Before I could say as much to Bran, however, I watched those lovely eyes widen, those pouty lips spread, as someone appeared at the entrance to the hall bearing a torch, waving it wildly back and forth. Everyone turned as one, their cheers fading as they, too, realized something was inexplicably wrong. I frowned, recognizing the newcomer as one of the guards who’d accosted us when we entered.
“My king,” he yelled, voice straining, face lathered in sweat, “it’s the Curaitl! They’ve come, using our very own horses, and have made it to the second step! Aife leads them!”
For an instant, no one spoke.
“Tógálaí Capall!” Amergin shouted, exchanging glances with King Tuathal, who had risen to stand beside his nephew, looking impossibly fierce even from this distance. Donall, I noticed, looked completely shell-shocked. The king placed a hand on his nephew’s shoulder and nodded to his bard. “I say we turn this into an even greater tale!” Amergin continued. “Let us chase off the spear-wielders and regain Caer Capall!”
This time the cheers were bloodthirsty, full of rage and the promise of violence. I cringed at the sound, then watched in growing horror as flagons fell to the floor and the Tógálaí Capall charged the door, sprinting past Bran and I, the press of their bodies carrying me out in a wave. I fought and cursed, losing sight of Bran amidst the chaos, but soon I and the rest of the crowd had abandoned the mead hall altogether, listening to a night no longer full of laughter and music, but screams.
14
I scrambled to free myself from the horde of former revelers as they funneled out into the night, apparently very eager to join in the defense of their home. But even once they’d spread out, I still found myself carried along against my will towards the sounds of fighting. Their outraged screams were deafening, the air steaming from the heat of their bodies, and I knew without a doubt that—the moment I stopped moving—I’d be trampled beneath their feet.
At least until the Tógálaí Capall met some actual resistance, that is.
Up ahead, several of the horse breeders screamed and fell back as a small band of the Curaitl hit them from the side, wading into the throng like snakes, striking over and over again. They wore dark furs, their skin and the tips of their spears painted black, making them difficult to see by torchlight. Those around me shrank from the sight of their own people being so callously dispatched, their anger no match for the brutality of seeing their own slaughtered. They’d been encouraged to fight back by promises of glory and too much alcohol, but a mob is only as good as its odds of winning—and the Curaitl weren’t taking prisoners.
Still, with the Tógálaí Capall’s momentum suddenly slowed, I knew this would be my best chance to break free, so I elbowed my neighbors, vying for room. In the end, I had to push, shove, and pull a half dozen times each before I emerged on the far side of the crowd. I froze, only a foot perhaps from the edge of the top tier and its steep drop-off, and bore witness to the fight below.
To someone trained in the art of war, the battles that raged along Caer Capall’s lower tiers might have been a wondrous thing to behold, but—to me—it looked like utter chaos. Horses milled about, screaming and unattended, along the base of the fort. The lowest step had already been overrun, and I knew there would be bodies sprawled out on the ground—not mere drunks, this time, but victims of the Curaitl’s assault. The second tier was in better shape, but not by much; it seemed the Curaitl had broken through their defenses, though pitched battles were still taking place. Before I could study the aftermath further, however, I felt the crowd at my back shift as one, the nearest warrior nearly knocking me over the edge.
I spun to find more fur-clad spear wielders had ascended the final tier and were leveling their weapons at the Tógálaí Capall, many of whom were unarmed. Still, the horse breeders seemed to be holding their own; I watched as several leapt at the nearest spear wielder, getting inside the weapon’s longer reach to drag down their prey. It was an ugly, grisly fight, but numbers were on their side.
Or that was the case.
Until the moment Aife the Fair, warmaiden of the Curaitl, arrived.
From where I stood, I could see the woman burst over the lip of the final slope, not even winded by the climb. True to Finann’s assessment, she was indeed beautiful, though her features were more angular than feminine, all the more so with her red-gold hair pulled away from her face by a series of artful braids. She wore tan leathers and the skin of a white bear about her shoulders, the pelt already matted with blood, and wielded both sword and spear. Still caught between the crowd and the edge, all I could do was watch as she charged the Tógálaí Capall.
The first horse breeder who stepped close ended face down in the dirt without having so much as touched her, bleeding from a slash across his stomach. The second and third she simply knocked unconscious with the butt of her spear, slapping them both upside the head like errant children. The whole time her face remained remarkably impassive, almost as if she were going through the choreographed steps of a familiar dance. I quickly realized her fellow warriors fell into the gaps she left behind, securing more and more ground as she advanced, casually downing opponent after opponent. Soon they’d have a firm foothold on the top tier, and I sensed a rout was coming. But what should I do, if that happened? Flee? Fight? A horrifying howl split the night while I struggled with my decision, and I thought to spare a glance below, but something else got my attention first.
The ground was shaking.
I whirled to find Bran and his brothers leading a charge of perhaps a dozen armed guards on horseback. They galloped into the fray, taking the spear wielders by surprise, ripping into their midst and trampling over bodies. After that, it was total mayhem; Bran and his brothers moved as one, shielding one another from thrusts even as they mowed down their attackers, their mounts biting and kicking any who dared get too close. And yet, Aife and a small contingent of warriors continued their assault, working their way through the remaining Tógálaí Capall rather than doubling back to save their fellows. But that made no sense. Was she just hoping for maximum casualties, or did she have some other goal?
“You!” Aife screamed, jabbing her spear into the gut of a man maybe twenty feet from me, the tip of her sword aimed directly at my chest. Several members of the crowd stepped to the side instinctively, parting to make certain they weren’t the intended target.
“Me?” I asked, placing a hand over my heart, surprised.
“Get her!” she called, gesturing to her warriors.
I watched three of the spear wielders hesitate and scour the area before advancing towards me, lashing out at those few who still stood in their way. Panic made my heart race. What had I done? I backed away, hands raised in supplication, until I could feel the emptiness behind me, my heel in midair. I gritted my teeth, realizing I had nowhere to run. Sure, I could throw myself over the edge, but the slope was steep enough I’d be lucky to survive the fall, let alone flee from there. Besides, for some reason, the image of me tumbling end-over-end in a bid to escape pissed me off. I felt something stir within me—a deep well of anger I hadn’t realized existed. Overhead, a flock of birds soared past, their shrill voices joined in a harsh cacophony.
We would not retreat.
After all, that’s not who we were.
We met the first warrior before he could so much as raise his spear, sweeping the weapon aside with our foot, then stepping in close to deliver a vicious throat punch. The bastard dropped to his knees, clutching at his crushed windpipe, spear forgotten.
Which was convenient, because we needed a spear.
We drove our knee into the man’s face, then sidestepped, slipped our foot beneath the shaft of his fallen spear, and kicked it into the air with a practiced motion. From there, we snatched the spear from midair and flung it at our next attacker, the weapon taking her in the shoulder, missing her heart by inches. More’s the pity.
The woman launched sideways from the force of the throw, momentarily out of the fight. Unfortuna
tely, it seemed we’d lost the element of surprise; the final warrior came forward far more prepared for us, crouched low, jabbing with his spear. We danced away, warily, wishing not for the first time that we had some weapons of our own. Something that could strike from a distance, quick and often. But, since that wasn’t an option, we decided we’d have to rely on something else: misdirection.
We glanced past the warrior between one strike and the next and opened our mouth in surprise, pointing as if something had stolen our attention. The warrior spun, completely taken in by the ploy, as we knew he would be. We tackled the moron, landing with our full weight on his back, a hand locked in his hair, and began bashing his head into the ground. He scrambled for his weapon, but we swatted it away, snarling. Again and again, we slammed the man’s face into the dirt, screaming in outrage. How dare they attack us?
Which is likely why we didn’t see the woman we’d wounded until it was too late; she stabbed us through the chest with her own weapon, her strike weaker than it might have been, but still with more than enough force to drive us to the ground. She pinned us there with all her weight, grunting with the effort. The pain was excruciating, but we knew we couldn’t let her win; we lashed out with one foot, catching her knee at an odd angle, and she collapsed with a shriek. We tried to get up, to finish what we’d started, but we couldn’t. We couldn’t breathe.
A lung, a distant part of us realized.
She’d pierced my lung.
Alarm set in, and I squirmed, my heart thundering in my chest. The edges of my vision blackened. I rolled, unable to do anything else, and watched as Bran and his brothers chased off the spear wielders in the distance, forcing them to the tier below, successfully repelling the invaders. It seemed Aife had come to the same conclusion; the warmaiden signaled the retreat among her remaining warriors, angling towards the opening my three assailants had secured when they’d come after me. My vision tunneled further until all I could see was the warmaiden’s legs as she approached, her spear and sword caked in blood, firelight dancing over her skin.
Her shadow fell over me as I blacked out.
15
My guard trekked alongside me, a coiled rope wound about her waist which ended at my bound wrists. Blair—as she’d introduced herself on the first morning of our march—had a heart-shaped face, much more attractive now than I remembered, though I doubt anyone looks their best when in ridiculous amounts of pain. The shoulder wound I’d given her, like my own chest wound, had healed days ago—not that she seemed inclined to forgive and forget. If anything, Blair seemed to despise me more now than when I’d first woken up in Aife’s camp on a makeshift cot of mounded furs, my ankle tied to a post.
Confused and disoriented, I’d asked all sorts of questions, but Blair and her people hadn’t been inclined to answer any of them. Instead, they’d referred me to their leader, saying, “We don’t know, ask Lady Aife.” Of course, Lady Aife had been far too busy to see me that morning. Or, indeed, any morning since.
We’d traveled dozens of miles since then, the air growing crisper with every step until at last Blair had taken pity on me and given me a tattered fur of my own, as well as a pair of fur-lined boots. I’d been given water and a little food, but my stomach still ached. Though I’d hoped otherwise, I hadn’t regained my memory over the intervening days. In fact, the longer we marched, the more I seemed to forget. Had even Caer Capall been a dream? What of Bran and his brothers? Were they out there, even now, searching for me? Or had I simply made them up, a fantasy to latch onto while Aife and her spear wielders carried me off?
“There it is again,” Blair muttered.
“What?” I asked, startled by the woman’s voice; Blair had rarely spoke unless spoken to, and even then all that came out of her mouth had been some variant of “keep moving.”
Blair gave me a withering look, but finally jerked a thumb to our right, where a series of rocky hillsides dominated the landscape. The rest of Aife’s forces were largely on our left or in front—a long line of warriors moving at a fair clip towards the distant peaks of northern mountains. Lately, I’d begun praying we’d reach our destination long before I discovered just how tall those mountains really were; I wasn’t the least bit interested in losing any of my appendages to frostbite. “What about ‘em?” I asked, eyeing the rugged landscape she’d indicated.
“Look!” Blair urged, giving me a shove.
I stumbled a little, caught off guard, but did catch something out of the corner of my eye in the process. I squinted, studying the space between two boulders where I thought I’d seen…something. “What was that?”
“A horse, probably,” Blair replied, though she sounded unsure. “Must have followed us from the fort. Maybe it thinks we have food to spare.” Blair shrugged and returned her attention to the march, using her spear like a staff to navigate the uneven landscape. I trailed after her, aware she’d use the butt-end of that spear on me if I held her up but continued to glance back at the hills. I didn’t say it but somehow, I knew that what Blair had seen—what I had caught a glimpse of—hadn’t been a horse.
Not unless there were horses around here which looked like feral dogs.
“How much further?” I asked.
“You ask that at least ten times a day. Tell me, strainséir,” Blair snapped, using her preferred term for me, a word that I’d learned meant foreigner, “do you get as tired of the sound of your own voice as I do?”
“Not really,” I replied, pursing my lips thoughtfully. “But I’ll tell ye what, let me carry your spear for a while, and I’ll gladly watch over ye while ye take a much-needed nap. What d’ye say?”
“Why would you do that?” Blair asked, suspiciously.
It took me a moment to realize Blair hadn’t caught on to what I’d been implying. That, in her mind, I really was offering to guard her while she slept. “Ye lot really struggle with sarcasm, don’t ye?”
“You mean lies.”
I shrugged, the difference negligible to me. The warrior I’d tricked during the battle, a thin, bald man named Rhys, had been even more critical of my deceptive tactics; I’d spent the better part of ten minutes retching after the blow he’d landed to my stomach on our first day’s march. Of course, it’d been at least partially satisfying watching Blair clout him over the head with a rock for having attacked a defenseless prisoner.
“I don’t understand you, strainséir.”
“Ceara,” I insisted, using the name Finann had given me on the night of Aife’s raid. Three days later and I had only barely pieced together what the warmaiden had intended—a strategic strike into the heart of the Tógálaí Capall’s territory, proving herself and her warriors the greater threat and essentially rebuffing Donall’s proposal. Personally, I thought it all seemed a little extreme when a simple “no” might have sufficed. That was until Rhys had inadvertently revealed the real reason Aife had fought her way to the top of Caer Capall: to capture me.
Blair spat to one side. “That is not your name.”
“It was given to me, and it’s not like I have another.”
“Well you cannot have this one, either. Pick something else.”
“Why?” I reached up, using what little slack I had, and grabbed a fistful of my own hair. “It’s accurate, isn’t it?” I asked, waving it about.
Blair’s eyes widened. “Red?” She barked a laugh, then pointed to a piece of cloth tied to the end of her spear. “That is red. The color. But Ceara, the name, means spear.” She shook her weapon in front of my eyes, defiantly. “When you woke and told us your name, we thought you were mocking us,” Blair admitted, searching my face.
I frowned, realizing my mistake. Finann hadn’t given me a name, he’d been teasing me. Like ribbing a fair-skinned person for being pale. Of course, this wasn’t the first social gaffe I’d committed among the Curaitl; the more I interacted with them, the more apparent the gaps between us became, even if we did technically speak the same language. Indeed, the miscues and blunders seemed to
go both ways—my every joke taken seriously, my occasional gesture viewed with open hostility.
“I didn’t know,” I admitted. “I’m sorry.”
Blair’s eyes narrowed. “It is hard to tell when you are lying.”
“That’s how ye know someone’s good at it,” I replied, without thinking.
The shaft of Blair’s spear hit me across the knuckles. I screamed, the pain immediate and sharp, and sank to my knees clutching my throbbing hand. Blair jerked me to my feet, putting that lovely face mere inches from my own, eyes searching. “From now on, if I catch you in a lie, I will do this. You have been given to me until we reach the pass. By the time we arrive, I will have broken you of this habit. It is far kinder than what will happen to you if you lie to Lady Aife, or to others among us who do not appreciate being made to look foolish. Do you understand?”
I fought back tears, biting my lip so hard I knew it’d bruise, all while suppressing the sudden urge to choke the woman to death using her own spear as above us, a crow cawed, accompanied by the sound of wings flapping. We could do it, we knew. We’d never make it far dragging her corpse along for the ride, but we could at least hurt her.
But wait…that’s what had gotten me here in the first place, hadn’t it?
In fact, it seemed like every time I lashed out without thinking, losing myself to bloodshed and violence, I’d ended in a worse situation than before. And so I rejected the voice inside my head, ground my teeth through the pain, and fought to stand under my own power. Once on my feet, I met Blair’s eyes, and what she saw behind mine made her flinch.
“I reject your kindness,” I said, voice thready with pain, but menacing, nonetheless. “Know this: if ye ever touch me like that again, I swear I will tear out your eyes and keep them as trophies, leavin’ ye to wander this world blind for the rest of your long and miserable life.”
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