Storm Maiden

by Mary Gillgannon

  “The boy,” he answered.

  Ellisil shone the torch wide, and Dag heard him suck in his breath as he examined Dermot’s body. Then the warrior bent over him again and pulled the knife free. Dag grunted at the pain, but didn’t attempt to rise.

  “Are you wounded elsewhere?” Ellisil asked, his voice heavy with dread. “What is it, Dag? Why do you not get up? The wound in your back is not serious compared to some of the blows you’ve taken in battle.”

  Wearily, Dag pulled himself to a sitting position. The mist had almost disappeared, and Eliisil’s torch clearly revealed the boy’s body lying twisted in its death throes. Dag stared at the slender corpse, beyond weeping.

  Ellisil shook his head. “Of all the foolishness—to attack you with a puny dagger like that. What was he thinking?”

  “He was only a child, but I cut him down with my ax. I couldn’t see!” Dag’s voice trailed off hoarsely.

  “He stabbed you in the back. You were only defending yourself.”

  Dag shook his head. “Fiona. She loved him. He was her foster brother.”

  “Would she have rather you died?” Ellisil asked incredulously.

  “I don’t know,” Dag said. “I fear it may be so.”

  Fiona slept deeply, buried under the weight of a dream so terrifying it seemed to crush her. She was down in the souterrain. All was dark except for a multitude of glowing eyes that leered at her out of the murk. As she shrank away, the eyes followed her, and suddenly she knew they belonged to the dead. A torch flared and she saw that the chamber was lined with corpses, rotting corpses that danced on mangled, bloody limbs and reached out for her with hideously disfigured arms. She pushed them away, but they fell on her, burying her in putrid, oozing flesh.

  She sat upright, choking on a scream, and the pain on Duvessa’s face as she bent over her told Fiona that the nightmare had not ended. “Dag,” Duvessa croaked. “He wants you to come.”

  Fiona leapt up from the pallet like a panicked animal. “Where? What’s happened?”

  Duvessa shook her head. “He said you must hear it from him.”

  Outside the hut, Ellisil waited for them, torch in hand, his face grim. He shook his head when she questioned him. “Dag will not let me say.”

  “He is well? Please tell me that he is well!” Fiona begged.

  Ellisil nodded.

  They walked silently, like a funeral procession. The forest seemed impossibly far away. When they entered the woods, the trees were endless. When they reached Dag, Fiona saw that he was seated on the ground. Siobhan crouched next to him, apparently tending his back.

  Fiona rushed to him. “Dag, Dag—what is it?”

  He lifted his head to look at her. Fiona’s blood went cold at the look of despair on his face. “By the saints! What’s happened?”

  “Dermot is dead. I killed him.”

  Fiona swayed on her feet. Nay! This could not be happening. Behind her, Duvessa began to weep.

  “ ‘Twas an accident.” Siobhan rose and put her hand on Fiona’s arm, steadying her. “Dermot tried to kill Dag. He came up behind him in the dark and mist and stabbed him in the back. Dag did what any warrior would have—he pulled his weapon and fought his attacker.”

  “I struck blindly, never knowing....” Dag’s voice bled with grief.

  “I want to see him,” Fiona said. It surprised her how calm her voice sounded.

  “Nay.” Dag’s answer was harsh, decisive.

  “ ‘Tis my right!” Anger filled her. How dare Dag prevent her from seeing her foster brother!

  “It might be well if you did not,” Siobhan said softly. “ ‘Twas not an easy death.”

  Fiona gasped at the pain the words brought her. “I will see him,” she insisted. “I will say goodbye. Never did I get a chance to say farewell to my father. I will at least give Dermot that.”

  Siobhan nodded and took her arm. “He’s in my hut.”

  * * *

  “She will curse me,” Dag said softly. “Then she will curse herself for bringing me here.”

  “Get up, Dag,” Ellisil ordered impatiently. “You’ll take a chill,” Numbly, Dag rose. He was surprised to see Duvessa clinging to Eliisil’s arm, tears streaming down her face.

  “Dermot was my brother,” she said brokenly.

  Ellisil held the torch out to Dag. He accepted the flaming brand and watched as Ellisil gathered the little Irishwoman to his chest. As she wept, Ellisil soothed her with soft words and a gentle hand upon her thick wavy hair. A stab of excruciating longing went through Dag as he watched his sword brother comfort the woman. Once he had held Fiona thus, eased her pain, and vowed to protect her. Instead, he had brought her more grief.

  “Can you walk?” Ellisil asked Duvessa. When she nodded, he gestured to Dag that he should lead the way to the ship. Dag began to walk. His legs felt leaden, his insides like ice. When they reached the grounded ship, Ellisil reached for the torch again. “I’m going to take Duvessa back to her hut.”

  Dag handed over the torch and turned away. The elegant prow of the Raven loomed above the river, gilded silver in the moonlight. He stared at the ship a long while, then waded in and climbed over the side. Rorig greeted him sleepily. Dag chastised him for not being more alert then sought out his own bedsack.

  He closed his eyes and beseeched the gods to bring him sleep. Slowly, warmth crept through him, bringing with it a kind of dull resignation. He was alive. His spirit had not fled his body on that mist-shrouded pathway. He had done the only thing he could do. If Fiona could not forgive him, he would have to live his life without her.

  “Dag! Dag!”

  He could hear Fiona’s voice. She sounded worried. He opened his eyes—and the memories of the night before flooded back to him.

  “Fiona.” She looked terribly weary. Her eyes were red, her face pale. It hurt him to see her suffering.

  “You must get up, Dag. You must let Siobhan examine your wound. She scarcely treated you last night. It might yet fester.”

  Dag sat up. “Do you care?” he whispered. “Do you not wish I would die as Dermot did?”

  Her eyes widened. “Nei! You think I wish you dead?” She leaned over, kissing him quickly on the jaw. “ ‘Twas not your fault. Dermot did a foolish thing. Cowardly, too. I grieve for him, but I would not trade his life for yours. Never!”

  Dag sighed and drew Fiona down to him. His back hurt fiercely, but he didn’t care. The pain in his heart was gone.

  “Jesu,” Fiona suddenly gasped. “You’re burning with fever.”

  Dag nodded and closed his eyes, sinking down into oblivion.

  * * *

  Over the next few days, Fiona refused to leave Dag’s side except to relieve herself. She stared fixedly at his flushed face or sometimes leaned her ear to his chest to hear the thready heartbeat that whispered there. She cursed herself a thousand times for not having insisted Siobhan tend his wound that night. It had seemed a shallow wound, but it had festered quickly. Now he burned with fever, and this time, Siobhan’s healing herbs did not seem to work.

  Helpless anger made Fiona’s aching body tense. She and Dag had come so far on their journey to understanding each other. He could not leave her now! He could not!

  “Peace, little one. As long as he breathes, there is hope.”

  Siobhan’s soothing words made Fiona bite back tears all the harder. “He can’t die! I won’t let him!”

  “ ‘Tis not up to you,” Siobhan reminded her. “He walks among the spirits now, and it is their will whether he returns to us.”

  “I have prayed,” Fiona said. “To the Christian god and all the others. How can I make them listen?”

  “You can’t. The gods do what they will.”

  “But you told me that Dag was the one, that he was meant to rule Dunsheauna!”

  Siobhan nodded. “I thought he was.” Her gray eyes appeared dull this day, slate instead of silver.

  Fiona choked back another outburst. She would not curse the gods yet, not whi
le Dag still breathed. She reached out to touch his heated skin. Her fingers stroked his whisker-roughened cheek as she murmured love words. Closing her eyes, she willed him to live. Her spirit reached out to his, searching for the filament of love that bound them together. She concentrated, putting all her ebbing strength into her endeavor.

  Frustrated, she opened her eyes.” ‘Tis no use. I can’t reach him. I don’t have the healing gift, or mayhap my spirit isn’t powerful enough.”

  “How do you know?”

  Fiona waved her hands impatiently. “I can’t feel him. ‘Tis as if his spirit has already left me.”

  “That you can’t feel his spirit doesn’t mean he does not feel yours. How do you know you don’t strengthen him each time you reach out to him?”

  “He doesn’t stir or acknowledge any of it.”

  “Don’t give up hope, Fiona. You must be brave.”

  Fiona took a shuddering breath. “I keep thinking of my father. I still feel I failed him somehow, and now... now I fear I have failed Dag as well.”

  “Why?”

  “I was so caught up in my grief for Dermot; I should have seen that Dag’s wound was tended.”

  Siobhan nodded. “I also should have insisted that he let me clean it. But he seemed well enough.” She sighed.

  Fiona released Dag’s hand and stood. Tully moved from his place on the floor beside her. He, too, had kept vigil at Dag’s pallet since the night he’d followed her down from the hill fort to find her fallen lover.

  “If only I had known...”

  “You could not know,” Siobhan observed sharply. “Life can only be lived forwards.”

  Fiona sighed and settled herself on the stool again.

  Near dusk, Duvessa and Breaca appeared. Standing next to each other, they looked to Fiona like siblings who had shared the same birth sack, so close in color was their coppery hair, so similar their diminutive figures—although Breaca’s midsection had begun to swell with her growing babe.

  They each took a place on either side of Fiona, and she immediately sensed a conspiracy.

  “We’ve come to take you to eat,” Duvessa said.

  “I’ve eaten already.”

  “You will come,” Breaca insisted. “You are weak, and there are two of us.”

  Confronted with such conviction, Fiona stood. She let them lead her toward the doorway. She paused again on the way out. “What if he wakes and I’m not here?”

  “What if he wakes and sees what a frightful bag of bones you’ve become? I vow, he will faint in horror, and it will be an even longer while before he rouses again.”

  Fiona let them guide her through the doorway.

  * * *

  The nothingness thinned and faded, and all at once he was back. His spirit rushed into his body. It was a useless, pitiful husk of a body, but nevertheless, it was his.

  He struggled to open his weighted eyelids. The light seemed unbearably bright. A shape floated into view. A few paces away, a woman with dark hair and weathered skin sat by the fire. Fiona? Nay, this woman was old! Yet she reminded him so much of Fiona. Had he slept through years and awakened to this?

  The woman spoke, mumbling as she poked the fire. He puzzled the sound of her foreign words. Once he had known this language. Now it eluded him. Had it really been so long ago?

  He shifted his head to gaze around the dwelling... a tiny, cluttered hut, filled with strange things. Dried plants hung on every inch of wall space. What furniture there was had been fashioned in minuscule form.

  He looked to the woman again. She was small and dark... and old. Her flesh had begun to shrink into her bones. She must be a fairy, he thought, then drew back, shuddering. Fairies didn’t age, only mortals did. Unless he was in fairyland and the pattern here had been reversed—he stayed young and his captors grew old.

  The woman had heard him rouse. She rose from the stool.

  He raised his eyes to hers, terrified he would find Fiona’s unmistakable green gaze staring back at him.

  The woman’s eyes were gray! Dag breathed a sigh of profound relief. Although he still didn’t know where he was, at least he had not slept through his time and awakened in the future.

  She approached the pallet and leaned over him. “Dag,” she said. He stared at her, trying to puzzle out how she knew his name.

  “Where am I?” he asked.

  She frowned, and he guessed she did not know his language. Foreboding filled him again. “Fiona?” he ventured.

  Recognition flared in the woman’s eyes. She spoke rapidly, gesturing toward the door. Dag’s befuddlement and fear eased. If he found himself in an unfamiliar place, at least Fiona had been here. He said her name again. The woman smiled. She placed a soothing hand on his brow and whispered soothing words. The ache in his head seemed to ease although he still felt a fierce burning in his back. He had been wounded again, but how, he couldn’t remember.

  “Water,” he croaked. The woman looked at him, again puzzled. Dag searched his mind, finally remembering the Irish word. “Uisce,” he said.

  The woman hastened to the hearth and returned with a beaker of water. He drank greedily. His thirst was so great, he felt he could drink a lake. After he had finished, his head fell back against the pallet. The world spun dizzily around him, and he let himself sink once more into the timeless, thoughtless void.

  The next time he woke, Fiona was there, sitting on a stool beside the fire, stirring something in a wooden vessel. He said nothing, only watched her. Her hair was unplaited and disheveled, her face pale. She was dressed in a simple, unadorned kirtle. But that scarcely diminished her beauty. She looked as he remembered her, wild and haughty. A warrior-woman—his storm maiden.

  She looked up and met his gaze. Unfathomable green eyes stole his soul even as memory rushed back.

  “Dag!”

  Her hand felt cool against his skin. Her lips touched his tenderly. He kissed her back, his eyes fluttering closed with the effort. The pain and fear vanished. She would heal him.

  He reached out to feel the softness of her flesh and sighed with contentment.

  Epilogue

  Fiona gathered up her skirts and ran. She could not be late, not on this day of all days—Beltaine, the ancient celebration of summer.

  Surely they would not begin without her, she reassured herself as her hide sandals squished in the wet grass. Expectation welled up in her, making her half-dizzy with buoyant happiness. Ducking into her aunt’s hut, she dug hurriedly in the leather- bound chest in the corner. Triumphantly, she lifted up her treasure. She gazed at it a moment, then whirled and left the hut.

  The forest was heady with warm mist and the sweet scent of flowers. But Fiona didn’tt pause to savor the sunshine gleaming through foliage, to remark upon the extraordinary fairness of the day. Her thoughts were fixed on another image, one more beautiful to her than any other.

  Leaving the woods, she raced up the grassy slope to the freshly-hewn walls of the palisade.

  Duvessa met her at the gateway. “Where have you been? Siobhan has been searching everywhere for you,” she scolded.

  Fiona didn’t answer, only smiled and fell in step beside her friend as they walked to the center of the palisade. Under a canopy of leather, three long, board tables and benches were arranged. There was no great hall, not yet. Dag had insisted that rebuilding the fort walls was more important than the hall. If they had to, they could sleep another winter in their temporary shelters.

  Fiona slowed her pace as she remembered the exquisite kirtle she wore and decided she should have a care for it. Fashioned of green silk and embroidered with gold thread, the kirtle was the finest garment she had ever worn. Dag had brought the fabric back from Hedeby after his early spring trading voyage, and Duvessa and Breaca had wasted no time in using the fabulous material to make her a gown fit for a princess.

  Fiona smiled, thinking of the hot gleam in Dag’s eyes when he had first beheld her in the garment. “In truth, you look like a fairy queen,” he had said,
his breath catching. “I vow, the only time I have ever seen you look more beautiful is when you are naked.”

  Could a man be beautiful, too? Fiona wondered as she approached the feasting table. Surely, in her eyes, Dag was the most glorious sight she had ever seen. Standing behind the head table, he wore a short tunic of snowy linen banded with saffron and crimson silk. Fitted in the Irish fashion, the garment bared his powerful neck and muscular arms. With his long, reddish-gold hair, coppery mustache, and ruddy skin, he glowed like a sun god.

  She wanted to go to him, to pull his face down to hers and drown in his fiery kiss. But this was a day for ceremony and formality. Around them, dozens watched—her kinsmen and his oathmen—all resplendent in their finest tunics and kirtles, the women’s hair neatly plaited, the men’s beards and mustaches combed.

  This day would seal forever the bond between Irish and Norse. It had been a long time coming. Dag hadn’t fully recovered from his wound until almost the Yule season. Then they had been busy, so busy, making tools, rebuilding storehouses and shops, rounding up cattle and horses which had strayed since the fire, hunting and fishing to supplement their meager food supply. When the first shoots of new green appeared on the hillsides, they had all worked—man and woman, Norse and Irish—side by side, planting in the fields.

  They had scarcely finished the planting when Dag had said it was time for a trading voyage. Although they had little produce to barter with, Dag still had a cache of hacksilver and other booty—his share of the fortune Knorri had saved from the fire. Fiona had also been able to contribute. In their haste, the Vikings had missed a fair share of her father’s wealth, and after the fires were spent, Siobhan and the other women had scavaged among the ashes and discovered metalwork and jewelry which had not burned and a whole wicker casket of glassware, silks, and other luxury items.

  Although Fiona had wept to see him go, Dag had insisted that trading was different from raiding. They would take no risks, keep to the safest sea route, and be back within a fortnight. He had kept his word, and Fiona had welcomed him back with a passion she hoped would entice him to remain forever at her side. Of course, she knew that the sea and travelling was in his blood, just as the land was in hers. And one of Dag’s greatest skills was his ability as a trader. He was able to drive a hard bargain and win men’s goodwill simultaneously. In time, he hoped that word would spread and Dunsheauna would become an important trading center.