Ice Maiden

by Debra Lee Brown

  “God knows,” Lawmaker said.

  Without a second thought, George started toward her.

  Ottar grabbed his arm. “Nay. I’ll go.”

  George wrenched out of the youth’s grasp and pushed him back into the mast. Ottar lunged at him.

  “Idiots!” Lawmaker said, brushing past them. “Both of you stay here. I’ll go!”

  “Fine,” they said in unison. George caught Ottar’s murderous glare before the two of them grabbed hold of Erik and Leif’s outstretched hands.

  “What now?” he cried.

  Leif shook his head. “We wait it out.”

  “And if it doesna pass?”

  The three youths exchanged sheepish glances.

  He realized that none of them was an experienced seaman. What had they been thinking to chance such a voyage in the dead of winter? This dowry scheme of Rika’s was insane. Och, he was as much at fault as any of them. He’d have done anything to get off that island.

  George narrowed his eyes against the icy needles of rain and salt spray blowing over the side. Where was Lawmaker? “What’s keeping th—”

  A flash of lightning lit the sky, and the words froze in his throat.

  Lawmaker stood backed against the low-timbered sides of the byrthing, clutching the top rail, the tip of a dagger poised at his throat.

  Ingolf’s dagger.

  A split second later George’s dirk was in his hand and he was snaking toward them through rows of barrels and stacks of homespun.

  Rika lay sprawled at Ingolf’s feet and, as the sky lit up again, he saw her slip her own weapon from its sheath. His gut tightened. Three more strides. Two.

  “Rika, wait!” Ottar cried, and tried to push past him.

  The byrthing pitched again, and they all tumbled to port. George was the first to his feet. One barrel lay between him and Ingolf, who had Lawmaker pinned to the side. Rika crawled toward them on hands and knees, her weapon gleaming in the sharp flashes of light.

  “Stay put!” he cried, and skirted the last barrel. Its top flew off. A split second before Rasmus shot from the barrel, ax in hand, George lurched sideways.

  Rika screamed.

  “I’ll kill him!” Ingolf cried, and thrust the dagger at Lawmaker.

  “Nay!” Rika lunged at him.

  George shot forward, barely aware of Rasmus thudding to the deck behind him under Ottar’s weight. A second later, Erik and Leif flanked him, weapons drawn.

  “Turn the ship around!” Ingolf edged his dagger higher on Lawmaker’s throat. “I’ll kill him, I swear!”

  “Do it!” Rika cried. “Erik, turn us around.” She knelt at Ingolf’s feet, her own dagger poised in midair.

  “Nay.” Lawmaker shook his head. “Don’t turn back.”

  One more step.

  “Grant, no!” Lawmaker caught his eye, and George hesitated. “The dowry, get it for her.” The elder smiled, then grabbed Ingolf by the throat.

  The henchman lunged. Rika screamed as Ingolf’s dagger slipped neatly between Lawmaker’s ribs. A second later, to George’s astonishment, Lawmaker cast himself backward into the sea, pulling Ingolf with him. Erik and Leif exploded across the deck as George lunged for Rika.

  “Nay!” she screamed, and eluded his grasp. “Lawmaker!”

  An enormous wave crashed over them, pummeling George backward into a roil of bodies—Rasmus, Ottar and the rest. By the time he got to his feet, she was halfway over the side.

  “Rika!” He shot forward and grabbed her wrist. Too late.

  She hung there, half in the water, struggling against him. “Let go of me! I must save him. Let go!” With each roll of the ship, she went under, shrieking and sputtering.

  George held her fast, his heart pounding, his lungs burning against the blasts of sea water threatening to choke him.

  “Let go!”

  Lightning flashed, so close the sopping hair on the back of his neck prickled. For a moment their eyes locked, but ’twas not Rika’s fearless gaze he saw—’twas Sommerled’s, eyes wide and terror-glazed.

  She jerked herself from his grasp, and the sea swallowed her whole.

  “Rika!” Ottar pulled himself up beside George and shrieked her name over and over.

  George’s hand was still outstretched, as if he thought by some miracle the sea would cough her up and she’d take hold of it once more.

  Another wave rolled toward the boat like a dark phantom. Rika’s head broke the surface just before the water hit them. He could save her, she was that close.

  Instinct drove him to reach for her. Then he froze.

  What if she drowned?

  He’d be free, would he not? Free of the bargain. Free of her. Free to go home—if he survived.

  The icy wave crashed down on them, and through the stinging spray he saw her hand shoot from the water, reaching out to him, fingers splayed, the eerie light of the storm beaming off her braceleted wrist.

  Chapter Ten

  He would let her drown?

  So be it.

  The sea sucked her under, and this time she did not struggle. Why should she? Lawmaker was dead. Gunnar, too. She must stop fooling herself. A year in hard labor in the dank caves at Dunnet Head. She’d heard tell of the beatings, the torture. What man could survive such abuse?

  Nay, they were both lost to her, and there was not another on this earth who cared whether she lived or died. The look in Grant’s eyes when she slipped from his grasp, for a moment she had thought…

  Nay, she’d been wrong.

  Rika let her body go limp, and mustered the courage to suck the chill water into her burning lungs.

  And then his hands were on her. Grant’s hands. Strong and sure, circling her waist, pulling her tight against him. Together they broke the surface and her lungs exploded. Thor’s blood, she could not get enough air. She fought him, choking and sputtering.

  “Be still!” He pulled her under with him, and something slipped around her waist. Rope. They crashed to the surface again and she sucked in air. Grant pulled the tether tight. “Put your arms around me, woman!”

  “Nay!” She beat at him with her fists. “Let me go!”

  She knew he would not. Grant slipped his arms under hers and pulled them along the tether, hand over hand, toward the ship, which bobbed like a cork in the dark water.

  Ottar and Leif hung over the side, their hands outstretched, reaching for her. Erik held the other end of the line to which Grant had tied her.

  The wind screamed. The sea raged. Her legs were numb, her fingers ice. She was barely aware of them hauling her into the byrthing. The deck pitched beneath them, and she went down hard on a rolling keg of mead.

  “My…head.” Rika felt blindly along her damp scalp. Her eyes, glued shut, stung with salt.

  “Dinna move.”

  Grant. The calm authority in his voice made her head stop spinning. The Scot had saved her life.

  She cracked an eye and was instantly blinded by the light. “The…storm…”

  “’Tis past.”

  Her throat burned. “How long?”

  “A few hours. Ye hit your head on a barrel. ’Tis a wee bump. Ye’ll be fine.” She squinted up at him as he knelt before her, proffering a cup. “Here, drink this.”

  “What is it?”

  “Water.”

  Her stomach lurched, and she waved him off. “I’ve had my fill of that.”

  “Try this, then.” Ottar’s wet boots came into her line of sight. He squatted beside her and Grant and offered her a ladle. “It’s mead.”

  “Ah, good.” She tried to sit up, and both of them moved to help her. “I…I’m fine. Leave me be.”

  The two exchanged a look she could not read, and allowed her to right herself on her own. The sweet libation brought her to her senses. “Ah, that’s better.”

  She blinked into the sun until her eyes focused. The byrthing’s sail billowed white against the unbearable blue of the sky. Perhaps she’d dreamed the storm.

  “Where�
��s—” Lawmaker’s name died on her lips. She remembered now.

  “He’s gone,” Grant said.

  “Nay.” She shook her head, not wanting to believe. Ottar’s filming eyes and the empty ache she felt inside told her it was true. “Nay,” she breathed, and met Grant’s sober gaze.

  “Aye, lass, ’tis true.” He pulled her to her feet and held on to her until she felt steady on the gently rolling deck.

  She closed her eyes and breathed deep of the salt air. Oh, God, what would she do now?

  “Grant, she should rest,” Ottar said.

  “Nay, I’m fine.” She pushed past them both, gripped the top rail and blinked at the southern horizon. Was that land she spied? “Where are we?”

  “On course, by some miracle,” Ottar said. “Erik says—”

  She spun toward the byrthing’s bow. “Erik! Leif! Where are they?” The events of the previous night crashed over her. “Ingolf, Rasmus. How did they—”

  Grant stepped in front of her, blocking her way. “The lads are well. Erik and Leif are sleeping—over there, on a pile of homespun.”

  “And—”

  “Tied up.” Grant nodded toward the center of the cargo, where the back of Ingolf’s dark head lolled against one of the barrels.

  “He lives?” Rage boiled up inside her. Grant read it in her eyes, and placed a steadying hand on her shoulder.

  “But then—”

  “Nay,” Grant said. “I know what ye’re thinking, but there was naught to be done. Lawmaker was dead before he hit the water.”

  A sick feeling welled inside her as she remembered the flashing lightning reflected off Ingolf’s blade.

  “Erik fished the murderer out,” Ottar said, and cast Ingolf a deadly look. “God knows why.”

  Grant’s gaze drifted out to sea and his expression tightened. “Because no man should let another drown.”

  He was remembering his brother. She recognized the anguish in his eyes and felt the staggering weight of his pain. He held himself responsible for Sommerled’s death.

  She, too, felt responsible—for Lawmaker’s untimely demise. He had purposefully sacrificed himself for their mission. Rika closed her eyes and offered up a silent prayer for his soul.

  “Rasmus is still out cold.” Ottar’s voice wrested her from her entreaty. He drew himself up straight and tall before her.

  Rika pushed her own pain away and smiled at him. “You did well last night. Thank you.”

  The youth wiped a hand across his ruddy, tearstained cheek and beamed at her.

  “Aye, ye did,” Grant said.

  The two exchanged glances, and Rika sensed a fragile sort of peace between them. It pleased her.

  Ottar glared over the barrel tops at their captives. “We should have killed them both straightaway. What good are they alive? They’re Brodir’s men.”

  Grant snorted. “Aye, all the more reason to slit their bloody throats.”

  “Yet you yourself would not have let Ingolf drown.” Rika arched a brow at him.

  Grant shrugged.

  The Scot’s initial reaction evoked in her a strange sense of satisfaction. Still, they were not killers. Lawmaker himself would not have condoned murder. She lusted for vengeance more than any of them could know. But she would wait and let Gunnar decide a fair punishment. “Nay, we will not touch them.”

  “But—” Ottar silenced himself at her upraised hand.

  “Make certain their binds are tight.” She caught herself rubbing her own braceleted wrists. Grant looked at her with a heady measure of understanding. It unnerved her, and she turned away.

  “Come,” she said to Ottar. “I wish to check our bearing.” The sun was enough of a gauge, and the islands to the southwest, but she needed the diversion. Her thoughts raced, and she was not yet ready to confront them.

  The pouch at her waist was still damp, but intact, and she drew comfort from knowing the lodestone was safe within it. At least that was something.

  She was alone in this now. True, she had Ottar and Erik and Leif—but while the youths were valiant and loyal, they had neither Lawmaker’s wisdom nor his foresight.

  Rika gripped the top rail and ground her teeth. Once you start down this path there can be no going back. The wind toyed with her hair. Absently she reached back and began to braid it.

  It was up to her now.

  She’d see them safe—and Gunnar, too, God willing.

  George stood starboard and squinted against the setting sun. The sky warmed red then cooled to violet as the brilliant orb slid behind the dark silhouette of the islands.

  “Orkney,” Ottar said.

  George arched a brow at him. “How d’ye know?”

  “It must be. Lawmaker said we’d pass east of the islands near to the third day.”

  “So he did.” George felt the old man’s loss as keenly as did the others, and that unsettled him. He gripped Gunnlogi’s hilt. The sword would ne’er leave his side again. Had he worn it from the start, Lawmaker might still be alive.

  “We’re nearly there, then,” Ottar said.

  “Aye.”

  “A day at most? What think you?”

  George met the youth’s gaze and read something in those dark eyes he’d not seen before. Uncertainty. The events of last night had had a sobering effect on them all.

  ’Twas the first time Ottar had asked his opinion on any matter. The first time, in fact, the youth had shown him any measure of civility. His hotheaded pride and misplaced rivalry had quelled with the storm.

  Erik and Leif had consulted George throughout the day, as well. They were boys, he reminded himself, and though he was a foreigner and traveled with them not quite of his own free will, he was older, more experienced, and they looked to him for advice.

  Ottar waited, his anxiety manifest in the twitch of his beardless cheek.

  “Aye, a day,” George said, and saw the tension drain from the youth’s expression. In that moment, Ottar reminded him much of his brother Sommerled—the exuberance of youth all but crushed under the sobering weight of manhood.

  For Sommerled, that exuberance was extinguished forever.

  “Erik is preparing some food. Are you hungry?”

  George wasn’t, but he supposed he should eat. “I could do with a bit of something.”

  He turned his face into the wind and his eyes to the sea, which had gone a pearly slate under the darkening sky. The first stars blinked at him low on the horizon, their violet backdrop cooling to indigo.

  “Shall I wake her?” Ottar said.

  “Rika?” His gaze was drawn to her sleeping form, curled like a cat on a bale of homespun nestled amidst the kegs. “Nay, let her sleep.”

  Ottar smiled—George felt it more than saw it—then made his way aft to where Erik and Leif were rearranging some of the cargo. Aye, much had changed between them since he’d pulled Rika from the sea.

  Why had he done it?

  Looking at her now, he wondered that he had ever hesitated. In sleep she seemed small, defenseless—a woman like any other. Oh, but she was not like any other.

  A gust of wind blew her cloak open and, without thinking, he knelt beside her and smoothed it back over her damp gown. She’d lost her boots in the water. Her feet were ice. Quickly he stripped off the fur wrap covering his tunic—’twas nearly dry—and wrapped it around her feet.

  She stirred, a tiny sigh escaping her lips.

  He had an overpowering urge to lie down beside her, cradle her in his arms, brush a kiss across her temple. But he did not. He told himself he’d have braved the chill waters to save her no matter who she was. ’Twas the Christian thing to do. He would have done it for anyone.

  All at once, he recalled the shipwreck—watching in horror as Sommerled pitched over the frigate’s top rail into the churning water. George had leaped after him but caught a foot in some twisted rigging hanging off the side. He’d managed to grab Sommerled’s outstretched hand as the youth worked madly to keep his head above the surface, but th
e drowning ship lurched starboard and his brother slipped from his grasp.

  “Sweet Jesus,” he breathed.

  “There is naught sweet about him,” Rika said, startling him. She opened her eyes and fixed them on his. He could see in the waning light that she’d been crying.

  “He is a cruel and merciless God.”

  For a long time he just looked at her. “Aye, that he is.”

  She shivered and pulled her cloak more tightly about her. Fisting his hands at his sides, he willed himself not to help her. Then her eyes lit on the fur wrap covering her feet. Their gazes locked.

  After a long moment she said, “Thank you.”

  He nodded, then rose, suddenly uncomfortable under her scrutiny.

  “Why did you do it?”

  “The fur?” He shrugged. “Och, ’twas just that your feet—”

  “Nay, not that. Last night—” She sat up and looked at him with those guileless eyes. “Why did you fish me out?”

  Why had he?

  The answer he’d prepared for her died on his lips. He shrugged stupidly.

  “Grant!” Ottar’s voice carried over the rushing of sea and wind. “Come—eat with us.” The youth waved him over.

  He stood there a moment longer, looking at her in the last of the light, wondering what she was thinking. Then he left to join the others.

  The cawing of seabirds woke her just before dawn. It was a frigid morn. Her bare feet burned with cold as she stood near the byrthing’s prow and watched the sun rise. Shrouded in a whispery veil of mist, she saw it, and her breath caught.

  Land.

  “We shall finally have done with this hellish voyage,” Grant said as he came up behind her.

  “Ja.”

  “Where d’ye plan to put in?” He eyed her in a way that made her suspicious of his intent.

  “Gellis Bay,” she said, visualizing the crude map Lawmaker had drawn for her in the snow the afternoon before they sailed. “We seek the man MacInnes.”

  “A Scot. Fine. But there must be dozens of MacInneses. ’Tis a fair common name in the north. If that’s all ye’ve got to go on, then—”

  “Thomas MacInnes, and he lives just above the bay.” Lawmaker had described the place to her many times.