’d take the castle and then my sisters. And I’d have let them down—again.

  The sudden sharp caw of a crow rang out above us, and the Northman paused, his brows drawing low over his eyes. I took his distraction to my advantage. He was powerful, but was he fast? I feinted left and swung around behind him. My blade slammed down on the chain mail covering his broad back.

  It didn’t bring him to his knees, but it did stun him.

  I swung my sword, taking advantage of his slow reaction. He parried at the last second. My blade slipped off his sword and nicked his neck. Blood snaked down his throat, and I quickly scanned the ground beneath him. Stones even larger than the one I’d used to knock out the boy were scattered all around us. I threw my sword down and dived for one.

  As he bent down to grab me, I snatched a rock and smashed it against his head. He fell heavily with a dull thud upon stone. I retrieved my sword and held it high over my head, poised to keep the Northman down permanently.

  But before I could deliver the final blow, something stayed my hand. A silvery voice filled my mind, whispering, Not him. It was the crow’s voice again. It had never been wrong, but still I resisted. Why would it want me to spare my enemy? Did this Northman know what had happened to my father? Was he the reason my clansmen and father had gone to the monastery’s defense? I watched the man’s chest rise and fall, my gaze moving upward to study his face. His cheeks were smooth, and his golden lashes gave him a deceptively innocent appearance. The possibility that my father had
been defeated, possibly even killed, made me want to shake the Northman until he woke.

  My lip curled. Never mind the crow. I hated this man who’d brought these demons to my doorstep. The world would be better off with one less Northman. My arms trembled, suddenly weak under the weight of my sword as I warred with myself. In sleep, he was no threat, and I was no murderer.

  I sheathed my sword as I panted for breath.

  Another Northman warrior stumbled close to me. He saw his leader at my feet. I latched hold of him with my mind as fast as a hawk snatches an unsuspecting mouse from a field. This one was tired and bloody; he barely had the strength to resist. I made him open his mouth and shout in his own language, “Hrokkva!” Fall back. The fighting continued for several heartbeats, and I forced the Northman warrior to repeat his call. One by one, the Northmen caught sight of their fallen leader and obeyed the order to retreat.

  The surviving Northmen—twenty or so by my count—turned and ran as my remaining clansmen chased them to the edge of the cliff.

  The man I controlled remained behind, still swaying under my influence. I moved him toward the younger unconscious boy. I could sense the pain of his injuries as I forced him to scoop up the boy: the cut on his thigh bleeding freely that burned as he bent down, the searing pain of bruised or broken ribs with his every breath, the sting of the blood and sweat in his eyes. Still, he was strong enough to retreat with the boy, and that’s all I cared about.

  Take the boy and never return, but your leader is mine, I told him. Let him remember me for the monster I was.

  I glanced back down at the fallen Northman leader as my twelve remaining clansmen gathered around me.

  “Cut his head from his shoulders and end this,” said Conall, one of my cousins.

  “No,” I said, my eyes holding his. He immediately dropped his gaze. “I want him kept alive.”

  “Your father—”

  “My father isn’t here,” I snapped, “and this Northman may know about—may even be responsible for—the attack on the monastery. I need to know if my father survived.” I moved to stand over the Northman’s fallen body like a wolf guarding her pup. The crow’s voice had told me to spare him, so I would . . . for now. But more than anything, I wanted to know how this Northman was able to resist me. I let out a sharp whistle for Sleipnir. He trotted over, gracefully avoiding trampling the fallen. All my clansmen save Fergus and Conall backed away, eyeing me warily. I stared at the two of them for several heartbeats—just long enough to remind them I could force them if I wanted to—before they finally hefted the Northman onto my horse.