Spirit of the Mist (37 page)

She turned as she reached the edge of the water, splashing through the shallows, following the beach toward the place, nearest where the fires burned directly above. As she ran, she reached up and pulled the golden dolphin brooch from her worn blue cloak and let both fall to the sand. They were quickly followed by her brown leather belt with its gold ring.
 

Soon she reached the foot of the cliff where the stone half rings of Dun Bochna met the edge of the precipice. Those stone walls now enclosed a raging inferno.
 

As she stood below the dun, her breath coming quickly now, she reached down and untied the worn leather strings of her battered boots and kicked them off. Last of all she pulled her blue-and-cream-plaid gown over her head and threw it aside.
 

Now she wore only her cream-colored linen undergown, loose and flowing to her ankles, dirty and ragged from those many long days spent on the Island of the Rocks. Her wrists and throat were bare. Her hair hung long and loose and unadorned. There was nothing about her to say she was a highborn woman, much less that she was a queen; there was nothing to set her apart from any other servant.
 

Just as Brendan had willingly become a servant when he could not be a king, she would do the same, surrendering her station to become as one with the humblest creatures of the earth and the sky and the sea…for if she became one of them, their powers might become accessible to her in ways that would never be possible if she remained closed off by thick clothes and heavy gold and protective stone walls.
 

Now she was a servant of the elements, a handmaiden of the natural world, for it was the only hope she had of saving her husband’s life.
 

Moving in silence, and as quickly as they dared, Brendan and his five men reached the top of the cliff—and shielded their eyes from the glare of the billowing red-orange flames that suddenly came into view.
 

It seemed as if the whole front end of Dun Bochna was on fire. The heavy smoke barely moved at all in the warm, still air, leaving it hanging over the burning rooftops in a thick pall lit from below by the flames.
 

Then the sound reached them, the roaring and snapping of the fire, and the shouting and crying of the dun’s people as they ran back and forth in the blaze. And the smell reached them, too: the smell of smoke from the burning wood and thatching of the houses, the scorched odor of metal and earth.
 

They hurried around the great length of the outer stone wall until they were at the gates. Brendan shook his head. “I was afraid these would be shut,” he said. Instead, the massive wooden gates lay half-open, one beginning to smolder from the flying sparks. Men and women hurried frantically through them with buckets, a stream of those who were futilely attempting to end the inferno inside.
 

“Come with me,” Brendan called to his men. “Draw your swords, your daggers, and hide them under your cloaks. And stay close. Remember, we’re looking for Odhran.”
 

They crowded together and ran inside, pulling up their cloaks against the onslaught of heat and smoke. The flames roared in their ears, and they heard the crashing of roofs caving in.
 

There was also the heartrending sound of horses and cattle shrieking in fear and agony as the fire reached their wooden pens. Brendan could see the panicked horses plunging back and forth in the heat and smoke, the terrified cattle milling about and pushing up against the smoldering rails of their pens. But there was no one to help. All the dun’s inhabitants seemed enveloped in chaos, were only struggling to get themselves out of their houses and out of the dun.
 

Someone clutched Brendan’s arm. He turned to see Gill looking meaningfully at the trapped animals. “Yes. Go,” Brendan aid. His father was not trained to fight but this would be a valuable aid to the dun. “Take Duff and Cole with you. And I expect to see all three of you safe and whole when this is over.”
 

“We expect the same of you,” said Gill. The two slapped each other’s shoulders, and then the three ex-slaves ran toward the horse and cattle pens. Brendan and his friends continued on toward the King’s Hall, which was as yet untouched by the flames.
 

Odhran and his men surely would be there.
 

Muriel dashed ankle-deep into the cold, rushing sea, into the foam sliding gently back and forth across the sand. Raising her arms, she gazed far out to the moonlit horizon and thought with the utmost concentration of mist and cloud, of water and storm. She willed a thunderhead to form out there, far out to sea, from whence the rainstorms always came flying in—
 

Mist and cloud, water and storm! Come together over the sea, come to Dun Bochna, come to me! Mist and cloud, water and storm…
 

Again and again she repeated the words in her mind, staring at the sky where it met the sea, hoping to see dark clouds rise up and surge toward her—to bring the rain that would save her husband’s home.
 

She saw nothing but clear black sky, glittering with stars and lit by the shining white moon…and behind her, the wavering glare of flames high overhead, growing brighter with each passing moment.
 

Throwing their cloaks around their faces in an effort to block out the smoke, Brendan, Darragh, and Killian hurried through the grounds of the dun, avoiding burning houses and dodging panicked people who raced about trying to save their belongings. As they passed the last of the flaming dwellings, its roof fell in with a terrible crash, and sent up a shower of flying sparks and burning chunks of straw.
 

The three men stood for a moment in the heated air, trying to breathe, and then jumped back into the shadows as some twenty of Odhran’s warriors, all wearing swords and daggers and all carrying rope nets and empty leather sacks, walked towards the King’s Hall as calmly as if they had just arrived for dinner.
 

With smoke trailing past their faces, Brendan and his men peered out at the invaders from behind their cloaks. Brendan’s grip tightened on the concealed hilt of his sword, and he forced himself to stay still.
 

There had been a time when he would have charged boldly after the whole lot of them, with a few trusted men at his back and boundless courage in his heart, to take back all that rightfully belonged to Dun Bochna. And though he found that his courage had not left him, he knew it was required of him now to do anything but face his enemy directly.
 

Muriel had told him that he could best help his people now by being their servant—not their king. And now he saw that she had been right.
 

He stood up, as did Darragh and Killian, and then moved toward the King’s Hall. Reaching its doorway, he and his men peered in with lowered heads like frightened servants, their swords carefully hidden beneath their ragged cloaks.
 

“You, there!” someone called.
 

A man wearing thick leather armor with a wide plaid cloak pinned over it stood inside, and he beckoned to them. Brendan tried to keep the anger from his eyes as he recognized Aed, and knew him for one of Odhran’s men.
 

“Help us with this. Move, now!” the warrior shouted. “Your home is burning. Or haven’t you noticed?” He laughed then, and spit on the floor, before turning to rejoin several other of Odhran’s men at the far wall. Brendan saw him step over the body of King Colum as he went.
 

Brendan’s eyes scanned the hall. There, at the very back, watching as his horde of men took all they could grab of Dun Bochna’s wealth and crammed it into leather bags and wooden boxes, was a tall, thin, aging man with gray hair and sharp eyes and a grim, humorless face.
 

Odhran.
 

The invaders were alone in the King’s Hall, Brendan realized. There was no one left to defend it. With their king dead and their fortress in flames, the people of Dun Bochna had retained no thought for gold plates or fidchell boards. Even the warriors were trying to save their families, their houses, their food supplies. There was no one left to confront Odhran except Brendan and his men.
 

He and Darragh and Killian stepped inside just as the plundering mob of Odhran’s warriors crowded past with their sacks of stolen treasure. They were fleeing the hall like field mice escaping a burning home. “Get over here!” shouted Aed, waving his arm at Brendan again. “Burn if you want, but not before you finish carrying out our property!”
 

Aed stayed close to Odhran’s side, and Brendan knew nothing would move him from that place for Aed was the king’s champion, Odhran’s guardian and personal defender, the one who would fight to the death for him. He was the one Brendan would have to overcome if he hoped to get face-to-face with Odhran and defeat him once and for all.
 

“Hurry!” shouted Aed, and Brendan realized that he was looking up at the opening directly above the firepit. “The roof is catching!” And Brendan, too, saw the smoldering straw and ominous glowing spots at the edges of the enormous thatched roof.
 

“You two hold Odhran,” Brendan murmured to his companions. “Leave the champion to me.” Darragh gave him a small nod and the three of them crept across the rushes, stepping carefully around the motionless body of King Colum. Darragh and Killian went with lowered heads toward Odhran. Brendan walked silently toward Aed.
 

He took no pride in what he was about to do. He had never drawn a weapon on any man except in fair combat, had never struck anyone down without the battle being a lawful one. But Aed, and his king, had done nothing according to any rule of fair play or honorable combat. For the second time, they had attacked a fortress unannounced and burned it in the night—and destroyed its king. And they would keep right on doing those terrible things until someone did what was necessary to stop them.
 

Two kings had been unable to stop Odhran—but those kings had been expecting lawful combat.
 

Now Odhran and his men did not yet realize that they were no longer facing a king. They were facing a man they had dismissed as the lowest of slaves, a man who was willing to face them as a servant.
 

Two king’s tactics had not withstood Odhran’s deceptions. Perhaps a slave’s tactics would succeed where royal ones had failed.
 

He tarried, shuffling through the rushes even as bits of burning straw began to drop near his feet. He waited until he saw Darragh and Killian lift up two of Odhran’s sacks, until he saw Darragh glance over at him…
 

“Now!” Brendan threw back his cloak, swung his sword high, and ran straight for Aed, just as Darragh and Killian threw their heavy sacks at Odhran and knocked him hard to the floor.
 

“What is this?” For an instant Aed froze, stunned by the sight of his king felled by two he had taken for ordinary servants—and that slight hesitation was all Brendan needed.
 

“It is justice!” he shouted, and with a single stroke half severed the head of the king’s champion from his body.
 

With a look of shock in his glittering eyes, the man slowly toppled to the floor, one hand clawing at his gaping neck and the other grasping for his sword still in its scabbard. “Justice for murderers and thieves,” Brendan whispered. “If you had not poisoned Colum and burned the dun, you would have earned a fair fight. But there has been nothing fair about you or your king.”
 

He turned his attention to Odhran. The man lay flat on his back, gasping, trapped beneath a heavy wineskin and a sack filled with grain—with Darragh and Killian each standing on the sacks, swords in hand and pointed at Odhran’s throat.
 

“Let him up,” Brendan called, aiming his own sword at his captured enemy. “Take the supplies. Get outside; help save what you can. Most of all, save yourselves! And get back to Muriel as soon as you can. Go. Go!”
 

The two warriors grabbed up the sacks, pausing only long enough to grip Brendan’s arm for an instant. Together they raced for the door.
 

“Now, Odhran,” Brendan said. “Get to your feet.”
 

Chapter Twenty-Three
 

With a sudden move Odhran rolled and jumped up, then stood with his back against the wall. Glaring, he drew his sword. “I thought you were dead, Brendan. But no matter. Now I will have the pleasure of killing you myself.”
 

“I think not,” Brendan said.
 

Odhran smirked. “Your new attire suits you well,” he said, his cold eyes flicking over the rough and ragged brown wool that Brendan wore. “I always knew you were no king. You are a thief, a criminal, a lowborn slave…one who is not fit to rule over dogs.”
 

“Then we are truly alike, for I have always heard the very same words about you.”
 

Smoldering bits of debris continued to rain down on them from the roof. From the corner of his eye, Brendan caught sight of actual flames bursting to life and eating into the tightly bundled straw there, filling the dimly lit hall with a garish light.