“Here,” she whispered, reaching out in the dimness of the corridor and taking his hand. “This way.” He kept close to her, his heart thumping in his breast, as she brought them to a low door and paused, fumbling with the latch.
“That’s got it,” she said after a moment, and the door swung open to show a little patch of ground, glimmering wet in the fitful moonlight.
“The rain’s stopped!” he said in surprise. It was true. As suddenly as it had begun, the rain had eased and then ceased, and the heavy clouds which had obscured the light of the new moon were tattering in a rising wind. Silver light fell on the little grassy lawn before them. Thorvald shivered.
“I’ve stashed our supplies out here. Come on! We’ve made it this far, but...”
“Well, what’s all this then?” A harsh voice broke loudly on her whisper as a man stood in the moonlight, a drawn blade glittering in his hand.
“Look here, Allan!” he called, “look what’s walked intae our hands!”
Anne and Thorvald glanced around quickly, but too late. From both sides, dark figures appeared from the shadows, two leaping for Anne and gripping her arms before she had a chance to draw her sword, a third lunged at Thorvald, with hands outstretched. But Thorvald was too quick for him. He dropped and rolled, a manoeuvre he had been taught long ago by the Bishop’s men who had come to Skylness to train. Flinging himself to his feet, he weaved to one side, leaping toward the chopping block where he could see the heavy wood-splitting axe protruding from the chopping block where Anne had left it earlier that day.
He grabbed at it, yanking it from the block. It came suddenly, awkwardly, and he stumbled against the pile of split logs under the lean-to.
“Thorvald!” he heard Anne shout, and turned just in time to see one of the men leaping toward him, a heavy cudgel in one hand raised to strike a crushing blow! Unable to roll out of the way, he settled for raising his knees and kicking at the man as he fell upon him. Thorvald felt the cudgel crash into his arm, and the flash of pain was intense, but the blow was not well-aimed and lacked force. He used the time he had bought himself, grabbing a block of firewood and flinging in hard at the man’s face. There was a loud crack as the wood found its mark, and his attacker stumbled back another step, clutching at his face. Thorvald rose, picked up the axe and planted his feet firmly on the ground before raising the axe.
He met the man’s eyes and hesitated.
“Do it, Thorvald, for God’s sake!” her voice was panicked as she saw him question what he was about to do. He swung the axe – but not to kill. He used the weight of the axe head to drive the wooden shaft into the man’s legs, knocking him over. Then he leapt toward Anne.
One of her captors was struggling with his own sword, trying to get it loose from its sheath, but not managing to. Thorvald dropped the axe and bulled into the three of them at full speed, the force knocking them all down into a heap. Quick as a snake, Anne was out of their arms, and her sword drawn. She darted it toward the man with his blade drawn, but he dropped it, hands in the air, and fell to his knees. The man Thorvald had fought lay on the ground, moaning and holding his bloody face. The third man decided his chances were not good enough. Anne’s reputation as a fighter was fearsome. He fell on his knees, hands in the air.
“Mercy!” he cried.
“Silence,” Anne spat, but she would not kill an unarmed, kneeling man. “Thorvald, there’s rope in the lean-to, hanging on a nail from the wall. Bring it and bind these two. Come on.”
He did as he was told, moving quickly and silently, and using the knot-tying skills he had developed as a fisherman to good effect. Very little time had passed when he stood beside Anne again, looking down on their three attackers with satisfaction, as they lay bound and gagged under the awning of the woodpile. Anne moved over and retrieved the two packs she had stowed there, giving one to Thorvald and hitching the second onto her own back. Thorvald had retrieved the sword, belt, and sheath from the armed man, and – after driving a new hole into the leather with his small boot-knife to make the belt fit him – had secured the ugly, functional sword to his own hip.
“We’re lucky only one of them was properly armed,” he commented.
“That we are,” she agreed. The eyes of the securely trussed men followed the pair as they moved around the grassy space.
“What now?”
“I’ll show ye. Look here.”
She retook his hand, and he found the warmth of her skin against his calming and comforting. Anne led him toward the cliff wall, which soared up beside the castle. In the shadows, her hand groped in the darkness until she found a rope. Her eyes flashed with satisfaction as she placed it in his hand.
“I put it here earlier. It’s fixed tae a tree up above. Ye first?”
“Ye have planned this out, haven’t ye?”
“Aye, though I didn’t count on meeting them.” She jerked her head back at the three prisoners. “Come on, away on up. Hold still when ye get over the top and wait for me.”
Thorvald gripped the rope and began to climb. It was higher than he had thought. Halfway up, he made the mistake of glancing down. The sea stretched away behind him, dizzyingly visible from this high vantage point. The lawn where Anne waited seemed terrifyingly small and far away. He glanced up, and the rearing cliff face seemed to sway above him. The world swung suddenly, and he hung onto the rope and closed his eyes until it stopped. Deep breaths. He opened his eyes again, focussing on his hands and the rockface in front of him. The rope was thick, rough, knotted – no problem to keep a hold of. No problem. Hand over hand, he began to climb again.
After what seemed an interminably long time, Thorvald, at last, found himself lying still on the grass at the sheer knife-edged of the clifftop. In the moonlight, he could see the dark land stretching away before him, a rugged, rocky, cliff-edge, coastal highland landscape, bleak and forbidding in the cold night. Thorvald shivered. He looked the other way, to where the double towers of Neil Gow-Sinclair’s castle dominated the skyline, glaring moodily out to sea. In a high window, even at this distance, he could see a flicker of warm light. His fire was still burning behind the ill-fitting shutters in his old cell. He owed Anne his freedom.
Smiling in the dark, Thorvald crawled to the cliff edge and looked down. Anne was a small shadow on the cliff below him, making steady progress up the rope. She was not hurrying, nor was she moving slowly – quick yet relaxed, she moved toward him without glancing up. He pulled his head away from the edge to give her space as she gained the top and pulled herself the last few feet onto the grass, where she rolled over onto her back and lay there, panting.
After a moment, she made a relieved sound and turned her head on the grass to look at him.
“Well, that’s some climb!” she said breathlessly. “I never did like heights. And ye, Thorvald, are ye alright? I saw ye look down halfway through – ye won’t make that mistake again, eh?”
He laughed, shakily, his own breathing hardly steadier than hers.
As they lay there, they heard sudden voices from below. The laughter died on their lips as they rushed to peer back down onto the grassy place below.
“One of them must have got free somehow!” Anne slapped her palm to the ground in her frustration.
Thorvald looked where she was pointing. Far below, he could see small figures on the grass. One was pointing up the cliff face, and Thorvald could hear distant shouting, mixed with the wind in his ears and the far-off thunder of the waves at the bottom of the cliff. As he watched, one of the men rushed back in through the door, while a third struggled to free himself of the entangling ropes. A man looking up at them shook his fist before running back inside the castle.
“Oh, that’s done it,” said Anne, her face a picture of frustration and fear. Thorvald could see the clifftop where they sat was not far from the cleft in the hills that led to the main entrance of the castle.
“I had counted on having at least a few hours tae put some distance between ourselves and the cas
tle before our escape was discovered. Now they will be out in force as soon as they can wake the captain and make him understand what has happened.”
She got up onto her knees, hitching her pack up onto her back and reaching out toward him.
“Can ye run, Thorvald?”
“Aye, the hunt is up. I can run.”
They fled.
Chapter Sixteen
They could not run forever, and after an hour, they began to flag under the weight of their gear. Anne seemed determined to keep pushing herself on, but Thorvald called out to her, and she pulled up short. “Hold on a minute. We cannot keep going like this. Let us rest a moment and take stock, eh?”
She did not answer, but turned, leaning on her knees and breathing deeply, her head hanging down. After a moment, she straightened, looking up at Thorvald and nodding.
“Ye are right,” she panted. “They will have wakened the captain by now, and will be on our trail, but hopefully we will not be too easy tae trace. They will be on foot, for they have few horses, and we are fleeter than they. Come, let us drink a little at least.”
She flopped down against a pine tree and hauled a waterskin from her pack. After drinking deeply, she held it out to Thorvald, and he took it gratefully.
“Do ye know where we are?”
She shook her head. “Do ye?” she asked in return.
“I’ve never been in this land,” he protested. “I thought ye....”
“No,” she said shortly. “We have been here for a few years, but in that time we’ve either kept tae the castle or gone out on the ship. I’ve not explored the lands around here on foot at all. Look up, though.”
She pointed, and he saw what she was looking at: the north star, glimmering in the cold night sky.
“So, we are heading west, and that seems fine tae me. I’m not sure, but I think that the castle is a little east of Orkney and if we head west we should eventually come tae a town, or a road, or... something. I’ve not thought that far ahead yet.”
“Neither have I,” he realised out loud. “Where shall we go?”
“I’ll tell you what,” said Anne, getting to her feet and stowing her water bottle safely away. “For now, let’s just settle for going west, and sticking tae these woodland belts, and let’s allow the future tae take care of itself.”
* * *
Sir Magnus Bain pressed the big draught horse hard along the wet road in the pouring rain. It was madness to ride like this in the darkness, and he was under no illusions about the riskiness of a man his size in full armour riding an inexperienced horse, fast, along a dark, wet road at night. But hatred drove him, a deep, burning hatred nestled like a serpent inside his great chest, fed continuously through the years by his memories and brooding. Dark thoughts flitted across his mind as he rode, peering through the blackness to try to catch sight of the road.
The knowledge that the priest had come ahead of him stabbed at his consciousness. Oh yes, he had recognised the description – a nervous man, always toying with a silver chain around his neck, and asking fearfully for news of a huge, red-bearded man? Yes, Hallam, he thought, I know you.
It was primarily the knowledge that the damned priest was ahead of him that drove him to ride his horse with such reckless haste. That priest had a mind of his own, Magnus knew, and he simply must get to the boy first. The boy... Magnus had only seen him once, and that was from a distance. A nondescript lad, really. Good-looking, of course, as all those of the true Norse blood tended to be, especially when they were young. Such was not so with Sir Magnus. He felt his age creeping up on him like another horseman close to his heels in the darkness. He could almost hear its hoofbeats. The weight of the of gold at his belt was a heavy, corrupt presence.
He had been riding for an hour or more when the rain began to ease up and the clouds to break, revealing the sharply etched new moon in the crystal-clear sky. Magnus relented, slowing the horse to a walk, and looked up at the stars to try and get his bearings. As the clouds parted, the sky became thick with stars, a great band of them thickening and stretching from horizon to horizon, and away toward Orkney, his home, with the green and yellow flicker of the Northern Lights.
Magnus tipped his head up to look at them, but a sudden cough caught in his throat and took him before he could regain control. By the time the fit was over, he was on his knees beside the horse, tears streaming from his malevolent eyes, his throat raw with retching. His breath whistled as he caught it and set back on his haunches, trying to get a hold on himself; his head aching with the pressure of coughing.
Shakily, he pulled a waterskin from his pack and drank sparingly before climbing back to his feet. The horse stood a little way off, regarding him warily. Like the clouds in the sky, his anger had dispersed and blown away, leaving reason to shine through. The priest had come through the town that afternoon, but it was now night. Hallam would have got there first – assuming, of course, that he was on the same mission as Magnus.
“I assume so,” he said out loud to the horse as he reeled him in. “I must assume so. Damn these priests. I will have him. I must.”
He mounted again, and rode slowly along the empty road, now bright and still, weaving away under the moonlight.
* * *
Morning caught Anne and Thorvald by the side of the road, forging ahead together at a rapid trot, the wet, leafless trees blowing in the wind around them, breaking morn illuminating the stark northern coastland with a bleak luminescence. There had been no sign of pursuit until, at last, as the cold winter sun rose over the rough hills in the east, they heard the sound of hoofbeats on the road.
“What do we do?” Thorvald looked terrified. “There’s nowhere to hide!”
Anne glanced around in desperation, before pointing upward.
“The trees, it’s our only hope. We must climb up into one of the trees. Come on!”
Together they dashed toward the tallest of the pine trees which swayed in the lee of the hill beside the road. Thorvald took a leap and caught at a low-hanging branch, swinging himself up into the canopy. He turned and reached a hand down to Anne.
“Jump up!” he called “Quickly!”
With a lunge, Anne caught at his hand while scrabbling at the trunk with her knees and feet. He hauled her up until her arm was safely over a branch.
“Go on up,” she panted. “As high as ye can! The needles will shield ye from view.”
He followed her advice, and she followed his path as he made his way up into the old tree, where the limbs were sheltered not only from view but also from the worst of the wind by a thick outer canopy of richly scented needles. Reaching a great cleft where a huge branch met the main trunk, they huddled close together, gazing down onto the road. The sound of hoofbeats was getting closer.
“That does not sound like the pursuit of my uncle’s party,” whispered Anne, shivering a little, “and unless I’m quite out of my reckoning, it’s coming from the wrong direction.”
Her shivering turned to the chattering of teeth, and Thorvald reached out and put an arm around her. Grateful for his warmth, she snuggled closer to him, feeling the comfort of his strong arm and body.
“Look,” he hissed, and she leaned out a little to get a better view of the road.
She had been right. It was not her uncle’s party, but still, she was glad they had sought the safety of the trees. Along the road, riding at a gentle walk, came the biggest man either of them had ever seen. He was clad in armour of chainmail and plate, like a warrior from a bygone era, his fiery red beard divided into three great plaits as it sat on his figured steel breastplate. His beard was massive, but his hair was shorn very close, giving him an oddly monastic look. But there was nothing spiritual in the fierce little eyes that peered out from the folds of the tremendous puffy face, swinging from side to side like a snake seeking its prey. The wind made a loud hissing in the branches, swaying them gently and stirring the needles, but as they watched, the wind dropped. In the silence that followed, they could clear
ly hear the enormous warrior muttering to himself, unintelligible, angry words that floated up to their ears in the momentary silence. The wind picked up again almost immediately. They had been unable to hear what the man was saying, but the impression it left on both of them was deeply unpleasant.
Anne felt Thorvald take a breath as if to speak, but she gripped his hand, hard, and he kept quiet. Transfixed by the apparition, they sat as still as stone, barely daring to breathe, until it had passed. As the last slow clop of the horse’s hooves faded into the distance, Thorvald let out a long, pent-up breath.
“Did ye ever see anything like that before?” he asked quietly.
“Never,” Anne shook her head, “and I’ll be quite content if I never do again. I think we should get off the road for a bit. My uncle will follow it, no doubt, and I don’t want to meet that fellow coming back this way. I wonder where he could be going? My uncle’s castle is the only place this road leads to.”
Fighting For A Highland Lass (Defenders 0f The Highlands Book 3) Page 11
