Loki's Daughters (45 page)

Ronan knew where Gunnar was leading. "Aye, I agree. Vengeance or no, she is not the kind to risk her own folk without reason."

All eyes turned on Bjorn, who had tucked himself into a corner, nursing a horn of ale that he had already refilled several times. The blacksmith was not just feeling the effects of saltwater.

Ronan strode across the hard-packed dirt floor and stood over the man, his arms folded. He folded his arms. "All right, Bjorn, out with it."

"Out-" Bjorn stared, bleary-eyed, confused. But he had not had enough time to get that drunk.

"You know what I mean. The truth."

Bjorn swiped his hand across his mouth, and the foam along his bright red moustache disappeared. "That's the trouble."

Ronan let out an exasperated growl. "What?" he demanded.

"She's telling the truth," Bjorn said.

"She's what?"

"She's telling the truth. I think."

"By Odin's ugly face," grumbled Egil. "Don't you think you could've told us sooner?"

"Well, I can't remember. I've been trying to, but I just can't. So I think it must be true."

Ronan balled his fists, silently wishing he held Bjorn's neck between them. "You told me you never left the Green Isle."

"I didn't think it would matter. But I wasn't even from there. You remember Ivar the Bald?"

"Ivar the Berserker, you mean?" Ronan had heard of him. And this was sounding worse by the moment. Every man in the cottage jumped to his feet, surrounding Ronan.

"Well, aye, and it fits better. I was just an itinerant smith when I met him, and he took me on."

"Wait a moment," Olav insisted. "You must remember what you did, though."

Bjorn shook his head, and his rounded shoulders hunched like a beaten slave's. "I don't remember much of anything. We used to drink this brew when we went raiding, something added to the ale, I think aconite and nightshade and some other things. It made me feel like I was bigger than a house, like nothing could conquer me. But I don't remember anything I did very clearly, for that whole time. We raided and killed, and I don't even know what else. But this place-from the beginning, I've had the feeling I'd been here before. But that's all I knew."

"Hel's tits!" Egil's voice was as fierce as a growl. "Just what we needed. No wonder they hate our kind so much. They must have known all along who we had with us."

Wynne shook her head. "Nay, 'tis your black mood speaking, son. The others didn't know what Elli intended. Nor do they hate you. But you have stirred frightening things in them that they do not know how to handle."

 
Ronan could see that more easily than Egil. Not even Arienh in all her rage had ever really hated them. Something in his heart had known that all along.

But they needed to focus on the problem of Bjorn.

"Ivar's dead," he said to the blacksmith. "Is that when you quit raiding?"

Bjorn nodded, miserably swirling his horn for the last dregs of ale. "I killed him. Found my woman with him. That was enough for me. I had to get out of that life, and I left and went to the Green Isle, where I took up smithing again. I never told anybody where I'd been. Thought maybe if I came with you, the ghosts would leave me alone. But they don't."

"Ghosts?"

"They come at night, unless I'm drunk enough. That's why I sleep in the forge. Alone. Scares people sometimes."

Ronan let out a disgusted snort. "The least you're going to do is apologize to Elli."

"Can't. Don't deserve her forgiveness."

"Maybe not. I didn't say you did. But there'll be at least a confession. We can't change what you did, but we'll do what's right, anyway. She has the right to choose what is to be done."

Egil rubbed a fist over his chin. "She can't hate him too much, Ronan. She pulled him out of the sea."

"Aye," said Olav. "I agree with Wynne. This thing hasn't gone beyond Elli, I'm sure. It's not too late tonight. Let's seek out the women and settle this now."

It was not like Olav to be so impatient. But Olav had secured his love with Mildread, and all that stood between them was Mildread's loyalty to the other women, whose fates were unresolved. Perhaps Mildread waited even now in some secluded glen, some secret bower for her lover.

Perhaps that was all any of them still wanted. Ronan studied the blacksmith, red-nosed and bleary-eyed in his cup, in the misery of the most painful part of love. Why Elli had bothered to save him, he could hardly imagine, if it wasn't love.

All around him, men hovered expectantly, ready to dash out the door at his command. He hesitated.

Ah, Viking you only hear her words. Listen to her heart.

What had Birgit meant?

I do not think she knows how to be anything else. If you do not accept this, you cannot accept her.

He had come looking for a docile, submissive, sweet-natured girl, and found instead a Celtic warrior woman, ferocious in her protectiveness of those she loved. Yet he had expected she would become the girl of his dreams simply because he dreamed it. Perhaps it was not just Celts who had trouble accepting Northmen. Perhaps Northmen, and one in particular, needed to accept Celts for who, what, they were.

Ronan almost laughed aloud. All these years, he'd had the wrong dream. It was the fierce warrior woman who excited him.

"Nay," he responded at last, feeling the slyness of a plan come upon him. "There's a better way."

A disconcerted grumble spread through the men.

Egil cocked his head in curiosity. "A better way?"

"Aye, and much depends on you. You mean to win Birgit over, don't you?"

"Aye." Curiosity doubled to anticipation.

The grin stretched broadly over Ronan's face as the idea expanded in his mind. "Loki's Daughters have met their match. They think we're Vikings. We'll give them Vikings."

CHAPTER
 
TWENTY-FOUR

Birgit didn’t know much about Arienh's herbs, but she knew which ones would keep her sister quiet, and quiet was what Arienh needed to recover from the torn shoulder. Through the long night she had sat beside Arienh’s bed to keep her from rolling, and her effort had not been wasted. Arienh had been a fidget, despite the wild lettuce.

But now her sister slept soundly. Leaving Elli to watch, Birgit left the cottage and the stale, somber air. Feeling the warmth of the bright sun on her head, she ambled down the path through the green as if she had no particular purpose. The Northmen did not seem to be about. But then, how would she know?

 
Birgit smiled and spoke of Arienh to all who asked, and told them she just needed to stroll alone in the sunlight for a while before going back to her vigil in the cottage. No one objected. They were used to her occasional rambling, they way she used to do before the Vikings came. She followed the path into the ash grove, up the valley, and turned off at the narrow trail to the Bride's Well. She knew it so well, she had no need to see it.

Her Saint's place, named for her patron saint, special to Birgit as long as she could remember. She found her peace there in the same way Arienh found hers in the stone circle.

She reached the crystal pool, a dark, cool blur before her, and dredged up memories from her childhood of the sparkle of warm sun upon its waters. The frolic of the Northmen played in her memory, more for what she heard of their merriment than the little she had been able to see. Once she had played like that with Arienh and their brothers. So long ago. Now only Beltane, when the Old Ones came back to dance, brought Trevor back.

She wasn't sure about Niall, if he was alive or dead. If he was dead, had he come back to the land of his birth and the spirits of his ancestors, from that faraway place where he had been taken? No one had ever explained that to her.

The path forked to circle the pool, and she chose the one that ascended over rising dark rock toward the cascading falls, to the high bluff that overlooked the pool and forested valley. From memory, she found her footing and climbed, heading toward the top. Halfway up, she paused, not from weariness but to reflect, and sat near the edge of the bluff, looking out, remembering the magnificent view.

Like Arienh, she wanted desperately for her people to live here forever. She wanted to come back and dance within the circle and know Celts still walked this land. Without the Northmen, this would not happen, for there would be no Celts, save those who were dead.

They were wonderful, these Northmen. Not just Egil. Ronan's tenderness tore at Birgit's heart, even more than Arienh's yearning for him. He was an unusual man, even for a Viking.

 
Northman. What sort of boy had he been ten years before, that he had risked his life for a girl he did not know? Not the same as those who had come to thieve and kill. And he had come back, not merely to pick out a valley and
 
take it over. He had searched for Arienh, and found her. And wanted her to care about him as he cared about her.

Ten years. A long time for a young man. They needed each other, deserved each other. How good it would be for Arienh to have such a man.

And Birgit stood between them.

She wished she could have the same sort of love from Egil, but that was really too much to ask. But for Liam...

From the day Liam was born, she had despaired of how to provide for him, a child lost between two worlds, perhaps hated in both. The Celts had comforted and sheltered the child, but he had always known he was different. But now his heritage had come to him, and Egil was showing him the way to be a good man in a harsh world. Liam must have Egil.

She stood between them as well. She alone stood between her people and their happiness, their very survival.

Was there an answer in the Viking way? Might the unforgivable sin be one God could at least understand? But what if He did not? Perhaps she would even be forbidden to come back to the circle to dance. She could not bear to face eternity without that.

She sighed and renewed her climb. The rock face steepened, becoming nearly vertical, but she knew the way. Many times, even since losing most of her sight, she had come here. Soon, at the very top, the plateau was as level as the ground near the sea shore. She picked her way to the edge of the bluff, easily negotiating its deep cracks, and stopped at its edge, overlooking the stream that fed the falls, and the deep, clear pool it made.

The sun warmed her hair, while an airy breeze cooled her face. The curly red strands that blew before her eyes were close enough for her to see the brilliant rainbow colors of sunset and gold that hid in its strands. She had forgotten how the sun could do that.

Years ago, she would have been awed by the view of dark, sparkling water, and its memory still made her heart beat faster. Now it looked like the fluff of a dark ewe's newly sheared wool. Soft, springy. Like the wonderful down blanket Egil described.

She could fall, fall, fall, and not know the danger until it was too late.

Nay, she knew the rocks were there.

Strange, that for so many years she had just wanted to die. Only the love for Liam and Arienh had kept her from this. Now, she wanted so much to live. She wanted...

She wanted Egil. She wanted what she could never have, could never take. How had he become so dear to her?

Nay, that was no surprise.

Even at a fair distance, now, she could recognize him by his shape and the way his blurred image moved, and by the red slash
 
of the leather sling for his sword. But not until she was close enough to actually touch him did his blue eyes become beautifully distinguishable.