The Celtic Mirror

by Louis Phillippi

  Morgan let out his breath slowly. What now?

  “Sure, sure. Maybe later,” Greenfeld edged away, appearing a little hurt. “I’ll save room for you two just the same.” Then he was out through the door.

  Morgan looked cautiously at the shorter man. Malo was smiling. It looked sincere enough.

  “Lord Morgan, I have been sent to you by my Lady.” Malo then led the bemused Morgan a few paces away to an unpopulated corner of the room where their voices would not carry to the others who yet lingered.

  Morgan was filled with relief. The little man was not going to betray him after all.

  “But first, I would like to convey my own thanks to you. Because of you, the Lady Brigid has granted my Elena permission to marry me. Never fear for our betrayal of your secret. Your Lady’s brother will never know, at least from us two. Ian is a good friend to me, but what the Lady Brigid does is entirely her own affair. My Lord Connach has usurped the father’s role with the sister, and I do not approve.”

  “Nor do I,” Morgan said, gravely. “But what of the message from the Lady Brigid?” He urged. “Please, friend Malo.”

  The native officer’s face lost its expression of easy good humor, and Morgan caught his breath again.

  “She cannot be with you tonight, my Lord. The High Chief lies badly stricken with that which the healers cannot relieve. The Lady is now beside him, praying for the gods’ intercession on his part.” He put his mouth to Morgan’s ear. “She told me to tell you that her love will lie with you this night, though her body must be absent.”

  A groan almost escaped Morgan’s lips. He made himself touch his palm to Malo’s and forced a semblance of a smile.

  “I understand. Tell the Lady that I understand from my heart.” Then he took a deep breath and expelled it raggedly, disappointment warring with the false smile he wore as a mask. He had to leave the room. He had to leave his understanding co-conspirator. He had to be alone with his personal demons.

  “Farewell, Malo, and thanks. The handmaiden, Elena, has found a good man in you.” With that, he turned and strode swiftly through the door, running through the corridors until he emerged into the sweet, outside air.

  He slowed to a walk with a stale feeling in his chest. He felt cheated, deprived of Brigid on the last night he would spend in Verulamium.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Morgan wandered without awareness of his direction until the waters of the camouflaged harbor lapped at his feet. Brigid, the impending combat mission and the need to return to Verulamium alive fought for possession of his mind.

  A sharp breeze drove a swirl of dried leaves past him into the water where they floated for a moment, then sank like a defeated navy. Morgan lifted his head and sniffed the air. It smelled strongly of the land, and even though he stood at the harbor’s edge, he could smell no salt tang. Dark cumulonimbus clouds boiled on the horizon in the direction of the mainland, and he detected a coldness to the air that was not right, a wrongness that accompanied the shifted winds.

  He shifted his head from side to side, trying to read the messages carried by the night air. More leaves slithered across the walkway, following one another in their reptilian undulations. Morgan dropped his hand to the sidearm that Connach’s Master-At-Arms had issued to the team leaders at the beginning of the briefing.

  The Nighthawk prototype, a silenced automatic that Connach had shanghaied along with one of its creators, was comfortingly solid. Morgan smiled, daring the evil he smelled to materialize into another of Maelgwyn’s assassins, knowing that Scatha’s tooth was no match for the 9 mm. explosive projectile carried by the illegal silenced pistol made by Messrs. Wilson and Booth.

  The shadows held no dangers for him, and no snake-tongued killer appeared, but still he could not relax. He looked into the darkness under the netting for the black boat that was his. With all distinguishing marks removed, he knew Le Fay only from her mooring position. She rode easily in the midst of the dark fleet, her jet mast reaching invisibly for the thin protection of netting above her deserted deck. Morgan strained to watch the onyx sloop for a time, still trying to translate the messages not meant for him.

  Then an alarm was triggered in the atavistic portion of his brain he had relied upon for survival in combat. There was no meaning, only an alarm, and a direction.

  Full of dread, he plunged back into the city as it readied itself for the night. The flower of Reged appeared normal, but an intimation of impending disaster drove Morgan to a full run.

  The Lothian’s tough training paid dividends that night. Morgan was not even breathing hard when he pushed through the courtyard gate and ran recklessly down the hallway, which led to his quarters. Stopping before his door, he drew the pistol and chambered a round. He put his ear to the door, knowing that it was an empty precaution. Whoever was waiting for him inside would have to have been quite deaf to miss hearing him enter the BOQ like a troop of Mongolian horse cavalry.

  There was someone inside. He could hear the creak of the couch as weight was shifted upon it, and he could hear a soft, choking sound. His visitor was obviously sitting or lying down. His visitor was also waiting in a darkened room, suspicious enough for Morgan.

  He stepped one pace backward, then kicked the door open, activating the light plate with his left hand.

  Brigid, her face tear-streaked, stared into the muzzle that was pointed at the center of her forehead. She slumped back listlessly and watched Morgan without a word as he holstered his weapon.

  Morgan was shocked. There was only one thing that could have so completely defeated the Lady Connach.

  “The High Chief?” He swallowed, dryly, and took her limp hands in his.

  “He’s dead,” she said in a monotone. “He died with Maelgwyn’s healers in attendance. He died with the Brotherhood’s vultures circling around his couch.” Her voice gained strength and life as her anger took over from her grief.

  Morgan sat down beside her, the alarms clanging louder than before in his brain. Not here! it screamed. The danger is not here! He shouted the shrill cries into silence but not submission. They would, he knew, sound again until the danger was averted. Right then, Brigid demanded his attention. The alarms would have to wait.

  Someone else’s grief always unmanned him. He had no idea how to offer her comfort. Anything he might say could sound trite and insincere, so he just held her and let her spill her sorrow and vent her anger.

  Her heaving sobs subsided gradually, and she straightened her back. “By the gods, I must look awful,” she said, wiping at her face with the hem of her robe. She looked at him with puffy, red-rimmed eyes, her hair unkempt, tangled.

  She looked beautiful and he told her.

  She gave him a salty kiss and stood up. I’m glad Aiofe granted me your love. But I need for you to grant me the use of your bathing chamber.”

  Morgan stood and made a little bow. “Granted, my Lady.”

  While she washed, Morgan pondered the newest disaster. The land that now held everything for him might collapse in confusion without the High Chief’s venerable hands holding the reins. Ian Connach was the key. What was Reged’s mercurial prince going to do? What had he already done? Morgan was pacing as Brigid reentered the room, scrubbed and brushed. If Morgan had been a casual observer, she would have appeared normal. Slower of movement, more deliberate in her actions, but normal, nevertheless. To Morgan, who was anything but the casual observer, she had lost something irretrievable. It was not only the old man that had died.

  “Brigid?” he asked, hesitantly, needing to ask questions that might keep her new wounds open.

  She looked at him and frowned. “It’s all right. I can talk about it, now. I think I was crying more for myself than for him. He was an old man, and death was always looking over his shoulder, he told me. He had a warrior’s heart, and a warrior does not fear death, whether it might come from an enemy’s arrow or from Scatha’s sting.” She smiled grimly to herself. “He did not cry out—even at the end. With his la
st breath he looked at Maelgwynn and told him, ‘The two of us will meet again very soon. I will keep Cernunos’s cauldron hot for you.’”

  She touched her pendant. “Maelgwynn was frightened, I think. For a dying man’s curse is very strong. Aiofe and I made it even stronger. Maelgwynn will soon be fed to the Horned God.”

  Morgan shuddered. The Celtic gods had their dark sides showing too often for him.

  “I must leave tomorrow,” he told her, wishing he did not have to say the words.

  “I know,” she whispered, putting her cheek against his neck. “Today Grandfather has left me. You and Ian desert me tomorrow. What if you don’t return? I have looked for the answers in the stones, but the gods do not choose to make the future clear to me.” She opened her dark eyes wide and gazed mistily at Morgan.

  “I don’t want to be here alone. I have come to need you.”

  “I’m coming back,” he told her, hoping he spoke the truth.

  “I pray to the gods that you will. And I will give you strength through the ring.”

  “What about Ian?”

  “Ian is already lost. He has assumed Grandfather’s authority,” she said gravely, “but without any of his subtlety, I’m afraid. His enemies will be many.”

  “What has he done?”

  “He was nearly mad with rage when he learned of Grandfather’s death. Maelgwynn made certain that Ian would not be called to say the prayers for the dead until late afternoon. By then it was too late. He never got to speak with Grandfather.”

  She closed her eyes, tiredly. “By the time Ian was notified, the traitor priests, Maelgwynn and Celtillus, had left for Moyarney by quadrirail.” Brigid drew a deep breath, and in one utterance, shed the last vestiges of her pacifistic leanings, startling Morgan. “Those bastards have gone to surrender Reged to the Viks!”

  “Jesus!” Morgan exploded. “What the hell was Ian’s reaction?”

  “He’s had himself declared High Chief of Reged by force of arms. He’s sent out orders for the arrests of Llandaff, Glassius and prominent Druids of the Brotherhood, all acts which violate the spirit that has kept us a free people over the centuries.” She clutched Morgan’s arms with such ferocity that it hurt. “What’s worse is that I approve of his decisions.”

  Morgan laughed softly, then disengaged Reged’s newest firebrand from his arms. “Do you think Ian can stop Maelgwynn from reaching the mainland?”

  “He was too late,” she said, touching the marks she had made on Morgan’s skin. “The traitors had commandeered a fishing boat out of Moyarney. By now it will have been intercepted by a P-boat and towed into Caerwent Harbor. Thorkell would never pass up a prize like Reged’s High Priest.”

  She melted into him, her passion spent, and Morgan tilted her head with a finger. She seemed near exhaustion from the emotional demands that had been made of her, yet Morgan saw a smoldering of another kind deep in her half-lidded eyes. He bent his mouth to hers and kissed her, long and tenderly. Her lips parted under his and she pulled his hands to her breasts.

  Her nipples stiffened under the thin cloth of her robes as he gently touched her, and a low sound began in her throat. Each time they made love was as full of wonder as the first. Morgan had long since ceased caring whether Druid magic was mixed with human chemistry. The growling rumble of an approaching storm was lost in the quickening tempo of their breathing as they strained against one another.

  A faint breeze brushed at the hair on the back of Morgan’s neck.

  “I’ll be goddamned! I’ll just be goddamned!” Greenfeld stood framed in the doorway, staring at the surprised lovers, and, as Morgan watched, a sudden understanding broke over his face.

  “This is one of Malo’s native games?” he asked. “No wonder I couldn’t get you interested in poker.” He made an awkward, head-bobbing bow. “No offense meant, my Lady.”

  Brigid inclined her own head regally. “None taken, I assure you.”

  Greenfeld looked rattled much more rattled, Morgan thought, than discovering Brigid should have done.

  “What’s up, David?”

  “Council alert! We’re to stand the boats out to sea. The Viks have just hit Moyarney and are headed our way. The Hellwinds are blowing tonight.” He managed a peculiar smile, and then he turned to alert the next room. His voice echoed down the hallway, “I’ll be goddamned!”

  “The Hellwinds are blowing tonight!” Morgan said, musingly as he started to refasten his tunic where Brigid’s hands had lingered. “That’s what the danger was. If I hadn’t been so stupid earlier, I could have warned the Council an hour ago.” He kissed Brigid quickly and took a step toward the still open door.

  Brigid held his arm. “Wait! I’m going with you!”

  “The hell you are!” He told her seriously. “Not with those bastards bombing the shit out of this town, you’re not.”

  She seemed not to have heard Morgan’s paternalistic order. She gathered her robes above her knees and raced him through the door. “The quadrirail will be the safest way,” she shouted over her shoulder. “Aren’t you coming?”

  Seeing that Brigid not only had no intention of keeping out of danger, but she was actually beating him to his duty station, Morgan had no choice. He ran after her.

  “All right, you can come along,” he called out, lamely to her shoulders. “But only if you do as I say.”

  Her sardonic laugh drifted back.

  There was no laughter at the harbor. Tears of impotent anger and frustration filled Morgan’s eyes as he reached the foot of the launch ramps. Under the torn camouflage netting that had obviously been ineffective against Vik seers, Reged’s invasion boats lay scattered. Half sunk, some burned to the waterline with the awful intensity and stench of ignited fiberglass; all were disabled. Dozens of commandos joined Morgan at the water’s edge, cursing—a few wept openly—as their hopes for revenge settled lower in the bay.

  Morgan helplessly watched Le Fay die, feeling a sense of outrage that made him grind his teeth. “Those Vik son-of-abitches are going to pay for this!” he groaned; knowing as he said it, that Reged’s way of paying the Viks back had just sunk.

  “Kerry, look!” Brigid called, tugging his hand.

  He turned. The hangar was ablaze with lights as Kirkpatrick’s crew struggled to get the airship aloft to catch the Hellwinds back to Caerwent. Morgan watched the men straining against the mooring ropes, trying to maneuver the ungainly craft out of the structure.

  “Le Fay is going to be avenged tonight,” he said through clenched teeth. He turned to a heavy-set non-com he knew from training and barked at him in a drill-field voice, “Optio, take these troops and help Lord Kirkpatrick’s crew with the Vik airship. If you want to hit the enemy back, let’s get it into the air!” In a quieter voice, he whispered, “And I’m going with her.”

  The N.C.O. was galvanized into action, immediately yelled at the milling commandos in a dialect Morgan could not easily follow, but he knew the snarled orders included every obscenity and vulgarity at the veteran’s command. Then, as the Celtic optio grew more eloquent, the stunned men and women became soldiers again, sloughed off their shock, and headed in an orderly fashion to the hangar.

  In moments, the only offensive weapon that remained in Reged’s arsenal was manhandled into the open with Morgan and Brigid pulling against the lines with the common soldiers.

  “What are you doing here?”

  Ian Connach had joined them, his face hard—fixed with an expression Morgan remembered seeing in the photographs of the few survivors of Wounded Knee. It was the look of bitter defeat and of more bitter pride.

  “I asked what you were doing here,” he demanded of his sister, ignoring Morgan completely. “I expected you to remain with the other women, keeping the prayer vigil over Grandfather.”

  “I have already said the prayers for the dead,” she answered, her face cast in Connach granite. “The other women can keep the vigil as well, without my presence.”

  Morgan knew by looking at Co
nnach’s rigid expression that the prince was at that moment a very dangerous man. Anything Morgan might say or do might well be construed as a challenge to his still shaky authority, an affront that would have to be settled by Celtic ballot. He took the chance, anyway.

  “She’s a soldier, now, Ian. She came here with me to help salvage something from this mess.” He placed strong emphasis on the “with me,” but Connach failed to react. He was staring at the airship with a concentration that left no room for personal quarrels. Morgan did not relax his guard, however. He knew that Connach would not forget that Brigid had come to the harbor with him. Connach could not ignore the intimate way Brigid touched Morgan as they stood together. The reckoning would come some time. Morgan would need to guard his back from then on.

  Connach startled Morgan by cracking a ghastly smile that let him see the demons that wrestled for the prince’s soul.

  “I’m riding Odinn’s Breath with Kirkpatrick, tonight,” he rasped. “I’ve already loaded the Mirror receiver that Evans rescued from Mako just before she sank. I’ll make sure that Caerwent gets some help from Reged.” He grabbed Morgan by both shoulders and shoved his twisted face into Morgan’s own.

  “You need to salvage as many of the boats as possible. Rebuild them from the keel up, if necessary. If I can slow the Vik invasion plans at all, there might still be time to put them to use as we intended.” He released Morgan and leaned for a moment against a bollard as if calling upon some external force to keep him functioning a little longer. His eyes lifted to Brigid’s. “If I fail, take the boats, take Brigid, and get the hell away from here.”

  Morgan had been given the perfect opportunity to secure his life with Brigid. He threw the easy chance away.

  “How can you leave Reged leaderless at a time like this?” Morgan said, shaking Connach. “There might not be a Reged to come home to if you desert it now.”

  A guilty look replaced the exhaustion on Connach’s face. “I’m a warrior, Kerry. I need to fight my enemies. The loyal members of the Council will rule as a committee in my name.”