The Highlander’s Norse Bride
In the 13th century, the king of Scotland had little control in the Western Highlands and in the isles to the north and west. A rich culture of Gaelic and Norn existed here, and power lay in the hands of the chiefs. Much of Western Scotland and the Isles gave their allegiance to the king of Norway.
In 1249, King Alexander II prepared to invade the Hebrides and Western Scotland. After 5 years of failed negotiations with Norway to purchase these areas, King Alexander broke his association with King Haakon and set out to take the Isles and Western territories by force.
In the years to come, two kings would perish during this battle for sovereignty—along with many people given the choice to change their alliance to the Scottish king . . .
Or die.
CHAPTER ONE
MacLean Castle, 1248
Arbela gently wrapped her arms about her brother’s shoulders, wincing at the ridge of collar bone evident beneath her hands. Wings of silver graced his temples, glittering in his night-dark hair, evidence of the passage of time. Though, as his twin, Arbela’s own dark locks glistened with a like reminder.
“Will ye not come inside?” she murmured in his ear.
Alex patted her hand. “I am only remembering, lass, not fashin’.”
She smiled. “Ye sound more like father every day.”
“I had no idea when he brought us here from the Holy Land almost thirty years ago, I would have so much of what I hold dear planted in this rocky soil.”
“We each began new lives here,” Arbela replied. “Do ye ever miss the desert?”
“Sometimes. I miss our youth, our freedom. What of ye?”
Arbela gave a soft laugh. “’Tis my home, now, though I do miss the desert heat from time to time. I find the wind and snow rather bracing, but I could do with a bit less rain.”
She kneaded his shoulders, smoothing the taut muscles, giving him what comfort she could. Together they stared out over the small graveyard, the fresh-turned soil a scar against the rippling grass that would fade with time. Two carved wooden crosses flanked Annag’s grave. One for the twins, born too early to survive, the other for eight-year-old Donal, named for his grandsire and taken from them the same winter as the elder of a fever.
Alex shook his head as if to chase away the memories that even now tore at Arbela’s heart.
“I thank ye for not scolding me for my thoughts this day, Sister. I know I should be caring for wee Gillian who misses her ma. I should grieve my wife, not sit here thinking on other things.” He paused and Arbela gave him time to gather his words. “I do grieve her death—but ’tis a ghostly pain, not the wrenching—” His voice broke and Arbela hugged him tighter, knowing what tore at his heart this day, understanding too well the grief of a lost child.
“It does not become easier, does it?” she asked, her heart breaking for her beloved brother. Each had experienced heartache over the years, but such loss seemed to touch him more than most.
He shook his head, beyond words. Arbela winnowed her fingers through his hair as though he were a lad. “Father would be so proud of ye,” she said. “All ye have accomplished with the shipping trade. Expanding our borders, though it required dealing with the King of the Isles—tip-toeing betwixt the Norse and Scottish kings. Bringing peace to our northern border.”
“Ye did not care for that business, did ye?” Alex asked, his voice soft, laced with faint humor.
Latching onto any memory that lightened Alex’s heart, Arbela plunged into the early days after their arrival in Scotland. “I was understandably upset to learn my dear brother proposed an alliance with the MacGillonays,” she replied wryly.
“What better time?” he asked, though the argument was an old one. “Auld man MacGillonay and his viperous sons were dead—thanks to ye—and the succession was in turmoil. My marriage to Annag brought her family—a distant relation to the auld laird—into prominence, and later, to the lairdship. Better them than the toadies vying for the position.”
“’Tis true. But ’twas a bit much to swallow so soon after Bram’s kidnapping and their attempt to take over Dunfaileas.” Arbela suppressed a small shudder at the memory. Her five-year-old stepson, now grown to manhood and as braw and fearless as any man, had faced down his captors—at her prompting—spoiling Laird MacGillonay’s son’s last attempt to wreak revenge on the MacKerns for the deaths of his father and younger brother.
“We have all thrived with your care and wisdom, Alex. Your years as chief of Clan MacLean have been good ones. And ye have more to look forward to, watching Gillian grow.”
He stiffened beneath her arms, and she cursed silently. His years had been punctuated by the births of four children—and the deaths of three. And now his wife.
He inhaled deeply, then released his breath. He glanced over his shoulder and gave her a sad smile. “I grow old, I fear,” he said. “The years pile together, leaving my regrets brilliantly clear, whilst muting those things I did not care so much about.”
“Ye are but forty-five summers, brother. But I understand,” Arbela replied. “And I am here with ye as long as ye need.”
“What about your husband’s needs?” he queried, a subtle return to humor marking his voice. “I seem to recall a hulking man who does not care to have ye long from his side.”
“He is well, and will have our granddaughters at Dunfaileas to distract him for the next few days.” Arbela chuckled. “’Twill make him all the happier to see me when I return home.”
“Life has been kind to ye, I believe,” Alex noted. “Ye grew to love the man ye married, and you have two bonny daughters, a son and a step-son who dote on ye and coddle ye in your old age.”
Arbela slapped his shoulder lightly. “My old age?” she asked, her voice sliding upward in mock outrage. “I will thank ye to keep your thoughts behind your teeth.” She leaned her cheek into his shoulder to take away the sting of her words. It was clear Alex felt their years this day. Burying his wife of nearly thirty years, no matter the scant fondness between them—unlike the passionate love Arbela had found with her husband—created a hole in his life. Arbela wondered how he would choose to fill the void, and if one small child would be enough.
“Ye will remarry,” she asserted. “In time, ye will find a woman who appreciates ye.”
Alex’s head swayed heavily. “I could have loved her,” he said, gaze once again on the fresh-turned earth over his wife’s grave.
Arbela stroked his arm. “Ye cared for her,” she comforted. “Annag was content.”
“But I dinnae love her as she deserved, Bela. My wife never knew what it was to be truly loved.”
“And, my brother, neither did ye.”
CHAPTER 2
May, 1249, 1 year later
Village of Hällstein, Isle of Mull
The rumble of barking dogs roused Hanna from sleep at the same instant her husband rolled from their bed. Steel rasped on leather as he slid his sword from its sheath, the pad of bare feet on the wood floor surprisingly light for a man of his bulk. Torvald did not waste time telling her to stay safely behind. Women in her world fought to defend what was theirs. She would attend her duties as head of the women of the clan.
Hanna slipped from the bed, shoving her feet into thin leather boots, arms into a kirtle stained dark that would blend with the shadows. Placing three small daggers into hidden sheaths, she followed Torvald into the dark hall and down the stairway. They separated in the hall, silent as ghosts, though movement in the longhouse rustled as others gathered to the alarm. Shouts in the yard rose, torches flared, and children were herded into the safe room beneath the floor of the hall.
“Stay silent,” she warned, laying a gentle hand on her daughter’s shoulder as she mounted the ladder to the underground passage. Twelve-year-old Signy paused, sending Hanna an anguished look. “Ye are a good daughter,” Hanna said past a lump in her throat. The commotion rose to a fever pitch outside the protective walls, and both she and Signy knew this was no simple raid. “Go,” Hanna told her. “Be safe.”
Signy nodded, squaring her shoulders as she met Hanna’s eyes one last time. A moment later, her head disappeared into the shadows.
“I will not go with the children,” her son stated. “I will help defend the village.”
Hanna stared at Sten’s ten-year-old form, gangly and tall, with only a hint of his father’s bulk. He was still a child, seeking her permission rather than his father’s, small axe clasped tight in his fist, a dagger at his belt.
“I cannot have ye amongst the men,” she said. “They fight as one, and ye have not yet the training. Find two others such as ye and defend the door.”
Sten nodded and glanced at the group behind him, motioning to a pair of his closest friends. Hanna gave them one last look as she prayed they would come to no harm. She had done what she could.
Stepping through the door into the yard, Hanna joined several other women, their faces grim in the torchlight. Beyond the edge of the yard, men armed and girded with steel struggled ashore from boats that pitched in the tide. The men of Hällstein pressed them back, the clang of metal harsh in the fire-pierced darkness.
Cries of wounded men reached the women, and two from amongst them followed the sounds, their job to tend the injured. Around Hanna, women fell to their tasks, no words necessary, and none arising from throats dry with dread.
Another ship loomed against the shore, bow and planks aglow, reflecting the dance of Torvald’s bonfires as the flames leapt high on the rocky beach, illuminating the battle in vivid red and gold. Hanna’s heart stuttered at the sight of bodies amidst the boulders. Men from the ships bounded over the seething mass of dying men, swords glinting, headed for the longhouse.
Time faded, became as nothing, the action around her slowing to an unbearable crawl. Her ears picked out Torvald’s shouts from amid the other voices as the fighting heightened. Hanna strode forward, skirts tucked inside her belt to free her movements, shaking her arms to loosen her muscles. A man she did not recognize slipped from the fight, his attention on the empty yard before the longhouse. His gaze swept over Hanna, dismissing her as a threat—the last mistake he would make that night. Hanna stepped sideways, into his guard, causing him to pull up short in surprise. Without hesitation, she drove her dagger into his belly just beneath his breastbone, angling upward into the thick muscle between his chest and abdomen.
His gasp of surprise turned to one of distress as he fought to drag air into his lungs. Not lingering to watch him die, Hanna met the next enemy.
* * *
Exhaustion dulled Hanna’s senses, deadened the pain of injury and loss. The few women crowding around her appeared as indifferent as she felt, shoulders drooped, clothing torn and bloodied. Yet defiance glinted their eyes as the dawning sun illuminated the charred remains of the village and the longhouse. Hanna leaned to one side, retching as bile rose, reeling from her imaginings of what lay beneath the burned timbers.
Straightening, her gaze darted from one guard to the next, seeking answers. Had the women and children hidden in the secret passage escaped? Had they been trapped? Overcome by smoke? Had soldiers entered before they torched the structure, taking prisoners? Or leaving no survivors? What had been Signy and Sten’s fate? Were these few women around her all who remained of their clan?
Perhaps a lucky few had scrambled to safety amid the confusion as the wooden structure was torched, but it was clear none lived. Her gaze drifted over the bloodstained ground between the yard and the shore where her husband and his men had fought their final battle. She would remember this for the rest of her days, but for now she clung to the next breath, the next moment, pushing aside the terrible emptiness within.
She pressed a hand against the ripped sleeve of her kirtle. In the moments it had taken her to stem the bleeding of the jagged knife wound, she had been captured and brought to the circle of detained women. Her fingers met with clotted blood, the fabric soaked through. The agony had settled to a dull throb, though she knew the pain would soon return. She fought through the dizziness of blood loss, determined to remain standing and hear her fate.
Men draped in checkered woolen cloth marking them as Scots swaggered around the group of women, leering at them, their bearded, blood-spattered faces a horrific sight in the dim light. A few traipsed across the yard, loading the ships with what loot they’d discovered before setting the hall ablaze. Hällstein’s riches had been in the sea, not measured in gold or precious gems, though a few treasures passed from generation to generation had graced the hall’s tables and coffer.
“What do ye want?” Hanna demanded, the sight of the utter ruin about her prodding her anger and despair. Sending their leader, a man marked by his air of command and detachment from the activity around him, a look of defiance and scorn, she labeled herself the spokesperson for the remaining villagers.
He returned her gaze, one brow arched. After a moment’s hesitation, he stepped closer. Halting a few feet away, feet braced a shoulder’s width apart, balanced slightly forward, he raked her with a derisive glare.
“Our sovereign king, Alexander of Scotland, bids welcome to his newest subjects,” he mocked.
“We are subject to no king of Scotland,” Hanna spat. “Indeed, if these are the actions of your king, he is despicable and deserves no man’s loyalty.”
“My king bade us take back the isles,” the man replied. “By force or by transfer of allegiance—whichever is most successful.”
Hanna’s brows rose. “I heard no offer of clemency by aligning myself with the Scottish king,” she noted. She tossed her gaze about the scattered bodies of her clansmen. “I doubt they were presented with the suggestion, either.”
The Scot shrugged. “I was not told which to offer. And I doubt the king cares so long as I bring him the land.”
“And what of the items ye have loaded onto your ship?” Hanna asked. “Will ye bring him what little gold we had?”
A smile creased the man’s face, parting his lips to reveal his teeth in a predatory grin that sent a shiver down Hanna’s spine. He closed the distance between them until she nearly gagged on the overwhelming odor of unwashed male and fresh blood. “Neither the gold nor the bounty I see before me will pass from my hands,” he whispered. “Some things I willnae share.”
A gull shrieked overhead. Hanna inhaled a smoky reminder of death. Defiance warred with anger. Anger for the lives wasted in the land struggle between two kings. Anger for the arrogance of the man before her who cared naught for the shame he would inflict on the remaining women of her village.
“Come with me,” the Scot commanded. He waved a hand over the clustered group of women. “Do with them as ye wish,” he called to his men. Jeers of excitement and approval rose, hands grabbed, clutching clothing and flesh. Shrieks rose as the women fought back, making up in ferocity what they lacked in strength. Hanna twisted away as the leader reached for her, stomping the side of his knee as hard as she could, gratified by his grunt of pain and surprise.
He shifted his weight to one side, lightly toeing the ground with the injured leg to maintain balance. Hanna did not give him a chance to settle, but aimed a kick for his groin. He pivoted to the side, but not fast enough. Her booted foot caught him squarely between his legs. With a thin shriek, he crumpled to the ground. With a quick, stabbing motion, Hanna shoved her blade between two vertebrae at the base of his skull, killing him instantly.
She spun about, finding herself outside the melee. One by one, the women were subdued, though the price in gouges, dislocated appendages and one man whose ability to see again was questionable, had taken its toll on their captors. Breathless and muttering uneasily, they cast infuriated looks at the still-defiant women. One woman caught Hanna’s gaze.
“Run,” she mouthed as her hands were jerked roughly behind her back. Hanna shook her head.
Another nodded at her. “Avenge us.”
Taking her chance, Hanna ran.
We hope you are enjoying the book so far. To continue reading...
Copyright © 2024 All Rights Reserved
Please log in to recommend or discuss...
