‘He also promised to wait,’ Sandulf reminded her.
‘True.’
‘I think this was far from a random attack; they were searching for something or someone.’
‘How can you tell? It looks like confusion to me.’
Sandulf’s face became grim. ‘Experience.’
Ceanna swallowed hard. ‘You’ve seen this sort of thing before?’
‘Once or twice. It never gets any easier. It’s worse than a battlefield. I worked the trade routes with the Rus after I first left Maerr. There was a bandit problem.’ His mouth twisted. ‘Most who go there to make their fortune end up bleached bones beside some foreign river. It made me determined to make more of my life. That means learning how to stay alive when I encounter something like this, listening to my gut when something doesn’t feel right.’
‘I feel sick,’ she confessed, wrapping her arms about her middle. ‘I keep thinking it could have been me. Perhaps it should have been.’
‘A natural enough emotion.’
She put a hand on her stomach and was pleased she hadn’t eaten. Her stomach roiled again. ‘I won’t be sick, though.’
‘No, you are not the sort.’ He put a hand on her shoulder and instantly her nerves calmed. He believed in her. ‘Gather what you need, and we will go.’
‘L-Lady Ceanna, is that you? At last.’
Ceanna froze. ‘Urist?’ she whispered, uncertain if she was hearing things. ‘Are you alive?’
Urist groaned from where he lay. He tried to raise himself up on one elbow. ‘My lady. You’ve arrived.’
‘Why didn’t you call out earlier? Sandulf and I have been standing here for a little while.’
The guide put a hand to his head. ‘I... I think I drifted off again. Don’t right know how long I have been here.’
Ceanna hurried over to him. She wanted to hug him and shake him at one and the same time. ‘I thought...’
He struggled to sit up, but his colour was paler than freshly fallen snow and his right eye was a bloodied mess. ‘You don’t stay alive for long if you don’t know how to play dead and they roughed me up good this time. My head hurts something fierce.’
Ceanna motioned that he should stay seated, rather than rising. ‘What happened? Was it a random attack?’
‘They were waiting for us, my lady. Waiting for us while we waited for you. They struck in the dark, towards morning, I reckon. My lad was on watch, but he scarpered. That little lad means more to me than anything.’
‘Waiting for you? Why didn’t you take precautions against bandits?’
‘We did.’ Urist collapsed back down. ‘Or at least I thought I had, my lady. The Northman and his friends...you’re in danger from him. I can feel it in here.’ Urist struck his chest.
‘Listen to me, Lady Ceanna,’ Sandulf said, shaking his head and interrupting the guide’s self-serving explanation. ‘This attack may have been planned, but there was little intention of robbery in the mind of the attackers.’
‘How can you tell?’ Ceanna decided to ignore the sarcastic use of lady.
‘They left the trunks. They left the clothes and jewellery. These things have value to thieves and Northmen.’
Ceanna went cold. ‘You think they were after something else?’
Sandulf stopped patrolling the site. ‘I think it was fortunate you were elsewhere.’
She went over to the corpse who wore her cloak and turned her over. Vacant eyes stared up at her. To Ceanna’s surprise, the corpse was stiff, as if the woman had been dead for several days. But it also appeared as if she’d been grossly violated, stabbed through the abdomen.
Ceanna’s stomach roiled. She placed her hands on her knees and tried to regain her composure.
‘Who?’ she whispered.
‘Died the day before yesterday,’ Urist said in Pictish. He told her the woman’s name, and it was someone from the village Ceanna knew only by sight. ‘I suspected there would be trouble, my lady, and brought the corpse, propped up in the wagon. It were one of the reasons I left sudden like, my lady.’
‘You did what?’
‘She died in childbirth, my lady, the night before we left. My woman friend in the village had the idea after she heard about the Northman nosing about. If we ran into trouble, we would have a decoy. She is a bright lass, unlike my wife who shouts.’
‘Where is your woman friend?’
‘I can’t rightly say, my lady. She declined to come on the journey.’
Ceanna’s sense of unease grew. Urist had confided in at least one person about her intention to escape, despite his promise to keep silent. ‘Keep to the tale.’
‘Right. Some of your gold went to purchase the corpse. It takes more than good wishes to put food in bairns’ bellies.’ Urist pursed his lips. ‘I gave my word she would receive a Christian burial. My lad’s gone for another cart. He’ll be back soon and we can go back to Dun Ollaigh and safety. There is bad folk out there, waiting for you.’
Ceanna winced uncomfortably. That poor woman’s body had been mutilated like that because of the deception? She shuddered to think about suffering that sort of fate. But someone had come looking for her. Would they look elsewhere? At the convent? She rejected the idea. Her stepmother would concentrate the search around here. ‘It will be seen to, I can promise you that. But why have you done this? Why not warn me about the threat before you left?’
‘There weren’t time, like.’ He gave a sideways glance towards where Sandulf Sigurdsson stood, glowering. Ceanna noted that he avoided answering her question and her sense of unease grew. ‘I was worried about that there Northman. He was asking questions. I told the wife there might be an ambush and she said to leave straight away. You never know. He might have—’
That made at least two other people who knew her plans. Bile rose in Ceanna’s throat. Urist was stalling and she didn’t know why.
‘Sandulf Sigurdsson is with me. He did not attack you, nor does he appear to have travelling companions. Your lady friend was mistaken about the attackers.’
Urist’s mouth dropped
