Lost Son of Ireland
By Dorice Nelson

Prologue

Corca Dhuibhne Peninsula,
Gael—May, 834 AD

Bruic the Badger focused on the lifeless bodies scattered across the sandy beach. Undulating rivulets of blood mixed with the sea. The ocean’s tangy smells wafted on air, to combine with the odor of hot smoke pouring from a fortress on the promontory. In contrast to the swirling gray smoke, shards of sunlight glittered and warmed the area with golden beams.

Sea birds raced from nearby islands to encircle the tiny cove and dive at the still forms. Shrieks resounded for miles as the creatures swooped down, squealed and fought over tidbits of raw, plucked tissue.

Bile rose in Bruic’s throat and threatened to choke him.

Despite the gruesome sight before him, he feared returning to the sturdy wooden ships berthed in the next bay, wanting desperately to remain in his native land. Turning slightly, he scanned the area, searching for a place to hide from those who had stolen him from these shores seven years ago.

No safe haven presented itself on the barren beach. Only scrawny trees and high rocky ledges kept him from seeing the shapes of the tall vessels in the other cove. As wind and waves beat the bodies of the dead, a  sea-laden breeze blew a lock of dark hair over his face. He pushed it back with unnecessary roughness and fought the urge to retch.

Bruic shook his head in anger, frustrated. “I’ll never get away from them,” he mumbled, just to hear the sound of his own voice.

Since his enslavement, he had witnessed battles often, but the results never resembled the carnage before him. Now, at thirteen, his intention to become a warrior of note vanished in the face of this destruction. He had grown older in the last hour. He sucked in rank air and plunged his sword into the ground. Kneeling on one knee, he bowed his head. An almost forgotten Gaelic prayer flew into his mind. He mouthed the words.

Once done, he pushed on his sword and rose to his feet. Without another glance, he scuffed through the sand toward the granite boulders that separated this cove from the next. At the bottom of the ledges, he paused to look back at the mangled bodies.

A flash of movement and unexpected color in the high reedy grasses that topped the nearest dune caught his gaze. A red-haired child teetered to the edge of the sandy ridge. Behind her, a yellow-haired girl peeped through the grasses. Bruic suspected they had witnessed the raid from a secret hiding place.

The redhead slowed, looked back at the yellow-haired girl but kept her forward motion. Not watching where she was going, she lost her balance and slid on her bottom to the beach. Her choking hiccups dispersed the feasting birds. They rose in the air, flapping and screeching in protest at the disturbance. Muted sobs shook her body. A choked, whispered cry tore from her mouth, “Mama!  Help!”

Startled, Bruic whirled around. His eyes wide, he glanced toward the rocky ledges.

The men in the next cove. Had they heard the little girl cry out?

Struggling upright and lifting a hand to shield her eyes from the sun, the girl brushed her tattered tunic and then raised both arms high to balance in the deep sand.

With a grimace meant to frighten, Bruic spun to face her, hoping to scare her back onto the ridge. Body bent, sword thrust before him, he rushed at her. He hesitated when he noticed the glazed look in her overbright green eyes.

In a hoarse voice, she whispered louder. “Help me. My mama—”

A sharp whistle came from the next cove, followed by a shout. “Badger?”

“Allo,” Bruic called back over his shoulder, in the language of his captors.

For a second time, flapping wings rose in the air. This time the birds flew higher, circled wider, and cawed their continued displeasure in much bolder tones.

With hands balled into fists, the girl stopped and covered her ears. She closed her eyes as if she thought closing them might make her invisible. She opened them slowly and moved closer, blinking hard. “Man?”

Another sharp whistle, accompanied by laughter and shouts from the men, far louder than the squawking of the birds, cleared the large rocks of the ledge. The men bellowed and cursed, obviously eager to leave the carnage they had created.

The same voice called, “Badger? Come. It’s time we leave this gods-forsaken hole.”

Angered by the calls, Bruic hissed at the girl in broken Gaelic, his speech garbled, littered with Norse words. “Get back, goose!” He pointed to the next cove, then to the spot where the girl had come from. “They’re ready to leave this place before more guards come.” He peered at her through squinted eyes. “You don’t want them to carry you away, do you?”

She tilted her head, but her gaze lowered to the ground. Her thumb went to her mouth; but she must have thought better of it for her hand quickly cupped her chin in a childish gesture instead. Her reactions puzzled Bruic. He wondered if she understood what he was trying to say.

She shuffled nearer. Her lower lip quivered. “Help me find my mama?”

He bent closer and spoke into her face, pointing to the dunes. “Go. Hide. Now.” He shoved her. She fell backward into the sand. “Go back!” he whispered, poking her shoulder.

Her unwavering gaze met his. They stared for an elongated moment. Her large eyes, the color of the deep sea, seemed to beg him for something.

Then, she glared at him and shook her head. “No!”

“Why won’t you listen to me, tiny one? I’m trying to help you,” he said.

She pounded a fist in the sand. “Mama. I want my mama.”

Muscular Annar, his long yellow hair hanging to his shoulders, appeared on top of a boulder. Dressed all in brown, a black cloth over one eye, he made an unnerving picture against the soft blue of the sky, and his sudden appearance surprised Bruic. He jumped in front of the child.

The small girl trembled and turned onto her knees. Bruic forced her flat and put a foot on her shoulders. He heard her short, ragged breaths and, glancing down, saw her tears flow to form a lump in the sand. To keep her still and hide her presence, he knelt on one knee over her squirming body.

Annar adjusted his eye cloth, cupped his mouth, then yelled. “It’s your master, boy. He wants you. Now! Stop your prancin’ amid the dead, pretendin’ you’re some kind of warrior-hero.” He laughed and slapped his leg. “Not yet, slave, not yet.” He beckoned. “Come along or we’ll leave you behind.”

“Stay down, fool,” Bruic rasped at her through clenched teeth, his knee pressing her deeper into the gritty ground with all his weight.

“What have you there, boy?”

Bruic shouted back, “Nothing of worth—an old log.”

The man chuckled then his face grew grim. With a great roar, he yelled, “Hurry, boy,” then leaped onto another rock and slipped out of sight.

* * *

Kellach gasped as she realized the man touching her was one of the bad ones. Unable to move, she had studied the man on the rock and recognized both the yellow hair and the black cloth draped over his one eye. He was the man who had thrown her mama to the ground and jumped on top of her.

She wriggled but cringed. Would the man holding her hurt her? Carry her away? He stood, releasing her. She crawled away, her heart pounding. Particles of sand had mixed with saliva in her mouth. She spat. Her chest heaved. Her knees burned from the coarseness of the sand. She turned toward the young man and narrowed her eyes to give him her fiercest look.

He grinned at her, before another whistle captured his attention. He ran toward the boulders, hesitating only once to look back. In a huge bound, he vaulted over several of the boulders and disappeared from her view.

Gasping to catch her breath, she sat still. Tears rolled down her face. Her legs shaking beneath her, she stood and searched the beach for her mother. She wanted to tell her what good girls she and Olwen had been. How they had hidden, holding each other hard, but never made a sound.

The two girls had watched Dun Geata’s warriors fall, heard the terrible screaming of men and horses. They’d seen the bad men run after the ladies. Not even when the man with the patch jumped on Kellach’s mama did the girls make a sound. Her mama screamed, but they stayed silent.

Now, everyone was silent.

Kellach curled a strand of her hair around a finger and picked her way across the beach, stepping around body parts. She thought she spied her mother’s gray skirt and ran to the spot. A long piece of gray cloth, obviously ripped from her mother’s garment, lay in strips on the blood-soaked sand.

Shocked and bewildered, she reverted to infancy, looking around and calling, “Mama—? I hided like you said. Kellach’s a good girl. Please, Mama—” Her hand rubbed her chest. She looked at it as if it belonged to someone else. Numbness whipped her.

Several minutes passed until she understood that her mama was not going to answer her. The bad men must have taken her away, for she was nowhere to be seen.

Kellach picked up the cloth. She fluttered her hand in a beckoning gesture toward the ridge, to Olwen who had hidden with her. She called out in a husky whisper, “Olwen, come. Please come to Kellach.” She waited. No answer came from the dunes.

Kellach’s body chilled despite the warmth of the spring sun. Through a fog of shock, she sat by the water. Her hand crumpled the piece of cloth she clutched. She pressed it to her cheek and mumbled a lullaby, rocking back and forth as her mama did when she sang to Kellach at bedtime.

Kellach choked and gagged on her melody, her tears flowing into the sea.

Chapter One

An Dun Geata,
Gael—852 AD

Destiny hurled him home to do a godless deed, a deed evil enough to live on in the memories of bards for eons to come.

Unable to ease the guilty ache in his heart over what he must do to his fellow Gaels, Bruic the Badger paced the shale-covered ground between a huge monolith and the band of hidden Norse horsemen. The monolith protected an ancient burial site close to the raid’s objective, An Dun Geata fortress.

The nearby men, an elite set of guards, protected him.

During the night, a host of the men under his command infiltrated the stone beehive huts of those living across from the fort. He calculated this unusual strategy, the element of surprise, might work best to secure the area without loss of blood. His return to the land of his birth had come through express orders from Olaf the White, who was attempting to reclaim Dublin from the Danes.

Drawing a deep breath and letting it out slowly, Bruic worried over the release of his young sons held hostage by Olaf, and looked out to the nearby coves that hid his raiding party’s ships. The coves would make fine ports for the trading Olaf desired, once all of Gael was conquered. Perhaps, the location of trading ports would please the man enough to free the twins.

The morn was bleak and still, yet the sound of the rolling ocean and the fragrant but fractious wind of dewy predawn sang to Bruic’s soul. He slid to a bare knee, crossed himself and whispered thanks for this restoration, however brief, to Gael. Unprepared for the vivid memory of his former visit to his homeland, his heart raced.

At thirteen, Bruic had witnessed the natives annihilated, women raped and pressed into bondage, or slain on the spot. No group deserved such slaughter or enslavement once, much less a second time, and he recognized the general region as the one he had visited before. He shook off the internal guilt he’d held for years over his part in that earlier raid and made a silent vow. This one would be bloodless.

A hand signal from the nearby copse of trees caught his eye. Only Fergus, the only other Gael and his second in command, would dare attract attention. All others waited for Bruic’s cue to move. Careful not to be seen, Bruic stood and darted toward the line of trees.

He peered into the branches where some of his men had chosen to hide. The rest stayed on the ground, holding the horses. An edge of anticipation sliced the air around the greenery, anticipation sharp as blades that lay concealed in the scabbards of his men.

“What?” Bruic asked, keeping his tone low.

Fergus, who sat hunched behind a wide tree trunk, spoke softly, “The men are in position, Bruic, but impatient to begin. The animals grow restive.”

“Warn the men again. I want no spilling of the natives’ blood, regardless of the resistance. That’s an order, Fergus.”

“Short of an unexpected outburst, it should be an easy raid. It’s only a minor queen in charge, one who must grapple with a Dark Druid’s curse upon her. She’ll have no strength to fight a greater force, nor will her people.”

Bruic nodded. “Keep my horse at the ready. It’s almost time but wait for a sign from me.”

“Aye. As always.” Fergus backed further behind the trunk of the closest tree.

Bruic moved away on a spongy carpet of grass. Once again at the base of the monolith, he climbed from one boulder to another until he reached the top, where he lay prone. With a practiced eye, he studied the terrain below. The small number of huts across the narrow, rutty road…the small stone walls around the fields, set in precise lots to keep the cattle in…the escarpment soaring into the sky from beneath the fragrant ocean…the nearly impregnable stone fort with its massive wooden door…

His body stiffened, alert. Two people entered the yard through the fort’s front portal. A red-haired woman and an older man, whose gray beard grazed his short neck, walked in the direction of the inner walls, set away from the sea. The woman reached up and dragged a multicolored shawl over flame-colored hair.

Knowing the improbability, Bruic wondered if this woman could be the grown-up version of the little girl he’d saved from discovery years ago. With a shake of his head, he dismissed his fanciful thoughts of the little girl, who still sparked thoughts of his infamous day on a beach, and whose bravery had remained unforgettable throughout his life.

The people below drew closer to the walls weakened by the Norsemen helping to conquer the lonely fort. Surely the two would notice the undisguised damage done to the inner walls and even to the ones beyond. Would they alert the compound? How many others were within the fortress? A large number of raging Gaels might disrupt his plans for no bloodshed. Tension hung in the air around him, promising little relief.

The woman stopped, turned and then ran back toward the fort. Obviously, the destruction of the walls had been discovered. No shouts rang out. About to raise a hand to signal his men, Bruic hesitated. When the woman leaned against the fort, he knew he’d be better served to wait and watch.

But waiting was not something Bruic did well.