Legend of the Mist (26 page)

“Oh, Thor’s balls,” exclaimed the first voice. “Did he have to kill
that
one? I would have enjoyed a turn with her. I might have taken her back with me, too, get a bit more use out of her.”

“You heard what Fairhair said:
no one lives. Every stretch of these islands is to be scoured and cleansed.”

The Viking raiders gazed
longingly down at Norah, who continued to feign death with everything she had. Then, sighing with regret, the men departed the chamber.

“Would have liked a turn with that one,” the voice repeated
, drifting ghost-like up the keep steps as its owner descended.

Once they were gone, Norah raised her hand to her aching forehead,
her fingers sliding over a stream of fresh blood. Her face crumpled under the weight of her despair and she crawled to her mother and siblings. Draping herself over them she submitted to a wave of grief.

“Mama,” she
wept. “Friseal, Roisin, Madeg.” Their faces, alive and smiling, wended their way through her mind. She wondered if Garrett was still alive, and her father, and her Uncle Iobhar. Her clansmen and women she’d loved as though they were kin. How many of them still lived? One by one their faces revolved behind her eyelids. Would she ever see them again?

And then
Torsten’s face flashed before her, his face as she knew it now, his face as she’d known it in lifetimes before.

Did he still live?

A new panic gripped her. She had to find him, to see him once more. She could not die in peace without seeing his face one more time.

Hauling herself up from the ground Norah launched
herself at the keep stairs, flying down them and through the lower corridor.

The instant
she exited the fortress a rough voice halted her.

“
Stop!” it hollered in Norse.

To
her right, two figures lumbered towards her, faceless against the darkness. But she immediately recognized their voices: they were the men who had thought her dead in the keep.

Another
clap of lightning brightened the sky, illuminating their horrible, scarred faces. The anger in their eyes when they saw her, realized that she’d tricked them, turned her blood to ice in her veins.

Spinning
around, Norah fled in the opposite direction of the village. She could not reach her destination now. The raiders were too close on her heels. She skirted the dwindling mass of islanders scampering in every direction and headed down the path to the harbour instead.

Half
way to the docks a solid, powerful body slammed her to the ground. One of her pursuers pinned her, knocking the air from her lungs.

“Let me go,” Norah gasped, struggling to breathe.

She fought against him, batting ineffectually at his great head. He brushed her off with little effort, forcing his hand between her thighs and tearing her skirts as easily as if they were made of gossamer instead of linen and wool.

When
she felt his horrendous arousal pressing against her she screamed and sunk her teeth into the man’s shoulder. The tang of blood flooded her mouth and the satisfying resistance of bone pressed against her teeth.

The man hollered in pain and shoved his palm into her face, wrenching her teeth from his skin.

“
Bikkja
,” he swore, striking her first and then pulling his dagger from his boot to kill her.

Staring wide-eyed in terror at the dagger, Norah
did not see anyone come up behind them; she only saw the blade of a sword the moment it swooped across the sky. With deadly precision the blade severed her attacker’s hand from his wrist, sending both the appendage and the dagger spinning to the ground.

Norah raised her eyes
, startled.

“
Freyr!” she cried.

Another
thrust of Freyr’s blade and her Viking attacker slumped dead on top of her. Then he turned and fought off the raider’s companion, battling fiercely for his life.

“
Go!
” he hollered when she did not move, transfixed by a dangerous blend of horror and fascination at the skill of Einarr’s captain.

Freyr’s
command snapped her spell. Norah scampered to her feet, still hopeful that she might make it to the village. But ahead of her more Viking raiders blocked her path, dashing her hopes. Hurtling towards Freyr, they soon overwhelmed him.

When their greedy, evil eyes turned to her, Norah
sped away, down the path to the harbour. There was no way back, no way to reach the broch now.

Staggering
onto the beach Norah was certain that, here and now, she would die.

Ahead, t
he sea pitched and heaved violently. Behind her a swarm of Vikings tore down the steep incline after her. The storm was at its highest point; it raged through the night, expelling itself with gale-force winds and driving rain as sharp as spears into the ground.

Death
by sword or death by sea.

Those were her choices,
though she knew there was no real choice. Her fate had been known to her for as long as she’d known the meaning of the word: the sea would be the one to take her life.

Confirming
her tortured thoughts, the water released a soft, ominous chuckle. It called to her, luring her towards its watery folds once more.

Come
, it whispered.
This is where you belong.

But this time there was no
cruelty in its laughter, no taunting. Instead the sea’s voice was inviting, beckoning her to find release in its undulating arms. It offered escape, a means to avoid a painful death at the hands of the demons that had descended upon the island.

Her destiny awaited her. It was time to meet it.

Shivering uncontrollably Norah climbed into a small fishing vessel that was tied to the nearest dock. Viking hands reached for her as she pushed off; their hateful voices laughed at what they thought was her pathetic attempt to escape.

“You’ll never make it,” they shouted. “You can’t row in this weather.”

The waves lolled and rocked beneath the hull, threatening to capsize the small boat. But Norah was no longer afraid. Clutching the anchored oars she rowed herself into the open water with difficulty.

When she was far enough into the channel between Fara and Rysa Beag she stopped, content to wait for the sea to do with her what it would. Tears coursed down her cheeks, blurring her vision.

An overwhelming sadness settled over her at the life which was now over. Her mother. Friseal and Roisin. Cook; Greine; Madeg. Freyr. The countless others who, if they had not yet died, would soon find their end.

And Torsten. Her beautiful Torsten, he
r warrior. How stupid she’d been to hope she could see him one last time. The water slashed at the hull of her boat, laughing at her for that one sliver of hope which she’d foolishly nurtured.

Consumed with self-pity she gazed towards the shore. Her pursuers were still there, but between the brief flashes of light from the sky she saw that
some kind of upheaval had resumed. Another futile battle had followed them; the ragged remains of her clansmen and their Norse allies were making a final stand.

Alarmed,
Norah scoured the forms fighting on shore, desperate to make out which of her clansmen were still alive. Another flash brought them all into horrible, pitiless clarity, and one face among them sent her heart leaping in her chest.

Torsten
!

Petrified,
she watched as he fought his way through his opponents, taking them down one after another. But despite his deadly skill his movements were sluggish. A piercing wail wrenched from her lips.

He’d been injured
. Gravely injured. He brandished his sword with waning strength, stumbling and staggering as he fought. One more opponent, one wrong move, and he would die!

“Torsten,” she
cried, sobbing into the wind. As she leaned over the edge of the boat, reaching involuntarily to him, the water rose sharply beneath her, nearly casting her into the sea.

Hearing her voice on the wind,
Torsten’s eyes snapped upwards.

And met hers across the watery distance
.

“Norah,” he cried in return.

The sight of her seemed to revive him, and abandoning his fight he raced towards the shore, throwing himself into the sea in his desperation to reach her. His warrior’s arms pulled through the water, bringing him to her stroke after stroke.

He was slow. Dear God, he was agonizingly slow!
Several times his head dipped below the waves, his arms too weak to keep his body above the water. Each time he disappeared she screamed in terror; each time he surfaced she cried a breath of relief.

“Torsten,” she wailed
again, helpless to save him.

With the last of his will he
closed the remaining distance between them and threw an arm to the edge of the boat. Norah grabbed onto him, straining with all her might to pull him into it with her.

He could not offer much help; he was slipping away too fast.

Somehow she found the strength to pull him into the keel, where he collapsed into her arms beneath the driving rain. Torsten’s eyes were unfocussed and his face was deathly pale.

On the shore, the fighting grew quiet as the last of the men were killed.

“Please, my love, don’t leave me,” she begged, cradling his face in her palms. Urgently she kissed his lips, his cheeks, his eyelids. Anything to rouse him. His response was a weak, sad smile.

“I must,” he said, his voice nearly a whisper. “
That is the way our story ends.”

Then with his last breath he whispered, “
I love you, always ... wherever I am ... whenever ...”

His eyes closed, and
Torsten slumped in Norah’s arms.

She
gazed into his face, her tears falling onto his pale cheeks. He was so still, so peaceful. Her warrior, her love, was gone.

But she did not cry, not openly, at least.
A strange calm overcame her, and acceptance took the place in her heart where, only a moment ago, anguish had been. It was a curious feeling—where agony should have ripped her to shreds, tortured every crevice of her body, there was nothing but peace. 

Yes, s
he’d lost her love; Torsten was dead. But they’d been here before. Their destiny was not to live a long and happy life together. They would never grow old; their love for one another would never fade.

But it
would live again in time.

She knew this
as surely as she knew her place on the island of Fara and the fate which had come to claim her. As the tiny boat rocked violently in the sea, Norah knew her destiny in all its crystalline facets.

And
finally,
finally
... she was at peace with it.

Even as the sea pitched
with deadly force, capsizing the boat and throwing her into the water’s frigid folds, she accepted it. She held onto Torsten, letting his body drag her down into the inky blackness, content to let it take her now.

Though she
began to lose consciousness, she continued to hold onto him. The sea did not frighten her anymore. From its depths, faces rose to greet her. The beautiful, painted faces of the
pictii
. They smiled, welcoming her home.

The faces of her clansmen and women: her mother, her father. Roisin and Friseal
and Madeg; Cinead and Greine; Cook; Seonaid; Iobhar.

Garrett.

All of them. They waited for her, too.

And
Torsten—his face was ahead of them all. His unspoken love radiated from his eyes, shone from his smile. Without words he urged her to let go, to join him.

S
he did. It was alright. She was not afraid. Their story would be told again.

In time.

Twenty-One

The oppressive heat
which plagued the southern lands of
Skaney
and the islands north of the Scottish mainland had been cleared away by the storm. In its place settled the harsh, unyielding cold of autumn.

On
the islands of Orkney there was no one to notice the change. Its once inhabited lands, Fara and Rysa Beag among them, were now silent, its people sleeping forever upon blood-soaked ground. As if to protect the islanders of Fara, the thick and inexplicable mist surrounding this, and no other, of Orkney’s islands rose up, blanketing the dead where they lay.

The story of
what happened that autumn on the islands north of Scotland would dissolve into myth. It would change, would become a celebratory tale of triumph over dissention, remembered in the written sagas of Harald Fairhair of Norway.

The legend of the Lady of the Mist
would be lost to time. For those who might recall it, who might breathe its words once again, it would be nothing more than that: a legend.

Only a legend ...