"What do you think?" Rurik asked Stigand and Bolthor, who had been working with the men all day, attempting to instill some discipline and rigor into their fighting exercises.
"They have heart," Stigand informed him. "Even those who are lame and weak have the will to fight. That may not seem like much, but it could make the difference."
"And there are those who were fierce warriors and can be again, despite their weaknesses," Bolthor added. "Like Young John with the one eye. Even with just a few lessons this morning, I was able to show him how to better handle himself. In truth, his half-blindness is not near as bad as mine. He can still see blurry shapes with his bad eye. It is a question of balance, and he is an enthusiastic learner."
Rurik nodded. "Toste and Vagn have been assessing the physical defenses." He peered off into the distance where they were assisting some of the younger Campbells, pulling down the rotting timber walls with their crumbling stone foundations with an eye toward rebuilding and remortaring them over the next few days. Of course, there were several Campbell lasses about admiring their work… or could it be their good looks? Truly, the twins garnered female admirers no matter what country they were in. "We have much to do to repair the walls," Rurik went on, "but this clanstead is well situated to ward off attacks when guards are positioned strategically."
"It's all a question of time and numbers of fighting men," Bolthor concluded.
"And skill," Stigand added. "That the six of us have aplenty, and the others can be taught. In time."
"Jostein," Rurik yelled out to the young man, who was working with his Campbell counterparts on the wall. Hastily, Jostein rushed over to do his bidding. "Dost think you could find your way back to Britain on your own?"
Jostein nodded eagerly, panting from his vigorous activity.
"This is an important mission, Jostein. I would like you to ride out on the morrow. Go to Ravenshire in Northumbria, the estate of Lord Eirik and Lady Eadyth. Explain the situation here, and ask if he has troops to spare that he could send to our aid."
Jostein fair beamed with self-importance over the task he was being assigned. "I could depart right now," he said, overanxious to fulfill Rurik's wishes. "It should be only a three-day trip each way. I could be back within a sennight."
Rurik patted him on the shoulder. "Tomorrow will be soon enough."
Maire walked up to them then. She was still annoyed with him over being confined to the keep, and Bolthor wasn't too happy either. A short time ago, he'd grumbled that he'd never known a woman to visit the privy as often as Maire did. He was even considering the creation of a special saga about it, "The Mystery of What Women Do for So Long in a Privy." He'd immediately quashed that idea when Maire had overheard and whalloped him over the head with a halibut that the cook had just given her to examine for dinner fare.
But now, it appeared that the annoying wench had another matter on her mind. Unfortunately, he was the target of her scowls now. Fortunately, she had no fish in hand, although she was carrying a long stick, which he suspected was her witch's staff. No doubt, she could turn a rake into a fish with one swish of that long wand. Best he keep a safe distance from her.
"Well, now that we've gotten rid of the cage, there's only one thing left to do. Why are you edging away from me like that?"
He inclined his head in question at her first comment, but refused to answer her second. He was no half brain. Leastways, not usually.
"The snakes."
"Huh?" He glanced across the bailey toward the area where her cage had hung. Then he gulped. The snakes. He'd forgotten. In the space of that gulp, all his comrades vanished, suddenly called away to the wall rebuilding project. Rurik had a strong distaste for the slimy creatures, probably stemming back to his early days at the farmstead where huge black snakes hung about the sties, seeking the warmth of the pigs' bodies, he supposed. Apparently, his men had a disliking for snakes, as well.
Resolutely, he walked over to the woven mat and flipped it up with the tip of a boot, tossing it to the side. There had to be at least five dozen snakes down in the pit, many of them of enormous size. He had no idea if they were poisonous or not. In truth, it hardly mattered. Bile rose to his throat.
"Shall I go get a shepherd's crook for you to lift the beasties out?" Maire asked.
He jumped, not having realized that she'd followed him and was peering over his shoulder.
"Nay, I do not want a shepherd's crook," he said, mimicking her voice. If she thought he was going to lift each of those disgusting "beasties" out one at a time, she was more demented than he already thought. "Don't you have a witch's curse handy that would strike them dead, or better yet, make them disappear?"
She pondered a moment. "Not handy."
He bared his upper teeth with revulsion. He was a fighting man… a strategist. What would he do if he were in the midst of battle? "Methinks I could go to the scullery and get a large kettle of oil from the cook."
Maire inquired of him, sarcastically, "Dost intend to drown them in oil?"
That was exactly what he had been contemplating. He cast her a fulminating glower, which should have made her cower. Instead, she grinned at him.
"Be careful, wench, lest I toss you into the oil pit as well to keep the reptiles company."
"Hah!" she said, but then she added, "Don't worry about it. I'll take care of the snakes myself."
There were some times in life when it was wise for a warrior to blunder onward, even when he knew the consequences. Other times, 'twas best to retreat. Rurik chosen the latter course. "If you insist," he conceded.
She favored him with a glance that was not complimentary.
After several of the Campbell men removed the snakes with long-handled crooks and pronged sticks and carried them off into the distance in covered woven baskets, Rurik breathed a sigh of relief. And he didn't even feel guilty that on this occasion he'd failed to impress Maire by his knight-in-shining-armor talents. He reminded himself that he did not have a chivalrous bone in his body. And he definitely was not a knight.
Still, he was not totally without noble sentiments.
He resolved that mayhap he would impress her next time.
But it would not be with snakes.
"Does this appear familiar?" Rurik asked her. He was pointing to a clump of woodbine.
"Umm. I don't think that's it."
Grabbing for the low-hanging limb of an oak tree, he swung back and forth, his feet two boot-lengths off the ground. "How about this?"
"Nay," she said. But what she thought was, Look at those muscles in his forearms. Holy Saints! I feel warm just looking at him. And who knew that a man could have such wide shoulders and then such a narrow waist. Is it a characteristic of all Vikings, or just him?
"And this?" He'd dropped to the ground and picked up several acorns. Then some nearby pinecones, followed by the unripened berries on a mulberry bush.
"Nay. Nay. Nay."
After spending the morning and half the afternoon overseeing the rebuilding of her castle walls and exercising the men in swordplay and hand-to-hand combat, Rurik had hauled her bodily out of the keep and into the hills, demanding that she find the remedy for his blue mark. Somehow he'd gotten the idea that all she would have to do was peruse the various plants growing in the wild and miraculously she would remember the recipe for the potion in the vial she'd spilled on him.
It was not that easy.
"How about this?" He hunkered down to examine some moss growing over the roots of a rowan tree, but all Maire could see was the way his tight trews pulled against the muscles in his thighs and buttocks. He glanced suddenly over his shoulder and made a tsk-ing sound of disgust on noticing the direction of her gaze. "Pay attention, Maire. This is serious. If you can't remember the ingredients in that vial, you will never be able to remove my blue mark. In that case, I will have to kill you. Or something."
His threats did not alarm her… leastways, not too much. It was the something that caused the fine hairs to stand out
on her body. Putting those concerns aside, she pondered the fact that Rurik had not been surprised at her appreciative perusal. He was a man who knew he was comely. That was obvious in the way he groomed and dressed himself. His face was clean-shaven, his fingernails trimmed, his teeth gleamed whitely from a scrubbing with the shredded end of a twig, and even his breath smelled sweetly of mint leaves he'd been chewing. Although the garments he wore today were not new, as evidenced by the fading of colors in the brown wool fabric and fine embroidery, they were still appealing and well cared for. In his long black hair, on the sides only, he had woven thin braids, interspersed with amber beads.
Someone ought to trim the peacock's tailfeathers.
Yea, vanity came easily to him. In truth, she had heard some refer to him as Rurik the Vain. For a man who put so much value on physical appearance, it was understandable, she supposed, that he would find the blue mark so offensive.
Next to him, Maire felt dowdy. At one time, she had been told she was beautiful… or had the promise of beauty. In fact, Rurik himself had spoken those words to her when enticing her to his bed furs. But those days were long gone… five years ago, when she had been twenty. She could not recall a time, ever, when she'd been carefree, but there had been others to help shoulder the burdens then. Now her hands were chapped and her nails broken from the hard work of trying to maintain her castle. She had no time for scented soaps or hair grooming. Even the red arisaid she wore today had been washed so many times, it was now closer to a dull rose. On her feet were thick brogues, suitable for climbing hill and vale, but far from the feminine shoes of silk and brocade that Rurik was probably accustomed to seeing on women.
She shook her head to clear it, as well as to indicate her opinion of the moss Rurik was still handling. He was standing now, a hand on one hip, another hand holding the moss, all the while tapping his foot impatiently while she wool-gathered.
"That is just moss… good only for mattress stuffing. Betimes it works for stomach cramps, as well," she informed him.
"I'm getting stomach cramps just walking up and down these hills."
"I could recommend an herbal that—"
"Nay!" he said, much too quickly. "If I am not careful, you may have my head swiveling on my neck with one of your cockeyed potions."
She raised her brows.
"Can you be a little more helpful in trying to locate the herbs that were put in that vial?" he sniped.
"Let's think about what we do know first," she suggested, sinking down to a large, flat boulder. It immediately tipped forward, and she jumped up in panic, then bent over to examine it.
"What in bloody hell is that?" Rurik asked, coming closer. Pressing the edge of the boulder with the toe of his half boot, he caused it to rock back and forth, then side to side.
"It's called a judgment stone. We have many of these throughout Scotland. No one knows for sure if they were hand-hewn to sway in this manner, or if nature honed them thus," she explained. "In any case, long ago the elders of a clan, or perchance the druids, used the stone to determine the guilt or innocence of an accused person. If the stone tipped front to back, he was deemed guilty… from side to side, innocent." She paused, putting a forefinger to her chin in thought. "Or mayhap it was the opposite."
"You Scots are a peculiar people, believing in such odd things," Rurik commented with a shake of his head as he went back to leaning against a tree. He picked up a blade of grass, nibbling on the end of it as he studied her.
Shivering a little under his cool regard, she sat back down on the rock, being careful to balance her weight so that it did not teeter. "No more peculiar than the English, or people of other lands, who believed a person's guilt or innocence could be discovered by drowning. You know, if a culprit survived being dunked under water for a lengthy period of time, he was guilty. If he died, he was innocent. And then, what good was that?"
Rurik smiled. "You have a point there."
"Back to the fluid in the vial that I spilled on you… There must have been woad, for the blue color… and I recall the scent of lavender… so, let's assume crushed lavender, as well. Both would have been mixed in an oil base, to preserve the potency of the ingredients. But I just cannot think what agent would have been in the mixture to give the color permanency. Certainly the woad worn by Celtic warriors washed off." She shrugged, at a loss as to what the other component might have been.
"Don't you have witch annals somewhere? Written documents that spell out all your… well, spells and curses and rituals and such? Like the priests have with their illuminated manuscripts?"
She shook her head. "Mostly the magick airts, as they are called, are passed through the generations by word of mouth. Unfortunately, I did not study enough years with old Cailleach before my husband banished her from our lands."
"Your husband did not favor your mentor-witch?"
"Kenneth loathed her."
"Hmmm. What did she do to him? Turn him blue, or"—he chuckled—"turn him into a frog?"
"He was already a frog."
"Like me?"
Worse. Far worse. Unfortunately, I did not know that afore the wedding. Cailleach did, though. If only I'd heeded her warnings. "The selfsame."
Rurik cocked his head to the side, and his mischievous eyes skimmed over her body with a boldness that made Maire squirm uncomfortably on her already shaky perch. "Bolthor contends that witches dance in the forest, naked. Mayhap you should try that, to see if some of your powers come to the fore." The libertine looked as if he would appreciate that spectacle immensely.
She slanted him a condescending scowl. "Not in this lifetime, and certainly not in front of you."
He shrugged, grinning unrepentantly. "Why can't you consult other witches in your… uh, coven?"
She glanced up at him where he still stood, leaning back against the trunk of the tree, arms folded over his chest, the blade of grass dangling from his lips. Then she laughed. "I'm not that kind of a witch."
"What kind of witch are you?"
"A solitary."
"Maire, Maire, Maire. You lie through your teeth."
She bristled.
"Methinks you know exactly how to remove the blue mark from my face, but you defy me willfully."
'To what purpose?"
"To gain the advantage in using me and my men against your enemies."
"I do want your services… your fighting services," she added quickly when she saw a grin tug at his lips, "but I do not lie when I say that I know not precisely how to remove the mark. To tell you the truth, I am a witch, but not a very good one."
He still appeared skeptical.
"For example, if I focused hard enough on that tree on which you lean, I might very well be able to split it in two, right down the center. On the other hand, it's just as likely that I would put a permanent part down the center of your hair."
She saw the moment that enlightenment crossed his handsome face. It was not surprising that he moved away from the tree then, just in case. "Ah! That is why everyone snickers when I mention your witchly arts… the MacNabs, your clansmen, even your serving women, and the children hereabouts," he said.
She nodded. "Oh, I am able to practice herbal remedies, and sometimes I even get the witchly spells correct, to everyone's advantage, but I have to admit that there have been some disasters," she told him woefully. "I have failed my people."
"Who says you have to be a witch?"
"There is no one else."
He seemed about to argue with that contention, but changed his mind. Instead, he spat out the piece of grass, straightened himself from his leaning stance, and walked toward her. His walk was lazily seductive, but the expression on his face was suddenly hard and resolute… threatening, actually.
When he stood directly in front of her, he gave the stone an abrupt push with his boot, which caused it to rock backward, and she with it. On the forward rock, she was still propped on her elbows, trying to sit up, but he gave the slab another shove.
"W
hat are you trying to do?" she demanded.
But he was leaning over her now, arms braced on the flat stone, on either side of her shoulders… so close she could smell the mint on his breath and the male sweat of his skin from a day of strenuous exertions. His left knee was on the boulder, while his right leg still touched the ground and kept the rock moving, front to back, front to back.
Her voice was no longer demanding, but breathy. It wasn't exactly fear. No, it was something else too disconcerting to name. "Rurik? What is it?"
"You. That's what it is."
"Me?" she barely squeaked out.
"Yea. I've put you on the judgment stone, and it has pronounced you guilty."
"Ha, ha, ha. That's not how it's done." She tried to get up, but was fenced in by his arms, and could not get her balance with the constant motion of the stone.
He shrugged indifferently. "Whether a stone deems you guilty or not matters not a whit to me. The important thing is that I still have the blue mark. You expect me to put my life and that of my men at risk, whilst you give naught in return. Well, no more. You have put your mark on me. Now I intend to do the same to you."
"What… what do you mean?"
"I mean that I intend to have you, witch. My mark will be put on you… inside you… in the way that men have been marking women for ages. By the time I leave the Highlands, you will yearn for me like an opium eater for his pipe. That is how I will mark you. In essence, your virtue is forfeit from now on."
"That is so outrageous, it does not merit discussion. You are far too pretty for such as me."
"Pretty, eh?" He laughed, and it was not a pretty sound.
His mirth was not of comfort to Maire, especially since he was staring at her with eyes that could only be described as smoldering. No man's eyes had ever smoldered for Maire before, and she had to stifle the impulse to be pleased.
"Do not attempt to tell me what interests me when it comes to the man-woman arena. In truth, I have been watching you move about all day in that pink blanket-gown you are wearing—"