Calgaich the Swordsman (8 page)

Calgaich lifted a half-burned door flap with the tip of his spear and stepped into the smoky interior of one of the huts that had not fully burned. A sprawled body lay to one side. Calgaich found the clothing of a boy—dirty trousers, red-dyed sheepskin tunic and worn hide buskins. The boy to whom the clothing might have belonged lay naked and dead in his bed of bracken with a small hunting spear driven through his belly, pinning him to the bed.

Calgaich passed from one partially burned hut to another. He constantly watched the mouth of the great glen. It was still dark in shadows. Nothing seemed to move in there. He spread a tanned deer hide on the ground and placed his loot upon it—a dried boar’s haunch, some smoked venison, several loaves of fairly fresh bread, the boy’s clothing, several greasy bed skins and woolen cloaks and a small dirk about boy’s size.

There was still something he badly wanted. He poked about in several of the unburned huts until the muted barking of distant dogs drove him back into the open. In the last hut he had found what he was looking for and grunted in satisfaction as he carried three large earthenware jugs of
usquebaugh
to his plunder. He pulled out one of the wooden stoppers and upended the jug. The strong barley spirits seemed to burn down his gullet and then exploded in a ball of fire within his guts. He drove the stopper back into the bottle and placed it on the hide. He bound the hide about the loot and then slung it over his back.

The sound of the barking dogs was closer now—somewhere close within the mouth of the shadowed glen.

Calgaich strode toward the hill-slope, then stopped short. A tiny girl-child lay sprawled beside a pup. Both of them had been pierced by Pictish blades. Her little dress was kilted high above her plump legs and rounded belly. Calgaich stood there for a moment looking down at her. The child’s blue, sightless eyes stared up at him. Her lovely golden hair was trampled into the mire and manure.

The dogs were closer now. Some of them were baying.

Calgaich put down his bundle and spear. He bent upon one knee and wiped as much of the mire and manure from the child’s golden hair as he could. He closed the staring eyes and composed the sprawled limbs. He pulled down the bloody dress and then covered her face with a square of woolen cloth that lay close to her. For a moment he looked down at her, then picked up his bundle and spear and ran lightly from the
rath.

“Walk!” he ordered Cairenn.

“It's cold! I’m hungry!” she said defiantly.

“Damn you! There isn’t any time. You hear those hounds? They’ll tear us to pieces if they catch up with us.” Calgaich pulled her to her feet. “Look!” he added, pointing toward the glen with his spear. Beyond the
rath
at the mouth of the glen men were riding shaggy ponies across the snow. Ahead of them was a loping crescent of huge hounds.

She looked down the slope. The ravens had landed boldly right behind Calgaich as he had left the
rath.
They strutted about on the ground, a distinct jet black contrast to the white snow and the crimson stains of blood. They pecked at the bloodstained snow and hopped upon the chests of the corpses.

“They will pick out the eyes first,” Calgaich said quietly.

Cairenn followed him through the wet, clinging brush. Thorns tore at her cloak and exposed skin. Her face went taut when Calgaich waded into a rushing burn that plunged head over heels in a mad race to reach the sea loch far below. Calgaich waded upstream. He did not look back at her.

Cairenn kilted up the cloak and stepped into the flood. The icy water flowed about her privates and the lower part of her belly so that she was almost paralyzed. There was not a stitch of clothing from beneath her breasts to her cloth-bound feet. Now and again she would stagger toward the snow-covered bank of the stream with a look of sheer agony on her face, hoping that Calgaich would take pity on her; but he never looked back. If she Fell behind, she wasn’t sure but what he would abandon her. She knew what would happen if those savage hounds caught up with her.

The harsh baying of the hounds echoed across the great glen. Once, in a shifting of the morning wind, the sound of shouting was interwoven with the baying of the hounds;

then the sounds receded, seemingly toward the shore of the sea loch.

The sun was up high when at last Calgaich waded from the icy stream and peered down the long tree-shrouded slopes. Cairenn gratefully followed him from the water. She could no longer feel her legs or feet beneath her. She could not feel her sodden wet clothes as they dropped to cling against her reddened legs and ankles.

"They have followed the shore,” he murmured, almost to himself. "They are looking for the Picts. The hounds might still pick up our trail into the hills.” He looked around to where Cairenn had slumped onto the ground. "Come, we have no time for rest.
Come now,
woman.”

He led the way up a steep and slippery slope until at last the two of them stood on the great ridge that formed the southern side of the glen. Far below them the smoke was raveling off thinly before the brisk morning wind.

Calgaich got off the skyline and opened the bundle of loot. He sat with his back against a tree, idly watching Cairenn as she dressed. Once their eyes met and she looked hastily away from him. It seemed to her that he was always watching her nakedness with a mildly speculative eye. The boy's clothing was filthy and it stank, but it was warm. She did not allow herself to think of what the boy's fate must have been, to remember the circling ravens. For now, finally, she was warm. Perhaps renewed strength would also come to her.

Calgaich drank steadily from one of his treasured jugs. He handed Cairenn a piece of the smoked venison and broke one of the loaves of bread in half with his bloodstained hands. He let her take a pull from the jug. She coughed as the fiery
usquebaugh
burned her throat.

Calgaich grinned. "The very water of life. Like mother's milk.” He handed her the boy's dirk and took back his own long-bladed dirk. He formed two packs and handed her the smaller and lighter one. "We'll march all this day to put as much distance between us and the Damnonii as we can. This is their country for several days' more travel. In a few more days after that we should be in my country
—if
you can keep up.”

"And if I can't?” she said softly.

He shrugged. "March or die,” he replied carelessly.

"Will we be safe in your country?”

"Why do you ask?”

"You didn't leave Albu by choice. You were a hunted man here. When we reach your country will you still be a hunted man, Calgaich?”

He looked beyond the ridge toward the jumbled hills and mountains beyond them. "I don’t know,” he replied softly. "It has been three years. Once I had many friends and relatives among my own people. Now, I do not know. Those Picts in the reiving ship were waiting for me off the coast. They knew I was returning here from Eriu. They meant to stop me. Someone must have paid them to do that. My father is no longer chief of the clan. My uncle, Bruidge of the Battle-Axe, has taken his place by right of
tanaise ri.
”

"Your father's only brother. It was he who fostered you until you were a warrior. Does that mean nothing to him?” Her emerald eyes blazed. ^

He looked down at her. "The man I killed over a woman was Fergus,
the only son of Bruidge.
He was my first cousin.”

She stared at him. "You
killed
him?”

"It was fair combat,” he said sharply.

"For a woman?” Cairenn felt her cheeks bum. Was this woman, for whom he had killed, Morar—the Golden One —of whom Aengus, the Pict, had spoken? Was Calgaich as anxious to return to her as he was to find his father? Yet Cairenn dared say no more, and Calgaich ignored her words.

"Bruidge hates me now. He has used the ancient right of
tanaise ri
to usurp my father's chieftainship. When my father dies, I should succeed him, but now I can't because of Bruidge.”

“Tanaise ri?”
she asked curiously.

"An ancient custom whereby a brother’s right to the succession of a chief is stronger than that of the chief's son.”

"But if your father is still alive?”

Calgaich shrugged. "Then he is still chief.”

"Can your uncle make his claim stand, then?”

Calgaich grunted savagely. "He has the men and the position. My father is old and weak, nearly blind, and in the hands of the Romans. His only son is an outlaw. The gods curse Bruidge! He
knew
I was coming home. He set those damned Pictish reivers on his own nephew.”

Calgaich set off, plunging downhill through the wet brush. Something powerful had driven him from his beloved Albu; something more powerful had drawn him back to it in the face of almost certain death. Again, Cairenn rose wearily and followed him.

Calgaich pressed on at a steady pace through the empty hills and echoing passes. Now and then the faint howling of a hound, or perhaps a wolf, came to them on the wind. There were no signs of humans in the wilderness through which they passed all that long day. Mist had moved in when the short-lived sun had vanished behind low-hanging clouds. Sometimes, through the forest tangle, the mirrorlike surfaces of small mountain lochs or dark tarns might be seen. Many little streams of rushing icy water plunged down the long slopes and through the passes.

Darkness was in the offing. A cold, snow-laden wind was feeling its way through the narrow passes when at last they descended from the heights. Calgaich moved on even more swiftly, heedless of the almost exhausted woman.

"Are you in such a great hurry then,
fian,
to reach your home and perhaps your death!” she cried out in desperation.

He turned his head without interrupting his headlong stride. "The night belongs to the wolves in these mountains,” he warned her.

It was enough to spur Cairenn on with the last dregs of her strength until at last they reached the shore of a leaden-colored loch thickly fringed with conifers. There was a dry stone ruin on a knoll near the loch. It was a bell-shaped defensive tower surrounded by a quadrangle of smoke-blackened stone buildings. Smoke stains streaked the walls of the tower. The gate of the quadrangle lay flat on the ground.

The light was failing fast when Calgaich dragged away the charred timbers of the tower door. The wind moaned about the gaunt-looking structure. Calgaich stooped to enter the low passageway that led into the interior of the tower. The ancient roof had fallen in long ago and now formed a pile of huge jackstraws. Smoke stained the inner walls. Here and there slitted windows seemed to be looking down on Calgaich and Cairenn like the eye sockets in a skull.

Calgaich stood there looking around. Memories came crowding back to him. He had been a new and untried warrior when his father had led the Novantae on a raid to this remote Roman outpost. They had put the Red Crests to the sword and then had fired the structure.

“You know this place?” Cairenn asked, watching him.

He grinned crookedly at her. “I set fire to it.”

Calgaich led the way up a steep and narrow winding stairway between the outer and inner walls. At the top was a large room with slitted windows that looked out toward the loch. He grunted in satisfaction, and dropped his pack. “There is some wood. Make a fire. I’ll get more.” He paused in the doorway and looked back at her. “No matter what might happen below, don’t leave this room until daylight.” He vanished into the stairwell.

Cairenn made the fire in the rude circle of stones set in the middle of the floor. She could hear him moving about in the center of the tower. Once she looked down at him. He was working swiftly, tired as he must be, and now and then he would look back over his shoulder toward the gaping doorway as though expecting someone, or
something.

Calgaich blocked the tower doorway with timbers. He carried several armloads of wood up into the room and then closed the sagging door. He braced a short length of timber against the door and placed his spear beside it.

He looked about the low-vaulted room. The fire was roaring. Moving firelight was cast on the lichened walls. The smoke was drifting through a hole in the outer wall. He grunted in satisfaction.

The fire died down to a thick bed of embers. Cairenn heated some of the meat. “Where are your brothers the wolves,
fian?”
she asked teasingly.

“Listen,” he said.

The eerie howling of a wolf rose from somewhere beyond the far side of the loch.

“They know we are here,” Calgaich explained. “One of them followed us the last hour. There will be others.
Many.”

“I didn’t see any wolf.”

He looked at her. “Once he was only a spear’s cast behind you. Maybe he was waiting for you to drop.” He grinned as Cairenn turned away.

They ate well of the food Calgaich had looted from the
rath.
Cairenn washed it down with some of the clear stream water with which Calgaich had refilled the jug of whiskey he had emptied that day. His face was flushed from the spirits but he showed little sign of haying drunk that much.

They could hear the rising chorus of the wolves. They were prowling now about the base of the structure. Cairenn surreptitiously watched Calgaich as he tore at the food with his strong white teeth. She could not help but think that here, too, was a wolf, a lean wolf of a man, seemingly as lonely as the howling wolves, and just as deadly.

Calgaich started on the second jug of whiskey. He drew his sword from its sheath and placed it across his lap as he sat crosslegged on the man’s side of the fire. He studied the fine weapon. He hefted it, and felt it with his hands. He hummed softly to himself as he did so.
“
Na tri dee dana
,”
he murmured appreciatively. “By the Three Gods of Skill—Gobniu, Credne and Luchta—this is a weapon fit for a warrior. Aye, a chieftain! A king! A god!” He looked at Cairenn with that faraway gaze of his and she knew he was somewhere else in spirit beyond that room. “It did its red work well this day, eh, woman?”

She nodded, shivering a little as the firelight danced along the fine blade. If the sword had not done its “red work well” she would have become a plaything of those bloody-handed Picts.