Calgaich the Swordsman (3 page)

But Cairenn shook her head. The wind whipped her long dark hair back from her face. “Not without you,
fian,”
she called to Calgaich above the wrath of the waves.

“Now!” Calgaich roared at her again.

But again Cairenn held firm, allowing Cuill to feel her weight behind the bloody spear. The crewmen remained motionless, caught in time between two forces they did not understand.

Calgaich thrust hard and missed. He then recovered and slashed his blade into a Pict’s unprotected crotch to emasculate him. The man reeled back against his screaming mates. Calgaich then hurled his blood-dripping sword like a javelin across the widening gap between the boats and leaped across to catch up the sword as the tip of it struck quivering into the deck. Whirling about he thrust out the sword just as a last Pict, blood-maddened and heedless of sudden death, jumped after him. The sword
point darted into the Pict's chest and was withdrawn as the Pict fell backward into the water between the two vessels.

Cuill, released from the point of the war spear, worked frantically to free the lines. Gradually the
birlinn
fell away. It wallowed in the vicious crosswaves, wind filling the mainsail. Light throwing spears, the deadly
slegs
, arced across the widening gap between the two boats. Calgaich laughed as he swung his sword in rhythm, first to one side and then to the other, striking the light
slegs
and spinning them away into the whitecapped waters.

Cuill stared at Calgaich. “He is not human,” he muttered. Cairenn, too, gazed in wonder at Calgaich as she wiped her hands on her wet woolen cloak, as if to wipe away all memory of the bloody war spear that she had held only moments before. She had disobeyed him—for a warrior in battle the punishment was certain death. Yet she would do it again.

Finally, as the
birlinn
left the reiving craft behind, Calgaich caught one of the light spears in a show of strength and threw it back to find the heart of one last Pict. He stood at the rail in a solemn moment of triumph before he came aft to where Cuill had once again taken over the tiller bar. He looked sternly at Cairenn, as if he were about to speak, but then strode past her to the steering oar. Resting his sword tip on the deck beside Cuill, he spoke. “Sail for the coast,” he ordered. The wildness of bloody battle had left him. He was no longer
fey
. Once again he was the calm and confident
fian.

This time there was no denial from Cuill.

Hours after the battle, fear came down from the low overcast sky and settled silently on the deck of the pitching
birlinn
. It had come to stay.

“Fian!”
Cuill screamed from the afterdeck. “We must turn back to the open sea. We can try for the coast when the weather changes; we are too far north of your landing place now. It is two days' sail to the south. If we don't turn back, we'll lose my
birlinn
and our lives as well."

Calgaich did not answer him. Instead, he untwisted his left arm torque of gold and tossed it the full length of the vessel so that it clattered on the deck at the feet of Cuill, who scooped it up despite his paralyzing fear of the dangerous coast in the mist somewhere ahead of them. It had been King Crann's gift to one of his favorite
fianna,
as the woman, Cairenn, had been. Crann paid his warriors well. The arm torque could keep Cuill in comfort for many years to come. He slid it inside his tunic.

Cairenn looked up into the face of her master. “Cuill’s right. The gods do not mean to let you return home."

“Quiet!" Calgaich snapped. “The sea will hear you!"

As though the sea had indeed heard, it began to work itself into an increased white-maned fury. The timbers of the
birlinn
creaked and groaned in the powerful grip of the waves. Despite the beating of the wind the mist had not dissipated. It was almost as though it were semisolid in content. Perhaps the gods had placed it there to prevent the
birlinn
from making a landfall.

Calgaich pointed with his spear. “There! Nodons shows his teeth!"

Black-fanged rocks wreathed in foaming white rivulets that streamed back into the dark waves had appeared

on both sides of the vessel. Beyond them were more rocks in serried ranks, as though Nodons had ringed the
birlinn
with sharpened stakes that could pierce her wooden sides as easily as a bone needle pierces cloth.

“Turn back! Turn back!” the crewmen screamed in unison.

It was too late.

No vessel in the known world could have turned within the scope of those grinning rock teeth and won free to the open sea. Nodons was playing his bitter game to the death well. He would win as he almost always had won. The rock jaws seemed to close in on the
birlinn.
A pointed needle of a rock ripped into the thin bottom planking and raked its way from stem to stern with a sickening crunching sound. The sound passed into the very souls of the humans aboard the
birlinn.

There was one exception to the fear that seemed to paralyze all the others—the tall warrior. He peered eagerly into the wreathing mist. His nostrils were drawn wide like those of a questing hound. He could smell the land. "There she looms!” Calgaich cried in an exultant voice. He pointed with his spear. “Albu! Albu!” he shouted. There was great longing in his voice.

Cairenn, forgetting her own fear for a moment, looked with wonder at Calgaich. His face was drawn as though he were in great pain, and yet it was alive with the same eagerness she had noticed on his face when he had fought
fey
, like a madman, on the deck of the Pictish reiving craft. It was almost as if Calgaich spoke of a woman he had known and loved well and for whom he had hungered during the long years he had been outlawed from Caledonia. It was the desperate, longing cry of the exiled Celt.

A dark headland showed through the mist. Another sound more terrible than the incessant whine of the wind came to the people on the doomed
birlinn.
It was the _ grinding of the surf boiling against the rocks and shale of the shore and the great dragging withdrawals of the waves that battered at the coast. Rocks stabbed at the slowly sinking hull of the vessel. The driving waves savagely worried at her like unsated hounds at their meat. Suddenly the
birlinn
struck hard, tilting wearily to one side like a stricken thing seeking its last resting place. She began to settle. Waves swept freely over the weather rail and carried some of the screaming crewmen over the lee side. The mast tilted and then cracked at the deck line to collapse over the side.

Cairenn watched in horror as Calgaich threw off his tartan cloak, unbuckled his belt and dropped it and the heavy-sheathed sword to the deck. He withdrew his dirk from its sheath and thrust it inside his tunic. He poised the magnificent war spear and cast it toward the beach. It flashed through the tatters of mist and struck into the dark sands to quiver there like a living thing.

The
birlinn
was breaking up. Waves flowed knee-deep over the deck. All of the crewmen had vanished into the sea. Cairenn waited for the sea to claim her next. Only Cuill clung to the useless tiller, while staring ahead to see his own death approaching, unable to save himself while his beloved
birlinn
died first, broken beneath his feet.

Calgaich undid his thick gold neck torque. He hurled it into the sea. “Nodons!” he cried. “Take this as an offering for a safe passage to shore for myself and the woman!”

He slid over the prow into the sea. For a moment his hard gray eyes held the emerald-hued eyes of Cairenn. In that moment she was almost sure he meant to leave her to drown. It was his right. His own life came first. She was only a
cumal,
a chattel to be dealt with like any other piece of property.

“Can you swim, woman?” he shouted.

She nodded. “I can,
fian”

“Then strip and get into the bath.” He grinned.

She hesitated. Her eyes were wide with fear.

“Now!” he snapped. “Or, by the gods, Nodons shall have a tasty morsel this night in his black cavern beneath the sea.”

She had no choice. She stripped off her cloak, long tunic and undergown to reveal full young breasts budded with pink, fine hips and shapely thighs, and the soft curling mat of darkness where her long legs met the flatness of her belly. She stood there naked to the biting teeth of the wind and the icy pelting of the sea spray.

Calgaich's admiring gaze shifted. He ripped a plank loose from the disintegrating hull and beckoned to her. She let herself down into the cold water and felt his hard hands pass along her body to help her straddle the rough plank. Calgaich struck out for the shore while he guided the plank with his left hand. Waves flowed over Cairenn’s shivering nakedness and it seemed as though she could never get enough air into her lungs to breathe. Twice Calgaich went fully under, only to emerge with his long hair plastered across his face. The second time he came up his temple skin was split and there was a faint pink tint of blood in the wetness on his features.

Rocks seemed to drift past. Then the surf took charge of them, changing momentarily from a frothing maelstrom into a gentle surging that swung them safely past the rocks and then tumbled them over and over again in a melee of water and churning sand to carry them to the beach.

Cairenn opened her eyes. She lay on the hard wet shingle covered by Calgaich’s cloak. His spear was still thrust into the sand close beside her. Spindrift blew horizontally from the sea toward the gloomy shoreline, where Calgaich stood knee-deep in the surf looking out to sea. There was no sign of the
birlinn.

Calgaich turned toward her as he wiped the blood from his face. He could not resist smiling at her. She was enveloped in the tartan cloak with just her pale face and those great green eyes of hers looking up at him like a frightened hare peering from its hole.

“Nodons threw me back my cloak,” Calgaich said. “Perhaps it was a wager between us. Nodons lost.”

“Not by much,
fian”
She shivered a little.

“But still a victory.”

“Must there always be victories for you?”

He studied her. She had a way of disarming him from his trained viewpoint of life. “There is glory and honor in good battle.”

“And in death?”

He shrugged. “What is there to lose? There is a better life hereafter in
Tir na n’Og
for a warrior such as myself.” She smiled faintly. “The Beautiful Land of Youth, where there is no pain, disease or death. Where a warrior may feast and drink, fornicate and fight to his heart's content throughout eternity.”

Calgaich nodded his head absentmindedly. “West-Over-Seas,” he murmured. He looked at her suddenly, trying to gauge whether or not she was subtly baiting him. “Get up. The storm is still rising. We’ll need shelter to survive this night.” He withdrew his spear from the sand and wiped the blade on his tunic.

“Where are we?” Cairenn asked, rising awkwardly from the sand.

“Too damned far north for comfort. Perhaps in the land of the Fir Domnann, the Damnonii. We can’t be far from the land of the Picts.”

She shivered. “Such as those in the reiving vessel?”

He nodded. “There has been bad blood between the Damnonii and my people of the Novantae for some years.”

“And the Picts as well?”

Calgaich smiled crookedly. “Most of the time we are at war with them. There have been several times in the past when we were allied with them but only for short periods. Paralus, the Greek trader, told me there are rumors in Caledonia that the border clans—the Novantae, Selgovae and the Votadini—may ally themselves with the Damnonii, the Picts and the other people of Caledonia against the Romans. It was done in the past, in the time of my grandfather, "Evicatos the Spearman, and even in the days of my father Lellan, when I was very young. It was Evicatos who led the alliance against the Great Wall of the Romans, to cross it and raid almost to Londinium. My father and my uncle were young warriors then.” His voice faded and a faraway look came into his eyes.

“And this new alliance, do you think it will take place?”

“Who knows? I find it hard to believe. The Damnonii might be agreeable to it if they believed in any one leader. The Picts likely not. That has always been the trouble with the Caledonians. We’ve never learned to unify and work together against our hated common enemy—the Romans!”

“You need a new leader, like your grandfather Evicatos the Spearman.”

He nodded. “But where is he?”

She studied him for a moment. “Perhaps I know,” she said quietly.

He reached out a big hand to her damp shoulder and drew her close to look down at her. His face was hard and set like amber. “Listen, woman! Only by the grace of the gods did you get to leave Eriu alive!” He bent closer to her face, trying to see through the beauty of it into the real face of this feminine creature whom men suspected of being a witch. It was no use. Her loveliness and great eyes effectively concealed whatever fearsome sight might lay hidden behind them. “I will tell you only once,” Calgaich added. “Do not prophesy in this country of mine, or your death will come so swiftly you will not know that it’s coming. Or perhaps they will sentence you to the long death, with hours of agony and hell before you die. Do you understand?”

She nodded. “I will remember,” she promised.

He turned away. “We’ve got to find shelter. We can’t survive on this open beach.”

Calgaich led the way up from the lonely strand, which was haunted by the screaming of the low-wheeling gulls as they hovered over the place where the
birlinn
had gone down. Cairenn trudged after Calgaich, bruising her slender feet on the rounded pebbles of the shingle. Now and again she would look up at his broad back. She remembered all too well the look on his face as he had eyed her naked body when she had stood on the deck of the
birlinn.
She remembered, too, the touch of his hands as he helped her straddle the plank that carried her ashore. She shivered a little thinking of the harsh rape that was bound to come sooner or later. Was that why he had saved her? Yet she shivered not only from fear but also from a strange anticipation of his body on hers, forcing her to his will. Yes, that time would come. She pulled the tartan cloak more tightly around her shoulders and hurried to catch up to him.