The inn that Wulfnoth found more than three leagues away from castle Ardrandun, was one that they reached after several hours more of walking. Or in his case, stomping down the road his face scarlet with fury.

  At first Daegan had suggested that they try still to find a temple to stay at, as temples and monasteries were prone to offering a single-night and morn’s meal along with a place in the principal hall to sleep in. This would have been the more economic solution to the issue of where to sleep. Ignoring her, the cleric preferred that they should stay in the stables and upon the hay which pulled Trygve and Cormac at once into the realm of dreams.

  The stars twinkled high above them, the wind drifting past all the trees, blades of grass along with the flowers so that they did not feel too left out. Unable to see the stars, due to the tightness with which the wooden roof was wound together, this worsened Indulf’s mood as he loved to keep late hours.

  It had not rained in some time he noted ignoring the argument between Daegan and Wulfnoth. Both of them hardly showing any care for their companions’ need for rest. Irritated by the back and forth argument, which was about dresses, hay and somehow bull-horns. Quite how they reached this last difference between one another was a mystery to him.

  Weary beyond words, the last thought he had before he drifted off, was to worry about the halting breathing of Trygve. Always an energetic youth, the youngest of Ida’s sons sounded as he slept weak and elderly, with his brother determined to find a solution to what ailed him in the morn’.

  His dreams though were strangely filled with the sound of steel ringing, and of the wind. The feeling of which served only to comfort him, so that Indulf felt at peace for the first time since Inga’s death. As though summoned by his thoughts, she appeared to him, in the wind. Not to scold him, nor as a memory but to take up his hand with that so sweet smile of hers.

  It was then that he awoke with tears in his vision, moved.

  *****

  “Indulf! Indulf! Wake up you fool!” Trygve shouted in a panic, shaking him awake with such force that he struck his head upon the ground beneath him.

  “I’faith, what is it Trygve?” Indulf said in a fussing voice, unhappy to have been awoken so suddenly blinking up at his brother.

  “Daegan has been taken away!” The other lad all but screamed into his face.

  The realisation that the sole lass of their troupe was missing woke him up in an instant. Rubbing at his face he rounded upon Cormac who was in the midst of blinking his own eyes, sleepily. Confused by the agitated air that now haunted the whole of the stable, as much by how Wulfnoth could continue to snore loudly without any awareness that trouble was afoot.

  “What is it that has happened?” Cormac asked bewildered, running a hand through his blonde hair to smooth out the jagged edges of it, and remove some of the hay caught up in his locks. His eyes turned round as saucers, the moment he took notice of the absence of Daegan faster than any other person, could so much as utter a single word. “Where has Dae gone?”

  “Where has the day gone indeed,” Trygve queried sardonically. His friend did not take notice of this at once, looking about he appeared on the verge of panic. “It is not the sole thing that is missing; the Blood-Gem has disappeared.”

  His bare neck attracted now the attention, of the other two lads. They all exchanged worried looks, before Indulf asked of them, “Shall we awaken Wulfnoth now?”

  “How?” Trygve asked, “I have tried to do so prior to you.”

  “We may require his aid, should the phantom-riders appear,” Indulf attempted to insist, resolved to maintain the importance of this key point.

  “Let us be away now, mayhap we could rescue Dae long before Wulfnoth awakens,” Cormac countered throwing himself out of the stable-door. Worried by the foolish comportment on the part of their friend, both of them gave chase a heartbeat later. It was only as he came to a stop outside of the inn that the youngest of the trio paused to ask them, rather thickly. “Erm, would either of you happen to know where Dae was taken to?”

  “There appears to be someone carrying a torch down the road, from whence we came,” Indulf informed him pointing back down the road where they had indeed hurried down from.

  The three of them raced after the torch-bearing figure. Who must have seen them hurrying after him, whereupon he raced along away. The wind was chilly Indulf noted, absently as he ran quick as thunder though this did not appear enough to diminish the distance between them and Daegan’s kidnapper.

  The torch flame danced and twirled as though it were teasing the trio, with its elusiveness. It defied the ongoing frost that continued to hold some sway over the land, the crack of the thawing ice and snow beneath their boots was as loud as the boom of lightning, or the roar of a lion. A lion that might well have lent its mane to Cormac, so fierce did he appear then, so swift did he run and so scarlet was his anger.

  The torch turned away from the road, towards one of the small temples that lay off the road and that stood between the inn and the fort of Ardrandun. This temple was one dedicated to the goddess Turan, so that it bore her rose-symbol above the door with the building itself ten meters high and fifteen wide and long. Somewhat more circular than other temples, it was ring-shaped and was a place of peace where marriages were celebrated. The temple had been built with cedar wood beautifully trimmed, taken from the local forest to the north of the locality, almost a century ago.

  By the time that the trio neared the temple, it was to discover a number of other torches in place. The knowledge that there was more than one man present herewith Daegan’s captor stunned the three of them. All of them struck dumb, they thus had no ability to guess who in that instant in time, could have command of more than a dozen men and to have gathered them all in one place.

  For a long time they stared, and for longer they caught their breaths all of them breathless as their eyes adjusted to the darkness that the torches of their friend’s kidnapper hardly seemed able to fend. So deep did the darkness appear to penetrate the land that Freygil, their father might well have complained that Baler’s light could hardly have hounded away this miserable night.

  “There appears to be a large number of them,” Trygve whispered fearfully, to his friends.

  This fact did not go unnoticed by those opposite them who guarded the doors to the temple. Several of the guards were visible enough for the three of them to observe that swords and daggers had been removed from their scabbards.

  Nervous, Trygve swallowed audibly at the sight of the large, muscular figures who all menaced them with sneers on their faces. The wind beat against each of their faces, with Indulf turning his gaze away from it to protect his eyes which drifted upwards noticing how the clouds had drifted together to blot out the stars.

  “We shan’t fight them,” Cormac said with some heat in his voice.

  “But, we cannot simply give up Daegan to him,” Indulf persisted.

  “We are not going to simply give up,” The blonde youth turned away making as though to flee from the guards who hooted, laughed and cheered at the sight of them fleeing.

  The trio were to move off the road from there, the moss and snow crunched under their feet as they veered away from those who had assisted in the kidnapping of Corin’s only daughter. Once well out of sight and they could no longer be heard, by the guards who were present before the door of the temple.

  “What do you have in mind, Cormac?” Trygve queried worriedly, shivering he pulled his cloak more tightly around him.

  Cormac thought for some time.

  They waited until he was prepared to speak. Sly as Trygve’s tongue could be, and fierce as Indulf was, they both knew the dreamer to be cleverer than they.

  It was as he stared over to the east that he at last made a decision, “We must examine the posterior of the temple.”

  This appeared to the rest of them a wise prelude to a proper plan. Their faith in their friend, who had always led them in certain of their games, as children they approached the temple with many a furtive glances towards the front of the temple. Apprehension dogged them with every step, with Cormac the first to kneel down to examine the cedar which the snow had been pressed against but several weeks ago.

  “Hurry, Cormac.” Trygve murmured urgently.

  The other lad nodded, pressing his fingers against the wood. A moment passed as he pressed his hand more firmly against it once more. It was then that he pulled at the wood, with some of it coming away in his hand.

  This collection of slivers he showed to his friends, whereon he removed from one of his satchels a small knife to claw at the wood. The two older lads, who stood to either side of him, exchanged a startled look uncomprehending, until they began to see a small hole growing where he stabbed.

  Indulf gasped at the effect and rapidity that Cormac’s actions were already having upon the soggy, wet wood of the temple of Turan.

  Throwing himself to the ground, with his own dagger which he had brought also for the purpose of skinning any animals that they caught, Indulf began to assist him in cutting at the wall. Pulling, clawing and cutting they worked laboriously, at the wall in a desperate attempt to reach the temple-hall. His knees touched some of the snow, which soaked his hose and worsened the cold that enveloped him, shooting him into him from his legs and back where the wind struck him.

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  “This is sacrilegious,” Trygve whispered anxiously.

  “Do be quiet, and keep watch out for those brutes,” Cormac hissed back at him, with a glower over his shoulder at his darker haired friend.

  Trygve grumbled under his breath, yet did as bidden.

  The noise they made was miniscule, though it seemed to Indulf’s ears that his breath came in pants and hisses that were every bit as obnoxious as the crashing of the sea upon the promontory. All of a sudden he was seized by the surreal nature of what it was that he was doing; he was out upon a great quest, in the midst of knifing at soggy wood to sneak into a temple where just a week prior he was curled up in his bed, in his home.

  Life certainly is strange, he noted philosophically to himself, feeling strangely detached at that moment from what was happening. Working mechanically, ignoring the slivers that slipped into his flesh, the pain that arose from suckling and pulling them out and the growing ache in his arms. The agony came upon him suddenly, not similarly from when sleep fell away as wakefulness come upon a slumbering man or dog. It arose first in his right arm, then in his left one as the former was crucial in tunnelling into the building where the latter was used to extract the wood before them.

  “I have never heard of a hero digging through a temple, to save a damsel,” Complained Trygve in frustration.

  “I have.”

  “Really? Do tell Indulf.”

  “There is that one of Wodin I think it was who bore through a mountain in the shape of a worm, to save some sort of lass and wine of some sort.” Indulf said recalling one of the tales told to him, in his childhood when Trygve was but a year old and he himself was three. It was Mairi who had told him the tale, claiming that it was one that his grandfather had told her. It was apparently her favourite.

  For the first time in years, a new hole arose in his heart, as he thought of his grandmother. She had been so sweet, so genial just like Inga!

  His mind was pulled from his sorrow and regrets, by his brother remarking, “Really What a peculiar story, who told you that one?”

  “Mhamó,” He replied stoutly. The term meant ‘grandmother’ in the érian tongue, from which their mother’s folk were said to have come from, and was their term for old Mairi.

  Trygve fell quiet once more.

  The awkward silence was not, as all those induced by his brother who had no great love for the quiet. He trembled and shook, and snorted unwillingly against the cold that assailed him mercilessly.

  “I fear that I have just heard one of them moving about,” Trygve warned moving from foot to foot.

  The soft wood before him, his face now pressed forward beneath a portion of the wall of the temple. Cormac with all the stubbornness of a terrier-dog or bull-dog, cared little how blunted his skinning knife became, how jagged some of the wood was becoming. Not that this seemed matter, as the wood had become soft and brittle Indulf noted in amazement.

  “Then do hurry to see whether they intend to circle about, here or not.” Cormac growled back at him furiously.

  Trygve let slip an angry sigh before he hurried over to stick his nose around the corner of the temple to stare out towards the front. The breeze flowed once more against them, pressing their soaked clothes against them all the more. Shivering it was with a small start that Indulf took notice of how they could now hear several voices, from within the temple.

  It was apparent that there was an argument taking place (a heated one), as Daegan’s voice, an old woman and another one. They all spoke at the same time, shouting over one another with increasing heat and anger.

  “We are almost there… somehow,” Indulf uttered shocked not only by their good fortune but by the question of how Cormac could have known that the wood would be brittle, near the earth when the snow had already melted from near it since at least a day or so ago.

  Away did the brittle wood go, forward went the circle and to them came the profound satisfaction of victory! Obstinacy rewarded with the sight of the back of the altar and the feet of the painted wood of the foot of the statue of Turan the goddess of love. A statue that had pink slippers painted onto its feet, under the red dress that she was sometimes depicted with. As to the altar, it was a simple slab of cedar wood (a sacred material to the good goddess), which had a white satin frequently thrown over it. This one though, was a poorer temple and thus did not have satin thrown over the altar but rather a simple white woollen cloth so stained and old, as to appear grey where it had not been chewed quite thoroughly upon by local moths.

  Aghast at the poor condition of the altar, as much as by the poor state of the temple, Indulf almost pulled back from the large hole they had carved into it. Recalling the importance of their self-appointed task, he was however a touch disturbed to see Cormac almost toss himself thither into the temple in a sudden burst of impatience.

  It was therefore hardly any surprise to his friend that he struck his head with all the force of a battering ram, upon a castle-gate. A cry of pain erupted from his slack lips, despite his best efforts to control himself and Indulf’s whispered ‘tush Cormac!’ that went unheeded.

  To one side Trygve warned him, “One of them is coming this way!”

  “What?” Asked Indulf bewildered, with his head still in the hole, pressed against the back of his friend’s knee only to raise it, striking it against the brittle wood and have the annoyance of having soft threads of cedar tangle themselves into his sandy-hair.

  The flaxen-haired youth before him though was pulled away just as Indulf felt something or rather someone grips him by the leg. At first he attempted to pull away, however he was swiftly disabused that he had any choice in the matter, when the grip tightened and he was pulled back whence he had come.

  Tossed into the nearby snow which had all the hardness and toughness to it that all slush-water has, Indulf stared up at the high-heavens for a moment. Startled to find the suns at the start of their mighty and highly glorious ascent to the summit of the heavens, the lad from Glasvhail wondered as he tore his gaze from the pink and orange skies to focus it upon the lumbering brute above him. The man was brown-bearded, long-haired and all muscle his sword was still thankfully in its scabbard he noticed his relief short-lived as the man grabbed him roughly by his tunic.

  “And who are you, lad?” Demanded the warrior pulling him onto his feet, wherefore the youth took a gander to the right of him where his brother should have been.

  The spot that had been occupied by the other lad was barren. No fuller than how his brother felt at that moment, not that this sense of emptiness and horror lasted for long. Sorrow filled him, and it was almost at once replaced by a feeling of fear the longer the brutish man glowered at him.

  “Who be ye?” He asked once more, his breath stinking of fish which made Indulf gag.

  “I be the cloth-maker, the fey-dancer and he who has lost that which all men hold above all else in their lives save for their ancestors and infants!” Indulf hissed back at him, his hands coming to rest upon the larger ones of the man, who was a good foot and a half taller than him.

  The slow wits of the man who now held firm his gaze, the fierce anger behind those eyes served only to arouse his own from its slumber.

  Hardly intimidated by the younger man’s glower, the stout warrior moved his hands ever so slightly to grip him now more by the throat in a gesture intended to choke out the truth from him. “Enough of such word-play, who are you? And why are you digging into the temple?”

  Indulf was saved from having to answer by the peculiar sight of his brother standing atop the flat, rounded roof of the temple. Gaping, he might almost have warned the other man, almost by instinct were it not for the sudden motion on the part of Trygve acting faster than either man could have moved or acted.

  A strong youth, who had since they were young, participated more frequently in physical labour than the older one. A fisherman who adored swimming as all folks of Glasvhail did, Trygve could thus toss the discus farther than he.

  The large hunk of wood struck and bounced off of the head of the guard who cried out quite mightily. His scream cut through the dawn-air with such swiftness, such brutality that many were the souls who quaked and quavered at the sound of.

  Not the least of which was Indulf, who had been dropped as the man who had held him up dropped him now. Falling onto his posterior, soaking it in the snow-slush with an uncomfortable hiss that soon turned into a gasp of fear; when he saw the warrior looming above him catch himself.

  Though the back of his head was soaked with blood, from where the hard wood from the top of the temple or higher on the wall, had struck the warrior remained firmly conscious. Frightened, Indulf almost froze where he sat, mouth agape. The reminder of his many boasts of how he wished to avenge Inga, of how there was no living creature who might stop him from doing so served now to entice him into action.

  Courage sparked by the reminder of his own bravado and anger, Indulf eyes upon the sword girded to the other man’s waist, he grabbed it as the other man rubbed at the back of his aching skull.

  The sword slid out from within the scabbard in one slick movement, the weight of the weapon contrary to the expectations of Indulf was nowhere near as heavy as he had expected. This was not to say that it was light as a sliver or skinning knife might be.

  The knowledge that he had gone from captor to captive, was a light that remained undimmed by pain and anger, as a new emotion substituted them a heartbeat later; fear. As the youth arose to his feet, to threaten the taller man the tip of the blade coming to rest against his Adam’s apple the bulky warrior stepped back.

  “Haaa- HELP!” He cried out loudly, pride cast away in the face of certain death at the panting weaver’s newfound weapon.

  There was no answer.

  This alarmed the warrior almost as much as Indulf who remained tensed for a good ten minutes before he had the peculiar experience of exchanging a glance with the warrior. Both of them disturbed by the quiet that had overtaken the front of the temple, neither of them certain of what it was that they should do.

  “No one remains at the front of the temple, Trygve what is it that has happened?” Indulf inquired of his brother only to glance up to find the other lad missing.

  “What by the Dark-Queen has happened to them fools?” Asked the guard every bit as bewildered at he was.

  Indulf shrugged helplessly in answer.

  What neither of the two men expected was for a great shriek to pierce the whole of the region. Both men leapt up a little in surprise at the shout that erupted from in front of the temple, as a shrieking, terrified man dressed in red silk with the very edge of the bottom of his hose aflame. Running about madly, this peculiar fellow gripped by the most queer possible fear imaginable threw himself into the slush-snow. Such was the force with which he threw himself into the snow that he was soon wet from head to his smallest of toes.

  Indulf and the guard stared at the bumbling man, who lay but five meters away from them whimpering in a manner akin to that of a frightened child.

  They met well have questioned him, over the matter of what he was doing there, however he recovered from his terror before they did, querying them with tear-slicked eyes. “Am I still afire? Well? Am I?”

  Captor and captive stared for a heart-beat longer, before the latter asked of the silk-clad fool. “My laird, what are you doing out here in the snow rather than inside marrying the lass, whom ùisdean selected for you?”

  “The witch and her ‘hero’ set me aflame! They threw the candles upon the altar upon sister ùna and I, you dolt!” Snapped the noble-born fop with all the wit and cunning of a log of wood, to the bewilderment of the two whom he glowered at just before he sneezed, a sure-sign that the cold had begun to have its effect upon him.

  “Why did this ùisdean point your laird to my friend Daegan?” Indulf queried curiously of the guard who shrugged his shoulders in response.

  “Because she is the fairest lass we have beheld in some time, and it has long been laird Torcall’s desire to wed the fairest lass in the land of Ardrannaig.” His captive explained with another shrug of his massive shoulders before he was wont to ask of him, “If my answers have pleased you sirrah, may I be permitted to return hither to my wife and four children?”

  “Not without the surrender of your arms.” Was the condition given, which was dully done as the two other daggers and scabbard were cast down from the other man’s belt.

  The fop for his part once he realized the depth of how cold the spring was, leapt to his feet to race after his guard who hurried back the way of Ardrandun-Castle.

  It was shortly after their departure that Cormac and Daegan slipped back out from inside of the temple with round eyes. The former came second with a sense of urgency that awoke his friend to the fact that there was still danger to be found in the fastness near to the temple of Turan.

  “Fly Indulf! We must fly back to Wulfnoth’s side! Though a number of guards have fled there remain several of them herewith sister ùna!” He hissed at the man just as he was in the midst of picking the belt and its arms from the ground, after he had sheathed the blade in his hand.

  It was thus in this manner that Daegan was rescued from the laird Torcall of Ardrannaig.

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