Legend of the Mist (7 page)

It was true, he had been raised a warrior, was good with a sword and gifted with tactic. It was as if the gods had intended him for battle. As they had Einarr, and their father before them. Why, then, had he never been able to reconcile himself with his divine destiny?

“I don’t know,” he admitted. “But I do know that I shall have no part in it anymore. From this moment on.”

Einarr nodded. “Well then, brother, you will be missed amongst my ranks. I wish you well in all you do. You will be home to visit, will you not? You will not simply disappear on us?”

“Of course not.
I mean to become a trader, though of what yet I do not know. I will be home as often as possible.”

“Good luck to you then,” Einarr said
.

Torsten nodded. He did not rush forward to embrace his brother, nor did he attempt to shake his hand. They understood one another in this, but in little else. They had nothing more to say to one another.

Striding towards the door he inclined his head for the maid, who was still hunched in the corner, to leave with him. She stood uncertainly, holding together the scraps of her bodice, and followed him from the room.

Outside, Bjurr’s
wench had joined him, and the pair stood laughing and leaning against one another.

“Finally,”
Bjurr huffed when Torsten and the maid appeared. “I was starting to think I’d have to take my whore out here against the wall.”

The wench laughed, a shrill, false sound. “Whatever tickles your fancy, love.”

Rage at the man’s cruelty boiled Torsten’s blood, and before he had time to think of his actions he drove his fist between Bjurr’s legs. Bjurr doubled over with a groan, his face turning purple.

“I don’t think you’ll be taking any wenches this night,”
Torsten spat.

“Hey,” the whore protested. “What about my coin
? You just took away my coin, you
argr
!”

Before she
had finished her tirade, Torsten reached into his pocket, and with little bother to hide his disdain for the woman, tossed a handful of coins at her.

“For your troubles,” he
mocked. Then he led the frightened maid down the stairs. The sound of Bjurr’s cursing followed them.

A fine, misting rain had begun to drift to the earth as they made their way back to the
forlorn little root cellar where the captives were being held. Torsten walked slightly behind the girl, who kept her arms wrapped around herself to hold her dress in place. The slope of her neck shimmered with the moisture that landed there, and he noticed there were long, deep scratch marks that extended from her earlobe to below the neckline of her garment. He muttered a curse beneath his breath. A hoofing in the balls was too good for that bastard Bjurr.

“Thank you, sir,”
she sniffled once they were farther away from the tavern. “I beg you understand that I am not a ... I am not fallen. I thought—”

“No,” Torsten silenced her
gently. “There is no need of an explanation.”

They
walked along in the darkness with no further words, and when they reached the raised piece of grass-covered earth under which the cellar was dug, the girl stopped. With a silent, indrawn breath she closed her eyes, preparing to be thrown back into the darkness below with the others. As she stepped onto the first stone stair that would take her below, Torsten put a hand on her shoulder.

“This
wench has bartered herself in exchange for her freedom, and for the freedom of the other captives,” he announced to the guard who leaned casually against the door. “Einarr has accepted the bargain, and I am here to ensure that his decree is enforced.”

The girl stiffened at his side
, but said nothing. Torsten did not turn to see whether her face betrayed the lie, and kept his eyes on the guard with confidence. The guard peered at him dubiously, but the tattered state of the maid’s gown lent credence to the claim. He shrugged and unlocked the gate without question.

Inside,
the captured villagers were crowded together in the far corner of the small, dank hole. They cowered as the guard’s massive shape filled the entrance, barring their way to freedom. The man lumbered down the few short steps and grabbed the arm of the nearest woman. She yelped in fear as he pulled her roughly to her feet.

“You’re free,”
the guard grumbled and yanked her in the direction of the door. She landed in a sprawl on the steps, her palms scraping against the stone. “Leave before we change our minds.”

In a line
, and holding onto one another, the captives scurried from the cellar, congregating at the top only long enough to get their bearings. Then, without further hesitation, they darted as a group for the shelter of the far off trees.

The young woman
with her tattered gown glanced back at Torsten once, her eyes wide with gratitude and awe. And then she was gone. Torsten watched until he could no longer see their forms in the distance.

“You had better be speaking true,” the guard snapped, still
suspicious of what he’d been told. “If I’m called to account for this, I’m pointing the finger of blame squarely at you.”

“I beg you do,” Torsten responded dryly
. “By the by, here is something for your troubles.” He flipped a coin at the man who bit it to ensure its authenticity. Then with a grunt of satisfaction, the guard departed for the tavern. He’d been prevented the company of a willing wench long enough.

Alone, Torsten
leaned against the grass bank of the cellar and looked out over the ruined town of Bjarmaland, now silent as the dead who still littered the streets and the burned out buildings. He felt defeated. Drained. He could not do this anymore. If this was the Viking way then perhaps he was not a true Viking, for each time he took part in a raid it killed a piece of his soul. Perhaps the others had no souls, perhaps that was why they could raid and kill and pillage without a thought.

Whatever the case, it did not matter. No more would Torsten be a part of it.
His decision resolute, he headed for the docks where the Bjarmalanders’ ships were still tethered. They would not mind if he took a small craft which he could man himself. The dead would not need them now.

* * *

Fara had seen this same vision before: a fleet of Viking longships approaching its shore. Great, sleek hulls advanced through the waves, slicing the rolling surface; a legion of fierce Norse warriors rowed long, pale oars in unison. Their thickly muscled arms were, like before, wrapped in bands of gold, and their frighteningly large bodies were once again garbed in leather and fur.

In appearance they were just as terr
ifying now as they had been the first time they’d landed on the island. But this time, watching them come from her vantage on the cliff above, Norah was not terrified like she had been then. Instead, she was strangely dull inside, and stared down at the sea with passive disinterest.

True to his promise,
the Viking leader, Einarr Alfradsson, was returning to Fara with his men after a summer of raiding. He would spend the autumn and winter months between the island and his new settlement on Rysa Beag where he would farm his land and teach the men of Clan Gallach to fight in the Viking way.

It was a c
urious thing that his hands were not stained with the blood of the many he’d killed that summer. She wondered if the season had been a successful one, if his plunder had been bountiful. If the body count had been satisfactory.

In contrast
, the clan had spent its summer grieving for its dead. So many were gone from their numbers, and so many of the survivors would find themselves in an endless cycle of forgetting and remembering. Forgetting for a moment that a father, a brother, a grandfather was no longer there, and then the cruel, sharp pain of remembering that a joke could not be shared, an inconsequential message could not be passed on. It was the remembering that was the worst part. Norah herself had forgotten on more than one occasion and had felt the painful twist of remembering again.

But of all those the clan had lost, i
t was Garrett she missed the most. He was not there for her to talk to, not there to shelter her from the wary glances of the islanders towards the chief’s mad daughter when they thought she wasn’t looking.

Norah sensed a guilt in her father over
Garrett’s decision to leave. As if he were somehow to blame for whatever discord had developed between father and son. But why that was so she did not understand.

“They are here then?”
said Cinead, coming to her side. His footsteps were soft upon the dewed grass, and his small arm grazed hers when he stopped.

“I suppose they are,” she
answered, draping her arm over his shoulder. “D’ye suppose ye’ll be joining the men in learning to fight like the Norse?”

Cinead’s brows drew sharply together. “I shall never let them teach me anything
. I hate them!”

“I dinna
blame ye, lad,” Norah said. Her throat tightened at the pain in Cinead’s voice which his show of anger did little to disguise.

Together they observed as the first longship reached the beach.
Its hull slid gracefully up over the sand and rocks, cleaving a cradle for itself in which to nest. The Viking at the helm of the ship jumped to the shore, his boots splashing in the shallow water. With a wide grin, Einarr extended his hand to Fearchar, who was waiting on the sand for his guests.

Cinead snorted in disgust
at the Viking leader’s greeting, as if he and the Gallach chief were old friends. Fearchar accepted Einarr’s hand hesitantly and offered words of welcome, though what he said could not be heard from where Norah and Cinead stood.

Below, Einarr
surveyed the island proudly as his men disembarked from his crafts. This piece of land would be his someday. Glancing up, he noticed a movement on the cliff above. There stood a young woman with a boy at her side. Einarr grinned with pleasure at the sight of her. This, he was certain, was his bride.

Fearchar had not lied: she was
indeed breathtaking. Long, plentiful hair a deep, vibrant shade of red drifted in the cold, autumn breeze. Her eyes, as green as the waves over which he’d travelled, were set against a fresh, pale face with cheeks and lips flushed pink. Her simple woollen gown, draped over a body which already promising great things in its womanhood, rippled down her legs, disappearing into the unnaturally thick mist which swirled at her ankles.

He’d promised Fearchar he would not tell the girl of their arrangement, and he intended to be true to his word
, but only because he was struck by the strength of the father’s love for his daughter. Though the way she was looking down at him tightened his groin something fierce.

She was unafraid; unmoved by the
happenings on the beach. She’d been broken by the raid on her people that spring; it was visible in her face and her stance. But beneath, Einarr sensed a spirit in her which was still very much intact, and which he suspected he’d thoroughly enjoy breaking.

Perhap
s he might come to love her, respect her even. Just perhaps.

Six

Three years later ...

“Norah, hold
still, will ye? Ye’re squirming like a wee bairn.”

“I wouldna
squirm, Mama, if ye’d no’ pull my hair so.” Norah yanked her head defiantly in the opposite direction of Iseabal’s pull as the lady weaved her daughter’s tresses into an intricate plait.

“And I wouldna be pulling if ye werena squirming so
,” Iseabal sniped back.

Norah
huffed and crossed her arms over her chest as if she were a child, not a lady of her nineteen years. She was not usually this insolent, but the wave of still, hot air which hovered over the island served to aggravate her to no end.

It was an unusual autumn, the islanders agreed. Never was the air so still with the constant influence of the sea breezes, and such heat at this time of year was surely an omen of something. But whether that omen was good or bad, they could not decide amongst themselves.

Norah cursed the omen, whichever it was, as she sweated within the folds of her silken tunic and fine linen shift. A shift with full sleeves at that, for Iseabal admired their delicate embroidery at the wrists.

“And why must I wear silk?” she added. “When have we ever worn silk for those brute Vikings?”

“Well why should ye
no'
?” Iseabal answered. “Ye’re a lady now, and ye must look the part.”

“
Ye
were a lady last year, and the year before that, and
ye’ve
never worn anything but wool.” Norah examined her mother through narrowed eyes. The lady certainly was acting strange this day. She’d been acting strangely for several days, come to think of it. Part of Iseabal’s behaviour might be explained by the fact that the clan’s Norse allies were returning this night to the island for another season. Yet another winter would the Norsemen spend on Fara, gorging themselves on its ale and mead, and depleting its stores of food as if they were entitled to all that its people had worked so hard to harvest.

That fact did not, however, explain everything. L
ike why her mother insisted on this silk nonsense when she never had before.

The Norse invaders had been a part of life on Fara for three years this past sprin
g, in one form or another. In all that time Norah had not managed to adjust herself to their presence. She was not alone. Few of the islanders had grown accustomed to them, for none could forget the reason why they had become allies to begin with. The islanders tolerated their Norse neighbours with wary acceptance, a forced respect only because of the power they might weald if displeased. Their alliance was no more than a matter of self-preservation, and none on Fara ever forgot it.

Not even the lady of the clan. Which made her behaviour even more strange.

“Mother, what are ye hiding?” Norah said slowly.

Lady Iseabal declined to answer. Instead, she pulled more insistently on Norah’s plait, winding the strands at the end to complete her work.

“There,” she exclaimed when she had finished. “Doesna my daughter look beautiful!” She stepped back to admire the results of her labour, her hands clapped together and pressed to her mouth overtop a proud smile.

Norah stood from the stool on which she’d been
perched miserably and crossed the room to the simple, unadorned table in the corner. Bending at the waist, she peered into the small mirror of polished tin on top and gazed with disinterest at her reflection. She must admit, her mother had done a fine job. Norah’s long, scarlet tresses crossed and looped over each other with precision, highlighting shimmering strands of gold that wove their way through the design. She grunted with distaste. She looked like a bloody princess.

“Ye havena answered me, mother,” she pressed. “
What are ye hiding?”

“Why should
I be hiding anything, cheeky lass?” Lady Iseabal insisted, but her voice wavered at the lie. She turned so her face would not betray her, and busied her hands by smoothing out invisible wrinkles on the quilts over the bed.

What
she was hiding was that Einarr Alfradsson had not come last autumn to marry Norah when he was expected to. With the passing of the Norseman’s father two winters ago, he had stayed at his family’s holdings in Hvaleyrr to oversee the estate for the summer season and into the following winter. It had drawn the agreed-upon length of time for the marriage from two years to three. If Einarr had come last summer, her daughter would have been married by now, perhaps with a wee bairn to show for it.

Norah, poor, naive Norah,
did not realize that her freedom was enjoyed on borrowed time. She did not realize that Einarr was coming tonight, and that her betrothal would be announced whether she was prepared or not. Iseabal had fretted about it for days. For years, if truth be told.

“
Ye’ll be wearing a hole in the covers if ye smooth them out any more,” Norah chided.

Iseabal’s hands stilled over the quilt, and her mouth opened to speak. Mercifully, though, she was spared by
the scamper of feet up the wooden steps of the keep.

“Mother, mother,”
cawed Roisin, bounding into the room with her friend Aibhlin close on her heels, “Friseal’s made a horrible mess of the kitchens and Cook’s about had it wi’ him.”

“What’s this now?” Iseabal
sighed.

“My Lady, he has
emptied the barley groats into the pottage,” explained eleven-year-old Greine, entering the keep behind the two eight-year-old girls. “Only Cook didna ken he’d done it until the groats were cooked up and had absorbed all of the broth. So now Cook’s shouting that we’ll have nothing but mutton-flavoured barley to serve the heathen Norse.”

“Yes, and his face is redder than Norah’s hair,” Roisin added,
prompting a giggle from Aibhlin.

“W
hat are ye doing here then? Why did ye no’ take him out of there?”

“We did try, my Lady,” Aibhlin answered, “
but he’s crawled up on the top shelf above the ovens and we canna reach him.”

“Oh for mercy’s sake,
tell me the ovens arena lit,” the lady huffed and rushed from room, trailed by the girls.

“Friseal’s bum is going to be as red as Norah’s hair,”
drifted Roisin’s snicker as they descended the staircase.

Norah
smiled, imagining the scene in the kitchens. Then, with no reason to stay pent up in the sweltering keep, she descended the stairs herself for whatever sea breeze could be had from the outside air.

Below, the hall was abustle with preparation. Clansmen and women,
regardless of their station, scurried back and forth to prepare the hall for the arrival of their unwanted guests. It was the same picture every autumn when the Norsemen returned to Rysa Beag from their a-viking season. The first few days were always tense as the islanders of Fara readjusted to the presence of their conquerors. By winter’s first snow they managed to fall into a routine of sorts, to adopt a wary tolerance at the forced co-existence. That precarious ease disappeared, however, in the Vikings’ absence during the summer months, and by the following autumn the atmosphere was once again tense. It was a cycle that was proving to be as sure as the seasons themselves.

Observing
the frenzied activity as she passed through the hall, Norah was aware that she should be helping. The chief’s mad daughter she might be, but privileged she was not. Neither Iseabal nor Fearchar encouraged in their children the notion of status; each was expected to help where he or she could. No work was above Fearchar’s offspring if it was for the good of the clan.

But t
he moment her feet touched the dirt outside the fortress, the familiar tug asserted itself against her breast once more. It was that indismissible yearning that pulled at her soul, called to her from the direction of the long-ago abandoned broch on the southern edge of the island. It was a tug that, when it came upon her, fell so swiftly that it left her little opportunity to consider whether or not to give in to it.

T
his time was no different. Her body turned itself southward, her feet instinctively began following the invisible path that would take her over the gently rolling hills and shallow crags of that part of Fara which lay abandoned.

The path was imprinted on Norah’s brain. She knew it so well, knew every divot and swell of the earth that she could have walked it in the dark.
Did
often walk it in the dark, when she was able to slip away from the sleeping clan unseen. With little difficulty and even less time, she crossed the length of the island, travelling, without seeing, to the place where the dense growth slithered up the side of the crumbling stone walls. That growth of scrub and bracken beckoned to her, lured her, promising that just beyond its blanket lay a hidden treasure.

What
the broch was doing there, why it had been built on the island’s southern tip, was not entirely clear. This side of the island was uninhabited, but not because the soil was unsuitable for farming, nor because the weather was particularly harsh. It was obvious by the remnants of low walls which still scratched the landscape that farms had once existed here. Even the southern shore showed signs of habitation where a neat, crescent-shaped beach opened to the sea, suggesting that a false harbour had once been carved there.

Why, then, had it been
abandoned? And more puzzling was the question of why it remained so. Fara was not large, its width easily traversable by foot. Why did none of the islanders know about this southern patch of habitable land? Why did curious children never undertake to play amongst the ruins of the broch?

It was as if some
intangible barrier, some ghostly hindrance, prevented them. Kept them away from this secret, sacred place without their realizing it. Without their being able to surmount it just as Norah was unable to surmount the urge to come here.

Could
it be? That the same pull which exerted itself on Norah somehow repelled the others?

Norah
shook her head as she drew nearer the broch. What a mad thought to have. There was no pull, invisible or otherwise. The others were not strange,
she
was. Whatever pull she felt from the abandoned broch was entirely in her head.

Though her journey had taken less than an hour, in that time the air had begun to cool, and the constant mist, thin
and low when she left the keep, thickened around her, drawing her into its haze. By the time she reached the remaining pieces of curtain wall, no higher than her knees in sparse stretches, the fog was so thick that she could not see more than an arm’s length in front of her.

It mattered not
. Her feet knew the ground over which she walked, her hands knew exactly when to feel in front of her for the smooth, slippery stones of the broch’s broken shell.

Her fingers trailed along the contours of the crumbling walls,
brushing over the moss that grew on them. It was like touching something that was a part of her, an extension of her soul. As it did every time she came here, warm, wonderful feelings stirred inside her, feelings that seemed tied to a memory of happier times ...

It was all an illusion, of course
. The workings of her mad, mad mind.

But no one was around to judge her
for her madness, no one to cast sly glances her way and whisper behind hands. Was there any harm in submitting to the feelings and memories?

With her eyes closed she followed
the line of the wall to the place where it had crumbled away completely, leaving a large gap through which she could enter the conical structure. These walls which outlined the broch’s circumference were of a double thickness, with a hollow, narrow space between. In that space still existed the evidence of wooden stairs, though the stairs themselves had long ago rotted away. Post holes wound themselves at regular intervals in an upward spiral where support beams must have been, and in the mortar high above the dirt floor, which had once been covered by a thatched roof, were the discoloured imprints of a long ago second and third storey.

Norah had lived in the modern Gallach fortress all her life. The concept of such a structure,
the broch’s odd construction, was foreign. And yet ... it was familiar. She
knew
its bones as if she had lived within them when they were complete. She’d stopped trying to guess at why that might be years ago. None of the answers she came up with were of any comfort.

The
ground floor inside the broch was dissected by short, inner walls which had once divided the now open area into different rooms. Towards the back, where the walls were better preserved, was the remnants of a permanent fire pit, its edges outlined by heavy boulders and its centre permanently encrusted by the charred remains of centuries of fires.

This was where Norah liked to sit, to curl up on the dirt beside the fire and breathe in the scent of
the mould and the dank earth. It was a scent which filled her with longing. With reassurance.

Sometimes it happened like this, the unintelligible words of a song she’d never heard before echoe
d in the back of her mind. Of a sudden she would find herself murmuring their cant without knowing their meaning or from whence they came.