“Aye, the Highlanders are ripe for hard work,” she agreed, then turned as she heard a loud laugh from the trapdoor leading to the gatehouse observation platform. “Ah, Bruni, welcome,” she said. “What do you find so funny?”
The big woman pulled herself through the hatch and stood up, looking over the tall farmer and all but dwarfing the relatively petite chiefwoman. She chuckled again. “These Highlanders do all kinds of work,” she said genially. “Marta just told me that she, too, is expecting a baby this autumn.”
Moreen nodded, not surprised, but not necessarily pleased by the announcement. Of course, in a way it was good news. The male warriors of her tribe had been slain in battle nine years earlier-had it really been that long?-and the influx of strong, handsome, and cheerful Highlander men had undeniably given the Arktos a new lease on their future. Since she and her people had restored Brackenrock, they held the most desirable land in all the Icereach. Because of this, men were willing to come here, work, and many of them married into Moreen’s tribe.
The chiefwoman understood, hypothetically, that if her tribe had been still eking out survival in the small, vulnerable fishing village on the Blood Coast of the White Bear Sea, the migration would have worked the other way around. Inevitably the women of her tribe would have slipped away to join the Highlanders in their own citadels, sacrificing the legacy of their people for the security of a life behind stone walls. None of those Highlander forts was as tall as impregnable Brackenrock, but every one of them had been safer than a waterfront village-until Moreen’s tribe had taken over and fortified Brackenrock.
After the ogres’ massacre of her people, including her father, the chief of the Bayguard clan, Moreen had led the survivors-women, children, and elders-to safety, assuming leadership of the desperate tribe. In that role she had brought them to the ruins of ancient Brackenrock and made this place not just a home but an unassailable fortress. The ogre army, led by the ogre king, had assaulted Brackenrock and failed, and over the past eight years the ogres had not dared to launch another full-scale attack.
But the ogres persistently harried Moreen with raids against remote Arktos villages, and forays against some of the smaller castles of the Highlanders. Refugees from those other battles had come here to be welcomed and provided with food and shelter. Moreen knew deep in her heart that Brackenrock was only temporarily a refuge, that the ogres would not leave them alone forever.
“You were down at the waterfront, right?” Moreen asked Bruni. “What about the harbor boom?” Even though she couldn’t see the protected circle of Bracken-rock’s little port from here, Moreen stared downward, as if her penetrating gaze might bore through the solid rock of the mountainside and bring the object of her concern into view.
“The logs and chains are in place. They need to float it across, then test it. As soon as that’s done, we should be able to bar the entrance against any hostile ship.”
“Such as the ogre king’s galley,” the chiefwoman finished grimly. Bruni let that statement pass without comment.
“Where’s Kerrick? I thought he was going to be back from Bearhearth in time to help finish the boom!” Moreen wondered, her worry changing into a crossness in her voice.
Bruni shrugged and looked northward, across the newly sparkling waters of the Courrain Ocean. “I expect he’s taking his sweet time on the trip. You know how he gets during the winter, all cooped up… and this is his first sail since the ice broke up. Still, he’s been gone for three days. I would expect him back before nightfall.”
“I wish he would pay a little more attention to the work that needs to be done,” groused the chiefwoman.
Bruni chuckled, the sound irritating in Moreen’s ears. “What’s so funny this time?” she demanded.
Her friend looked down at her with an amused but exasperated shrug.
“Sometimes I get the feeling that if Kerrick marched in here with Grimwar Bane’s head on a pike, you’d complain that he didn’t make a neat enough slice through his neck!”
Moreen glowered up at the big woman. “If Kerrick ever brings me the ogre king’s head-or any part of any ogre!-I expect I could make a proper show of gratitude! But there’s so much to do here, and it seems sometimes as if he just doesn’t care about anything! Anything-except that damn boat of his or all the gold he’s accumulating.”
Bruni nodded sagely, and the chiefwoman found that reaction similarly aggravating, especially when her friend spoke. “Remember the first gold he earned? We gave it to him willingly, so he would ferry the tribe across the strait. If he hadn’t been there…”
“I know, I know. We’d all be living under Strongwind Whalebone’s protection. I’d probably be his wife by now.”
As she thought of the trials of the past years, the strength she had gained and the prosperity her people now enjoyed, Moreen acknowledged privately that she owed a great deal to the elf they had come to regard as the Messenger. Not only had he and his boat carried her people across a previously impassable water barrier, but he had risked his life in their subsequent battle for survival. Once Brackenrock had been secured, he had shown her people how to build boats, mint coins, to do so many things that were commonplace in his world. As she looked across the sculpted fields she recalled that it had been Kerrick Fallabrine who had explained the technique of terracing farmland, of bringing water through sluice gates and channels to irrigate fields, giving Brackenrock-and Moreen-claim to the most fertile granges in all the Icereach.
When she pictured the elf’s handsome face, his golden hair and large, penetrating eyes-even the ragged scar of his left ear, which she secretly admired as a sign of his character-she felt different emotions. As always, she recognized a danger in those feelings and forced her emotions aside. As she turned to go, she looked at Bruni and shook her head.
“For someone who’s almost ninety years old, Kerrick Fallabrine still has a lot of growing up to do, is what I think,” she declared.
Bruni snorted. “You could do with a little grow-oh, never mind,” she declared curtly.
Moreen immediately felt guilty. “I’m sorry-I don’t mean to snap at you,” she said, then laughed. “I guess he’s not really as bad as I make him out to be.”
“What about you having some fun for a change, doing something just for the sheer pleasure of it?” the large woman asked eagerly. “You mentioned Strongwind Whalebone-he’d be delighted to hear from you, see you. Going hunting, fishing-something like you used to do in the old days! Who knows, the king of the Highlanders might start to look pretty good to you.”
Shaking her head, Moreen laughed again, wryly now. “No… I think you’ll have a mate long before I will,” she said.
Bruni’s shoulders slumped. She turned away, pretending interest in the work on the fields. The chief-woman regretted her remark. She knew that her friend had never attracted the interest of any man. Unlike Moreen, Bruni found the lack of male interest depressing, and lately she had gone through several bouts of melancholy brought on by her loneliness.
“Will you do me a favor if you see Kerrick?” Moreen asked quickly.
“Sure,” said Bruni, with another shrug.
“Tell him I need to talk to him,” Moreen said, before slipping through the trapdoor into the coolness of the tower. Already her mind was ticking through the rest of the list-a dozen, a score, a hundred things needed to be done.
As usual, it seemed as though she had to supervise them all.
* * * * *