A Highlander's Temptation

by Sue-Ellen Welfonder

  It was all they needed to know.

  Darroc’s blood heated. Exhilaration whipped through him, hot and sweet.

  “Now! Pull the oars!” He roared the order, the air ringing with the beat of a dozen gongs before he even closed his hand over the steering oar.

  As one, the galleys shot from the bay, flying past the soaring cliffs and into the open water, moving as fast as if not swifter than their prey. As planned, Olaf slued his dragonship around in an explosive burst of spray and bore down on his pursuer the instant Darroc’s birlinn and the other galleys flashed into view.

  Seeing them, Svend Skull-Splitter swung his own dragonship in a wide arc, the flourish sending up an impressive brace of spray. Far from fleeing, the Black Vikings drove straight for Olaf, clearly intent on ramming him in the side before Darroc and the other galleys could reach them.

  “Nae!” Darroc slued the steering oar, hoping to cut off the enemy dragonship. “Men! Pull harder!”

  Conall’s gong clanged louder, faster. “They’ll no’ be veering off this time,” he yelled, grinning as the oarsmen matched his beats.

  The birlinn shot forward, flying spume blurring everything but the flashing oars and, just ahead, the black-painted dragonship, turning at last, seeking flight.

  “Faster!” Darroc pumped a fist in the air, assured by the churning, boiling water that the other galleys were keeping pace. “Pull, men, pull! Don’t let them raise the oars!”

  In a blink they had the rogue ship surrounded, Darroc and another birlinn shooting forward with incredible speed to shear off the black dragonship’s oars. They snapped with amazing ease, spinning away into the sea or, much worse, flying back onto the rowing benches to skewer any oarsman who had the misfortune of being in the way. Crippled, the huge galley swayed in the water. Men not maimed or killed by the splintered oars leapt to their feet, swords rattling and shouting, even though their doom was sealed.

  With a well-practiced flourish, Darroc whipped the birlinn around, following Olaf’s lead to shoot back to the wounded dragonship and draw themselves up on either side of the enemy vessel.

  “Svend Skull-Splitter—I greet you!” Darroc called, jumping up on the bow platform. “I am Darroc MacConacher, chief of that noble race!”

  “You are a dead man!” The Black Viking leader whipped out a war ax, his eyes hot with fury. “Svend Skull-Splitter cowers for no man and leaves no enemy alive.”

  Darroc laughed and jammed his hands on his hips, not bothering to reach for his sword. “My good friend, Olaf Big Nose and I”—he flashed a grin in Olaf’s direction—“are here to consign you to Valhalla!”

  Svend Skull-Splitter glowered at him. “I will get there on my own and send you to hell in the by-doing.” He was a huge man not unlike Olaf in his blond shagginess, and a jagged scar bisected his left brow and disappeared into his beard, the puckered gash giving him a perpetual sneer.

  “Come then, Hebridean!” He tossed his ax from one hand to the other and back repeatedly. “Fight me like a man and see how quickly your toes get roasted.”

  “It is you who will roast in hell, Skull-Splitter!” Olaf leapt onto the black dragonship and, brushing aside sword swipes and swinging fists, crossed the deck to vault himself over the side and up on Darroc’s birlinn.

  Joining Darroc at the bow, he unfastened his hip flask and took a long swig. “There are men who say you are a clever and prudent man.” His voice rang out, deep and clear. “You can see there is little point in sword clashing.” He flung an arm at the score or more galleys circling them, the well-armed longships drawing ever closer in a tight, inescapable net.

  He didn’t bother to indicate the men slumped wounded or dead across the dragonship’s rowing benches.

  Nor was it necessary to point out the shattered long oars bobbing on the waves.

  That Svend Skull-Splitter was aware of them showed in the hatred rolling off him.

  “So-o-o, Skull-Splitter! Even if you slew a handful of us”—Olaf shot a glance at Darroc and laughed—“what men you have left are sorely outnumbered. For each one of us you bring down, ten will rise up to put an end to you.”

  The Black Viking’s face darkened and his chest swelled beneath his rust-grimed scale armor. Gold bracelets glittered on his arms and a wide golden torque, jewel-crusted and gaudy, winked from his large, bull-like neck, the flashy jewelry at stark contrast to his dirty, unkempt appearance.

  He said nothing.

  “Well?” Darroc spoke easily, glad he was not downwind of the man. “What shall it be?” Now he did unsheathe his blade, pleased when its appearance deepened the other’s frown. “Your choice, Skull-Splitter. Death or hell?”

  “That is no choice, Hebridean simpleton.” Svend Skull-Splitter’s eyes narrowed with scorn. “You are as soft-headed as your landsmen. I have nothing to say to you. I speak with my blood ax and my sword, not with foolish words.”

  “And if those words had a deal for you?”

  “I would rather fight you.”

  “Then so be it.” Darroc nodded to his men, his earlier grin disappearing as they whipped out their swords. “It would suit me well to see these waters redden with your blood.”

  The Black Viking shrugged. “Your glory will be dim if that is the style of you—slaying men who are wounded and outnumbered.”

  “It does not have to be that way.” Darroc looked down at his sword, pretending to consider. “If you have no wish to leave this earth today, I would be as pleased to see you banished from these waters.”

  A murmur went through the men on the black-painted dragonship.

  Bristling with swords, daggers, axes and other wicked-looking weaponry, many of them now shoved their dirks and maces back beneath their belts or simply threw down their steel, one even hurling his sword into the sea.

  Those bearing oar wounds moaned pitifully.

  Svend Skull-Splitter glared at them all. “Women!”

  Turning back to Darroc and Olaf, he kept a demonstrative grip on his own blade, clearly not ready to sheathe it. “I am accustomed to being paid handsomely to take my leave,” he declared, pride edging the words. “The king of Man filled my coffers with two thousand pounds of silver for the privilege of seeing my back.”

  “I am no king, but I’m offering you your life.” Darroc was tempted to smile. He could see interest beginning to kindle in the Black Viking’s eyes, however much the man grumbled and glowered. “There are many who would prize such a bargain higher than a few chests of silver.”

  “Humph.” Svend Skull-Splitter threw another angry look at his men. “You offer what I already have. That is no great bargain, Scotsman.”

  Olaf Big Nose went to the low-slung side of the birlinn and, leaning down, snatched a broken sweep from the water. “How long do you think your life would last if we snapped it like this oar?” he called, brandishing the shattered wood. “In hell”—he tossed the oar back onto the waves—“you can live to fight and raid another day.”

  “Just no’ here in our domains.” Darroc joined Olaf at the rail.

  Neither one of them bothered to mention that the men of Brattahlid would ensure the Black Vikings never set foot on another ship again.

  They’d spend their days picking rocks from fields and sowing corn.

  If they were truly unfortunate, the women of Brattahlid might even set them to spinning wool.

  The thought made Darroc grin.

  He slid a glance at Olaf, who looked ready to convulse with laughter.

  “O-o-oh, aye, Skull-Splitter, hell is where you’ll soon be.” Darroc’s lips twitched on the words. “You and your remaining crew, escorted there by our men. Or”—he jerked his head at the circling galleys—“do you think we brought so many men just to gawp at you?”

  “You’re both full addled.” Svend Skull-Splitter continued to scowl. “Speaking of hell as if it were a place on this earth!”

  “Ah, but it is.” Darroc was enjoying this. “Have you ne’er heard of Brattahlid? It’s a fine froze
n village on the iciest edge of the Ocean Called Dark.”

  Wind was beating the Black Viking’s hair about his face, but Darroc was sure he blanched.

  “You think to take us to Greenland?” His voice dripped derision.

  His men exchanged looks.

  They began to mumble and mutter again. Those few still gripping their swords now cast them aside, cursing. But it was clear they preferred Brattahlid to Valhalla.

  Seeing himself alone, Svend Skull-Splitter threw down his own blade. “How do I know your men won’t cut our throats when we sleep?”

  Darroc turned to Olaf and plucked his hip flask from his belt. Lifting it to his lips, he quaffed a quick gulp of the fiery spirits and then tossed the flask to the Black Viking. “Let us share a drink to prove my word!”

  “The word of a trickster, I’m thinking!” But Svend Skull-Splitter caught the flask with ease and tipped its contents down his throat, sending the empty flask sailing back through the air to Darroc.

  “So be it!” Darroc caught the flask with equal ease. “Our men will now board your dragonship to strip you of your weapons. You can sleep on your decks, untroubled by us. But”—he flashed another grin—“at first light your ship will be torched and you’ll be split up onto three galleys for the voyage to Greenland.”

  “Curse you, Hebridean!” Svend Skull-Splitter raised a balled fist.

  “Too late, my friend.” Darroc laughed. “I’ve been cursed all my days.”

  He didn’t add that he wasn’t any longer. But that sweet knowledge made his triumph all the sweeter.

  Indeed, he was powerfully pleased.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Three days later, after many hearty embraces, shouted well wishes, and some tears, Darroc and Arabella bid farewell to Olaf Big Nose and his friends. Another full day and one bliss-filled night spent at sea, once again behind Arabella’s sail screen, and finally the Seal Isles loomed into view. At first little more than a blue smudge on the horizon, the long serrated line of them soon stretched like glittering jewels set on the very edge of the world.

  “They look like Tir nan Og!” Arabella caught Darroc’s arm as she stared, her heart thumping. To her, the sparkling isles, each fringed by white cockleshell beaches and ranging in color from palest lavender to deep blue-black, could well be the mythical Land of the Ever-Young, a magical place said to hover beyond the western horizon.

  She refused to think about the isles being part of her marriage portion. Now wasn’t the time to worry about home and—saints help her—her father. This was a moment to savor fully, to toss aside caution and sail close to the wind.

  So close that every memory made here would be forever branded on her heart.

  Willing it so, she lifted her face to the wind, excitement beating all through her. It was a wild, giddy kind of exhilaration that increased when Darroc threw back his head and laughed, his grin matching her own.

  “If these isles are Tir nan Og”—he leaned close to kiss her cheek—“the only inhabitants are seabirds and seals. You’ll no’ find a fair race of tall, blond Valkyries waiting to greet us with honey and mead.”

  “I know what I’ll find there.” She kept her gaze on the fast-approaching isles as she spoke, certain the sky above them appeared wider and more open than anywhere else and that even the air smelled different, more clean and brisk. “You know I want to pray at St. Egbert’s shrine.”

  Darroc arched a brow. “I still don’t understand why you wished to journey so far to kneel before moldering bones. Like as not, they’re long gone. Seabirds or rats will have carried them away.”

  “It doesn’t matter if his remains are in the cave or not. The shrine is still there and it’s a holy place.” Arabella fingered the Thor’s Hammer pendant that Jutta Manslayer had insisted she keep.

  No doubt St. Egbert would go cross-eyed if he saw her wearing the pagan necklace.

  But the Giving Stone might look in favor on her.

  At the thought, she flashed a glance at her traveling pouch, guilt nipping her. What would Darroc think when she unpacked her honey, oats, and the skin of sweet milk Arnora Ship-Breast had given her?

  She’d soon find out because already they were sweeping around the jutting sea cliffs of the Seal Isles’ main island and beating into a deep U-shaped bay lined with a broad shell-sanded beach. Machair-covered dunes backed the strand and beyond that, grassy hills rolled away into the distance, the highest peaks cloaked with clouds and a thin misty drizzle.

  The isle’s beauty took her breath.

  And the seals bobbing in the water delighted her. They were everywhere, their gleaming wet heads bobbing up and down as they peered at her with curious, doglike eyes. Others basked on rocky offshore islets or swam around the birlinn, playfully following their race to the shore.

  Then they were there, Conall slowing the beats of his gong and the oarsmen taking his cue. The birlinn dropped speed and they began to glide, the bow running up on to the sand. A great cheer rose from the rowing benches and the oarsmen raised their sweeps.

  Laughing, Darroc leapt onto the strand. He opened his arms to Arabella, catching her around the waist and lifting her down to join him.

  “Your isles, my lady.” He sketched a bow. “And that”—he pointed to a steep and twisting goat track that led up the cliff face on the far side of the bay—“will surely be the way to your hermit’s cell.”

  Arabella looked to where he indicated and her heart clenched.

  The path was worse than the one that climbed from Darroc’s boat strand to Castle Bane, not to mention that the cliffs were white with seabird droppings.

  A fool would know how slick the track would be and she was anything but a dimwit.

  “Oh, dear.” She saw no reason to hide her dismay.

  “I will no’ let you fall.” Darroc didn’t tell her he was equally concerned about slipping. But he couldn’t bear to see her disappointment.

  If it’d please her, he’d crawl up the track on his hands and knees, letting her ride on his shoulders. After all, compared to facing her father and demanding her hand when they journeyed to Kintail, a wee thread of a goat track was nothing. The steep cliff it crept up was even less significant.

  A dust mote held more importance.

  Only she mattered.

  And she was looking again at the cliff, frowning. “I don’t know.…”

  “Come, lass.” He set his hands on her shoulders. “Have I ever let you down?”

  “Nae, but—”

  “The men will be putting up the sail screen for us.” He glanced to where they were already busy erecting the small, tentlike shelter. “Now is as good a time as any to visit St. Egbert.”

  He took her hand, pulling her down the strand before she could protest. Something told him she had more reasons to wish to visit the Seal Isles than a hermit’s cell. And he hoped her prayers at the shrine, if she spoke them aloud, would shed some light on the mystery.

  But the saint’s cave proved more difficult to find than he’d hoped. And the track up the cliffside was so dizzy-making, he wasn’t sure they’d find it before good sense made them turn back. Especially when they rounded a sharp turn and were faced with retreat or a mad scramble across a steep crevice filled with jagged, loose rocks and gravel.

  “Lass.” He gripped her elbow. Below them, the cliffs fell sheer to sea and heavy swells crashed over the reefs, and the white-crested waves glistened in the afternoon sun, cold and windy as it was.

  Winds gusty enough to pluck them right off their feet and send them hurtling down into those shifting, glittery waves.

  Darroc frowned, his decision made.

  “I say we go back.” He placed his fingers against her lips when she started to protest. “I’d ne’er forgive myself if you fell and”—he forced a smile—“I’m no’ of a mind to make you a widow, either.”

  Her eyes flared on the word widow and he knew she was thinking of his avowals that—since their promises to each other on Olaf’s isle—they w
ere as good as wed. In his eyes they certainly were, by God. And he’d not tolerate anyone saying otherwise.

  A muscle in his jaw twitched.

  The tales of her father were as black as the man’s by-name, the Black Stag. Darroc checked the urge to curse. He might not have a by-name, but men would speak of him with even greater dread if Duncan MacKenzie refused to see reason.

  Arabella was his now and he wasn’t about to let her go.

  Nor would he allow her to plunge down a cliff.

  “Come, sweet.” He tugged on her arm, pulling her away from the treacherous spill of broken rocks. “You can pray to St. Egbert on the strand. He’ll no’ mind.”

  “But I will! And we’re almost there.” She bit her lip and looked around, the stubborn set of her jaw not surprising Darroc at all. “I can feel it. Here”—she pressed a hand to her breast, her gaze still darting about—“and because I heard the seals singing the night we sailed to Olaf’s isle. I know—”

  “There wasn’t a single seal near us on the voyage.” Darroc’s brow knit, trying to remember. But he was sure. “You must have heard the wind.”

  She shook her head. “I know what wind sounds like. But I did think it was the wind at the time. Then”—she glanced down at the water, the hundreds of small dark shapes swimming there—“when we reached the bay here and I heard the seals’ calls, I recognized the sound. It wasn’t quite what I heard the night of our voyage, but the sounds were close enough for me to be sure that’s what it was.

  “And so I’m certain that I was meant to come here.” She pulled him out onto the scree with her, stepping lightly over the broken rubble. “I believe we were both meant to make this trip, together.”

  “Even so, I’m for returning to the strand. We can—”

  “There!” She smiled, her gaze on a spring pouring from the rocks on the far side of the crevice. Several feet away, a dark vertical opening yawned in the cliff face. “That has to be the cave. And St. Egbert’s holy well.”