Alba did not look back as they passed through the gates, the horns trumpeting in final farewell. She would lose her courage if she turned her head, and she kept her gaze fixed forward, blind, deaf, and dumb.
She ignored Aidan when he came to an abrupt stop beside her.
“Halt!” he bellowed, his voice ringing with tension, but the party continued down the road without him, and a Northman grunted and urged him along. The trumpeters ceased their heraldry, their duties done, and the horses quickened their pace, the downhill pull urging them forward. A handful of clanspeople spilled out the gates behind them, and the portcullis stayed open for the ebb and flow.
They were halfway down the temple mount when fire bloomed on the thatched roof of a cottage below. Another flame mushroomed in the hut beside it. Whoosh. Whoosh. Whoosh. Three more cottages were engulfed in fire.
Figures swarmed from the mouth of the village, rushing up the road toward them as though they fled the fire behind them.
“Those aren’t villagers,” Aidan shouted, drawing on his reins.
“Close the gates!” Lothgar roared, but Gudrun’s men were already falling upon the confused clansmen, slashing and swinging. Benjie fell beneath an axe without ever coming fully awake. The dark swell rose up the hill, an army of Northmen who had been tucked inside the empty village.
“Scatter!” Alba screamed, and with all the power she possessed, she bade the horses buck and bolt, shedding their riders as though they too had caught fire. Gudrun’s men were temporarily distracted with their rearing mounts, and Alba slid from her saddle as her horse shrieked and shot down the hill toward the approaching horde.
Her skirts clutched in her hands, she began running toward the gates, her arms pumping, screaming out in warning. No archers lined the palace walls, no watchmen called out the attack. The horns that had bugled in farewell had been quickly set aside for another round of drinks.
“To the gates!” Gudrun boomed, ordering his men back up the hill. He had managed to stay astride his horse, and she could feel him behind her, pushing the beast up the incline. She could not outrun them.
Halt, halt, halt, she begged the horse, willing him to resist the climb. Gudrun cursed, and the horse shrieked in protest. She looked back, gauging the distance between them, and saw Gudrun slap the horse’s rump and dig his heels into its side, urging it on. The road behind her was strewn with bodies and splattered with blood. She thought she saw Aidan among the clansmen still standing, still fighting, but many of Gudrun’s men had already begun to surge up the road behind her, abandoning the fight on the hill for the battle beyond the gates.
And then she saw him, several paces ahead of a swarm of Northmen, climbing the hill at a full run, an axe in each hand, his sword still strapped to his back.
“Bayr!” she screamed, both overjoyed and dismayed.
“Alba! Run!” he bellowed, and she obeyed, scrambling up the road that had never seemed so steep or so long, running for the walls that had never seemed so insufficient.
She heard the hoofbeats and the harsh breath of Gudrun’s mount before he reached her, and she swerved and ducked, his hand glancing off the top of her head as she evaded him.
Then she was through the gates, tumbling into the courtyard that had been filled with carousing villagers and drunk clansmen for much of the day. The celebration had ended. The disembowelment of a string of the king’s guard, slumped in a tidy row, had served to wake up the masses to the death that was upon them. The Northmen at the rear of the processional, and most likely a hidden contingent left on the mount, had already begun slaughtering every person in the square, regardless of age, gender, or size. Alba tripped over the legs of a woman sheltering a small boy in her arms. Both were dead.
Everywhere Alba looked were the slain and suffering. A toppled barrel of wine had been skewered by an axe, the sweet liquid gurgling out and spilling over the cobbles, mixing mayhem and merriment in a sea of red.
She wrenched the axe from the barrel, arming herself, and began searching for something to do, someone to help, or somewhere to hide. A handful of clansmen were racing toward the square, wielding swords and shields, and Alba recognized Bayr’s grandfather and the warriors from Dolphys at the front. Then the horde from the village began spilling through the gates, and Alba began to run toward the temple, the only place she’d ever felt safe.
It was clear that others had sought sanctuary as well, but Gudrun’s soldiers had followed behind, mowing them down as they fled toward the edifice. Some of the king’s guard, posted outside the temple after the wedding, had begun to engage the attackers, but it was the sight of the keepers that drew Alba up short.
They ringed the temple, their backs to the stones, swords in hand, their purple hoods pulled back to reveal shorn heads and solemn eyes.
“Oh no,” Alba mourned. “No, no, no.” The keepers were not warriors. Many were old men whose rudimentary training in weapons would be no deterrent for battle-hardened Northmen. Her horror slowed her steps and stole her attention, and without warning, she was swept up by her hair and tossed over Gudrun’s saddle.
Ghost had followed her daughter once before, trailing after her, not knowing where the journey would lead or how it would end. Seventeen years before, she’d walked from Berne to the temple mount, and she would walk back again.
If Dagmar discerned her thoughts, he didn’t say. As soon as the ceremony ended, the king’s men guarded the doors once more, herding in the people from the temple and barring the keepers from finding an audience with the chieftains. Just as they’d planned, Dagmar and the keepers hurried the refugees and the daughters into the sanctum tunnel that led to the east side of the mount. They’d waited until the ceremony was over, until the bells chimed and the temple doors were closed. The chaos on the mount would provide a diversion, and the long night ahead would give them time to put some distance between themselves and the king’s guard, should he discover their absence. There were tears but no arguments. Ivo’s death had illustrated the dire nature of their circumstance. The temple was no longer a sanctuary.
Ghost stepped into the tunnel last and steeled herself to leave without looking back, the way Alba had done when she left the sanctum on the arm of the North King. Ghost had watched from behind the wall, marveling at her daughter’s iron control and vowing to face her future with the same courage. But now, just as she was leaving, Dagmar stepped into the darkness behind her, and Ghost could not walk away. She turned into his arms with a strangled sob. He kissed her lids and the tip of her nose, the hollows of her cheeks and the point of her chin before he settled his mouth on hers, his hands cradling her face as though she was infinitely precious to him. She clung to him for a moment, her lips lifted to his, her hands wrapped in his newly donned black robes. The keepers had hastily confirmed him Highest Keeper. No one else was willing to shoulder the mantle. He would be charged with protecting the runes and guarding the temple, even from a people and a king who no longer valued either.
When Dagmar ended the kiss and stepped away, she touched his face in farewell and felt the tears that coursed his cheeks. They did not say goodbye, and they did not lie to each other about a reunion. He clutched her hand a moment more, and then he was gone, ducking back into the channel of light from the sanctum and letting her go.
She walked through the darkness, the last in a long, single-file line of women who’d found a home in the temple only to be displaced once more. Of the three dozen females, only five were the daughters of the clans. The rest were refugees of foreign lands and war-torn clans. Some were old, some were young, and all were afraid. Each carried a small pouch—a little food, a change of clothes—to see them to Dolphys. Only Dalys had been to Dolphys before, but Juliah led the way.