by Jules Watson
‘That is your choice,’ Cahir said to the red-faced Saxon king. ‘But we are all sovereign leaders, are we not? Our choices are our own.’
‘And what is yours, then?’ Gede interrupted softly. ‘Brother.’
Trying not to wince at his sore back, Cahir got to his feet. ‘I forged this alliance to free Alba, just as Calgacus and Eremon fought for that day. This we have done. The outpost forts north of the Wall are destroyed and their men disbanded. Their Alban allies have been cut off from their Roman masters. The Wall forts are burning, the northern Dux executed. Their spies and scouts, their treaties, tithes and taxes are all in ruins. Is this not what our goal was? Have we not reached it? I say we have.’
Fergus gazed up, still undecided. ‘But other opportunities have come to us, brother. Should we not take them?’
Cahir looked down at him. ‘I have come to see that true kingship lies in gleaning what is real from the shades that lead us astray.’
‘Kingship!’ Garnat spat. ‘Your people have always been the Roman lovers, the hounds at their table snarling and snapping for scraps. Only we have the blood honour, only we have remained true and free!’
Seeing the contempt in Gede’s eyes, the calm abruptly deserted Cahir. Without thinking, he whipped out his dagger from its sheath and held his arm high, anger drumming in his breast. ‘Out of respect for my brother kings I will not spit you like the pig you are,’ he said to Garnat, ‘but in answer to your lies I hereby give you my blood honour!’ Holding Gede’s eyes, he drew the blade up his wrist and forearm. Though the cut was shallow, when he lowered his arm and clenched his fist, blood dripped to the rug. ‘I hereby swear on my own life-blood that I have fulfilled my oath to free Alba of the Romans. I have discharged my vow with honour. Now I pull myself back from the abyss, for I know who I am.’
A flame lit in Gede’s face before he masked it. ‘You weaken us by this act,’ he said softly. Yet I will not stop you.’
‘Nor do you have the right.’ Cahir sheathed his dagger. ‘I and my men will leave at first light.’
He nodded stiffly at the other kings, as Kinet uncurled and stood up. ‘I will take my leave and return home with my men also.’
Fergus looked between them, spluttering, ‘But I need to think on this; I need to take this in, what you say—’
‘Then do that.’ Cahir already felt lighter, as the blood dripped down his wrist. ‘I have thought enough.’
As he strode out of the tent, he paused only to clasp wrists with Kinet, then continued on. Ruarc, Mellan and Ardal fell into step behind, silent as they retraced their path across camp, Cahir pressing his arm to his side to stem the blood. Though he moved slowly, his heart raced.
Warriors caroused at their fires, fought and wrestled, gamed, diced and drank. The heaving crowds were growing bigger, as drunken men threw piles of Roman shields and spear-shafts on the flames, as well as abandoned carts and boots taken from the corpses.
Cahir was surprised when, in the shadows between two fires, Ruarc’s hand fastened on his shoulder. He turned to see the young man’s face contorted with a mix of anger and fear at his own boldness. Cahir spoke to the other two men. ‘Go back and tell our warriors all that has happened. We must be ready to march at dawn.’
Mellan and Ardal melted away. ‘Come then,’ Cahir said to Ruarc. ‘Out with it.’
Ruarc’s mouth worked, his gaze accusing. ‘How can you leave this army now?’
Cahir compressed the throbbing wound on his arm. ‘Because it is the right thing to do.’
‘You stood on that mound at Beltaine and told us that we must fight for Alba’s honour! You drew us in with fine words about glory, about striking a blow against the invaders who had bled our land dry!’
‘And this is what we have done. I have given you this glory, have I not?’
‘But … we’ve died for you, bled for you, and now we have the chance to go where no Alban has ever gone. We have the chance to take Britannia for our own, to make the whole island Dalriada! How can you tell us to abandon the fire you lit in us? You make cowards of us all.’
Cahir raised a hand to stem that impetuous fury. You forget yourself – in many ways. You heard what I said. Our gods walk in Alba, but there are other gods in this land. I advocated defence, not conquest.’ He took a step closer to Ruarc. ‘As for cowardice: how cowardly is it to rape and kill children, as this army has done, leaving stinking death in its wake? Is that glory? Is that honour?’
‘Of course not. And we never did any such thing.’
‘Because I did not allow it. Just as I know that we reached our goal while luck was with us, and now it is time to draw back. For I tell you, Ruarc, that if we give in to greed, we will be trapped on the coast when the Emperor’s army comes.’
‘Then we must continue to fight them,’ Ruarc argued. ‘They are weakened – now is the time!’
Cahir seized Ruarc’s wrist, pulling him close. ‘When Minna was given the visions that woke me she said only that we would free Alba. That was the destiny of my line, my destiny, do you hear, and we have done it. But if we go on now, the whole land will be scoured of life – and I will not give my name to that destruction.’
Ruarc broke away and turned to the darkness, running an unsteady hand through his hair.
You and your sword-mates can join the Picts if you must.’ Cahir’s voice was icy. ‘I won’t hold you. But mark me, you won’t return to Dunadd.’
Ruarc’s shoulders tensed, then fell. ‘I swore to follow you, and I will keep to that as you kept faith with us. And I don’t want that blood on my hands, of course. Only …’ He glanced back with a bitter smile, ‘I wanted to make a mark, somehow. I wanted glory, to make a name so they might sing about me like Davin just sang about you.’
‘And haven’t you earned that already?’ Cahir reminded him wearily. ‘Two great battles, and you by my side in each one.’
‘I mean some glory for me alone, to be remembered like the prince Eremon was.’
‘Then perhaps you should listen to your bard songs more carefully. The greatest warriors are not only the bravest fighters. They know when to be merciful, when to be wise, when to subsume their own needs for the greater good.’
Ruarc’s eyebrows rose. ‘You sound just like that Christian priest of Maeve’s.’
Cahir cuffed him away with a smile. ‘You are young, brother – you have plenty of time to gain a name. And if it makes you feel any better, I have an inkling that after this is settled, the Picts will be turning up on our doorstep anyway. I’ve only made a worse enemy of Gede now, and if he can’t take Britannia he’ll want Alba.’
Ruarc brightened at that, as they moved towards their fire. ‘You know,’ he said in a low voice, ‘we could take the mountains while they are away …’
Cahir found himself laughing, relieved. ‘We’ll talk about it when we get home.’
‘But—’
‘When we get home.’
Two nights later, Minna’s guards had discovered that the ruined farmstead in a valley up ahead was held by Roman soldiers, a motley crew gathered from some of the remnants of the destroyed army.
Smoke from the burned timbers stung her nostrils as she stumbled past hastily dug pits filled with sharpened stakes, and was bodily pushed through the tangled brakes of thorn fence.
As they passed beneath a gatepost, Minna glanced up at a small statue of the goddess Minerva’s owl, its wings broken off. Maimed and helpless, as Donal and his men had been helpless. Her throat aching, Minna staggered on, then suddenly stumbled to the broken edge of the wall. Leaning over, she retched up the scant remains of dried meat into the nettles. The sickness was coming every day now, and she was terrified for the baby, curling around it at night, seeking for its feeble light. One of the soldiers growled at her and dug her in the side with his spear-butt, forcing her on as she shakily wiped her mouth.
They stopped in a large yard lit by bonfires, scattered with knots of men and whinnying horses. The leader of Minna’s ban
d headed for the only roofed house, where a guard leaned against the wall. ‘Is your officer in here?’ Minna’s captor demanded. ‘We’ve come from the garrison at Luguvalium.’
The man’s head was bandaged around one ear. ‘Officer?’ He spat on the ground. ‘All our officers got it in the guts along with the Dux, didn’t they? Savage blue bastards.’
Minna stared at her feet. Her boots had worn through, and one toe was sticking out the end, bloody and black with dirt. A shudder ran over her shoulders. She was one of those savages now. How would they name her? Witch.
A witch, to be hacked and burned.
Later, in the darkness, she lay fitfully beneath a makeshift shelter of branches against a crumbled wall.
During the course of the day there had been much tramping of soldiers’ feet back and forth, accompanied by shouting and cursing. Horses had been led out of the gates by men with bows. Others squatted behind the thorn fences, peering out across the fields that surrounded the farmstead, the stands of barley flattened to stubble.
All day her belly had groaned with hunger, but she had ignored it, hanging on the rope that bound her wrists to the shelter, head down. When the sun was high someone had approached from the campfires, a pair of muddy boots stopping beside her. Then, to her surprise, the person proffered a hunk of charred deer-meat on a scrap of burned timber.
Unable to raise her head, she whispered, ‘Grates,’ and reached for the meat with her bound hands. The man had silently walked away, hunched into rusty mail, his helmet streaked with mud.
Now, as night fell, Minna was grateful to leave the pain of the daylight for her dreams. In those dreams she was with Cahir, holding his face between her hands. And he rested one palm on her belly, his warmth radiating into her skin.
Chapter 56
Once he turned his face towards his own lands, Cahir began to breathe more freely, and the Dalriadan and Attacotti army swiftly retraced fifty miles of road.
His scouts reported no significant Roman movements ahead, so Cahir and Kinet ordered their men to spread across a wider front to scavenge for food before regrouping north-west of Eboracum. The town itself had escaped Pictish wrath, being too large and well-defended to attempt, and Cahir would certainly not be tackling it now.
The next day Kinet went his own way, and as his own Dalriadans had dispersed Cahir retained only one hundred men and his guard, as well as a dozen horses taken from dead Roman officers.
On the second night, threading his way through the campfires, Cahir listened to the murmured conversations and was satisfied that there was no disgruntlement at his decision to turn back, only relief. The exhausted warriors sat talking, mending their boots or sharpening their swords, the wounded lying pale in the firelight. It was calm now the Picts were gone.
He stopped by a copse of alders and sniffed. The damp made him think of the marshes at home. Closing his eyes, he saw Minna’s face before him, her cheeks brushed by the dark waves of her hair. She was waiting for him at Dunadd, and soon he could sink into her arms, warm and replete again.
At his own tent, his warriors were laughing, Mellan and Ardal winding the bloody flesh of stolen chickens around green-sticks, then propping them over the fire.
Cahir sat down on his bed-roll, as one of the men swallowed his ale and grinned. ‘Well, leaf-fall is coming, and I’m looking forward to being back at my own hearth …’ he leered around, ‘and back inside my wife’s sweet thighs, eh?’
Cahir stretched to loosen his tight muscles. ‘You mean back under the lash of her tongue, too, Eber?’ The chuckles swelled into guffaws.
Then he heard the horses nicker. By the stream, one stallion raised its nose and neighed, tossing its head.
The horses whinnied again and Cahir peered into the darkness, frowning. Ruarc had volunteered first watch with the other guards posted in a ring at the edge of the fields. The wind was up now, blowing from the north, dragging on the upper branches of the great oak and ash trees so they groaned.
Then the starlight caught someone’s sword. Satisfied, he turned his attention back to Eber telling the story of an old raid on the Picts, with some fanciful embellishments. Cahir smiled at the disbelieving snorts of the younger warriors.
A shout echoed across the darkened fields.
Instantly everyone was on their feet, as the cry came again, faint and distressed. Cahir was already reaching for his sword and bellowing orders when a horn blasted out. It was Ruarc, blowing desperately, again and again, before finally being silenced. Another sound came, an unearthly rumbling.
Cursing, Cahir fumbled with his sword-belt. There were no Romans for miles … How could anyone approach so fast? He ran to the edge of the firelight just as a blurred throng of stallions exploded into view from the darkened fields, long-legged Roman stock like his own captives. He desperately tried to visually disentangle riders from mounts. Wild hair, mottled furs, curling tattoos – perhaps seventy or eighty.
Picts.
He must be dreaming … but as his sword came up, his back to his men, he heard the howl of fury emerge from his own throat. The Picts were close enough for Cahir’s hastily-assembled bowmen to shoot now, so, with wild screeches, the easterners threw themselves from horseback instead, and drew their swords.
The Dalriadans around him leaped forward, and both sides merged in a clash and plunge of arms. After the shock, Cahir’s blood resumed pumping and he ran in, enraged beyond all reason. Many of his men, caught half-asleep, had been cut down in the first rush. But the sides were evenly matched now, as they whirred swords about their heads in the way of the tribes, double-handed.
Coals and burning branches were scattered from the fires, and in moments the black figures all struggled against a backdrop of flaming tents and bushes. The faces of the men before Cahir were twisted masks of tattoos and bloody firelight, cut across by shadows. The self-inflicted wound on his arm had opened, and blood from it slickened his sword-hilt. He felt exposed without his mailshirt, his skin itching as if a thousand spears were poised to skewer his flanks.
Now he was backed up against the fire-pit, swinging his sword slowly around, waiting for the next man to come at him. Ardal and Mellan were fighting furiously with three of the enemy beneath an ash tree. At Cahir’s feet, piled in with a mound of Picts, Eber’s glassy eyes gazed up. He would not reach his wife’s thighs after all.
With a roar, Cahir lunged at the nearest Pict, but the man glanced at him and backed away, shouting. He tried again, pouncing at another warrior who also leaped far from his blade, looking fearfully over his shoulder to something behind him.
He whirled. A man was striding onwards towards him through the heaving knots of fighters with no glance to left or right, a long dagger in one hand and a naked sword in the other. He ploughed on through the mass of men, pausing only to cut down the Dalriadans who managed to throw themselves under the guard of Picts around him.
Gede.
Now Cahir understood that the real battle was here. Suddenly, Gede began running towards him, driving in hard and fast, and Cahir leaped to the side and lunged to block the blow. Their swords clashed, and across the blades he looked into Gede’s face and saw unveiled at last his true self. Hunger. Hatred.
They blocked, jabbed and staggered back, parrying between the fire and the flaming trees. In moments Cahir’s face was running with sweat: he had never fought anyone so swift and lithe. He renewed the attack, slashing and ducking, unwilling to be put on the defence. Chillingly, through it all, Gede’s expression never wavered, and he kept his sharp gaze on a place below Cahir’s chin, and went after it with unflinching determination. The hawk-eyes tattooed on those cheeks pierced him, the red beard a stabbing beak … Cahir tossed sweat from his eyes. A man … he’s just a man.
Sparks flew as one of the Dalriadans flung a Pict into a pile of flaming logs, and Cahir took the moment of inattention to target not Gede’s body but his hand. With a grunt, he caught Gede’s sword out of his fingers, and it fell amid the tree roots. For the f
irst time, Gede’s eyes flickered.
Cahir circled him with teeth bared, but the Pict king made no move for other weapons beyond his dagger, though swords lay in tumbled piles at his feet. Then, out of nowhere, the brute Garnat came in for the attack. As Cahir swung to face him, from the corner of his eye he saw Gede dart in and grab his own blade at the base of the tree. As soon as it was in his hand, Garnat melted away, leaving the two kings alone once more amid the morass of heaving fighters. Gede lunged for him.
Parrying desperately, Cahir was forced to retreat again and again, until at last he tripped over a discarded helmet and stumbled. In that moment, frozen in time, Cahir saw how Gede fractionally shifted his grip lower, and in a flash realized what was coming – the same sword slash he’d seen Gede use on the Romans so many times.
So many times.
The memory poured into his mind: Gede on the battlefield dispatching the Roman soldier with that unexpected blow. And here it comes, Cahir’s mind thought from afar, with perfect clarity. The impossible twist, mid-lunge, catching me off guard, then the plunge of the blade.
He remembered it all, but, as Gede’s torso twisted on itself, Cahir could only stretch back like a bow string. He didn’t have time to move his feet, he couldn’t shift his body out of the way. All he could do was concave his chest, round his back and pull in his belly. Gede’s blade, which should have sunk deep into flesh, instead only parted cloth and sliced skin. Cahir felt the burning trail and cried out as he over-balanced, falling backwards to his haunches, stunned. Instantly, Gede recovered his surprise from the aborted swing, and turned to deliver a more triumphant blow.
He never got the chance.
‘The Boar! The Boar!’ came the cracked roar, and Ruarc came stumbling into the firelight from the shadows at the side, drenched in blood from a head wound, limping from a cut across the thigh. He threw himself at Gede a moment before the second lunge. The Pict king was knocked sideways to one knee, and Ruarc snarled as he unsteadily gripped both hands around his blade, going for his head. Wildly, Gede blocked the descending sword with his own, and as Ruarc poised there, bearing down like some gory, avenging god, Gede slashed up with the weapon hidden in his other hand. The long, wicked dagger ploughed straight into Ruarc’s unprotected belly to the hilt.