The Viking and the Pictish Princess: The Rose and the Sword Page 2

  The Gaels burn dry pines. It will blaze like torches. Any break in this fog, any breath of wind, and the whole island will be in flames. Ensuring his sword and dagger were still strapped to his legs, Olaf rolled onto his back, sucking in resin-scented air. “All pinewood?” he asked, when he was sure his voice was steady.

  “Oak and rowan farther in, towards the middle. You are right, though, we should make for there, where the oaks will not burn!”

  “Glad you agree, so good to discuss,” Olaf muttered sarcastically, as he pulled himself upright to trail after the Pictish woman and her bobbing bag and bow.

  Who guessed this speck of land would be so steep, so up and down? Olaf panted like an old man, skidding and slipping on thread-like tracks thick with pine needles. Behind, unseen but heard, the screams of the Gaels gave iron to his legs, although he marvelled at how the lass leading them kept going. Lungs as big as a cauldron she must have.

  Most of the echoing words slung after them by the Gaels Olaf could understand. At their next forced stop, when Bindweed sank into a crouch atop a lichen covered boulder, he spoke.

  “The men back there are burning to smoke you out. They are after you, girl.”

  “Bindweed or healer, not girl—never girl,” snapped Bindweed, her head rising proudly from her chest like the jutting prow of an approaching longship. She made the sign against evil with a bramble-scratched hand as her aquamarine eyes glowed brighter. “I save lives. My skills are respected, as they deserve to be after my apprenticeship!”

  A dark tale there, in her past. “Do the pirates know you as healer?” Olaf persisted. “Or as something else? Come on, woman, admit it. The Gaels burn here to seize more than a healer, however excellent her skills.”

  Her glare sharpened, making her more pretty, not less. Pretty? Am I a boy to be so beguiled? And she has not even shed her cloak or hood yet.

  But Bindweed was scolding, and her words cut through the fog and his own distraction.

  “There is nothing, Viking! I am healer and keeper of Maiden Isle. I make poultices and tisanes—”

  Even as she vented, her left arm flexed and the pebble she cast shot by him, hitting a blurred shape that yelled. Olaf whirled about, punching out with his sword as he wrested it free.

  Two Gaels shimmered out of the thick grey mists, the shorter bleeding from Bindweed’s stone, or from their climb up the island cliff.

  Not a bad plan for an ambush, but this healer-woman knows her home ground, even in this filthy murk.

  Olaf was already sprinting at the invaders. He shoulder slammed one and sent the Gael sprawling, flailing and grabbing at hanging lichen as the fellow tried to stop his fall. Backwards he went, right over the drop he had just scaled, and a distant splash told that their would-be attacker had hit the water of the loch. Olaf swept his blade low and the second Gael screamed as the sword hacked his calf. Abruptly, the screams stopped, and the Gael toppled in the mist.

  “Come!”

  The healer-woman was paler than the fog, but her command was clear, and the second stone she cast also struck true. Olaf kicked the dead Gael as he passed, marking the blood-stained pebble sticking out of his cracked skull.

  “I had him,” Olaf protested, but Bindweed, vaulting over a branch of holly, gasped, “Hurry!” and after that, there was no time or breath for speech.

  So much for healing! She killed a man with as little flourish as a hardened warrior, and yet I follow her. I must be mad.

  The closing trees about them, now birch and stubby oaks, chattered through their sparse leaves as if they agreed. Still Olaf followed, skidding down on his backside as the oak trees became more dense and the path steeper. Here the fog and choking smoke lessened and he watched her dip her foot into the sullen waters of the pool she had clearly brought them to.

  Finally, she turned to him.

  “We swim through the pond to reach my hideaway, y’ken?”

  He nodded and, still wrapped in the cloak, she dived into the pool, disappearing into the weedy depths like a selkie.

  What now? Olaf plunged in after her.

  ♦◊♦

  “Another island?” Olaf asked, as his companion gathered driftwood and kindling from the tiny pebble beach where they had landed after a churning, teeth-aching swim in a greasy, icy stretch of water as dark as a storm-cloud. Behind him, as if it wanted to drag him under again, the pool water coiled against his ankles and the whole islet rose up in front of his water-logged vision, tall and thick as a Roman column and studded with oak trees.

  No pines, thank the norns.

  Off to his left was a white cave, a huge ledge of overhanging limestone, and to his right, bulrushes and reed mace that hid the entrance to the cave from any who found the pool. Those who did not know the underwater entrance would not realise this secret spot was here. “Clever,” he muttered, reluctantly impressed.

  “A nook, my old teacher called this isle.” Bindweed picked up her armload of foraged branches, hefted her travelling satchel and stalked up the beach towards the cave. By the time Olaf caught up with her, she was crouching by a shallow fire pit, blowing on a spark of fire in a heap of shavings. “Maeve liked to name things. She gave it an Irish title, which translates as ‘Nook reached from under the sacred pool.’ I found the place on Maiden Isle when I was twelve, and visited whenever I could.”

  Bindweed added another handful of kindling to the spark and smoke. She straightened and puffed out her cheeks, a curiously endearing gesture, and then admitted more. “Maeve kept my secret of here. She disliked the old laird and his legitimate kin and shared no more than she needed to of Maiden Isle.”

  She speaks the word ‘legitimate’ as if it was a curse.

  “Useful,” Olaf remarked, avoiding any controversy. When Bindweed remained silent, he dropped his own armful of branches on the cave floor beside their modest fire. He shook pond water from his hair and leather trews and considered wringing out his sodden tunic but continued to look about instead.

  “I have stores nearby, and a bed space.”

  Olaf marked how she blushed at the word bed, but he did not feel like teasing. Distant but still persistent the bawling of the Gaels drifted over the pond to them, along the with pervasive stench of resin, and burning.

  Above his head the cave roof, dotted with stalactites and holes that let the fog in, arched off into the mist. Farther back from the edge of the lapping water the ridged floor became bone dry. In one low corner he spotted a dresser made of dark stone slabs, and a straw mattress set in a box bed of stones and loch boulders. Bindweed was rummaging in a large crock on the dresser and she drew out a bag of oatmeal with a cry of victory.

  “I knew the rats would not gnaw through my pot! Now we can eat!”

  Chapter 3

  The Viking ate heartily though not greedily, waiting for her nod of permission before taking more of the thick, saltless porridge. After she had pointed from the cave to the thick ladders of ivy she used to go higher on the islet and explained the location of the latrine—well away from both cave and water—he scrambled off into the fog. Moments later he was back, wet-handed and his gold chains and armlets gleaming, and he washed their bowls and made up the fire, allowing Bindweed to climb the ivy in turn.

  Back at the hiding place, she draped the clothes she had carried with her from the larger cave over stones near the fire-pit to dry and finally changed her wet tunic and cloak for dry warm things she had stored in a pot in this smaller cave. Shivering as painful feeling tingled in her hands and toes, she bedded down first on the stale straw mattress.

  I will be trapped, she panicked, as the Viking stalked to the bedspace, long and lean and dangerous, dripping frost off his trews as slickly as an otter sheds water. With a grunt that surely meant “Goodnight”, he rolled away from her in his own damp cloak and soon she heard his snores.

  She did not want to sleep, but morning, cold and dank, shook her awake the following day. Chilled to the bone, Bindweed forced her aching limbs to stretch and tu
rned, only to flinch at the pitiless grey eyes studying her. Lying on his side facing her, the man who had shared her mattress merely watched as she scrambled back against the cave wall.

  “Not what you expected, little Pict?” He leaned closer, his shaggy hair as dark as his handsome face was bright. “Or did you hope to be ravished in the night?”

  The Viking’s mocking question prompted her to deny, but she could do sharper than that. “I expect any guest of mine to have the good manners to tend the fire.”

  “And collect water for cooking, washing and more? All done, my lady, while you slept.”

  “Are all northmen so arrogant?”

  “Is it arrogance when the tasks are done, and done well?”

  Bindweed longed to protest more, but time was pressing, and she had to know what was happening beyond their bed-space. Reluctantly, the words as weighty as curses on her lips, she forced out, “My thanks.”

  Her companion smirked and surged off the bed, agile and sinuous as a seal in water, his leather trews displaying his shapely legs and backside. Refusing to stare, Bindweed glanced at the brightly burning fire, then at the woodland beyond the pool. Before she could compose her expression, she scowled.

  “What is it, healer-woman? The mists are thinning, are they not?”

  “Aye, but the snows are coming now,” she replied, understanding what that heavy pewter sky signified.

  “I am Norse, my lady. A scattering of frost means nothing to me. It was clear when I rose and will be clear again, very soon.”

  “Not with that bowl of heaven. The trackways will be impassable by this afternoon, perhaps the loch itself.”

  Her answer stopped his swagger. He sprinted straight back onto the pool, stifling a yell at the increased cold and smashing a fist into its icing waters. “By Thor and Christ and all his blessed saints!”

  His muttered curse echoed round the cave and Bindweed knew why. Already, the Viking was covered in thick grey flakes and the fallen snow muffled all sound.

  “In less time than a sea-watch? A sword’s depth deposited in so brief a space?”

  Bindweed smiled at his disbelief.

  “Welcome to Alba in winter time,” she said.

  ♦◊♦

  The snow fell and fell, and Olaf did not leave. In truth, after the dark cold lands of the north these Alban snows were no challenge, but Olaf did not want to go.

  Bindweed needs me, he told himself, on the second day, as drifts built around the pond and icicles hung from the cave entrance. A woman, alone and unprotected. She should have a man to take care of her.

  He had tried to do the same for his mother Gudrun while she lived. He never liked to see womenfolk struggle.

  The healer-woman had said nothing, made no complaint, but that first day together she was wan and often, when she did not spot him watching, she would rub at her back and belly. Women’s cramps, he guessed, and said nothing.

  The raiding parties of the Gaels were another matter. Each daybreak, after a hasty handful of dried apple rings lifted from another of the healer-woman’s crocks he burst out of the snow drifts heaped around the cave to look for them. Armed with his sword, Bindweed’s short bow and a staff he made of stout holly-wood—to test for more of her cunning traps—Olaf scoured the islet. Witnessing the scorched earth and burnt pines stark against the frost and snow, he sought their tracks as avidly as a hunter after game, determined to run them to ground. They despoiled Bindweed’s home and should pay for that.

  He did not question his anger on her behalf, nor his fierce joy in bagging a plump roach to bring back to their camp.

  Sometimes, in their long evenings together, Bindweed spoke of returning to her larger cave. Olaf was relieved when she remained in the smaller.

  We do naught but lie side by side at night fully clothed, but I would miss her in bed. He was even growing accustomed to suppers of plain, unsalted oatmeal, washed down with tisanes of wild mint. His captured roach, cooked on hot stones, had been a welcome change.

  On the third day, he admitted the pirates had gone, along with the fog. That dawn morning, waking first, as he always did, he saw his companion clearly, for the first time.

  At the sight of her, he felt the blood rush into his groin and face, exactly as if he was a lad and not a man grown. Rolling over, so Bindweed would not see his state, Olaf fought to bring himself under control. However had he thought her wan?

  Unable to resist another look, he turned back. Clearly her woman’s course had ceased, for he could smell no blood on her and had lost her previous grey complexion. With her hood pulled back he admired the rich silver-gold of her long, blonde hair, the sweet curves of her pretty face. A Freya, he decided, naming her for the Norse goddess of love.

  If she has no lover, the Picts are fools.

  Astonished no one had claimed her, Olaf took fresh delight in how her long eyelashes fluttered like moth’s wings and then was pierced by her bright, light blue eyes as she came fully awake.

  “The fog has gone, but no one comes,” she said at once, and sat up, almost striking her head on the low roof of the cave. “Do you not understand?” she burst out, staring at him as if he was a plague-carrier. “The women of the broch visit me, and none have.”

  Olaf flexed his shoulders and made himself rise from the bed. Bindweed started after him, chattering in clear nervousness.

  “Now the fog is lifted, even with the snows they should have made their way here. I am the healer of the women hereabouts and the fact that none have ventured onto Maiden Isle is bad, very bad! I must find out why!”

  Nothing good, Olaf decided, but he wanted to know, too.

  ♦◊♦

  The dark broch, once powerful and commanding, was now a shattered tooth against the snowy landscape, blasted by fire and strewn in blood and bodies. Bindweed moved quickly among the dead, stopping briefly beside the corpse of the laird, a man who, in life, had been taller than most. Giric’s aquamarine eyes were glazed and snow had filled the ragged open pit in his belly.

  I thought my woman’s curse cramps were bad this month. Hating her own flippancy, Bindweed scraped her heart for some compassion, but all that came was the bleak, the laird died as he lived. A warrior of the Picts who could only destroy.

  Saliva flooded her mouth as the blackest memories returned in force, those terrors that haunted her days and dreams. The loss of her mother. The jeers and pinches of her legitimate half-sisters, ten, eleven years earlier, when she was just seven years old. The bullying of her legitimate half-brothers at the same time. Then, her being forgotten by her father and his people—forgotten and dismissed.

  All nightmares and all recollections and experiences that have beset me, but not these past nights, while the Viking shared my bed.

  Bindweed pursed her lips, longing to spit on the body of Giric the Harsh, on the heap of painted and bloodied young men ranged around him, all dead in battle, defending their chieftain.

  “They fought hard,” the Viking beside her said quietly.

  “Still lost,” Bindweed snapped, wincing as she recognised her half-brothers Talorc, Domnall and Drest in the terrible mound of corpses. My alarm to them was for nothing. Sickened, she turned away, desperately looking over the bloodied, pinkish snow for any sign of life, even of her malicious half-sisters, Alpia and Mongfind.

  Are they all dead or have the Gaels stolen the women and little ones away? Even as she again recalled the proud tormentors of her early childhood, those girls of acknowledged royal birth and blood, she heard a shout.

  “See, the youngest princess has returned! We are saved!”

  ♦◊♦

  Olaf sensed her trembling and laid a hand across her back, a touch to remind Bindweed she was not alone. Though it seemed she needed no aid from him. Her face sharpened even as a tottering knot of old men and women, snuffling children and one limping hound emerged from a nest of sail-cloth near to the loch-side.

  He sensed her gather herself, like a wildcat poised to spring, and glare
at the stocky, red-bearded, grey-haired man at the head of the sad mass of folk.

  “You call me princess, Conall, after you helped the dead laird, here, sell my mother Kentigerna into slavery? Where were you, where was anyone from Black Broch when I was handed to Irish Maeve and she named me Bindweed for trying to cling to my ma?”

  Her scathing questions stopped the straggling crowd in their tracks, while this Conall hunched where he stood, the sea-serpent tattoo on his arm showing dark against his flushed skin.

  “When I washed sheets in the loch in midwinter, who did not laugh at my cracked shoes and bleeding hands? When I grew a head shorter than my royal half-sisters Alpia and Mongfind through lack of food, which of you Christians had charity enough to spare me bread? Which of you tried to stop Mongfind from taking my small daily scrap of porridge while she was already well-fed on grouse? Above all, when I was beaten for crying because Ma was gone, where were the noble folk of this land?”

  More pained expressions, more blushes. And where is the priest of this place? Dead with the warriors, or off with the Gaels?

  “You threw me away, called me bastard—”

  She is a dragon-woman, a proud survivor. Desire and need surged in Olaf anew, even as that sympathy of understanding rang like a bell in his mind. We are alike.

  “—now you dare to ask me back?”

  “I do.” Finally, Olaf understood why fate, King Christ and the Norns had guided him here. Taking care not to snag her cloak on his way down, he knelt in the snow at her feet. “Be my lady, our lady, and heal this place.”

  “Viking.” Red as the earlier fire in her fury, she did not even speak his name.

  “Not my trade,” Olaf replied, meeting her eyes and willing her to see his truth.

  “Marry him, my lady, and be with us again,” begged one of the crones, a plea chorused by other women and wailing youngsters.

  “I am hungry!” clamoured a toddling pile of rags, a child of three or five.