Kathleen Kirkwood & Anita Gordon - Heart series
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Authors: The Defiant Heart
by
Anita Gordon writing as
Kathleen Kirkwood
Table of Contents
©Copyright 1993
, 2013 Anita Gordon
Revised Edition, 2013
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the author, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review.
License Notes:
This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents, other than those in attributed quotations or references, are either products of the author
’s imagination or are used fictitiously. All characters are fictional and any similarity to people living or dead is purely coincidental.
Cover art: edhGraphics
Cover image of models Jimmy Thomas & Lacey Hannan licensed from Romance Novel Covers at
www.romancenovelcovers.com
.
ISBN
-13: 978-1624540073
For my children, Kimberly, Scott, and Christopher. You’ve always been and continue to be the precious lights of my life. And for our grandsons, Sean, Beau, Connor, Aidyn, Nicholas and James, and for Ligia, our daughter-in-law, and Brian, our son-in-law, you add sparkle and shine to my life all the more.
Very special thanks to Jim Shellem for his nautical expertise and advice, not only in editing the pertinent scenes, but as the “architect” of the sea battle.
Additional thanks to Linda Douglas for her help in Lyting’s and Deira’s scene at Gelandri.
Also, warm and very special thanks to my parents, Jim and Betty Barbour for the “care and feeding of the muse” while laboring in the face of her deadline and she needed a place of peace and quiet to tuck herself away. You’re the best.
Note on pronunciation: Once again, I have used Icelandic (
Íslensk
) which preserves the language of the ninth-century Norsemen. The character “ð” is pronounced like the th-sound in “the”; “Þ” is pronounced like the th-sound in “thin”; and “æ” is pronounced “i” as in “like.”
THE DEFIANT HEART
“A rich and sumptuous feast of romantic historical adventure . . . I read all night.”
Bertrice Small, author of
To Love Again
“A wonderful story of grand adventure and enduring love — I thoroughly enjoyed it!”
Anita Mills, author of
The Fire and the Fury
“From the first page to the last,
The Defiant Heart
is totally captivating.”
Linda Abel, publisher,
The Medieval Chronicle
“A masterpiece of fiction! Five stars!”
Affaire de Coeur
THE VALIANT HEART
Winner of the Golden Heart Award
“Wonderful historical fantasy; I read it with avid enjoyment!”
Roberta Gellis, author of
Fires of Winter
“
Exciting and heartrending, touched with warmth and humor. One of the best novels I’ve read in years!”
Rene J. Garrod, author of
Passion’s Endless Tide
“Anita Gordon joins the ranks of the finest Medieval novelists.”
Romantic Times
Magazine
PART 1
A furore Normannorum libera nos, Domine.
“From the fury of the Norsemen deliver us, 0 Lord!”
The North Sea, 915 A.D.
The mighty fleet of
drakken
swept north, carving the fogbound sea. Swift and silent they coursed, triumphant high-prowed dragonships, their hulls heavy with plunder — serpents in the mists.
Onward they plowed through trackless ocean and sunless haze, bearing their precious cargo
— ivory, gold, and womanly flesh — far from the Isle of Eire, far to where gelid shores and hoarfrost lairs brinked the earth.
A horn brayed long and deep, sending chills to crawl over Ailinn as the lead vessel signaled its companions through the curtain of gray. The others quickly took up the call and repeated the blast from stern to stern till the waters vibrated with the sound of trumpeting beasts.
Ailinn drew the mist-sodden blanket about young Lia and hugged her close. “Shush, love. Rest now,” she soothed.
Lia shuddered beneath Ailinn
’s arms, but her cries quieted to a broken sniffle.
Heavyhearted, Ailinn
laid her cheek against her stepcousin’s small, dark head and closed her eyes. She breathed the dank sea air and listened to the muffled sobs of the women about her. Listened to the rhythmic drub of a wooden rod as a Norseman smote his buckler over and over, pacing the oarsmen’s strokes.
“
May God remember us in our hour of need,” Ailinn prayed softly over Lia. “May God protect — ”
Ailinn swallowed her words against the knot of anger that rose in her breast. For a countless time this day she shuttered her heart against the pain, against the horrors that burned in her soul.
Where was the Almighty in those desperate moments before dawn? Why did God hold back his hand when the blood-thirsting devils descended upon Clonmel? Why?
She squeezed her lashes against
a fresh flow of tears. Still, they trickled paths over her cheeks. Instinctively Ailinn rocked Lia in her arms, a gentle, comforting motion.
Cold. She was so cold. And so very tired.
‘Twas a chill and a weariness that only one who had passed through the darkness of death and the shadows of Hell could know. If there remained one shred of gratitude she could lift heavenward, ‘twas that Fianna, her mother, and Lorcan, her stepfather, did not live to see Munster ripped wide by Danish blades. Would that God had seen her to her own grave with them and spared her this agony.
Ailinn thrust aside her self-pity. Her heart ached for her stepcousins. Lia and Deira had witnessed their parents lying in a pool of blood, their father with his head crushed and their mother savaged. Rhiannon had shrieked wildly for her father, the overking. He was a dauntless, hard-bitten warrior. Still, there was no sight of him when they were dragged from the compound with the other women.
Sweet Jesu, the sight of it! — everything hacked to pieces. In their contempt the Norsemen hewed down every object and beast that misfortuned to occupy the walled yard. All about lay the wreckage of implements, furniture, and crockery. Huts were torched and pens smashed down. Blooded hounds cluttered the yard. Everywhere there was death. Ailinn saw those she’d known from her youth lying vacant-eyed, their lives poured out on Eire’s sweet earth. Many more were beyond recognition.
The preparations for the bridal feast, so joyfully made the day before, lay in ruin. Sprays of hawthorn, decorating the doors and walls of buildings, shriveled with heat as flames devoured the structures and those who had fallen within.
Longships — dozens upon dozens — awaited, blackening the River Suir. Ailinn was boarded with the others and shackled to the thick mast. As the ships slid away, she watched the billowing smoke climb the skies over Clonmel.
Ailinn shivered as she tasted the salt of her tears. A breeze stirred and teased a strand of auburn hair across her face. Dragging it down, she squinted her eyes open to seek Deira and Rhiannon. Instead, her gaze met with the hard, flinty stare of the man called Hakon.
She stiffened with revulsion and loathing. God willing, she would kill the cur with her own hands given the chance. ‘Twas he who had slain their maid, Bergette, and violated Deira and Rhiannon before her very eyes.
Ailinn averted her face and stared gloomily into the mist. Fresh currents of guilt surged through her.
‘Twas, in part, her own actions that provoked the Norseman to lay hold of her stepcousins and defile them so savagely. Even now as she glanced to them, Rhiannon clawed her with eyes sharp as talons, then gave Ailinn her back as she slipped a comforting arm about Deira.
Pain lanced through Ai
linn and stung her heart. She grieved for them both and for all the women who suffered the dark lusts of the Northmen. None had escaped, not even young Lia. None, save herself alone.
She glanced
to the ship’s graying chieftain, a massive, grizzled warrior — Skallagrim, she’d heard the others name him. ‘Twas he who claimed possession of her despite Hakon’s heated protests. Whatever his intent, Skallagrim neither pleasured himself upon her nor allowed his men sport of her.
Ailinn felt the weight of Hakon
’s steady, piercing gaze. A chill curled along her spine. She feared he yet purposed to have her.
In that first, horrifying moment, when the Norsemen burst through the chamber door, her eyes had beheld Hakon
’s crimsoned blade flashing. Flashing its terrible downward stroke as he severed Bergette’s life. Ailinn screamed at the butchery, drawing Hakon’s attention upon herself. In a heartbeat he leapt for her, yet she fought him with a frenzied strength as pure, unholy terror erupted through her. The fine bride’s veil and crown of hyacinth ripped from her hair beneath his hands as she wrenched free and fled for the door. In the next breath she slammed into the hardened chest of a huge, brutish Northman who reeked of smoke, sweat, and death.
Ailinn
’s blood ran cold as Skallagrim held her in his iron grip and ran a gauging eye over her. Hakon argued hotly with her captor while their comrades began to push into the small room and lay hold of the young women there. Though Ailinn understood naught of their twisted tongue, Hakon plainly deemed her his prize and demanded her back.
But Skallagrim refused to release her, using his authority to end the matter.
‘Twas then in the heat of his anger that Hakon seized Deira and ravaged her. He next laid hold to Rhiannon. The heathens abused the other maidens as well, swiftly, brutally, shouting their coarse pleasure. Several flaunted the stained gowns of the virgins they sullied, pleased with the spoils of conquest.
At that, Skallagrim studied Ailinn a long, considering moment. He marked the bridal array that adorned her
— the unblemished gown, the remnants of bruised blossoms that yet clung in her hair. A light came into his flat eyes and his craggy, bearded face spread with a grin as though he had found some great treasure. With Ailinn secure in his grip, he hauled her from the building and down to the River Suir.
Lia tensed against Ailinn, netting her back to the moment. She looked up to see Hakon unfold to his full height. He stepped forward with sure footage on the forging deck.
Ailinn’s heart thudded against her ribs as his gaze prowled over them. She tightened her grip on Lia, but he only rumbled a sound deep in his throat, then moved past to the rear of the ship, where he replaced the man at the steering board.
Ailinn vented her breath. Gently she fingered back a tangle of hair from Lia
’s pale cheek.
“
As pas de peur, ma chère cousine. Reposes-toi,”
Ailinn calmed, unmindful she had slipped into Frankish.
She, Lia, and Deira
had learned the tongue at their nurse’s knee and exercised it most often to share a confidence or voice their griefs. Now the familiar words rushed forth, consoling in somewise — old friends, intimate and dear.
Lia quieted once more as Ailinn soothed her fingers through the girl
’s sable tresses. What would come of them, she brooded — Lia, Deira, Rhiannon, the maidens of Clonmel, herself? Were the remainder of their days foredoomed to enslavement and submission among the heathens? And Skallagrim — what plans did he hold for her? Surely, he spared her apurpose. Though she loathed to concede it, for the moment her safety lay with the rugged chieftain. But her kinswomen and friends she was powerless to aid.
Dispirited, Ailinn began to sing softly, lulling Lia with an old strain that was tinged with a sadness peculiar to Gaelic melodies. Her crystalline voice carried along the ship
’s length and drifted out over the deep waters. The men fell silent. Even the oar-pacer muted his strokes.
Tears ached in Ailinn
’s throat, but her voice never faltered. Once anew, she thanked Heaven above that her mother and stepfather had not lived to suffer this day or witness her fate. She embraced their memory and held them dear. For the briefest of moments she recalled her mother as she lay dying, her husband’s and daughter’s hands clasped within her own thin strength.
“
Hold fast, my dearest Ailinn,” Fianna heartened. “Sometimes the darkness holds the light.”
Ailinn staved the memories before their keen edge pared too close. Lifting her gaze, she beheld her new masters. They wore the blood of her people.
Raw, mordant anger churned Ailinn’s soul. What small light remained in her life after Fianna’s and Lorcan’s deaths today went out altogether. In the darkness that engulfed her world, she knew only a scalding hatred for all Norsemen. Her body they might use and break, but in her heart she vowed ever to remain defiant.
As the ships sliced the waters for distant shores, Ailinn ended her song.
“I am sorry, Mother. Night has fallen and I cannot see beyond. There is no one to aid me or bring forth the hope of dawn.”