Maire (43 page)

Deirdre stared boldly up from the ship’s hold at the Saxon warrior who had captured the
Mell.
Blood still dripping from the long, single-edged knife hanging at his lean girded waist, he eased down to one knee and peered into the hold.

Her breath seized at the clash of their gazes, blue fire against a steel gray as hard as the sword she concealed in her robe. No doubt his heart, if he had one at all, was just as cold.

She lifted her chin. “Will you stand there gaping like a village idiot, or will you help us out of this stink hole?”

His surprise transformed into a smile. “By all means, milady,” he said, reaching down to help her, “do come up where my men and I might have a look at you.”

He spoke the Latin of a scholar, not a brigand.

“You’ve nothing to fear from me…” He hesitated upon recognizing the clerical robe Deirdre had donned to hide her identity as well as her weapon. “Sister.” Clearly, he was not convinced.

The sword strapped to her leg hampered her progress up the ladder, but that was the least of her concerns at the moment. She felt as if the stranger looked not just into her eyes, but into her very soul. She lowered her eyes hastily but could not resist challenging his shallow reassurance.

“Is that what you said before you slaughtered Erin’s sisters in God’s own house?”

His cordial demeanor darkening, the Saxon growled like thunder’s own god. “Neither I, Alric of Galtstead, nor my men make war upon women anywhere.”

As Deirdre searched her memory for either the name or the place, he tilted her face so that she could not avoid his penetrating look. “Women are for far more… pleasurable activities than war.”

A rush of heat singed Deirdre’s neck on its way to her face. How dare he! She was a princess, her bloodline traceable to the first kings of Ireland. He was nothing but a bloodthirsty swine. Deirdre raised her hand to slap Alric, but he seized her wrist just before it made contact with his gold-stubbled jaw.

“I see your study in Christian humility has been a waste of time.”

“No more wasteful than praying for your black soul.”

One of the Saxon’s eyebrows shot up.

Father Scanlan rushed to Deirdre’s defense. “My colleague is new to the order. She only wears the mean garb of our church community because—”

“I clumsily dropped my belongings overboard,” Deirdre finished, sparing the priest further involvement in her charade.

“Grace is sorely lacking among your more obvious charms,” her captor conceded with a chuckle. “You took to yon ladder like a fool on stilts.”

“Better an affliction of the limb than of the mind.”

Far from stung by her sarcasm, the oaf seemed to be enjoying it. His mercurial gaze was an unsettling study of contrasts—slow, yet quick; warm, then cool; amused, then something that made Deirdre shiver involuntarily, if such intense heat could make one shiver.

At length, he made an announcement in his native language, banishing the heat she felt as she recognized two of his heathen words.

“Slave market?” Deirdre’s challenge clearly took her captors aback. Her smile smacked of a satisfaction she was far from feeling. “There are some words in your sore language well-known in my country. Your reputation precedes you.”

“It’s a shame it did not precede us on this ship.” The Saxon recovered with an unsettling gravity. “Your crew wouldn’t surrender until they’d spent their last breath.”

“Wouldn’t you prefer death’s freedom to a life of slavery?”

“Life offers the chance to escape from slavery, Sister. There is no escape from the grave or urn for free man or slave.”

“There’s none for your heathen likes anywhere.” Deirdre spat out her contempt. Anger was the only mainstay left her, for her bravado bled away by the heartbeat.

The blond giant threw back his head and laughed. “If I hope to fetch any price for you, I shall have to parade you with that tongue of yours bound securely. No man in his right mind would expose himself to its sharpness…unless he cut it out. Now there’s an idea.”

Alric scratched his chin thoughtfully and, for one terrifying moment, his other hand moved toward the hilt of the blade at his waist. Only the faintest twitch at the corner of his mouth gave Deirdre a whit of reassurance—that and the way the sunlight cavorted in his gaze.

She ventured a breath of relief, just a brief one, for with the likes of Alric of Galtstead, it was sure to be short lived.

Now let me take you to another place and time, where the sound of the pipes haunts the mist and the land itself is so green, you can smell the very color. While the smoke of barbarian fires plunges Europe into the Dark Ages, Ireland’s Christian priests and their bardic counterparts work hand in hand to build fires of faith, preserving and spreading knowledge in their light. I give you my second Gleannmara story of Kieran, the mercenary king whose faith has fallen more on his sword than on God, and of the gentle Riona, the lady he’s sworn a blood oath to protect. So sit back and savor each word as a tempting morsel of a grand feast for the heart, mind, and soul.

With a click of the tongue, Kieran signaled his warhorse to the race. The horse plunged ahead with a mighty leap that would have unseated any but the most skilled equestrian. This was more like it. Give him the fingers of the wind through his hair to soothe his tortured mind. Give him the command of a powerful horse that responds at the slightest pressure of his knees over the hopes that a fickle God might grace him with favor. Young and naive, Kieran had given God a chance once, and for all his earnest submission and belief, he’d watched his mother and father die of the plague that made him a king at twenty. His best friend Heber’s faith rewarded him as a corpse, run through with wounds, his life’s blood soaking a foreign soil.

Nay, Kieran swore silently, give him the sword song for victory today, not a chant of that reserved for the next life. Today was for the living. Tomorrow was for dreamers.

Kieran and his horse were waiting by the river when Bran and his smaller steed caught up with them.

“If you keep this up, Kieran, I’ll be looking for yet another mount before we reach Killmare,” Bran complained. “Mayhaps another friend as well.”

“Your horse is bred to these hills, sure of foot,” Kieran said, letting Bran’s latter remark slide. His companion would not.

“And you’re baptized in the church, though painfully short of faith.”

Kieran rolled his eyes. “So it’s Saint Bran now, is it?”

“Far from it, sir. But I don’t take kindly to others ridiculing Him. If you’ve no regard for the Father, then at least have regard for my right to revere Him.”

Kieran met Bran’s solemn gaze and nodded. Guilt warmed his face. Heber had a way of making him feel the same, with regard to his faith—or lack of it. It vexed Kieran how Heber had accepted the death of his father in battle and the resulting suicide of his mother as the will of a loving God. It was beyond him.

“You have my sincere apology, Bran, so long as you don’t start telling me how God’s my Father, too. I’ve said it before. A Father wouldn’t treat His son the way I’ve been treated.”

“Are you better than His own Son, who also prayed to be spared an unthinkable death, yet was denied?”

Kieran shook his head. “No, as far as I see it, He let down His own Son, too.”

“No, it was all part—” Bran broke off at the sharp look Kieran gave him.

Good. Heber hadn’t been as easily dissuaded as Bran when he’d felt the urge to preach God’s goodness.

“But if you keep on this track,” Bran continued, “you’ll make no headway with Riona.”

Riona. Back to the second of Heber’s last wishes. Kieran exhaled a long, weary breath.

“Riona will have no choice in the matter. I gave Heber my word as his friend in life and death.”

“It will take more than a promise to a friend to make Riona change her mind about you. She turned you down once when she had no reason.”

Kieran winced at the reminder. Was there anything harder to tolerate than a smug poet? The new king of Gleannmara needed to take a wife to provide heirs. Any lass in the kingdom and more would leap at the chance to become his bride, and Riona was not only the choice of his logic, but of his heart as well. No beauty before or since consumed his mind day and night. Yet he was reminded of her last words to him: I cannot give you my heart, dear brother, for it belongs to God.

Kieran’s mouth tightened, his teeth clenched, until the tide of anger, hurt, and humiliation from the past ebbed. “Aye, then she had no reason. But now, she has no choice.”

—Lori Copeland,
author of
The Island of Heavenly Daze

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