Bride of Ice
BRIDE OF ICE
The Warrior Daughters of Rivenloch
Book 2
by
A lovely warrior lass with ice in her veins takes a Highlander hostage in order to ransom her kin, unaware she has invited a self-made champion into her keep, one who means to earn her respect, charm her clan, and melt her heart.
BRIDE OF ICE
Copyright © 2020 by Glynnis Campbell
Glynnis Campbell – Publisher
P.O. Box 341144
Arleta, California 91331
Contact: glynnis@glynnis.net
ISBN: 978-1-63480-049-5
Cover design by Richard Campbell
Formatting by Author E.M.S.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.
PUBLISHER’S NOTE: This work is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Learn more about Glynnis Campbell and her writing at www.glynnis.net.
Table of Contents
BRIDE OF ICE
Copyright
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Epilogue
Dear Reader
More Books by Glynnis Campbell
Dedication and Acknowledgments
About Glynnis Campbell
Contact Information
Chapter 1
Rivenloch, The Borders, Scotland
Autumn 1155
Hallidis Cameliard and her cousin Feiyan stared at the gaping hole in the storeroom wall, peering into the long, dark tunnel that led from Rivenloch castle to the woods. For a moment, neither of them could speak.
Then a single word fell from Hallie’s lips like a cold curse. “Jenefer.”
Feiyan crossed her arms and sighed in disappointed agreement. “Jenefer.”
Hallie knew Jenefer was impulsive and impatient. But the three cousins had made a pact. They’d vowed that whatever action the Warrior Daughters took against the invader, it would be together.
Jenefer had broken that pact. Using Rivenloch’s secret passageway, she’d stolen off into the night to face the enemy alone.
Now she’d ruined everything.
Hallie had hoped they wouldn’t need to face the enemy at all. By her reckoning, their parents would return on the morrow with good news. Everything would be decided without resorting to underhanded tactics.
“Maybe ’tisn’t too late to stop her,” Feiyan offered. “I’ll get my weapons.”
“No weapons,” Hallie said, catching Feiyan’s arm. “No one’s starting a war on my watch.”
Feiyan’s eyes simmered with rebellion. But while their parents were away, Hallie had been left in command. Feiyan had to obey her.
As the firstborn, Hallie would one day take her mother Deirdre’s place as Laird of Rivenloch. And she took those responsibilities seriously. Unlike Jenefer, who acted first and sorted things out later.
“But we’ll go after her, aye?” Feiyan asked. “We won’t let her face a savage Highlander alone.”
“Aye, we’ll go.” Hallie drew her brows together. Jenefer hadn’t given her much choice. The three cousins had been sworn allies since they were young lasses. “But ’twill be a mission of peace.”
“I’ll fetch my cloak,” Feiyan said, whirling away like mist.
Hallie recognized the need for haste. Kin was kin.
But she refused to rush blindly into peril. If Jenefer was in trouble, it was trouble of her own making. The impetuous lass probably deserved whatever she’d started.
Still, Hallie understood why she’d taken action.
The three lasses had been left powerless, reduced to pacing the halls of Rivenloch while their parents were off petitioning the king for ownership of Creagor, the castle and land adjoining theirs.
Since the previous laird of Creagor had died childless, Jenefer had been led to understand the holding would one day be hers.
Unfortunately, Scotland’s thirteen-year-old king didn’t see things that way. The newly crowned King Malcolm had offered the border keep as a prize to a Highlander.
A Highlander.
Which was, of course, insufferable.
For generations—from the time their first Viking ancestor had wedded a Pictish warrior lass—the Rivenloch clan had protected the border lands. A long line of Rivenloch warriors had served the rulers of Scotland with loyalty and honor.
To think that a beardless lad sitting upon the throne would snap his fingers and award precious Creagor to a barbarian from the Highlands was unfathomable.
Still, war was not the answer. Their parents recognized that. It was vital to choose one’s battles.
Her mother had taught Hallie about swordsmanship and conflict strategy. But it was the skills of diplomacy and compromise—maintaining the fine balance between what one deserved and what one was willing to sacrifice—that would make Hallidis Cameliard a great leader.
And now, it was incumbent upon her to decide which weapon in her arsenal would best achieve those ends.
She’d have to be swift. Impetuous Jenefer might already be neck-deep in trouble. But Hallie wouldn’t go unprepared.
Tossing back her long blonde braid, she gathered her skirts and hurried toward the armory to speak with someone she could trust.
“I don’t trust the lass,” Rauve d’Honore admitted, shaking his shaggy head as he sharpened his sword on the spinning whetstone. “Your hotheaded cousin acts ere she thinks.”
Hallie scanned the armory. Three knights chatted in one corner. Two more were occupied, polishing their chain mail. They were safely out of hearing.
“Aye, I know,” she murmured, “which is why I must leave at once.”
“Now?”
“Aye, ere my parents return.”
Rauve let the wheel slowly grind to a halt.
He scowled in disapproval.
That scowl could make grown warriors quake. Especially since Rauve towered over nearly everyone. Even Hallie, who possessed the height of her Viking forefathers. Like a grizzled black bear, Rauve could send foes scrambling for their lives with a snarl and a roar.
But Hallie remembered being bounced upon Sir Rauve’s knee as a lass. He’d taught her to fight and picked her up when she’d bloodied her knee. There was no warrior more fierce, no defender more loyal than Rauve d’Honore.
“You’re not going alone.” He wasn’t asking her. He was telling her.
She arched a fine brow. “You’re not coming with me.”
“The hell I’m not.”
“I need you here,” she said. “I need you to take command of Rivenloch in my absence. Besides, I’ll have Feiyan with me.”
He scoffed. “That wee mouse?”
“That wee mouse flipped you onto your back yesterday,” Hallie reminded him.
Feiyan might be a bit of a thing. But her unique fighting skills—learned from her mother’s servant from the Orient—served her well. She’d quickly humbled Rauve on the practice field.
Rauve grumbled and rubbed at his graying black beard with his battle-scarred paw. He sheathed his sword. Then he plucked Hallie’s blade from where it hung on the wall and pressed it into her hands.
She shook her head, refusing it. “’Twill be a battle of words, not weapons.”
His black eyes widened. “You cannot know that. Besides, in the woods? At night? Dangers lurk in the forest. Thieves. Miscreants. Wolves.”
A snort of a laugh escaped her.
Everyone knew the story of Hallie and the wolf. As a lass, Hallie had befriended an orphaned wolf pup, which she still spotted on occasion in the forest. Legend said that as long as the beast roamed the wood surrounding Rivenloch, no wolf dared harm Hallie.
Thieves and miscreants Hallie could handle. Wolves she didn’t fear in the least.
“I’ll be fine,” she assured him.
Rauve frowned, biting back a curse.
“You won’t delay,” he threatened.
“We should be back by morn.”
“See that you are,” he groused, “unless you’d like for your father to string me up by my beard and feed me to the crows.”
That made Hallie smile. Her father would do no such thing. Sir Rauve was his most faithful knight. Only once had Rauve dared to disobey Pagan Cameliard, and that disobedience had saved her father’s life.
If all went well, she’d return by sunrise, well before her parents.
If it didn’t…
“I need you to promise me one thing,” she told Rauve. “No matter what happens, you are not to march on Creagor. I cannot start a war with the neighbors.”
Rauve looked deeply unhappy about that. “So you’re going alone and unarmed. In the dead of night. To try to rein in your hot-tempered cousin. Who may have riled up a savage Highlander. And you’d like me to sit on my hands?”
“Exactly.”
“I don’t like this.”
“I know. But you’ll give me your word, aye?”
He muttered under his breath. Giving the sharpening wheel a kick, he laid the edge of Hallie’s sword against the spinning stone. Sparks flew. The harsh whine of the blade sounded like an angry wildcat.
“Rauve?” she prodded. “Your word?”
“Aye, m’lady,” he said tightly, making his disapproval clear.
He might not like it. But she could trust him with her life.
Now that Rauve’s cooperation was secured, Hallie wasted no time.
She and Feiyan departed Rivenloch by the underground passageway, the same passageway Hallie’s mother had used years ago to save her father. They emerged deep in the wood and set out for Creagor.
The full moon filtering through the branches lit their way. The silence was broken only by the breeze soughing through the pines and an occasional mouse skittering through fallen leaves.
Hallie’s mind, however, was anything but silent. She raced through various scenarios and courses of action with duty and determination.
As they neared Creagor, she drew her cloak about her. The air was colder and windier than she’d expected. If Jenefer had stuck to their original scheme—frightening the superstitious Highlander away by feigning to be an evil spirit—she must be half-frozen by now in her sheer and ghostly disguise.
It was just as likely that forthright Jenefer had simply marched up to the keep with her bare blade, demanding the castle be surrendered to her.
Whatever she’d done, it was up to Hallie to make things right. Effective leadership required that she consider all possible outcomes. That she be ready for anything.
Still, nothing could have prepared her for what she found when they finally reached Creagor.
Beyond the copse of trees at the edge of the wood, down a long, gradual slope, surrounded by a wooden palisade, the castle gleamed like a pale gem in the moonlight.
The grass of the vast clearing was bedewed by shimmering crystals, frozen by the chill night air and stirred by the wild wind that blew through the glen.
But the magical peace of the landscape was broken by the scuffle taking place on the sward below.
Hallie narrowed her eyes.
Feiyan gasped.
Their cousin Jenefer was grappling with a giant.
He was armed with a claymore.
And she was as naked and defenseless as the day she was born.
Chapter 2
Colban an Curaidh jerked his head upright and blinked back sleep. He should never have offered to take the night watch at the palisade gates of Creagor.
Despite his best efforts, he kept dozing off in the dark. After an exhausting fortnight of travel from the Highlands and a full day of settling the clan into their new home, he could hardly keep his eyes open.
But Colban was a man of duty. He’d made a promise. As Laird Morgan Mor mac Giric’s oldest and most loyal friend, Colban had vowed to keep the laird safe. He wasn’t about to break that promise.
Morgan needed him. He hadn’t been himself lately. Not since he’d lost his wife in childbirth.
Colban had done his best on the long journey to their new home to be Morgan’s right hand man, covering for him, acting as a leader in the laird’s stead. He’d spent all day making decisions on Morgan’s behalf. Organizing the household. Directing the servants. Sorting out the livestock. Stocking the armory.
Finally, Colban’s patience had worn thin. Frustrated over Morgan’s lingering grief and numb disinterest, Colban had tried to knock some sense into the laird. His good intentions had culminated in a juvenile battle of fists between the two. A fight that had ultimately jarred the laird back to life.
Now, however, Colban wondered if reviving him had been so wise after all.
It was Laird Morgan himself who’d just startled Colban awake. Bursting out of the palisade gates past him. Spitting curses. And brandishing his claymore.
Colban shook off the cobwebs of sleep, watching Morgan storm across the field and wondering where the devil he was headed. When he spied the target of Morgan’s wrath, his heart seized.
In the moonlit mist of the frozen sward stood a single lass. Pale. Naked. Shivering.
By all rights, she should have been screaming in terror, running away as Morgan Mor charged toward her.
Instead, the intrepid lass held her ground, standing up to her attacker as if she had the power of all the angels on her side.
Colban’s jaw tensed as he clenched his fist atop the palisade fence.
What the devil was Morgan doing?
Surely he wouldn’t harm a defenseless lass.
Morgan was a good man, a fair man. Aye, he hadn’t been himself lately. But that didn’t mean he’d abandon his honor.
Still, Colban didn’t dare leave anything to chance.
What if Morgan hurt the woman in his ire? What if he killed her?
There would be no warm welcome for the mac Giric clan at Creagor if its laird murdered one of the local lasses.
When he saw Morgan begin to confront the young woman, Colban knew he had no choice but to intervene. Someone had to reason with the laird and balance the odds for the helpless lass.
Startling them would be dangerous and might cause a tragic accident. Carefully closing the gate behind him, Colban quickly and quietly headed toward the trees.
He was only halfway to his goal, approaching with stealth, when he glimpsed two more figures emerging from the shadowy edge of the wood.
The arrival of more possible assailants changed Col
ban’s purpose. With Morgan outnumbered, now he had to make sure it was a fair fight for the laird.
Unfortunately, he’d left his claymore behind.
But armed with his wits and his courage, Colban was never completely defenseless. And once he heard female voices coming from the new arrivals, he breathed a sigh of relief. A pair of lasses? Those he could handle with his bare hands.
Morgan had one lass engaged. All Colban had to do was steal up and intercept the nearest arrival, the smaller, dark-haired lass. Surely, once two of them were caught, the third would surrender.
If he and Morgan couldn’t manage three wee maids on their own, they didn’t deserve their claymores.
Or so he thought. Until, just as he came within range of his target, she attacked without warning. Something—her fist? her elbow? her foot?—came out of nowhere to strike Colban’s jaw with punishing force, rocking his head back and making his vision swim.
An instant later, she somehow tossed Laird Morgan, still clutching the naked maid, flat on his back.
Then, while Colban staggered, struggling to make sense of what had just happened, from three yards away she pitched her arm violently forward. He felt the hard impact of a weapon striking his chest.
Several thoughts flashed through his mind in an instant.
He was dead. She’d thrown a dagger at him and killed him.