Winter Serpent Read online

  He spat and crossed himself quickly. The girl stirred.

  “This I have already heard.”

  He changed from the Gaelic to the Pictish tongue with a furtive air, although there was none to hear his words or understand.

  “We of the Picts, the people who were your mother’s people, are watching. Yet Calum macDumhnull your foster brother watches also, and word is brought to him of your coming and going in this place. He has not tasted the sweetness of your misfortune as he had thought. Because of this, and because of your plight in the hands of the terrible Norse who are demons, word has been carried to the Old One in the north, the King of the Picts who is also your kinsman, to tell him how the ancient blood of the Cruithne has been dishonored. He is not happy. He wonders at such treachery done to the child of his sister, and yet he is mindful that you are here in the land of the Scots and under the eye of Calum macDumhnull. As for myself, I remember Ithi your mother, and I have observed the oaths which bound me to the house of the macDumhnulls only to be with her child, who is also of the Cruithne.” His eyes roamed the beach. “Once this was our land, the land of the Picts from sea to sea, and not even the legions of the long-dead Romans could take it from us. In those ancient times, it is remembered, the power of the druids was strong.”

  “If you still believe in druids, why do you now cross yourself?” He spread his hands sorrowfully.

  “In this world all is confusion.”

  They were silent once more. The man was not able to think of anything to say, yet he was reluctant to leave the girl alone in this mournful place. The wind soughed in the trees on the peaks and he was reminded that his sheep would scatter far in the high pastures. Still he lingered by the fire, seeing that the girl had fallen into a reverie, aware of his presence, yet not needing him.

  This one was a fine woman, he thought, beautiful as any woman of legend, yet with the sturdy spirit of the dark people. Her head was drooped and she looked at the ground with faraway eyes to some place where she was no longer faced with her ordeal.

  He sighed. For beautiful women there was no retreat, no escape. Their beauty made them prized above all things, and their only rescue from torment was the decay of old age. For some, ruin came swiftly, grief and madness destroying them. But for women like this, like the one sitting before him who struggled with a man’s courage, the gleam of beauty often stayed long, until the final breaking. He wished that he could speak to her and tell her his thoughts, to warn her, but he knew also that it would be cruelty. Let her think that there was hope and that somewhere she would find kindness from others and the contentment she sought. Let her think that she had some control over her destiny. This much he owed her out of admiration for her bravery in the scheming hands of the Red Fox.

  The gulls returned noisily from the sea, suspiciously circling their nests. The sound roused the two by the fire and the small man stood up and stretched and picked up his spear.

  “We are always near,” he assured her. Doireann nodded that she understood.

  The short figure cut rapidly across the beach and into the woods and was gone.

  Doireann did not rise at once. The day was empty. She scanned the wreckage of the beach. There was nothing she could do until the rest bestirred themselves. At least she was free of them for a while. There was always the thought of escape. She sighed. But to what? And where?

  It would be a good day to fish, for the water was still. It seemed that it had been a long time since she had done anything for the pleasure of it. The tide was now at full flood, making small islands of the rocks which marched out into the cove. They made a good place from which to cast a net.

  She went into the hall, stepping over the body of Sweyn, and found a net in the pile of ship’s gear. It was in poor repair but she chose it thinking if any calamity came to it, at least it was not valuable.

  She took her time and chose her footing carefully on the shell-crusted rocks until at last she found one that she could stand up on. She tried her skill at casting the net in the shallow bottom. It was strangely weighted and she could not get the feel of it in her hands. Once she slipped and would have fallen into the water. She caught herself in time, but sliced her hand on the needle-sharp barnacles. She stood in some disgust, sucking the wound. There was a curse on everything that belonged to the Northmen. And since she was now one of their possessions, there was undoubtedly a curse on her, too.

  As she stood glumly she imagined that she heard footsteps on the pebbly beach behind. She did not turn at once for the net was still in the water and it had become entangled on the rocks. It tore in many places while she worked it loose. With the remnants of it in her hands she stood up and looked back to shore.

  The man in the bearskin, the Jarl, stood watching her with red eyes, his mouth drawn back in a drunken grin.

  She stood without moving. It was not difficult to guess what he wanted. There was only one way to escape him and the cold sea looked uninviting. And she had sworn not to betray her fear but be submissive. All she could manage at this moment was dull confusion. Her feet would not move. She could not make any pretense of going to him.

  It does not make it any easier, she thought, to see him transfigured by the skin of the bear.

  He beckoned to her, still grinning, speaking Norse. She could not answer him. She sidled from the rock and waded parallel to the beach. He began to unlace the bearskin, never taking his eyes from her. He folded it neatly and put it on a boulder as he followed.

  She must not try to run, she told herself. Her skin shivered. But she slowed her steps so that it seemed to her that she barely moved, and he overtook her.

  She stood with her head turned away from him waiting for the feel of his hands. But instead he swooped on her and bent and heaved her to his back like a sack of grain. She was hanging head down as he started to jog, and his stride slammed the breath from her. He began running along the beach to the ocean side of the cove.

  With what breath she could gasp she screamed at him, but he seemed not to hear. He grunted to himself and staggered tipsily in the sand. At any moment he might fall and she prayed that he would not fall on her and crush her. Then she thought in terror of what he would do to her in his heavy-handed drunkenness.

  When they had reached the waves breaking on the seaward beach, he stumbled around in a circle, careening to a stop. He flipped her over his shoulder and she hit the hard-packed sand flat on her back. He bent and quickly grabbed the hem of the arasaid and shook her out of it. She went head over heels again and landed on her hands and knees.

  She whimpered. Here she was with this cackling maniac and she was sure he meant to kill her in one way or another! She scrambled away on all fours and got to her feet and ran toward the sea. It was better to drown than be mauled to death.

  Even as unsteady as he was, he caught her easily. He dragged her by one arm into waist-deep water and threw himself down beside her. A long roller from the sea went over them both and when she came up for air, her hair hanging in her eyes, he pushed her head under again with his hand.

  “You are dirty,” she heard him say as she came to the surface the second time. “You should take more baths else I can have nothing more to do with you!”

  The sound of her angry weeping was lost in the noise of the surf, her tears mingled with the salt water. Her mouth was open to curse him when he pushed her face downward again and she swallowed a lungful of sea. Gasping and strangling, she came to the surface and began swimming toward the open sea.

  He was beside her. He swam with little effort, watching her angry struggles. The waters felt as though they were full of tiny ice crystals, and cold began to numb her arms and legs. Her lungs were seared with salt. She would never escape him by swimming and even now she could not bring herself to drown. The Northman fell back, treading water.

  “Too far from shore,” he called to her. “There are serpents in the sea which will seize you and drag you down.”

  He turned, toward the beach and she, cold
and subdued and afraid, followed him. She had heard of monsters which lived in water; all streams and rivers had their sidhes both good and bad. The monks said this was evil nonsense, superstition left from the old days. Still people spoke of seeing them and one could not be sure. The Viking’s certainty made her fearful.

  He was waiting for her on the beach. She was reluctant to come out, and squatted in shallow water. The water was icy but the wind was even colder. And she could not forget her nakedness. The dark cover of night was one thing but this was another… to walk out before him. But he was not boisterous now. A cold, purposeful look was on his face. He waded out to her, perhaps to keep her from running from him again. He took her hand.

  He chose a little knoll that partly shaded them from the wind and drew her down beside him. His eyes seemed clearer after the shock of the freezing sea, but his breath was foul with the night’s drinking.

  He lay still, holding her in an iron grip, his eyes half-closed against the biting wind. She shivered. Her wet hair was like a cap of ice, and she tried to keep her crafty thoughts of vengeance foremost before her. She would be as still as he and submit to him, even indicate a little willingness, a little softness. But she would not struggle. His stillness baffled her. Perhaps he had frozen; the wind was cold enough.

  Doireann squirmed and cursed herself silently. She could not endure much longer the feeling of being squeezed breathless. How could he be so still, not even shivering?

  To her astonishment he suddenly released her and sat up. He raked his hands through his matted hair, wincing as he touched the wound. She could not believe she had seen his quick, abstracted look of pain. The iron manner, then, was for others to see.

  It hurt him, she thought triumphantly. For all his stone-like appearance, he was still human, could still feel pain like any man.

  She sat up also and clasped her knees.

  So now he sits glooming here, she thought, and I sit with him. But I will freeze in the wind.

  She tried to wrap her arms about her chest, hunched over, and shivered uncontrollably.

  Shall go and get my gown, or will he only shake me out of it again so that I land on my head? Do I just sit waiting here until he remembers me?

  She made a little chattering noise between her teeth.

  He turned then, and looked at her woodenly, seeing her lips blue, her body huddled together. In the cold brilliant light of day she looked wild and forlorn. He took her hand slowly and lifted it, and his fingers separated her icy ones. He rubbed them to bring some warmth into them. Craftily she pressed closer.

  Let him take me now and get it over with, she thought desperately; either we go or we stay, but in God’s name let us do anything so that I may keep from freezing.

  She sneezed. He looked down at her then, and put his arm about her and drew her to him.

  Now, she thought. Where their flesh met it was warm and pleasant. She put her arms about his neck so that he could not release her. He is only a man, she reminded herself.

  He was studiedly gentle. He seemed to try to hold himself deliberately from violence, from that part of him where violence always reigned. She was as much baffled by this as any other thing that he had done, but she put away all thoughts of wonder, of anything concerning him, of any picture which might bring fear, and thought only of her determination to submit, in order not to be conquered. Just as she had managed to slide into an uncaring blackness, he spoke to her.

  “What?” she cried out.

  He started at the sound and grasped her tightly. Their lips were touching and she could feel his mouth flushed and warm, soft as her own.

  He said something in Norse, broke it off to begin again in the Breton tongue. “It is all right,” he said quietly. He brushed a speck of sand from her bare shoulder. “I would not hurt you.”

  He left it at that. His eyes were distant and unreadable, and she mistrusted his words. But he held himself carefully, and was patient with her.

  She thought the fine, forgetful moment interrupted, and imagined she was now too tired and cold to be drawn to him. But then she wondered what it was she had been thinking, and forgot this also. There was nothing else except, at the last, surprise.

  Perhaps he had done this thing deliberately. It certainly had no part in her plans, but then it would be foolish, too, to deny any pleasure he might give her, no matter what his strange reasons. His arms released her and she lay back against the sand, weightlessly, lulled by her senses. He was watching her closely. He reached for the woolen robe and drew it over her, but she was no longer conscious of any chill.

  If there had been anything but hatred and coldness between them she could have enjoyed this moment. If this had been her lover and not her captor. She had several vivid pictures of how she could have returned his desire, had he been someone worthy of it. Forgetting, she put her hand over her eyes and smiled at the thought of it.

  The man turned at once and made as if to touch her, but he saw that she was dreaming and his hand fell.

  He moved slightly away. She pulled up and looked at him. He was as before—withdrawn, remote.

  Let him retreat, she thought. She licked her lips. Let him retreat into his granite image of himself. She had heard him murmur into her lips and had that to remember, and the words he had spoken. I will not hurt you. She would use them to advantage.

  He stood up and belted the wet tunic about him. He replaced the discarded sword and heavy leather shoulder belt. As he bent his head to buckle it she took a long thoughtful look.

  It could not be denied that as a man he was fair. The stolid manner did not mar the fairness. His body was strong, and any woman would long to feel it. He was a man not to be overlooked, towering as he did over the crowd of huge Northmen, dominating them by more than mere height.

  He is clean, she told herself, and loves his smooth skin, for I have seen him cleaning it with sand and stroking and oiling it when he is idle. He is vain of his long, outlandish hair. He is the ideal the others strive for with all their boasting and primping and growling. But he is cruel like them. And yet he also whispers softly to a woman and can be gentle.

  As she examined her thoughts her triumph faded away. Standing now before her, he was again the implacable Norse chief, the character assumed like the wet tunic, belted and pulled down into place. This was the wild Viking that no one could approach, the man apart. The beast in the bear’s skin.

  Even under the robe she was again cold.

  5

  Donn macdumhnull, the brother of Calum, was a weary man. He had been four days in traveling from the dun at Cumhainn, which was a long time even for mountain travel, but he had been delayed again and again by the stops he had had to make to listen to the complaints of the herders. It seemed each beehive hut his party passed produced another shaggy man who must delay the clan captain with garrulous and time-consuming descriptions of all the thievery which had taken place in the loch. Leaning upon their spears, with barefoot wives and bairns goggling in the background, the herders would spin leisurely tales of complaint in the manner of hillmen who must include every detail no matter how small and irrelevant.

  Donn listened patiently; it was a part of his duties as captain of the warriors of the clans to get to the heart of the matter and be off. As far as the facts were concerned, he rarely gleaned more than “I heard a noise in the night, the dogs barking, and woke to find two, three, four sheep gone.” Or a cow. All seemed firmly convinced that the Northmen camped in the loch had done the thieving, and each spoke as if a pirate lurked in the woods not twenty feet from his stone hut.

  Well, there was enough truth in it, Donn admitted. To be sure, not every sheep stolen went to fill the Northmen’s bellies, but enough to make this sudden rash of thefts accounted their handiwork.

  Between the endless tales of stolen livestock and the stories of lambing or calving troubles and the strange aches and pains which had overcome every crofter during the last wet spell, Donn took time to note carefully the condition of eac
h man’s household and his herds, which often gave the facts more eloquently than any words.

  Theirs were not the only complaints. Within the past week Donn macDumhnull had spoken to two men from neighboring clans who had brought protest that the strangers from over the sea now in Cumhainn had raided their herds with great loss.

  Well, he had warned Calum as early as midsummer of the growing unrest in Lorne concerning the Viking raiders, and he felt foolish enough to be telling his own countrymen the story which Calum had devised: that the daughter of the old chieftain Muireach macDumhnull had conceived a mad passion and had given herself over to the leader of the Viking band. It was such a poor story that he could not, with any explaining, make it sound reasonable, and the Scots went away wondering if the macDumhnulls of Cumhainn had taken leave of their senses.

  Donn frowned to himself as he rode. It was stupid to spread this thing abroad, for no one believed it, nor the story that the Vikings would build a peaceable camp in Cumhainn. The gossip had reached to Dunadd, and the Ard-Ri, the High King, had sent a message that he was puzzled. This should be warning enough. Donn had related all this to his brother the last visit, and Calum had shrugged it away. Well, now that the Fingall, these Northmen, were raiding the herds as far as Eti, the matter could not be let go any longer. A forceful word to Calum should be enough. For when Calum wished it, he could think his way out of a box, and it was a box he had gotten them into now.

  He was tired of the journey and the bad weather, and tired of the whole difficulty, when he at last reached the buildings of Coire Cheathaich. All lay quiet under a pall of rain, and the yards were full of ankle-deep mud.

  Calum he found at table with the evening meal. The wooden house was crowded with children who usually did their screaming and running outside but who were now confined within because of the weather. Dogs moved about underfoot, and serving men and crofters lounged at the tables filling the smoky air with their talk. It was noisy and crowded and overwarm but, despite all, the atmosphere was cheerful. Donn shed his soaking outer clothes, throwing his woolen tartan on a rafter to dry, and sat down beside his brother.