Warrior Daughter

by Paisley, Janet

  ‘It's better fresh,’ he said, assembling dried feverfew and pennyroyal, juniper oil. ‘I'll find some, and prepare it.’ He turned, walked with her to the door. ‘Come back this evening. You'll need to stay till it works. There will be pain, maybe vomiting. Better if I'm with you.’

  She nodded, put her hand on his chest, over his heart. ‘I'll have a child for you some day,’ she vowed, ‘when the time is right.’ Then she left, swinging down the track through the trees, heading back to Doon Telve and the training ground.

  He watched her go, a shifting shadow among silver-birch trunks and backlit leaves of translucent green, caught now and again in shafts of sun. ‘Live the day well, Skaaha.’ He called the warrior farewell.

  Reaching the edge of the treeline, she turned and waved.

  29

  It was Sowen, blood harvest and festival of the dead. Kylerhea was crowded with guisers in strange attire. Up on Carlin's Loup, the bonfire blazed. On hills around the islands, across and down through Alba, chains of fire linked the whole druid world in celebration.

  ‘Look at you!’ Jiya hollered, jumping off her horse and striding to grab Skaaha by the shoulders. ‘Quite the woman.’

  ‘For some time.’ Skaaha grinned, throwing her arms round her aunt. She had been home for several days, working in the forge. It felt good to be back among the loved and familiar, doing what she did best. ‘I moved up to second sun training.’

  ‘Already?’ Jiya shrieked, dancing her round in a jig. ‘Ho, Ard,’ she shouted over her shoulder, ‘we need drink, some of Lethra's finest mead, to celebrate.’

  They went inside to talk. It was late. Only the young still jigged around the flames. Most revellers staggered or dragged themselves to bed. Determined to catch Skaaha on this rare visit home, Jiya had abandoned the Ardvasar warriors.

  ‘We're patrolling Loch Eishort and Loch Slapin coasts,’ she explained, as they settled round the glowing hearth. ‘The sails of raider ships were seen.’

  ‘Mara should set up a chapter there,’ Skaaha said. ‘The north is well protected, but she leaves Torrin undefended. They could strike right to the island's heart.’

  ‘Tactical defences too?’ Jiya queried, impressed. ‘Vass grumbles plenty, but it's a brave man who'd give the spiteful one advice. Oh’ – she spluttered mead – ‘she hopes you're well.’

  ‘Mara does?’

  ‘With her tongue slit,’ Ard said. ‘Does she know about Glenelg?’

  Jiya shook her head. ‘Thinks our little goddess languishes at Tokavaig.’

  ‘No one here knew,’ Erith added, joining them, ‘till today. But word travels. People go home from festivals and gossip.’

  ‘It's not a secret,’ Skaaha objected. ‘If she doesn't like it, what can she do?’

  ‘Tell Donal not to train you!’ Jiya yelped.

  Skaaha gazed at her aunt. Jiya was loud, eyes huge, staring, wilder than she'd been for some time, since before the druids opened her skull. ‘Can she do that?’ The students were mostly mainland.

  ‘Donal's warrior allegiance is to the island,’ Jiya assured her, ‘or the school wouldn't stand where it does.’

  ‘Most things are best kept secret from Mara,’ Ard said, topping up their drinking horns. ‘She knew more about those outsiders than she should.’ A blast of questions greeted this. ‘At Beltane, she said half of them were killed here,’ he explained.

  ‘By you’ – he nodded at Jiya – ‘that Sowen. Half,’ he repeated.

  ‘Three of them in one attack.’ Jiya thumped her chest. ‘I should've got the rest then too.’ She banged her fist on the hearthstone.

  ‘Did you know there were three more?’ Skaaha asked, staring at Ard.

  ‘Not till’ – he dropped his gaze – ‘not till we returned from Beltane.’ He stirred the fire for no apparent reason then his eyes met hers again. ‘But Mara did.’

  Erith glanced uneasily from one to the other. ‘It means nothing. One word? There could be more of them, another two, three, five, somewhere else.’ She got up, agitated. ‘Don't make trouble where there is none, Ard. Let it go. I'll fetch food.’ She left for the larder.

  ‘Are we in trouble?’ Jiya asked. ‘Is that what's flapping her skirts?’

  ‘She's fretful.’ Ard put an arm round Skaaha's shoulders. ‘We're expecting another baby, before next Beltane.’ He squeezed his daughter reassuringly. ‘Erith will be right. There's nothing to fear.’

  Yet Erith, like Jiya and Ard, didn't want Mara to know she was at Glenelg. ‘Why do you think they were the same men? The court didn't’ – Skaaha clutched at straws while, out of the bog, a sleeper rose, face leering into hers, a face she knew – ‘or they'd have lost a hand each instead of being branded.’

  Ard took her to the forge to see the pattern of the tattoo. ‘Don't know why I keep it,’ he said. ‘Maybe in case there are more.’ He put it down in front of her. ‘I copied it from one of their bodies the first time,’ he said. ‘And the ringleader –’

  ‘Had the same one,’ Skaaha interrupted. She'd forgotten the first tattoo, if she'd even noticed as a child what Ard did and why, but she'd never forget Bartok's.

  Ard nodded. ‘I saw him at Torrin, looking at that dagger you made, but staring at you. When Gern remembered the design, we searched for him. Mara didn't want to look for petty thieves. That's when she said we had already killed half their number. But they'd gone, come here, only we didn't know that then.’ He bowed his head.

  ‘I didn't know any of this.’ Shadows leapt in the forge. Cut-eye had talked about Beltane. Half their number. ‘Why didn't you tell me?’

  He turned away. ‘You were in no fit state.’

  ‘Hey.’ Seeing his broad shoulders heave, she wrapped her arms round him, rested her cheek on his back. ‘Don't, Dad. It's all right.’

  ‘It's not all right, Skaaha.’ Sobs shook him. ‘It will never be all right.’

  ‘No, it won't be,’ she said, holding him. They had made her father ashamed of masculinity, reducing him and every man, just as they'd made her nothing, of no account, a thing to vent hatred on, to despise. It was an illusion that she lived again. Loving others didn't warm the cold, hard knot inside. Her purpose was to wreak revenge. She couldn't let Ard know he'd named the cause of it. He suspected, but she held the final piece – Don't waste the head – the danger too great to share it. It's wanted. Bartok and his men were at Beltane. They sailed straight from Torrin to Kylerhea to lie in wait, thinking they had a protector. Druids – can't touch us. The warrior queen had sent them to bring back her head. Her enemy was Mara.

  Unable to keep still, Jiya had gone by morning, back to rejoin the Ardvasar men. The smell of roasting pork from blood harvest wafted round the village. Skaaha was also leaving. The sword she'd come there to make hung at her side, perfectly balanced in weight, length and grip so that it felt like an extension of her arm. Gern had decorated the scabbard with the ruby-studded triquetra of Danu.

  ‘Stay for the feast,’ Kaitlyn begged. ‘Help me jump the fire.’ She'd come to trade iron from her bog for tools and spend the festival with her foster-son, her own belly finally swollen with pregnancy.

  ‘Can't,’ Skaaha said. Nor could she speak the truth. It endangered anyone who knew it. ‘I've training to do. Have to make my own luck.’

  ‘And you're not crazed?’

  ‘No.’ She hugged her friend tightly. They might not meet again.

  ‘Who'd have thought,’ Kaitlyn said, ‘after all our nonsense up in the cavern, we'd become responsible adults.’ They were both transformed – Kaitlyn to farmer, Skaaha to warrior.

  ‘Speak for yourself,’ Skaaha corrected. ‘Erith thinks I'm less respectable.’ She turned to Lethra, too old and stiff now for leaping bonfires. ‘Kenna is only half the Carlin you made,’ she told her. The noman's love of sparkling jewellery spoiled the stern illusion.

  ‘Away with your bone-crushing,’ Lethra grumbled, pushing off her embrace, though only after she squeezed the warrior within an inch of her life.r />
  Young Calum danced around. ‘Are you still a goddess?’ he asked, and when Skaaha assured him she was, he grabbed her wrist. ‘Can I tell you a secret?’ She bent down to hear it. ‘I saw Bride once,’ he whispered, his breath making her ear moist. ‘She's real, real as you are.’

  ‘I know,’ she whispered back. ‘Blessings on your house.’

  ‘That's what she said,’ he squeaked. ‘That's just what she said.’

  Outside the house, Ard waited to walk with her to the jetty. ‘There is a place for heroes,’ he said. In his hands he held a bronze, oval shield. ‘A gift.’

  It was beautifully ornamented, with three embossed circles, the basis for the triquetra, studded with ruby stones, the circle of the central boss larger than those at each end. It was also beautifully made, the precise thickness of metal to provide protection, lined with hide – strong but not heavy. It was a shield that might be given to a warrior on maturation, but not while training. He had worked on it a long time. She met his eyes, dark as hers, unable to speak.

  Erith, busy directing the seasonal cleaning of the house, bustled out to say goodbye. ‘You're laden already,’ she tutted. ‘Do you want this?’ She held out a slim bundle wrapped in tattered blue cloth. ‘It was under your bed.’

  ‘Ach,’ Skaaha swore. ‘I could've asked Jiya about that again.’ She tucked it into her pack. ‘It's for Eefay.’ They exchanged hugs. ‘Blessings for the baby.’

  ‘Come back and be a smith,’ Erith said. ‘You're far too talented to waste it on the rough life of a warrior.’

  ‘Some day.’ Waving to the others, she walked with Ard to the crossing. He was quiet, sombre. ‘There's a small forge at the school I can use,’ she said, hoping to cheer him.

  ‘To sharpen blades is all,’ he said. ‘You're more gifted than that. Will you come home for Imbolc?’

  ‘I'll be back when I can fight.’ They stopped on the jetty, held each other for the longest time. Waves washed the rocks. Eagles called in the skies above. ‘Don't worry for me. When I've done what I have to do, I'll be a smith again.’

  ‘In this world, or the next?’

  ‘You look forward to that baby.’ She stepped into the coracle, sitting quickly to grip the sides so it didn't pitch her out. ‘A brother would be nice.’

  All the way across, she watched him standing watching her as they both shrank away from each other. He knew, of course he knew, and that she'd need shield, goddess and more on her side. Mara was a master warrior, unbeatable by a novice, and in her prime. Even when she thanked the boatman and collected her horse from the stable on the opposite shore, her father still stood, watching till she disappeared into the Alba hills.

  Riding up to Doon Telve in the autumn sunshine, Skaaha saw Eefay perched on the surrounding wall outside the broch, rubbing cedar oil into Cut-eye's head. There was relief in the safety of Glenelg, at her sister's easy approach to life.

  ‘That looks good,’ she called, dismounting and slapping the horse on through the doorway. The empty eye-sockets stared. The scar added an air of menace.

  ‘Better looking dead than alive,’ Eefay agreed. ‘You're back early. Come to jump our fire?’ She leapt down from the wall to admire her sister's sword and shield.

  ‘No.’ She had no future to jump into. Shaking off her pack, she crouched and pulled out the cloth-wrapped bundle. ‘I brought something for you.’

  Eefay squatted beside her. ‘A broken spear?’ she queried as Skaaha unrolled the bundle. ‘What do I want with that?’ She picked up the two pieces, held them, useless, one in each hand.

  ‘I don't know,’ Skaaha admitted. She'd kept them for so many suns, waiting for Jiya to explain, and when she did it made no sense. ‘Jiya wanted us to have them. She said we were two pieces, and you had the answer.’

  The sound of hooves clattered through the paved hallway behind them.

  ‘To one of Jiya's riddles? I don't think so.’ Eefay rose, looking at the broken weapon, perplexed. ‘Did she say anything else?’

  Donal, dressed for travel, led a saddled horse out of the broch. ‘How did you manage that?’ he asked, mounting up.

  ‘I didn't break it,’ his daughter protested. ‘Jiya sent it, broken already.’

  ‘Why would she do that?’ he said, taking the spearhead half of the shaft from Eefay's hands to look at it. ‘Especially when it's not hers. She likes a longer point.’

  Skaaha got to her feet. ‘Then who did it belong to?’ She had sacrificed Kerrigen's in the loch.

  ‘See that spiralling running down the rib?’ Donald showed them. It was hard to discern under the rust. ‘Only one of them has that design. It's Mara's, or was.’ He gave it back to Eefay. ‘Useless now, unless you sharpen it and fix a new shaft.’ Reminding his daughter he'd be gone till the quarter-moon, he heeled the horse and rode off, cantering away towards the coast.

  The air beat in Skaaha's ears. She'd brought a haunting with her.

  ‘It's good Jiya's crazy,’ Eefay said, ‘or Mara would kill her for breaking her spear. No wonder she hid it.’ She handed the pieces back. ‘If I were you, I'd throw it in the pit.’ Stooping, she scooped up the tattered blue cloth. ‘And this with it.’

  Kya… Kya… Kya… a golden eagle shrieked overhead.

  ‘I can't.’ The shadow of the bird crossed the grass. ‘Not now.’

  Holding it with both hands, Eefay shook the material out. ‘Is this Kerrigen's?’ she asked. Puzzled green eyes looked at Skaaha. ‘It's from a sash cloak.’ She held it, crumpled, to her face. Any smell of their mother was long gone. Her eyes filled with tears. ‘What's going on? Why are you here? Why’ – her voice broke, fingers clenching the torn strip – ‘is this here?’

  ‘I don't know. I didn't know the spear was Mara's.’ Dread had followed her. Mara's reach was long, her power unassailable. Skaaha hunkered down beside her pack. ‘We better talk,’ she said, patting the grass for Eefay to join her.

  ‘You're scaring me,’ her sister said, clutching the cloth, ‘with ghosts.’

  ‘Not ghosts,’ Skaaha said, ‘the living. It's not Jiya that Mara wants dead.’ She paused. Trust did not come easily. Blood might not prove thicker than the danger she asked Eefay to embrace. ‘It's me.’

  ‘What!’ Eefay exclaimed. ‘Are you crazed?’

  Sitting on the grass at the foot of the wall while, above them, Cut-eye's oiled head browned slowly in the sunshine, Skaaha told her sister what she'd learned at Kylerhea. ‘Someone sent them for my head,’ she concluded. ‘Now I know who.’

  ‘Blessed Bride,’ Eefay swore. ‘Mara?’ She began to rise. ‘We better get the druids. You have to tell them this.’

  ‘It's not enough!’ Skaaha said, forcefully pulling her down again. ‘She'd deny it then claim my life as forfeit.’

  ‘But why kill you and not me? We're both’ – Eefay clutched the strip of blue cloth – ‘Kerrigen's daughters…’ Her voice tailed away.

  ‘Two pieces.’ Skaaha picked up the broken spear. ‘Maybe Jiya meant to warn us.’ The threat to Eefay steadied her courage, just as it had that day on the shore when the warriors came out of the fog, while the dogs howled in it, and Mara sat high on her horse, looking down on them. It was easier to be strong for someone else.

  Eefay played the tattered fabric between her fingers. ‘Kerrigen wasn't killed with a spear.’

  ‘No, she raced Mara in their chariots. It was an accident.’ The image of Kerrigen's chamber at Doon Beck returned to remind her. The guttering lamplight, her mother reaching out – Skaa-haa. ‘Her skull was broken.’

  ‘And Jiya said nothing else about this?’ Eefay held out the stained blue rag.

  Taking it, re-wrapping the broken spear, Skaaha struggled to recall. ‘Just clucked her tongue, over and over, and got very agitated.’ There was more though. She knew there was more, but it was buried in Jiya's distressed brain.

  ‘So what should we do?’

  ‘You can teach me,’ Skaaha said. There was only one course, one way forward. ‘The right o
f vengeance is mine. When I'm ready, I'll challenge her.’

  ‘This is Mara you have to fight!’ Eefay exclaimed. ‘She'll take the head off you without breaking sweat.’

  ‘Then you can avenge me.’ It wasn't said in jest, but the bald temerity of her assumption made them both smile.

  ‘If it takes a hundred circles of the sun,’ Eefay promised. She leapt to her feet, held out a hand to haul her sister up. ‘We better work.’

  ‘She doesn't know where I am.’ It was the one thing in her favour. ‘We've got time.’

  ‘Not now, we haven't,’ Eefay said, her green eyes clouded with concern. ‘It's Sowen. Donal went to Doon Beck to train the Bracadale warriors. He'll tell Mara you're here. He's got no reason not to.’

  30

  ‘This is why I like you, Donal,’ Mara groaned. ‘Always ready to please a queen.’ She was astride him, naked, in her chamber at Doon Beck, pitched forward so his hands could reach her breasts. His brief marriage to Kerrigen was the reason she bedded him. It excited her, deeply, to mount and master this man whose body once pleasured the great, and long dead, warrior. Covering his mouth with hers, she rocked her hips, biting his lip, drawing blood.

  ‘Honouring you,’ he muttered, ‘is why I live.’

  ‘Believe it,’ she agreed, rolling over and guiding him down till his head was between her thighs, his tongue pleasuring her. Blessed goddess, he was good at this. She grabbed his hair, moaning and panting. Donal moved her in ways no other man or woman ever did. His skin and touch and flesh and hands and mouth spoke achingly to hers. If he'd never been Kerrigen's she might have made a husband of him, for a time. Since he had, it pleased her more to make him serve without reward.

  ‘Now,’ she breathed, ‘come into me now,’ feeling the bed dip as he moved, her flesh shuddering as he did.

  She roared, bit his shoulder, clinging on, nails raking his back. The agonizing loss of self, and control, shook out through her, going on and on as he drove for his own climax, his seed spurting into her, giving her everything he'd ever given Kerrigen – except a child. Weakness, her own neediness, wanted to howl out of her, wanted to rest in his arms, held and comforted. But the fleeting moment of trust had already passed. He'd dallied on his way here, spent the last night of Sowen with his foster-mother at Doon Torvaig rather than with her.