Slowly, against the odds, it appeared that she was gaining the upper hand in the battle. She was keeping her vow, delivering the victory for Constantine.
* * *
When the battle was at its height, Olafr raised his sword and lifted his shield, shouting for Thorsten over and over again. A sudden hush fell over the battlefield. Aedan froze in mid-swipe of his sword. Immediately several of Dagmar’s men stopped fighting, allowing the shield wall to collapse and the Northmen from the Black Pool to stream through.
‘Treachery!’ someone yelled.
Aedan hacked his way to where Dagmar fought against several warriors. In a matter of heartbeats, she would be dead along with his hopes for his people and their freedom. The sword he carried shattered as he reached her.
He brought the hilt of his broken sword down on the back of her head. She crumpled.
He scooped her unconscious body up. She was slender, but all sinewy muscle, rather than soft womanly curves.
‘You go to her father?’ the old warrior cried.
‘God and the saints willing.’
The man smiled and tossed him a brooch. ‘Look after her. I will distract them. Give her that when she goes to rip out your throat. Tell her that Old Alf kept the faith.’
He gave a shout and went forward, drawing the opposing warriors to him, giving Aedan a corridor to escape.
‘Good.’ Aedan whistled to his wolfhound who bounded forward, snarling. ‘Time to fulfil our vow and return to the West.’
Behind him, he heard the old man’s dying agonies, but he honoured his sacrifice and did not slacken his pace.
Dagmar slowly struggled from an all-engulfing black pit and tried to make sense of the world. Positively, she lived. She knew that from the faint drizzle which landed on her face and the prickle of pine needles in her back. However, instead of the sounds of battle raging about her, there was a low hum of crickets and the faint chirp of some bird.
She flexed her fingers and toes, relieved everything seemed to work. Her right arm was a bit stiff and her thighs screamed like they always did after a battle.
Her mouth was drier than the sand on the beach below Constantine’s court at St Andrew’s. But mostly, it was the back of her head which pained her, a great searing ache which made her nauseous and threatened to cause the enveloping blackness to return.
She tried to piece together how she’d arrived here but could only remember in snatches—the sword thrust towards her chest that she’d been certain would end her life, the sudden searing pain in the back of her head, the bumpy movement of a galloping horse and the strong arms about her as a low voice told 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