Chieftain's Rebel

by Frances Housden

  His name was the last thing he heard on her lips, “Rory!” It mingled with his roar until, spent, he collapsed, letting her softness cradle him as sleep took him.

  When he awoke it was daylight. He was alone with naught but fistful of wondrous memories to carry south with him.

  Time to go home to Dun Bhuird and take up the responsibilities his father had in mind for his eldest son, certain now that he had worried o’er naught when it came to the hot rush of angry blood he had feared came frae his Norse ancestors.

  Chapter 1

  Year of our Lord 1109

  Fist clenched, Gavyn Farquhar dug his forearm into the wood of the high board as he spoke to his eldest son, his heir. “So ye believe yer o’er auld to take advice frae yer father?”

  Rory listened, sucked in a breath, but said naught. It was seldom he and his father clashed in a battle of wills. Since reaching maturity, Rory had always been naught if not an obedient son, tamping down his temper, mindful of the respect his father was due. He was well aware of how much he had to learn if he was e’er to take his father’s place as Chieftain of the Comlyn clan, and tonight when, as usual, he had taken a seat at his father’s elbow, he hadnae expected to be on the receiving end of an icy stare. Was it too much to imagine that because of the temper tantrums he had displayed as a bairn, his father had been fooled into thinking they would show up as rebellion in a grown son? He hadnae recognised the iron control that Rory kept clamped around the hot anger that could flare up in his gut until he felt it might burst into flame and consume him if he gave it free rein.

  Though unintentionally, his cousin Merida saved him. The little flame-haired sprite had been born inquisitive, and she was ne’er happy unless she knew exactly what was going on and used any information as a chance to dish out advice. Some said she had been born auld, though Kathryn, his mother, often contradicted and said she’d been born wise. “What’s wrong about him going to Caithness? Merida queried. “Ye let him go last year.”

  Without waiting for an answer, she turned to Rory and said, “If I was aulder, I’d be asking to go with ye.” She swivelled on her stool to face Kathryn. “I loved hearing about the bonfire and dancing. I think the Norse folk are similar to us but different, if ye ken what I mean.” Then she finished on a sigh, “I ne’er get to go anywhere.”

  He should have known better than to think Merida had saved him, as Gavyn barked out, “Ye wouldnae want to be going north when the Irish are intent on vengeance. Nae one with the least bit of sense would.”

  His young cousin’s eyes snapped open wide and her lips shaped the sound, “O-o-oh, nae, I wouldnae want to fight. I’m nae guid with a sword.” She showed Rory a sweet smile, if ye managed to dismiss the slightly sleekit tilt to the corners of her mouth. “Howsoever, Rory’s really handy with that weapon. He’s always down practicing in the training ground.”

  Gavyn’s eyes flashed and Rory’s gut twisted to see Merida on the end of that glare as his father said, “I think we’re all well aware of how guid Rory is in a fight. That doesnae mean he should barge into a quarrel that’s not of his own making, and I’m saying nae more on the matter.” As if that settled everything, he turned his attention to the venison in front of him. If there was anything Gavyn was guid at, it was putting folk in their place.

  Merida for one didnae appear bothered; she merely blinked her big eyes at him once and turned as if to speak to their cousin Ghillie, though Rory could swear she was merely humming under her breath. That young lassie was going to be a handful for some poor man one day, and he was bluidy glad it wasnae him.

  The wind whipped Rory’s hair across his forehead and cheeks, gusting frae the direction he had turned his back on—Dun Bhuird—for he faced the northwest, towards Caithness and the isles, the place he longed to be—had done for a twelve-month. He dragged in a deep breath, nostrils quivering, as if they recognised the scent of honey and thyme—all that was left of her, since he knew neither her face nor her name.

  Already tense, Rory’s muscles tightened as if in preparation to making the leap northwards. For a moment he clamped his back teeth down onto the inside of his cheek in an attempt to ward off the feeling, the longing, the red-hot anger.

  God’s teeth, why didnae he just leave?

  He thought back to the night afore. Naturally, Gavyn hadnae really spoken his last word on that subject. Anybody would think Rory was still a bairn the way his father always managed to put a damper on his aspirations—nae doubt because Rory didnae know how shape his feelings with words that wouldnae make his father snort with laughter, considering how often Rory had shrugged off any suggestion of tying himself to a female.

  When he forbade him to return to Caithness, his father hadnae the least notion of Rory’s true reasons for wanting to go back there. At any other time, his father’s demands would have seemed reasonable.

  “What kind of father would I be to send ye off to a war that’s not of our making? I’ve been informed the Irish intend repaying an insult. Worse than that, it’s said they want revenge for the abduction of the Chief’s wife.” Rory listened, as aware as Gavyn of the uncanny similarity to the circumstances that led to the last war betwixt the Irish and the Norsemen and, stranger still, the Comlyn clan’s connection to the conflicts of that time and mayhap this.

  Way back then, the Jarl of Caithness had been a much younger Olaf Olafsen whose wife had been abducted by an Irish Chieftain. As far as Rory remembered, the tale went that Merida’s mother, Brodwyn Comlyn had been involved as well—an instigator who had become part of the resolution. With Olaf’s help, Gavyn had handed Brodwyn o’er as a slave to the Irish and, in the way of strong men, had later forgiven Brodwyn, taking in both her and her daughter, raising Merida once her mother died of wounds sustained while protecting one of his cousin Rob McArthur’s twins.

  That event had, in its own way, simply demonstrated the Comlyn family’s inherent proclivity for danger and turmoil—a truth that his father seemed to have forgotten was their reputation for winning through against the fiercest of foes.

  “I dinnae want to be forced into seeking my own revenge because my son lost his life through refusing to listen to reason”—a statement Rory supposed to mean that his father loved him.

  Not that it prevented him growling back a reply, “Hah, that’s very unlikely,” or from adding insult to injury by mocking, “I’ve heard ye boast how well ye have taught me father, how I’ve benefitted frae the McArthur and my cousin Rob’s experiences. Oft I’ve listened to ye say how well I acquitted myself while fighting by yer side, showing my fine sword skills against warriors like yon bull-headed clansmen frae the western isles—warriors with their greedy eyes on the gold and silver it’s rumoured ye have buried somewhere on Bienne à Bhuird.” He smirked.

  The treasure was nae fable. Rory had first seen it when he was naught but a bairn, though he knew as well as anyone that turning Dun Bhuird into a mountain fortress had somewhat diminished the trove’s size.

  “Yer my son, my heir. I dinnae want to lose ye,” Gavyn had ground out through clenched teeth, a convincing sentiment, believable if not for his two younger brothers.

  “I’m far frae being yer only son,” he’d returned, voice silky, verging upon a sneer. For a moment he recognised a shadow of bleakness in his father’s eyes as he responded, his tone lowered so none but Rory could hear, “My first son…” the dark mote in his eyes took flight, “and should ye repeat this I’ll deny ever having said it: yer my favourite, Rory.”

  His father hesitated, cleared his throat of an obstruction afore admitting, “Ye have been frae the moment ye were born. Aye and afore then. I remember when Harald stole yer mother away—my fear for ye both. All the way home frae the heathen place yer determined on returning to, I held yer mother in my arms and could feel ye kicking in her womb, demanding to be let out into the world, and knew I could hardly wait for ye to arrive.”

  Rory could tell Gavyn’s emotions were still raw frae the danger they had experienced back
then. It showed in his words as he spoke and, though he wished it made a difference, naught could halt the yearning Rory felt deep in his innards.

  Call him a fool—mayhap he was one—but he hadnae been able to rid his memories of that night and, at that instant, he had it in mind to go against his father’s wishes—all for a lassie whose name he had ne’er known. Every muscle in his chest swelled, expanded, as if summoning the howl crouching deep down in his soul to spring free.

  Frustrated, he dragged his fingers through the mass of dark brown curls the wind blew across his eyebrows, hampering his view out to the horizon.

  Even as he watched, a huge stag climbed up frae the bottom of the glen and leapt across the heather—a red deer with a proud spread of antlers jutting frae its fierce brow. Monarch of all he surveyed, the stag turned, eyes agleam, as if aware Rory watched his progress. During the rut, he’d listened to the beast’s deep-throated challenge, warning off stags intent on cornering one of his hinds to mate with. He had listened to their mating call and envied them their certainty of finding what they wanted.

  Fist clenched, Rory pressed it hard against his chest, as if the pressure would hold his mating roar inside his lungs. Need and rage quivered in every fibre of his being, an urgent craving to find the lass again—the anger he saved for his father. There was nae doubt in Rory’s mind that his father had the notion he could control his son’s life, as Malcolm Canmore had once contrived to manage Gavyn’s by commanding him to wed Kathryn.

  The love they now shared hadnae been a requirement, though to see his parents together meant recognising that truth. Strange as it might seem, Rory felt he was being denied the same right—not that he was likely to confess such a notion to his father—a notion he found it almost impossible to admit to himself. And his father naming him his favourite didnae mean Rory would simply bend the knee and obey Gavyn’s demands.

  Gritting his teeth, Rory chewed o’er the insolent thought that his father was merely a Chieftain, not a king.

  The deep breath he sucked in touched the yell nestled in the pit of his lungs, telling it to break free. If his father’s restrictions werenae reason enough to let it out, God’s teeth, what was? Again, he fixed his eyes on the horizon—the future—and opened his mouth till his jaws hurt, but afore he let the yell loose he heard a sound, a footfall, behind him and spun around on his heel, fist clenching the hilt of the sword already half-way out of its scabbard.

  “Ghillie!”

  Startled, he ground out the young lad’s name in the heart-pounding moment he discovered just how near he had come to striking his cousin dead. “Mother of God, have ye nae more brains than ye were born with? I might have killed ye.”

  “Ach,” Ghillie said with a shrug that meant he knew better, “do ye think I would be daft enough to approach ye while yer thoughts were miles away, if I believed such a thing likely?”

  Rory bit down hard on a curse. “I dinnae give a damn if everyone thinks ye can see what’s about to happen afore it does. All I see is my wee cousin taking his life in his hands,” he growled and, not for the first time, refused to give any credence to all that foreseeing foolery. “What do ye think yer up to, following me?”

  “It seemed if I brought up yer belongings it would save ye going back to Dun Bhuird for them.”

  Rory demonstrated his disbelief with the lift of an eyebrow. Ghillie was completely empty-handed. Not only that, the raven he had begun taking to let ride upon his shoulder was nae where to be seen. Or so he thought until a shadow swooped betwixt him and Ghillie frae the air above them. At times his young cousin’s antics made him feel auld—or was it the weight of his father’s expectations that did that?

  As the raven landed gently on Ghillie’s shoulder, Rory realised he had just fixed upon his reason for journeying to Caithness. “So-o-o,” he drawled, scanning Ghillie’s empty hands, “Is this a new kind of sorcery? Can ye make stuff disappear?”

  Ghillie stuck out his bottom lip, a sign of his disgust at Rory’s inability to take him seriously. “Ye surely didnae expect me to cart it all the way up here. I’ve left it in the glen with the horses.”

  “Horses?”

  “Aye, three of them,” his cousin answered with a shrug of his broad shoulders. Ghillie might be almost a head shorter, but few of the folk with enough years to remember would deny Ghillie had a guid deal of Erik the Bear—their mutual grandfather—in his make-up. “I ken fine ye wouldnae want to share. I’m not o’er keen on it myself.”

  “But why three?”

  “Calder is coming as well.”

  With a brisk snort, Rory clamped his lips to hide the humour that lingered behind them. Frae the glint in Ghillie’s eye, he could tell his cousin knew, which made it hard to deny the lad’s canny ways, and he finally gave in, asking, “In that case then, mayhap ye will tell me where we’re all going?”

  “To the Gathering of course, where else?”

  Chapter 2

  Ainsel carried her wee son in a linen sling that slanted front and back frae shoulder to waist. The bairn’s head nestled against her breast as he slept, most likely soothed by the scent of her milk. Nae one else in the settlement slept; they were far too busy gathering up the dead trees that bordered the forest, piling them up along with sand-frosted driftwood frae the beach.

  Soon the solstice would be upon them. For some this would be the highlight of the Norse year. To Ainsel’s way of thinking, it was the end of a year that didnae bear repeating, yet frae the teasing laughter that reached her frae where half the settlement laboured, few would suspect that a dark cloud hung o’er this year’s celebrations. Some might say it was inevitable after the harm her husband Nils had caused.

  She had married Nils with such hope and with her grandfather Jarl Olafsen’s approval. It hadnae taken her o’er long to discover her husband was a man with two faces: smiles that he showed to the world, and snarls he saved for people like her, too shocked to fight back … then he spoke best with his fists.

  Shock had curbed her tongue the first time he laid into her. Later she had been too ashamed make her plight known and then fearful for her grandfather, but that was afore she saw him in a thunderous black temper and regretted her silence.

  She had added humiliation to her list of emotions in early spring when rumours reached Caithness that the Irish were plotting a revenge attack. Worse, they had persuaded Norsemen frae Orkney to join them. A wee skerrick of hope still lingered that Nils hadnae been responsible for turning the men that her grandfather had once thought of as kin against them. Hope not for herself but for her son’s sake, his future. She pulled Axel close and breathed in the bairn’s sweet scent. There was some had thought she should name him after his dead father. It had taken every skerrick of her subtlety to turn away suggestions that her son in nae way reminded folk of his father. For his own sake, she thanked the gods he didnae resemble Nils; and she shunned any notion except one—that some of Nils’ ancestors had been as dark as her husband had been fair, almost fair as herself. Nae matter, Ainsel would do whatever it took to make certain her son wasnae tainted in any way by his father’s evil deeds.

  Years had passed, practically the whole of her lifetime, since the last ferocious battles betwixt Caithness and the Irish, and then the battles had been in Ireland. Ainsel was nae body’s fool, she was well aware her father’s father had enemies, the Irish amongst the worst. Her grandfather always said the best alliance he ever made was with the Comlyn clan—blood relatives, though the blood in the connection had to have grown thin by now. She would trust the Scots long afore she would the Irish. She suspected Nils’s family had a streak of Irish in their lineage. Hadnae they come across the sea and abducted her grandmother all yon years ago? Her grandfather had made them pay, but he was getting auld, while her brother was younger than she was. Aye, Olaf was still alive while her father had gone to Walhalla in a flaming dragon boat with all the ceremony due a Jarl’s son.

  Now her brother would be Jarl when her grandfather died. It was
nae a prospect she would wish on her son and, on the tail of that thought, she dipped her head and planted a kiss on her bairn’s dark curls as she reached the entrance to her grandfather’s longhouse. He had wanted her and the bairn she was carrying to move in beside him. She had been big with child when he asked her a day after news of Nils’s death reached them. She was a widow, a pregnant widow about to give birth. Shock they had said: At least her tears of joy were easily mistaken for tears of lamentation.

  If she regretted anything it was being unable to see Nils’s body float out into the Ness on a flaming bier. Ainsel’s chest tightened. She huffed a sigh down her nose to release the pangs that Nils’s memory always wrought, though why should she feel guilty that she was still pretending to mourn him? The question made her mouth tighten and her lips quiver. As if the strength of her emotions touched and disturbed Axel, he opened his eyes and stared up at her. His eyes were of such a deep blue she almost wished she had been able to compare them to his father’s. The sight of Axel’s thumb sneaking into his mouth was a signal that he would soon want to drink from her breast again. The lad was never more happy than when she fed him, which she was quick to explain was why he was so big for his age—more like six months than three.

  Her grandfather was the first person she saw as she came into the gloomy hall, and he waved her o’er to him, a smile on his face that she knew was more for Axel than for her, since she knew he had almost given up on her producing a grandchild—a male one at that. It wasnae that Axel would ever be Jarl—he wasnae an Olafsen—though her brother was nae acting he was of a mind to settle down, take a wife and produce bairns of his own.

  Nae, Finn would rather fight than take on responsibility for a wife and family, rather take a life than get a wife with child. She had seen her brother’s eyes light up when her grandfather gave them the news that the Irish had their sights on Caithness, and when Olaf said their Norse brothers on Orkney had always been jealous of them, as if it were their fault the others had chosen hilly islands with steep glens shaped as if a giant had scooped them out with a spoon.