We were travelling to Cu Cumundi’s to celebrate the wedding of Broarli to the eldest daughter of Lughoalan. Tuathan should have attended to pay his own respects to his brother kings, but, for the first and last time in his life, The Fox stumbled and threw Tuathan so that he, too, broke his leg. At his age, Tuathan could not travel. His brother kings would understand that he sent his son and heir in his place, with a suitable retinue including me as his envoy.
“I trust you,” was all Tuathan said, making me flush to my ears with pride. To be trusted by Tuathan was as much as any man could ask in this life, even me.
We made slow progress, largely because the prince had the application of a gnat and, being the king’s eldest son, expected his whims to be indulged by one and all, with the possible exception of Tuathan himself. His foibles had been factored into the plans, and on the night before we arrived at the wedding, I was confident we should arrive with my king’s honor untarnished.
We came to a poor farmstead a little while before night, just a few miles to go but too many to do before darkness. Corbelathan had complained about the prospect of sleeping under the stars for at least the last hour and when he caught sight of the farm, he put heels to his horse, hallooing the house.
He was greeted by a young woman and a boy of about twelve years of age. He would be a handsome man when he grew. She was already beautiful.
“We would have hospitality of you,” bellowed Corbelathan, dismounting almost before he came to a halt. Only the gods knew how he did not fall flat on his face.
“Be welcome to such hospitality as we can offer, my lord,” said the woman, her voice as beautiful as her face. “My husband attends his lord, Cu Cumundi.”
“Exactly what we do tomorrow.” Corbelathan smiled, falling in beside her as she led the way into the farm house, leaving us to make sure his horse was readied for the night. While we were about that, the boy showed us where we could sleep in the barn, strewing fresh straw for our beds, saying not a word, eyeing our warrior’s accoutrements with the veiled but eager interest of any boy who dreams of fame and glory, and was there ever a boy who did not?
The smells of hot food came to our noses as we finished, making our mouths water as we headed for the house.
“Leave me alone, you pig!” she screamed as we entered, removing Corbelathan’s hands from her breast. “I am a married woman.”
“Your husband isn’t here,” he leered, stumbling unsteadily after her, “and I am, ready, willing and eager to satisfy your needs.” He managed to get his arms around her again, but she slipped away from him with ease, stopping in the doorway and tossing her raven’s wing, glossy black hair at him as he propped himself up against the table.
Suddenly she was pushed aside by the youth, standing there with fury in his eyes and a sword in his hands.
“Is this how you repay our hospitality?” he demanded, his voice quavering but defiant, facing down five grizzled warriors and a prince.
“What about hospitality indeed?” Corbelathan wondered, hauling himself upright and affecting as much dignity as he could. “I am a prince. I can have any woman I choose!”
The boy shook his head. “You are not my prince, and you will not have my sister.”
Corbelathan’s head was almost brushing the thatch, and he looked from each one of us to the next, his gaze resting last on me. He winked at me, and I knew exactly what was about to happen.
“We are all friends here,” he said, approaching the boy, whose sword wavered before the Prince’s smile, which he had of his father ― and Tuathan could charm the birds from the trees, as befitted a king. “I am truly sorry. Here’s my hand on it.”
I saw the tip of the boy’s sword dip as he clumsily switched the blade to his left hand, which was scarcely strong enough to hold it. He reached out with his right towards Corbelathan’s hand extended in peace and friendship. I saw Corbelathan clap the youth on the shoulder with his left hand, driving the hidden knife into his throat with his right, before ripping it out. The lad’s blood spouted as first bewilderment filled his eyes, and then death drove him to his knees and onto his face, where he lay in a spreading black pool of his own blood. The woman fell to her knees beside him, silent, reaching out and caressing the boy’s face.
“The pup put a blade to me!” fumed Corbelathan, bending down to clean his knife on the boy’s shirt. “Well, let that be a lesson to him.”
“Not one he’ll ever forget,” laughed Cormissen.
“Wine, bring me wine,” crowed the butcher. “War is thirsty work.”
“Is that what you call it, war?” said the woman, on her feet now, the blade in her hand, holding it a lot more easily than had the boy. The tip was little more than a hand’s span from the prince’s throat. A glance was enough to assure me the blade had not seen a whetstone in too long. She might bruise him with it, but she would not cut him. “Let’s see how you perform against someone with a steady hand.”
“Spirit,” slurred Corbelathan. “I like that in a woman.”
The scene held still for a moment before fury turned her face into something ugly and she drew the sword back, ready to thrust it through his throat and the spine behind it.
Before she could strike, though, Padrhaig stepped up and wrenched the blade from her grip with his bare hand, so keen was the edge on it. Dairmud moved behind and grasped her arms. Corbelathan stepped close and tore at the neck of her dress.
What did I do then to preserve my lord’s honor, the master of his ceremonies, the keeper and upholder of his laws? What did I do in the face of this gross violation of every law of hospitality known to man? I left them to it, striding out into the chill, fresh darkness. I was a warrior, and had never been anything but a loyal man to my king. I had killed for him more times than I could remember and I dared say I would kill for him again if the time came. I would die for him. I had prided myself on being a man of honor but all I could taste was shame. There had only been one man of honor in that room, and he was now dead. My sword brothers would have their way with her and I could not prevent it, not if I wished to live out the night. Come morning, Corbelathan would have forgotten I had not joined in his debauch, but I would not.
My lord Tuathan had been betrayed by his eldest son, to whom I owed only slightly less fealty than I owed his father. I lay in the darkness, the sweetness of the straw beguiling my nostrils, praying to all the gods that I would be allowed to sleep. Whenever drowsiness crept upon me, though, I put the blade of my knife to my thumb. Pain is good for keeping a man awake when he must plan how he is going to get his king’s son safe home again when the idiot had defiled the hospitality of Cu Cumundi.
The corpses lay in their dried blood when I went to rouse Corbelathan. He lay sprawled on his back, mouth open, dribbling, his blood smeared, still turgidly enlarged member hanging out of his trews. A voice told me to geld him where he lay. Instead, I went outside to the water butt and brought in a cup that I splashed in Cormissen’s face, putting my knife to his throat as he spluttered awake.
“Wake him,” I hissed into his sour face. “We should have been gone from here before now.”
“Gods, my head...” he moaned. I handed him the cup and he swallowed down the remaining drops. Rubbing at his eyes, he sat up, and then he saw the two corpses. “Gods...” he murmured.
“We’ll need more than the gods to help us if we are not out of this land when Cu Cumundi discovers this mayhem.”
I went outside then, unable to stomach any more of that charnel house or my friends’ casual acceptance of it. I didn’t spew my guts in the farmyard, but that was not through lack of desire. Conflict boiled inside me, mixing with bile and hunger, reconciling itself to the need to ride away from this place as quickly as I could, as far as I could, to forget I had ever been there.
Instead of which, I stood waiting, murmuring endearments to Rowan, knowing this would be my last embassy for Tuathan. I should have prevented Corbelathan’s stupidity. I could no longer do the job Tuathan had entrust
ed to me. The time had come to learn how to be a farmer, a husband and a better father before it was too late.
Corbelathan regarded me with the contempt he felt for everyone. There was only one man alive he feared, and sometimes I believed he was stupid enough not to be afraid of his father anymore.
“Don’t be such an old woman,” he croaked, “who would attack a prince?”
If he truly believed being Tuathan’s eldest son and appointed heir was sufficient to excuse him the consequences of his appetite, there were no words I could use to convince him otherwise.
“Her husband?” I wondered aloud. “Her father and brothers? Her husband’s lord whose hospitality has been so defiled?”
“You saw her,” he whined, like a boy who still believed he could talk his way out of a thrashing. “How could any reasonable man with hot blood inside him be expected to spurn the opportunity to have such a woman?” I could see him warming to the notion, his bloodshot eyes sparkling and the tone of his voice firming into the conviction that his absurd notion was simple fact. “I could have fathered heroes on her!” he said, regardless that his record of fathering on either side of the blanket was of weak bodies and weaker minds. “Heroes!”
I said nothing. No-one could ever say anything to get through his thick skull. I considered asking him how he would respond to someone coming to his father’s kingdom and abusing Tuathan’s hospitality so, but he wouldn’t have understood. That was why I was there. I had guile for two, diplomacy and tact, more than enough imagination for us all. I imagined the hoof beats of Cu Cumundi’s carls on the turf of the other side of the hill. I heard their rage, even though I knew they were still asleep in their beds.
I climbed into the saddle, the damp of the morning making my joints ache, the weight of what had been done making my head ache.
“We must be gone. I suggest you occupy yourself on the journey home with devising some excuse to give to your father.”
His roar of laughter was obviously heartfelt. “Why should I?” he bellowed. “That’s the sort of thing you’ve been brought along to do! You’ll make so much better a fist of it than I ever could. I do not have your deviousness.” With that, he smacked Rowan on the rump, the crack of it sounding even through the poor animal’s whinny and my cry of alarm as I was almost thrown. I wavered, flinging my arm about as though I really was in danger of being unhorsed even though my knees were tight to his flanks and my right hand gripped the reins like a drowning man’s. For a while I considered indulging my desire, simply galloping away and leaving my brothers in arms to the sharp-edged fate that awaited them. Eventually though, I reined in Rowan and she came to a panting halt near where a ford took the path across the rushing stream.
A woman knelt at the downstream side of the ford, washing clothes. Something about the redness of her hair in the morning sunlight caught my attention.
“You are about your work early today,” I said by way of an introduction.
With elaborate slowness, she sat up and turned slowly towards me. I gasped. She was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen, that glorious hair, complexion as white as milk but radiant, green eyes that looked straight through me, lips that made me dream of winter nights where the only warmth to be found away from the fire was in the arms of a woman.
Then I recognized the clothes she was washing, and I could have been no colder had I been encased in ice.
“Is there anything of mine there?” I wheezed, certain there could not be, because I had neither undressed nor unpacked my bags since arriving at that doomed farmstead, but wondering all the same.
My stomach fell as fast as my gorge rose as I recognized the five shirts she laid out, plain except for the embroidery at the throat and wrists, the entwined snakes that proclaimed their wearers’ allegiance. That was how I knew there was nothing of mine in her wash. I never wasted my coin on fripperies to impress others ― there was no-one I wished to stir. I had lived long enough to have had the vanity knocked out of me, and needed no badges to remind me of my worth. I was Tuathan’s man. That was all I, or anyone else, needed to know.
She looked at me and smiled. I felt fear that was more hot and intense than anything I had ever experienced before. How else should I feel when a goddess focused on me?
She got to her feet and walked towards me. If I was asked to swear for my life whether her bare feet touched the dewy ground I could not answer. She lightly caressed Rowan’s nuzzle, and I felt all the tension melt out of the animal in less time than it took to blink. I found myself staring into a face, into eyes that went beyond anything a man might call beautiful, such was their sweetness, their awful power, their dreadful, cold ineffability. Her hand moved to mine, feeling like the hand of an ordinary woman, soft and warm and pliant.
“This is not your day,” she said in a voice like the rush of wind over a heather moor in high summer, just before the fire came.
What could any man say to the Morrigan when she told him the clothes she washed belonged to his comrades?
Then she was gone, in a flutter of wings, the sound of which was overlaid by the pounding hooves of the five horses riding towards me.
“Why are you waiting?” called Corbelathan. “I thought you said we should hurry.”
The five of them kicked across the ford, splashing, laughing as their heads cleared of the miasma their excesses had caused. If they saw the clothes of theirs the Morrigan had left on the ground, they gave no sign. I rode on after them, my heart so heavy I was surprised Rowan had the strength to carry me.
****
They found us less than half a mile from the cairn marking the boundary between the lands. We rode hard all morning, not spelling the horses, until Padhraig’s stumbled and broke its leg. Corbelathan, to give him his due, dismissed Padhraig’s plea to leave him behind. Corbelathan was enough of a prince to lift the man behind him on his own horse. Our progress after that was considerably slower, although we neither saw nor heard any sign of pursuit behind us all day. We emerged from the trees at the base of the gentle, grassy rise towards the cairn, grinning at each other. We had made it.
Which was exactly when twenty horsemen appeared at the crest of the rise, halting there, leaning forward over their horses’ ears, staring down at us with hard eyes. The afternoon sun shone on the white and ochre clay daubed on their faces and torsos, their hair twisted into stiffened spikes. We did not need to see their freshly sharpened blades to understand there could only be one outcome to this confrontation.
One of the horsemen kicked on down the hill, approaching us at a walk. As I moved Rowan towards him, I recognized him as Dar Elias, Cu Cumundi’s right hand. By reputation he was wily as a fox, and as dangerous. As he rode, he stroked the head of a pigeon he held to his chest.
“Your fame precedes you,” he said after reining in and ostentatiously not dismounting before Corbelathan, as courtesy demanded. “Or should I say, your infamy.” With that, he lifted the bird to his lips, whispered to it and then tossed it into the air, where it quickly flew back the way we had come. It was rumored that Cu Cumundi could converse with the creatures of his kingdom as easily as with its men.
“Give me the murderer and the rest of you can go on your way,” Dar Elias said, his voice deep and rolling with contempt. His only reply was the hiss of swords. Mine was not the last to appear.
Dar Elias looked from each of us to the next in line, and then nodded. “I should have expected no less from you.” He lifted his left hand, and the rest of his war band came trotting down the slope towards us. As they approached we all dismounted and pushed our horses to the rear. There were men, somewhere, who fought on horseback, but none of them were here.
The heaviness that had oppressed me since the morning lifted, leaving me feeling light on my feet and clear sighted. The prospect of imminent, violent death concentrates a man’s mind on what makes life worth living; the colors and scents of the country; the gruff, wary voices of his brothers-in-arms; the memories of past times, of glory and tendernes
s, of terror and elation.
I had known from the moment I gave my fealty to Tuathan that I should likely die for him. I had the scars to demonstrate how often I had put myself in harm’s way to protect his body and his honor. It had been a good life, and while I should have preferred it to go on until I slipped away in my sleep, a toothless old man who bored the tribe spitless with his incessant tales of the older, better days, I was content for it to end here, today. To be sure, I would have preferred a better reason than protecting a sot and a rapist and a murderer, but Corbelathan was my king’s son, and my honor required me to give my life just as readily for him. My blood might belong to another man’s sword, but my honor would always be my own and nobody was ever going to take it away from me.
While Dar Elias’ band dismounted, we grasped each other’s arms and wished ourselves the fortunes of war, which would be a swift cut to the front from another man of honor, which Cu Cumundi’s men were. They were another tribe, differently accented, wearing their hair differently, with different patterns drawn in clay on their torsos than we would have drawn, but they were our brothers just the same. There was no enmity in this battle, no hatred, just resolution.
Dar Elias stepped forward again, thrusting his sword point into the earth between his feet. The gesture was not lost on us, as the rest of his men followed his lead.
“I give you one last chance,” he said, striking the pose of a leader of men, chest puffed out like that pigeon he had just sent home, chin high, clear eye fixed on Corbelathan. “Give up the despoiler of our hospitality to my lord’s mercy and the rest of you may return to your homes without a stain on your honor.”
If there was a darker or more pungent stain than the knowledge I had walked in the other direction while my lord’s son was taken, I could not imagine it. I could not bear that burden. Its weight would drive me, living, into the earth.
The Phantom Queen Awakes Page 20