Voada opened her arms to her anamacha, letting herself fall into the other world and find Iomhar once again.
Is that the Moonshadow herself? Voada wondered. Is she moving out of the shadows? The warnings Ceiteag and Greum had given her regarding the Moonshadow made her hesitate, but voices continued to croon and cajole.
On the far side of the wall, light bloomed in the dimness of the storm, and screams followed. Those around her cheered.
But a few breaths later, Maol Iosa’s war chariot came racing through and over the rubble near the gate, followed by retreating Cateni warriors on foot and more war chariots. Voada saw Iosa shake his head mutely at Greum Red-Hand. Greum seemed to draw himself up, sighing. The ceanndraoi opened his arms, calling up another spell. This time he was slower, more deliberate. He waited as more Cateni came through the gate, and when the first soldiers in Mundoan armor and livery appeared, he released the spell. Lightning flared around the gate, and thunder boomed. The walls and roof of the gateway collapsed, crushing those underneath.
Ceannàrd Iosa had already taken his chariot through the gates of the fort in retreat, and the rest of the Cateni chariots and warriors were following quickly. The Cateni were pulling back; Altan knew they’d continue to retreat from the gates on the far side of the fort toward the refuge of the next hill-fort and the folded hills nearby. “Ilkur!” he shouted, but the officer couldn’t hear him over the roar of battle. The archers’ war chariots might have a chance to move quickly enough around the walls of the fort to pursue the retreat, but Ilkur was already moving toward the tumbled gate in pursuit of Ceannàrd Iosa.
The chance to capture ceannàrd and ceanndraoi was slipping away from them, and Altan cursed.
A draoi’s spell flared, and the remaining stones of the gate fell, nearly burying Ilkur. When the dust cleared, there was no easy way through. Ilkur left his chariot to scramble over the stones toward the fort with a cohort of soldiers.
Altan could only shake his head in frustration.
It would take turns of the glass and the loss of more men than Altan wished, but they’d taken the fort. They would not find Greum Red-Hand and his draoi, nor Maol Iosa.
There were no Cateni left inside but the dead.
“Through the west gate!” Maol Iosa shouted. “Quickly! Charioteers, take the draoi!”
Voada felt herself being picked up and placed on the bed of the ceannàrd’s own chariot. Under the pounding and concealing rain, the retreat began.
“That was impressive,” Iosa shouted back to her as his driver took the chariot through the gate at a breakneck pace.
“Ceannàrd?” Voada shouted back to him as they lurched out onto open ground amidst the confusion of mounted warriors and those on foot, all heading toward the fort looming on the next hilltop.
“The spell you cast,” Iosa told her. “Impressive.” The rain was washing the blue paint from his face, streaks of it running into his beard and uncovering the scars on his cheek. His hair hung in wet strings around his face, and a Mundoan sword had laid open a wound across his chest, liberally spattering his skin with blood. The ceannàrd bore the signs of the battle, but he was grinning as if the fighting had only revitalized him. “The Red-Hand could have done no better. In fact, I suspect he might not have been able to match it.”
Voada didn’t answer, didn’t know how to answer. Instead she clung to the rails of the chariot and wondered how the ceannàrd managed to stay so easily balanced on the swaying platform. “You should be careful,” Iosa said.
“Why?” she managed to ask.
“Greum Red-Hand doesn’t like competition, and he can only see one path: his own,” the ceannàrd answered. “You may find that what the ceanndraoi wants ultimately isn’t what you want, and you’ll be forced to make a decision.”
“That sounds disloyal, Ceannàrd,” she told him. The man only laughed at her comment.
“Does it?” he said. “I’ve talked to Menach Ceiteag about you. You and I … it may be that we want the same thing.”
“I have no idea what you mean.” Voada found herself unable to hold the man’s gaze. She looked away, toward the fort they were approaching.
She said nothing more to the ceannàrd, nor did he speak to her again. She slid from his chariot as soon as it entered the courtyard of the fort.
17
An Alternative Offered
CEITEAG LOOKED AS EXHAUSTED as Voada felt. The bread and cheese they’d been given on their arrival at the hill-fort had been eaten quickly, even the crumbs picked up with their fingers and licked away. The wooden flagons in front of them had been drained of ale, refilled, and refilled again by servants who kept their eyes averted.
The two women were draoi, after all, and thus dangerous to offend.
When the servants came in to clear away the dishes, Voada and Ceiteag visited the middens in the tower, trying to ignore the stench. One of Voada’s unpredictable moon-times had begun without warning; she blamed the wild bouncing of the chariot during the ride from the fallen fort. Voada placed a soft linen pad filled with blood-moss between her legs, and Ceiteag watched her tie the strings of the pad tightly around her hips beneath her undertrousers.
When they returned to their room, Ceiteag went immediately to her bedding while Voada stared listlessly toward the inner courtyard of the hill-fort from her vantage point on the second floor of the tower. Torches flared throughout the fort, and the moon shone through torn clouds—some of the draoi had cleared the weather. The Cateni injured in the battle were lying on the ground while archiaters moved among them, tending to their wounds. She could see Maol Iosa as well, kneeling down occasionally next to one of the warriors to give comfort and encouragement. There were too many wounded and too few healthy men below. She wondered if Commander Savas was feeling the same to the east as he looked out over the ruined fort he’d won.
Voada looked back at Ceiteag, who was slumped against the wall, sitting on her blankets. With her gray hair still damp from the rain and hanging in ragged strands, illuminated only by the single candle in the room and a small mound of glowing peat in the hearth, she looked impossibly old. “It’s more exhausting than you believe possible,” Ceiteag said, “this kind of usage of your anamacha.” Ceiteag cocked her heard slightly. “Even one like yours. Surely you feel it.”
“I do.” Voada shook her head. “So many died.”
“Not enough of our enemy did,” Ceiteag answered with a wry twist of her lips, “or we wouldn’t be here. Does the death bother you, Voada? Did you think that being a draoi in war would be bloodless? Weren’t you telling me how you wanted revenge for what the Mundoa did to you and your family? I would think you’d be pleased at the chance to strike against them.”
“I’m not bothered,” Voada told her. “I would do it again, and more.” She could hear the false bravado in her own voice and softened her tone. “It’s just …” She stopped, taking a long breath as she looked out to the courtyard again and thought of her decision to spare Comman
der Savas. She wondered whether Greum was right and that had been a critical mistake. “I saw the Mundoa crawling over the land like maggots over a rotting corpse, so many soldiers that they couldn’t be counted. Why were we so few in comparison?” Voada asked. “Why did so few of the clans come when Greum Red-Hand called for help? We brought him only a paltry number of hands of warriors and only a hand-and-one of draoi. Out there with the northern clans there must be many times more, but they didn’t come. Not even for the sake of Onglse.”
A shrug answered Voada. “You’ve never known anything except the way things are in Albann Deas. Up here in Albann Bràghad, the clans keep to themselves and protect their own first. But they’ll do what they must when the time comes. Greum sending a messenger to ask for help is one thing. Had he gone to them himself and spoken to the clan leaders …” Ceiteag repeated the shrug. “It might well have been different. But he chose not to do that.”
They only need someone to lead them. Iomhar’s words. “I can’t see Greum holding out that red hand for help. I can see him expecting and demanding the help as his right.”
Ceiteag laughed quietly at that. “So you’ve discovered that he doesn’t make it easy to like him.”
“From what I’ve seen, he doesn’t care whether anyone does or not.”
“He’s taught you well, then.”
Now it was Voada’s turn to laugh. “He says it’s not me, it’s only Leagsaidh Moonshadow’s anamacha that matters. Nothing else.” Voada glanced to her right, where her anamacha stood impassively. The flickering, moving faces seemed to watch her.
Ceiteag only nodded. “You should sleep. We’ll all need the rest, because soon enough there won’t be time for it. How do you feel? I remember when my moon-times came that the pain was sometimes bad. I have willow bark; I could make tea.”
“That’s kind of you, Menach, but I’m fine. My moon-times have been rare since I gave birth to Hakan, and they don’t bother me much.”
Ceiteag blew out the flame on the candle next to her bed, leaving only the low, blue flames of the peat fire. Voada could see Ceiteag’s anamacha, silent and still as it stood next to the older woman’s bed. Ceiteag’s eyes closed.
Voada glanced out the window to the courtyard once more. So many of the Mundoa. Savas and the Great-Voice must have emptied Albann Deas of every last solider …
The thought seemed to echo around her; she could feel the cold touch of her anamacha, and she wondered if it was its voices she heard. Movement below caught her eye: a ghost—a taibhse gliding around the cot of one of the dead. The body had been covered with a cloth by an archiater, but the taibhse circled around it, unseen by the archiaters, servants, or other wounded men. Voada could also see Ceannàrd Iosa not far from the taibhse, moving from man to man, crouching down alongside each and speaking to him.
Voada took a blanket from her bedding and wrapped it around herself, then left the room, padding down the stairs in bare feet until she reached the door of the courtyard, her anamacha gliding behind her. She nodded to the guards there and went out among the men. She could hear some of them moaning, could hear the archiaters as they tried to comfort those who were hurt. The taibhse stood over its corpse, but it looked up as she approached, appearing to see not only her but her anamacha as well. She could hear its whisper as well.
“I can help you,” she said to the ghost. Iosa, tending a man nearby, looked up from where he knelt and saw Voada. His scarred, battle-worn face nodded to her, understanding what must have happened. “Give me just a little time …” she said to the ghost. In a temple, she could have looked down to the sun-paths engraved on the floor, and she could have ushered the taibhse along them. She tried to imagine the temple at Bàn Cill and how it would be oriented if it were here, tried to remember where the dawn would come and where Elia’s lamp might sit. Her anamacha evidently understood her intention as well; it moved to her, not entering her as fully as when she cast a spell, but enough that she could hear its voices.
Two crossed lines of shimmering yellow light glistened on the flags at her feet, the ends sliding outward over the bodies of the men there. Where the lines struck the walls of the forts, doorways of blinding white brilliance opened. “There,” Voada said aloud to the taibhse. “Can you see? All you need do is follow one of the sun-paths to Tirnanog.”
The ghost nearly sobbed the words. It turned and began to move along the path. With each step, the taibhse grew fainter and more difficult to see, until it vanished into the glare near the wall of the courtyard. The sun-paths vanished as one at the same time.
Voada was standing in the gloom among the torches and the men.
The voice was receding. Her anamacha was alongside her but no longer touching her, and with her return to the reality of the fort, her exhaustion was complete. A sudden cramp rolled through her stomach. The woman’s voice still echoed in her mind. She clutched the oak leaf, pressing it into her palm against the cramping. She lifted her head and saw Iosa still watching her, standing now, his lips pressed tightly together under his dark beard, his scar standing out white. His eyes were black pits, and she saw him take a step toward her.
She didn’t want to talk to anyone else, especially a man. She didn’t wish to know what the warrior might say, think, or want. The ghost was gone, and there were no more waiting to be guided to their rest; that was enough. She turned, walking along the rows of prone men and back to the tower. She thought Iosa might call to her, but he did not. Without looking back, she climbed the steps again.
She was asleep as soon as she lay down on her bed in the tower room.
The draoi had been invited to Greum Red-Hand’s conference with the Cateni war leaders, but Voada knew she was expected simply to listen and remain silent. She huddled in a corner of the stone-walled room, a blanket wrapped around her, as Greum paced the room’s perimeter, accompanied by his anamacha. Her moon-time was on her heavily, and she wanted little more than to be alone and to drink some of Ceiteag’s willow bark tea. Tomorrow it will be better; the day after, it will be nearly gone …
“The Mundoa left hands upon hands of their dead sprawled before the two forts they took,” Greum said. “We slew four of them for every one of our warriors now receiving his or her reward in Tirnanog. They’ll spend time tending their wounds and burning their dead before they move again. We’ll keep chipping away at them; we’ll make them miserable and wet, and every time they try to move toward Bàn Cill, we’ll take more of their men until only a few hands of them survive to run back to Albann Deas. Bàn Cill and Onglse have never been taken, and I promise you they never will be, not while any of us still live.”
There was a cheer at that statement, led by Maol Iosa, though Voada thought some of the affirmations felt halfhearted. So stupid. They don’t see what’s in front of them …
“The Mundoa’s next move must be to drive their forces inland,” Ceannàrd Iosa declared, stepping forward into the center of the room. The scar on his face was now joined by the deep, puckered, angry red cut on his chest, which an archiater had sewn together, as well as wounds along each arm. If they bothered the warrior, it didn’t show in his easy movements. He cocked his head, long, braided bl
ack hair swinging with the motion. “Greum Red-Hand and I are in agreement about that. Strategically, it makes no sense for Savas to continue to spread out his forces along the outer perimeter. His goal is Bàn Cill, both for its symbolic value and because he knows that we will defend it to the death. From here, he will try to punch through into the second wall of forts, but the land between here and the second wall is our ally. We know it. We know its twists and turns and folds. They don’t. If we killed four to one here, we can kill two hands for every man of ours out there. They won’t meet us champion to champion, so we’ll use the land as our shield and shower them with arrows, descend on them like an avalanche from the heights, and have our draoi send death down upon them in the valleys.” The warrior looked at each of the men in the room, then lowered his voice, which pulled everyone forward to listen. “I tell you this: they will leave their bones here. All of them.”
With that, he stamped his foot on the stone flags as cheers erupted around him. Voada could only shake her head.
“We’re making a mistake.” The words emerged from her seemingly without volition, sounding loudly in the room as the cheers began to die. Heads turned toward her immediately as she stood, letting the blanket fall from her shoulders. On her léine, the oak leaf glittered in the sunlight entering from the window, and Voada brushed her fingers over the smooth metal of the torc around her neck. Next to her, she heard Ceiteag whisper a warning, but she remained standing. Iosa and Greum Red-Hand were both glaring at her. Iosa started to reply, but Greum lifted his hand. Iosa scowled but swallowed whatever he’d intended to say.
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