Ice Maiden

A bittersweet chord tugged at her heart. “I know you would, and I’m grateful to you for the offer.” But were Ottar her only choice, she would never allow such a thing. It was unthinkable. Brodir would kill him, as he would any man of her clan who dared such a bold move in his absence.

As for the Scot, who cared what happened to him? Besides, if they moved quickly, both she and Grant would be long gone by the time Brodir returned.

“Come,” she said, and rose from her stool. “We’ve worked long enough this day. Let us take our evening meal with the others.” Ottar opened his mouth to speak, and she put a finger to his lips to quiet him.

“We will speak no more of this,” she said, and stepped outside into what promised to be a brilliant sunset.

Ottar followed, dragging his feet in the crusty snow. Rika smiled inwardly. Honor and chivalry were rare among her folk. One day, Ottar would make a woman a happy wife. But not this year, and not this woman.

“Ho!” a voice boomed behind them.

Rika turned to see Lawmaker jogging toward them from the bathhouse, his breath frosting his peppered beard.

“I’ll see you inside,” Ottar said to her, and continued toward the longhouse.

She nodded, then smiled at Lawmaker.

Strange that the old man would bathe midweek. She glanced at the small hut on the opposite side of the courtyard and saw that, indeed, a whisper of steam puffed from the hole in its roof.

“It is but Thursday,” she said as he approached her.

Lawmaker took her arm and led her toward the cliff overlooking the water. The sun was nearly spent. “Ja,” he said, “but my old bones cannot seem to get warm. I thought a good long soak would do me good.”

Rika shivered and pulled her cloak more tightly around her. “And me.”

“I shall leave the fire lit when I’m finished, if you like.”

She nodded, and stepped closer to him. The wind whipped at her unbound hair and chilled her to the bone, but she would not miss a winter sunset on so clear a day.

They often stood like this together, she and Lawmaker, watching as Odin’s fiery orb kissed the sea. Someone else watched, as well, below them on the beach.

Grant.

He sat alone with his back to them, unaware of their presence. Rika felt a sudden stab of pity for the lone Scotsman, but quickly pushed the unbidden emotion away. Compassion, like love, was for the weak.

“Once you start down this path,” Lawmaker said, his eyes trained on the Scot, “there can be no turning back.”

Rika had no intention of turning back. Gunnar must be freed. She would free him, and this was the only way she could conceive of to do it.

“You think it will not change you, this marriage.” Lawmaker looked at her, and in his eyes she saw the experience of a thousand lifetimes. “But it shall.”

A shiver coursed through her. “Nay, it shan’t.” The subject unnerved her, and she grasped at the first unrelated thought that crossed her mind. “Ingolf warned him off, you know. Last night, in the longhouse.”

“Ja, but the Scot was not afraid. Far from it. Did you not see the fire in his eyes? I swear his hand itched to rip the blade from Ingolf’s grip and slit both their throats. A lesser man would have tried.”

Rika had seen, and was impressed by Grant’s judgment and control. “Perhaps you should speak with him,” she said as she watched Grant rise from the rocks and walk along the surf line.

“Tonight,” Lawmaker said. “He’s had time enough to think on it.”

George pushed back from the supper table, sated, and made for the door. The two young dissidents who’d watched him all week offered him a horn of mead and a seat by the fire. He declined, wanting some air and a bit of solitude before bed.

The time had come to make a decision.

Today was his wedding day.

In Wick, Anne Sinclair and her family waited for a bridegroom who would not come. George closed the longhouse door behind him and sucked in a draught of wintry air.

The king and the Sinclairs would have his head. There was no way to send word to them or to his own clan about what had befallen him and his men. Mayhap they’d think him dead. Nay, no one knew they’d gone by ship. It had been a last-minute decision, made on the docks at Inverness.

He remembered the look of wonder on young Sommerled’s face when his brother had first spied the bonny ship in the harbor. Stupid, stupid decision. George would never forgive himself.

All lost.

Rika’s dispassionate words echoed in his mind. What kind of woman could be so callous? A woman who dressed like a warrior, who drank and gamed with men, and showed not a whit of the softness and grace expected of her sex.

He’d never agree to her plan. Never. Not if he lived a hundred years on this godless island.

“You’ve made up your mind,” a voice called out in the dark.

George whirled toward the sound, his hand moving instinctively to the place at his waist where a dirk should rest. Damn! This lack of weaponry grew tiresome.

“Who’s there?” he called back, ready for a fight, and walked toward the dark shape lurking in the shadow of the longhouse eaves.

“Lawmaker.”

He relaxed. In the past week he’d formed a cautious association with the old man. He reminded George a bit of his dead uncle, a man who had shaped his thinking as a youth.

“It’s a fair night,” Lawmaker said. “Come and sit.” He gestured to the bench hugging the wall, and George obeyed.

There was no moon, and the stars hammered a brilliant path of light across the midnight sky. The wind had died, as was its wont after dark, and the sound of the sea filled his ears.

Lawmaker sat silent beside him, and he knew the old man waited for him to speak first. George had a dozen questions, and began with one that had been on his mind from the start. “What is your true name?”

The old man chuckled. “Now there’s a question I’ve not been asked in years. You likely couldn’t pronounce it.”

“Why, then, are ye called Lawmaker?”

“It’s an ancient custom we still abide. There must always be one who speaks the law, one who remembers.”

“And ye are that one,” he said.

“I am. Since I was a very young man.”

George could well believe it. The elder had a patience and temperament well suited to such a position. ’Twas not unlike the role of the elders of his own clan.

“And Rika,” he said. “In her father’s absence ye are her guardian?”

“I suppose I am, as much as any man could be, given her nature.”