Erinsong

by Mia Marlowe

  “Then you’ll not be minding if I go down and take him these tarts fresh from the baking,” Moira said. “Even a fine braw lad like our Keefe needs something to keep up his strength with all the work ye put him to.”

  “Do as ye please,” Brenna said, trying to ignore the sinking feeling in her gut. Moira looked especially fetching today in her new green tunic and brat.

  “Come with me, Brennie,” Moira suggested. “We can gather mussels on the beach on the way back.”

  It was tempting, but Brenna shook her head. She didn’t want Moira to know how rattled she felt around the stranger. Her sister could be a terrible tease.

  “Not this time, but do ye go on. Only mind yourself,” Brenna urged. “Remember who ye are and comport yourself as a daughter of the house should.”

  “Where’s the fun in that?” Moira laughed and turned lightly on her heel to start down the switch-backed path to the shore below. The foot-worn track led to the far edge of the beach. From there, she’d have to walk back up the rocky coast and round the point to join Keefe in the cove.

  “I wish ye would come, and I’d lay silver Keefe would wish it, too,” Moira called back over her shoulder. “Given the choice, your Northman would rather see ye than food, I’m thinking.”

  Heat crept up her neck and flooded her cheeks. So Moira had seen the way Keefe ogled her. Who else had noticed and tittered at her in secret?

  And might they also have wondered if she’d done anything to encourage Keefe to strip her with his gaze as if she were a light-heeled wanton?

  She wished she could sink into the very earth. Instead, Brenna grasped her skirts and broke into a trot back toward the keep.

  ***

  “Steady, now,” Kolgrim said. The dragonship rounded the southern point and made steadily for a long strand of beach. “We don’t want anyone raising an alarm till we’re in and out and on our way with whatever comes to hand.”

  “These little farmsteads are poor sport,” one of his men grumbled.

  “We aren’t after loot now,” Kolgrim reminded them. “We only need to stock up the larder before we raid the juicier prize.”

  “Already had more than we needed.” Kolgrim overheard a few of the crewmen grumbling among themselves. They no longer bothered to mask their lack of trust in their captain.

  It all started the night of that storm. They’d been heavily loaded with spoils from their last raid. Kolgrim remembered each detail with the hideous crispness terror brings to a man’s memory. He’d stood in the prow of his ship, one arm wrapped around the long neck of the dragonhead while his second in command, Jorand, strained against the steering oar, muscling the Sea Wolf, dragonhead first, into the oncoming waves. Kolgrim held his breath and squinted against the briny spray.

  “She won’t hold!” he’d bellowed to be heard over the slashing wind.

  The longship’s timbers groaned as her prow tilted over the crest and plummeted down the wall of water into a deep trough. Gray swells rose above them, threatening to swamp the dragonship. A few of the sailors wailed in terror.

  “She’s breaking up.”

  “No, she’s not.” Jorand gripped the gunwale of the Sea Wolf so hard his fingernails bit into the wood, as if he could hold her together by the force of his will. He dragged a bucket through the water at his ankles and dumped it over the side.

  “Keep bailing,” he yelled back to Kolgrim. “You’ve overloaded her. Toss some of the cargo. We have to lighten the ship.”

  The Sea Wolf held a dragon’s hoard of silver and fine pilfered goods. Kolgrim wasn’t about to start dumping it. The longship shuddered, bowing and flexing with each swell.

  “Unless you want to swim back to Dublin, it’s time to cut our losses!” Jorand shipped the steering oar and struggled to his feet. He clambered over the rest of the crew to the shallow cargo hold near the base of the mast. He drew out his knife and sliced the ropes that bound a stack of ale kegs. They rolled one after another into the dark sea. The Sea Wolf lifted, riding lighter, but Jorand didn’t stop. He bent down to grapple with a heavy, locked chest.

  “I’ll lighten the ship,” Kolgrim growled. He grabbed an oar and swung toward his onetime partner. The flat blade connected with Jorand’s skull at the temple. Jorand reeled, lost his balance, and tumbled into the sea after the ale kegs, never to be seen again.

  The worst of it was that Jorand had been right. In the end, they’d dumped all the cargo and barely managed to ride out the storm without further loss among the crew. But since then, the men had been sullen and spiritless.

  It was all Jorand’s fault, really.

  “There’s a monastery on the island down the coast. You all saw it as we sailed by last night. Inishmurray, they call it.” Kolgrim’s lip curled in derision. “Christians! Their coffers are always filled with silver and fineries and they trust naked hope to defend them. All we’re likely to meet on that piece of rock are toothless old monks and ball-less young ones. From what I’ve heard, Inishmurray is ripe for the plucking.”

  “Ja, so you say.” The other sailor spat into the waves. “But a man can’t be at his fighting best when his stomach’s knocking on his backbone.”

  “You’ve the right of it, Einar,” Kolgrim agreed, narrowing his eyes at the lone figure ambling along the rocky beach. The wind was at their backs and the Sea Wolf closed the distance with the same silence and stealth as the predator for which she was named.

  The person on the beach meandered along, pausing here and there to pick up oddly shaped driftwood that made its way to the coast, obviously unaware of the raiders’ approach. The captain of the longship recognized the sway of a skirt.

  A woman.

  “By Loki’s hairy arse, it looks like there’ll be plenty of sport at this stop.” Kolgrim’s voice sank to a rasping grunt. The woman’s golden-red hair flashed in a shaft of sunlight that split the heavens and bathed her in its glow.

  Kolgrim felt himself fully engorge. He favored redheads. “These little Irish wenches always put up a grand tussle.”

  Kolgrim guided the craft in close, no farther than the length of two longships away from her. The woman didn’t hear them coming until the Sea Wolf’s hull scraped into the gritty sand.

  She turned at the sound. The girl was younger than he’d expected, and pretty, her heart-shaped face white as moonstone. Kolgrim could’ve sworn it went whiter still when she saw them. She was afraid.

  Good.

  He leaped over the gunwale into the shallow surf, leaving Einar and the others to tie up the craft. The woman hoisted her skirt, showing a nicely turned pair of calves.

  The promise of more to follow, he thought. She wheeled and ran, screaming at the top of her lungs.

  “Keefe!” she yelled. Her piercing wail echoed off the rocky cliffs that rose from the shore. “Keefe Murphy!”

  “So much for not raising an alarm,” Kolgrim grumbled under this breath.

  He didn’t mind when a woman fought back. In fact, he preferred it that way. But he’d hoped to loot a farmstead or two without attracting any of the local rabble. If the girl kept caterwauling she’d bring the whole countryside down on them. Once roused, the Irish were fair fighters.

  “The little skirt better be worth the trouble,” Einar called after him.

  Kolgrim caught up with her in a few long strides and threw her to the ground. Not too hard, of course. If he knocked her out and she lay there unconscious, it would take all the fun out of it. He didn’t fancy rutting a corpse.

  But this quarry was far from docile. Her arms and legs windmilled at him. She hissed and spat like a cornered lynx. When her nails raked his cheek, he roared with laughter.

  “Einar, hurry up and come hold her for me,” Kolgrim said. “The little hussy wants to play, but I don’t want her messing up my pretty face.”

  Einar sprinted to them. Then he dropped to his knees in the sand and forced a length of cloth between the girl’s teeth. He jerked it tight and knotted it behind her slender neck.

&
nbsp; “That should shut her up,” Einar said. Then he caught her flailing hands and pinned them above her head.

  Two other crewmen grabbed her legs, spreading them wide, and straddled her ankles. The other sailors crowded around, leering down at the girl wolfishly.

  “Hurry up, Cap’n,” one of them said. “There’s an even dozen of us waiting.”

  Kolgrim rucked up the girl’s tunic, exposing her delicate pale flesh and a neat triangle of coppery curls. He smiled in satisfaction. She was definitely worth the trouble. The terror in her wide green eyes was an added treat.

  He fumbled with the drawstring at the waist of his trews.

  “A damned knot.”

  He drew out his long knife and sliced the string. But before he could lower his leggings, a sound split the air around them.

  It was an enraged bellow, too full of wrath to be an animal, too feral to be fully human. The roar bounded off the cliff face and repeated itself in a ghostly echo.

  Kolgrim looked up to see a warrior rounding the point, charging toward them. The man’s fair hair streamed behind him, his face distorted with fury, and in his upraised fist, he brandished the tool of a shipwright, a sharp-edged adze.

  “It’s Jorand!” one of the sailors cried.

  “Or his shade,” another voice quavered. “He’s come up from Hel to drag us back down with him.”

  “Captain never should have tossed him overboard,” said the first. “Bad luck, said I.”

  “I’ll not fight a ghost!” More than half of Kolgrim’s crew turned and fled back to the longship.

  Jorand roared again as he closed the distance. Einar was slow to scrabble to his feet and never quite managed it. The phantom warrior buried his adze in the base of Einar’s skull, nearly decapitating him with one stroke.

  Then Jorand’s shade wrenched the weapon free and sliced its wicked edge across another crewman’s gut. The sailor screamed, clutching at his vitals as they spilled from his body in stinking gore.

  “Jorand,” Kolgrim said woodenly, his feet frozen to the spot.

  It couldn’t be. The shipbuilder had drowned. By now, Jorand’s body must surely have been picked clean by the denizens of the deep and his soul consigned to icy Niflheim, the bleakest corner of Hel.

  Yet Jorand’s ghost stood before him, furious and quivering in a black berserkr rage. The phantom’s heavily muscled right arm swung the adze again. This time one of Kolgrim’s crew took the killing stroke right across his throat. Blood spurted like a fountain, painting a red streak across Jorand’s face and heaving chest.

  Kolgrim’s erection shriveled and his bowels threatened to loosen on the spot. There was no sense in fighting a ghost. The dead had nothing to lose.

  He held tightly to the waist of his trews and fled, terror giving him wings.

  Before he shoved his vessel into the surf and bounded over the side, he turned to see another wounded raider sinking with finality onto the beach.

  The ghost of Jorand stood over the splayed body of the girl, defending her against all comers. It roared at Kolgrim, slashing the deadly adze over its head.

  “Row!” Kolgrim bellowed to what was left of his crew. “Row, damn you, or I’ll kill you myself!”

  Chapter Eight

  He bellowed once more at the retreating raiders. The unholy sound poured from him as he expelled all the air in his lungs. It released both a power and a rage he’d never suspected was there. If only he could have laid his hands on that leader with the russet beard. He’d have squeezed the life out of the man with such joy, he trembled at the mere thought.

  Blood pounded in his ears, roaring louder than the dash of surf against the rocky beach. He felt as though he might burst out of his own skin.

  He took a shuddering breath. The red haze clouding his vision began to recede and he suddenly recognized what had happened to him. Battle lust. It was the power of berserkr, the trancelike state that came upon warriors. It made them cut themselves and feel no pain. A man who worked himself into the darkness of berserkr might gnash his own shield in his frenzy to fight. A warrior in the throes of the madness could charge naked into a melee and survive unscathed. A berserkr ceased to be human. He became a killing machine.

  He looked around at the carnage on the beach. Had he actually slain four men? All he could remember were snatches of color and the screams of the dying. He stared at the adze in his hand. Ribbons of red snaked down the length of the handle and over his wrist. The smell of blood was eerily familiar to him.

  He’d puzzled so hard these past weeks over who he was. Now, with a sickening lurch in his stomach, he wondered what he was.

  A soft whimper pulled him out of himself.

  “Moira.” He turned and knelt beside her. “Have they done you hurt?”

  She had pulled her tunic down over her bare legs and wrenched the gag out of her mouth. But when he reached to help her up, she sidled away from him, wild eyed. With shock, he realized she was afraid of him.

  Perhaps she was right to be.

  Brenna’s sister made several attempts to rise, but yelped in pain and sank back onto the sand. One of her ankles was visibly swollen.

  “Be easy, now,” he said, forcing himself to breathe slowly. “I’ll not harm you.”

  Moira looked at the bodies of the dead raiders. All the color drained from her face. She rose to her knees and was promptly sick. When she finished emptying her stomach on the sand, she plopped down heavily and eyed him with suspicion.

  “Keefe?” she said uncertainly.

  “No, I don’t think so,” he said as he suddenly remembered the raiders seemed to know him and had used a name for him that rang true in his ears. “I’m called something else. It seems my real name is Jorand.”

  How did those men know him? Were they his comrades in his former life? That might explain why they hadn’t fought back with any vigor. And if the gang of men who nearly ravished Moira were his companions, what did that say about him?

  He felt as heavy and worn as a dull ax. He dropped the adze and sank to the sand.

  “Jorand, is it?” Moira had stopped trembling and made an effort to smile at him. The color was returning to her face. “Then I’m after thanking ye, Jorand. God alone knows what would have happened if ye hadn’t come when ye did.” She turned her gaze away from the mangled bodies. “And did what ye did.”

  “We’d better get you back to the keep,” Jorand said. “Can you stand?”

  She tried to put weight on her foot and cried out in pain. “I don’t think so. My ankle hurts like the very Devil himself is jabbing hot needles into it.”

  “Then I’ll carry you.”

  “First, ye’d best be cleaning up.” She waved a pale hand toward his face and chest. “Give yourself a good plunge in the sea. Otherwise, me Da will think I’m being fetched home by a monster.”

  Jorand touched a palm to his cheek. It came away sticky with blood. He stumbled down to the shore and waded into the shallows.

  The bracing, salty spray cleared his head. He wasn’t sorry he’d killed those men. They deserved everything he gave them. But the ease with which he dispatched them, the burning in his veins as he hacked away, the jubilant triumph he felt... What had he been in his former life?

  Perhaps he was a monster.

  Chapter Nine

  Brian Ui Niall didn’t seem to think the Northman was a monster.

  After the initial frenzy caused by their arrival at the keep, Moira explained how Keefe had rushed to her aid. Connor and Aidan ran to the beach before the tide rushed in and carried away the dead raiders, sweeping the coastline clean of any gore. Moira’s story was confirmed.

  Jorand, as Keefe Murphy was now known, was proclaimed a hero and a feast was declared in his honor. Brian Ui Niall sent out a call, summoning the whole Donegal clan to the keep for a celebration to be held on the night of the next full moon. The festivities promised to be grand.

  One by one, the crofters sent back word of their acceptance. A tame Northman was novelty
enough. The fact that the Donegal had trained one to attack his own kind was enough to send even the least inquisitive mind into flutters of curiosity.

  Brenna buried herself in preparations. Since the feast honored the man who fixed her precious chair, even Una bestirred herself enough to take an interest in the cleaning. The stone floor of the keep was swept, scrubbed, and freshly strewn with rushes.

  “Maybe ye’ll be making another batch of meat pasties, I’m thinking,” Moira suggested. “If we hope to honor Jorand as he deserves, we don’t want to be running out now, do we?”

  After he rescued her sister, their father had released Jorand from all servitude and gave him free range over the region. Brenna was no longer bound to watch him or devise work to keep him occupied.

  Jorand. The foreign name still lay heavily on Brenna’s tongue. To her mind, the man would always be Keefe Murphy, her handsome sea warrior. Now that he no longer bore the name she’d given him, he seemed even less hers.

  Brenna shook her head. What a fanciful notion! The stranger had never been hers, even when she first found him on the beach. And why on earth would she even want him if he was? Besides, it was too late for such fantasies. She’d never have a man of her own now.

  On the appointed night of feasting, the king of Donegal’s keep was jammed with people. Those who hadn’t seen the tall, blond Northman before now crowded around Jorand, alternately suspicious and admiring, wanting to talk to him, to take the measure of this foreigner who’d saved a daughter of the house and earned the gratitude of their king.

  Brenna never enjoyed crowds. Her craving for solitude had made her consider life as a novice at Clonmacnoise in the first place. With the peat fire smoking in the grate and the press of humanity all around her, Brenna had to escape the keep for some fresh air. She wrapped her brat around her shoulders and slipped into the darkness.

  The soft summer evening gave way to a hazy night. From time to time the moon peeped from behind cloudbanks. As she wandered away from the keep, Brenna heard a few couplets of a crude drinking song followed by a burst of laughter. She kept walking till she could hear the singers no more and finally climbed atop the stone wall, settling down to enjoy the quiet. Far from the round stone tower, the only sounds were the drone of insects and the occasional lonely hoot of an owl.