Lock & Key Page 8

  “Dugal Gillacomgain,” Niall said, yawning cavernously and scratching his crotch with a hairy, paw-like hand. “What brings you here so early?”

  “Early?” Dugal said. “The sun has long been up.”

  “Has it? Well, I haven’t.” He went to what was left of his fire, picked up a stick, poked the embers without much effect, and then shrugged. “Let me get food and drink.”

  Niall disappeared once more into his house, and returned with bread, salted fish, and some strips of green that looked like the dried seaweed he had seen used to wrap sushi. He also had a large clay bottle of what turned out to be quite passable beer.

  After all three men had eaten in silence, Niall belched, wiped his hands on his kilt, and said, “Now. What is it you want, Dugal? I do not think you have come to this side of the island for the pleasure of my company.”

  Dugal smiled a little. “I have a stranger here, Darinauld of Seattle. He came here by the magic of another, seeking a man who tried to kill him. I know that you get news from far and wide, and I thought that you would know if other strangers have been seen on the island in recent days.”

  Niall squinted at him, as if noticing him for the first time. “Seattle? Where is Seattle? I have not heard of that place. Is it an island? Or a settlement in Scotland?”

  “Neither,” he said. “It is very far away. On a whole different continent.”

  “Is it?” Niall said, sounding uninterested. “And this villain who tried to kill you, did he come from Seattle as well?”

  “Yes.”

  “And he looks like you?”

  “Not much. Well, I mean, he might be dressed like me. But he’s broad-shouldered, and blond. But he’s not a Viking,” he added hastily.

  “Not a Viking,” Niall repeated. “No, I suppose not. I have never heard that the Vikings came from a place called Seattle.” He looked thoughtful. “How had you angered him, that he wished to kill you?”

  “I don’t know. We were friends since we were children together.”

  “Was it over a woman? It would not be the first time a friendship ended in death because of a lover.”

  “No, nothing like that. Lee has a girlfriend, but I’ve never tried to come between them.”

  Niall nodded, and stroked his beard thoughtfully. “There are only a few things that men will kill for. Women, wealth, revenge, to protect themselves or their families. I think it must be one of those. Do you not agree, Dugal?”

  “It is so.”

  “If you had no intent to steal his lover,” Niall said to him, “did you intend to steal his belongings?”

  “No!” Darren said.

  “Had he any reason to seek revenge on you?”

  “Of course not.”

  Niall looked at him speculatively. “And you do not look like much of a threat to anyone. It is puzzling.” He frowned. “This enemy of yours, why do you think he is here? You say your home is far distant. Why would he come here, where he knows no one?”

  “I do not know. The one who sent me here told me that he’d be here, and that he’d try to do something. Something bad. And that I needed to stop him. If I don’t… well, apparently, it will cause all sorts of bad things back home.” He glanced at Dugal, praying he wouldn’t mention the whole coming-here-from-the-future thing. He seriously didn’t feel like explaining that again.

  Dugal, fortunately, didn’t volunteer any further information, and Niall didn’t press him with further questions.

  Niall cleared his throat, hiked up his belt a little, and said, “Well, for my part, I have no knowledge of anyone on the island who shouldn’t be here. Yesterday a sharp-eyed man on Donnacha’s fishing boat saw Viking longboats, but they were distant and moving away. Other than that, there has been nothing out of the ordinary here.”

  “I thank you for your help, Niall,” Dugal said. “I would warn you to keep your ears and eyes open, and if you see any who seem not to belong here, that you let us know immediately. I have discussed the matter with Darinauld, and I am convinced the threat this man represents is real. I cannot fully explain it, but I can feel it, like a weight in my mind. If this man comes here, we cannot fail to act.”

  “I understand,” Niall said. “If he comes here, I will know.”

  “That is why we came to you.”

  More beer was brought out, and more food, and perhaps another hour passed in that way. Whatever else you could say about the Scots, they couldn’t be hurried. But finally farewells were pronounced. Niall went back into his house, and Darren and Dugal walked back the way they’d come.

  “It may seem to have been a long walk for nothing,” Dugal said, after they’d gotten out of earshot from Niall’s house. “But however Niall appears to be a fat, indolent man, he is shrewd. Nothing happens on the island that he does not find out about. He has eyes and ears everywhere.” He looked over at Darren. “Of all the things Niall said, the one that concerned me the most was the Viking longboats. This is, to my knowledge, the first that they have been spotted in over a year. But I do not see what we can do about it.” He walked in silence for a while, frowning in a meditative way. He finally said, “What course of action should we pursue, then?”

  “I don’t know.” He scowled. “That’s the frustrating part. I don’t know what I’m supposed to be looking for. I don’t even know when it’s supposed to happen. It could be today, or it could be three months from now. There’s no way to tell.”

  “Then we have no choice but to keep doing what must be done, let life take what course it will, and exercise patience.”

  “I’m not good at that.”

  Dugal smiled faintly. “Few men are.”

  • • •

  By the time they approached Dugal’s house, the wind had shifted, and it looked as if the weather were turning bad. Gray storm clouds lined the horizon, although the sky overhead was still blue. From the top of a hill, Darren could see the ocean, slate gray and lined with whitecaps, and he shivered a little as a gust struck them.

  It was because the wind was blowing from the direction of the ocean that their first hint of something wrong was the smell of smoke. Dugal frowned, looking seaward, and his nostrils quivered.

  “That is not the smell of a turf fire,” he said, and his voice sounded dark with worry.

  They crested the last hill. Dugal was a little ahead, and he stopped so abruptly Darren nearly walked into him. He looked down the hill, aghast.

  Dugal’s house was nothing but smoldering ruin. The turf shack where the sheep were housed at night was destroyed. Dugal, silent, began to walk again, and he marveled at the man’s self-control. Even when he got near to what was left of his home, he didn’t run.

  It wasn’t until they came around to what had been the front of the house that Dugal sprang forward, fell to his knees, and looked to the sky as the rain began to fall, and gave an inarticulate cry of grief.

  It took a moment for Darren to realize what Dugal had seen, what was lying by the fire pit. Malcolm, his simple shirt ripped and bloody, was sprawled on his back, fallen with one leg twisted beneath him, like a dropped doll. His shoulder bore a gaping wound, and his face was white and still.

  “No,” Dugal said, and touched Malcolm’s face. “No, my son, no, you cannot be gone…”

  Darren ran to Malcolm’s side, knelt next to him, and lifted his head. To his surprise, Malcolm opened his eyes, and after a moment licked his lips and spoke weakly, in a whisper, as the rain fell around them in swirling sheets.

  “They… they came ashore. There were twenty, or more. I tried to stop them. They took Mother, and Maíre. They have taken everything.” He closed his eyes, and his forehead creased with a frown. “I have failed. I failed to protect them. I did not even see them coming.”

  Dugal bowed his head and wept, his broad chest rising and falling spasmodically.

  “Which way did they take them?” Darren’s heart pounded with greater anger than he’d ever felt.

  “Down… down to the shore.” A tear sp
illed from one eye, across his white cheek, merging with the rivulets of rainwater coursing down his face. “I tried to stop them. I have failed.”

  “No, my son,” Dugal said, his voice thick. “You did what you could. None can stand against those dogs.”

  Darren looked up at Dugal, and fury blazed in him. A tiny voice said, almost too quietly to hear over the blood pounding in his ears, What are you doing? You’re just a bookstore owner. You can’t possibly be thinking… But then he thought of Maíre’s sweet, innocent face, and what would undoubtedly happen to her if she remained with the Vikings—what might already have happened.

  “I have to rescue them.”

  Dugal looked at him incredulously. “We two? Against so many? You cannot think that we…”

  “Not we. Me. You stay with Malcolm, make him comfortable. He’s lost a lot of blood, but he’s young and strong. He might yet survive, if you can get him somewhere warm and dry. If you leave him here by himself, in the rain…” He reached out, and clasped the older man’s arm. “This is it, I know it is. I have to try to stop the Vikings from taking Maíre and Caitlin. That’s what I was sent here to do.”

  “But this has nothing to do with the man who tried to kill you.”

  He shook his head. “But it does have to do with Maíre. When Fischer sent me, he said… he said that the key was her. Not Lee. It was Maíre. Whatever is causing all of this, it has to do with her. Maybe… maybe Lee has joined up with the Vikings. I don’t know. But whatever it is… I have to try to save her.”

  Dugal frowned at him. “There is more to you than I thought, Darinauld.”

  “Hell, there’s more to me than I thought.”

  “I should go with you. Two have more chance than one alone.”

  “No. Two have the same chance as one. That chance is probably pretty close to zero. And if you go, you’ll have to leave Malcolm, and he will certainly die. Stay here. If I’m not back by nightfall… then it will be your turn.”

  • • •

  Darren headed off over the low hills, away from Dugal’s house, toward the sound of the ocean crashing in the distance. The rain fell steadily now, blown by a gusty wind, and it was getting dark. Darren hoped this meant the Vikings who had kidnapped Caitlin and Maíre wouldn’t cast off. Once they’d taken to their boats, there would be nothing he, or anyone, could do.

  What exactly was he going to do in any case? He was a bookstore owner, and he looked like a plucked chicken. He had a spear, and he was going to rush in and rescue Maíre and Caitlin from a bunch of well-armed, tough, battle-hardened Vikings? Not to understate things, but had he lost his mind?

  No, he hadn’t lost his mind. The whole world had gone crazy. None of it made any sense whatsoever—from Lee trying to kill him, to the Library of Timelines, to Fischer and Maggie, to his getting thrown back to tenth century Scotland. None of it made the least bit of sense.

  But that didn’t mean he had to do something crazy to fit in. What was he going to do? Walk up to a group of Vikings and say, “Hey, you need to let Maíre and Caitlin go or I’m going to be really annoyed with you. See? I have a spear.”? The only thing that would delay their running him through would be they’d have to wait until they stopped guffawing in his face.

  He stumbled over a tussock of grass, and cursed the fact that it was now almost pitch dark. The clouds were thick enough that the moon, even if it was up, was invisible. He could barely see his hand in front of his face. Then he remembered the little flashlight clipped onto his key ring, and pulled it out, hoping the batteries weren’t dead. He switched it on, and it gave an amazingly powerful beam of light.

  “Well, score one for you, Mom,” he said. “I just wish you’d figured out a way to give me an umbrella that I could attach to my keys.”

  The rain fell in sheets, and they glittered in the beam of the flashlight like a swirling, gauzy curtain. He was soaked to the skin, and even the exertion of walking wasn’t warming him. He shivered uncontrollably.

  This was insane. But then Maíre’s smiling face appeared in his mind. And he kept walking.

  He couldn’t see the ocean, even though he was certain it had to be close. It was simply too dark. But he did see a reddish glow, a fire burning brightly despite the downpour. He reached the top of a hill, and saw, through the shimmering bands of rain, a huge bonfire, and surrounding it some dim, indistinct shapes, but clearly human.

  “Well, there they are,” he said. “Now what the hell do I do about it?”

  He turned the flashlight beam off, and crept quietly toward the fire. The Vikings seemed not to have posted any guards, and were apparently unconcerned about the possibility of attack. He heard the noise of speech, and then a bellow of laughter, and then, clearly, “… mutton goes down well after nothing but fish for weeks.”

  They spoke English, too?

  No, of course they didn’t speak English. Whatever peculiar circumstance had allowed him to understand Maíre, Caitlin, and Dugal, despite his complete ignorance of Gaelic, must have also allowed him to understand these people despite an equally complete lack of knowledge of Old Norse.

  That was handy. It gave him at least one advantage. Maybe his only advantage.

  He gradually made his way up to the edge of the firelight. Several broad-chested blond men with long hair and beards both in braids stood near the fire, which sizzled and sputtered as the rain fell into it but nevertheless burned cheerfully. He frowned a moment, wondering why none of them had a helmet with horns. Didn’t the Vikings all wear helmets with horns?

  But other than one of them, who had what appeared to be a leather cap on, all were bare-headed. Maybe they only wore their horned helmets on special occasions or something. Then he decided it didn’t matter, and tried to focus his attention on what they were saying.

  “We’d be away by now if we’d attacked the other side of the island,” one said. “Wind was already coming up when we landed. I told you we’d get stuck on this stinking sand bar.”

  “Ulf saw the sheep. If you wanted to pass up meat for dried fish, then you can give me that shank you’re working on. There’s plenty of fish back in the hold for you to feast on.”

  One of the others laughed, and the man with the leather cap gave a resounding belch. “I’d sooner be stuck here with meat than safely away with none,” he said, and there was general laughter. “And what about our other prizes, eh? What about them?”

  “You can have the old one, Grim,” the first man said, “long as I get the young one. She’ll be worth something when we get back to Norway, and I daresay her value won’t be any less if she’s used goods by the time she gets there.”

  The laughter bellowed forth again, and anger, a hot and entirely unfamiliar feeling, rose in his heart.

  “The old one has some spunk,” Leather Cap said. “She kicked Olaf in the balls when he grabbed her. He’d have spilled her guts right then and there if you hadn’t stopped him.”

  “The rule is, no killing what’s valuable,” the first man said. “Olaf will get over it, and it’ll remind him to be more careful next time.”

  Where were the women? Would they have them stowed on the boat already?

  He edged his way around the perimeter of the firelight, hoping to find the two women without being seen. As soon as he moved around to the side of the fire, away from the knot of Vikings discussing the day’s exploits, he found that there was a low rise that screened him from view, and he slowly made his way clockwise around the fire.

  The problem was, the rise also screened him from the firelight, and as a result he found Maíre and Caitlin by tripping over their feet. He fell face-first into the sand, uttered a muffled curse, and heard an exclamation in Caitlin’s voice.

  “Watch your step, you filthy dog,” she snarled.

  “Caitlin?” he whispered. “It’s me. It’s not a Viking, it’s me, Darren.”

  “Darinauld?” came Maíre’s voice, the excitement and hope sounding clearly.

  “I’ve come to rescue you,�
� he said, and he felt his way to them, found a pair of bound hands, and fumbled at untying the knots. Finally he said, “Dammit. I can’t see a thing. Hang on a second.” He pulled his keys out of his pocket, and switched on his flashlight.

  Maíre gasped. “How… how are you making fire in your hands?”

  “It’s not magic,” he said, working at the knots binding her hands. “But I don’t have time to explain it now.” He gritted his teeth. “I wish I had a knife.”

  “Darinauld,” Caitlin observed, “you have a spear.”

  “Oh. Yeah.” He picked up his spear, which he’d set on the ground, and used the sharp edge of the bronze point to cut the cords that bound Maíre, and then Caitlin.

  “There. You’re free. Dugal is with Malcolm. Malcolm’s hurt but he’s still alive. You should run. They won’t be able to track you in the dark.”

  To his amazement, and appreciation, Maíre took his face between her hands, and kissed him squarely on the mouth. “I knew you wouldn’t fail us, Darinauld. I said so to Mother.”

  He found himself smiling, but he didn’t have time to bask in the pleasant glow the kiss left behind. “You need to hurry and get as far away as you can, so they can’t track you. If you run quietly, you’ll be fine. These Vikings are big, but I get the feeling they’re as dumb as they are ugly.”

  There was a quiet sound behind him. In the glow from the flashlight, Maíre’s eyes widened, and she gave a little gasp. Then he felt something pointed jab him in the back.

  Oh, shit. He knew that feeling. Unfortunately.

  “Perhaps I am not quite as dumb as I am ugly,” a heavy, sullen voice said, and then added, “Move suddenly, and I will skewer you like a pig.”

  What was it with these people and their nasty analogies? He turned his head slowly, and saw, glowering down at him, the fleshy face of the Viking in the leather cap.

  For a moment, no one moved. Time seemed to have stopped. Then he did something that was either smart and brave, or simply foolhardy. He threw himself to the side, and before Leather Cap could react, he aimed the beam of his flashlight into the Viking’s eyes.