The Dowry Blade (10 page)

Maeve caught the look that passed once more between Tegan and the Marsh woman, and her voice trailed off. Tegan looked up sharply, caught out.

‘You sound like Chad,’ she said.

Maeve nodded.

‘I was quoting him.’

Maeve scowled at Brede’s uneasy look, and changed the subject. ‘You had better look after the horses until we’ve taught you how to fight properly.’

Brede turned away to collect Guida from the trees where she had left her.

‘Not now,’ Maeve said, amused. ‘You’re bleeding. Care for yourself first.’

Brede glanced down. Apart from the glancing blow across her back, she had a scratch across her thigh and a deeper wound above her elbow. The wound on her forearm where Tegan had cut her had barely started to heal. It would help if she had mail like the others, but then, she was not going to be a fighter, she was to care for the horses. Brede had never felt so grateful to be under-rated in her life. With a quiet contract in the capital, the mercenaries wouldn’t be seeing much fighting; with luck, she wouldn’t need to draw a blade against anyone. And, there was the possibility of finding Falda.

Corla had made good use of the enforced idleness of the winter, and was considerably more confident in her treatment of the wounded than she had been, but losing Balin had shaken her, and there were other injuries to her comrades. She watched Inir anxiously, dwarfed as he was by the body of his friend, still holding him, still weeping helpless angry tears. Corla forced herself to look away from that anger and found the Marsh woman under her regard. Her hands trembled as she helped Brede bind her wounds. She unwound the binding of Brede’s wrist, and frowned over the angry edges of the cut. She discarded the tattered rag that had served as bandage.

‘Surely, between you and Tegan, better work could have been made of this?’

Brede flexed her hand carefully.

‘That is Tegan’s work.’

Corla poured a tincture of herbs over the cut. Brede winced.

‘Wounds heal better if they are cleaned before you bind them,’ Corla said sternly, and then Brede’s words sank fully into her mind. She glanced at Tegan and Maeve, stiff with one another, as they had never been before, and wondered. ‘And that crack Tegan has taken to her skull? Is that your work? I’ve often wanted to knock her head against a wall, her and Maeve; but I wouldn’t stand between those two, were I you,’ Corla offered, as she tied off the bandage. She caught Brede’s wary expression and shrugged. She pulled Brede about to inspect her back, and exclaimed sharply at the scars beneath the new wound. ‘
That
one should have killed you.’

Brede turned her head, frowning and confused. Corla traced the line in her flesh, absently probing.

‘It’s a mess, this old one. You don’t heal well, do you?’

Brede shook her head, and tried not to wince as Corla dealt with the new cut. Corla glanced beyond Brede at Maeve and lowered her voice, to murmur directly into Brede’s ear, ‘They argue all the time. You could get caught up and used as a weapon – by either of them.’

Corla caught the furtive look Brede shot towards Tegan, and was almost sorry for her.

‘We don’t take sides,’ she whispered. ‘We just wait for the dust to settle.’

Brede nodded her thanks for the warning, and went in search of her horse.

The red-coated warriors still lay at Guida’s feet. The bloody sword lay abandoned near the man Brede had killed.

Brede gazed at the sword, thinking about Ailbhe, and how a king might come to lose his head, and what she might have done with the sword once the deed were done. A valuable sword – one that might be bartered for information – or used to buy her sister’s freedom, if she still lived. Brede heard steps behind her and swiftly wrapped the sword in the man’s red cloak and thrust it into the saddle roll. Maeve stepped past her, and turned the other body over, automatically searching the pockets. Brede flinched from the staring eyes of a woman scarcely out of her teens. She remembered the weight of that body striking her back. She turned back then, to look at the man she had killed. He looked younger in death than he had any right to.

I did that
, Brede thought, panicked bile rising in her throat. She looked from the one body to the other, and Tegan’s words rose in her mind.
Anything you are willing to die for?
Maeve glanced up from her task.

‘What’s the matter? Have you not seen a dead body before?’

‘Not one I killed.’

Maeve grimaced.

‘Pray the Goddess you never get used to it,’ she said.

She inspected the small handful of valuables she had stripped from the corpse, and pocketed them with slow deliberation. She stood, abruptly grim, and wiped her hands against her breeches, angry with Brede.

‘No one should get used to killing,’ she said, and walked away, her head lowered.

Brede soothed the horses, including a lame beast with a red saddlecloth, fed and watered them, cleaned and brushed their flanks. She worked methodically, scarcely thinking, comforted by the normality of her task. The abandoned horse was too lame to go any distance, even unloaded. She was still trying to persuade it to put weight on its injured foot, when Tegan arrived at her side.

‘Is that horse going to be any good?’ she asked.

Brede shook her head.

‘We’ll have to leave it then. When we get to the capital, the first thing you’re going to do is find me a new horse; that is, if you are coming?’

‘I can keep Guida then?’ Brede asked.

‘She’s your horse,’ Tegan said firmly. ‘I’ll have to ride Balin’s monster for now, if I can reach to get up to his back.’

Brede grinned. Her horse, then; and Tegan her friend once more.

‘So, are you coming with us?’

Brede glanced beyond Tegan to Maeve.

‘I can’t be a fighter.’

‘You could,’ Tegan said, ‘if you would only –’

Brede shook her head.

‘When I have a sword in my hand – I become someone I don’t like. It isn’t fear; it’s – I don’t trust myself. I don’t want to be a killer.’

Tegan smiled wistfully, part of her glad to hear that unwillingness, part of her wanting to shake Brede into some kind of sense.

‘This is war, Brede. You may not get a choice. If you want to take Guida and go, I’ll not stop you, but this is no time to walk alone.’

Brede hesitated.

‘No,’ she said at last, ‘I’ve a sister to find, and a horse to choose for you. I’ll come with you to the city, then I’ll decide. I’ve been without my Clan for years; I can wait a while longer.’

Tegan nodded and touched Brede lightly on the shoulder, intending to encourage her, but finding her hand resting longer than necessary, trying to find a way to say goodbye.

She pulled the torn edges of Brede’s ruined jerkin together, and laid her hand over the wound beneath, as Brede had done to her no more than three hours before. Brede waited for whatever it was Tegan wanted to say. She felt the blood pounding against the restriction of the bandage, and her skin prickled with sudden heat.

‘You need some mail,’ Tegan said at last, ‘and some new clothes, there’s no mending this.’

Brede moved away from Tegan’s touch. She turned to face her, trying to control a smile.

‘Tegan, enough; I’ll manage.’ She glanced beyond Tegan, observing the furtively watching Corla, and the un-furtive glare of Maeve.

Maeve caught her gaze and held it, then deliberately turned her back, scorning to give her notice. She gave some signal that Brede missed, and the warriors mounted. Tegan got some looks as she mounted Balin’s horse. Inir in particular watched her longer than the movement warranted. Brede scrambled for Guida, caught out and slow, and followed after the swiftly retreating group.

They did not travel far, just far enough to put some distance between them and the site of the battle, and find a safe place to camp. A stream and a clearing, some screening brush and trees between them and the road; a subdued gathering of firewood and cooking of food, carried out in near silence.

Brede’s offer to take a watch was rejected. The mercenaries studiously ignored her, waiting to see how the dust settled. Even Corla spared Brede no more than the briefest nod, as she settled into Riordan’s arms. Maeve’s brother, Brede reminded herself, acutely aware of the tangle of alliances about her, and that she did not fit the pattern. She pulled her cloak tight about her, shuddering with cold, and tried not to let her eyes drift to Tegan, missing the light pressure of her body against her back, pretending that was all she missed.

When Brede woke, it was to find Maeve standing over her.

‘You have a lot to learn,’ Maeve said, ‘and very little time to learn it. The first lesson is not how to use a sword, but how to avoid using it. That includes how you sleep, and how you wake. You should know where you are and who and what is about you, before you open your eyes; before you think about opening your eyes. You have a few days to learn that. This is enemy territory; treat it as such. I could have been one of Ailbhe’s spawn, with a knife at your throat.’

Maeve stepped away and Brede sat up, resentful of her words, and tone, but silently in agreement. Maeve was as like to slit her throat as any of Ailbhe’s warriors.

Maeve met Tegan’s gaze sheepishly, but she wasn’t going to give ground.

‘All winter, and you haven’t taught her that?’ she asked.

‘We were not sleeping under the same roof,’ Tegan said softly. ‘I’ve not had the opportunity.’

Maeve’s anxieties hardened into fears. There were many things she needed to hear from Tegan, so many questions.

‘This Marsh woman is special to you, is she?’ she asked.

‘I am in her debt.’

‘Meaning what?’

Tegan shrugged, wary of Maeve’s easy anger, trying to dredge a safe answer from the confusion of what she thought about Brede.

‘I owe her my life.’

‘Is that all?’ Maeve asked. Tegan laughed.

‘
All
? Isn’t it enough?’

Maeve remembered thinking that Brede was trouble when she first saw her, chafing under the yoke of her apprenticeship. She remembered being glad that Brede wasn’t her problem.

‘Barely.’ Another thought overtook the trouble that Brede might be. ‘That sword – did she make it?’

‘Sword?’ Tegan knew which sword.

‘The long one. It’s hard to miss. If she made it, I’ll keep her as armourer-smith.’

‘No, it isn’t of Brede’s making.’

‘So I’m to do what with her? She’s no warrior. You shouldn’t have made her promises.’

‘I didn’t, beyond getting to the city. We can lose her there.’

‘Shame about the sword. I’d like a sword like that.’

Tegan thought, briefly, to tell Maeve what she suspected about the sword. She hesitated, and the moment was gone.

Chapter Eleven

Chad stood in the doorway of Grainne’s tower and counted Tegan’s crew in. The numbers were right, but something about them was wrong, something beyond the harried expressions and the sweating horses. Concern took him down the steps into the courtyard, starting an automatic pairing into relationships and alliances –
Balin
. The lack should have been more obvious. Balin had been a substantial figure among the slightly-built fighters Tegan favoured. His eyes raked over the new girl. Good shoulders, sloppy unsuitable clothing, lousy attitude. Chad nodded his sympathy to Inir, the most comment he could muster, and the most Inir would be likely to accept. Tegan was at Chad’s shoulder.

‘– right under the walls.’

‘What’s that?’

‘Aibhe.’ Tegan repeated sharply.

Chad nodded.

‘I’m not surprised,’ he said, fuelling her outrage. ‘If you have criticisms, Tegan, take them elsewhere. My instructions have not included any sorties beyond the walls.’

‘And why not?’ Tegan asked frostily.

‘Our duties are within the city; I’ve been answering directly to the Queen. If she wanted me out beyond her pale she’d have told me so.’

‘But you’re not surprised that Ailbhe’s troops are so near and so early?’

Chad shrugged. Tegan pondered his choice of words.
Elsewhere
: A warning? Tegan shrugged in her turn; she was used to fighting, within the army as well as with more obvious enemies.

‘And on that subject,’ Chad said sharply, ‘you can come and see the Queen now, if you’re so sure you can do better.’

‘Fine. Let’s go.’

Tegan watched Chad’s expression but she couldn’t tell if he was bluffing.

The Queen could hear voices, fierce with subdued argument, just outside her door. The door opened and Oran ducked his head round the edge to announce her visitors.

‘I know who it is.’ Grainne said and the muttered argument fell into silence. She smiled thinly and nodded to Oran. The door was pushed further open and Chad’s bulk loomed familiarly over the threshold.

‘See who I found idling about the gateway,’ Chad said cheerfully.

‘Tegan.’ Grainne held out a hand that shook very slightly. ‘It’s good to see you back. Are you recovered?’

Tegan bowed. As she straightened she got a good look at Grainne. This was a woman she had met off and on over the last twenty years and thought she knew. She barely recognised her. Tegan gazed in silence, all thought of accusation gone.

‘Considerably.’ She said at last. ‘Ready to take over whenever you want me.’

Grainne considered Tegan: travel-stained, bruised, dishevelled; badly repaired mail covering a body that was out of condition and half starved. Her eyes slid to Chad’s glossy good health and immaculate armour.

‘Your eagerness need not have led to neglecting your own wellbeing.’

Tegan glanced down at herself. She grinned.

‘I’ll stay down-wind until I’ve time to wash.’

Tegan flicked her eyes about the room, letting the darkness and staleness impinge on her for the first time. No audience chamber this, more of a sick room: a bed in the shadowy corner, a sticky residue of some kind of physic in the deep glass beside Grainne. Tegan sniffed gently, but could not tell what the herbs were. Corla might have recognised them. Grainne smiled wanly.

‘Chad will advise you on anything you need to know, which of his team he can offer you and so on. You’ll have friends who you want to see, you’ll need to order provisions – and new armour,
better
armour, Tegan, please. Come back when you’re ready. Chad will suffice for now.’

Tegan bowed again, and as she straightened, felt Grainne’s eye on her, doubting her, and for a moment she felt another gaze, raising hairs on her arms. She glanced about the room again, sure there was someone else there. No one that she could see. She crooked an eyebrow at Chad, and strode out onto the stairs, nodding briefly at Oran as she went by. As the door closed she turned back to Chad and hissed angrily.

‘Why didn’t you warn me?’

Chad’s mouth thinned to an angry line.

‘I assumed you knew. I thought Maeve would have mentioned it.’

Grainne listened to the receding sound of dissent and leant her head against the chair back and closed her eyes. She sat still, listening to a different voice, a different tone, a different message, dragging breath and strength back into her body. She turned towards the woman standing motionless in the shadows cast by the bed curtain.

‘They had no idea you were there.’

‘You’re wrong. Tegan knew something; but she couldn’t find me. You are right about her; she has a knack for seeing. She saw right through you.’

‘Chad is easier to fool. He’s afraid of me, so all he sees is temper or haughtiness. Tegan knows me.’

‘A winter in the Marshes doesn’t seem to have done her much good. It’s as well you have Maeve also.’

‘Yes, Maeve. I suppose Tegan trusts her –’

The woman beside the bed leant forward slightly and started to sing, a soft lilting song that insinuated itself into Grainne’s muscles, easing pain, bolstering confidence.

‘Sorcha,’ Grainne said gratefully.

‘Mmm?’

‘I think this could work – but I need someone up here. Not Maeve, someone I can be sure of.’

‘So I’ll have to do something about that.’

‘How?’

Sorcha lifted a shoulder and came to sit at Grainne’s feet, her long dark curls a cloak. Grainne lifted a handful of curls and spread them over her knee; smoothing the curls straight and letting them spring back against her palm.

‘Tell me,’ she said at last.

‘I’m not sure, but I have an instinct for people.’

‘Like your instinct for riding?’

‘I can ride.’

‘I’ve never seen you.’

‘There are lots of things you’ve not seen. Take it on trust.’ Sorcha leant her head against Grainne’s knee and gazed up at her. Grainne shook her head, burying her fingers in the mass of hair in her lap.

‘Not trust then.’ Sorcha said. ‘I will buy a horse, then you can watch me ride it. No – when you are stronger, you can ride with me.’

‘I didn’t think your kind needed horses.’

Sorcha pulled her head clear of Grainne’s hand, twisting to face her.

‘My kind?’ she asked softly, her expression masklike.

Grainne found her heart beating fast, and pain winding back into her limbs.

‘Sorry,’ she whispered, ‘that was foolish.’

The mask slipped and Sorcha sank back to the floor.

‘Well, so we don’t need horses for transport. I still need exercise. Besides, I like the way horse minds work.’

‘And how’s that?’

‘Not like yours.’ Sorcha said firmly. She stood, shaking out the myriad pleats of her skirt. Grainne smiled.

‘I missed you.’

‘It’s been too long,’ Sorcha agreed.

‘I’ve been lonely without you, and vulnerable.’

‘Vulnerable, yes. Lonely? You? As I remember it, I used to have to fight for a share of your time.’

‘That was before Aeron died.’

‘It wasn’t just Aeron I had to compete with.’

‘Everything changed when she died.’

Sorcha checked her rejoinder, searching Grainne’s face.

‘If you needed me, you had only to ask.’

‘I did ask.’

‘A week ago. I’m talking about twenty-two years, Grainne. Are you telling me you’ve been lonely for twenty-two years?’

‘People find it hard to be intimate with their Queen. Only Phelan stayed the same towards me, and even he – Aeron’s death maimed him.’

‘Well Phelan –’ Sorcha grinned. ‘Has he asked you to hand-fast recently?’

‘Not since last summer.’

‘He must be losing interest finally.’

‘He never did cope well with rejection.’

‘Hardly surprising. I’m not fond of it myself.’

Grainne frowned.

‘I never rejected you.’

Sorcha wandered to the shuttered balcony, her hands tucked defensively into her long sleeves.

‘I didn’t give you an opportunity to put it into words, Grainne. I’m not keen on humiliation. I could see the way the wind was blowing.’

She pretended not to hear the gasp of protest and peered through the slats of the shutter. The angle of vision was poor. She glanced at Grainne and walked into the side chamber, which offered a better view of the courtyard. The windows here were very high but if she got onto the deep sill and braced herself against the side, she had a reasonable view. She wasn’t sure what it was about the courtyard that was drawing her out there. She jumped back to the floor and gathered up a small stone jar. She took the jar back to Grainne.

‘You should lie down. If you need it, here’s the drug. You know how to mix it. I’m going for a walk.’

Grainne opened her mouth to protest, but Sorcha was gone, only a slight disturbance in the air to show where she had been standing.

Tegan retired from the meeting with Grainne and the argument with Chad in an ill humour, which she took out on the first person she encountered, who happened to be Maeve.

Maeve heard her out in silence.

‘Fine.’ She looked around for Corla, couldn’t find her and settled instead on Inir. He could use something to keep him occupied.

‘We’re not in charge yet, find one of Chad’s and negotiate barrack space.’ Her eyes strayed over the yard and lit on Brede, fidgeting with the reins of Corla’s horse. ‘Take the Marsh woman round to Eachan, but sort out the billets first. We’ll be down on the corner when you’re ready.’

Maeve shook her head at Tegan’s protest.

‘You’re not on duty. You need a drink,’ she grabbed Tegan’s arm and walked her firmly down the narrow street to the inn at the corner. Tegan allowed her first resistance to fade. An inn was a good place to learn what was happening, and she was restless with nothing official to do.

The inn was crowded, as it always was, and smelt of sour beer and stale sweat. Tegan hesitated on the threshold, overwhelmed by a wave of nostalgia. It had been a long winter.

She loosened Maeve’s grip on her elbow, and put her arm about her waist. Maeve grinned, and guided them both through the crush of bodies to the row of barrels at the rear of the building.

Settled into a corner, Tegan relaxed for the first time in months. She drank long of her beer and sighed contentedly. Maeve sank onto the arm of Tegan’s chair and shifted against her to aid her balance. She rested her elbow on Tegan’s head, creating the illusion of private space. Tegan wished Maeve had chosen somewhere more genuinely private and caught her hand, pulling her arm around her. Maeve laughed and leant in close, seeking a kiss. Their lips had barely touched when Maeve unbalanced and they tangled into a precarious closeness that had Maeve’s ale slopping across Tegan’s shoulder. Maeve righted herself.

‘Missed you,’ she said quietly, and leant forward to force her tankard onto the crowded table. Her movement caught the eye of a man at a table near the centre of the room, who called her name with some urgency. Maeve hesitated, glanced at Tegan, then recovered her drink and wove her way through the maze of stools and outstretched legs.

‘Missed me?’ Tegan muttered, glaring at Killan’s arm about Maeve. She shrugged him off quickly enough, but – Tegan never trusted Killan. She mopped at the spilt ale on her sleeve.

A solid looking woman, one of Chad’s lieutenants, took Maeve’s place at her side. Tegan shifted slightly to make more room for her.

‘Well, Tegan?’ Ula asked, planting a kiss on her forehead.

‘Passable,’ Tegan said, taking her hand; ‘worried.’

Ula glanced across at Maeve.

‘About that?’

‘No,’ a lie. And then, ‘about Ailbhe.’ The truth.

‘Chad said you were being over-scrupulous.’

‘Over-scrupulous? I left him minutes ago. He’s in a damn hurry to spread his opinion of me. What does he mean by it?’

‘What do we care how someone else does their job?’

‘I care when it puts me and mine at risk; I care when the woman paying me cares.’

Ula raised her shoulder awkwardly.

‘I think you might have more need to worry about Maeve and Killan.’ She twisted awkwardly and waved to Murdo, at the barrels. His mouth widened into a grin at the sight of Tegan, and he struggled through the throng to loom over them both.

‘Tegan! Alive after all. You have no idea how glad we are you’re back. Maeve and Chad have been fighting so badly it’s a wonder we still have a contract.’

‘So I’ve heard. How did we get it in the first place? Who had it before and why have they gone?’

Murdo laughed.

‘Tegan, the Queen changes her household guard like other people change their underclothes. We’ll need to be very good to keep this contract, regardless of Chad’s bickering. But I hear Grainne likes you?’

He looked expectant. Tegan smiled at the memory of Grainne’s liking.

‘More than she likes Chad, anyway. If we split the team, which way will you go?’

‘Split it? Why?’ Ula asked anxiously.

Tegan sighed.

‘I’m not sure I really want to get into this yet, I haven’t had a chance to talk to Chad.’

‘No, just to argue with him yourself!’

Tegan laughed. Murdo poured ale into her cup and frowned at her in mock severity.

‘You’re back, Tegan, that’s all that matters; you can control them both.’

Tegan shook her head, feeling exhausted.

‘I don’t think I can, and I’m not going to try. I’m giving Maeve the lead, and I doubt Chad will agree to serve under her. I know that your first loyalty is to Chad, but would you consider staying with Maeve?’

Ula and Murdo looked at one another. Tegan watching them sharply, saw a
yes
forming in Ula’s smile and a
no
in Murdo’s grimace. She waited. Ula won the silent argument. She turned briskly to Tegan.

‘Wherever you are, we are, you know that Tegan. You’re the best thing to happen to Chad, and if he’s too much a fool to know it, I’m not.’

Tegan hugged Ula.

‘Give me a chance to talk to Chad, won’t you, before you talk to anyone else? I’m glad you want to stay.’

Ula flushed, but nodded. Tegan glanced over at Maeve, still engrossed in whatever tall tale Killan was spinning. Ula once more followed her gaze.