Before anyone could intervene, diminutive Sung Li, with a quick flick of the wrist, somehow brought Colin to his knees in the snow with his arm bent behind him. The clan gave a collective gasp.
Helena, furious at seeing her husband laid low by Miriel’s aged and irritating servant, targeted Miriel’s husband. She stepped forward with her dagger, pressing the point against Rand’s throat. “Call off your lackey, Miriel.”
Rand froze.
“How dare you,” Miriel bit out. “Besides, ’tis your husband’s own fault. He should know better than to—”
Helena fumed. “If your pompous minion would stop interfer—”
“Sung Li was only defending—”
“Sung Li needs to be taught a lesson in—”
“Hel! Miri! Enough!” Deirdre shouted. “We need to work together…and quickly.”
Still simmering with ire, Helena and Miriel nodded a reluctant truce. Helena lowered the blade from Rand’s neck. Sung Li released Colin, and Pagan helped his fallen friend to his feet.
Deirdre glanced up at the sky. It had been cloudless at dawn. But a storm was fast approaching from the east. If the lasses got caught in it…
She didn’t dare finish the terrifying thought. Fear only paralyzed a warrior. She had to do what she did best—take charge.
“We’ll cover the most ground if we search in small numbers,” she decided. “Archers, split up and take the north woods. Rauve, lead the men-at-arms and search the great glen to the south. Pagan, Colin, Rand, go west toward the loch. My sisters and I will head east. Lucy and Sung Li, gather the children and scour the keep for any sign of them. The rest of you, search all of the outbuildings—the mews, the smithy, the chapel.”
As everyone left to do her bidding, Deirdre’s sisters came to her side. Then she summoned all the Rivenloch children and hunkered down to speak to the oldest cousins.
“Gellir, Brand, Hew, Adam, I promise you we’ll find your sisters. But I need your help. Are you certain they said nothing this morn about where they were going?”
The four lads solemnly shook their heads.
Deirdre nodded, swallowing back disappointment. “I need you lads to search every nook and cranny of Rivenloch. Can you do that?”
They nodded.
“I’ll search the armory,” Gellir offered, his eyes gleaming.
“Good.”
“I’ll look in the buttery,” Brand said. “Maybe they got hungry.”
“Good idea.”
Hew chimed in, “What about the storeroom? The one where Da locked up Ma so she wouldn’t have to wed that horrible—”
“Aye!” Helena interrupted before her son could finish the lurid story.
Adam screwed up his nose. “What about the secret passageway where Ma and Da were playing Zhuōmí—”
“Nay!” Miriel barked, startling everyone. She blushed and quickly explained, “Your da and I…already searched there.”
Deirdre smirked. It seemed all three Warrior Maids of Rivenloch had been caught with their trews down—literally. And they needed to make things right before they’d ever let that happen again.
Helena quickly donned her armor and buckled on her sword. Miriel swirled her cloak over her exotic secreted weapons. Then the three of them struck out through the snow-frosted trees.
They traveled well into the woods, taking turns calling out their daughters’ names, to no avail. Finally, Deirdre found the courage to tell them the rest.
“Listen,” she confessed, “there’s more.”
“More?” Miriel and Helena replied in unison.
Deirdre nodded. “Laird Gellir is missing as well.”
“What?” Helena exploded. “Da too? Bloody hell!”
“Why didn’t you tell us?” asked Miriel.
“You know Da,” Deirdre said defensively. “He’s missing half the time, always wandering off.”
On days when his wits were addled, which were more and more often of late, Laird Gellir roamed the halls of Rivenloch. Deirdre honestly didn’t always know where he went. But without fail, he appeared in the great hall for supper every evening. Still, she felt guilty, not knowing precisely where he was.
“Most of the time he’s safe enough,” she added. “There are servants everywhere in the keep and guards posted around the castle wall.”
“The guards should know where he’s gone,” Miriel deduced.
“And maybe they saw our daughters leave,” Helena added.
Deirdre stopped in her tracks and shook her head. “With all the festivities of Christmas, I gave the guards a reprieve. I allowed them to attend last night’s feast and the mummer’s spectacle. Then Pagan and I…” Then she bit out a foul curse. “I should never have let my guard down. This is all my fault.”
Deirdre was prepared for her sisters’ fury. She deserved every bit of it.
What she was not prepared for was their understanding.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Miriel said. “You aren’t the only one to blame. Rand and I…well…” She blushed. “I wasn’t exactly…attentive to my children this morn.”
“Nor was I,” Helena added. “I’m certain the whole clan heard what transpired in the stable.”
“Besides,” Miriel said, “you can’t watch over every clan member every hour of the day.”
“I’m the Laird of Rivenloch, Miri,” Deirdre reminded her. “That’s my bloody duty.”
“Ballocks!” Helena scoffed. “Even Da didn’t do that. If he had, we’d never have had half the adventures we did.”
“That’s right,” Miriel agreed. “Remember how we used to sneak off to bathe in the loch?”
“Oh aye,” Helena said, smiling at the memory. Then she elbowed her little sister. “And your secret passage, Miri. I still can’t believe you used it all those years, right under Da’s nose.”
Miriel shrugged. “Remember the overgrown crofter’s cottage where we used to plan sieges?”
Helena arched a brow. “How could I forget? That’s where I held Colin hostage.” Then she gave Deirdre’s shoulder a reassuring squeeze. “I’m sure the lasses are fine.” Her smile wasn’t quite as certain as her words.
“That’s right,” Miriel agreed. “Knowing our daughters, that’s all they’ve done—gone off on some adventure.” Her bravery too seemed forced.
Deirdre looked back and forth between her sisters. They were obviously trying to make her feel less culpable. She loved them for it. She desperately hoped they were right.
But something else they’d said started a curious tingling at the back of her neck.
“The cottage.” Her heart skipped. “Do you suppose they could be there?”
Miriel nodded. “Maybe.”
Helen gave them a dubious frown. “Is it still standing?”
Deirdre shrugged and shook her head.
“Has your Hallie been there before?” Miriel asked Deirdre. “Could she have led them there?”
“I never showed it to her,” Deirdre said. “But she’s a curious lass. She may have found it on her own.”
Miriel furrowed her brows. “’Tis been years since my last visit. Do you remember how to get—”
“I do,” Helena said, charging past them. “Follow me.”
Their hopes buoyed, the sisters set out at a brisk pace to find their daughters.
A few wrong turns tested Helena’s temper.
The light onset of snowflakes made Miriel frown in concern at the sky.
Deirdre, unable to shake the feeling that this was all her fault, felt an ache start in her tightly clenched jaw.
Finally, they found the moldering hovel. It was much as they’d left it seven years ago. Nearly collapsed and covered with so many vines it was almost invisible. But even before Helena yelled out the lasses’ names, Deirdre could tell they weren’t inside.
Ivy had grown over the door. When Helena burst through it, tearing vines and shredding cobwebs, it made a grating screech of protest and sagged on its hinges.
For a mome
nt, they gazed in silence at the damningly empty interior. It was much as Deirdre remembered it. Dirt-floored. Stone-hearthed. Sparsely furnished with a bed and a rickety stool that seemed ready to splinter apart. A few rusty pots and pans.
“Curse the Fates,” Helena muttered.
Deirdre and Miriel sighed behind her. They’d been so sure they’d find the lasses here.
In the ensuing silence, Deirdre suddenly heard something she’d never heard before from Helena. A sniffle.
“Hel?”
Helena scowled at her own gathering tears. “Loki’s ballocks,” she cursed. “I’m so bloody mawkish when I’m breeding.”
Miriel gasped. “You’re breeding?”
“Aye. I meant to tell Colin right after we… But then…”
“But I’m breeding as well!” Miriel cried.
Helena squeaked, “What?”
“Impossible,” Deirdre informed them. “You can’t both be breeding.” They looked at her as if she were mad. “I’m breeding.”
“Nay!” Helena barked.
“Aye.”
At that revelation, the still air was stirred to life by cheers of congratulations. They exchanged teary-eyed smiles and sisterly hugs.
Gradually, however, their mirth subsided, and they sobered.
“I intended to give Pagan the happy news last night,” Deirdre said, “before we were…distracted.”
“I haven’t told Rand yet either,” Miriel said. “But what kind of news will it be if we’ve lost our daughters?”
They silenced as the unthinkable possibility descended upon them like a heavy shroud.
Deirdre steeled her jaw. She couldn’t let that happen. She couldn’t ruin the best Christmas gift of all—three new Rivenloch babes—by paying for it with their precious daughters’ lives. She would find the lasses.
Motioning her sisters out of the cottage, she wrenched the door shut again and clapped snow dust from her gloves.
“Look. We’ve raised our daughters to be independent, aye?”
Her sisters nodded.
“Then we shouldn’t be surprised when they exert that independence. We’ll find them. We just have to think like they do.”
“Like they do?” Miriel said.
“With hearts full of adventure and spirits full of courage,” Deirdre said, “like we used to be.”
Helena lifted a skeptical brow. “Used to be?”
Miriel snorted. “Deirdre, you may have engaged your husband in your bedchamber last night. But Hel and I are still trysting in secret tunnels and stacks of hay.”
Deirdre smiled at that. She didn’t need to tell her sisters, but there probably wasn’t a wild spot in Rivenloch where she and Pagan hadn’t knocked their sabatons together.
Helena sniffed and smeared the rogue tears from her cheeks. “So where to next?”
“Let’s try the burn,” Deirdre suggested. “Hallie knows to follow the current if she’s lost.”
A few tiny snowflakes began to filter down through the pine canopy as the maids hurried through the trees.
The silvery stream they sought wound through the wood, ultimately emptying into the double lake for which Rivenloch was named. If the young lasses were clever enough to follow it, they’d end up not far from the keep.
The sisters were only halfway to the burn when Miriel suddenly halted.
“Wait. Do you smell that?”
Deirdre and Helena sniffed the air. The scent was faint. “Fire.”
“That has to be them,” Helena breathed. She started to call out, “Jene—”
Miriel clapped a quick palm over Helena’s mouth. Helena frowned in irritation and would have burst free. But Deirdre held her hand up for silence.
Of the three sisters, Helena was the least cautious. She preferred to dive headfirst into trouble and come out with her blade swinging.
Deirdre and Miriel, however, knew the benefit of stealth. Fire could mean anything. It might have been started by the lasses…or by outlaw captors.
Deirdre whispered, “Let’s follow the scent.”
Chastened but still scowling, Helena swatted Miriel’s hand away from her mouth. Miriel glanced skyward and shook her head.
Deirdre carefully unsheathed and beckoned her sisters follow her. The three of them stole through the woods, as quiet as wolves on the hunt.
When Deirdre first detected the orange glow through the trees, she could see it was from a blaze much larger than a simple cooking fire. For an instant, she feared it might be a wildfire. But only a single broad column of white smoke, salted with bright sparks, rose up through the evergreens.
They approached in silence through the trees until Deirdre could hear the crackle and snap of pine pitch. In the clearing beyond, the golden flames of a great bonfire licked at the falling flakes of snow.
As she watched, three dark, devilish figures began cavorting before the fire like wee demons of hell. And reigning over their impish dance like the Viking god Hel himself was…
“Da?” Helena mouthed.
Miriel blinked in surprise.
Relief mingled with rage as Deirdre studied the macabre scene before her. The wee lasses were covered in blood, doubtless the blood of the goat that lay in grisly sacrifice before the fire.
While the sisters stared on in mute wonder, Laird Gellir hoisted a horn of beer in salute. “To Odin!” he shouted.
“To Odin!” the wee lasses echoed, tipping back their own horns to drain the contents.
Deirdre knew at once what this was about. Her father had brought the lasses into the woods to celebrate the Viking rites of Jul.
It was an innocent enough gesture. He obviously wanted to share his traditions with his granddaughters.
But she couldn’t let him believe it was acceptable to abscond with the heirs of Rivenloch without a word to any of their mothers.
Before the laird could refill their horns and further intoxicate the wee lasses, Deirdre had to intervene.
As she sheathed her blade, her eye was caught briefly by its inscription, Amor Vincit Omnia. No matter how upset she was, it served to remind her that love conquered all.
“Come on,” she murmured to her sisters.
The sisters pushed through the brush into the clearing, startling the celebrants.
Deirdre had never seen three guiltier-looking lasses. That guilt appeared to last about five heartbeats, at which point the spirited cousins grabbed hands to face their mothers in defiant solidarity. Deirdre couldn’t decide if they were adorable or infuriating.
Before Deirdre could choose diplomatic words to chide their father, headstrong Helena shouldered her way past.
“What the devil are you doing, Da?”
Laird Gellir’s blood-streaked face was menacing as he rose to his full height, fixing her with an icy blue gaze.
“Do you not know?” he growled. He narrowed his eyes. “I knew it. I knew you’d forgotten.”
Miriel scolded Helena with a scowl. “’Tisn’t true, Da.”
The laird’s blood-spattered white beard quivered as he proudly raised his chin. “You’ve forgotten the old ways of your forefathers.”
“Oh, Da,” Deirdre’s voice broke over the words, “we’d never forget.”
She saw now that her father was hurt. In his mind, their Norman husbands had usurped his beloved Jul, replacing it with their foreign Christmas rites.
Laird Gellir shook his head. “How is it that my own granddaughters know nothing about Thor’s battle with the frost giants of Jotunheim? About keeping Midgard from Fimbulwinter? About Odin leading the Asgårdsreien to keep the dead from the living?”
Deirdre stood in stunned silence. Was that true? She may have neglected some of the old rites. But every year she recounted the story to her children. She was certain her sisters did as well to their offspring. Were the lasses simply too young to remember the tales from year to year?
It turned out they were not. And it was the wee lasses themselves who brought comfort to all.
“Ach, I know, Grandda,” Jenefer announced with pride, flipping her golden braid over her shoulder. “Ma tells me the story every Jul.”
“Me as well,” sweet, dark-haired Feiyan said. “We put gifts on the trees and burn a Jul log on the fire and have boar for supper.”
“Aye, Grandda, we know,” willowy, blonde Hallie gently assured him. “We just like the way you tell the story.”
When all three lasses nodded in agreement, Deirdre’s heart melted.
Beaming with pride, Laird Gellir straightened to his full height, looking like the mighty Viking warrior he’d once been.
Deirdre had never felt prouder of her Hallie. A lump lodged in her throat, making it impossible to speak.
Miriel pressed a hand to her bosom and gazed at her Feiyan with watery eyes.
Helena took one look at her Jenefer and burst out sobbing.
Deirdre took her sisters’ hands. She shook her head. They were definitely breeding. Only pregnancy could make the fierce warrior maids so weepy.
Without another word, she pulled her sisters toward the bonfire. Crouching beside the slain goat, they painted their faces with blood. Laird Gellir poured beer into the wee lasses’ horns, which they passed to their mothers.
“To Odin,” Feiyan prompted in a whisper.
“To Odin!” the warrior maids called out together.
To Deirdre’s amusement, the beer was so heavily watered, the lasses could have toasted every Viking god in Valhalla and still not have gotten drunk.
Draining the horns, all six maids squeezed onto a fallen log near the bonfire. Then Laird Gellir recounted the Jul story in all its splendor—with dramatic scowls, confiding whispers, triumphant laughter, and a wild waving of arms.
Of course, the tale culminated in his riveting rendition of the Asgårdsreien, the wild hunt.
He described the violence of the stormy night. The ferocity of Odin, mounted upon his eight-legged steed. The beauty and bravery of the Valkyries. He spoke of the fearsome horde of black horses, snapping hounds, and the terrifying specters of the underworld that loomed behind a frail curtain on this darkest day of the year. He praised the power of Odin, who drove the beasts across the sky, protecting the living from the dead.
By the end, even Deirdre was waiting breathlessly to see if the sun would once again triumph over the darkness.
All Things Merry and Bright: A Very Special Christmas Tale Collection Page 26
