The Bloody Quarrel (The Complete Edition) (32 page)

She smiled at him. “If you give them a better country, they will love you more. They will remember you destroyed an evil King who wanted them to sacrifice their children to Zorva and who starved their families but asked for more and more of the pittance they had. If they have food in their bellies and coin in their purses, they will love you.”

“And Kotterman? They still want us as part of their Empire.”

“Indeed. And that is why the King must die. The agreement dies with him. They can push pieces of paper at us all they like but the man who signed it will be dead.”

“Then they will try to make new demands on us.”

“But we have their Crown Prince’s family,” she said triumphantly. “They can do nothing while we hold them.”

“I gave my word they were to be returned once our families were back,” Fallon protested.

“And so you did. But, if I am the ruler, then I can hold them and you have not broken your word,” she reminded him.

“But I still break my word—”

“Fallon, do you want Kottermanis ruling this country and sending our people off as slaves?”

“No,” he admitted.

“Then leave it to me. Listen now, much has happened in the past few turns of the hourglass and your head must be whirling. I have much to do to begin to establish our control. Can you grant me one favor?”

“What is that, your grace?”

“Go down and talk to King Aidan. Speak to him and then come back and give me your decision as to his future. If you still decide you cannot kill him, then we can leave him imprisoned. Or perhaps give him to the Kottermanis!”

“That is one thing we cannot do,” Fallon said. “If they got hold of him, they would use him as a puppet to justify their claim on the country.”

“Please, speak to him and then talk to me. I have the noble birth but you are the man who put me on the throne and I shall never forget that,” she said gently.

Fallon nodded. “I shall speak to him, although I do not know what good it will do.”

“Perhaps nothing. But do it anyway.”

*

The smell had not improved much in the chamber, even though the bodies had been cleared away. His men were clustered down one end of the cells, keeping away from the one that held the King.

“Has he been making much noise?” Fallon asked.

“Nothing with his mouth gagged. But he looks like he wants to murder us all,” Craddock replied.

Fallon patted him on the shoulder and walked on down to the cell. The door was wedged shut and he eased that away before stepping inside.

King Aidan had rolled over until he was sitting with his back against the far wall, although his hands and feet were tied. His mouth was blocked with rags but his eyes blazed. Fallon stepped around to the side, where Aidan could not kick or bite at him, and jerked the gag down, allowing the King to speak.

“What are you doing here, Fallon? Come to beg forgiveness?” Aidan snarled.

“Forgiveness?” Fallon laughed. “For stopping you killing my son? For refusing to sell my soul to Zorva?”

“You fool,” Aidan said. “I thought I saw greatness within you but I was mistaken. I offered you the world and you threw it away. How could you not understand that? Unlimited power. The chance to lead armies across all of Kotterman and even beyond, to other lands. Everything you ever wanted!”

“You know nothing of what I want. And I would have had to kill my own son to get it!” Fallon cried.

“Nothing comes without sacrifice. I should know. I had to have my first-born killed,” Aidan said.

Fallon dropped to one knee beside him, grabbing Aidan’s tunic. “You made me do that. He was my friend, he was my Prince and killing him nearly destroyed me!” he cried.

“I would do it again in a heartbeat. Nothing good comes without blood. That was the secret I learned from Zorva.”

“You are mad,” Fallon told him, standing up and turning away.

“Don’t turn your back on me!” Aidan raged, an insane fury in his voice. Fallon turned to see him raving, almost frothing at the mouth. “You are a little man and even Zorva will be disappointed when I tear out your heart and give it to him!”

“You sit in a cell, with your hands tied, and you still threaten me?” Fallon asked.

“You struck your King – cut my flesh even! Your death will be long and terrible and I will make sure that every one of your friends and family dies first. I will rip apart your wife and son and let them die slowly for days. You will see your friends die screaming and, at last, when you are begging me to end your torment, I will give your heart to Zorva,” Aidan screamed.

Fallon’s fury ignited. Dina was right. This was not a man but a creature. Every moment he drew breath was an affront to Aroaril. He touched the knife at his belt but left it in its sheath, contenting himself with replacing the gag. Aidan tried to bite his fingers and Fallon was forced to kick him in the side, winding him, to get the fabric back in.

“The next time I see you, it will be to kill you,” he told Aidan.

The King was still raving at him from behind the gag but he could not understand the words. Nor did he care.

“Are you all right?” a shaken Craddock asked as Fallon wedged the door shut again.

“I will be tomorrow, when I kill that bastard,” Fallon said. “Give him nothing.”

He could feel their eyes on him as he walked away but did not care.

Bridgit gathered all the men together. The ones who were still healthy anyway. The children had found handfuls of cobwebs but of the seven men who had been wounded, only two looked like they would recover. Ahearn had died before they could do anything for him. Bridgit had the women all busy, going through the sacks of supplies they had thrown on board in the final rush to get out of Adana. Night was falling and there was no sign of pursuit. The wind was blowing briskly and she had made sure there would be no lights showing on the ship. By the time the Kottermanis sailed after them, she hoped to be over the horizon and out of sight. Granted, the slavers would know they planned to sail back to Gaelland and would know the route. But they would not catch them. She would not let them. For the first few moments after Ahearn’s death she had felt panic but she had crushed it ruthlessly. He had been her main hope but he was not her only hope. They were free. Getting home was not the hard part.

“Who knows the stars? Who can look at the night sky and see where we are?” she demanded. “You are fishermen and farmers, used to moving at night. We need to travel north and east to hit Gaelland again.”

She looked expectantly at them but they merely shuffled their feet and looked at each other, waiting for someone else to take the lead.

“Look, Ahearn gave me the directions to sail home before he died. We just need someone to make sure we are sailing in the right direction each time. We do not have to sail into Baltimore, or Killarney. We just need to find Gaelland and then we can sail around it from there,” she said briskly, injecting confidence she did not feel into her voice.

But, once again, they said nothing. Finally Dermot cleared his throat. “I worked all the hours of the day, never into the night,” he said reluctantly.

That broke the dam and Bridgit listened with mounting frustration to a series of excuses from the men. Even Ahearn’s crew were reluctant to step forwards.

“He was the one who steered us true. He never liked anyone else taking the tiller,” one of them said.

“My grandpa said you just need to look for the north star at night. It’s the brightest star up there and we just sail towards it,” someone else said.

“The north star isn’t the brightest star. It’s the one above the brightest star,” another objected.

Instantly six more of them began arguing, all offering their old hints and tips for directions.

Bridgit held back her anger. She remembered Fallon telling her once that most men liked to be led: only a few wanted to be leaders. But, if they were not given direction, they fell to fighting with each other.

“Enough!” she roared and they fell silent.

She took a deep breath, thinking fast. The last shadows from the setting sun were falling across the ship and would be gone very soon. She walked through the men and held out her hand to Dermot.

“Your knife,” she ordered.

Mystified, he handed it over and she took it and walked across the deck, until she was level with the mast. Raising it high in her hands, she rammed it deep into the ship’s rail.

The men watched as she walked briskly back and took another knife from another man. She made sure she was level with the mainmast, then rammed that knife home in the other rail.

“Get some rope and stretch it across the deck. Quickly now!” she barked.

For a moment they did nothing, then a handful of men raced off, coming back with rope so they could form a line across the deck.

“Now we need to turn the ship. Dermot, you and another man to the ship’s tiller!”

Quicker to obey now, they raced up to the tiller.

“Make the shadow of the mast line up with the rope!” she called.

The sun was slipping below the horizon and she could feel hope slipping away with it but she refused to panic. The ship altered course until the shadow from the mast slowly eased around until it lay across the rope line she had stretched across the deck.

“We know that now we are heading north, with west to our left,” she said. “So we just need to hold that course until the morning. We shall check it again then, with the first light of dawn, so we get due east, so we can turn more towards that direction during the day, before heading north at night. We check it twice a day and we shall be sailing in the right direction.”

She was not entirely sure this would work but the men seemed far happier and she began to breathe again as the last shadows slipped off the deck.

“Find your families and hold them. We shall determine who will work through the day and who needs to be there at night, in case of storms or high winds to bring in the sails,” she called.

They walked away, all except the two largest, and she groaned to herself.

“When do we eat?” Blaine demanded.

“When we have worked out how much food there is and how many people we have. Be patient. I told you all to eat well today. We shall eat tonight but we have to be sure we have enough to last for the trip.”

“We did the most to get us here. We need feeding now!” Carrick demanded.

“You can either have cold scraps now or a proper hot meal later. What would you prefer?” Bridgit asked, quietly furious that these two were already causing problems.

“A hot meal. But you had better hurry, woman,” Blaine announced.

“It will be ready when I say it is and not before,” she retorted. “And woman is not my name. So, when you have eaten you can stand watch through the night.”

“What?” Blaine cried.

“There is only one captain of this ship and that is me. You would do well to remember it.”

Blaine looked ready to keep arguing but Carrick grabbed his arm. “Agreed,” he said, leading his brother away, where they sat down on coils of rope, leaning up against the rail and muttering to each other. She glared at them. That had seemed a little too easy. Then she chided herself for such a thought. They always backed down when pushed. And they had saved her back at the docks. She would just have to keep a close eye on them.

She did not spare them another look as she hurried down the ladder below, where Riona and Nola were organizing a score of women to count the supplies. It felt strange to be going below on one of these ships, where they had traveled as prisoners from Gaelland and she had first learned to lead.

Here it was darker and several lanterns showed piles of sacks spread across the lower deck.

“Do we know where we are going?” Nola asked softly.

“I used the setting sun to find east and west and we are sailing north, as we need to,” Bridgit announced loudly. “We shall check that twice a day and that should bring us to Gaelland at least. Once we find our home country, we can sail around to Lunster once more.”

The light was dim but it was still easily light enough to see the obvious relief on faces.

“What have we got?” she asked, before they could ask any more about the way they were sailing. The ship was so different from anything they were used to. The men had worked out how to get out the sails, and could bring them in again, but she was sure they were not sailing it properly. It felt different from the way they had sailed there. Slower, somehow. She pushed that out of her thoughts. An extra night or two at sea was not going to kill them.

“Well, we should have enough for a half-moon voyage. But we are going to have to tighten our belts,” Riona said. “There’s plenty of dried dates and oranges and even sacks of those strange, hard fruit they like. Those, at least, have water inside, which can be drunk. There is flour, which we can use to make a flat bread on their stove, and some salted mutton. But little of that. There will be complaints at the lack of meat within a day or two. We have four goats as well, so we can get a little milk and maybe some meat if the milk dries up.”

“We’ll keep them as long as we can,” Bridgit said, although she was already wondering how much the goats might eat. “Can we make it last for at least half a moon?”

“The children will be complaining but yes, we can get there. But we will be chewing on the last few dates when we finally see Gaelland,” Nola warned.

“And water?”

“There are plenty of casks aboard and we should drink from those. Once we get closer to Gaelland it is bound to rain and we can replenish them. And there is always those coconuts to drink, which can make things last longer,” Riona added.

Bridgit chewed on her lip. There were several wounded men who were unlikely to last the trip. If she banned them from eating and drinking then it would mean more for the others – but their families would be outraged and horrified with the thought that hunger and thirst would kill them quicker than their wounds. That was a question for another day. She would see how they did over the next day or so and decide then. Meanwhile there were other hard decisions to make.

“We need to lock the food and water away. None can come in and take any of it. If any do, then we shall punish them by not allowing them food for the following day,” she said.

“There’s many who are not going to like it. Not to mention the children who are used to getting more food and who won’t understand why there is so much of it and they are receiving so little,” Nola warned.

“That does not matter,” Bridgit said firmly. “We did not risk so much, and lose brave men like Ahearn, so that greed starved us to death within sight of our home. We shall give them a hot meal of mutton and bread tonight and tell them what we face. They will understand.”

She saw Nola and Riona exchange glances and knew what they were thinking. Blaine and Carrick were not going to understand anything. But with the whole ship against them, they could do nothing. “I know I swore to get them home but I’ll throw the pair of them overboard rather than have them kill the rest of us,” she said and Riona and Nola nodded agreement.