Page 1 of The Speed of Lightning
Prologue
INVERLUSSA, JURA - APRIL 13, 1376
Run.
Splayed atop the magnificent carved pine table, his arms and legs tied, Calum MacLean fought every instinct within himself to sprint. Skin crawling, muscles straining, enduring the scrape of bone against skin, he lay perfectly still.
Even if he wished to run, he couldn’t. It was too late. Too late to undo the tànaiste ceremony. Too late to undo the dark marks that now permanently marred his flesh. Too late to confess to his father that he now believed the Pictish marks a sin.
Above him, Da held the skin of his chest muscle taut.
He wondered how his father had endured his own tànaiste’s ceremony over thirty years prior, somehow certain that Da had laid here without complaint, as if he had never felt pain in his life. Dozens of times since childhood he had witnessed it in his father—enduring a punch inglíma?1 as if he had been hit with a feather, a wrestle in the cold winter snow as if it were bathwater, a stray arrow to the back of his leg that might as well have been nothing more than a scratch. Never did he groan, grunt, or cry. He simply endured.
The high priest crouched over Calum, whispering the Pictish words as he dipped the pig bone in ink and angled it over his muscle, giving a firm, scraping strike to shade the area around the wolfhound’s snarling jaw. He bit down, steeling his own jaw, wondering how much longer he’d be forced to lay here.
Shamefully, the sting of tears watered behind his eyelids and he kept them firmly shut, afraid to embarrass his father. When the threat of crying ebbed, he forced them open and turned his head to the right, gaze falling on his newly marked arm.
His right side mirrored his father’s. Blackened fingertips, swirling knots winding across knuckles and wrist, hideous imagery clawing down his forearm. His skin blazed with fire. His fingers, arm, chest, shoulder, back, and neck were scraped, pierced, and stained until raw, all bearing the disfiguring image of a war dog.
“Cù Cogaidh?2, Maqqo Cù Ceartas?3…”Hound of War, son of the Hound of Justice.Around the perimeter of the longhouse the elders chanted the Pictish phrase over and over.
“Hail Odin, king… Hail to the Æsir… Hail to the Vanir… Hail to all the gods in Asgard…” The gathered clan chanted in uneven unison, their voices rising and falling with each piercing of his skin, lacking harmony. It struck even deeper than sound—it assailed Calum’s knowledge of the truth, offended his belief, and made every sinew in his body writhe with shame.
Dark disgrace more potent than any ink lashed over him, staining and affixing to his conscience which reminded him after each prick that God had set him apart—not with ink or by ceremony, but by the blood of his own son.
Grufa MacSorley, the high priest, paused, the bone poised over Calum’s bleeding skin. “Hold still. You shame the gods with your flinching.”
Calum failed to stifle the snort that escaped him. Above him, Da tightened his grip on his shoulder, stretching the skinacross his chest and pinching the muscle at his neck—a silent admonishment to endure.
Again Calum marveled at his father’s ability to feel no pain. Not just the blows of the flesh, but the wounds of the spirit. How many children had he buried without shedding a single tear? How many times had Ragnall, his fiercest rival, mocked or challenged him, and he endured it as though it were nothing at all? Da was strong, stubborn—Calum gritted his teeth enduring more scraping—and more a man than he could ever hope to be.
In agony and desperate for relief, he clenched his jaw as the needle-sharp pig bone replaced the broader one. It thrummed across his chest with a grating scrape, driving ink into raw flesh, etching the thin black lines that completed the dog’s menacing snarl. The smell of blood and bitter dye rose thick in the air. His body spasmed with pain, and he gripped the wooden table to steady himself, head lolling to the left until his eyes caught on the awkward lass across from him.
Seated beside her father Ragnall, Freya MacSorley watched him, her mismatched eyes fixed on him as though they saw into his very mind. Dressed like a lad, her hair shorn and tonsured, her brow quirked and bounced with concern. A single tear slipped from her blue eye. Astonished, Calum followed its shimmery track beside her nose and down the expanse of her full lips.
The same wrongness he felt at enduring the chieftain’s mark lived in her expression. It was in the way she stole glances at her father, in the way her fingers touched at a dried scab beside her temple where her hair was shorn too close. Freya, he realized, was also in pain.
Tenderness flooded in his chest as she brushed the errant tear away. For a moment their eyes locked, and he felt suddenly close to her. Not for the first time, it struck him that of everyone in this room, it was Freya he had the most in common with.They were both born on this day sixteen years ago. Both children of their clan’s highest leaders. They both understood the great burden of their position in the clan, and both seemed to let their fathers down with startling regularity—she by virtue of her sex and inability to inherit, and he by his failure to live up to the Norse traditions his clan had established over two hundred years earlier.
Yet for all they shared, they were not quite friends, indeed, they should have been enemies. Freya was the daughter of his father’s fiercest rival, who believed his own blood gave him the stronger claim to the chieftainship. Ragnall never went quietly, never mastered his temper, never spared a thought for how his actions struck others. And he never hesitated to unleash his wrath on the one person he should have cherished most.
And that was why Calum and Freya were not enemies either. Because of Ragnall’s temper. Because of one moment that had shattered their enmity and changed everything. A single instant that had shifted the very course of stars, so swift and sudden that he had never been able to look at her the same way again. Freya MacSorley was his burden.
For a heartbeat his mind slipped back to the first time he had spoken to her, when they were but eight summers. He could still feel her scrawny body leaning into his as she cried over disappointing her papa.
“Eyes on your father!”
Ragnall’s admonishment rang out over the ceremony, his crooked teeth growling out from the halo of dark beard. Beside him, Freya’s cheeks pinked and she blew out a breath, her gaze shifting to the ceiling.
Annoyed, Calum fought to smother the tenderness rising in his chest, waging a silent war with his conscience over what he should not feel. His growing affection for her was dangerous—a fissure in the foundation of his future chieftainship. For he knewthe truth: given the same choice he had faced eight years ago, he would make it again. And again. And again. He would choose her over the clan to protect her. And that was an unacceptable thought.
Grufa set aside his tools and lit the bundles of yarrow and juniper—an offering to the spirit-guide of the hound. The dusky, medicinal scent filled the longhouse as gray-blue ribbons of smoke curled upward. Calum was unbound and lifted to his feet, the leaping wolfhound now complete, his chieftainship nearly consecrated.
Thunderous shouts of approval erupted as Da inspected the mark, the wolfhound framed in dozens of triskelion?4, each symbol a seal of his eternal choosing by blood as leader and protector of the clan. A flicker of joy sparked in Calum at the pride in his father’s eyes, but it died as quickly as it came when he caught Freya brushing away another tear. Did she suspect the weak-kneed, spineless feeling that was urging him to flee?
Nausea beset him, squeezing his innards and chest as he wondered if his feelings were showing on his countenance. He could do this. He could say the words of promise to Odin. He did not have to mean them. Except by the clan’s charter, hedidhave to mean them—otherwise he was unfit to rule Jura. And if he did not swear the oath that bound the MacLean and MacSorley septs together, he would not only imperil his own chieftainship but cast doubt on his father’s as well.
Another wave of sickness stole his breath, his skin throbbing and burning. He must not vomit. He must not shame his father. He would repeat the words. He had to.
