by David Drake
The red-haired warrior snapped around like a released spring. "You're going to tell me she's kin to you?" he shouted at Mael. "That she knew you were coming here when I didn't myself?"
"I'll tell you damn-all but the truth," Mael said, his own voice controlled and as tight as the muscles of his rectum. They were drawing up and chilling his whole body with the fear of death. "She's no kin, she's no acquaintance—by the Dagda's dick, she's not even Irish, you can hear that in her voice." Which was true; the syllables were perfect but too flat for a native speaker's. "But this I will say, I'll not be a part to a rape in a stranger king's territory, not with me not an hour landed in Ireland again."
"You just hold her bloody arms and leave me to worry about Muirtaig," Dubtach snarled. He turned back to the woman.
Mael caught him again by the arm. Dubtach cursed as he jerked his hand down to his sword hilt. Mael kicked him in the groin, his hand locking Dubtach's down so that the war chief could not draw. Dubtach's gasp as he doubled over choked the call for assistance that was already halfway up his throat. Mael hit him on the back of the head and cursed as Dubtach ignored the blow and tried to rise. Mael kneed him in the face, then drew his own dagger and chopped the red-haired man with the butt of it twice behind the ear. This time Dubtach sagged all the way to the ground.
Mael spun, crouching, his dagger out to take the charge and the life of anyone who might have followed him and Dubtach through the orchard. Breeze and the terrain blocked all sound of the men at the beach. Mael prayed that all sound of Dubtach's struggles had been masked as well.
He turned again, both fearful and threatening. The woman with white hair had not moved, nor had the hedges spilled her suspected companions. Mael was breathing heavily. "I need one of your horses," he said, pointing his dagger downward. He did not sheath it, not yet. "I'll pay you for it, a fair price."
"I brought it for you," said the woman. "I've been watching for you to come."
"That was a fine story the first time, " Mael snapped sarcastically. "It nearly got me killed and you raped by a boatload instead of the chief only. But it's no good with me, you see. You don't know me and you can't have been expecting me."
"I've been waiting for Loeghaire o'—"
"Don't say that name!" Mael shouted. For the instant he forgot the men on the shore and the others a cry might bring to find him over the bludgeoned Dubtach. He forgot everything but the far past and the icy fear of discovery. Mael had convinced himself that it would not happen on a brief return. After all, there had been a decade for men and memories to age.
"Come," said the woman, "we have to ride."
That was good advice. Besides, Mael was beyond planning for himself, not then. He sheathed his dagger as he followed her, two quick steps and a vault that took him astride the larger of the two horses. The woman mounted the bay mare as easily. Mael's stallion walked, then trotted to quick heel pressure. They were following the path westward as Dubtach had directed.
"Where are we going?" the woman asked, keeping station to Mael's right and half a pace behind.
"Don't you know that, too?" Mael retorted. The measured gait of the horse was a comfort to the exile's mind, especially after the greasy smoothness of the curragh in the waves.
"I was told to meet a man," the woman said, her tone quiet and certain. She sounded like a mother drawing an answer out of an unruly boy. "And if you don't want me to call you by the name you were born with, you have to tell me what you go by now. I'm Veleda."
"Mael mac Ronan," Mael said unwillingly. Veleda was not an Irish name, but that was no surprise. German, perhaps? But not really that, either. There was no accent at all in her speech; rather, she had a suspicious lack of accent. And—but Mael broke into his own thoughts to add, "I'm riding to Lough Conn," repeating his lie to Dubtach.
They went on in silence for almost a mile, through a landscape of small fields and occasional small turf houses. Most of the dwellings were surrounded by fences that served both as corrals and for protection from attack. Once a horse whinnied as Mael and Veleda passed, but their own mounts made no reply.
They reached the first fork in the road. Veleda pointed to the right without hesitation. They continued on. "What are you?" Mael demanded abruptly without looking at his companion.
"A woman," she replied.
He turned in his saddle and her eyes were on him already, her face shadowed by the silver frame of her hair. "There's ten thousand women in Ireland," Mael said, "and not one of them but you knew where I'd be landing—any more than I myself did. What are you?"
"We're all of us together in the world," Veleda said, "all of us a part of it and of each other. Some are born a little more aware of that togetherness than others. I hear things, I'm told things. I was told that I should meet you, and where I should and when . . . and I did. I don't know who or what it was that told me, or why—not really. If all that makes me wise, then I'm a wise woman, as some have called me. But they've called me a demon, too, and a goddess—and I'm none of those things. I'm a woman."
She smiled and tossed her head. The road jogged south at the same moment, and the thin moon lit Veleda's face like a still pool in the sunlight. Mael grinned back, then laughed aloud as he found himself believing her. A pressure lifted from him. "I won't complain that you hear voices," he said, "if they've saved me a hike I was dreading."
For a while Mael's face sobered, but it did not fall into the grim lines it had worn at the beginning of the ride. He held his horse for the half step that brought Veleda abreast of him, then asked, "What are you going to do, then?"
"There's something very important and very near," Veleda said. "Very . . ."
"A king rising?" interjected Mael into the pause with his mind on mad, brilliant Arthur and his boasting. "An empire?"
"No," said Veleda with the curtness of one who understands something completely for one who never would. "Not men, not anything of men. That's like saying the sun sends down its light to warm us. We're not that important. But whatever is about to happen, you're a part of it. I want to stay with you, at least until I understand more than I do now." she smiled again. "That's a fault of mine. I like to know things."
"Umm," murmured Mael as he considered. Indeed she was a woman. An attractive one who had done him a favor. Clearly it was not safe for her to wander alone in a country as unsettled as Ireland now. Even the leaders, unless Dubtach was the exception, seemed to think it no disgrace to rape in peacetime as if they were at war. . . . "We'll see, then," Mael said. "Do you have any relatives around here?"
"None at all."
"Well, we'll see then," Mael repeated. "For now, I think we're far enough from Dubtach and his friends for safety, and I, at least, could use a soft place to sleep in. Though I doubt we'll do better than a haystack. It's damned late, and nobody with good sense is going to open his house to strangers."
"I've slept in haystacks before," said Veleda. "There's one a quarter mile ahead on the right—near the path and far enough from the house that we won't trouble the owners. Or they us."
"Oh, you've been this way—" Mael began. He stopped himself when he realized that if the answer were "No" he would not want to have heard it.
The haystack was where Veleda said it would be. It was a six-foot dome notched by use to half that height on one side. The two of them unsaddled their horses. Mael stripped the reins off his mount and started to use them as a makeshift hobble, but the woman said, "No need—they won't stray." She had already unpinned her cloak and was wrapping it around her in place of a blanket.
Mael shook out his own cloak, a thick, gray-white rectangle of wool. It had not been either bleached or dyed. The lanolin still in the wool made the garment almost waterproof. He eyed Veleda as he worked, fascinated by her grace and the economy of her movements. Odd—generally he liked his women tall, with a little more bone showing than was most men's ideal. Mael's mind flashed him a memory of a tanned, rangy woman, her eyes and hair black and welcoming. He shivered with the force of the thought,
shaking his head as if to free cobwebs from his hair.
This woman, Veleda. Was it her hair that drew him? It fell in silky perfection to the small of her back when she shook it from beneath her cloak. Or again, the attraction might be her face; serene and smooth, its youthfulness was a stunning contrast to the white tresses around it. Veleda's lips were thin—thinner than those other lips—though not cruel. But a knife blade is not cruel either, only lethal, and there was a quality of lethal determination in the blonde woman's lips and face. Veleda's hands were small and gentle, as delicate as filigree brooches. They clasped the cloak about her in the moonlight.
Mael grunted and rolled himself down in the yielding hay. He found the woman interesting as a person, and the fact concerned him. Interest in women as people was a practice Mael thought he had given up ten years before, in a bloodstained bedchamber. That was not a scene he ever wanted to repeat.
Sleep was a longer time coming than it should have been.
Chapter Four
In the morning Mael told Veleda their real destination, the wide slough of the Shannon that was Lough Ree. The roads were crooked and narrow, frequently muddy ruts where their course followed a creek. Mael and Veleda moved as fast as the well-being of the horses allowed, but Mael knew it would be at least an honest three days' travel to the wayside shrine that was his goal.
Though travelers were rare, the two of them attracted little attention. Veleda generally rode with her cowl up to hide her striking hair. They were both too simply dressed to arouse greed. Mael, though not heavily armed, had a killer's look about him that twice turned casual bullies to look for other prey. All around were signs of an unsettled land. Men tilled their fields with spears lashed to their plows where they could be seized at need. Women called their children sharply out of the road when the strangers appeared. But two riders who gave no trouble and looked able to defend themselves were safe enough anywhere.
Veleda traded brass armlets for boiled mutton and porridge along the way, bargaining with the householders while Mael stood back with just enough of a frown to encourage a quick resolution. They dipped water from springs when there was no house nearby to barter them beer.
And each night the two of them slept on the ground, close enough together that Mael could feel the heat from the woman's body—or thought he could. Mael's knee had swollen where Dubtach's tooth had cut it, but the pain and swelling had disappeared when Veleda applied a poultice of leaves and spider silk. Mael's only pain was that of his groin which was as tight as an inflated bladder. It ached, especially when his mind wandered back to times past. Mael talked incessantly as they rode.
Late in the afternoon of the third day, Mael and Veleda topped the wooded ridge that overlooked the black waters of Lough Ree a quarter mile away. There had to be some current, but the surface seemed still for as far as the watchers could see. Reeds grew so thickly in the shallows that the shoreline was hard to determine. The western slope of the ridge on which Mael stood was covered with rhododendrons that linked themselves impassably to either side of the path. From the water's edge at the end of the path, a rickety pier thrust out beyond the reeds.
Halfway down the hill, between the crest and the pier, stood a tiny stone chapel whose peaked roof made it look taller than it was long. "The shrine of the Unknown Hero," said Mael in satisfaction. "They say a traveler jumped into the lough with nothing but a sword and beheaded the monster there. Quite a hero tale about it—as there are about lots of things, of course. More to the point, there was a shrine built at the spot—here—and the monster's skull inside it. I saw it once."
"And you're going to kill a monster yourself?" Veleda asked mildly.
Mael snorted. "I won't go swimming with fish that size," he said, "not when somebody did the work for me already. Besides, there aren't any of the beasts around, not any more."
He felt Veleda's cool eyes on him. He turned to her, frowning. "Look," Mael said, "it happened a long time ago. There's stories that the hero was Niall, but that's not true—the skull was old even when he was the High King. Maybe it really was Lugh or some other god that killed the thing—that's what the oldest songs say. I don't know. But I don't have years to spend out there in a rowboat, proving that the skull in the shrine was the last one there was to be had, either. I don't care to rob a shrine, and if your voices tell you to go—go. I didn't plan to drag anybody here anyway.
"But the gods can take care of their own. I've got a friend depending on me."
"A man does what he must," Veleda said.
"A man does what he can, you mean," Mael said, and he faced back to the shrine. But of course it was not what Veleda meant, and it galled Mael more than any open condemnation could have.
The chapel was of ashlar-cut limestone. The roof was formed by heavy timbers because its slope was too sharp for slates. There was a suggestion of a wooden lean-to built against the far side, but the angle made it hard to see for sure. On the uphill side toward Mael was a wooden door and a slit window. The latter was unshuttered but too narrow to pass a man or even a boy. A yard of sorts had been cleared of rhododendrons. A solid oak bench sat in the clearing against the wall of the building. It was a moment before Mael noticed the stone cross that now stood at the northern peak of the roof.
"Christian?" he blurted incredulously.
"Many of the old places are now," Veleda replied. "It's coming, you know, all over Ireland."
Mael shook his head. "I've been away too long," he said. He grinned and added, "Or maybe not long enough. Well, this may change things, but we won't know till we check." He clucked to his horse, leading the way down the narrow path through the twisted shrubs.
Chance or the thud of hooves on the peaty soil brought motion at the window. Then the door flew back and a short man stepped out of the building to await them. He was a priest—or a monk, perhaps; there was a difference but Mael did not know quite what it was. The man was old and wore a cassock of black wool in startling contrast to his white beard and hair. His face was more shrunken together than lined, its expression bitter and proud and inflexible. He could have been fifty years old or eighty, but he still moved like a bird.
Mael smiled and waved his right hand, empty, in greeting. The priest nodded stiffly in reply. He stepped to the side of the door. A balding giant seven feet tall walked out of the shrine behind the priest, ducking to clear the lintel.
Mael was not small himself, and he had been around even bigger men for most of his life. This fellow would be, he thought, the biggest man he had ever seen. The giant was barefoot and clad in a plain linen tunic with a wide sash. He seemed to taper toward both ends like a skein of wool. Mael's first thought was that the giant was fat, since his smooth limbs seemed stuffed like sausages and his torso a tun of lard. Then the fellow moved in front of the black-garbed priest. His flesh rippled and bulged instead of dimpling as fat does. The giant was muscular, and there was an awesome bulk of those muscles.
"Fergus!" snapped the priest. "Did you finish your prayers?"
The giant stopped. He opened his mouth and drooled slightly on his tunic. Mael could see that the cloth was already damp. "I forgot," Fergus rumbled, looking at the ground instead of the small man questioning him.
"And do you want the Lord Almighty to forget you in the day of your need? Is that what you want, Fergus?" the priest demanded.
The giant began to twist his right index finger into his left palm. He concentrated wholly on the process and did not speak.
The priest sighed. He wiped spittle from the giant's chin with the end of the sash, then said, "Oh, go sit down. But you must be more careful." Obediently Fergus walked to the bench and sat. The oak creaked loudly. The giant's round face was as expressionless as his bare pate.
The giant's appearance had startled Mael out of his original plan of tying the priest, stealing the skull, and fleeing before a chance wayfarer stopped by the shrine. Instead, the exile reined up at the edge of the clearing and said, "Ah, sir . . ." but he could not think of
a way to continue.
The little priest nodded. "Yes, yes, I'm Father Diarmid. And you're pilgrims to the shrine, I see—since this path doesn't lead anywhere else."
Mael dismounted, still trying to frame a useful opening. His body no longer blocked Diarmid's view of Veleda. The priest's breath hissed in. His wizened face took on the look of a man who has caught his wife making love to the potboy. "Witch!" he cried with loathing.
Mael blinked in surprise and looked back at Veleda. She was calm, not even frowning. There was nothing unusual about her except her hair—and that, if unusual, was no certain witch-mark.
But the priest was right.
Diarmid pointed at the woman and his voice, never pleasant, rasped like a corn mill as he shouted, "You! God seared Ireland over the coals of his wrath for your sort, witches and druids! He brought the Plague on us as upon the heathen Egyptians, that all this land should know His name and follow Him. Your gods are false, dead and stinking with the corruption of their falsehood. How dare you try to enter this holy place wrapped in sin and error?"
"Men will do as they wish, think as they wish, pray as they wish," said Veleda. She leaned a little toward the old man and added, with a distinctness as forceful as his own shouted polemic, "and god is still the same in all his aspects. For myself, I don't worship a god who died on a tree, and my god doesn't drown the earth with the blood of innocents to fill his churches—and his coffers!"
"Get away from here," Diarmid said, almost calmly. The leash on his tongue snapped and he screamed, "Get away from here, whore of Satan! Cease defiling ground blessed by the feet of the Holy Padraic!"
"Now wait a minute . . ." Mael began. He stepped forward with his left hand raised as much for attention as a sign of peaceful intent.
Fergus moved also. He reached under the bench on which he sat and twitched out what Mael had thought was a loose building block. It was a forty-pound wedge of soapstone, a small boat anchor. A three-inch hole had been bored in the center to reeve through a line. Fergus had fitted the stone with an oak shaft as long as Mael's arm. The streaked, gray mace head was utterly steady though Fergus held it one-handed.