“Nothing the like.” Grim looked at him for a long moment, his gray eyes sharp. “Archie MacNab’s business took me to Ireland. I’ll be returning to Duncreag after I’ve spent a few days at Nought.”
“I see.” Alasdair still didn’t trust him.
Angus, Ewan, and the rest of Alasdair’s men exchanged glances, looking equally doubtful.
It was Ewan who spoke. “You saw no sign of an encampment below the cliffs?”
Grim shook his head. “If I had, I’d no’ be here. I’d have made haste to Nought to warn my chief of trespassers. When you arrived” – he spread his hands – “I was enjoying the view, see you?” His words didn’t ring quite true. “It’s no’ oft that we of Nought can gaze upon the sea.
“You’d do best to savor it as well.” He stepped back, adjusted the wolf pelt slung about his shoulders. “Your own Blackshore cannae offer such magnificence.”
The taunt spoken, he turned and strode away, not looking left or right at the gathered MacDonalds. In a blink, he was gone, disappearing down the same goat track Alasdair and his men had climbed to reach the promontory.
“Thon’s a great hairy bastard.” Angus stared after him, glaring.
Ewan shrugged. “He saved us from having to creep over to the cliff edge.”
“No’ so fast.” Alasdair thrust out an arm, catching Ewan by the elbow when he made to hurry back to their horses. “I’ll still be having a look.”
“You’re mad.” Ewan jerked free, tossed a glance at the jumbled rocks everywhere, the dark-shadowed crevices and the tangle of stony tree roots. “Only a fool would go any closer to thon edge.”
Secretly, Alasdair agreed.
But the tight bands of ill ease clamped so fiercely about his chest had little to do with the risk of tumbling off a cliff. They did concern his suspicion that Kendrew was using the Dreagan’s Claw cove to hide hired longships and their crews. The alternative…
That the Norse ships brought a new suitor for Marjory was even more troubling.
Worse, the nagging sense she was in danger.
Alasdair frowned, rubbed the back of his neck. He could feel menace in the air, strong as the long, cold wind blowing in from the sea.
“One look” – he reached for Ewan, gripping his elbows – “and we’ll be away.”
“I dinnae like it.”
“Nor do I, but-”
“Smoke! Look there.” One of the men ran over to them, pointing at the cliff edge. “Threads of smoke, as if from a guttered fire.”
Alasdair and Ewan turned, following the man’s outstretched arm.
Alasdair saw nothing.
Ewan’s shrug said he didn’t either.
“That’s sea mist, Farlan.” Alasdair was sure his kinsman had seen a coil of the ever-drifting mist that hung about this coast. Or perhaps a large breaker had crashed against the rocks, sending up a plume of spray.
The like happened. Blackshore’s cliffs were aye fanned by seafoam.
“Nae, it was smoke.” Farlan shook his head, vigorously. “I saw it plain as day. The MacDonald hasn’t been born who can’t tell the difference between smoke rising from a doused fire and sea haar. As for sea spray…” Farlan spat, showing his disdain for the suggestion that he wouldn’t recognize such a commonplace sight.
Alasdair gripped his chin, knowing that was true.
When he started to say so, Farlan shouted again. “There it is!” He leapt up on one of the boulders, pointing. “It’s bigger now. A great swirl from a smoking campfire, I say you.”
Alasdair and Ewan looked, both men searching the long rocky rim of the drop-off.
Nothing stirred there except screaming seabirds.
Even the mist had been blown away by the strong, gusting wind.
“There’s naught there, Farlan.” Alasdair regretted the look his denial put on his kinsman’s face.
“I ken what I saw.” Farlan swelled his chest, thrust his jaw. “There be a fire down there. Leastways, there was one. Taking a Mackintosh’s word o’er mine won’t change what is. I have good eyes, I do.”
“That I know.” Alasdair did.
Farlan could spy a ship on the horizon before the sail crested the earth’s rim.
Nor was he given to falsehoods.
Alasdair lifted a hand to his brow, looking more closely. He still saw only seabirds. He turned to Ewan, also known for his keen eyesight.
“And you?” Alsadair challenged his cousin.
Ewan hesitated, then sent an apologetic look at Farlan. “I saw naught that minded me of smoke.”
“Then you both have your eyes turned backwards.” Farlan wheeled about and stalked to the horses, muttering as he went.
Alasdair again glanced at the maze of rock, stony tree roots, and crevices that stretched between where he stood and the promontory’s drop-off. Swirling mist suddenly blew in from nowhere, making it difficult to choose a safe path to the cliff’s edge.
The chill that swept his spine told him it was an uncanny mist.
Not that he wanted to accept the possibility.
He did regret announcing he’d peer down into the Dreagan’s Claw. Doing so now might mean his end and he’d much prefer to finish his life on someone’s sword blade. Falling off a cliff was as shameful as dying in one’s bed.
Yet Grim had scaled the rock-face and strode about the promontory’s uneven ground without batting an eye.
That he’d done so left Alasdair no choice but to do the same.
He couldn’t return to the comforts of his hearth fire at Blackshore only to have his men complain that their chief refused to go where a Mackintosh had trod with such ease.
So he straightened and threw back his plaid. “I’ll have a look o’er the edge, Farlan,” he called to his sullen-faced kinsman.
Farlan nodded once, some of the annoyance slipping from his face.
“I’ll go with you.” Ewan started forward, but Alasdair waved him back.
“Nae, all of you wait here.” Alasdair was already striding purposely through the whirling mist, taking a path right over a tangled growth of fossilized roots. Carefully picking his way, as would’ve been more prudent, was out of the question. “I’ll return anon.”
But when he reached the cliff edge and lowered himself to his knees, peering down into the narrow inlet, the first thing he saw was a great black-cloaked warrior staring up at him. Tall, and with a dark piercing gaze that held his own, the man wore polished mail and had a neatly trimmed black beard, showing he wasn’t a Viking.
He didn’t look friendly.
He clasped a long spear, its end resting against a low mound of rocks. A sword hung at his side, while his plumed helm marked him as a lord.
Alasdair’s blood chilled as he looked down at the man whose great black cloak billowed in the wind. Most astonishing, the warrior glowed. He shone like a ray of sun against the gloom of the cliffs.
His stance proved him a proud man. The kind of fighter worth a hundred men in battle.
Alasdair felt his eyes rounding, his jaw slip.
By all the fireside tales he’d heard, the warrior fit the description of Drangar the Strong.
Yet Drangar didn’t exist.
And neither did the warlord on the inlet’s tiny strand. Alasdair blinked and the man was gone, a swirl of sea mist in his place.
That, and a faint smear of black across the rocks nearest the water.
Edging closer to the drop-off, Alasdair held fast to the sturdiest rock of the same outcrop where Grim had knelt. He leaned forward, peering at the inky stain.
The tide was out, revealing wet-glistening shingle and a dark ribbon of seaweed that marked the waterline. Traces of black remained, looking suspiciously like a trail left by a boat that had been dragged ashore.
Not a Norse dragonship, but a small coracle.
The kind of lightweight, skin-sided craft carried by larger ships so their crews could go ashore in inhospitable waters, places like the tight, rock-strewn inlet known as the Dreagan�
��s Claw.
And in this instance, the coracle appeared to have carried a coat of pitch on its stretched-hide hull. If such a cockleshell had been employed, and Alasdair believed that was so.
Sure of it, he leapt to his feet. “Dinnae come after me,” he called to his men. “I’ve spotted something on the rocks.”
Then he nipped around the outcrop and over the cliff edge, taking the barely discernible path down to the strand before anyone could follow.
He went faster than was wise. But if he slowed his feet, he’d think too hard on the recklessness of chasing down such a steep, slippery track.
Sometimes a man had to act first and think later.
This was such a time.
His instincts proved right when, upon reaching the strand, the smear of black along the tideline looked even more like pitch than from above.
Certain it was, he headed for the largest smear, leaping from rock to rock to get there. His suspicions were confirmed as soon as he dropped to one knee beside a tide pool and trailed his hand along the dark-stained shingle. His fingers came away black.
“Damnation.” He stood, surveying the narrow strand. Nothing stirred here now. All was still save the slapping of the sea on rock, the freshening wind. For sure, no ghost haunted this bleak inlet. He’d mistaken the tarry smears for the warlord’s black cloak.
He hadn’t seen Drangar.
Besides, even if his much-sung ancestor existed, he had no reason to visit Nought’s Dreagan’s Claw.
Living men who wished to remain hidden, their business unknown, were another matter.
There could be no doubt that at least two pitch-coated coracles had been dragged ashore here. And that knowledge churned in Alasdair’s gut. A gnawing ill ease that made him go cold inside.
Again, his mind wandered to Marjory, so he lifted a hand to his brow, turning his gaze on the open sea beyond the cove’s rock-strewn opening. Long lines of rollers, huge and white-crested, stretched as far as he could see. Nowhere did he glimpse a sail. There wasn’t even a fishing boat anywhere near Nought’s bleak and jagged bit of coast.
And no wonder.
The seas here were hostile, the currents strong and deadly.
Still…
He shook his head, lips pressed together. He narrowed his eyes, staring at the horizon as if by sheer will alone he could peer beyond its edge.
See the evil he was sure lurked there.
Black-hearted men who’d tread this rocky skirt of beach, up to no good, he was certain.
Wishing he knew who they were, he turned away, eager to scramble back up the cliff path. Once at Blackshore, he and his men would decide what to do. Starting forward, he cast one last look at the tarry stains on the rocks. They were nearly washed away now.
Perhaps he was mistaken…
He knew he wasn’t.
As if to prove it, the wind changed, swinging round to carry a trace of smoke past his nose.
Old smoke, stale and faint, but notable enough to stop him in his tracks.
It was then he remembered the low mound of rocks where the bogle-he-hadn’t-really-seen had jammed his spear butt against the ground. There, where the pitch stain was the largest, letting him imagine that the smears were Drangar the Strong’s billowing black cloak.
Except Drangar didn’t exist, and neither did his long, dark mantle.
But there was a slight heap of stones.
And the rise appeared manmade, put together by someone’s hand and not nature.
“Damnation,” Alasdair muttered again, retracing his steps to reach the mound.
Once there, he knelt on the cold, wet shingle and tossed aside the rocks. They’d covered a doused campfire, the charred wood and ash still damp. Frowning, he thrust his fingers into the sticky mess, not surprised when fresh, inky soot clung to them.
Standing, he crossed to a tidal pool to wash the smeary ash from his hand. As he did, a whirl of images flew across his mind. Clear as day, he saw Marjory claimed by a savage Viking lord, the man’s bearded mouth plundering hers, his hands ripping the gown from her, his ship carrying her away to his distant northern lands.
Just as ominous, if not as personal, he caught a flash of Kendrew pouring silver coins into the outstretched hands of a greed-driven shipmaster, the lout’s men crowding round, their eyes alight as they silently counted their newfound riches.
“No’ so long as I breathe,” Alasdair snarled, looking about the strand once more. A muscle jumped in his jaw, hot anger beating inside him. He put his hand on Mist-Chaser’s hilt, the day now edged in red.
His suspicions were confirmed.
He just hoped that his concern for Marjory proved less valid. If such a fate awaited her, whatever he did would result in disaster.
For do something he would.
There’d be hell to pay if harm came to her.
This day, he and his men hadn’t required the long spears they’d brought along to the Dreagan’s Claw. But in his mind’s eye, he could see those killing shafts in his men’s hands, the steel-tipped heads dripping blood.
The image was as real as the cold mist damping his face, the rhythmic wash of the sea against the stony ground beneath his feet.
He could almost smell death in the air.
He knew such a day was coming.
Soon, the blow would fall. A tide of men bearing swords, spears, and axes would flood his beloved glen. The hot, red glow of raid fires would stain the sky, while thick, acrid smoke choked the life from those who didn’t perish beneath the bite of steel.
Alasdair rubbed his mouth with the back of his hand, the thought unbearable.
Most damning of all, if events unfolded as he suspected, he’d be responsible.
As if the fates agreed, the voices of strangers came from the mist curling round Alasdair’s home on its rocky islet in the southernmost corner of the glen. Low and guarded, the grumbles would’ve been the men’s death knells if Alasdair had heard them. Truth be told, fury would’ve boiled the blood of any warrior of the glen.
But the speakers apparently didn’t know the dark sea winds of Blackshore drifted far. Or that even mist sometimes had ears. They only knew their greed. And the burning lust that some men can’t control…
“I could’ve done with some fine, womanly heat.” Troll, a huge, one-eyed Norseman groused as he pulled the oars of a small, black-sided coracle. His war-scarred face darkened as he cast a look over his shoulder to where the waters of Loch Moidart broke on the curving strand at the far end of Blackshore Castle’s causeway.
The woman he’d spotted at the loch’s edge had slipped into the shadows.
He frowned, annoyed that his companion, Bors, hadn’t been willing to beach the coracle. “We could’ve had her and been away before she could even scream.”
Bors didn’t answer him.
Troll didn’t care. He did peer across the loch again, trying to see where the woman had gone.
It’d been too long since he’d aired the skirts of such a beauty.
Even through the mist, he’d recognized her worth.
She’d practically glowed.
Wanting her badly, he turned back to the other man in the coracle. Bors puzzled him. Big, brutish, and just hot-blooded as he was, Bors wasn’t a man to pass on the chance of a good tumble.
Yet he had, arguing that Troll’s goings-on about the woman would be heard by the guardsmen on Blackshore’s battlements. He didn’t want to alert them of their presence. Troll tamped down a bark of laughter.
As if the MacDonald guards had such sharp ears.
Morelike, Bors was worried about angering their leader, Ivar Ironstorm.
Ivar frowned on dallying unless he’d given his men leave to enjoy such pleasures. Most times he concerned him only with gaining land and gold. Slaves he could trade or sell. Women, when they brought an advantage.
“We could’ve caught her, there on the shore.” Troll gripped the oars tighter, his arm muscles bulging. “We should turn back, look for her.”
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Bors snorted. “Your good eye is going as blind as the missing one.” Leaning forward, he fixed Troll with a narrow-eyed stare. “There was no woman on that strand.”
“There was. And she was a beauty.” Troll dropped the oars for a moment, sketching a shapely form in the air. “Long black hair and fine features, smooth creamy skin, white as fallen snow. Her gown clung to her, a slip of silvery-blue. And she wore a fine gray cloak I wouldn’t have minded taking back to Norway for my mother. She was a lady, no doubt.” He licked his lips, his grip on the oars now white-knuckled. “Just think how sweet her-”
“I’m thinking Ironstorm will thrash you to bits when he hears you were ogling mist and calling it a woman. Our task was to learn the strength of Blackshore’s walls.” Bors snarled the words, rowing with all might now, as they swept round the headland known as Drangar Point and entered deeper, rough-tided water.
Bors grimaced when a large fan of sea spray blew across the little boat, drenching them. “Your good eye should’ve been searching for weak spots in the walling, nothing else. If all goes as planned, we’ll add to our gains by filling our holds with Blackshore amber. Slaves to sell in Dublin…” He dragged a quick arm across his brow, dashing the sea water from his eyes. “Mist wenches won’t bring a coin.”
“She was there, sure as you’re an ugly bastard. Even Ironstorm would’ve wanted her. He likes breaking ladies.” Leaning forward, Troll’s tone went conspiratorial. “Word is MacDonald women are fiery. And” – he licked his lips – “the taste of them headier than mead.”
“You err again.” Bors scowled at him. “Ivar has only one woman on his mind these days and she isn’t a MacDonald.”
“The Mackintosh maid isn’t his yet.” Troll pulled hard on the oars, straining.
“She will be.” Bors grunted they fought the drag of the current.
“And then we’ll all enjoy her.” Troll increased his own oar-work, the two of them turning the tiny craft toward the fierce-prowed dragonship they could just make out through the mist. Half-hidden behind a craggy islet a good way offshore, only someone who knew where to look would’ve seen the craft’s black-painted hull and high, single mast, its large, square-shaped sail dark as night. “We’ll treat her to the honor of our prowess before-”
Seduction of a Highland Warrior (Highland Warriors Book 4) Page 18
