“What?” Breag’s voice shot so high it near cracked.
“I have answers of my own to hunt, laddie, and no better time than now. Don’t fuss; I’ll be back by morning. Sweet dreaming.”
Tarbhal turned and left, stranding Sionna in a room with two beds. And the animal.
12
The blue-black sky was star-pocked thick as a Faughan woman’s backside. Tarbhal rolled his shoulders to stretch muscles tight from a day under Caislean’s eye, and walked at a fair pace towards a front of scrubby hazel trees that straggled uphill towards the east. The night was soft and damp, and the odds were good that he'd meet no challenge on the road.
These Ullish soldiers were sore on boys and old men, but not so bold when it came to a drop of rain on a dark night.
Probably not a fair thought, but Tarbhal was a long way past being fair. The military didn't deserve fair. Fair was the first step on a path that ended in dead.
Dead. Like Raghlan. And so many others, one memory melting into another as friends fell and had their places filled by the next to fall. How much time had passed since he'd had the luxury of looking into a new face without wondering how he could make use of it?
And for how much longer will I be of use to myself? How long until I move from bones that ache every morning to an empty husk drooling in my bed?
Tarbhal growled in disgust, beating his clenched fist into the hip that flared pain with every step. The pain came harder the further his span stretched past those he'd never planned to outlive. The gap between him and those he'd had true feelings for was decades now instead of years.
Stuff a rag in it, old man, you whinge more than an alewife.
When Tarbhal's time came, he would smile and take it gladly. Until then, there was work that wouldn't do itself and nobody to do it but one old man.
* * *
The cabin might have been a cabin twenty years before. Now it was a shack. The roof grew more moss than it had thatch, and the walls rotted with quiet determination. Long, narrow window-hatches showed no gleam of candle, but then the man he came to meet had wit enough to hood his flame.
This was the right place. He had been given very careful directions. The people who had sent him didn’t make mistakes.
Tarbhal knocked twice--gently--and again. No reply, which didn't stop him from manhandling the single-hinged door open a crack. The darkness inside shamed the night.
"Come out, if you're in there. These old eyes aren't fit to play games in the dark." Tarbhal's eyes were one part that still worked just fine, but an old dog-fox liked to choose his own ground.
"It’s long past time for playing games between me and you. These are adult days." The man's shape slid from the cabin's dark as smooth as the honey of his voice.
"Well met, Ushna." Tarbhal allowed no relief to colour his tone. One safe from Dealgan at least.
"It’s always well met to find a man where he’s expected to be." Ushna might have smiled. And the tumbled cairn of rock he squared his shoulders against might have been a homestead, once.
“Are you alone? I expected at least a half-dozen of the Ullish guard to keep you company.” Tarbhal knew that Ushna hated banter, which was why he felt obliged to lead with it every chance he could.
“There’s no bite in the guard here since the Glór-Hunters and their military lapdogs broke their teeth. I’d find more use in rabbits.”
“Doesn’t mean we can’t make them useful. The likes of you and me, we know how to put words in an ear that set the blood to pumping again.”
“Doesn’t seem to have won us much so far, now does it?”
"You're a grumpy sod, I've always said so."
"Have to be, for balance." Ushna turned his head so that Tarbhal could see the scar that whorled across his cheek from earlobe to left eye and curled to nothing in his hair. It pulled mouth and left eye upwards into a good humoured crinkle.
"Admit it, laddie, the smile's genuine more often than you let on." Six years of working with Ushna, and Tarbhal still hadn’t given up on making the good side of that mouth turn upwards.
"I didn’t come for chatter. There’s news of Dealgan you need to hear."
"Tell me.” No light chatter for you, lad, to keep the darkness at bay. So be it.
"Wasn't as bad as we prepared for. We still lost plenty." The left side of Ushna's mouth quirked still. "Raghlan had the worst of it. He lured them into taking him, told what he wanted them to know."
Stupid lad. Stupid, pointless end. Tarbhal stretched his fingers wide and touched thumb to each finger in turn, an exercise he'd picked up as a boy. He hoped that Raghlan’s god Flidais was there, and real enough to welcome him safely home.
"Four days they had him. Longer than anyone else lasted. He made sure they believed him." Ushna spoke through a concealing fall of hair, his fist clenched around moon-silvered rock.
"Who else?"
"Daimhin, Bearach, and Dúnla of ours. The baker's lad and a farmer's girl. Plenty of others who had nothing to do with anything."
"What reason?" When did they need a reason?
"Some named as Lupes, or might have been. More known to help one. Dermud had Proinsis under his roof many a mealtime, the baker's lad spoke to the Northman twice." Ushna shrugged. "What reason is there ever, when they want to break a place."
"And are we broken? Do we go home to our fires and our suppers and leave the rough games to the bigger lads?" Tarbhal's teeth ached from the words he bit back.
"You know better." Finally, Ushna turned. His half-smile belied the moon-glitter in his eyes. "This country is full of lads that lost their fathers, or their brothers, or their sisters. They're stupid to think they'll break the guard by stretching us over a knee."
"Half-grown lads with fire in their bellies. I give them six months before they finish up like Raghlan." Tarbhal leaned over to spit, his breath catching at a flare of agony when his weight settled on his right knee. Not much time left.
"Raghlan made a choice; you didn't force it on him. He thought the time it bought you worth the price."
"It better be. I have questions of my own on that score. We all paid a high price for this."
"Are you done with what was asked? There's need of you in Dealgan. Ardal’s holding on and keeping the military quiet, but there’s not much he can do for us when he’s right under their eye."
“Aye, my duty’s done in coming here. I’m away from Caislean tomorrow.” Tarbhal allowed the cairn of rock to take his weight.
“And what of the two you brought with you?”
“I was to bring the girl for certain and the Northman if I could manage it. That’s done. They’re somebody else’s burden now.” More faces added to his debt.
“We can be back in Dealgan in six nights if we take a chance on going by boat. There’s need of you there. The Glór-Hunters are gone for now, but they’ll be back. We need to be ready.” Ushna raised his head, his face white as bone in the moonlight.
“We’ll see, lad. I have an idea of my own on what should be done next.” Tarbhal forced his weight onto the screaming knee, stripping lips from teeth.
Time was short, and an old man had no place in the coming fight.
* * *
Tarbhal allowed himself to limp only when the hazel trees screened him from the cabin and from Ushna’s eyes.
Pride, old man? I thought such a thing was long dead in you.
With his jaw locked against the grunts of pain that came with each step, Tarbhal shaped his plan. Herbs from the healer, first, to see him through the night. The time was come, finally, when he untethered his lot from the guard. He had a direction of his own in mind.
Not long now, Blannad love.
13
Breag stiffened at the door-handle’s creak, or would have if a single fibre of his body could have become more tense. The guard’s pain-spiked scent, muted by a waft of unfamiliar herbs, filled his nostrils an instant later. The familiarity that should have soothed him instead made his jaw clench.
The situation was ludicrous. Breag had admitted it to himself even as discomfort threatened to stain his cheeks pink as a half-grown lad’s.
It hadn’t helped that Sionna seemed as uncomfortable as he was, and terrified of the words that might fall into the empty space between them. The room eddied with green apples and fresh-baked soda, bedded in an astringency of fear.
She didn’t trust an animal. Why should she?
Guilt made Breag surly. Watching as Sionna hid herself behind a needle and a torn jerkin, he couldn’t escape the truth that even now he could choose to let her go. Could allow her to slide away into the darkness, taking his redemption with her.
Lady help me, I’m choosing my future over hers.
Caislean stifled him with its watching eyes and its beaten people. This town had stolen his chance to act well, to be proud of himself. Best they leave for Tearmann before Sionna fell into the error of hope.
Tarbhal’s pain-hissed stumble to the bed nearest the door brought Breag’s self-disgust to a straining head. The guard had risked everything to see a stranger safe to Caislean, and had lost so much by doing so. Standing alongside Tarbhal, how could Breag claim to be a man?
Breag scarcely waited until the guard’s breathing settled into the steady rhythm of sleep before unfolding himself from his blanket under the window. His nose told him that Sionna was still awake, but the indecision that crawled along his skin like fire-ants wouldn’t allow him to delay a moment more. The girl would have to wonder.
The room’s low grey walls continued into the corridor, but even so Breag felt the air slide more freely into his lungs with every step he took away from where Sionna lay wakeful.
The inn’s common room was more than half full, and every head turned to watch Breag as he passed. No different here than Dealgan, or anywhere. Breag remembered the fumble-footed Dermud with unexpected fondness, especially when he compared him with the ever-accommodating Caislean blond who raised a hand in salute and watched with dark, hungry eyes. The man in military blues seated next to him--a head shorter and decade younger, but otherwise like him enough to make him a brother--did not wave.
The town, dark and silent, seemed to expand and contract with every step Breag took. No footsteps rang to echo his silent ones, and the breeze-sprite that lifted tendrils of hair from his braid to tease his neck was all that held him from believing that he had stepped somehow into the world of ghosts.
A relief and a dread to come finally to the three-whorled scratch of herbsign on Anú’s door.
The old woman greeted him with a smile and a flash of curious eyes. She invited him inside with a silent wave of her hand, and Breag edged through darkness and into the dim-lit kitchen. Two mugs of tarberry tea steamed on the stove's flagstone hearth.
"I'm sorry, you have company." Reprieve. His questions would wait until morning.
"Don't be daft, boy, the mug's yours." Anú tilted her head onto one hunched shoulder, drinking in the surprise that Breag couldn't hide.
"You expected me, then?"
"I boiled the kettle as soon as your friend the guard left me. Figured it wouldn't take you long to step this way."
Breag held his silence, breathing the kitchen's blend of spice and animal musk deep into his lungs. Was everybody on this Lady-damned island plotting against him?
“He looked in on the boy a while ago.” Anú settled herself into her rocking chair, its creaks taunting him for his suspicion.
In the darkened corner something scuttled. Bird, his nose told him. Always an answer, never what he expected.
“Can you tell, yet, if the wrist is broken?” Breag hunched under the weight of the boy’s injuries.
He ached to think of the child lying damaged at the soldiers’ feet, when he could do nothing except trust to Tarbhal for rescue. Each time Breag relaxed the hold on his mind he heard metal-toed boots connect with soft young bones.
“Nothing’s broken. He’s lucky.” Anú’s chair creaked again, and again the bird shifted in the darkness.
“Please, will you think again about Proinsis and his wife, Nimh? There must be something you haven’t remembered.”
“You didn’t come tonight to talk about dead strangers, Breag Daoine Glór na Gealaí. You want to know whether I can hear the Lady’s voice.”
“And can you?”
“Better than you can, and you know it. You can feel me in your bones, in your skin. Everything’s different once the Lady’s hand has opened to you.”
She knew. Breag squeezed his eyes shut against words and woman both.
“Still fighting it? Stupid boy.” Anú leaned forward in her chair, clawed fingers stretched towards Breag. “I can hear it singing in you. Your will is strong to let you resist for so long, but none of us can deny the Lady’s call.”
“I can’t blame the Lady for this. I know what Her teachings are and I still let myself Fall.” Breag allowed the words to flow from him. It didn’t matter now.
“Eolaí pig-phlegm! Don't speak about what you don't understand, boy.”
The whip-crack of Anú's voice snapped Breag half-way from his chair. A snuffle in the corridor turned his head, and Cú's scent came to him along with the scrape of nails on wood inside the sickroom door. Without waiting for permission, Breag threw open the door to the room’s darkness. Cú’s over-enthusiastic welcome almost bowled him from his feet.
"Needing a walk, are you?" Breag grabbed Cú's shoulders with both hands, struggling to prevent the animal from jumping into his arms. Not such a cub, now. The gadhar’s brindle backside wriggled so hard that Breag feared he might wear through the floorboards.
The hump that was Laoighre twitched under its blanket. Breag ushered Cú through the doorway, wincing as the animal's whine peaked to a whistle. A long-eared lad was all he needed. He shut the door gently, allowing the boy his rest.
Anú's chair continued to creak gently. She sat still as a Dorchadas poppet, watching as he settled again into the torn red armchair. Cú tried his hardest to climb into the seat with him.
“Running away from the truth won’t help you now. It’s time to listen.”
Breag didn’t want to listen. He wanted to drive his fist through the pretty little window to his left. Smash the chair into splinters. Slam the door at his back and leave house and town to the hog-stinking Uls.
What I want doesn’t matter a damn. The girl can tell me how that feels.
Breag’s stomach churned at the acid taste of his own self-pity, and at his feet Cú whined again. He pushed aside black hairs, escaped from his braid in the melee with Cú. He had responsibilities. Duties. He would listen.
Anú nodded, and the arrogance of the gesture once again balled Breag’s hands into fists. I’ll listen, old woman, but you can expect nothing more than that from me.
“It’s better to know nothing at all about the Lady than to drink in the Eolaí’s pissings.” Anú’s skin pulled tight across her cheekbones. More than anything she looked like a Faith-Eater, dried to a husk after a winter spent meditating in a cave without food, basking in the Lady’s glory.
“And you know better than they do what Odharna wants for us?”
“Yes!” Anú’s voice was a hiss.
“Yes.” A croak from the darkness.
Breag’s nose told him the room was empty save himself and Anú, Cú and the bird. Even so, the not-human voice traced prickles from his nape to the small of his back.
Cú thumped a stump of a tail onto the flagged floor, his head snuggled deep into Breag’s lap.
Not a threat, then, beast? Thank you.
“Won’t your friend come out and be seen?” Breag was fleetingly proud of his voice’s steadiness.
“Heliod? He means no harm, but his beak wags looser than a herb-seller’s tongue.”
The bird flapped from the darkness to settle onto Anú’s arm. Dark he was, and rumple-feathered. His beak was black, slight-curved and cruel. He fixed a si
ngle eye on Breag, silent now.
Raven. Truth-teller, Lady’s companion, partner from the Dawntime. Breag’s stomach knotted to find it here, a sign. Not the first raven he had seen in recent times, but it was so much more powerful a sign here in a Daoine’s kitchen than watching him from a tree in the mountains.
“Go on, then.” His voice remained steady, although dread hissed his breathing through flared nostrils.
“In the Dawntime, before memory before time, our people owned the seas.” Anú’s voice took on the rhythm of the fireside.
Heliod’s scent of musk and mould seeped through Anú’s strange-spiced presence. Words and scent together made Breag’s head spin. He leaned back deeper into the chair, fighting to hold on to his senses.
“The Lady blessed us, and we were happy. East and west, the horned boats sailed. North and south. We honoured the Lady and did what we would.
“Seven boats sailed west together; spiral horns painted red as the eyes that watched for fair weather, arrowtip tails black and pointed to the stars. When the storm came our people laughed and trusted their lives to the Lady. When waves broke our masts and carried away the hindmost, we fixed our eyes on the full moon and waited to be shown Her will.
“Five boats she delivered to this new shore. Daoine and Fiach, tested and found worthy. Here we stayed, farmers now and hunters, the horned boats rotted and drowned. We found no common ground with the people of the new land, the ones who could only hold a single shape, and slowly our people spread out to the land that they called theirs before we landed. And the Lady watched us and was pleased.
“The firstcomers’ hair greyed and fell from their heads. Young were born. We planted our first gravestones, and the young birthed young of their own. Amongst our people there came to be two voices, each crying out its own truth.
“First, the old men, earliest to be born into this new place. ‘Listen to the Lady,’ they called. ‘She punished our fathers and our mothers, and surely she will punish us too. We must alter for this new land, and put aside that which is animal in us. This is Her will.’
Requiem for the Wolf Page 15
