Calgaich the Swordsman (2 page)

“And if he is dead? If I am wrong?”

Calgaich's eyes were fierce and unblinking. “Then, I am hereditary chief of the clan!”

“Who leads the clan now?”

“My father's younger brother,” he replied bitterly. “Bruidge of the Battle-Axe, with whom I served my fosterage and from whom I learned the arts of the hunter and warrior.”

“Then, whether your father is dead or not, what can you, one man alone, do against such a man?”

The scar on Calgaich's face twitched. The reiving vessel was getting closer to the stem of the
birlinn.
“Cuill!” he called, ignoring her question. “Stand by to come about at my signal!”

“In this wind and sea,
fian?”
Cuill shook his head.

“Do you know who they are in that boat?”

“I don't,
fian.”

“Cruithne,” Calgaich said. That and no more. He unfastened the
fibula
that held his cloak about his neck and let the heavy garment drop to the deck.

None of the ashen-faced crewmen moved. They would not look at the pursuing craft. Instead, their eyes were on the warrior in the bow of the pitching
birlinn
.

“We're doomed!” a crewman cried out. “We can't even see yonder rocky coast and yet we drive into the blinding mist like madmen!”

Calgaich again spat contemptuously over the side. He picked up his wooden, lime-whitened shield from the deck and slung it over his left shoulder. He picked up his war spear. It was a fearsome thing and yet a work of art. The foot-and-a-half-long, leaf-shaped blade was socketed and riveted to a stout ash shaft. The length of the spear was a foot taller than Calgaich. Just below the shaft socket of the blade a ruff of heron’s feathers fluttered in the wind. At the butt of the shaft was a bronze balancing ball, chased and enameled blue and green in the fantastic and uncanny style of the skilled Celtish metalsmith.

Calgaich walked aft.

“Calgaich, who are the Cruithne?” Cairenn asked, following him.

He stopped and looked down at her. “The Painted People. The Picts,” he replied quietly.

“We are doomed!” the crewman repeated. He lay down on the deck and covered his head with a comer of his cloak. He shivered like a frightened dog, ready to die rather than resist.

Calgaich looked at Cuill. “Have those Hibernian dogs get up. We'll need their help if we want to live.”

“They are not warriors like yourself,
fian,”
Cuill reminded Calgaich.

Calgaich laughed. “I do not need warriors. I need seamen. I am Calgaich mac Lellan, son of that Lellan who once led five hundred war spears! I was a fighting man, a
fian
for King Crann of the Five Hostages. I will do all the fighting here this day!” he boasted loudly.

Cairenn could not take her eyes from Calgaich. She knew there were at least a score of ferocious Picts in the fast closing reiving vessel. They were formidable fighters, raiders and killers. Their fierceness and savagery in battle had won for them the grudging respect of the Roman legions and of the auxiliary troops who manned the Great Wall of Hadrian, which spanned eighty miles across the full width of northern Britannia to hold back the barbarian hordes of Caledonia. Cairenn had heard much of these people in her native country. Man for man, in single-combat open battle, the Picts and the Celts could take the match of even the tough legionnaires of Rome, although they had never learned how to cope with the disciplined maneuvers of those same legionnaires, who had conquered all of the known world, with the single exception of Caledonia. Now this madman, this long-haired braggart Calgaich, seemed willing and even eager to face a score of the Picts alone.

Calgaich pushed Cuill away from the tiller bar of the steering oar. “Stand by to come about!” he ordered.

“In this wind and sea?” Cuill demanded. “It can't be done and we won't do it!”

Suddenly Calgaich’s left hand slashed full across the mouth of the Hibernian, smashing him down on the deck in a spray of blood and broken teeth. Cuill rolled into the larboard waterway with blood leaking from his slack mouth. His glazed eyes stared dazedly up at Calgaich. Cairenn turned away.

“You stupid bastard!” Calgaich’s voice grated. “Don’t you know who those men are? If I let them take you and your chamber pot of a
birlinn,
our heads will hang in a row from their railings! They hunt heads like other men hunt hares! Now, damn you into the pit of everlasting darkness, get those shivering dogs to their feet and wait for my commands!”

Cuill staggered up to his feet. He wiped the blood from his mouth and set swiftly to work with foot and fist until his frightened crewmen stood to their lines with their fearful eyes on Calgaich. Now and then Calgaich looked back at the pursuing Pictish craft. It was hardly a good spear’s throw away from the Hibernian vessel.

The
birlinn
plunged deeply, rolling wildly as it fought for its normal buoyancy. Spray showered high over its sides to drench both craft and crew alike. Cairenn felt her hands slipping on the rough wet wood. The timbers of the boat groaned as they worked in the wrenching seas.

A hail came from the approaching vessel. “Let us come alongside!” a Pict yelled hoarsely.

The words of the Pict sounded different from that of the Hibernians, the Novantae and her own people, Cairenn thought. There was an alien quality in the speech that made her shiver. She looked at the squat, helmeted man who stood in the bow of the reiving craft. There was something peculiar about the face of the helmeted Pict. He had bands of blue paint, or perhaps tattooing, on his cheeks and forehead, and the wings of his nostrils had bluish curves and spandrils about them in an intricate design. The fierce yellowish eyes peering from his grotesque manmade mask were as cold and penetrating as those of a hunting wolf. They seemed to linger on her as he surveyed their craft.

''Fian!”
the Pict shouted.

Calgaich turned quickly.
It is in my heart that they know you are aboard, fian
, the slave woman had prophesied. Then it
was
true! A cold feeling came over Calgaich, not because of the nearness of the Picts, but because the woman had prophesied this very thing and in so doing had made it plain to Calgaich that
someone
did not want him in Caledonia—someone who had most likely made
a
deal with these bloody Picts to stop Calgaich from landing there.

"
Fian!”
the Pict repeated. He quickly tapped the edge of his naked sword against the small, square, blue-painted shield he carried. "Let us come alongside or you will all die!"

"For the love of all the gods,
fian
," Cuill pleaded through his bloody, broken mouth, "do as he says." He cringed at the wolf's look in Calgaich's eyes.

Calgaich eye-gauged the oncoming vessel. "Now!" he commanded, throwing his weight against the tiller bar to force over the steering oar. The
birlinn
shuddered and creaked. Cuill swiftly drove his crewmen to their work. The sails lost wind and fluttered madly, with the wet lines beating a drum tattoo against the canvas. The
birlinn
slowly heeled until the wind caught her, filling her sails with a powerful blast. She plunged deeply, as though intent on diving down to meet Nodons in his dark lair beneath the sea.

The Picts yelled wildly. Their boat lost speed as the
birlinn
cloaked the wind from them. For an instant the Pictish vessel wallowed with little way on her, and then the lean prow of the
birlinn
poked closer as Calgaich leaned full on the tiller bar. He bent his head as a spear flashed toward him. The blade swept through his hair and its shaft rapped his shoulders as it sped past into the chest of one of the crewmen. His mouth squared. He coughed thickly as blood poured from his mouth. He fell backward over the side of the vessel with the spear still sticking from his chest like some strange leafless growth.

The prow of the
birlinn
struck the bow oar on the larboard side of the other craft and snapped it like a twig, lifting the rower helplessly from the bench. The handle of the oar drove up into his chest, and hurled him upward and then over the side of the boat.

One after another the long oars were snapped off or smashed back against the side of the vessel as the
birlinn
surged close alongside it. Screaming, cursing Picts were caught by the handles of the oars and flung about within the craft. As the stem of the
birlinn
neared the stem of the other vessel a trio of Picts who had been standing near their helmsman beat their swords against their wooden shields to avert evil and readied themselves to leap aboard the slow-moving Hibernian boat.

“Cuill!” Calgaich shouted. He leaped to the side of the
birlinn
as Cuill took over the tiller bar. A Pict jumped the narrow gap between the two vessels. Swiftly the tip of Calgaich’s spear met the oncoming Pict to brush aside his shield. The keen iron struck deep into the man’s chest. His momentum still drove him on. Calgaich braced his legs and swung with the impetus of the Pict to lift him high into the air, squirming like a live hare on a spit. He pitch-forked him clear over the far side of the
birlinn
.

A second Pict leaped the gap between the boats. He drove in hard under the downcoming spear with his shield close up under his chin while he probed eagerly for Calgaich's guts with his sword blade. An instant before the Pict’s sword tip could plunge into Calgaich’s belly, Calgaich brought the bronze balancing ball at the end of his spear shaft down in a smashing blow atop the Pict’s battered helmet and drove it down over his eyes. He staggered blindly toward the far side of the
birlinn.
Calgaich whirled. He set himself and drove his bloody leaf-shaped spear blade into the Pict’s back. The Pict shrieked just once as he plunged over the side. Calgaich drew back, letting the weight of the dying Pict withdraw the spear blade.

Lines with barbed grappling hooks were thrown over from the enemy craft. They sank into the deck of the
birlinn.
The two vessels swung close together. Three Picts readied themselves to leap as the grapnels caught fast.

Calgaich dropped his war spear and whipped out his long sword. The iron blade hissed as it cleared the bronze sheath. Calgaich swung his shield from his left shoulder to his left arm and thrust his forearm through the loops. He cut through the nearest of the grapnel lines. A Pict jumped onto the deck of the
birlinn.
He slashed wildly at Calgaich's grinning face. Calgaich’s shield struck the shield of the Pict with a grinding of the metal bosses. The reiver was staggered. The sword tip flicked in once, hardly a few inches, and the Pict was dead before he hit the deck. He rolled against Calgaich’s legs. Calgaich leaped high over the fallen Pict and met another reiver with a downsweep of his sword. At the same time he raised the metal edge of his shield under the chin of the Pict. The man died instantly between the two surfaces.

Calgaich jumped back. He screamed above the rising fury of the storm wind.
“Abu! Abu!
To victory! To victory!” He leaped to the low railing while thrusting once into the thigh of a charging Pict. He reversed his blow and slashed the man's contorted face open from temple to chin.

Calgaich then leaped like a cat across to the pitching afterdeck of the Pictish craft. He met the determined rush of half a dozen tattooed killers. His great sword blade whirled high and came down like a flash of solid lightning, again and again, battering on shields and helmets, striking musically from the blades of the Picts, darting and hissing like a thing alive and drawing blood at almost every stroke, spattering the droplets in a reddish haze about the knot of fighting, cursing men.

“Do you hear the wild fowl calling?” Calgaich the Swordsman chanted. He was
fey,
with the mystical battle madness of the Celt. “The ravens gather for your flesh! Come to the sword welcoming, Cruithne! A red welcome for a feast of sea-wolves! Do not stand back, you who come unbidden! Is my welcome to you the doorway to sudden death?” He laughed wildly.

“He is
fey!
The battle madness is on him!” Cuill screamed hysterically to the crew. “He cares not whether he lives or dies just so he can keep on killing! Cut loose the lines, Usnect! Let the mad
fian
die!”

Cairenn could remain still no more. Overcoming her fear, she ran along the full length of the deck. She snatched up Calgaich’s war spear, the bloodied weapon, the mighty
laigen.
It felt strange in her hands, heavy, wet with blood, but she had to learn its use
now
. She leaned the tip of the blade lightly against Cuill's chest so as to draw a little of the red, just a very little. Her stomach heaved, but she must not falter. “Do not move, Cuill.” The words grated between her even white teeth. Her emerald eyes never left his face. “If you move, I will do thus.” She
leaned on the spear, and Cuill shrieked in pain and hysteria far greater than her own. The crewmen slowly backed away from the lines, hypnotized by Cairenn’s threats and the sight of a woman armed.

Calgaich’s shield was splintered from top to boss; blood splattered its whitewashed surface. A Pict went down screaming and struck up at Calgaich’s crotch with a broken-bladed sword. Calgaich caught him full in the face with a smashing heel, and then he leaped back to parry a vicious sword blow from another burly Pict. He calmly swept his sword sideways to shear through the tough wooden shield of the Pict. The man’s sight was destroyed in the red jelly left in the blade’s deadly track. Calgaich slammed his shield into that of the blinded man and drove him back against three of his cursing mates who called hysterically for a sword stroke or two at this stinging gadfly who had landed in their midst.

Calgaich retreated to the railing of the Picts’ vessel, holding them in check with reddened sword. He swiftly looked back over his shoulder at the pitching
birlinn
just yards away. “Cut loose,” he shouted.

Cairenn hesitated, slightly lessening her pressure on the war spear piercing Cuill's chest.

“He tells us to cut loose himself,” Cuill wailed. “We must obey.”