Born of Fire

by Kella McKinnon

  “Tribute?” A frisson of alarm raced down Bridei’s spine. “He truly thought I’d sent her as tribute?”

  “Aye.” Brun exchanged a wary glance with Egat. “And I don’t even want to think of…I mean you know what they’ll do to her…”

  But Bridei was already off his horse and moving toward the camp as fast as he could. If there was a chance he was wrong…if the lass was innocent… His gut clenched. Who was he fooling? His heart had known the truth all along.

  Under the cover of darkness and with a practiced silence, he crept closer, knowing his men were all around; spread out through the trees and ready to act in a split second. For long moments, he heard nothing, then a group of men exited the King’s tent, and Nessa was with them. She was struggling, as if her life depended on it.

  They took her into a smaller tent, and he stole carefully closer, weapon in hand. Perhaps they would leave her alone long enough for him to get to her unseen. He knew he had brought enough men to fight his way out if he had to, but he’d rather not have any trouble. That was until he heard her muffled screams, followed by vile male laughter. No, no, NO! Everything in him screamed in fury. He knew…

  Bridei was running before he could even draw his next breath. Every instinct was clamoring for him to get to her; make her safe. He was blinded to all else as he shoved his way into the tent, sword in hand, knowing he would kill anyone who tried to keep him from Nessa. His chest heaved and his eyes were wild as he searched the space inside the tent, only to find her on her hands and knees on the floor. She was sobbing, and her clothing was already torn. A huge, brutal looking man knelt behind her, a smirk still on his face.

  Rage tore through Bridei unlike any he’d ever felt before. It was the kind of rage that made the world turn red and blocked out all sound. A rage that came from the very deepest part of his soul. He barely remembered swinging his sword; swinging it until every man lay bleeding and he had tossed Nessa onto one shoulder like a ragdoll.

  He had her. He had her and all that would harm her were dead, and that was all that mattered to him in that moment. His men, loyal to a fault even when their King had seemingly lost his mind, surrounded him as he walked away from the melee.

  As more men emerged from surrounding tents, Ecgfrith came forward. The King of the Saxons was enraged, to say the least.

  “Bridei! What is the meaning of this?”

  “You had something that is mine, cousin.” Bridei gave him a cold glance, but kept on walking, knowing that Ecgfrith was outnumbered, and not foolish enough to risk his own life over a few dead soldiers. Bridei would pay later, no doubt, but not tonight.

  “She was brought to me! By your own men! What kind of game is this that you play?”

  “There’s no game, Ecgfrith. A mistake was made as to the woman’s identity. I’m taking her back.”

  Ecgfrith looked around him, taking into account the wounded men, and knowing that he couldn’t win a fight against the other king. “You will pay for this, Bridei mac Bili. You will pay for this dearly.”

  “I’m sure that I will”, Bridei said solemnly. But he wasn’t talking about war or retribution. It was the dull ache in his chest when he looked down at the woman in his arms that truly worried him. She had her face covered with her hands and pressed into the crook of his arm.

  And then Sten was there, marching angrily along beside him. “Bridei, you’re making a mistake. Leave the woman here.”

  “No.”

  “My King, you know in your heart that she would cause you harm. Don’t be fooled by beauty and charm, it’s been the downfall of many a great man!”

  Bridei’s voice was cold when he responded. “I won’t leave any woman to be abused, no matter who she is or what she has done.”

  “I think there’s more to your feelings. I think you are already caught in a web of womanly lies and your own lust! Your grandfather would be ashamed!”

  “Leave my grandfather out of this! I am King now, and you are not my counsel. You know not what you speak of. If nothing else, I have certainly proven her innocence this night.”

  Bridei carried Nessa away into the darkness of the forest, his men following closely behind. The horses were as they left them, waiting patiently in a small clearing. Nessa still lay limp and heavy in his arms, and he wondered if she was in shock. He placed her gently on his stallion’s back, swinging up behind her and pulling her close. She began trembling in his arms, but she had yet to say a word to him. They rode at a swift pace for nearly an hour once they reached the road north, following the path of the moon sinking over the hills in the distance. When at last they were in the safety of his own lands, he signaled a halt. He had to make sure Nessa was unharmed.

  He slid from his horse, reaching for her and setting her down on legs that for a moment threatened to buckle. He had to keep hold of her arms to support her. The moment she was free, Nessa turned on him, biting and punching and clawing as all of her recent terror and rage flooded to the surface. Her body still wanted to fight, perhaps not fully realizing she was safe.

  Bridei captured both of her wrists, subduing her, though she still struggled like a cornered wild thing while his men stood by watching, unsure of what to do.

  “Leave us”, he told them. “Stay within hearing and watch the road.”

  He held her arms. “Listen to me Nessa. Stop this! I won’t harm you.”

  At last she found her voice. “You won’t harm me?” she cried. “You won’t harm me? You just brought me god knows how many miles to be raped and beaten by a bunch of filthy barbarians, and you say you won’t harm me? Excuse me if I don’t believe you! I told you all along I wasn’t a spy! Let go of me!” She stomped as hard as she could on his leather-booted foot, to no effect.

  His fingers bit deeper into the flesh of her arms and he shook her just a little. “I would rather be gutted and thrown into the bog than live to see those men lay a hand on you again”, he growled. She still struggled against his grip, so he released her arms and she crumpled into a heap on the ground, her trembling legs finally giving out beneath her.

  She sat there, watching with wary eyes as Bridei stalked a small circle in the moonlight, his hands clenched at his sides. After a moment he came to a stop in front of her, drawing in a deep breath. He could hardly bring himself to look at her. At what he’d done to her. And yet he couldn’t have known. He couldn’t have made any other choice and lived with himself, either. He couldn’t put his people in danger.

  “Lass…did they…did any of them?”

  “Rape me?” She looked away, and he caught the reflection of her tears in the last of the moonlight. “No, they…no. But they would have!”

  “Then I got to you in time.” He sounded relieved; but for Nessa, rage was quickly replacing fear and disgust. And not just rage at the men who would have raped and killed her. She looked up at Bridei, her eyes shooting daggers. He actually took a step away from her.

  “Thank you, for coming for me”, she said, her voice dripping with anger and sarcasm.

  “It was I that sent you to the wolves.”

  “I know!” she shrieked. Her hands made small, impotent fists as if she could fight him and win.

  “Well, I had reason to. You were going through my trunk and I…well, what did you expect me to think? What should I think, Ashta? Tell me, because I don’t even know anymore. I need the truth!” He was shouting at her now, his already fragile control battling with the strong, unfamiliar emotions welling up inside.

  “I know that’s what you thought. That I was looking for battle plans, or maps, or…something! But I wasn’t. You are an honorable man Bridei. Or at least I thought you were until now. I would never have betrayed you like that. I don’t want to be here! All I wanted was to find my uncle and go home!”

  He squatted down in front of her in the dirt, taking her chin firmly in his hand and lifting her face to his. “Then tell me who you really are.” His voice was hard, but there was a new softness in his dark eyes that had never been
there before.

  She shook her head mutely as tears rolled down her cheeks and fell onto the ground. His thumb moved across her smooth skin, wiping them away. He leaned closer, until she could feel his soft breath on her face. His fingers moved up into the hair by her temples and tensed there. He made a low sound in his throat just before he let her go and sat back on his heels with a sigh.

  “You think I’m an honorable man? I am not an honorable man, Nessa! How could I be? I have wanted you from the moment I first saw you, even though you belonged to another. Even though I didn’t know where your loyalty lay. And I want you still, even now, when you were just nearly raped because I could not trust you! My body still aches with need of you.” He grabbed her hand and placed it none too gently on the hard bulge beneath the fabric of his pants. Immediately, his teeth clenched and an involuntary groan left his throat. “Do you see now? Where is the honor in wanting you like this, when you have just been brutalized by another? What kind of man am I when all I want is to have you beneath me even now? Whether or not you’ve betrayed me?”

  She pulled her hand back as if it had been burned. In truth, his flesh, even through the fabric, had been almost hot to the touch. She stood. Stepped back, shaking her head. “I…I don’t know. I don’t know what kind of man you are.”

  He sighed. “No, I suppose you don’t. Let’s go home. Rest. Then you will tell me what is was you were looking for, and we will settle this between us, once and for all.”

  “Okay”, she said quietly. What choice did she have? As usual, none.

  “And Ashta, this time it will be the truth I hear, do you understand me?”

  She nodded. She was scared and defeated. She had very nearly died—yet again—for her secrets. No more. If it was the truth he wanted, it was the truth he’d get. All of it. After all, things couldn’t get much worse.

  They had ridden through the rest of the night and into the next day, and Nessa had slept fitfully against Bridei’s chest, with his arm locked tightly around her. When they finally reached the gates of Tallorc, she had a strange sense that fate was tugging at her, telling her she would always end up back here, no matter how hard or how often she tried to leave, or where she went.

  She had to admit; it was better than being in the hands of King Ecgfrith. Though Bridei’s hands were certainly not free of blood, he at least had honor and grace. Nessa had known the moment she set eyes on Ecgfrith that he was a different sort of man; one who would stop at nothing to satisfy his own greed for power and wealth. She could see it in his cold, uncompassionate eyes; feel it rolling off of him like a damp, murky fog.

  Bridei lifted her off the horse’s back, and though she could have walked on her own, he carried her up the stairs to his chamber. There was a hot bath waiting in the center of the room. He set her down carefully, his hand lingering for just a moment on the small of her back as if he was loathe to let her go completely.

  “I thought you’d want to wash, after those men…” He paused, shaking his head slightly. “I thought you’d want a bath, so I sent someone ahead to have one ready.”

  She blinked at his unexpected thoughtfulness. “Thank you.”

  She thought maybe he would insist on staying and watching her again, and truly she was beyond caring if he did, but instead he nodded once and left the room, closing the door firmly behind him. She supposed he had lots of other things to do, after wasting nearly twenty-four hours proving that she wasn’t spying for Ecgfrith. At least she hoped it had been proven. She never wanted to set eyes on the Saxon king again. When Bridei finally struck him down, she would honestly feel no pity for the man.

  Not even caring if the door was latched or if someone might walk in, she numbly stripped her clothing off and stepped into the tub. She sank into the blissfully warm water with a sigh, and began once more contemplating her strange fate. She had already accepted that Angus was gone and she would more than likely never see him again, though she couldn’t properly mourn him either, not knowing for certain if he was dead. By now, Nathan must at least suspect that she wasn’t coming back. And her grandmother, if she was still alive, must think her only granddaughter had abandoned her to die alone. To top it all off, she was about to tell the king, who held her very life in his hands, that she had arrived here, unwittingly, from the future. She doubted very much he would believe her story, since she barely believed it herself.

  At least things couldn’t get too much worse. Her mind flashed unwittingly to the ritual sacrifices she had witnessed. The slit throat. The Blood Eagle. Okay, maybe they could get a little bit worse. She only hoped that if she was sentenced to death for lying, or witchcraft, or whatever crime she might be found guilty of after telling her strange truth, that it would be swift and painless.

  Sudden tears streamed down her face. How on earth had she come to this in such a short span of time? What she wouldn’t give to be home, working in her gardens, keeping track of Angus. Going out on a simple date to the local pub with Nathan. And yet…and yet, if she was completely honest with herself—something she had carefully avoided until this very moment—she had to admit that she felt something for Bridei. It was something that went beyond admiring his physical beauty or being in awe of who he was as a man. There was an attraction between them that she felt down to her very bones every time he was near; something she had never felt before and so she couldn’t describe it even to herself. She was inexorably drawn to Bridei in a way she had never experienced before with another human being. Even after he had handed her over to his worst enemy—and she wanted so much to hate him for what he had done—somehow she couldn’t. Somehow, she understood him. And he had come back for her…he’d come back, when he could have left her there and gone back to Tallorc, knowing she would never bother him again.

  After she had washed and the water had cooled, she got out of the tub, dried herself off with the cloth left there for her, and put on the clean tunic someone had laid out on the bed. There was also food and wine on the table. She sat down and ate some of the food, but avoided the wine, just in case Bridei had decided to try to force the truth from her again. He wouldn’t have to. She was finally ready to tell it.

  It seemed like hours before the door to the room finally opened and he was there. He stood still for a moment and her eyes took him in as if she was looking at him for the very first time. His chest was bare except for a simple linen vest that fell open over muscles honed by constant training. The strange and beautiful tattoos stood out against the tawny color of his skin. His hair was tied back again in a strip of leather, but a few pieces had escaped to frame his face. With a square jaw, full lips, and high cheekbones, he was the very image of wild masculine beauty. At last her eyes met his, and as they did, she felt the world tilt just a little. He shut the door.

  “I’ll have the truth from you now.”

  The truth was what she planned on telling, but she was terrified of what the consequences might be. If he even believed her, of course. She heaved a little sigh. “Do you promise not to kill me?”

  He sat in a chair next to hers, pushing one hand through his hair and causing more strands to come free of their binding. “Gods, lass…what have you done that you think I would kill you for it?”

  “You’ve already almost killed me twice”, she pointed out.

  “And neither time could I go through with it. I thought you made me weak, but perhaps it isn’t so. Perhaps you’re…meant to be here, and that is why I can’t seem to let you die.”

  His eyes searched hers, and Nessa felt a frisson of some vaguely familiar emotion that she couldn’t quite place sweep through her. Almost as if something deep within her recognized something deep within him. She took a breath and stared at her feet for a moment, unsure of how to begin. There was no easy way.

  “Do you…do you believe people can move through time?”

  Astonishingly, he nodded. “Of course, time is all around us, like the blanket of the sky.”

  She was startled. What he said…it was just li
ke what Angus had told her. “But I mean go through it, like from the future to the past.”

  He gave her a strange look. “There are certain times and places where the folds draw nearer, and seers can divine the future, or speak with the spirits and ancestors. Is that what you mean lass?”

  She shook her head. “No, that’s not what I mean.”

  “Then what do you mean?”

  Nessa took another deep breath, and started again. “You gave a responsibility to a certain family…to keep the knowledge of your people safe through the ages.”

  His eyes narrowed. “Aye, I did. It wasn’t so long ago. But how would you know of that?”

  Bridei couldn’t fathom what the lass was trying to tell him. Had she come here from the spirit world? Is that how she knew about the scrolls he had given to Domnall? Had she been the one to urge Meara to see it done?

  “You wish to speak with me, Meara?”

  “Aye, Bridei, I do. The spirits have been talking to me, whispering of things to come; of preparations to be made.”

  Bridei gestured to a chair near the fire, sturdy and piled with richly embroidered pillows stuffed with lamb’s wool. “Then sit, and tell me.”

  He sat in another chair, opposite Meara, and leaned forward expectantly, elbows on his knees. The priestess rarely asked to speak with him alone, unless it was important.

  “There will be a battle soon”, she began.

  He nodded. “Aye.” There must be. He looked forward to it, even now. He had been laying the groundwork and carefully planning it for nearly two years.

  “If our side should lose…”

  “We will not lose. I will not lose!” His nostrils flared and he sat taller, certain of his victory. He had to be certain, because losing this battle would mean losing everything he had worked so hard to gain. It was unacceptable.

  “Of course not”, Meara soothed. “But every good king has assurances in place, even when victory is written in stone. He must prepare for the worst, even in the face of triumph and prosperity. He must always protect that which he has fought so hard to defend. The spirits are adamant that you do this; your destiny depends on it.”