Firebrand

by Gillian Philip

  ‘What about her?’ The MacLeod nodded at the whimpering creature.

  ‘Her mother died five months ago. She has no other family. It was her stepfather who denounced her to the…to the minister,’ said Conal bitterly. ‘She can’t go back to Balchattan. She’ll have to come with us.’

  The MacLeod waved a hand dismissively. ‘Of course, of course.’ He clicked his gloved fingers again. ‘Give them horses,’ he told his men, ‘and escort them to the borders of my land. Beyond that their fate is their own. You should go far from here, MacGregor. You know exactly what I mean, don’t you?’

  Looking dumbfounded, Conal bowed his head.

  ‘I wish you wouldn’t do that,’ sighed the MacLeod.

  I caught the flash of Conal’s old grin as he straightened.

  Horses were brought, we mounted, and it was over. I could barely believe it. I thought I would start to shake, but I made myself keep control: we were still surrounded by full-mortals and I still trusted none of them. As far as I knew this could be a sick joke to torment us with before they killed us.

  Not all of them were full-mortals, of course. The silver-eyed fighter gave the girl up into Conal’s arms, and as he stepped back he winked. Something undoubtedly passed between his mind and my brother’s before Conal turned to the MacLeod.

  ‘Thank you. Morair. Your God go with you.’

  ‘Goodbye, MacGregor, and let’s hope against hope he’s with all of us. And in future?’ The earl sighed. ‘Do be more careful who sees that light in your mind’s eye.’

  22

  TWENTY-TWO

  We detoured, of course, to retrieve Branndair and Liath, and we stopped once so that we could eat. We didn’t have anything, but the earl’s fighters were Highlanders enough to share what they had. They didn’t speak much, and I wondered where they were from, but I didn’t care quite enough to ask. I was desperately tired, and desperately worried.

  Conal sat hunched and silent, his body curled up, and though he was thin and hollow-eyed he could barely force down the oatcakes and dried meat they gave him. I made him drink a little water. Liath lay with her head against him, watchful. Branndair tried to curl in my lap, though he was too big to fit there now and his haunches sprawled on the ground. I’d been afraid the earl’s fighters might try to kill the pair of them, but when I coaxed Branndair and Liath out of the sett, the men had only raised their eyebrows and shared glances, and then took no more notice than if they had been hunting dogs.

  The girl crouched a little apart, cramming down food like a ravenous animal but never taking her wary eyes off us all. She didn’t say a word. She hadn’t spoken since they dragged her to the stake, and she’d even stopped crying, thank the gods. When it was time to move on, and I’d given Conal a boost into his saddle, she went straight to his horse without asking, put her bare foot in its stirrup beside Conal’s, and mounted behind him, hitching up her thin shift. She rested her hands on his waist but she didn’t grip him too tightly, I was glad to see—it would have been a pity to kill her now—and he didn’t seem to mind her being there. He seemed to find it comforting.

  I knew things were bad with him because he rode with stirrups. If he hadn’t, I think he’d simply have slipped from the horse’s back. I’d crossed my own across my horse’s withers: a saddle felt strange enough. But Conal had his feet jammed into the stirrups, and he clutched the pommel like a drowning man clinging to life. Anxiety ate at my guts.

  The men left us in a small clearing that lay on the edge of the MacLeod’s lands. All but one turned their horses and rode off without a word, but their captain waited beside us.

  ‘It isn’t far from here, is it?’

  Conal’s head hung so low in exhaustion I knew he couldn’t even speak, so I answered for him. ‘No. Not far.’

  ‘Keep the horses. They are a gift from the MacLeod. Do you know the way?’

  I glanced at Conal, saw his head nod slightly. The girl’s wide anxious eyes were locked on him.

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘We’ll be fine.’ At least I hoped we would. All of us.

  ‘Don’t come back here, any of you, if you know what’s good for you.’

  ‘I wouldn’t dream of it,’ I said bitterly.

  ‘But if you do, and you’re in trouble,’ he said, ‘ask for me. I am Iain Ruadh MacLeod. And if I am not here,’ a smile twitched his mouth, ‘ask for my descendants.’

  A muttered thank you was all I could manage as he put his heels to his horse and cantered after his men. When I looked again at Conal, he had already ridden on in silence. I rode after him, the wolves at our heels.

  These were pretty lands, wooded and wild but lush, and sheltered by hills. The climate was damp and warm in the low lying forests; there were flowers and deep green grass and springs soaking through the earth. Midges hovered in a cloud around us, but none of us minded much. I recognised it all, though it had been almost two years, and my heart lightened the further we rode. If I could get him home, we’d be fine.

  The little loch lay quiet among the trees, and we were silent as we halted and stared at it. My heart was in my throat and my eyes burned. Beyond the reedy edges its surface was absolutely still, sticky-glossed with the intense reflected colours of bank and tree and sky. If you dipped in your hand, you might think you’d draw it out dripping with raw pigment.

  ‘Girl,’ I said. ‘Get off the horse.’

  The girl slid off the horse’s back and stood there, looking at me and then at Conal and then at the loch. Conal half-turned to give me a withering glare that was a ghost of what he used to inflict on me. I tried to smile.

  Dismounting, Conal gripped his horse’s stirrup leather tightly, and leaned against the animal’s flank for a moment, and so kept his footing. Gathering himself, he walked forward to the reedy bank. He turned to the girl.

  ‘Catriona,‘ he said pointedly, with a glance at me. ‘This is where we go.’

  She shook her head, took a step back, and shook her head again.

  ‘Do you want to stay here and die,’ he asked her, ‘or will you trust me?’

  Staring at the still water, she swallowed, her pale throat jerking. She took a step towards the loch, then another, but then she stopped and seemed unable to move.

  ‘You have to be with me,’ he said, and in front of my disbelieving eyes he went to her and picked her up in his arms again.

  She was a wisp of a creature, but I wanted to drag her off him and fling her away. I jumped down off my own horse, but something held me back. She was shaking her head violently, touching Conal’s face, stroking his cheek.

  ‘It’s all right,’ he said. ‘I’m all right.’ And he carried her into the water.

  He stopped when he was up to his thighs, and waited for me. Whistling a low note to Liath and Branndair, I slipped a hand under the cheekpiece of each horse’s bridle so that the backs of my hands were pressed to their bony heads. Then I led them forward. They were obedient beasts. They followed me and the wolves without shying or balking. Hell, they must have got a shock when the watergate opened.

  So must the girl. She must have been petrified, but she never showed it. I was fighting terrified horses by the time I surfaced and shook water from my eyes. They were tossing their heads, jerking away from me, going back on their hind legs, bucking and plunging and dancing sideways. Grimly I held onto them, though one was snapping frantically at my hand. We needed horses and I couldn’t lose them, so although I was desperate to get to Conal, first I had to tether the beasts to a bleached stump of dead tree. Liath and Branndair shook their fur dry, and sat down, and stared at the moorland, looking a little bewildered but not unhappy.

  The girl was still clutched in Conal’s arms, her arms now tight around his neck, her face buried in his throat. He sank down to his knees and I heard him say something to her, a note of desperation in it. Squirming from his arms at last, she crawled back on all fours and clambered to her feet, staring at him. He forced another smile, and tried to stand up, but instead he pitched sidewa
ys onto the heather and lay still.

  I screamed at her, though I don’t know what. Just to get away from him, I think, and at first she did, tugging up her dirty rag of dress and backing away, her eyes wide with terror. Shoving her aside I fell to my knees beside him, and that’s when I heard a snap and crack, and an abrupt thunder of hooves. Out of the side of my vision I saw one of the horses break free and run, galloping in a full-blown panic towards the far hills. In my rush I hadn’t tethered it properly. I swore, but we still had one horse, and right now I only cared about Conal.

  The girl hung back, trembling. I just wanted her to go away, go away and let me help him in peace, but I was cold, and hungry, and more exhausted than I’d realised. My arms trembled, aching from the vertical climb that I tried not to remember, the climb that chilled my guts when I remembered clinging to life and the fortress wall like a pathetic insect. I blinked away the memory, but still my arms wouldn’t take Conal’s weight. I wasn’t big enough. I wasn’t strong enough. He was going to die here.

  ‘Help me!’ I screamed.

  And to give her credit she did, rushing to my side and helping me half-carry, half-drag him to the horse. It was hell, and it was even worse trying to lift him onto its back. In desperation I tugged off the animal’s saddle roll and unwound the cloth and looped it under Conal’s arms, and between us we dragged and shoved him up; then Catriona sprang up behind him and held him, balancing him, while I unfastened the stirrup leathers and the reins. I buckled the stirrup leathers together and used them to tie his feet under the horse, and then we used the reins to strap his body as best we could to the horse’s neck. Catriona slid off again.

  ‘Don’t you want to ride too?’ I asked, because I felt I should.

  She shook her head.

  ‘It’s a long way,’ I warned her.

  She shrugged.

  I looked around for landmarks, and glanced up at a sun that was barely risen, a pale and clear early-morning sky. My sky. Then with me leading Conal’s horse by the cheekpiece of its bridle, and Catriona walking at its other side, we set off on the long walk home.

  * * *

  We must have been within a few miles of the dun by the time I blinked and pulled together my scattered thoughts and my exhausted brain. I knew I should call for help. We must be in range by now and help would come, if I could only think who to call. I struggled to make my mind work, knowing the girl at my side was staring at me in fright as I flailed my temples with my fist, fiercely enough to bruise them. I scratched the skin, drawing beads of blood. I couldn’t remember when I’d last slept. I could remember no-one in the dun.

  Raineach. The name came to me very suddenly. I stopped, clenched my teeth, and called Raineach.

  It was perhaps another mile or more before I was answered, but her answer came in the flesh. I almost wept when I saw familiar fighters riding towards us, but I didn’t. I kept walking till I couldn’t walk any more, and then I stopped, and Catriona stopped too, and suddenly we were surrounded by people I knew. I just stood there, silent, while they unbuckled the tack straps and lifted Conal with infinite care from the horse, and laid him on a hide stretcher beneath a soft plaid. Riders jostled me aside, threw questions at me, but I couldn’t answer, could barely speak. I tried to say he’d been hurt. I tried to say what had happened. I tried to say that I’d tried to stop it, but really, none of my words came out right, and not many of them were listening. I was so tired. Dully I watched them. I couldn’t hear them properly, and the scene was jerky.

  Eili was in front of me. I stared at her in shock.

  ‘Why didn’t you come for us?’ she cried. ‘Why didn’t you come?’

  I felt as if I’d been jerked awake, and my words stuck in my throat. ‘I couldn’t…you know I…the time. It might have slipped. I couldn’t leave him. The time, Eili…’

  She was already gone, running to Conal’s side, and helping to slide his stretcher gently onto a cart.

  And then the cart was gone, and the horses, and their riders, and Conal with them, and Liath was running at their heels. I’d brought him home, I thought, and I could let him out of my sight and know there was nothing more I could do. They’d do their best, they didn’t need me. Relief and fatigue swamped me like a spring tide, and I halted on the track, hoping my legs weren’t about to go from under me. Branndair tilted his head at me and whined.

  The girl halted too. She was still beside me, I realised with mild shock.

  ‘Go on,’ I said. ‘Go on. They’ll look after you.’

  She didn’t move, only turned towards the riders as they shrunk in the distance. Her eyes darkened and she frowned. I followed her gaze.

  They were so worried about Conal. So was I. Almighty gods, he was the one who was at death’s door. I was fine. I was just tired, that was all. There was no other reason for the crushing ache in my ribcage and the stinging pain in my eyes. I raised my arm to rub them, or tried to, but my arm felt too heavy. It was too much effort.

  She touched my arm. I looked down at her hand. It looked frail against the lean hard muscles of my forearm, her skin dungeon-pale and blue-veined. Her nails were torn, and a little displaced, and there were deep wicked lines running towards the base of them, red turning purple and black. I wondered what had been stuck beneath them. The pricker’s needle?

  Seeing me look, she snatched her hand back, but when I looked up her gaze held mine. Defiant, so she was. I eyed her with disdain. She was scrawny after her imprisonment, but she can’t ever have had much muscle on her. Her eyes were huge in a delicate pointed face, but maybe they just looked that way because of her shorn head, scabby and scarred and louse-bitten. Pity twinged in my chest, but it was swiftly overwhelmed by disgust. I hated the way she was looking at me: half sympathetic, half scared. She was too fragile, too snappable for my taste.

  Too full-mortal.

  I turned on my heel and headed straight west, Branndair trotting at my side. What I needed right now was sky and sea, clear salt water over my head. I knew the girl was following, and it irritated me, so I stripped naked as I walked. That made her stop and sit down on the fringe of the machair, so I kept walking, plunging down the sandbank and breaking into a sprint when I reached hard sand. I leaped and somersaulted, flinging myself into the waves.

  Once I was under, just for a second or two I never wanted to surface again. I wondered if this was what they called a deathwish. Conal said we all came from the sea, even the full-mortals, and that was why so many of us went back there.

  Shutting my eyes I swam down, then drifted weightless, tugged and turned by the force of the water as it roiled towards the shore, feeling nothing but cold silky water on my skin, the light caress of seaweed, tangle coiling round my ankle. All I could hear was the sea and the pulse of my blood, roaring in my ears, and I didn’t know which was which. My feet touched the seabed, wet sand shifting between my toes, so I pushed back up and broke the surface, sucking in sky.

  So deathwishes didn’t last. With luck they didn’t come true.

  I wiped my hair out of my eyes, kicked onto my back and floated, rocked in the swell. I could see Branndair, anxiously pacing the shoreline, whimpering his concern. While my attention was distracted, a bigger wave tumbled me into shore. I surfaced again, choking water. Damn, but it tasted good. The air tasted good. So did the whole world.

  I should go to the dun now. Soon. No. Maybe later.

  The girl hugged her knees, watching me. Grinding my teeth, I stood up and walked out of the sea, and that made her look hurriedly aside. I picked up my scattered clothing and tugged it back on, the sand scratching my skin in painful places, then went deliberately to the southern end of the bay and scrambled out to the rock headland. This time she didn’t follow, but she didn’t move either. I forgot her. I sat and stared out at the water, hypnotised by the waves, happy to be home.

  But I didn’t want to go back to the dun yet. The notion twisted my stomach. I didn’t want to see anyone. I wanted to see my home, that was all. This was mo
re than enough. I’d wanted it for two years. Till Conal recovered, I didn’t need anything or anyone else.

  ‘Hello.’ There was a footstep on rock behind me. ‘You sorry son of a wolf-bitch.’

  I sprang to my feet, shocked. The voice was deeper than I remembered: almost a man’s. It was a beautiful voice, the more so because he used it sparingly. That part of him was still beautiful, at least. He smiled at me.

  ‘Hello,’ I said, ‘you ugly bastard.’

  ‘Ugliest bastard in the dun,’ said Sionnach cheerfully. ‘Only ugly bastard in the dun.’ He put out his arms and I embraced him fiercely.

  ‘I missed you,’ he said, ‘you insufferable wee savage.’

  ‘I missed you too.’ I hesitated. ‘How are you?’

  ‘Grand. The women like this look.’

  He’d managed to grow a goatee beard, neat and trimmed though he hadn’t bothered cutting his wild hair. Scruffy tinker. Maybe he thought the beard drew the eye from the scars. They didn’t look too bad, to be honest. Well, all right, they were bloody awful, but they gave him a rakish look.

  ‘I’m telling you. Women like a face with character. They don’t go for pretty boys like you.’

  ‘Nah,’ I said. ‘They’re just being kind. They feel sorry for you.’

  ‘Could be my personality, I grant you that much.’

  ‘Aye. Wit, repartee and natural eloquence.’

  He laughed, and I laughed too, I couldn’t help it. He hugged me again.

  ‘So,’ he said. ‘Want to go back to the dun yet?’

  ‘Seeing as you mention it.’ I grinned. ‘Yes, I do.’

  23

  TWENTY-THREE

  The girl trailed us to the dun but she stayed well back in our wake. Sionnach glanced at her, curious, but he seemed more interested in Branndair, who I noticed fell instantly in love with him without going through a bad-tempered biting phase. I was amused and miffed.