by Jules Watson
With a bellow of rage and grief, Cahir hurled himself from his knees while Gede’s dagger was still stuck inside Ruarc’s ribs. He stabbed under the Pict king’s arm beneath the mailshirt, Gede’s sword slipping from nerveless fingers while Cahir scrabbled furiously for Ruarc’s fallen blade. As Cahir’s head swooned queerly, he threw himself on top of Gede, the Pict king still stuck in the tangle of his own weapons, and drove the point into the hollow of his throat.
With all his weight, Cahir, King of Dalriada staked the king of the Picts to the ground.
As a wail went up from all the Pict warriors, Cahir found his legs going out from under him and he slumped to his buttocks with a distant, dizzy sense of surprise. Next to him Gede’s bloody face was already frozen in a rictus of shock and fury.
Everywhere the Picts were stumbling back from the fight now their king was dead, Garnat alone trying to reach Gede’s body. But he was dragged away by the surviving enemy, their war cries echoing from the hillslopes.
Strength was draining away from Cahir. He collapsed onto his side and watched the remaining Picts racing for the darkness.
Chapter 57
Minna thought she was still dreaming.
But the whisper was repeated with feverish impatience, like a drum struck sharply beside her, dragging her back from Cahir’s smile. Minna. Minna.
‘Minna!’
She opened one swollen eye a slit to the glow of the bonfires against the night sky and the black shapes of her captors dicing and drinking.
‘By the gods, wake up!’
She went rigid – she was being tricked; she must be.
An expulsion of breath sounded on the other side of the shelter, against the crumbling wall. ‘Tiger, I can see your eyes so I know you are awake. But don’t say anything; just stay still.’
She could not move anyway. She tried to moisten her dry throat to say his name, but her tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth. Cian. She said it inside, to make him real.
Hands reached through the screen of branches and a blade sawed at the rope. ‘I presume you want to get out of here,’ Cian murmured. ‘So no throwing your arms around me, no noise.’ He paused. ‘Please tell me you are better at escapes than last time.’
Minna nodded, so light-headed the flames danced before her eyes. Blood rushed to her unbound wrists, tingling painfully.
‘Then listen.’ Cian’s voice cracked. ‘ We’re going to slide around the wall into the shadows, past the waste pit, and push through the fence over there. Follow me closely, though, because there is a horse in the woods and we need to be off quickly. Understand?’
She groped through the gap in the shelter and found his warm, callused palm. Cian gripped her hand for the briefest moment before withdrawing his. ‘No time, Minna.’
After peering over his shoulder, he helped her through a hole he tore in the brush shelter. On hands and knees they crept around the corner of the wall. It was late, and the disorganized rabble by the fires were either arguing drunkenly or had already passed out. No one looked back.
Cian went ahead, pulling back a section of the thorn fence and sliding down the slope towards a dark bank of woods. At the edge of the thorn-brake, halfway down, he paused and dragged her into a crouch. Two soldiers on watch approached from opposite ends of the farmyard. As they met, one grunted, ‘Bloody idiots will bring the barbarian army down on us with a blaze that big.’
Cian waited until their footfalls faded, then, half-carrying Minna, he stumbled across the cleared ground into the woods. As soon as they reached the horse and Cian caught the reins, she sank to her knees in the soaking undergrowth and brought up the remains of the charred meat. It was brought on by terrible relief, swamping her.
He made no move to touch her, gazing down impassively as she shuddered. When she finished, he shoved a water flask at her and, after she drank, heaved her, shivering, onto the horse. He levered himself up before her and nudged the stallion into a walk.
At first Minna was dizzied by the rush of shadows and moonlight, the scents of leaf-mould and streams, the scratch of branches on her cheeks and huddled shoulders. But then her hand crept to her belly and was absorbed there.
Tentatively, she sent fingers of awareness inside, and was rewarded by the tiniest glimmer of soul-light, enough to draw her on from despair.
They rode through the hours of night, stopping every now and then to listen, peering cautiously ahead into the shadows and starlit clearings. Minna never asked him how he came to be there. All that mattered was that he was.
He was silent … she could sense no feeling in him … and so at last she simply pressed her cheek into his back, clinging on. Dully, she realized he was broader across the shoulders now, and the muscles under her cheek were taut and hard as iron. He was different. That was all her mind could cope with, before she closed her eyes with no thought except that she was safe.
At dawn Cian stopped in a clearing and lifted her down. She hobbled a little way, the bruises from the jab of lances still sore, her back aching. There was a hint of grey light in the sky through the trees, enough to see the mist wreathing the ground.
Enough to turn and absorb Cian’s face.
Weak though Minna was, she forgot all her own pain the moment she set eyes on his face, her gaze roaming over the dreadful hollows and protruding cheekbones. It was a gaunt skull sculpted by bruised eyes and grey skin. Cuts webbed his flesh, and his black hair was hacked brutally short. Slowly, her hand rose towards him, her fingers brushing his cheek. ‘Cian?’ she whispered.
He flinched at her touch but did not step back, his entire body quivering. But it was when she met his eyes that she saw the true loss of him, for they were haunted and glassy, as if he looked through her because he could not face her.
‘I heard of the Dalriadan witch when I came back to camp,’ he said hoarsely. ‘I did not believe it could be … but then I brought you the meat to find out.’ He dazedly touched her hair, fingering a matted tendril as if he had never seen the colour before. ‘They hurt you. You are bruised.’
She touched a long scar on his jaw. ‘You have your own wounds.’ It was as her palm held his cheek that she felt the storm raging in him, and suddenly her own pain and weariness simply faded. The eyes she turned up to him held sorrow, for what was marked in his face.
He gasped as he met them. ‘I have fought for so long … killed so many. I’ve tried …’ He stopped. ‘I wanted …’ It was terrible watching him, as if he were gagging on the words, unable to make any sense, or to think beyond pain.
Minna’s other hand closed the circle to cup his face, pierced by the horror in his eyes. ‘It doesn’t matter,’ she whispered, for that is what came to her. ‘It doesn’t matter any more.’
And the Source was there in her, a warmth pouring through her hands and heart, taking all her own hurts and grief and guilt with it. It does not matter. The light spoke with its own power, streaming through Minna as her soul simply stood aside, bowing to the Lady in surrender. All can come before the Goddess, their Mother, and lay down their hurts and be healed. Lay them down now, my child, and be free.
Minna knew Cian could not hear the words, but this was an ancient love that came through her, an old power from the time before speech, and so it flowed directly into his soul.
He gulped back a cry, as if he were being strangled, and suddenly he sank on his knees before Minna in the wet grass and flung his arms about her waist. His sobs were dry and hoarse, pulled up from his bowels.
Shaken by his grief, Minna clasped arms about his head and held it to her belly and chest. She turned her cheek on his crown, staring into the heart of the red sun as it rose now through the trees, and her tears for him ran into his hair.
Then the sun blurred into flame, and in its heart Minna saw visions.
It wasn’t like with the soldier, when the voices of the Sisters whispered what to say. Now, she simply knew, as if she had always known, that love and surrender to the greater good, the sharing of burdens for ot
hers, opens the spirit-eye. And a heart who has so given, and so surrenders, can flower into grace and thereby see the greater vision.
Something poor Brónach had not understood.
So Minna saw a small boy, and by his side a graceful mother holding his hand, as a father and three brothers rode off to war, their spears held proudly. And the hills behind were Alban. At the head of the army rode a Dalriadan king, and a young prince beside him with dark hair. Cahir, Minna cried. War-horns pealed over the warriors’ heads, for the father and brothers were being called to battle on the old king’s behalf.
Then the picture fractured and there were only vague snatches: a warband of Picts clashing with Dalriadans in a valley, a terrible slaughter, more lurid for having been imagined by the boy, where the loch waters ran red. Then the cold light of actual memory as the father and brothers were burned on one pyre together, their shields placed over the rents in their flesh, as the old king watched with no emotion on his face but regret. And in the heart of the boy, rage was kindled, stoked by grief.
Minna saw the mother and the small boy walking away from their home, then, its burning roof dwindling behind them, swallowed by the hills. A confused sense came of time passing, and finally she glimpsed the mother, the life leached out of her body by pain until her face was only a skull covered with skin. So the cold winter took her. Mamaí, the boy whispered over her, brokenly. Mamaí.
‘You are Dalriadan.’ Minna spoke into Cian’s thick hair.
He stiffened, his heart struggling as his thoughts darted about inside her like sparks. He tried to hate them all, Dalriada and Picts … his father died for the wealth of one, at the hand of the other. But no matter how many he kills it does not get better, only worse … and now he can’t … he can’t do it any more … He had run out of killing.
She closed her eyes, and pressed her lips to his brow. ‘Peace,’ she whispered. ‘You don’t have to.’
He went entirely still. ‘No?’ His voice was muffled in her clothes.
‘No. But speak of those you have slain, and there you will find absolution.’ She rested her chin on his head, as if bracing them both for what would come.
And so in that new dawn, with the sun shafting golden through the mist, Cian surrendered up to Minna every black deed and every blow, and every man maimed and killed. Though it had only lasted a few moons, it still amounted to a tangled hill of bodies.
It was daylight by the time he finished, and then there were no more tears to shed.
Chapter 58
Breath rattling. Fever streaming. Pain lancing across his chest.
Cahir felt the litter of branches beneath him, his hand curled into claws among the hacked leaves. Voices floated about him.
‘We should stay here and care for him as best we can.’
‘But the Picts could come back.’
‘Yes, yes, they might. We must get him north, now. The druids are not far away.’
‘But I don’t think he can be moved. Look at him!’
‘I don’t care … we have to. Hurry!’
The burning came again, and the ceaseless heaving of Cahir’s belly so that nothing but bile leaked weakly from the side of his mouth. And how fast his heart pounded, like the hooves of a wild horse, a mad stallion. He gulped at the air, his breathing shallow and swift.
The black night wheeled around him and torches flamed above his head, as the litter lurched along a rough track. A tracery of tree branches was lifted against the lightening sky.
‘… get him north …’ the murmurs came.
North. Home. Alba.
In silence Cian took Minna over a high plateau and then down defiles so narrow she could put a hand on each side; then through hidden groves of ash and birch, dappled with sunlight.
Though Cian did not speak, her own pains had faded now to dull aches, the scratches, bruises and cuts soothed by the light that had filled her body. Her skin felt as if it glowed, and she looked down at her hands in the shadows of the trees and wondered.
They stopped at the edge of a spur of forest that flowed from the moorland plateau, reaching up a long vale to the Wall. At the head of the vale, Minna could see a faint blur of smoke over the dark line of stone. He hadn’t even asked her if she wanted to return to Alba. He seemed to know.
When Cian slid from the horse, he lifted a face that was not ashamed of his weeping, as she had feared. ‘We do not have long. They might come after us in the daylight, but you are close enough here to reach the Wall safely, and the Albans hold that still.’
There were depths in his gaze that had not been there before; now tears had come, and release, she saw a wisdom being forged by pain. Always finely modelled, his features were no longer fey and insubstantial, but settled, harder somehow. The lines by his mouth and brow and sorrowed eyes showed his beauty as she had never seen it before. He was a man now, not a boy.
‘Minna, I must know why. Why you were here. Why … this …’ His hand sketched helplessly in the air. He had felt the change in himself, the light of grace, and must be wondering what had wrought it.
Slowly, she slipped to the ground and sat down on a fallen log in a shaft of sun. Yes, she owed him that telling and, most of all, why she would not escape from Dunadd with him.
By the time she finished, Cian was squatting in the bracken at her feet, his hands cupped around his nose, his eyes closed. ‘Gods.’ He shook his head, as if trying to decide what question to ask first. ‘You are telling me you were born in Alba before.’
‘Yes.’
He looked out over the woods, spangled with dew. ‘The many-born,’ he said under his breath. ‘So you are Dalriadan.’
‘As are you,’ she returned softly.
He acknowledged that with only a bleak smile, gesturing out towards the Wall, where the air still smelled of smoke. ‘But you brought all this about? You?’
A fleeting guilt came, but the Mother’s grace still filled her and she was able to touch it and let it go. ‘Not only me, not really. Cahir felt the pressure to heed his ancestors, but he’d lost his way. And then I was sent the visions to bring him back … to make him remember She heard the passion creeping into her voice and trailed away, her face burning.
He turned to stare at her, and her chin went up a little, unconsciously. She hadn’t told him all of her story with Cahir, because … well, she wasn’t sure why it was so hard. ‘You see, Cahir and I had to do this together. To be one; to help Alba break free of Rome.’
Cian’s brows rose. You may well have accomplished that, at least,’ he said, with a spark of grim humour. ‘The northern forces are in disarray, the Dux dead, the Wall taken. The fine Roman army is left scurrying about the hills like starving rabbits.’ He dropped his chin, and when he spoke again his voice was low. ‘So … do you love him, then?’
‘Yes,’ she said simply, her gaze resting on the top of his black head. ‘He asked me to be his lennan.’
Cian blew out his breath, then glanced up, his blue eyes very bright. ‘Well, well. When first I saw you in Eboracum, who would have thought that one day you’d be a Dalriadan queen, and me a poor sod in the Roman army?’
‘Queen?’ She shook her head. ‘I don’t think so.’
‘Near enough.’ Unexpectedly, he reached out and hesitantly touched her cheek. Then she knew he had changed for ever. ‘And does he love you in return?’ he asked softly.
‘Yes,’ she breathed.
He absorbed that. ‘Then I’m glad you found what you wanted, Tiger.’
‘As can you.’ She grasped his hand. ‘Come home with me.’
He pulled back. ‘No.’
‘They are your people – they are good people. They will understand; Cahir will, if I explain.’
Slowly Cian uncurled to his full height. ‘That boy is dead, Tiger: I turned my back on Dalriada long ago. There’s no going back for me, not after what I’ve done … the Alban blood I’ve shed.’ He rubbed his palms unconsciously on his thighs. ‘Once you’ve given up anything soft inside yo
u to kill a man, you can’t find it again.’
‘That’s not true!’ She leaped up. ‘Cahir isn’t like that – he is a warrior, but he is gentle, and he can love.’
He regarded her bleakly. ‘Then that’s why he deserves you.’
Speechless, Minna could only turn when he took her arm and pulled her around, pointing. ‘Hurry now. If you take Brand with you you’ll get to the Wall swiftly enough.’
‘Take your horse? But you need him.’
He shrugged. ‘I will have to go south now, perhaps to one of the walled towns, or over to Gaul.’ He patted the horse intently. ‘Some bastard will only spear him, like they did Ruarc’s black, or kill me to get him. He’ll be safer with you.’ He left a last stroke on the pony’s neck.
‘I can’t do that. I can’t leave you all alone.’
‘Gods, you’re stubborn!’ He pulled her to him in frustration, and now it was him holding her head, his hands buried in her hair. ‘Take the damned horse – let him get fat on good Alban grass.’
Tears sprang to Minna’s eyes, as an unexpected emptiness opened inside her. ‘I cannot bear never to see you again, to think you might be dead.’
He freed a hand and tilted her chin. You have a life to lead, Tiger. I don’t have any part in that, I can’t.’
‘Why not?’ she cried angrily. There had been too much loss. ‘Why not start again and come home?’
Cian silenced all her questions by bowing his head and taking her mouth in a brutal kiss, hard with need and frustration. She was so dumbfounded she did not pull away, until he straightened, his eyes a brilliant blue. ‘That’s why,’ he said huskily, and gave her a little push. ‘Now go.’ There was a plea in his gaze. ‘And let me go, too.’