her she would live if she obeyed. She pinched the bridge of her nose, trying to rid the buzzing noise from her ears.
She cautiously raised herself up on one elbow. A wave of pain rocked her, causing the world to spin and blur, but she fought against it, refusing to return to that black nothingness. Gradually it cleared and her eyes focused.
She lay on a bed of dry leaves and pine needles. From the sky, she reckoned it was nearing owl-light, then she immediately revised her opinion. The world was becoming lighter by the breath. She’d lost at least one day and night. A large multi-coloured wolfhound stood guard over her. Nearby she saw a dark auburn-haired figure sitting on a log, watching her intently. But her men had vanished. Neither were there any horses. She put a hand to her head, trying to remember where she’d seen her captor before.
At her small movement, the man straightened, his hand going to his sword and recognition crashed through her. The Gael! The man who claimed to have a message from her father. The man had kidnapped her! She’d been ten thousand times a fool not to consider such a possibility.
‘Aedan mac Connall!’ she spluttered, but it came out weaker than a kitten’s mewl.
She ground her teeth. Olafr had not required a confrontation; he’d simply arranged for her removal. She had been fooled by the oldest trick in the book. Her father would never have sent a Gael. He despised them. The only mistake Olafr had made was that she still lived. Silently she swore revenge for everything he and this Gael had done.
‘Aedan mac Connall, you’ll pay for what you’ve done!’ she said again, this time with greater force. ‘My men will be massing! Release me at once and you may yet live!’
‘You’re awake and in good voice,’ Aedan mac Connall said, lifting a brow but seemingly unimpressed and unperturbed by her threat. ‘Good. It makes things easier.’
Dagmar’s next snarled threat died in her throat. ‘Easier for whom?’
‘Everyone concerned, but mainly for me.’ He leant forward. ‘I require you to be alive, Dagmar Kolbeinndottar.’
Her hand instinctively searched for a sword, but found none. She cursed under her breath. Someone, probably the Gael, had divested her of her armour. She was simply clad in her trousers and tunic. Nearly defenceless, but her boots with their hidden gold remained on her feet and she possessed a mind if she cared to use it, instead of panicking and behaving like a feeble-minded female.
‘Helgadottar, not Kolbeinndottar,’ she said, curling her hands into impotent fists.
‘Yet your father remains Kolbeinn the Blood-Axe. Changing your parents is a privilege given only to a few.’
Dagmar screwed up her eyes and refused to allow tears to fall. Tears were what other women did, not the daughter of Helga the Red. She concentrated on breathing until she felt in control of her body once again.
The Gael had removed her sword. It was what happened when a person was kidnapped. The kidnappers took steps to secure their prisoner. She needed to stop acting like a thick-headed panic-stricken mouse and formulate a plan for escape.
The Gael wanted her alive and he claimed to be from her father. If her stepmother had sent him, she would be lying in a pool of blood with her life slowly ebbing from her. Small comfort, but a chance for escape would present itself.
‘Where are my men? Where is the High King?’ she asked, fixing him with one of her harder stares. ‘Take me to Constantine immediately. There are things which need to be said before we depart. My father wouldn’t want to anger the High King of the Picts.’
She breathed easier. The Gael would have to see the logic and yield. Once she was back in Constantine’s camp, she would not be going anywhere near her father.
‘Constantine was last seen on a horse headed towards the coast. He lost. A comprehensive defeat. No longer High King of the Picts. Perhaps he remains King of a very small slice of Alba’s eastern shore.’ The Gael rose and dusted down his trousers. ‘Thorsten and his Northmen from the Black Pool now control the Northern Alba, from the isles of Orkney to the Firth of Forth and beyond.’
She winced. Constantine had lost. Badly. The day was getting worse and worse. Her mother’s lands would also be gone. Overrun and parcelled out to some Northern jaarl. ‘And my men? Did any survive?’
‘Those who lived switched sides. Celebrating Thorsten’s historic victory for the north.’
She cursed Olafr under her breath. Old Alf had been correct in his mutterings about betrayal. ‘Who are you?’
‘Your saviour. You were supposed to die on the battlefield. I saved your life.’ His lips curved upwards. ‘You may thank me appropriately later.’
Dagmar balled her fists and struggled to breathe slowly. Saviour? Thank him? How—by sharing his bed? Not likely. Even if he did have shoulders which blocked out the light and long legs that went on for ever. She pressed her hand to her head. The blow was affecting her reason. Men had no interest in her in that way. Her chin was too pointed and her nose too long.
She had no business noticing the Gael as a man. She was dedicated to the arts of war, rather than the pleasures of bed sport.
Her finger drew a line in the dirt. He’d taken away her world. She might as well be dead. She’d lost everything that her mother had worked so hard to achieve. She’d betrayed her final vow to her mother. But she had someone to blame—Aedan mac Connall with that self-satisfied smile on his face, proclaiming he had saved her from certain death by snatching her while the battle still raged.
‘Saved my life?’ The words exploded from deep within her. ‘You kidnapped me in the heat of the battle! I could have fought my way to Thorsten and bested him.’
‘Forgive me, but I was on the battlefield. An axe was aimed at your back as well as a sword at your neck. Your man—that elderly warrior—leapt in front of the sword while I handled the axe. He perished to assist our escape, so you could live.’
The angry words dried in her throat. The man had unerringly found the flaw—why leave her alive if he only meant to kill her at a time of his choosing? ‘Old Alf died?’
‘No man could have survived that scene.’
She silently whispered a prayer for the grizzled warrior who had served her mother and her so faithfully. He’d taught her how to handle a sword and had dried her tears when her mother had become too exacting.
‘Then he is fighting for Odin now as he always wanted to,’ she said around the lump in her throat. Old Alf would be the first to scoff at tears, acting like a fragile female he’d call it, instead of behaving like a warrior. She wiped an eye. ‘A fitting end for him. Good. Old Alf trusted you. Why?’
The Gael shrugged. ‘He understood what I had to do. He urged me to do it. He knew the sword I wore came from your father, the sword which shattered saving your life. Your friend died so that you could live.’
‘My men...’ Dagmar whispered as the lump in her throat had begun to choke her. ‘My men are loyal.’
He lifted a brow. ‘Obviously not as loyal as you might have thought. Some of them betrayed you, led by Olafr. As we were leaving, they shouted for Thorsten while beating their swords against their shields. They turned the tide against Constantine.’
The
