Erin said nothing as Sigurd rode up to them once more. She expected further disapproval for her actions, but the man was quiet as he accepted Mageen upon his horse.
Sigurd was thinking only that the queen was certainly her father’s cub, truly the child of the wise and indomitable Aed Finnlaith.
Messages had come to the city from the front, so Erin knew that the combined forces rode northward. She was assured that her husband was fine and her father healthy. Those who reported to her also knew that the king of Ulster still rode well, but of her brothers and Gregory, she heard nothing. All she could do was pray and hope that the Danes would soon be encountered and beaten and that the troops would come home.
Though it became harder and harder to believe that her time with Olaf had existed, Erin discovered more thoroughly each day how she missed the man who was both intimate and stranger. Through sleepless nights she thought of him, splaying her fingers over the bed where he should lie. She wondered how he filled his nights, and writhed with the agony of thoughts that he found willing women along the way, women whom he held, women who touched his golden head, crushed themselves to his broad shoulders, availed themselves of his compelling touch.
She would awake exhausted in the mornings to tell herself she was a fool and bemoan the fact that she had been born a woman. She offered him all, while as a man, he expected her loyalty as his due while he … She didn’t know what he did. She only knew that he would half kill her if he suspected her of disloyalty, and that her own father would approve of his action. It wasn’t fair. She knew now too that he distrusted her, that Sigurd was always near because he watched her for Olaf.
Erin spent her days with Moira, sewing tiny things for her friend’s child, while keeping her own condition a secret between herself and Mageen.
She kept wondering how Olaf would feel, and how she would tell him. When he did return, would he want her as he had, or would he decide that he had tamed his wild Irish wife and discover he had little use for her?
How would she greet him? Surely he couldn’t be displeased with her. Everything had run smoothly in his absence. Sigurd could report that she had cared for his home well and made no attempts whatever to thwart him.
It was midsummer when she was awakened by a roar and cheering from the courtyard below. Dressing hastily, Erin raced down the stairway and outside, anxiously demanding to know what had happened.
Sigurd forgot all protocol and lifted her high off the ground to plant a kiss on her forehead. “It is done!” He explained, “The Danes have been defeated at Lord Olaf’s hands and the troops now ride for home.”
Erin was dizzy with relief, but still frightened. “My father?”
“Your father lives,” Sigurd said. His eyes clashed quickly with those of the young messenger who had brought the message. In the days that had passed, Sigurd had discovered himself growing fond of the wild beauty his king had married and whom his wife loved. He saw no reason to tell her before Olaf’s return that she had lost a brother.
“Oh, thank God!” Erin murmured. She glanced up at Sigurd with her emerald eyes alight. “I must plan, we must prepare a great feast—”
“Whoa, Irish!” Sigurd laughed. “They have a long march home. It will be many days before they appear!”
“Still,” she murmured, “there are things which I must attend to.…”
Her heart began to beat painfully, and tingling ripples began to scurry up and down her spine. He was returning … he was coming home.…
She was anxious and scared. She closed her eyes, remembering the rough magic that had flared between them that last time they were together. She could remember his harsh words, how he still believed she wished to see him fall beneath a Danish battle-axe. Erin started shaking again. No matter what his feelings, the angers that lurked in his heart, whether he took her in tenderness or tempest, he was conscious of her always, kindling her fires as he did his own.
Had their child been conceived that last time? Or the very first? Or when they had met at the cliffs while the rain raged its deluge? It seemed so long ago.
How he would greet her on his return caused the fear she had so stoically learned to control to rise again. He could be the coldest stranger. His eyes could blaze with the frosts of ice as well as the flame of fire. He was still the Viking conqueror. Always a stranger. But despite his words of mistrust and her fear, she already ached for him, trembling with the anticipation born of her memories.
One night, unable to sleep, Erin slipped from bed, discarded her nightgown to change into a robe and scamper down the stairway. Perhaps if she could sit before the fire in the great hall awhile, drink another cup of ale, then maybe she could sleep.
But as her footsteps carried her toward the hall, she paused. She could hear Sigurd’s voice, and though he attempted to mute it, his voice carried. He was speaking with the captain of the Dubhlain guard, and he sounded worried. Clutching the wall that parted the staircase from the great hall, she curiously tiptoed closer.
“If we could get the Irish of Meath to trust us and ride with us, I would feel no worries. But our troops are skeletal as it is. We cannot pull all of our men away from the city. It would be left vulnerable. I don’t know what to do. Olaf is usually always on guard against an attack, but he will not be expecting a scurvy lot of outlaws to spring upon him after he has bested Frig-gid’s troops.”
The young captain said something Erin couldn’t hear.
“By the blood of Odin!” Sigurd suddenly railed. “I don’t know. Perhaps these Irish do not realize our king rode for an Irish king! Or perhaps they don’t care about their own kings! But if they refuse to ride with us to rout out these outlaws, then I fear the outlaws might very well attack Olaf and his troops.”
Erin felt a chill stealing over her. All this time—all this war—and now the troops, battle-weary and finally victorious, were about to fall into a rat’s nest.
She closed her eyes and leaned heavily against the wall. The Irishmen of whom Sigurd spoke had to ride with the Norsemen! Her father’s life was at stake, Gregory, Brice, with whom she had spent half her childhood hours quarreling, Leith—so calm and judicial, just like Niall, keeping the peace, mimicking the fights until she and Brice would laugh and hug and make up, and Olaf—the husband she awaited, the Viking whose child she carried, the man she awaited to share his bed again.
No, it was her father she worried about, and Gregory, and her brothers.…
She swallowed sickly, straining to hear the conversation again. Sigurd had been told that the Irish troops whose aid they needed to enlist were half a day’s ride up the coast. The outlaws were not a hour’s ride farther north. They had received no answer from the Irish except that they awaited a sign from Saint Patrick. Sigurd would not know until he went into battle whether he would receive the aid he needed so badly. If only the outlaws could be drawn out from their lair!
Erin was barely breathing. She knew a sign that the Irish would accept. A lady in gold appearing before them. The Golden Warrioress.
I cannot, she thought, I cannot ride again.… I am terrified.
She shook so badly that she held to the wall to remain standing. The situation had to be desperate for Sigurd to be worried. The confident, undauntable general was frightened.
I cannot, she thought again. Erin sagged against the wall, thinking of her father and how she had last seen him, telling Aed she would never forgive him. If he were to die, it would be herself she could never, ever forgive.…
Erin heard the chairs creaking suddenly in the great hall. She turned, fleeing up the stairway and back to her room. She leaned against the heavy door, breathing heavily. Oh, Gregory! she thought. You were wrong. The Golden Warrioress must ride again.
Erin began to plan as she moved around the room, clenching her hands together. She would sneak out with the next coming of night. Sigurd, her watch dog, would not notice her absence. She would keep him and Moira drinking late at the table, and then surely Sigurd would be safely cloister
ed with his wife, since he must then rise and prepare his own troops. By the time the Norse arrived, the Golden Warrioress would have led the Irish in an ambush against the outlaws. Then Sigurd would come in time to back her up. But would she and Sigurd be successful in flushing out the enemy?
Mergwin! Erin thought suddenly. If only she could see her old Druid friend. He could advise her, warn her.… Suddenly she stopped her pacing. The runes. She could cast the runes and try to foretell if Olaf was in danger. Her husband, she had fathomed, looked caustically on the oracles. But as a Viking commander, he kept a set of runes, for many of his men would make no move without the wisdom of the engraved stones.
She reached for the bag. One stone, Mergwin had told her, would guide a decision. But would she read the message of the stone correctly?
Erin reached into the catskin bag Olaf kept and withdrew a single stone with uneven slashes crossing. She closed her eyes tightly together. It was the stone the Norwegians called Nauthiz, a rune of pain. She tossed the stone away from her, trying to convince herself that she, like Olaf, did not believe in oracles.
“My destiny is my own!” she whispered aloud. But fear riddled through her again. Olaf could be ambushed. She would have to ride.
“I shake and tremble when I can perhaps change things,” she murmured. Her decision was made.
Erin slowly calmed herself, and then it all suddenly felt right. It was so terribly hard to be a woman, used for barter, taken but not loved by a husband. Humiliated by his superior strength.
Though she had discovered she loved the bronze giant who was her possessor, she could still rail against the fates that had left her powerless to his mercy, praying he did not discover the love that would give him even greater advantage over her.
She should be glad to ride as the Golden Warrioress again, to have, just for a moment, a time of soothing power once more. And to see death and destruction once more, she reminded herself.
It couldn’t be helped, and she forced herself not to think about the terror.
She half smiled a moment. If all went well, she would perhaps admit to Olaf that she was the famed Irish warrioress.
Her smile faded. She could never do that. Like her father, he wouldn’t be pleased. He would be furious that she had risked his child—if he wanted his child.…
A sob caught in her throat. He had to want his child because she wanted it so much! Her hand moved protectively to her lower abdomen. A boy with golden hair and stunning blue eyes, a Norse giant of a man, yet intrinsically Irish. An Irish cub of the Wolf. And she could love him freely as she was so afraid to do with the father. Her child—oh, dear God, she was risking her child! And she wanted the baby so badly.…
No! The risk was minimal—and necessary. She would be careful.
“I am afraid,” she whispered aloud.
But she reminded herself her countrymen were out there, men willing to die to keep alive an alliance made by her father and her husband. An alliance that had made her first a prisoner of the Wolf, then of her own heart.
CHAPTER
18
“We attack just as the dawn breaks!” Friggid announced to his scurvy men. They were a ragged lot indeed. Vultures rather than men. The poor remains of his own troops, and the outlaws he had banded together—Danes, Irish, and Norwegians, following no king or loyalty except to themselves. Scavengers of the land. But perfect for his purpose. They fought viciously for whatever they could grab.
“The Wolf is camped on the shoreline by the cliffs. We have but to take him by surprise.”
Friggid turned his gaze to the road and stroked the ragged length of his beard, tucking the ends more securely beneath his belt. As he stood there one of the Irishmen came to him, a pleased snarl displaying a row of broken and discolored teeth.
“Have you a wish for an edge, Danish jarl?” the man asked.
“I’ve always a wish for an edge. Speak up, man.”
“Through the trees I have spied a woman riding, wearing golden armor. One against whom I seek vengeance, for she led a raid against a troop of Danes with whom I rode two years hence. She is the one the Irish call Golden Warrioress. She must seek out the forces of the king of Meath. We must stop her and perhaps use her, Dane. If she believes we are the Irish.…”
Friggid grinned fully. “We can allow that famed Irish warrioress to lead us against the Wolf, and the alliance will be sadly shaken.” Friggid began to laugh. Justice. At long last justice, against the Norseman, against the fickle Irish.
He turned to shout to the lot of men once more. “Hide all your trappings that are Viking! If you speak not the Irish tongue, speak not at all. We await a lady in gold!”
Erin was well aware that she was engaged in a risky business. She kept Sigurd and Moira long at the table, seeming to drink as much as they while toasting the prowess of the kings of Dubhlain and Tara. She stumbled up the stairway yawning and did such a magnificent job that Moira, giggling, insisted that Sigurd carry her the rest of the way.
Then she waited, feeling time creep by.
Among the trunks of haphazardly packed belongings brought with her an eternity ago when she didn’t believe her father would even deign to sup with a Norseman, she found the delicate coat of gold-gilded armor and the helmet and faceplate. She rolled them carefully into fur bunting and silently crept from her chamber.
She didn’t take the time to saddle a horse for fear she might be heard. She slipped a bridle into the mouth of a big bay gelding and covered herself in a huge woolen cloak so that she might wave her way past the guards at the gate like any peddler.
Meticulous in her plan to keep all possible chance of discovery minimal, she rode inland first to a small farming village crested against a hill. There she offered the sleepy farmer a bracelet of gold to trade her a horse for her own, retrade it when she returned, and to forget she had ever come in the first place.
It was only as she rode through the fields and trails to the coastal road that fear began to plague her. Would she be able to get away with it this time?
Erin gave her head a little shake and mentally squared her shoulders. No one could possibly suspect her of being the Golden Warrioress. She had never been near Dubhlain during any of her exploits. But what if she was forced to reveal her identity when she joined forces with Olaf?
Her teeth began to chatter. It was one thing to dream that she met her husband on equal terms, but quite another to accept the fury that would surely fall her way if she faced him in the light of day. No, whatever happened, she would meet him with her head held high.
Then she began to worry that her ploy to attract the invaders might not work. Perhaps they had already heard of her approach. But that was unlikely. These were outlaws, and the Golden Warrioress had not roamed the land for some time now, and in all that time, she had not wielded her sword. It had lain untouched with her things.
She grew ever more nervous with the coming of the dawn, yet she continued her keenly attentive journey north, hearing every crackle of the trees, every whisper of the wind. As pink streaks trekked across the sky, paling the black of night to dawn’s gray, she saw ahead of her the signs of a camp; smoke from a dying fire, broken branches within the foliage, the occasional print of a hoof in the dust.
She had no intention of going too near the men of Meath. She planned only to allow them to see her, and she would ride ahead, finding the outlaw camp, luring the would-be murderers out. But before she did that, she would assure herself that these men were Irish.
Dismounting from her horse, she crept quietly through the foliage, stepping so softly upon the earth that no twig snapped. By the early gold and pink light she felt herself begin to breathe more easily. These men were indeed Irish. Only the Irish would fight with the aprons of leather and the weapons set before the smoking fires. Surely the outlaws Sigurd had spoken of were Norse, Danes probably, with only a few traitorous Irish and Norwegians in their ranks.
Erin hurried back to her horse and, finding a small alcove wit
hin the foliage, rested as she awaited the full coming of day. Then it was time. She adjusted the golden helmet and faceplate and mounted her horse and rode through the camp.
A heavyset warrior raced up to her and quickly explained the location of the outlaws. Erin nodded her understanding, waited for the Irish band to mount, and once more started north with the troop behind her.
They rode as the sun began to creep up in the sky, casting a golden glow over the summer day, and before they came upon the second camp, Erin began to understand her father as she never had before.
It was the land that he loved, and this was the land. Rich and verdant in her summer cloak of green, the trees full of life, the air fresh and vibrant. This was the land, this beauty. This emerald of hill and field, this vibrant color of sky and nearby sea and growing, blooming flowers. This was their dream.…
She was so lost in her sensitivity to the morning shrills of the birds and the glistening of drying dew drops upon the foliage that she almost stumbled on the signs of the outlaw camp. It was east of the road, set on the beach of an inland cove that was perfect for her method of operation. Vast caves and boulders framed the coves—perfect lairs in which to hide the Irish troops who would fall upon the outlaws.
She motioned to those following her, pointing out their destination and signaling them to move out in small numbers. The horses were left behind as men began to creep belly down through the remaining scattered foliage until they reached the refuge of the cliffs. Erin watched their progress and waited until all were ready and carefully positioned. Then she began her own crawl to the highlighted cliffs. She remained belly down as she carefully climbed the jagged stone, painfully aware of the sound of her own breathing, of the hot feel of the sand and pebbles beneath her groping fingers.
At the top of the cliff of her choice, she saw that the camp was far larger than she had expected. She wondered sickly about the battle to follow and wished fervently that the sun wasn’t striking her eyes so ferociously. It was difficult to see, to truly assess the enemy.