Deirdre (42 page)

His stomach lurched like a landlubber’s as he recognized the outline of a woodworker’s tool, its smooth turned handles round a shaft of iron and its protruding grooved metal bit. An auger had only one purpose, and that was boring holes. Holes to sink a ship? With no time to ponder such a dark motive, Alric began feeling between the ribs of the vessel, along the seams.

Faces of the passengers flashed across his mind as he blindly searched for the deadly leak, but they evoked pity not suspicion. Alric threw aside a dead, bloated rat coated in the slime of the bilge and sidled deeper to the stern. Whoever had done this had to be small enough to get his shoulders in the space with room to work the—

Shavings.

On a new ship, perhaps, but the
Wulfshead
’s bilge had long been free of its construction debris, washed out or rotted. Alric’s pulse accelerated. He scraped to the right and left of the keel with frantic fingers when he felt a steady flow of water, a little more than a finger’s worth, but deadly nonetheless. Bumping head, elbows, and knuckles, he tore off his shin to make a makeshift plug. It would at least stifle the flow, until he fashioned a plug of wood.

“I need a man here …
now
!” he hollered, packing the twisted plug of linen into the hole with his blade.

A half a lifetime later, a second man wedged close enough to take over holding the plug in place.

“Just bail!” Alric shouted the command over his shoulder to the others as he climbed out of the hold. Considering his green crew, the lack of chaos was a credit to Deirdre’s and Cairell’s organization. The younger women manned the oars to Wimmer’s count, while their men kept a continuous stream of cargo and water coming from the hold to the rail. Abina and the older ladies kept the children from underfoot.

“You found a leak?” Cairell inquired from the bucket brigade.

“I found the problem. We’ll be all right, no thanks to a villain among us.”

Alric scanned the faces on the deck as he made straight for the forward compartment, where a few scraps of wood were kept for repairs, but instead of malice, all were blanched with alarm and set with determination to survive. With a hatchet, he made quick work of a plug, tapering the wood so that it could be driven in tight. Once wet, swelling would take care of the rest.

A glance at the sky as he headed back to the hold shattered Alric’s smattering of relief. Looking to the helm, he saw Wimmer nod. The mate had seen the black cluster of clouds gathering up ahead of them as well. Winded by this new threat, Alric stopped in midstride, the hatchet in one hand, the rough-hewn plug in the other.

What next?
Tossing back his head with the silent challenge, he peered beyond the square of sail, which had garnered the first stirrings of a breeze. Was his confession of sin for naught, or had he committed some unpardonable deed for which God now sought vengeance? If so, was everyone aboard his ship to suffer the consequence?

Dark visions gathered as unbidden as the squall ahead—of his father lying with Ethlinda’s dagger buried in his chest, of the spectacle of slain friends and crew members he desperately needed now, of Scanlan’s battered body, of Tor’s plaintive look before the dog lowered his head in a sleep from which he’d not awake. Each opened a raw wound, bleeding his spirit.

Now the storm swept toward him cloaked in swirling black robes like …

Like the queen’s.

For as long as Alric could remember, Ethlinda threatened him in the same manner, appearing when least expected, venting her rage, and slipping out of view to await her next chance to plague him. As a child, he’d thought she floated about on a silken swirl of darkness, like some sinister fairy.

“Something troubles you, little pretender?”

God help him, he could hear the witch’s taunt even now, that singsong drawl that scraped the spine with shards of ice.

“First your dog. Then your ship—”

Alric shook himself, nightmare becoming reality.

“And now your bride.”

Ethlinda—at least the old woman resembled the queen—stood back to the rail, holding Deirdre at knifepoint.

“Dee!”

“Hold, Gleannmara!” The queen snatched Deirdre’s head back even further by the braid wound around her free hand as Cairell broke from the bucket brigade. “In fact,
everyone
hold.”

Seeing the blade indent the smooth, white flesh he’d worshiped in what little time he and Deirdre had spent as man and wife, Alric addressed the bucket brigade.

“Do as she asks.”

“She’ll kill us all if we stop.”

The look Alric gave the enemy was enough to wither green oak, but when he turned back, the gaze that met Deirdre’s tore at her heart. She’d seen him look at the sky, watched his brow furrow, but what drew her to him could not be seen, only felt.

She’d wanted to soothe his torture, if with nothing more than a touch, but as she made her way to him, the bent old seasick woman had slipped on the deck.

Deirdre rushed to see if she was injured, but instead of a face shriveled by time, something far more hideous appeared. Dumbfounded to behold the streaked face of Galstead’s pagan queen, Deirdre became easy prey No longer bent or crippled, Ethlinda vaulted to her feet, seizing Deirdre’s long braid with one hand and brandishing a dagger with the other.

“You’re mad, woman.” Alric made a statement without any of the emotion Deirdre had sensed earlier.

“Oh, I’m more than mad, my
little
pretender.” Ethlinda’s laugh was colder than the blade at Deirdre’s throat. The metal warmed with each thrum of her pulse against it. If her heart pumped much harder, she’d surely feel the sting of its edge.

“I am
livid
,” the queen declared imperiously. “Thirty years of my life I waited for the day when I could cut out that old fool’s heart and hand it and his kingdom over to the son of the man he murdered. I choked on Lambert’s flaunting of his whore and his fair-haired bastard, but no … the little pretenderling rises like bile to spoil my delicious revenge. I want an
eye for an eye!”

“Then take me and let the others go.” Alric knelt slowly depositing the hatchet and the spike of wood he’d made to plug the leak.

“No, Alr—” The blade at her throat nipped her flesh in warning, freezing Alric in place as he rose.

“You have always been full of yourself, little pretender. Do you think that your eyes alone will satisfy me?” the madwoman disdained. “I want them
all
.”

The woman literally trembled with seething. No human could summon the sheer evil of her presence. No human stood a chance against it.

It held them all captive in its web—all save one. The infant in Abina’s arms began to wail in protest of the elderly nurse’s tight hold. Deirdre felt Ethlinda stiffen behind her, imagined those painted eyes slanting toward the child as though to skewer its tiny heart.

Her breath hissed against the nape of Deirdre’s neck. “Silence the whelp.”

Abina shushed the baby girl, but she would not quiet. She wailed all the louder, in all her innocence of the danger. Her mother started up from the rowing bench.

“Stay put wench, or I’ll have it tossed over the side.”

Panic-stricken, the young woman looked across the deck to where Kaspar stood just as helpless.

Struggling to her feet, Abina began to sing, all the while rocking the distraught infant in her arms. “Thou, Michael the Victorious …”

Ethlinda’s voice exploded. “I said
silence
!”

Nonplused, Abina glanced up. “You said to quiet the child. I am only obeying your command.”

The baby’s mother joined in. “Conqueror of the dragon, be thou at my back …”

Deirdre dared not breathe. She could already feel the warm trickle of her own blood at the hollow of her neck, but she sang with her heart. Ethlinda groaned behind her. Or was it a growl?

Certain death was a whim away, for Deirdre at least. She would not be the queen’s instrument of destruction for the others. With an urgent
Father
to Him who would receive her, Deirdre met Alric’s gaze. Silently, she mouthed her love for him, watching with breaking heart as he registered what she was about to do.

The child, who defied evil with complete innocence, wailed like death’s banshee above the drum of the pulse in Deirdre’s ear.

Abina and the new mother, maybe even others now, sang.

“Thou, ranger of the heavens—”

Deirdre raised her eyes heavenward, ready to end the standoff one way or another, when the thickening canopy of clouds split overhead, exposing a great chasm of light. Transfixed, she watched as a bolt of fire shot downward, straight at the
Wulfshead.
It struck like a giant hammer, as if to drive the mast through the bottom of ship, throwing several to the deck. An eerie blue fire danced up and down the pole, the sail evaporating in a loud puff of flame.

Ethlinda swayed backward against the rail, as if to draw away from it. The pressure of the blade slackened, and Deirdre seized the heavenly opportunity. Grabbing Ethlinda’s wrist with both hands, she wrung it with all her strength. The knife fell away in the ensuing struggle, but Deirdre never heard it strike the deck.

It was as though the deck had fallen out from under them, taking the rail with it. Beyond the pale of Ethlinda’s face, a yawning mouth of seawater opened wide, large enough to swallow them all. It shouted back Alric’s fear-stricken “God,
no-ooo
!” and then closed its hungry jaws over the shuddering ship.

Letting go of her adversary Deirdre reached back in the direction of her husband’s voice. Something struck her from behind. Ethlinda? It didn’t matter.

It hurled her through the watery abyss toward the open arms of all that mattered in this world
and
the next.

W
ith the crack of thunder, Alric’s heartbeats became minutes. Memories were dealt like cards flying from the hand of a master. A blinding flash of light. Deirdre struggling with Ethlinda. The jolt of the deck beneath his feet. People screaming. The rogue wave that rose like a gaping monster beyond the rail. Deirdre pulling away, running toward him. And the jeweled bolt, hurled past the corner of Alric’s eye, by Cairell of Gleannmara. Ethlinda grasping its hilt in disbelief as Deirdre reached the safety of Alric’s embrace. Then the cold jaws of the sea closed over them.

“I love you,”
Deirdre had said. Nothing else seemed real as water closed around Alric, as every shadow and shape became a nightmare vision.

God save us or take us, but keep us together.

That was what he recalled praying. So why was it Ethlinda he saw in this shadowy mire? Who, or rather
what
, were those hideous creatures tugging at her, laughing at her obvious torment? Alric had never seen the like. How he could see in the briny bellywash of the rogue wave that had swallowed them never crossed his horror-struck mind.

The creatures’ voices were haunting as the cold scream of the flat stone settling on the uprights of a departed’s cromlach. Nothing he saw belonged to the living. Was he dead then?

The two dark figures, which appeared more real than the life he’d lived before this moment, dragged Ethlinda and her pitiful screams for mercy deeper into the water. He heard a clamor below him that scraped the very marrow from his bones. There were more … hordes of them, coming from the black unseen of the sea floor.

He
had
to find Deirdre. He twisted away from the vision of the queen’s struggle but of his wife—nay his
life
—he saw nothing. The water slowed the hand reaching for his scramasax. It wasn’t there. One of the demons—yes, that had to be what they were—brandished the weapon in its hand. Where was Deirdre? Ignoring the slash of his own
blade across his chest, Alric twisted and swam toward what appeared to be the surface of the water. She would be where the light was. Her love would guide him.

He gasped for air as his head broke the surface, but one of the demons grabbed his foot, pulling him back down. Salty death seeped into his lungs, burning, smothering. Something bit him, tearing at the flesh of his shoulder. He twisted in agony, kicking at the claws tugging him deeper into the darkness. Reaching up with his good arm, he prayed.
God, if I can just get to the light …

A hand shot down into the water. A strong forearm locked with Alric’s, pulling against the tug of the demons at his feet. His joints were afire with the strain, as though at any moment he would be pulled into pieces.

That was the
Wulfshead
floating calm above him, wasn’t it?
Thank God at least the passengers were safe
. Only he and Ethlinda had been washed over, he realized. Heartened, Alric used his free leg to kick at the gnarled claws tugging at the other. The two creatures would not give up their hold, but the boot did.

Shooting out of the water as if he’d taken wing, he collapsed in the arms that drew him into the boat. At first he thought his fair-haired rescuer was Cairell of Gleannmara, but this man was bigger, a magnificent specimen of a warrior with armor fashioned of pure gold. The sun glanced off it so brightly that Alric could not see his face. Was this the archangel of the hymn? Was the beating in Alric’s ear his pulse or this stranger’s wings …?

“And so Moses led Cod’s people out of bondage to the old ways to freedom in a new life, like you, muirnait.”

The sea seemed to fall away around him. Nothing seemed to exist but the voice and a form he knew so well.

Alric blinked. Orlaith smiled down at him. “Mother?”

As she was given to do, she fingered a lock of his hair. “Your father and I are so proud of you, my derling princeling. At last you have accepted your birthright.”

Alric shook his head. He was hallucinating … or he was in heaven.

A melancholy smile lighted upon his mother’s lips. She gently
tucked the golden strands behind his ear. “But you must return to your flock. They need you.”

His flock? What flock?

“They need to know that God chose them when they quickened in their mother’s womb. They did not choose Him. Like a loving Father, He waited for His willful children to listen.”