Icefall (25 page)

Seth wasn't on the shore; he was nowhere in sight. Not that kind of sight, anyway, but I wasn't born yesterday. I was ready for him and I knew where he was, and I'd taken a lungful of air before arms went round my legs and yanked me under.

I blinked and blew bubbles, smiling. There was enough underwater moonlight for me to make him out, drifting there in front of me. Shards of it striped and rippled his skin. I reached a hand for him, right where he wasn't expecting it, and his eyes widened with his grin. He spluttered to the surface, and I let go and wound my arms round his neck.

His arms slipped round my waist. I pushed back his hair and kissed him. Our legs, still treading water, bumped and tangled.

‘Can we get back into our depth?' he mumbled into my mouth. ‘Need a bit of leverage.'

‘Already?' I drew back and licked the salty skin on his throat.

‘No sand here.' His tongue found mine.

‘Horses,' I managed to gasp.

‘Spoilsport.' He wound his fingers into mine and we both struck out one-armed towards the shoreline.

My toes found shifting sand and weed, and I stood up, my breasts clear of the water. Seth was eyeing those, but I turned a slow circle, searching the water's surface. ‘Back to business, sweetie.'

He growled, took a mouthful of sea and fired it with annoying precision at my left nipple. ‘Fine.'

‘Bugger.' I swept a fan of water into his face.

‘Didn't you call him already?' He raked his hair back. ‘I called the roan five minutes ago.'

‘Yeah.' I frowned. ‘Give them time.'

He ducked his head underwater, then resurfaced. ‘Well. Mine's coming.'

I felt my heart quicken. However long I'd known the blue roan, it never seemed altogether trustworthy. I peered down into the black waters below me, trying not to visualise any iconic movie posters.

I shouldn't have worried. When its savage head breached the surface it was thirty metres out from shore. White water cascaded from its crest and forelock, streaming down its black face, and then it was cutting through the waves towards Seth, hooves rising out of the sea in its excitement, plunging back in an explosion of foam to power it forward. Seth smiled through his wet hair as it reached him, and then he was embracing its neck, dragging himself over its withers and onto its back. He reached down an arm for me and cocked an eyebrow.

I shook my head. ‘I'll wait.'

He bit the corner of his lip, slightly apologetic. ‘How long, Caorann?'

‘Maybe he's on dry land,' I sulked. ‘Maybe he's hunting.'

Seth leaned forward to rub the roan's flicking ears. ‘Not according to this one.'

I gritted my teeth. Called the black again. Trod water for long minutes at the roan's side. I was so close to it, my hair tangled with its mane. I felt Seth's hand touch my head.

‘Maybe you'll have to go back for his bridle.'

‘It's in my pack. I can't be arsed.' I sank under the water, let myself drift for long seconds, then resurfaced. Still no sign. Seth had ridden the roan closer to shore; it stood up to its shoulders, mane blowing free in the salt breeze, tail hanging heavy in the water like tendrils of weed. I swam back to them, floated beside the roan's flank.

‘It's not like he can refuse you,' said Seth into the wave-lapped silence.

‘Apparently he bloody can.'

‘Come back to the camp for your bridle,' said Seth again. I resented the note of sympathy in his voice.

All the same: ‘Looks like I'll have to,' I said.

‘I'm not even sure—'

I don't know what he was about to say, but his words were drowned out by the shattering explosion of water. I laughed with glee and pure relief as the massive black head and shoulders erupted from below, barely ten feet further out. The black was so close I ducked, reflexively, shielding my face with an arm. The blue roan plunged and screamed, and Seth had to grab its mane to stay on.

Brutal white teeth grazed my cheekbone as the black lunged forward. Its silky sodden mane slapped my face, but I seized it as it swam, hauling myself onto its back as it pitched through the swell and suddenly dived underwater.

I had time to take a breath. Luckily. My fingers tangled in its mane, and I saw a sudden flash of memory in my mind's eye. It felt real and frightening, as if I'd never been master of this horse at all, as if I was sixteen years old and trapped in time on a blue roan kelpie that was planning to eat me. My free hand pressed against the black's neck, feeling the power of its muscles, and as I blinked through dark water I saw its head turn, saw its empty eye swivel towards me. Then it breached the surface again, spray showering around us.

Its legs plunged strongly. Seth and the blue roan were fifty metres back—had we really swum so far?—but we reached them while the shock was still etched on Seth's face. The black splashed to a halt alongside him, seawater cascading off it and me, nipping affectionately at the blue roan's rump.

‘Well,' said Seth, and blew a wet lock of hair off his face. ‘I've never seen it that reluctant.'

‘Funny, isn't it?' Avoiding Seth's stare, I scratched gently at the black's shoulder, exactly where it liked to be scratched. There had been something in that glare it gave me in the gloom beneath the water, but it was here now, wasn't it? It had come to me, it had answered my call. Why shouldn't a wild thing take its own sweet time? The kelpie arched its neck and lifted a hoof high to strike a swelling wave. I rubbed its ears and it nickered with nothing more than calm fondness.

‘Or indeed,' Seth added, ‘quite that keen to drown you.'

‘Nah,' I said. ‘He was only playing.'

Seth nodded at the landward horizon, paling now behind the black hills.

‘Dawn,' he said grimly. ‘Hannah and Sionnach have been gone more than a day.'

‘End of play.' My lips twisted ruefully. ‘I suppose we'd better go back. Get dressed. Before anybody else wakes up.'

‘Yeah,' he said, and turned the roan's head. ‘And try to imagine what the hell we're going to do next.'

 

Rory

‘Isn't it obvious?' said Grian, poking at the ashes of the fire with his dirk. ‘We take the dun back first. Get ourselves a secure base. Evict the Lammyr. I've been aching to do that.'

‘I'm with Grian,' said Braon brightly, glancing from his face to Seth's.

It was Seth's favourite time of day, Rory thought, when the world was grey in a thousand tones, but he didn't look as if he was enthralled with it right now. A rain blew against their faces, a rain so faint that Rory couldn't feel the drops, only the wetness on his skin when it had passed.

‘No,' said Jed, who was sitting on a rock, lovingly examining the edge of his blade.

‘“No?”' Grian twisted round to stare at him. ‘Who died and made you Captain?'

Jed shrugged. ‘That's not Seth's plan. Ask him.'

‘I thought I did.'

Jed shrugged again. Seth looked exasperated, but he said, ‘Jed's right. There isn't time to besiege a bloody dun, Grian. You know what the defences are like.'

Grian rested back on his elbows, letting his yellow-eyed hound lick his face. ‘You haven't got a plan, have you, Murlainn?'

Seth hissed though his teeth. ‘I didn't exactly get time to make one. But taking back the dun certainly isn't part of it. Yet.'

Something tickled Rory's ear, and he reached up a hand to scratch the grey filly's nose. She'd come instantly when called, so he reckoned she must simply have been waiting for his return. He felt guiltily smug about that, given that Finn had apparently had so much trouble with her black.

The filly's lips explored his scalp, then nipped a hank of hair and tugged it. If he'd known she was going to be so obsessive about Polo mints, Rory thought, he could have brought a few packets, and she wouldn't have been limited to the few lint-fuzzy ones he'd found rattling around in the crannies of his backpack.

Finn and Seth's kelpies were being a little more stand-offish, grazing on a knoll some fifty metres away. Branndair, jealous of the filly's closeness, was flopped across Rory's lap, his eyes half-closed, his tail thumping lazily. Rory threaded his fingers into the wolf's neck fur, not wanting to look at his father in case Seth managed to read his face even without a mind link. He was desperately impatient to get to Hannah—and Sionnach, of course—but he couldn't help thinking of the time Seth had made him learn the whole of
Art of War
cover to cover. All that stuff about forward planning and superior forces, and decisiveness without impulsiveness, and winning the battle before you fought it. According to Sun bloody Tzu, as far as Rory could make out, they were all going to die.

Orach nudged him mischievously. ‘Know when to walk away and know when to run.'

‘That's not Sun Tzu,' said Braon beside her, ‘that's Kenny Rogers.'

The two of them giggled like schoolgirls.

‘Oh great,' muttered Fearna. ‘We really are gonnae die.'

‘We're not going to die,' Seth growled. ‘But we need horses, weapons, more fighters. I'd suggest Dunster…'

Grian shook his head. ‘Dunster has never been fond of you, Murlainn. You killed their Captain—'

‘For good reason,' Rory butted in. Hell's teeth, his father and Braon and the rest had scalpeled a nest of Lammyr out of that village, for no thanks, and their wretched Captain had promptly sucked up to Kate by betraying rebels in a neighbouring settlement.

‘For no better reason,' agreed Grian, ‘but did he expect their undying adoration?'

‘No,' grunted Seth. ‘Which is why I was going to say we'd have a better chance at Faragaig. Apart from anything else, it'll help me gauge what support there is out there.'

‘I don't understand.' Braon had stopped laughing with Orach. Rory realised she'd stopped some time ago, and her expression was cold and challenging, and Orach looked nervously supportive of her. He wondered what had passed between the two women's minds. ‘There are ways into our dun. You've got in twice.'

‘And saved your scrawny arse both times.' Seth stopped honing his blade. ‘And ever since the second time, the Lammyr have known about the tunnel.'

Braon snorted contemptuously. ‘There has to be another way. Lammyr are cowards and they won't hold out for a long siege.'

‘Lammyr aren't cowards, they're pragmatists,' said Iolaire. ‘They'll hold out as long as it suits them, and they don't mind dying. Positively enjoy it.'

‘Still, the fewer of them are at our backs, the better chance we'll have. And Grian's right, we need a base. Your father never met a Lammyr without cutting its head off, Murlainn. He certainly wouldn't have let a mob of them keep his dun.'

Orach stiffened, reddening, and detached herself very slightly from Braon's side as if to distance herself from that remark. Seth looked as if Braon had stuck a dagger in his gut. He paled with fury, and Rory couldn't imagine what he might have said to her if Jed hadn't flicked his dagger into the centre of the group. It smacked blade-first into the peat.

Jed cracked his fingers casually as they turned.

‘I've got a personal interest in Skinshanks's lot,' he said. ‘And if Seth says leave them alone for now, that's fine with me.'

Grian looked as if he wanted to punch him. ‘So they'll be free to come at us from behind as soon as we head for Kate's caverns. Good plan,' he ground out through his teeth. ‘I want to know what Langfank talked to you about, Murlainn.'

‘That's my business,' said Seth. ‘You trust me, or you don't.'

‘I don't know how you can even say that to me,' said Braon.

‘The watergate's that way.' Seth got to his feet and pointed back the way they'd come. ‘I'm going to get Sionnach and Hannah, and whoever wants to come with me can take my word that I know what I'm doing. The rest of you—' he glanced at his otherworld watch ‘—I think the pub's open for another two hours.'

Grian stood up too, his face close to Seth's. ‘I don't know what's got into you, Murlainn. Unless it's something that's finally drained out of you.'

‘That is
enough.
' Finn walked up to Grian and placed her hand against his ribcage. She left it there for a second, maybe two, long enough to feel his heart beat. Then she shoved him away from Seth. ‘Grian and Braon, you make good points and it's your job. But Murlainn's your Captain and it's his decision. He's right about that, at least. You don't like it, you leave.'

‘I'm not leaving.' Braon scowled. ‘And he knows it.'

‘Yes, I think he does.' Finn smiled at her.

‘And nor am I,' said Grian, ‘though Murlainn might trip over his own complacent arse one day.'

‘I'm not the only leader who's complacent,' said Seth softly, ‘which is why I want you to trust me. Grian, do not ever imagine I take you for granted. But I will not attack the dun, not now.'

Grian shrugged. Branndair whimpered, and licked his hound's muzzle. Iolaire looked relieved that the squabble was over. Jed kept his cool eyes fixed on Seth.

And if that uneasy silence hadn't fallen at just that moment, they wouldn't have heard the horses.

*   *   *

Seth turned on his heel. Jed was on his feet, and a fraction of a second behind him, so was everyone else. Rory couldn't help noticing that Orach backed close to his father as she drew her sword. She wasn't just guilty about Braon's brutal comment; she'd been anxious and protective around her old lover since they'd got here. Rory had noticed that. He was totally sure Finn had too. He was fair-to-middling sure that Finn didn't mind.

‘Where the hell are they?' Grian sounded perplexed.

‘This way.' Iolaire took a step towards a crevice in the granite rocks.