Ross Lawhead - A Hero's throne

“Humph,” Ealdstan grunted, heading back to the Langtorr. Breca walked beside him, ready to attend his need. “That’s him dealt with. But are things really such on the continent, I wonder? No doubt a visit would be prudent. I will open the sea tunnel. Breca, ah, Breca, before I forget-send a couple of your men to follow the good king and his men out; find what path they used here. Then tell them to seal it.”

_____________________ III _____________________

Freya pushed herself up from the table, drool chilling the corner of her mouth. The notebook was beneath her. She flicked back through the pages to see all she had written. There had to be over a hundred pages of description and conversation-all different time periods and people she’d never heard of. Where was it all coming from?

“Please, I need another break. I need some food and some sleep. How-how long has it been this time?” She looked at her wristwatch; the hour hand was just a little farther on. But had two hours passed or fourteen? It felt like fourteen.

“Are you sure you can’t go again? We’re on a fairly tight schedule.”

“No, please. . how long has it been? I-” Freya tried to stand, but her legs were like rubber. She braced herself by holding on to the table and lowered herself into a crouch.

Vivienne was up and at Freya’s side. “I’m sorry. Yes, you could use some rest-we both could. It’s just-you understand the importance, don’t you?”

She helped Freya up, supporting her weight on the back of a metal chair. Then she unfurled one of the bedrolls.

“Find anything yet?” Freya asked.

Vivienne’s head jerked up. “Yes, lots, of course.”

“Anything that will help us. .?” Freya almost said destroy this place, but stopped herself in time. The visions had done nothing to assuage her distrust of Ealdstan.

“Yes, this is all very helpful. Invaluable, in fact. It gives us some context for what is going on here, at least. Whether by design or circumstance, Ealdstan has kept us in the dark.”

“Any word on Daniel? I’m worried about him.”

“I have not strayed from this spot, and Daniel has not poked his nose in here, no.”

“Are you worried about him?”

“I don’t believe so.”

“Vivienne. . when are we going to talk about Gad?”

“Not right now-go ahead and rest. We’ll talk about it later. Just sleep now.”

Freya let her leaden eyes shut. And as she drifted into a thankfully dreamless sleep, she tried to think about why she felt she had been in this position before.

Gretchen Baker stood on a sand dune, sniffling, sighing, and wiping back tears that the fierce, salt-laden wind did nothing to abate.

She knew she wasn’t the most attractive girl in the school. She wasn’t even in the top twenty-five (of twenty-eight), but there was no need for everyone else to continually ridicule and tease her. If they could just let her alone, she could cope and get through with no friends. Then she’d leave the highlands and go to university in Edinburgh or Glasgow, or maybe even-and it gave her a thrill just to think about it-London. Anywhere, so long as it was away ; and a long way away at that.

It wasn’t just that she was unattractive; it was that she was conspicuously so. She was big, that was the main thing. Not fat, exactly, but tall-a good four inches taller than the next tallest in her year-and with a blocky form that fell from her wide shoulders straight down. Like a brick privy, she’d constantly heard herself described. The curves that had been promised her during her pubescence had yet to be delivered. And her face as well; blocky, jowly, with a prominent brow that buried her eyes in a squint, and a jutting jaw that gave her a permanent frown. She was constantly being picked out and victimised. She was like a celebrity in the school-an anticelebrity. If anyone thought of a clever new prank or needed the object of a dare, she was found at the butt of it. Always.

The girls were bad enough. She had finally, consciously given up on being fully accepted by the girls a little over two years ago. All they ever did was pass blame to her and use her as a scapegoat for their own insecurities and frustrations. She finally understood that and avoided them with some success.

But the boys’ cruelty stung. She didn’t know why; there was no real reason why it should. It wasn’t like she fancied any of them. Today there had been some sort of dare or initiation the popular group of boys had started. It involved coming up to her and asking her out on a date and seeing how long they could stay serious. The first time it happened, she had almost said yes. One of the group had broken away and come up to her and quietly asked if she wanted to see a movie over the weekend, his head slightly hung, his eyes steadily holding her gaze. She was just about to open her mouth when he burst into theatrical laughter and ran back over to his group, saying, “I couldn’t do it! I couldn’t keep a straight face!”

She shrugged and shook her head and carried on into the hall to eat her lunch, but then it happened again, and again, and again. Even boys who weren’t in the popular group came up to her just to laugh and guffaw in her face, so as not to be left out. It was a performance art to the benefit of their peers and the other girls in the school who sat around and coyly ate their own lunches, tittering at the spectacle. The teachers pretended not to notice.

Gretchen, flushed and fuming, eventually finished her sandwich and stormed off to the girls’ toilets. She hid for the next twenty minutes in one of the stalls until lunch was over. The rest of the day she buried her face in her books and notes, ignoring the laughs and whispers behind her.

After an eternity, school ended and she came here, a place most teens seemed to ignore. It took half a mile of tromping through tall grass to reach the sandy bowl of a bay. From her favourite spot atop one of the dunes above, she could look out at the sea and imagine all the places that weren’t here, and which one of them was her real home. Where was she meant to be? Where did all the big people live? She considered Sweden, the United States, even Germany, perhaps. But for some reason, she really liked the idea of Canada. She imagined living there in a cabin surrounded by forest, at the foot of a towering mountain.

She’d marry a big, rugged man who didn’t have to be goodlooking, so long as he had a big, bushy beard, and he’d teach her the ways of the wild, and she’d butcher and cure the elk and deer and wildlife that he’d manage to hunt and trap in the forest. Cooking them up for him at night, they’d sit across from each other at a rough wooden table and after grace he’d lean over, put his big, rugged hand over hers, and tell her he was the luckiest man in the world to be married to her. And she’d put her other hand on top of his and say with a smile, “You’re right.”

Some days she’d tell herself things would be great, if she could just wait for Canada. Other days, like today especially, she’d kick and slap herself for being so impractical and stupid. There was no place for her anywhere. Canada didn’t exist. Not her Canada.

She ducked down with a gasp when she realised someone was on the beach. She had been looking at an odd-looking, long piece of leathery flotsam that was lying against a rock when she saw movement out of the corner of her eye. Swimming up out of the ocean was a man.

At first she thought he was a seal by the way he raised his head above the waves and then dove back under, but as he drew farther and farther into the bay, she became certain that this wasn’t the case. Mostly because he was completely naked.

But not naked in a bad way, Gretchen reflected. His hair was jet black and shoulder length in an out-of-fashion sort of way, but it was slick and wavy, and would have looked good any way he wore it. His face, as much as she could tell from here, bore strong features and a square jaw. He had a slight, almost feminine figure, but the tautness in his legs, the bulkiness in his shoulders, was all male. From the side, he looked impossibly thin, but when he turned to face her, his outline began with very wide shoulders that tapered down to a narrow, flat waist, and then bloomed again to display two powerful legs.