Erinsong (8 page)

“I’d grant ye a boon, Keefe
Murphy,” the king went
on. “I still hold
ye to your word not to leave us, but short of that, I’d grant ye a
request.”

Keefe glanced at Brenna.
For a moment, he consid
ered asking for a
kiss from the eldest daughter of the
house, but thought better of it. He was pretty sure
the
king’s hospitality stopped well short
of his daugh
ter’s favors. And besides,
given half a chance, he intended to entice Brenna into kissing him
willingly,
and soon.

“I remembered more while I worked on the
queen’s chair.”

“
Then ye know your true name?”

“No,” Keefe said with a
frown. “It was more like
remembering how
to do things. Mostly that I seem to have some experience with wood.
I’d like to do some
more
carpentry.”

“Sure and if that isn’t the easiest request
I’ve ever granted,” the king said.

“I’ve seen the little
coracles you and your men use
for
fishing,” Keefe said. The hide-covered crafts were
adequate, nothing more.

“What of them?”

“I can make them better,”
Keefe said. “They need a
keel, a sort of
backbone, running down the center.
It’ll
make all the difference. If you give me leave, I’ll
build a little boat that will sail circles around
your skin-covered hulls.”

“Aye and he’ll be sailing
away at the first chance.”
Connor McNaught
jumped into the conversation. “
Now that he
knows the lay of our land, the next full
moon, we’ll see a whole great boatload of the
Ostman
demons landing on
our beach.”

Murmurs of assent greeted
this pronouncement. The support seemed to embolden Connor
further
and he strutted over to glare up
at Keefe. If the differ
ence in their
heights troubled Connor, he gave no sign.

“I’ve given the king my
word,” Keefe said. A mus
cle ticked in his
left cheek. He stifled the urge to knock the mocking expression off
the Irishman’s pugnacious face. “Brian Ui Niall has no reason to
mistrust me.”

“None but the accident of
your birth, Northman.”
Connor swiped his
mouth with the back of his hand.
His pale
eyes were already glassy from too many
pints. “I still say ye cannot rely on a man who
doesn’t
even know himself.”

“I may not remember my
name,” Keefe said, flex
ing his fingers
and balling them into fists, “but I
know
well enough my word is sacred.”

“Sacred! And what might a heathen Ostman know
of things sacred?” Connor spat back at him.

“Connor McNaught, ye’re a
fine one to talk.”
Brenna stepped between
them, poking a finger into the center of Connor’s chest. “Ye
promised me only last week ye’d see the harness for the mare
mended,
but ‘tis still in
tatters.”

Connor frowned and stepped back a pace.

“Keefe Murphy may be a
heathen
Ostman,
as ye
say, yet he’s not promised but
what he’s delivered.” Brenna’s eyes flashed as she sent a scalding
look
toward Connor. “So just ye mind your
tongue.”

Keefe resisted the urge to
laugh out loud. The
princess was actually
defending him, but he knew it
would be
unwise to point it out to her.

Connor looked to the king
for support. “Ye surely
aren’t going to
let him build a twice-cursed dragonship, are ye?”

Brian Ui Niall dragged a
hand over his face. “I of
fered the man a
boon. Shall it be said the word of Donegal is taken back just
because ‘tis inconve
nient?” He caught
Keefe with his steady gaze. “I’ll be
having your word ye’ll not use the ship to sail away without
me favor.”

“You have it,” Keefe said.

“Then I grant ye leave to build it.”

Keefe nodded. “Fair enough.
And so there’s no
misunderstanding, let me
build her in that little sheltered cove. I can test her there for
seaworthiness, but
the reef will keep me
from venturing farther. She’ll have to be hauled overland to the
beach before she
can be fully tried. When
I’m ready to do that, Connor
can come with
me, if he’s up to it.”

“Handsomer than that a man
couldn’t wish,” the king said, clapping him on the back. “Brenna,
me darlin’, I leave it to ye to see our Keefe Murphy has what
stores he needs for the building of this boat,
this... what was it ye said it wanted? A keel, was
it?”
He raised a questioning brow at
Keefe. “Ah, it makes
no never mind. Build
it with me blessing.”

“It would please me if you’d name the boat
when it’s finished,” Keefe said to the king. “A good-omened name
protects all who sail in the craft. I’ll build a vessel worthy of a
fine name.”

“Why, name it for me, boy-o!” Brian suggested
with smile.

“I can’t do that,” Keefe
explained. “It needs to be a
woman’s name
because a ship is like a woman. Reli
able
and treacherous in turns, but hard for a man to do
without.”

“Aye, that’s a woman.”
Brian Ui Niall laughed in agreement and motioned to Brenna. “Bring
a horn
for the thirsty men, daughter.
There’s a good lass.”

Brenna nodded and fetched a horn of ale for
both the king and Keefe.

The Northman reached out to
touch her arm as she
passed
him.

“Thank you for taking my side this night,
Brenna.”

Her lips tightened. “Don’t
be thinking more highly
of yourself than
ye ought, Keefe Murphy. Against the
likes
of Connor McNaught, I’d side with the Devil himself.”

Brenna hugged herself
against the stiff wind. From her perch on the rocky promontory, she
watched the restless sea, scalloped with whitecaps. Clouds
raced
across the sky like a herd of
long-maned white mares.
Her view stretched
to the distant horizon where wa
ter and
sky merged in a smudge of gray.

She tried to focus on that distant point, but
her gaze was drawn downward to the man working in the sheltered
cove below. The bare skeleton of a miniature dragonship was taking
shape, the curving strakes molded in sinuous contours. The
symmetry, the clean, even lines of the craft, proclaimed it the
work of a master. Keefe was undoubtedly a shipwright of great
talent.

Even from this distance,
Brenna sensed his satis
faction from the
set of his shoulders. In the short time
he’d been there, she’d learned to read his moods from his
posture. When he was frustrated with a problem, the muscles between
his shoulder blades
gathered into a hard
knot. When the work was going
well, as it
was now, his limbs were loose and relaxed.

She wouldn’t admit it, even
to herself, but she never tired of watching him. Covertly, of
course.
She’d die of shame if anyone noted
and remarked on
her interest in the
man.

His attempt at song floated
up to her. She was even
getting used to
hearing the soft, guttural chant he claimed he was
singing.

He hadn’t made any more
advances toward her.
But from time to
time, she felt his eyes on her, hot and
knowing. It irritated her that this Northman, this
stranger, could lay her bare with just his
gaze.

You’ve suffered,
Brenna,
he’d said.
I see it in your eyes
every time you
look at me.

How had he been able to
divine so much about her
cut and bleeding
soul?

“For someone with no use
for men, ye seem to have no trouble keeping track of this one.”
Moira’s
voice pulled her out of her
reverie as she came along
side
Brenna.

“Are ye forgetting Da made me his
keeper?”

“A truly onerous duty, that,” her sister said
dryly.

“Mayhap ye’d like the job.”
Brenna frowned at her. “
Say the word and
‘tis yours.”

“No indeed. I’ll be having
far more fun teasing him
away from the
work ye’ve set for him. No doubt he’ll
be
needing someone to soothe him when ye scold. Ye
are a terrible taskmistress, ye know.”

“Keefe sets his own pace,”
Brenna explained. “He
drives himself to
finish his other chores so he can hie
himself here to work on that infernal boat of
his.”

“Infernal boat,” Moira
repeated, her presumptuous
smile raising
the hackles on Brenna’s neck. “Ah! So
ye’re afeard he’ll leave as well.”

“I fear no such thing,” she
denied. “If Da gives him
leave to go, then
good riddance says I, and not a mo
ment
too soon.”

“Then you’ll not be minding
if I go down and take
him these tarts
fresh from the baking,” Moira said. “
Even
a fine braw lad like our Keefe needs some
thing to keep up his strength with all the work ye put
him to.”

“Do as ye please,” Brenna
said, trying to ignore the
sinking feeling
in her gut. Moira looked especially
fetching today in her new green tunic and
brat.

“Come with me, Brennie,” Moira suggested. “We
can gather mussels on the beach on the way back.”

It was tempting, but Brenna shook her head.
She didn’t want Moira to know how rattled she felt around the
stranger. Her sister could be a terrible tease.

“Not this time, but do ye
go on. Only mind your
self,” Brenna urged.
“Remember who ye are and
comport yourself
as a daughter of the house should.”

“Where’s the fun in that?”
Moira laughed and turned lightly on her heel to
start down the switch-backed path to the shore below.
The foot-worn track led to the far edge of the
beach.
From there, she’d have to walk back
up the rocky
coast and round the point to
join Keefe in the cove.

“I wish ye would come, and
I’d lay silver Keefe would wish it, too,” Moira called back over
her shoulder. “Given the choice, your Northman would
rather see ye than food, I’m
thinking.”

Heat crept up her neck and
flooded her
cheeks. So Moira had seen the
way Keefe ogled her.
Who else had noticed
and tittered at her in secret?

And might they also have
wondered if she’d done anything to encourage Keefe to strip her
with his
gaze as if she were a
light-heeled wanton?

She wished she could sink
into the very earth. In
stead, Brenna
grasped her skirts and broke into a trot
back toward the keep.

***

“Steady, now,” Kolgrim
said. The dragonship rounded the southern point and made steadily
for a
long strand of beach. “We don’t want
anyone raising
an alarm till we’re in and
out and on our way with whatever comes to hand.”

“These little farmsteads
are poor sport,” one of his
men
grumbled.

“We aren’t after loot now,”
Kolgrim reminded
them. “We only need to
stock up the larder before we
raid the
juicier prize.”

“Already had more than we needed.” Kolgrim
overheard a few of the crewmen grumbling among themselves. They no
longer bothered to mask their lack of trust in their captain.

It all started the night of
that storm. They’d been heavily loaded with spoils from their last
raid. Kol
grim remembered each detail with
the hideous crisp
ness terror brings to a
man’s memory. He’d stood in the prow of his ship, one arm wrapped
around the long neck of the dragonhead while his second in command,
Jorand, strained against the steering oar,
muscling the
Sea Wolf,
dragonhead first, into the on
coming waves. Kolgrim held his breath and squinted
against the briny spray.

“She won’t hold!” he’d bellowed to be heard
over the slashing wind.

The longship’s timbers
groaned as her prow tilted
over the crest
and plummeted down the wall of wa
ter into
a deep trough. Gray swells rose above them,
threatening to swamp the dragonship. A few of the sailors
wailed in terror.

“She’s breaking up.”

“No, she’s not.” Jorand
gripped the gunwale of the
Sea
Wolf
so hard his
fingernails bit into the wood, as if he
could hold her together by the force of his will. He
dragged a bucket through the water at his ankles
and
dumped it over the side.