“You dare to defy me, O’Byrnes?” he bellowed in fury, grabbing the prisoner by the sides of his head and hauling him up in front of him. “Donal MacMurrough, do you recognize this man? He was bound for Ferns to summon your clansmen, but now he’s bound for hell!”
Again silence greeted him, though Sigurd could see the faces of his enemy grown even grimmer. With a wild howl, he squeezed the prisoner’s head so fiercely that the man screamed in agony—but only for an instant before a distinct crack of bone shattering could be heard and Sigurd dropped the lifeless man to the ground.
His men lined up in rows behind him howled now, too, and beat their weapons upon their shields. The thunderous sound only fueled Sigurd’s battle lust as he retrieved his axe and rose to his feet.
“Shield wall!”
In unison his forces lifted their shields to abut each other and began to march forward shoulder to shoulder, while Sigurd merged into the line to join them.
Nora stood stock-still outside the feasting-hall, her heart in her throat.
Triona had sent her out to look for Caitlin, who hadn’t yet joined the women and children gathered inside. So many of them were weeping, terrified, that Triona had asked Nora to go so she might stay and comfort her clanswomen as best she could.
Triona had said for Nora to try her and Ronan’s dwelling-house, where Caitlin had spent the night, but Nora hadn’t made it very far. Instead she had heard the terrible ultimatum Sigurd had roared out to Niall, and had seen the O’Byrnes and MacMurroughs lining the parapets unleash a barrage of deadly arrows in answer.
Dear God, so many willing to die to protect her? So many others crying and frightened in the feasting-hall, not knowing what was to come? Women fearing for their husbands and tearful children calling out for their fathers—God help her, it was too much to bear!
Her back pressed against the timbered wall, Nora had heard the stomach-turning crack of bone, too, in the ominous silence after Sigurd had baited Donal MacMurrough about capturing one of his clansmen. Now that poor man was dead because of her! Her presence here had brought this unspeakable horror down upon Ronan and Triona and their people, aye, and especially Niall!
If Sigurd and his Norsemen managed to breach the stronghold’s defenses, who would that monster run looking for with his broad axe raised high but her husband?
Sickened and more terrified than she had ever felt in her life, Nora heard the wild battle cries of Sigurd’s forces drawing closer and knew she must find Caitlin. She didn’t want to risk Triona sending out anyone else to look for her, or mayhap even Triona leaving the feasting-hall to search now for both of them.
Somehow Nora made herself move. She lifted her blue silk gown and ran toward Ronan and Triona’s dwelling-house…until a sudden glimpse of blond hair made her stop and look toward the parapet abutting the massive inner gate.
She saw Ronan and Niall there…saw Niall turn around as if startled, and then Caitlin rushed toward him to fling herself in his arms.
To press her lips to Niall’s as he gathered her close, one hand still gripping his sword. Together, they ducked down along with Ronan when a slew of arrows went whizzing above their heads.
“Oh, God, Niall, no…” Nora heard thunks all around her as arrows struck the walls behind her, the roofs above her, and the ground beside her. Yet she scarcely noticed, instead meeting Niall’s gaze across the distance separating them when he suddenly spied her.
It seemed for an instant that time stood still…Nora not breathing, her heart thundering in her ears, and then she began to run.
Not for the feasting-hall, but the kitchen next door.
Tears threatening to blind her, she didn’t stop even when she’d entered the low building but ran straight for the larder.
No one stopped her. No one was there. Everyone either preparing to fight or taking refuge in the feasting-hall from the terror descending upon them.
God in heaven, because of her! Doing her best to block out the image of Niall embracing Caitlin from her mind, Nora choked back sobs and ducked into the larder and wildly looked for the trap door.
A steel ring caught her eye and she rushed forward to grasp the cold metal to lift the door and drop it with a bang to the floor. The yawning darkness of the tunnel below her, it was only then that she saw a row of flickering lamps upon a nearby table as if prepared and waiting for scores of weeping women and children.
Yet there was no one else to grab one of the lanterns and clamber down into the musty-smelling tunnel other than Nora.
Tears streaking her face, she held up the lantern to light the way and ran forward into the darkness, the ceiling buttressed with timber high enough so she didn’t have to duck her head. Her breath coming in gasps, she had no idea how far she’d gone along the tunnel when she spied a ladder ahead and knew she’d come to the end.
Nothing made sense to her any longer but that she had to stop the terror, stop the attack. Her knees shaking, she dropped the lantern and scaled the ladder, dirt raining down upon her when she pushed open the wooden door.
The brilliant sunlight blinded her as she climbed out, but she didn’t stop. Sweeping up her gown above her knees, she ran down the hill toward a terrifying phalanx of raised shields moving en masse toward the stronghold.
She spied her father further back from the melee atop a horse that tossed its head at the deafening commotion, but she didn’t run toward him. Instead she made straight for the chilling apparition of a giant towering above all the rest behind his massive shield, screaming his name.
“Sigurd!”
God in heaven, how would he hear her above the howls of his men? Yet as if she were an apparition herself upon the field of battle, Norsemen and Ostmen alike began to stop in their tracks and stare at her as if they couldn’t believe their eyes.
Falling silent one by one and then by dozens, until she saw Sigurd turn his shaven, tattooed head in her direction…and raise his broad axe high.
“By Odin, cease!”
All at once everything around Nora fell silent but for her rasping effort to draw breath and her heartbeat roaring in her ears.
Out of the corner of her eye she spied him then, Niall climbing atop the parapet with Ronan and Donal MacMurrough grabbing his arms as if to prevent him from jumping the twenty feet to the ground.
“Nora!”
His cry agonized, she caught a glimpse of his stricken face just as Sigurd reached her to grab a fistful of her hair and yank her against him.
“Foolish bitch!” he roared at her, digging his fingers into her scalp. “What good are you to me if you’d been killed?”
“I am here! Is that not enough?” Staring up into his face mottled with rage, she heard her ragged voice begging him, pleading with him. “Please stop the attack! If there is a way, I will be your wife!”
“Have no doubt you’ll become my bride as soon as an annulment is granted for your heinous marriage to that bastard O’Byrne! I’ll not stop until he feels the blade of my axe buried in his skull!”
“No…” Nora’s legs gave way beneath her, but Sigurd dragged her by the hair to the closest of his men and thrust her at them.
“Take her from the field and renew the attack! Shield wall!”
A resounding roar went up as Sigurd’s forces obeyed his command, but it was the driving pounding of hooves toward them that made Nora turn her head.
“You have my daughter, Sigurd!” Magnus MacTorkil’s enraged voice rose above the din as he reined in his horse in front of the huge Norseman. “By God, I swear you’ll have neither the gold nor your annulment from Rome if you and your forces don’t depart from Glenmalure this very hour!”
Nora feared her father might be struck dead at that moment for how fiercely Sigurd glared at him, but then a twisted smile lit his broad pox-marked face.
“True, MacTorkil, I have your daughter. For now, as she said, it is enough…but not for long.”
As Magnus dismounted to rush toward Nora, Sigurd spun around to brandish h
is axe at the stronghold.
“So you will live another day after all, Niall O’Byrne! Mayhap the daughter of Donal MacMurrough will yet spread her legs as your bride, what do you say?”
Sigurd’s coarse laughter ringing out across the glen was the thing Nora heard as she collapsed into darkness in her father’s arms.
18
“Niall, set aside your rage and think! You cannot hope to try and wrest Nora from Sigurd in broad daylight! You must wait until dark as when we raid. O’Byrne strength lies not in numbers but in stealth!”
Ronan’s hand gripping his arm, Niall cursed as he glanced past his brother into the distance at the last of Sigurd Knutson’s men marching from the glen.
Nora was with them. The woman he loved was with them!
Again Niall tried to break free from Ronan, but his brother held him fast while their huge clansman, Flann O’Faelin, stood ready to grab him as well. All he’d been able to do was watch helplessly—impotently!—from the parapet as Nora was taken from him by the biggest, ugliest beast of a man that Niall had ever seen.
Aye, Sigurd Knutson was a monster, just as Nora had named him. A monster atop a huge steed who had ridden away with Nora limp and unconscious in his arms!
Sigurd’s forces had left nothing behind them but the trampled body of the man Sigurd had brutally slain with his bare hands. Only moments ago had Ronan deemed their enemy far enough away so the gates could be thrown open for the MacMurroughs to retrieve their fallen clansman.
To ride home as well to Ferns if Donal MacMurrough had so decided, but instead the chieftain had said grimly that they would stay and abide by whatever plan Ronan devised to go after Nora.
He’d added, too, that Clan MacMurrough would not stand for Sigurd Knutson and his Norsemen and Magnus MacTorkil’s Ostmen to be tramping about Leinster. Without it being said, both Niall and Ronan knew that the Normans would not allow such a show of force to go unchallenged, either. Though it galled Niall, more was at stake than regaining his wife…if they were able to overtake Sigurd and his men before reaching their ships in Ostmentown.
“Very well, Ronan,” Niall spat out, not calmer at all but forcing himself to think more clearly. As enraged at himself to have caused Nora such pain, however unintended, that she would flee from the stronghold through their escape tunnel, he met his brother’s eyes. “What is our plan?”
“We ride within the hour. Keep to the hills and out of sight. After their trek here and now on their way north again, they’ll need to rest and likely camp in Glendalough for the night—”
“Damn him!” Again Niall strained against Ronan, who still hadn’t released his arm.
He didn’t want to think about the night!
He didn’t want to think about what Sigurd might do to Nora even before he gained an annulment from Rome!
Aye, Niall had heard it all from the parapet as Magnus MacTorkil had confronted Sigurd, nor was it lost upon Niall that his kind-hearted wife might have sacrificed herself to spare the people she loved from an attack. God help him, if Sigurd so much as touched her…!
“Release me, Ronan! There is something I must do before we ride. Caitlin…” Niall didn’t say more, but understanding flew between him and Ronan, who dropped his hand from Niall’s arm and let him pass by.
It had been Ronan who had signaled to Niall that Caitlin was behind him on the parapet atop the palisade, Niall turning around just as Caitlin lunged forward to throw herself into his arms.
He and Ronan had rushed to the inner parapet to direct the battle after Sigurd and his men had raised a shield wall to begin the attack, and Caitlin must have seen Niall there and climbed the steps to reach him.
To kiss him when he had pulled her close to keep her from tumbling off the edge of the parapet, and then all three of them ducking to evade the enemy’s arrows.
Niall had followed their deadly arc into the stronghold yard and then he’d seen Nora staring up at him as arrows landed all around her.
That alone had sent his heart pounding to his throat…but the look of disbelief on her face to see Caitlin in his arms had nearly felled him. Then Nora had begun to run at the same moment Donal MacMurrough had reached them to take his daughter in hand, while Niall believed Nora had fled to the feasting-hall.
He had thought her safe from any more arrows and with Triona…until like a horrific nightmare unfolding in front of him, their attackers had ceased their battle cries and he’d heard Nora’s voice screaming for Sigurd.
Not from inside the stronghold but beyond the outer rampart. In shock Niall had rushed there only to see the hulking giant seize her by the hair—
“No more!” Niall grated to himself, trying to shut out that terrible image from his mind as he made his way along two narrow wooden bridges connecting the parapets.
Yet he knew he could not shut it out even as he knew if Ronan and Donal MacMurrough hadn’t stopped him, he would have jumped from that rampart to certain death.
His only thought had been to reach Nora…but as that fiend Sigurd Knutson had taunted him, Niall would indeed live another day to find him and kill him—
“Niall!”
He had barely climbed down from the last parapet into the stronghold yard when Caitlin hastened toward him. Her lovely face pale, her green eyes desperate, she reached out to him but Niall caught her hands to stop her.
Aye, he blamed himself for this misunderstanding most of all.
He should have explained to Caitlin from the very first that there was nothing any longer between them, but he had thought introducing Nora as his wife would quell any such notions. Now he could see from the way Caitlin looked at him that she still believed there might be a chance—
“Oh, Niall, it’s terrible what’s happened, truly…but mayhap everything has worked out the way it was meant to be! Your marriage will be annulled and then we can be together—”
“No, Caitlin. I’m going after Nora, hopefully to bring her home.”
For a moment Caitlin stared at him in utter disbelief, until at last she sputtered, “That…that plain-faced Ostwoman? How could you possibly want her more than me?”
Niall stared back at her, wondering what could have happened to the tenderhearted young woman he had once thought Caitlin to be.
Mayhap her matchless beauty had tainted her somehow and led her to believe that she could do whatever she wanted with no consequence, who could say? In that instant Niall pitied her, but he had no time to be but brutally honest.
“It’s a simple thing, Caitlin. Nora has never betrayed me and never would…nor can I live without her. I love my wife with all my heart.”
He left Caitlin then staring open-mouthed after him, but his thoughts remained fixed on Nora as he strode to the stables.
Only on Nora.
Nora stared blindly at the walls of the hastily constructed tent where she lay atop a blanket thrown upon the hard ground.
Her prison in Glendalough for the few hours Sigurd had grudgingly allowed his men to stop and rest before they set out again on their march back to Ostmentown.
No lamp had been given to her, the light outside growing dim as dusk fell over the camp.
A guard stood in front of the tent to deny anyone access but Sigurd…even her father. The last she had glimpsed Magnus was when Sigurd had carried her into the tent and dumped her upon the blanket, and then left cursing his men’s fatigue and that they had stopped at all.
Her father had looked so tired, too, more so than Nora had ever seen him. His face haggard and pale, his watery gaze filled with concern as he’d appeared to be fighting to breathe.
That had been several hours ago after a nightmarish ride from Glenmalure clutched in Sigurd’s massive arms. His fetid breath had fanned her face, one huge hand upon the reins and the other straying to her breasts more than she wished to recall to squeeze her cruelly.
Yet it had been his coarse whispers in her ear that had chilled her, Sigurd sharing all the lewd things he planned to do to her once the
annulment came from Rome and they were wed…if not before.
Rolling onto her side, Nora bit her lip to prevent herself from becoming sick.
She knew her father’s threat to withhold the gold he’d promised Sigurd, and his aid in seeking the annulment would only go so far to keep that monster from assaulting her. One day that horrifying moment would come—ah, God!
Unable to breathe now herself, Nora sat up in an effort to calm her racing heart. She must think of something else—anything!—but there were few thoughts to cheer her.
At least other than that Sigurd’s attack upon the O’Byrnes had been averted…though she could not get Niall’s tortured cry out of her head.
Nora!
The agony in his voice echoing over and over in her mind, Nora clasped her fists to her ears as if she could shut out the memory.
He had wanted to jump from the rampart to try to save her, which had told her then how much he must love her. Not Caitlin at all…yet there was nothing to be done about it!
Nora had given herself over to Sigurd, and he would battle any attempt to take her from him. He had told her that when squeezing her breasts and whispering how he would force her down onto her hands and knees…
“No, no, no!” Bile rising in her throat, Nora had to bite her lip harder to keep from vomiting. She came close to screaming with relief when lightning flashed against the tent walls and thunder boomed overhead, so loud and long that the ground seemed to shake.
Aye, a storm would drown out the sound of Niall’s voice in her head! She closed her eyes tightly and prayed for wind and rain and more deafening claps of thunder—
“Nora!”
This frantic cry more real than imagined, Nora opened her eyes to find Magnus staggering into the tent, a bloodied knife in his trembling hand.
Her Knight in Tarnished Armor: A Medieval Romance Collection Page 53