by Eliza Knight
“The Cam’béals. We live…not far from here at Castle Gloom.”
Beiste grunted. “The Scottish warlord. I know of him. He’s a vassal of my fath—of mine.”
“Aye.” She chewed her lip and he watched her suppress a shudder. “He was.”
“Married to a Norsewoman.”
She nodded. “My mother and her family’s lands were given to my father.” Her voice was low and soft. More tears gathering in her eyes. “By your father. He was our protector.”
“He protected all in his realm.”
She shook her head. “There was more…my father…he saved your father’s life once, in a battle. So, Laird MacDougall swore an oath to protect us for all time.”
“What are ye doing here?”
“I came because… I…” She swallowed, the column of her throat constricting. “How did he die?”
“An attack on the road.”
She gasped and took a step back. “Recently?”
“Aye. Yesterday he left the castle with his men, only to return a short time later. His men dead. A mortal wound to his chest. He died this morning.”
“I am so sorry.”
“’Tis not your fault.”
She shook her head. “That is the thing…’tis my fault. I summoned him.” Eyes wide, she jerked her gaze away from the bed and met Beiste’s eyes. “Ye’re all in danger. They are coming.”
“Who is coming?”
“My mother’s family. Vikings.”
“What?” Beiste moved quickly, grabbing her by the arm and dragging her within inches of him so he could stare into her eyes.
She flinched, but kept her gaze on him when anyone else might have closed their eyes to ward off his ire.
“Explain.”
“They attacked several days ago. Killed my father. They stoned my mother in the bailey, naming her a traitor. I hid my brother from them, but it is only a matter of time before he is found. They will kill me. They will kill ye.”
Beiste saw red. His father had been killed by Vikings? Summoned into a fray by this slip of a lass?
“His death is on your head.”
“I didna know they would kill him…”
“Aye, ye did. For did they not kill your own?”
Her shoulders slumped. “I thought he’d bring a legion of men. I warned him of what had happened…”
“Ye thought wrong,” Beiste growled.
His grip still tight around her arm, he dragged her from the room and up a level where his own chamber was. He flung open the door to the chamber attached to his own and thrust her inside.
“What are ye doing?” she asked.
Beiste fought to catch his ragged breath. He felt as though a fire had been lit in his lungs, his throat. “Taking ye prisoner.” He glowered down at her, fresh anger gutting him. “Dinna attempt to escape.”
“Wait,” she called, arms outstretched as he slammed the door closed, stabbing the key into the lock.
She banged against the door. “Please! Ye must help my people. My brother, Erik, he is still there!”
Beiste ignored her wails as he retreated, charging down the stairs to the great hall. There was no time to think about her pleas. Nor could he think about his father’s oath, his promise, his vow to protect them for saving his life, not when his own had been forfeit in an attempt to help. A promise wasn’t linked to blood was it? Och, but Beiste knew it was. He’d have to honor it, simply because his father would have wanted him to.
“Gunnar,” Beiste called.
His master of the gate stood at attention.
“Vikings are coming. They are is who killed my father.”
“How?”
“We’ve had a visitor. She told me.”
Gunnar raised a brow, perhaps questioning the ale he’d drunk. “A woman.”
“Aye.”
But then the men let out a resigned sigh. “The guard came in to give ye this. She carried it with her. The guard found it on her horse.” Gunnar held out a weighty claymore, the iron hilt carved with thistles and roses, and embedded with a large emerald at the very top. “Thought ye’d recognize it.”
“That is my father’s sword. It went missing when I was a lad.”
“Indeed. And what was she doing with it?”
“I dinna know. But I’ll found out.” Beiste gripped the hilt of the sword that had been passed down to his father by his father before him, the great Norse king, Somerled, who’d come to conquer the land.
He glanced toward the archway, where just a trip up the stairs would take him to the room housing the mysterious beauty with his father’s sword and the answers to his father’s death.
What had his father gotten into? Why hadn’t he told Beiste about his oath of protection to the Cam’béal Clan?
“Prepare the men on the wall for a siege. Send out riders to warn the villagers. The Norsemen are not merciful. They are brutal. Everyone must take shelter if it is not too late already.”
Thunder cracked once more, rumbling throughout the walls. Beiste was certain the thunder was masking the din of riders.
“They have come,” Beiste said.
“Aye.”
“Prepare for battle.”
He rushed out to the bailey in time to hear his men shouting over the high, thick walls of the castle, built from the rock of a mountain and overlooking the sea.
“We will not be sieged this day,” Beiste bellowed. “Fire your arrows. Dinna let them over this wall. Fortify the gate!”
Men rushed all around him, rain wetting their hair and causing it to stick to their faces, soaking into the thick wool of their plaids.
Beiste let out a battle cry filled with equal amounts of rage, sorrow and frustration. He felt like a man walking blind into a battle, fighting a war he had no knowledge of. An enemy he’d never met and knew not their motivation.
“Give us the woman!” The bellow was clear.
They wanted Lady Elle Cam’béal.
But he wasn’t in a giving mood today.
Beiste marched up the wooden stairs to the battlements, looking down at the rough, soaked warriors below. There had to be fifty of them.
“Ye’ll not be getting her today. Nor tomorrow. Ye’ll have to kill me first,” he shouted. “The woman is mine.”
Chapter Two
The warrior moved like a specter.
Flashes of his body lit in the lightning-streaked sky, glinting off the long, jagged dagger he held in one hand and the wicked sword extending in iron-might from his other.
In one place one minute and another the next. Ducking, twirling, dodging, leaping, crashing, hacking at their bones. His enemies had nowhere to go. No way to save themselves from his assault.
These same enemies who’d attacked her castle days past.
She’d been lucky to escape alive.
By either of them.
Elle Cam’béal had heard Laird MacDougall’s declaration. She was his. But what did that mean? His to protect? To imprison? Abuse? Murder? Or to set free?
She prayed it was the former and the latter, but nothing in between.
A life for a life. That was essentially what she’d told MacDougall, but she’d not been completely honest. She’d not told him the reason her own father had been able to gain not simply a trade of one life saved for another but, in fact, protection for his entire family for all the days of his life.
And she wouldn’t tell him if she didn’t need to. If he set her free, then she was free. If he promised to continue to protect her, then her secrets were her own. But… if he chose to harm her, her family, or keep her in any way that impeded the oath his father had given, she would tell him.
Oh, Erik… Pray be well.
Just having reached his tenth year, her younger brother was in grave danger. Left to fend for himself and, hopefully, protected by any who yet lived…
She wished she hadn’t had to leave him, but there was no other way! When her Norse relations came, when they murdered her father and stoned her mother, she’d se
nt word out right away. But when days passed and no help came, she knew she had to go herself, in case her message had never been received.
Her Norse relation, Bjork, had decided she was to marry him. Her brother was not yet discovered and she was surprised to see that Bjork had no knowledge of him, besides. As long as those loyal to her and her family kept Erik’s identity safe, then he could remain hidden and unnoticed by her mother’s cousin. But… if someone thought to gain favor with the man who’d sieged them… Erik would be in mortal danger.
Elle’s stomach grumbled and the dizziness that had been threatening to consume her since the day before filled her head like a thick, hazy cloud. She swayed on her feet, reaching out to grab hold of something, anything to keep herself from falling.
The chamber pulsed in and out of her vision, completely foreign. Stone walls, a narrow window, wide enough for, perhaps, herself to fit through, but not a larger man. A bearskin had been pulled back from the window to let in a fresh breeze. The hearth was banked, any ash swept away. She spied a large four-poster bed with a plain brown curtain tied at the posts. A thick, brown blanket covered the bed. The floor was bare of any rugs, but was scrubbed clean of dust. A single chair and small table were situated near the hearth and beside the door was a narrow wardrobe not quite as tall as herself. There was no personality to the room, no personal flare or even a hint of what clan the room belonged to. She could have been anywhere in Scotland, if she’d not known exactly where she was.
Her mind reeled.
What was happening? Why?
One moment, she’d been with her family. Laughing. Loving. Learning. Living.
The next, a heavy knock had sounded at their not so heavily fortified keep door. Their holding was small, situated between two larger, wealthier castles. If ever raiders were to come, ’twould be the other castles that they would target. What could they hope to gain from laying siege to a small keep with little worth?
So on that fateful night just a few days before, when the knock had sounded, no one had guessed what would happen. And especially not when they realized her mother’s cousin had come to visit.
Or so they thought.
Elle remembered seeing her mother’s face light up when she heard the language of her home and then the precise moment when her smile had faltered.
As soon as Lady Cam’béal laid eyes on her relation, she’d known why he was there.
He was not a nice cousin. But rather one Elle had heard of before. A man steeped in misery. Jealousy. He hated the Scots. Hated anyone not fully Norse. And he’d always resented the marriage her mother had made in order to widen their alliances. He thought he should have been sent to conquer the land, to take control of the Scots. He thought her father too weak to see the deed done, not understanding the need for a greater, more unified Scotland.
His appearance that night could only mean two things: One, her grandfather, King Ederlad had passed away and, two, Bjork had come to make Lady Cam’béal pay. To take over their lands and castle. To murder and maim and punish.
Elle’s father had fought. He’d fought so hard. She could still see him crashing to the floor, blood pooling around him, sinking into the wooden planks. The way Bjork had stood over his body, breathing heavy, excited. The man had not simply killed for self-defense or in the name of battle, but for the pure enjoyment of it.
Elle stumbled forward onto her hands and knees. Her vision blurred. The ghosts of the past finding their way in and out of her line of sight. The bed loomed up in her vision and she attempted to crawl forward, to reach for it, and curl up beneath the blanket. She was suddenly so cold.
But the further she went, the further it seemed. When her gown caught on a stray nail in the floorboards, she simply collapsed, curling up in a ball on her side. After a few deeply drawn breaths, she rolled onto her back, briefly seeing the ceiling overhead. Maybe it was best if she sank into the oblivion that threatened. Maybe it was best to join her family.
But, Erik…
Her brother, so much younger, was unable to defend himself. She’d quickly grabbed his hand and ran down to the cellars. She’d stripped him down and forced him to dress as a peasant. Told him never to tell their relation who he was and that she’d come back for him. Hopefully, he’d listened. Hopefully he’d forgive her if she was never able to return to him.
Elle’s eyes slowly blinked closed and then back open, the room fading in an out.
She startled at seeing a shadowy figure looming over her.
Outside, the battle still raged.
Who was this? Someone sent by the new laird to finish her off? In her weary state, she’d not even heard him enter.
“Who are ye?” she croaked, squinting trying to get a better view.
“Laird MacDougall.” His voice was different from Beiste MacDougall. Deeper, scratchier, more familiar. The old laird.
Her vision came slightly back into focus and she could see that it was, indeed, the old laird, long, gray beard and matching brows. He stood tall and strong over her. Whatever wounds he’d succumbed to were gone.
“But ye’re dead…” Her lips barely moved as she spoke. Words felt more like a slow exhale.
He floated closer. “Be strong, lass. Be strong and I will protect ye.”
Elle shook her head, her fingers curling around her middle. “But ye’re gone.”
“Nay, I am right here.” There was something soothing about his voice now, as though he’d changed his tone to calm her, beckon her. Well, she couldn’t let him!
She had to remain forthright, to push this demonical vision from her eyes. “I saw your dead body. Be gone with ye!”
The vision darkened, coming more into focus. “What is death? Death canna break an oath I made. Ye know the one of which I speak.”
“How?” Elle rubbed at her eyes, the vision not leaving. Was this real? Was she already asleep and this a night terror?
“The fairies, the gods, they are not done with me yet.”
He sounded so real… Elle pinched her thigh, hard, wincing at the pain. ’Twould appear she was fully awake. Could what he was saying about fairies and gods actually be true? “Did they breathe life back into ye? Can they help my family? Will they?”
“I canna answer to the fate of your parents, lass. But I do know that I have a task to complete and it requires help from ye.”
Her parents. He did not mention her brother. That must mean that Erik was still alive. “Am I going to die?”
“Not if I can help it.”
And how much promise could she believe from a ghost? “I am here, for a little while longer, to help save my son’s soul. To protect ye. And ye can save your family. But ye have to make a sacrifice of your own.”
His son’s soul. But which one? Elle opened her mouth to speak but found no words were able to make their way out.
“Do ye know what a glaistig is?”
Elle’s head rolled from side to side. Her tongue was thick and she found words didn’t want to come. She was so sleepy. She needed a nap. Would the figure mind if she simply fell asleep?
“A glaistig is a ghost, gifted by the fairies with immortality and tasked with protecting a house, looking after the weak, avenging those who are harmed.”
Elle worked around the thickness of her tongue. “Are ye… a… Glaistig?”
“Nay, lass. The fairies… they want ye to be one. To live this life to your fullest and in exchange for their help, that when ye pass from this earth, ye join them, become their green maiden. Protect future clans from their enemies. Protect the weak. Warn them of impending doom.”
The old laird’s visage faded into nothing, then shimmied back.
Elle blinked, certain she was having some sort of hallucination. She could not have heard correctly. That almost made her laugh. But was she more willing to believe that she’d heard the ghost wrong than to believe she wasn’t conversing with a spirit at all? This was utter nonsense.
Lack of food, drink, sleep. The extreme torment of watch
ing her parents be hacked to death by her mother’s own blood had gotten to her. Taken away her ability to manage. Her sanity. She was going mad.
That was it. Why else would she imagine a dead laird coming to her and promising her protection from the grave if only she agreed to be a ghost herself? But not just any ghost, a glaistig, one that haunted anyone who lived on these lands for all eternity.
“I canna…” she whispered. “I willna.”
She wanted to protect her family, her brother, but chances were Erik was already dead. Killed by their Norse relatives. And if he wasn’t, then she’d already told Beiste MacDougall of his obligation to her family. He would see their clan protected. Find her brother if he was still alive. She had no doubt that he would honor that vow. Well, mostly no doubt. If he were honorable, he would see to the people even though his father’s death would have paid the debt in his own eyes since she’d not been fully honest with him.
All that aside, she…she wouldn’t be a haunting thing. She couldn’t. When the Lord saw fit to take her from this world, then she wanted to rest in eternal peace. Not be doomed to walk the earth forever. With Beiste protecting the Cam’béals, she need not risk her own soul or sanity.
“I need your word, lass. A blood oath. Let me help ye.”
The laird’s voice was crisp and clear, right next to her. She rolled her head to the side to see that his shadowy figure had taken up residence in a chair, relaxing as though he had all day to wait her out. All eternity, in fact.
“How do I even know if ye’re real?”
“I am real.”
“The word of a specter in my imagination.”
“Ask me anything. I will know the answer.”
“Only because I have made ye up.”
“’Haps. ’Haps not.”
“How did ye die?”
“I was attacked on the road. By the men outside fighting right now. The verra same who besieged Castle Gloom, the verra reason ye sent for me.”
“I dinna believe in ghosts.” This was a complete lie. Since she was a little girl, she’d often conversed with faint visions. With fairies, with people of her family’s past. In the dark, sometimes the beings frightened her. At other times, she felt a serene sense of calm.
