Calgaich the Swordsman (23 page)

Armor and weapons clashed as an auxiliary slid down the rope. A man cursed in some unknown tongue. He hadn't known the rope only reached partway to the ground. Calgaich grinned.

Calgaich glanced backward. Far to his right, to the east, he could see signal torches flaring up. He looked to his left. Signal torches were flaring at the mile castle. In a matter of minutes the signals would be traveling east and west along the wall for many miles.

The wind shifted. Somewhere along the wall a dog bayed; shortly thereafter the sound was repeated further along the wall. The outer gates of the mile castles would be opening soon to emit mounted auxiliaries and hounds.

They would converge diagonally toward the fugitives beyond the wall,

Guidd and Cairenn waited in the thick oak woods. “Are we safe now, Guidd?” she asked, gasping.

He looked down at her. “We're never safe around the wall. There is nothing we can do
now
but run, and run. Are you ill?”

She shook her head. “Only tired.”

“A woman can't be weak in this country,” he said sarcastically.

“I’m not here by choice, woodsman!” she said bitterly.

Calgaich came noiselessly through the misty woods. The dogs bayed incessantly behind him. Far across the moors, echoes of the baying seemed to come to life, but the tone was different. Bron raised his head and looked to the north. The wolves of the moors were calling back to their half-tamed kin.

Calgaich looked down at Cairenn where she rested on the damp ground. He handed Guidd his war spear. “Lead on,” he said quietly. He picked Cairenn up and swung her across his broad shoulders.

Guidd led the way through the woods to the banks of a rushing stream. He stepped into the shallow icy water and began to wade upstream, followed by Calgaich and Bron. Cairenn slid an arm about Calgaich's neck. He turned his head to look at her. She smiled a little.

They pressed on, hour after hour, while the sound of the pursuing hounds became fainter and fainter and then died away altogether.

Cairenn awoke in a swirling opaqueness. She lay on a bed of dry bracken, sheltered in a eave. She was covered by her own sheepskin tunic and the remains of the Asturian cloak Calgaich had been wearing. There was no sign of Calgaich and Guidd, and for one awful moment she thought she had been abandoned. She couldn't blame them. She was holding them back, and their lives were at stake.

The sun was high, slowly burning away the ground mist, when Bron came silently through the woods and lay down just outside the cave to study Cairenn with his cold yellow eyes. She shivered a little and drew the rough cloak

up about her as she sat up with her back against the back wall of the cave. She smiled gingerly at the wolfhound. There was no response from him. Tentatively she extended a small hand toward the great beast. He raised his head as though to respond, then turned it to look back into the woods.

Calgaich and Guidd came silently out of the forest. Calgaich shook his head. “Nothing, by the gods,” he said wearily. “Not a steading, or a hut to beg, borrow or to steal a crust of bread. Not a cow, sheep, or even a dog loose on these damned empty moors. There is something wrong here.”

Guidd nodded as he squatted beside the wolfhound. He rubbed his grizzled jaw. Once he looked up sideways at Calgaich. “I do not like to think about it,” he murmured.

There was something chilling in the air besides the mist. Cairenn looked beyond them through the thinning mist and into the silent, dripping forest. “Where are we?” she asked nervously.

There was no reply.

“Fian?”
Cairenn asked.

Calgaich looked back over his shoulder. It was as though they were again back at the eerie barrow on the shores of the sea loch in the distant land of the Damnonii.
Something
was putting fear into him. He had been unafraid to enter the
mansio
prison to rescue his father, he had not seemed afraid when he had scaled the Great Wall within shouting distance of the mile castle garrison. But now fear itself seemed to have alighted on his back.

“What is it, Calgaich? The auxiliaries?” she asked.

Calgaich shook his head. He wet his lips. When he looked directly at her, she seemed to sense something lurking behind his troubled gray eyes.

Guidd shifted about. His eye flicked nervously back and forth. Bron became uneasy. He, too, sensed that something was wrong with those surrounding woods, and that something was haunting his master.

“Medionemeton”
Calgaich murmured at last.

“I don't understand,” Cairenn said.

Calgaich stood up. His strong hands tightened on his spear shaft, but he knew full well that no weapon devised by man or used by a great warrior would prevail

against that which haunted the great oak woods. "A sacred grove,” he explained quietly. "A grove of great oaks, greater than any Guidd and I have ever seen. Do you know the meaning of this place?”

She nodded. “A place of worship for the Druids.”

“The name Druid itself means ‘knowledge of the oak,” Calgaich explained.

“I know,” she said quickly.

He looked closely at her. His suspicion of her since he had taken her from Eriu returned full force to him. Quickly he looked away from those huge emerald-hued eyes. He felt he could never penetrate that magic screen to see who and what she really was.

“There are no birds within the wood,” Guidd said quietly. “There is not a hare or a deer. Not a mouse or a cricket. Not a bird flies over it. Beyond this place the sun shines fully, like the face of Lugh of the Shining Spear. There is not a trace of mist on the moors just beyond this place. The sun shines strongly in the sky, but the bright light does not penetrate these woods.”

Calgaich nodded. “The Druids have the power to do many strange things.
They
can drive a man to madness with their incantations.
They
can bring down a shower of fire on their enemies.
They
can raise a mist to bring the darkness of night over the land at high noon.”

“They,
Calgaich?” she asked.

“Men of the Oak,” he murmured.

A faint hum sounded through the dense grove of mighty oaks. It was a mysterious sound, as though the words of Calgaich had awakened sleeping spirits.

Cairenn stood up. “But most of the Druids were stamped out many years ago by the Romans. The legions followed the Druids to their holy island of Mona off the west coast of my country and wiped them out. They cut down the sacred grove of oaks. They put out the sacred oak log fire. They slew the priests. That was hundreds of years ago, Calgaich. There is nothing to fear from them now.”

He turned on her savagely. “I fear nothing, woman!” “Nothing you can
see,
Calgaich mac Lellan.”

Calgaich gave no sign that he had heard her. He looked down at Guidd. “We’ve got to get some game, old hound.” “Not in here, Calgaich. There is nothing.”

“Then well go beyond the woods.”

Guidd looked up at him. “Can we find our way out of this mist?”

“We can try.”

Guidd stood up. “If we do reach the open country,” he added, “we’ll be exposed to the Red Crests and their damned hounds.”

“It’s a risk,” Calgaich admitted.

“We’ll need Bron.”

“Stay here,” Calgaich ordered Cairenn.

“And if you don’t come back?” she asked again. She felt she was always asking that question.

Calgaich did not answer. He whistled at Bron and strode off through the misted woods, followed by Guidd. In
a
little while the woods were silent again.

In the middle of the afternoon Cairenn awoke from
a
fitful sleep. A strange, sweetish, rotten odor seemed to have crept into the cave. She sat up and looked about. There were no flowers within the forest. The sickening odor was unrecognizable. She thrust her nose into the rough fabric of the Asturian cloak. It smelled of woodsmoke and perspiration, but it was not as bad as the other repugnant odor she had noticed.

After a while Cairenn was thirsty. She threw aside the cloak, stepped out of the cave and promptly fell over
a
rounded object swathed in a piece of cloak. The aura of rotting flesh arose from the bundle. The head of Lellan. She ran, stricken with panic, into the misty forest.

She found a small tarn of clear water and dropped onto her belly to drink from it. Something glistened brightly through the clear water. She thrust a hand into the pool to retrieve a beautifully worked enameled arm torque. It was a small masterpiece of the metalsmith’s craft. Cairenn stood up and fitted it about her left arm. A strange cold and tingling feeling seemed to come from the bright metal, but perhaps it came from the chill of the water.

Cairenn looked about her. She narrowed her eyes. Which way had she come? Each of the dim vistas between the huge oaks seemed exactly the same. She studied the soft, damp ground to see if she could discern her footprints, but could not see them. She looked about again. An eerie feeling came over her. The forest was so quiet it seemed unnatural.

Cairenn began to walk in the direction from which she thought she had come. In a little while she knew it was not the right route. She paused, hesitated, looked about and then strode off in another direction. The result was the same—everything looked exactly alike.

She walked back toward the tarn, but could not find it. Faint panic began to work in the back of her mind.

Now and again she would turn her head quickly as though someone, or
something
, was behind her, and although she never saw anything, she was quite sure that whatever it was had moved quickly, just beyond the comer of her eye.

There is something wrong here
, Calgaich had said.

She was utterly lost. It was as though she had somehow wandered off the earth into some unknown and alien land, in which she was doomed to wander throughout eternity.

She stopped walking at last, and stood resting with her back against a great oak. She sensed, rather than saw or heard, the movement in the dense shadows. Terror crept through her and then was succeeded by sheer panic. She started to run.

Suddenly the huge wolfhound appeared in front of her, watching her with unblinking yellow eyes that seemed to glow in the dark like foxfire.

The wolfhound turned and began to walk through the forest. Cairenn hesitated; then he turned and looked back at her as though waiting for her to follow. She wasn’t sure it was Bron, but she had no choice. She followed him through the darkness.

A concealed fire cast a faint glow of light against the rear of the cave. Calgaich strode toward Cairenn as she started to run toward the fire. She ran into his strong arms and clung to him while the tears ran from her eyes and sobs racked her body.

"There is good pig meat,” Calgaich said kindly, leading her to the fire. Cairenn dropped to the ground, exhausted.

Guidd squatted by the fire roasting the meat. "What did you find in the forest, woman?”

"Nothing.” Cairenn said, her voice husky.

"Fear and panic,” the woodsman murmured. "Even the hound has enough sense not to wander off alone in there.”

They ate swiftly and without speaking. Now and then either Guidd or Calgaich would look sideways at the silent woman. Cairenn forced herself to swallow the food. They finished eating. Guidd kicked dirt over the fire. The woods were as dark as pitch. Only a few of the larger embers still glowed through the thick bed of ashes, like secretive red eyes, winking open and shutting quickly.

Suddenly Calgaich laughed.

Cairenn stared at him as she wiped the grease from her mouth. "What is it,
fian?”
she queried.

"In Eriu a champion is entitled to a
whole
pig. A leg for a king. A haunch for a queen. A boar’s head for a champion charioteer.”

"And a whole pug for a fighting champion,” Guidd echoed.

"Here I sit in these damned woods, with a woman, a hound and a one-eyed woodsman, grateful for the tough meat of a thin sow!” Calgaich laughed again. He slapped his hands on his thighs.

"How many whole pigs were your lot in Eriu,
fian?”
she asked.

He waved a greasy hand.

"Many, Calgaich?” she persisted.

He nodded. He seemed to look beyond the cave into the dark forest and the not too distant past. "It was not a bad life,” he said absentmindedly.

"Fighting, drinking, raping and killing.”

Calgaich looked curiously at her. "What else is there in life?”

"A home and a family. A woman by the hearthside and little ones to greet you on your return from the hunt.” She met his gaze with her clear emerald eyes. Calgaich did not look away.

"Listen to her!” Guidd exclaimed.

"Faugh!” Calgaich said. He suddenly leaned toward her as an ember flared up. The firelight reflected from the golden arm torque Cairenn had found in the tarn. "What is this?” he demanded.

She shrugged. "I found it in the forest in a tarn.”

He drew back his hand as though he had touched fire.

"For the love of the dark gods!" he exclaimed. "Cast it back into the forest!”

"But it's so beautiful!” she touched the torque as if to share its beauty.

He stood up and dragged her to her feet. He untwisted the torque from her arm and ran with it into the darkness. He hurled it as far as he could and then ran back to the cave.

"What’s wrong with you?” she cried angrily.

He drew her close and shook her gently. "It had to be an offering to the oaks! It belonged to
them!
Don’t you understand?”

She looked quickly behind her then turned to look up into his shadowed face. "Is that why I was lost?” she whispered.

He released her and rubbed his hands hard against his soiled tunic. "Never touch anything like that in the sacred groves. Even now, with the torque cast back into the woods, perhaps a curse has already been put on us.”

Guidd nodded solemnly. "There will be a moon later on. We can then find our way out of this accursed place. It’s too dark now. Even Bron could not guide us from the forest.”

A keening wind suddenly swept through the forest. The branches of the huge oaks thrashed wildly. The night seemed to come alive with something that was more than just manifestations of nature.