Warrior’s Redemption

by Melissa Mayhue

  After all, they did have a real live Faerie on their side.

  “I would assume it’s my Magic you’re talking about.” Elesyria stopped her pacing to face them. “And though I’m more than willing to do whatever I can to help Malcolm, I’m not at all sure my Magic is the answer.”

  “Of course it is!” Dani countered. “If you could zap me seven hundred years into the past, you’ve got to be able to do something to disable the people who are holding Malcolm and set him free.”

  “You credit me far too much.” Elesyria sat down in the chair next to where she stood, heavily, as if her legs had grown weak. “Let’s just worry with the obvious complications. We won’t even go into the issue of my being prohibited by oath from using my Magic for anything other than what I came here to do.”

  “Obvious complications?” Patrick asked, leaning forward in his chair. “Name them.”

  “The Magic that guards over your family, for one thing. I sampled it when I touched Malcolm on the day I arrived. Though I recognize it as ancient Magic, I’ve not felt its like before.”

  “Odin’s protection,” Patrick explained.

  “Wait a minute.” Dani stared at the two of them. “That’s not really true, is it? I mean, Malcolm told me that tattoo on his chest was there because your family claims to be descended from Odin, but that’s just family legend stuff, right? He wasn’t really serious about that. Was he?”

  She could accept people believing in Norse gods. What she couldn’t accept was that those gods might actually exist.

  “Quite serious. He shared that with you, did he?”

  Dani still wasn’t ready to believe what Patrick was telling her. “Yes. But a tattoo doesn’t prove anything.”

  “It’s no a mark made by any man, Lady Danielle. It appeared when Odin chose my brother to be one of his own warriors.”

  Right. It just appeared. Poof. All by itself. Patrick might be that gullible, but she wasn’t.

  “And you believed Malcolm’s story about that? You never questioned him about when he had it done or who did it for him.”

  “I’d no the need to doubt his story, as you call it. I’d a mark of my own appear shortly after my twelfth birthday.”

  Experiencing it for yourself was certainly one way to know for a fact.

  And who was she, after all, to argue with mystical beings and Norse gods? She’d spent the better part of her life believing in Faeries. And here she sat, seven hundred years from where she belonged, as proof that they existed. Elesyria had told her there were more Magical beings in the world than she could imagine.

  “Everyone in your family bears this mark?” Elesyria still had questions.

  “No, only Malcolm and I.” Patrick shrugged one shoulder as he continued. “Why us? No way to explain it, according to my father. Entirely a matter of Odin’s whim. Christiana was gifted with Sight. She has visions of what is to come. It’s because of her gift that Torquil holds her prisoner.”

  “What about Torquil? And Dermid?” Dani was ready to hear almost anything at this point.

  “The Magic skipped over Dermid entirely. Whether that’s because he was the last born or because, as our mother claimed, she prayed through her entire pregnancy that he might be spared, I canna say. And as for Torquil . . .” Patrick closed his eyes for moment, as if to prepare himself. “As firstborn, Torquil received the lion’s share of our bloodline’s gifts. None of us ken the extent of all that he can do.”

  “That explains much,” Elesyria groaned. “I’m not at all sure I wield the power to combat Magic such as you describe.”

  Sure or not, the Faerie was still the best chance they had.

  “Then it’s time we find out, isn’t it? You told me yourself that you came here to determine what had happened to your daughter and mete out reward or punishment. You’re the one who decided Malcolm deserved to be rewarded. What better reward is there than helping to free him?”

  “I already arranged for his reward,” Elesyria grumbled. “As you well know, since you’re it.”

  “So you’re just going to let the man who did everything in his power to save your daughter—”

  “And the man she loved,” Patrick interrupted to add.

  “The man who saved your daughter and the man she loved,” Dani repeated, hoping against hope she was getting through to the Faerie. “You’re just going to abandon him when he needs your help the most?”

  Elesyria clasped her hands together on the table in front of her. “And what if I haven’t the power? What if I fail?”

  “Then at least you will have tried.”

  Elesyria remained very still, her eyes locked on the hands she clasped together as if she expected them to fly away.

  “What would you have of me?”

  “You and I must carry the silver to Torquil. We’ll be the perfect Trojan horse. We’ll waltz in there and distract them with the silver while you Magic them so we can grab Malcolm and make our escape.”

  “Why you?” Patrick asked.

  “Because chances are good Dermid already told this Torquil about me. We’ll use that. They’ll never suspect a frightened new wife and her companion of being a danger to them. At least they won’t until it’s too late. And by then, well, it’ll be too late.”

  Patrick’s fingers tapped out a tattoo on the table while Dani waited for his response to her idea. When the noise abruptly stopped, she knew he’d made his decision.

  “If the Elf is up to it, it could work,” he admitted at last.

  Of course it could. It had to. It was their only hope.

  Twenty-eight

  WHAT HAD EVER made her think she actually enjoyed riding horses?

  Dani slid off her mount and gratefully handed the reins over to one of the guardsmen Patrick had sent along to accompany them to Tordenet Castle.

  Every muscle in her body ached. And after the last few days on the road, she was pretty sure she’d discovered some new muscles she’d never even known existed.

  Rauf, cradling a load of stones, kneeled to set about building their fire pit for the night. Dani circled the perimeter of their campsite, gathering sticks and dried grass for kindling before joining him.

  “My thanks, my lady.” Rauf nodded his head without turning his eyes from his work.

  Dani had been opposed to having him join them in the beginning, but she’d been quickly overruled. As Patrick had pointed out, since there was no way he was allowing his younger brother to return to the dangers of Tordenet Castle, Rauf was the logical one to send. He not only knew the way, he also knew the people they would encounter.

  More than once Dani had considered the suspicion that Rauf might be more danger than help, but in the past few nights around the campfire as they had their meals, she’d begun to view him differently. Only one of many surprises she’d already encountered on their journey.

  “There is no substitute for getting to know someone,” she muttered to herself as she made her way back around the edges of their site gathering more wood.

  “Begging yer pardon, my lady?” One of the guards halted his steps as she crossed his path.

  “Nothing, Eymer. I was just talking to myself.”

  “My Jeanne does that as well,” the lanky young blond answered with a grin, continuing on past with the bedrolls they’d carried on their horses.

  Of the three guards whom Patrick had sent along to accompany her and Elesyria on their journey, Eymer was her favorite. Though she’d met the man briefly at Castle MacGahan on a few occasions when he’d come to the kitchen to speak to his wife, she hadn’t realized until the two older guards, Guy and Hamund, had teased him that he and Jeanne were newlyweds.

  She carried her second armload of wood back and dropped it beside the fire where Elesyria was already nestling a large pot into the flames.

  “Soup or porridge?”

  It had been one or the other every night. Though whether it was hunger or the Faerie’s cooking skill, she’d been surprised each time by how good it ta
sted.

  “Porridge,” Elesyria answered with a tired smile. “I haven’t the energy to prepare a proper soup this night. Will you watch over this for me while I see to the blood ransom?”

  “Of course I will.”

  Dani accepted the spurtle and stirred circles in the watery oats, watching as her friend checked on the six small bags containing the silver they carried to Torquil.

  Each of them carried one of the bags during the day to prevent too heavy a load on any one of their animals that might slow down their progress.

  Not that there was that much silver to begin with. Certainly nowhere near the amount Torquil had demanded. The MacGahans had suffered through a hard year, and there was precious little coin in their coffers.

  Dani and Elesyria had organized a small army of maids to search every room in the castle, stripping it of any treasures they might bring along with them. Candlesticks, cups, even a small bag of jewelry they’d found that Elesyria claimed had belonged to the old laird’s wife, all of it resided in those six bags.

  Each evening when they’d stopped, Elesyria spoke some prayer over the pile. A blessing of protection, she claimed.

  Dani was hoping that, when the time came, the Faerie would have a similar blessing handy for them.

  When Elesyria returned to her side, Dani shooed her away to rest with the assurance that she could handle a pot of porridge. Cooking calmed her, like a little slice of normalcy in a world gone bizarre.

  “That’s the end of the bread,” she announced as she served their meal, dividing it equally among the six of them.

  “I’ve a loaf my Jeanne sent along, rolled in my bedding.” Eymer grinned as his two fellow guards began to chuckle. “Aye, well you should laugh. It’s Jeanne’s ma what baked it, but I freely offer to share, with a note of caution. She’s no as careful with her ingredients as Cook.”

  “And you’ve proof of that, have you no, Eymer? Show ’em.”

  The young guard laughed along with his friends, pointing to a missing front tooth as explanation.

  “We’ve no need to risk ourselves on yer rock bread, lad. We’re less than a day’s ride from Tordenet Castle now. Tomorrow we reach our destination.”

  The reminder of what lay ahead dampened everyone’s spirits, or at least it seemed that way to Dani. Chatter died off and there were no funny stories of family shared this night as they quietly finished their meal and made ready for bed.

  As on prior nights, Hamund prodded and nudged at one of the larger stones ringing the fire pit, using a long stick to push it over to where Dani and Elesyria had laid out their bedding.

  “It’s a cold one tonight,” he said, not bothering to tell them the story he had on each of the prior nights about how he made sure his daughter always slept with a heated stone for her feet in the winter.

  Dani snuggled down into her covers, thankful for Hamund’s kindness as her toes touched the fur-covered stone.

  As tired as she was, sleep eluded her.

  Tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow, sang through her head, lilting like a top-twenty tune on the radio.

  Tomorrow they would arrive at Tordenet Castle. Tomorrow she would see Malcolm. Tomorrow they would know whether or not their plan would be successful.

  If only she had some way of getting word to Malcolm.

  Maybe she did have a way.

  Elesyria had told her there were examples of SoulMates out there who had been able to communicate with one another across vast distances in their dreams. If she could experience the Dream Mating as she had, there should be no reason she couldn’t pass along a message.

  If she could focus her thoughts and if—and this was the big “if”—if she could get past the black door.

  Twenty-nine

  NO.”

  Eric leaned against the doorframe, wearing a grin that appeared beyond his ability to wipe away.

  “No?”

  Patrick was not happy with that response.

  On the day before Danielle and Elesyria had departed for Tordenet Castle, Dermid had retired to his chamber in a fit of pique on learning that he would not be allowed to accompany them.

  At first Patrick had thought to ignore him, too busy with preparations for their journey. Once he had them on their way, and Dermid still refused to come out, he’d done little more than see to it that food was taken to the lad. But it had been five days now that his brother had refused to leave his bedchamber.

  Patrick had just about, by the gods, had enough of the spoiled cur’s pouting.

  “No,” Eric repeated. “She says he’ll no be bothered to come out until he’s treated with the respect he deserves.”

  “The respect he deserves?” The insanity of that statement brought Patrick to his feet. “I’ll show that damned, spoiled—wait. She says? She who?”

  “The strumpet what guards his door.” If possible, Eric’s grin widened. “It would seem yer wee brother has chosen to work through his sorrows in the eager arms of a busty willing lass.”

  Little wonder Malcolm continually thought of their brother as being a child. He behaved as one.

  “And what does he say?”

  “Nothing.” Eric shrugged. “He does all his talking through the lass. In his temper, he’s apparently no speaking to any of us.”

  “No a word himself? No one single word in these five days past?”

  Eric shook his head, his brow wrinkling as he apparently considered the direction of their conversation.

  While the pouting and hiding in his room might well be typical of what Patrick had come to expect of his youngest brother, the idea that he’d not spoken a single word rang false.

  “Dermid has no the ability to bridle his tongue. No for five minutes and certainly no for five days.” Patrick strode to the door and past his captain. “I’d see this for myself.”

  He should have checked for himself five days ago.

  Up the stairs and through the hallways, his suspicions built until at last he reached his brother’s chamber.

  “Open up, Dermid,” he called, pounding on the door. “Dermid!”

  The door opened a thin crack, allowing a young woman wearing what appeared to be nothing more than a blanket wrapped around her body and a long, neat yellow braid, to peer out.

  “What do you want?” She braced one leg behind the door, allowing no more than a few inches of open space.

  “Remove yerself, lass. I’d have a word with my brother.”

  She was a head shorter than Patrick and he made full use of that advantage, scanning the room over the top of her head. A large lump occupied one side of the bed. His brother?

  “Master Dermid has already said he dinna want to be bothered. He said yer to go away.”

  “No, sweetling, my brother has said nothing. No a word from the lad in five days. You said he dinna want to be bothered. You said we should go away.”

  He leaned his weight against the door, watching her eyes widen as she struggled to hold it in place. Through the wider opening he noted a chair that had been pulled in front of the fireplace. And next to that, a basket of needlework lay at the ready, as if its owner had just been interrupted in her work.

  She shifted her weight to put more force into holding the door in place.

  “He told me to tell you and yer men to leave us be. He . . . he wants an apology, and until he gets it, he’s staying right here. In bed with me. You should go now.”

  Two red blotches bloomed on her cheeks even as she continued to stare at him.

  A failing, that, the inability to hide true emotion. A disadvantage of fair-skinned peoples.

  “I can see I’ve been settled too long at Castle MacGahan, Eric.”

  “And why might that be, Master Patrick?” Eric responded, following Patrick’s lead as he had so many times in the past.

  “Because the ways of the world appear to have changed muchly since I was out and about. I was unaware that whores carried their needlework along with them.”

  “I’m no a—,” she bega
n to protest before clamping her mouth shut. A deep breath and she started again. “Master Dermid says yer to leave us alone. He says . . .”

  Patrick had had enough of this little game.

  He shoved against the door with his full weight, grabbing the girl’s arms to keep her from falling to the floor as the door jerked from her hands and pushed her back. The blanket she’d held in front of her fell, exposing her sham.

  She wore both her shift and her overdress. They’d merely been lowered to expose her arms so that it might appear as if she wore nothing.

  Patrick handed her off to Eric and strode to the bed, where he grabbed a handful of the covers and swept them to the floor.

  A roll of furs occupied the spot that should have held his brother.

  “By Freya,” he hissed through gritted teeth. His brother had played him the fool. “How long has he been gone?”

  The girl had stuffed her arms back into her clothing. “He paid me three silvers to keep everyone away.”

  Patrick’s patience wore thin.

  “How long . . .” A pause to keep from raising his voice. “. . . has he been gone?”

  She dug her fingers into her pouch, pulling out the coins to display on the flat of her palm. “Three silvers, you see? I was only doing what I was paid to do. He said—”

  “How long?” Patrick yelled at her, all semblance of patience completely disappeared.

  The girl scrambled backward toward the fire, covering her face and head with her arms as if she feared a beating. Only Eric’s intervention saved her from stumbling into the flames.

  “How long?” Patrick asked again, holding tight rein on himself this time.

  “Five days.” Her voice quivered and tears ran down her cheeks. “He left the night before those he had wanted to accompany.”

  The night before.

  He should have known.

  “Ready the fastest horse we have.”

  He gave the order without waiting to see if Eric obeyed. He had no need to see, only a need to gather his things as quickly as possible. Time was of the essence now. He might already be too late.