Firebrand (35 page)

See? I didn’t need extra height. I didn’t need extra weight. Not when there was another shortarse to help me. The wheel groaned, and swung round, and I managed to clamber up two, three more spokes. Grunting, I climbed again, the weight of the child almost killing me now. Her legs were locked round my waist, clinging on like a human grappling hook.

The arrows had stopped flying so thickly, and I saw the courtyard was filling. They could not concentrate on us any more, dangling like bowshot-practice, because Conal’s troops were forcing the gate wide and slashing their way through Calman Ruadh’s fighters. Out of the corner of my eye, through blood and sweat, I could make out only the fast flash and glitter of blades, the agile twist and leap of bodies. I heard screams, and war-cries, and above it the agitated howl
of Calman Ruadh.

‘
Get the
CHILD.
THE CHILD
. HANG THAT FECKING GIRL…’

I smiled at her, and she smiled back, still locked round my neck. My arms were about to give way.

‘Good girl,’ I said. ‘Thanks.’

Her smile faded. ‘I think my father’s dead.’

I thought about lying. ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘he is. But he’s proud of you.’

The smile came back, and then my sweating palms lost their grip and we fell together.

I managed to twist so that she fell on me, not that it did my lungs much good. If the fighters around me hadn’t been so preoccupied, I’d have had it, because I couldn’t breathe for a while. We lay there like corpses, the girl on top of me, and that’s what they all must have thought we were. At last I sucked air into my lungs in a great whistling gasp. I took her arms.

‘Run,’ I said. ‘Do as you’re told this time.’

I caught the flash of her pixie-grin and then she was off, running and lost among the dun alleyways. I couldn’t worry any longer. I snake-crawled to the nearest corpse and wrenched the sword out of its bloody fingers.

There comes a moment, luckily, when instinct takes over. Later that dawn I found that the arrow-wound in my thigh was quite bad, but I didn’t feel it then, and it wasn’t bad enough to bleed me to death. I just fought like I was fighting Eorna, like I wanted to thrash him, like my clann was watching and wanted to see me beaten, like I wanted to prove them wrong. My flying bare
feet found bellies and throats and other points where flesh was soft; my blade whipped and snapped with a precision I couldn’t have achieved if I was thinking about it. I was in a trance of ecstasy. Ecstasy.

Later I thought: is this how it feels for a Lammyr? But I didn’t think it then. Just as well. It might have stopped me in my tracks.

I saw Sionnach and Eili, fighting like mirror images, catching one another’s moves and echoing them with a deadly efficiency. I saw Aonghas, and Reultan, and Sorcha; Carraig, Righil, and Orach. No fast moves from Torc, who was simply hacking his blunt and brutal way through the fighters who came at him. Most of Conal’s fighters were off their horses now; being mounted had given them an advantage but now they were hungry for close-quarters duelling. Nor did my horse, or Conal’s, or Torc’s, need a rider to encourage them to join a battle. The blue roan had one of Calman Ruadh’s fighters by the throat, shaking him like a dog with a rat.

I needed to find Conal.

Reultan’s block was gone now; she had abandoned me to my own efforts, and fair enough. At least my head had stopped hurting. The minds around me were a chaos of violence and fury, and I couldn’t lock onto Conal at all. Furiously I rubbed my eyes. They were blurred once more with blood; the wound on my forehead had split open again.

There. I caught a brief glimpse of him as he leaped and turned in the air, then he was gone, and I had to fight my way through to him. Someone else was doing
the same, hacking down Raonall to get closer to Conal. Raonall staggered back with Calman Ruadh’s sword in his guts, cursing his killer in a spray of bloody spittle as he stumbled and went down, jerking.

Luthais’s scream: I never heard anything like it. The man hurtled though the ranks, at the last minute springing up to run on heads and shoulders towards Calman Ruadh, who reached swiftly to whip his sword from Raonall’s belly. The wide slash as he brought it round just missed Luthais’s ankles. He was quick to recover his balance, though, and Luthais’s rage was too wild with grief. He hacked violently, and missed, and Calman Ruadh’s backswung blade half-severed his head from his neck.

The clash had brought Calman Ruadh closer to me than to Conal, though only just.

‘Mine!’ I screamed.

‘No!’ yelled Conal.

‘
Mine! I claim him!
’

All right. That may have been impetuous. Conal stared at me, not just livid but horrified, but I had no time to endure a bollocking from him, and he had no time to give me one. I turned and raised my sword as Calman Ruadh, grinning, came towards me.

A space cleared around us. Partly it was that the battle was reaching its end, and only the last small deadly squabbles continued around us. Partly the survivors were intrigued that I’d been stupid enough to claim Calman Ruadh, and in front of so many witnesses, too. It was between him and me, now, till one of us was dead. No-one had the right to intervene on a claimant’s
behalf. True, accidents happened. But unless Calman Ruadh had an unforeseen heart attack right now, or a meteor fell on his head, it was up to me to kill him. A claimant laid his claim, and took the consequences.

I hate these ridiculous traditions.

I rubbed my eyes with my arm, not letting go of my double-handed grip on my looted sword as we circled each other. Damn it, I wasn’t even carrying my own weapon.

That reminded me of Raineach. My heart chilled as I looked into her killer’s pale eyes.

A child crouched by the steps, her eyes fixed on me. Of course: she still couldn’t do as she was told and stay out of the way. My small comrade who’d been due to hang.

‘And she will,’ smiled Calman Ruadh, reading my thoughts. ‘After I’m done with you.’

‘After I put in all that effort?’ I said. ‘Not bloody likely.’

‘Don’t be scared, I’m not going to kill you. I still want the fun of gelding you.’

‘What, like my friend Sorcha gelded your man in the guardhouse there?’

He can’t have known. Calman Ruadh frowned, his gaze searching out Sorcha. She gave a yell to attract his attention, and grinned, and gave him two fingers.

‘He was my cousin, Murlainn,’ he snarled.

‘Well, he wouldn’t be adding to your family tree,’ I told him. ‘Even if he wasn’t dead.’

‘You kiss my sword,’ he said, ‘I use a sharp knife.’

‘You kiss my backside,’ I retorted, ‘I won’t let you
suffer.’

He came at me. He was fast and flying. I ducked and rolled and was on my feet again, lashing out and spinning back out of his reach. I heard his blade cut the air just in time to bend out of reach of his strike, and when his backswing went at my hamstrings I jumped high. I could have had his head off then if I’d been fast enough, but I wasn’t. The sword in my grip was heavier than my own, and it felt clumsy in my grip. I swung at him and he somersaulted backwards, landed like an elegant cat and eyed me.

I breathed hard. He smiled.

Hell, he was fast. He flew at me again, light and lithe. He knew I was having trouble with the sword. It was all I could do to parry his rain of strikes, and I didn’t have a moment to riposte. He beat me back almost casually, and as I leaped to save my feet being severed at the ankles, I tumbled clumsily back and came to rest on one knee, unbalanced. Lightly he swung his sword across my ribs, smiling, then backed off.

I thought I was dead. When I felt the blood swell and trickle down my belly, I knew it was a flesh wound, a calculated insult. I was no good. He’d cut me to bits before he killed me.

I got to my feet, but panic was creeping in now, and with it pain. I could feel the slash across my chest, my own blood mingling with dried mud and sweat. Now I could feel the hole in my thigh, and even the irritating sting of the wound on my forehead. My head swam. There had been no need for me to die, no need for me to claim the man. Idiot that I was.

The watchers were wordless: the only sounds were rasping breath, and the moaning whimpers of the wounded. And then, the clean sibilant sigh of a blade sliding out of its scabbard.

I blinked blood out of my eyes and stared over Calman Ruadh’s shoulder towards the sound. Idiot or not, I would rather die than face the shame of an intervention, and I was about to yell in fury at whoever had drawn his sword.

It was Conal, of course, but it wasn’t his own sword he’d drawn. That was in his left hand. In his right was the blade he’d just taken from the second scabbard strapped on his back. Raising it, he smiled.

~
He’s yours. So kill him
.

I dropped the strange sword. And I sprinted empty-handed at Calman Ruadh.

I had enough time to see shock dawn in his eyes, and confusion, before his confidence reasserted itself. Then, as he raised his own sword to kill me, I saw the flash of a thrown blade spinning in the first murky dawn.

I reached for it as it passed me, snatched it from the air, flung myself skywards and came at him from above. He was looking up at me in disbelief as I drove Raineach’s beautiful blade down into his throat, let go of the hilt, and twisted to make my own cat-landing.

Calman Ruadh fell awkwardly to his knees, clutched at the hilt beneath his jaw, then pitched forward and died.

There was no time for feeling pleased with myself. There was only a moment to plunge my head and shoulders into a water trough, scrub off the worst of the mud and blood, then strip the shirt off a corpse. My hands shook, so Conal took the shirt from my hands, helped me put it on, then pulled me into a brief fierce embrace.

‘Where’s Branndair?’ I asked.

‘With Catriona. Don’t worry. I thought it was the best place for him. In case…’

He didn’t finish. He didn’t need to. Branndair was a Sithe wolf, and he was my wolf. He’d know to protect her, and he’d know, when he was no longer able to protect her, that it was time to kill her as he’d kill a deer.

‘Thanks,’ I said.

He laughed. ‘You really don’t need to mention it.’ He hugged me again. ‘I owe you.’

I felt terrible. Everything hurt, most of all my head, and I was furious, because this was not the moment. No-one had seen the children or the non-fighters, and if they hadn’t emerged when the battle-sounds died down, it meant they couldn’t.

‘Great hall,’ said Righil sourly. He was kneeling by Raonall’s corpse. Its open eyes were locked on the remains of Luthais, and Righil carefully drew the eyelids shut before he stood up.

‘Yes,’ said Conal.

Half of Calman Ruadh’s fighters had withdrawn there. That’s why it was over so fast. I couldn’t help thinking—and I knew Conal was thinking it too—that they must have had a reason. Worse, they probably had a strategy.

So it was with naked blades in our hands that we approached the great hall of our own dun. It was quiet, even as Conal stepped over the threshold. I was at his shoulder so I saw it all at exactly the same time he did.

Kate sat in the chair that had been Griogair’s for so many centuries. Even Conal hadn’t chosen to sit in it yet. Her hands were steepled beneath her chin and she scrutinised each of Conal’s fighters as they filed in behind him. Lilith stood at her side, the usual smirk fixed to her beautiful face. In three ranks on each side of Kate stood the remnants of Calman Ruadh’s army, and in front of them were lined the Lammyr, thirty or more, and Skinshanks at their head.

Damn. I was afraid of that.

In front of the Lammyr, kneeling, chained together, were the children of Conal’s dun and the remainder of his clann.

Kate sighed, frowned slightly, then looked up.

‘Let’s talk,’ she said sweetly.

Conal walked forward, but when some of his fighters tried to follow he thrust his hand back in a vicious gesture to keep them back. I wasn’t about to be put off so easily. Catching him up, I walked at his side.

‘Now,’ she said, clapping her hands lightly as he came to a halt in front of her. ‘I don’t want you dead, you fool. I still have hopes of you. Take a new exile
and be glad of it.’

He stared at her, wordless. I could feel the hate coming off him.

‘If you don’t, I’ll simply kill all of these here and now.’ Her sweeping gesture encompassed all our chained clann. ‘My loyal Lammyr will enjoy the sport, and you won’t be fast enough to stop it. By the way,’ she tossed her hair back, ‘I’m glad Skinshanks’s lieutenant didn’t succeed in having you burned. I was disappointed at the time, but really, truly, I’m glad.’

‘And at least it had fun,’ Skinshanks said in its rattle-bone voice, giving my brother a dry grin. ‘All those dreary sermons, all that moralising. All that miserabilist lecturing. It enjoyed itself no end. And burnings to boot!’

Kate laughed. ‘It certainly had fun with our humble dun captain. Now, do hurry up and decide, Cù Chaorach.’ Her fingers fluttered in the direction of the captives.

‘If I take exile, what guarantees do you give me?’

I couldn’t believe it. I knew I couldn’t bear it.

‘Guarantees?’ asked Kate in surprise.

‘Guarantees of this dun’s preservation.’ Conal spoke through gritted teeth. ‘Guarantees of the safety of my clann. Guarantees that they’ll keep their autonomy.’

She looked at Lilith. ‘Do you know anything about guarantees, Lilith?’

‘None. There are none.’

I thought I’d heard venom in my mother’s voice before. I realised I hadn’t heard the half of it. ‘You deserve no guarantees,’ she hissed, ‘you filthy damned traitor.
You can ask for none. Take your exile and be glad you’re alive. You won’t fight us. You have too much to lose.’ Lilith pointed a long fingernail at the captives. ‘So do they. How dare you threaten your queen’s life?’

I lost it. ‘Not hers, bitch!’

I went for her and I think I might have killed her. I think it might even have been what she wanted, but Conal must have known what I was about to do. I didn’t get within a sword’s length of my mother before his arms were locked around me, wrestling me back.