His hair fell over his brow, and he flinched, thinking a spider skittered across his face. He was unaccustomed to the caress of unkempt hair. He ran cold hands over the short, curling strands, seeking to dislodge his unsettled thoughts and displace anything that had nested while he slept. Weary, he rose to his feet, his limbs stiff and his hands cold. He leaned into the tree, waiting for his body to warm and his senses to waken. His arm stung, and he held it out to the moonlight, studying the welts seared into his skin a few inches above his wrist.
In one rune, two lines met and knotted, only to separate and continue on, forming a cross. The other rune was a cluster of angry lines and interwoven symbols, partially surrounded by a snake consuming its own tail. The Highest Keeper had marked him, finding him in his sleep and carving the rune into his skin.
There is no daughter without the son.
The moon shifted, a horse whinnied, and the soft tread of moving feet murmured through the trees. Bayr froze. As he waited, eyes trained toward the approaching sound, one man morphed into another and another, a battalion of shadows traipsing through the Temple Wood. One passed so close to the tree Bayr was pressed against, a gusty exhale would have stirred the man’s tangled hair. The bones in his ears and dangling from his clothes clicked softly, obscuring Bayr’s thundering heartbeat. Northmen. Dozens of them, moving toward the mount under the cover of darkness. Walking among them were a handful of warriors from Berne, some of whom Bayr recognized, their braids tight and long, setting them apart from the raiders of the Northlands.
Bayr waited until the last man disappeared and the forest exhaled, the night sounds resuming as the danger departed. Then he fell into step behind them.
30
The Northmen stopped just behind the edge of the Temple Wood at the east side of the King’s Village, where the cluster of cottages ended and the forest began. Dawn broke as they rested and took turns keeping watch. Bayr could not get close enough to determine exact numbers, but it had to be over a hundred. A hundred warriors armed with axe and shield, guided to the mount by Bernian warriors. Gudrun and his men, already within the walls, would make fifty more.
The mount was overflowing with the old and the young from every clan. Most were not warriors. Most would not know how to wield a sword. One hundred and fifty hardened Northmen would be enough to hew them all down. But the clan chieftains and many of their warriors—at least as many as the Northmen—would still be within the temple walls. To attack the mount when Saylok’s warriors were all assembled made little sense on the surface. Yet an army of Northmen stood just beyond the tree line, studying the mount from the Temple Wood.
As the bells marked the noon hour, the villagers left their homes and climbed the hill for the final day of the tournament. The gates were wide open and welcoming. Banners fluttered from the wall, and even across the distance, Bayr heard the peal of the trumpets indicating the commencement of the melee. A feast would follow, and the villagers wouldn’t return until after dark. Everyone all in one place, drunk on wine and merriment, lulled by the engagement of their princess, convinced that war had been avoided.
The rune on his arm began to throb.
Bayr crept along the edges of their encampment. The Northmen were waiting for something. They didn’t climb the hill or send sentries or scouts up the mount. No fires were burned, no laughter heard, no chatter exchanged. They waited, speaking in low-pitched tones when they spoke at all, and they watched, sharpening their weapons and sleeping in shifts. They awaited King Gudrun, he had little doubt, but whether they were simply protection or they planned an assault, he couldn’t be sure. He needed to warn the mount and alert his men.
He’d left them all behind.
He’d left Alba behind.
He’d stumbled from the mount in a horrified stupor, disemboweled and dismembered, a dead man walking.
He could cut back through the forest and climb the mount from the south side, but that would force him to abandon his watch. He feared the Northmen would storm the front while he was scaling the back. There were too many to defeat by himself—Bayr was strong, not indestructible—but if they swarmed the gates with him still behind them, he could make a wide swath from the rear, shaving their numbers and slowing their attack.
The afternoon deepened, and the bells began to ring once more, sonorous and slow and completely unexpected. Bong, bong, bong, bong, bong. They didn’t mark the hour or sound an alarm. The melee was long over, and the final feast well underway. Yet the bells continued to reverberate. Bayr frowned at the clangor, reminded of the terrible tolling the day Queen Alannah died.
And then he knew.
The bells were being rung not for a funeral but for a wedding.
As if they’d been waiting for their cue, the Northmen began to enter the village in small groups, moving past animal enclosures and slipping inside empty huts. If anyone remained inside, Bayr had no doubt they were quickly dispensed with. The army in the Temple Wood grew more and more sparse as the Northmen moved into place, until Bayr was the only one who remained.
Then the trumpets began to sound, playing the taps of a royal procession, and Bayr began to run.
The flowers from the feast tables had been gathered and tossed on the cobbles in the courtyard, and the clanspeople raised their voices and their colors in false jubilation as Alba walked at Gudrun’s side down the temple steps. The wine flowed again, and Alba was prepared for her departure. Her blush gown was removed and her traveling dress donned. Her long hair was woven into a plait to keep it from tangling in the wind and collecting dust during her journey to Berne, where the longboats of the Northmen waited to take them across the water.
Shadows had gathered alongside the waving well-wishers, though sunset was still a ways off. Few had abandoned their libations since the melee had ended hours before, and the merriment would continue until the people collapsed in drunken piles. It was always thus when the tournament ended. The Hearth of Kings, representing the presence of the Daughters of Freya, sent smoke rings into the sky, though Alba prayed they had made their escape. The king’s men surrounded the temple once more, and the doors were closed to the visitors of the mount. No one seemed to notice. No one seemed to care.
A handful of aging mistresses and doddering manservants would go with her, a retinue to attend her in her new life. Many of them were crying as though they’d been sentenced to death. King Banruud stood on the palace steps, bidding his guests goodbye, a weary guard on either side. The courtyard was in a state of drunken dishabille, and the Northmen seemed eager to be on their way.
The chieftains of the northern clans—Berne, Adyar, and Leok—would ride with Alba until they reached the port, ensuring the agreement was kept. Each chief had a cluster of his own clansmen mounted and ready, but many of the warriors had taken part in the melee and nursed black eyes and sore bodies. None of them appeared especially fit to travel, and many swayed in their saddles.
Aidan rode on Alba’s right, Lothgar on her left, and Benjie led the way, his shoulders draped in the skin of the bear but his back slumped as though he were already half asleep. King Gudrun rode near the front, a group of his warriors leading the way with another bringing up the rear. Their numbers seemed diminished, and Alba wondered dispassionately if some of them had gone on ahead to make camp. It was only hours until dark, and they would not travel far.