Legend of the Mist

by Veronica Bale

  Fearchar hesitated, drew himself up, and spoke. “My daughter.”

  “Father, no!” Garrett protested beside him, horrified.

  “Your daughter,” Einarr repeated, considering. “And what age is the girl? I shall not wed a ... oh, what do you call it ... an old maid?”

  “She is but sixteen this winter,” Fearchar answered, offended by the suggestion that he might be trying to offer up a spinster.

  “Ah, now that is an attractive proposition. Sixteen years.”

  “But please,” Fearchar interrupted, “I beg ye wait a year or two. She is no’ ready yet. Sir, my daughter is ... she is a special lass.”

  “She is more than special, father. A marriage to this Viking cur would kill her!” Garrett spat.

  Iobhar slapped his nephew across the back of the head. The men around the campfire chortled heartily at the display.

  “Special, you say? Do you mean to say that she is ... how do you say it ... feeble of mind.”

  “By God she is not,” Garrett shouted, his face red. Stupidly he took a step forward, ready to charge the Norseman and fight bare-handed.

  “Ye will hold yer tongue,” Fearchar commanded, fixing his son with an authoritative glare. This achieved the effect which his brother’s attempts to silence the lad had not. Garrett clenched his jaw shut, glowering at his father but not daring to challenge him again.

  “My daughter isna simple,” Fearchar continued, addressing Einarr again. “I can assure ye, she has all her wits about her, and I’ve raised her to be obedient and respectful. She’s no defects on her body to speak of, and she is gae comely, the spit of her mother. She will make ye a good wife and bear yer children. I would have had a dowry to offer ye, but ye’ve already taken everything I have to give, so I would consider us even on that score. That, sir, is my assurance that our alliance will be honoured.

  “But ye must uphold yer end of it,” he added. “Ye must no’ attack Fara again. Ye must teach my men to fight as Vikings fight, and ye must let it be known that ye are protector to Clan Gallach so other bands of raiders will leave us be.”

  For long, tense moments Einarr did not speak. He stared at the Gallach chief, his ice cold eyes cutting into Fearchar’s as he considered the proposition laid before him.

  “A year, you say?”

  “Two,” Fearchar answered. It was both a demand and a plea. “Two summers from now.”

  Einarr nodded, and rose from his makeshift seat. When standing, the Norseman was a head taller than Fearchar, which was remarkable since Fearchar was one of the tallest men on Fara. “We shall begin training after the autumn harvest. My men and I intend to farm this land, and we will go a-viking this summer. But when the season is done, we shall journey to Fara to train your men.”

  “And I have yer word that ye willna go a-viking on Fara?”

  “You have it. And I will spread the word to all that Fara is a protected land. Of course that does not mean you will be completely safe; my word is not law, after all. But no Norseman who knows of me would dare risk my wrath.”

  “That is all I can ask,” Fearchar breathed, his shoulders slumping slightly. “Thank ye, sir.”

  “I would advise you to go now,” Einarr concluded. “I cannot offer you shelter until morning as perhaps I should. My men are ... I think you have a saying for it, do you not—their blood is up? I cannot promise you they won’t slaughter you in your sleep, so it is best you return to Fara.”

  The Gallach men glanced at the Vikings around the fire. Some grinned menacingly, some glared back. They needed no further warning. Nodding their respects they allowed themselves to be led away from the camp and back to their awaiting birlinn.

  “I canna believe what ye’ve done,” Garrett cried to Fearchar once the birlinn was again on the water heading homeward.

  “It had to be done,” Fearchar argued heavily, his eyes downcast. “I wish it didna, but there was no other way. Norah will understand that.”

  “You know as well as I that she willna, father.”

  Fearchar turned to his son then, looking him in the eye. “She must. She has no choice.”

  “She willna accept it so lightly when ye tell her.”

  “She willna ken; leastways no’ yet, for I’ll no’ be telling her when we return. And ye’ll say nothing either.”

  “But—”

  “Ye’ll say nothing,” Fearchar repeated, his voice raised enough that the men in the birlinn heard him clearly. “And that goes for the rest of ye. My daughter is no’ to ken what has transpired here this night.” Speaking directly to Garrett, he added, “Let her have these two years, I have bargained that much for her sake. Dinna burden her wi’ her fate just yet.”

  Garrett clenched his jaw shut, acquiescing once more to his father’s will. His head understood his father’s logic, understood that as chief of Clan Gallach he’d had no choice. But the chief was also Norah’s father. And Garrett could not abide the sacrifice he’d made of his own daughter.

  Nay, he would not disobey Fearchar; he would not tell Norah that her hand had been exchanged for the safety of the clan. But neither could he suffer the last two years of her freedom in silence.

  There in the birlinn, surrounded by the strange silver mist, Garrett made a decision: he would not stay on Fara; he could not. He would leave at the first opportunity, for he would not be able to stand seeing his sister, day after day, knowing he’d betrayed her this night.

  Three

  The air was still, the mist thick and cloying. It distorted all objects within its ghostly form so that the land appeared to be made up of nothing more than a collection of shifting shapes, there one second and gone the next. The silence of the place was unearthly, so much so that not even the gulls, with their shrill screeching, dared to interrupt its hold over the island. The morning dew lay heavy upon the grass and low-lying shrubs. It saturated the hem of Norah’s grey wool tunic as she tread through the crystalline brush to the barracks of the unmarried clansmen.

  The slatted wooden door of the stone-and-mud building with its low thatched roof stood open. The turf smoke from the previous night’s fire drifted over the dirt entrance; as she stepped across the threshold it swirled about her ankles like shackles.

  Inside, Garrett knelt beside his pallet, still rolled out in the spot where he’d slept. He was folding the last of his garments and placing them into the centre of a tanned sheep’s hide for his journey to the lands of their Campbell kin. He was to train with the warriors there, a decision made of a sudden and without apparent reason. The claymore which their grandfather, Chief Elisedd of Campbell, had given Garrett before his passing lay beside his pack.

  “It still gleams as it did the day he gave it ye,” Norah noted.

  Garrett turned his chin, acknowledging her presence but keeping his eyes on the garments before him. “I would argue it gleams brighter, for I have spent many hours polishing it.”

  She smiled sadly. “Yet further proof that my elder brother is wiser than I.”

  Garrett laughed begrudgingly. “Dinna be daft.”

  When a heavy silence followed, Norah stepped through the door and knelt gingerly at her brother’s side. His hands stilled over his work, and his chin dropped to his chest. His defeat not only perplexed Norah, it frightened her. He was hiding something, something of such a magnitude that it was causing him distress. Never before had he hidden anything from her. What was it?

  “Garrett, ye dinna have to go,” she implored, taking his hand in hers. “Yer home is here. Ye’re the next chief of Clan Gallach, ye’re needed here.”

  “Nay, I canna.”

  “But why? I dinna understand. Why must ye go? What has happened?”

  Garrett raised his eyes to hers, searching her face. For a brief second Norah thought he might divulge whatever it was that he was withholding. But then he shook his head and looked away again. The sorrow which had set in the moment she learned her brother was leaving twisted in her chest afresh. The tears that she’d been holding ba
ck welled up behind her lids and brimmed over, spilling down her cheeks.

  With a breath to regain her composure, she reached forward and folded the sheep’s hide over the pile of clothing. “Well, whatever yer reason, I hope ye think it a good one.”

  Instead of answering her, Garrett smiled weakly as he watched Norah’s hands tuck the ends of the hide into themselves to seal the pack. “Ye were always good at that,” he said.

  Taking the pack from her, he bound it with a length of rope, looping it twice to make armholes so that he could carry it on his back.

  The pair lapsed into another heavy silence. Norah was desperate to say goodbye, and at the same time she was desperate not to. How could she say goodbye to the brother who had always protected her? Who would be there to protect her now?

  “Please, Garrett. Stay,” she begged, her lower lip trembling.

  “I wish I could,” he responded. “Ye canna imagine how much I wish to stay. But I canna. And before ye ask again,” he added when she opened her mouth to protest, “I canna tell ye why. While I’m gone, though, ye’ll take care of the children, aye? The ones that lost their fathers, especially Cinead. He needs ye. Ye keep his head level. He respects ye, wants to please ye. Make sure he grows into a fine man.”

  Norah’s eyes widened. “How long will ye be gone?”

  “A few years, perhaps. I reckon it will take that long to get good and trained up.”

  “Garrett,” she gasped, clutching at his hand again. “Ye’ll be gone a matter of years? Ye didna say!”

  “I’m saying now.”

  “But—but what training can the Campbells give ye that ye canna get wi’ the Vikings? Ye heard Father say they’ll be here after the harvest to train the clan in their style.”

  “I dinna want to ken the Viking way, and I dinna want to be here when they are!” he asserted, thumping his fist into the dirt at his side.

  Norah bit her lip, trying not to burst into a fit of sobs. “Ye canna leave me,” she said quietly.

  Garrett hung his head. “I am sorry. I must.”

  His words rang with finality. She lowered her own head, chastened. When Garrett leaned over to embrace her, she could say nothing.

  “Ye take care, Norah. Ye hear? Take care of yerself.”

  She nodded and buried her head in his shoulder, holding onto him, memorizing him as if she might never see him again. She might not, after all. Who knew what the years ahead would bring?

  Later that morning, as she stood on the edge of the cliff watching his ship sail off to the Scottish mainland, Norah considered how long a matter of years was. Garrett had always been there to talk to, to laugh with, to look up to. In two, three years he would be a full grown man when he returned, crossing the threshold from youth to adulthood in a distant land away from his people. If he were gone more than two or three years ...

  She’d never felt so alone as she watched the birlinn drift farther and farther away. The whistle of the wind that whipped her hair in its seaborne breeze taunted her, echoing her loneliness.

  * * *

  “Torsten,” called an exuberant, high pitched voice from the door of the tavern. “Einarr is home!”

  Torsten glanced towards the flood of light that penetrated the smoky gloom within. The patrons who also looked to see who had interrupted their drinking squinted against the sudden glare of the late summer day.

  In the middle of the doorway stood Siri, Torsten’s younger sister. She leaned with one hand braced against the wooden frame and her other hand plunked on her hip which was draped in a rose coloured gown of Byzantine silk. That gown, he recalled, had been captured in one of the previous summers’ raids.

  “Well?” she demanded when Torsten continued to stare blankly at her. “Are you coming?”

  Torsten scowled at the slip of a girl. Only fourteen summers had she seen and already she was barging into taverns and handing out orders like she was the lady of the land. Revisiting his goblet of mead, he raised the rim to his lips and tossed down the remainder with a loud swallow.

  “My friends,” he said, nodding to the men with whom he had been partaking of the tavern’s refreshments for the past hour, “I am being summoned.”

  Torsten’s companions chuckled amongst themselves in response, clucking their tongues at the typically brash behaviour of the jarl’s daughter.

  Stalking across the rush-strewn floor, Torsten grabbed her arm and spun her away from the door. “I thought I told you to stay away from this part of the village,” he clipped, his eyes narrowed with displeasure.

  Siri was not chastened in the least by her brother’s tone. Instead she flashed the winsome smile for which she was known and rolled her eyes. That smile had, time after time, won over even the most hardened Viking in the port village of Hvaleyrr, and once again, Torsten found himself unable to stay angry with her.

  “You worry too much, brother,” she retorted. “I have known these men all my life. They would not hurt me.”

  “They would not when they’re sober,” he countered. “But the men in there have more mead and ale in them than blood by now.”

  “I saw that Gnud staring after you as you left,” Siri said, changing the subject. “What a horrible woman she is. I hope you have not been encouraging her attentions.”

  “Not that it is any of your business, but I have not.”

  “Good. I hope she’s hurt that you ignore her.”

  “As much as I hate to upset your youthful flights of fancy, I hardly think hurt has anything to do with it,” he corrected her. “And I hardly think she’ll have given it a second thought when she has more than enough customers willing to pay for the pleasure of her charms.”

  “Charms? Ha!” Siri barked, tossing her long, golden hair over her shoulder. “Ten years ago, perhaps. Her fruit is a little overripe now, I think.”

  “Mind your tongue,” Torsten admonished, swatting at her. She ducked easily out of his reach, skipping sideways with a grin.

  “I knew you would not pursue a withered old bat such as Gnud,” Siri continued, unfazed. “No, my Torsten would not lower himself to consort with her lot. My Torsten is waiting for a chaste, young maid.”

  “I doubt I’m waiting for anyone.”

  “So you say. But I know different.”

  “Is that so? Do enlighten me, sister, on the secrets of my heart. I certainly don’t know what they are.”

  “It is because you are not a woman,” she responded matter-of-factly. “A woman knows these things. You, my dear brother, are destined for a great love. I feel it.”

  “You’ve been paying too much attention to your silly, young companions and their girlish stories, more like. I can assure you that my lack of a wife has nothing to do with some great plan. It is a selfish act on my part: I simply don’t feel like taking a wife. Really, Siri, you must get such ridiculous notions out of your head. Especially now that you are to be wed.”

  “You need not remind me,” she sighed. “I know my marriage is one of strategy and alliance. I’ve no illusions that Rulfudd is in love with me.”

  “Does Einarr know yet of the betrothal?”

  “I think he does, though I have not yet spoken with him myself. Father greeted him when his longships docked, then took him straight up to the castle to discuss the goings on here. I cannot imagine he forgot to tell him about such an important match. You should have seen him,” she added laughing. “He was down at the docks waiting when Einarr’s ships came in. Practically hopping with excitement, he was.”

  “I have no doubt,” Torsten agreed dryly. Their father pined for the loss of his eldest son to the a-viking season each year, and was like an excited child each time Einarr returned home to Hvaleyrr.

  In that manner they ascended the incline on which the village was built together, their banter easy as it usually was. At length the castle at the heart of the village came into view. It was the seat of Jarl Alfrad Greybeard, Torsten, Einarr and Siri’s father. It was one which Harald Fairhair was eager to get his h
ands on, being a rather lucrative port in the commercial trade between Norway and the lands of Britain and Ireland.

  As they reached the summit of the sloping town and approached the main gate the castle loomed before them. It was a vast and impressive structure, built to such a grand scale to demonstrate Alfrad’s wealth and position.

  A group of Einarr’s men loitered about the entrance to the castle as Torsten and Siri passed through the arched gates. Their faces were rough and weathered from a summer on the seas, and they looked as though they had not bathed in months. Which, likely, they hadn’t.

  “Welcome back,” Torsten greeted them.

  A number of them grunted in response. There weren’t very many of them that Torsten liked or respected, but he maintained a level of civility with all of them for the simple fact that he had no concrete reason not to.

  The feeling was reciprocated: the men didn’t much like or respect Torsten either. Torsten didn’t go a-viking often. He did not like it, did not like constant war, constant killing. It was draining to the soul. When he did go, he was usually guilted into it by Einarr and his father, by talk of Viking pride and Viking revenge.

  They were both in the hall when he and Siri reached them, and were joined by their mother, Ingrid. Alfrad’s strong, angular face shone with pride as he spoke to his eldest son about his travels. For a moment, it looked as though he were young, and the illness with which he had been afflicted the past year was completely gone.

  “And you lost no men?” Alfrad exclaimed. “You must be well funded, now.”

  A bitter taste rose in Torsten’s mouth. Einarr had not been out rallying support for his cause, he’d been raiding villages, plundering them for their riches and killing their people.

  Before Einarr could answer, his younger siblings caught his attention. He turned towards them, a wide smile spreading across his face.

  “Siri,” the fearsome Viking exclaimed with child-like delight, and opened his arms wide.