Wordless, Skaaha stared up at her, at the cold eyes, the blue spiral on her cheek. The answer formed in her gut, shrieking through her flesh, but no sound came out of her mouth. Eefay shivered against her, mouth open, gazing at the warrior.
Suli spoke for them. ‘Your offer is generous,’ she said calmly, ‘for it will be a hard task, but by hard tasks we learn, and that one falls to Skaaha who will do it.’
‘Yes.’ Skaaha nodded furiously. ‘Yes, I will.’
‘So be it,’ Mara said. Tugging her mount's head round, she kicked the horse away, scattering clods of turf around them.
‘Bitch,’ Jiya cursed, flicking spatters of soil from her breast.
Suli tapped her rod again. ‘Ruan will keep the honours till the time comes,’ she said, continuing as if the interruption hadn't occurred.
The novice druid took the dead queen's helmet, shield and weapons from the chariot. Her bearskin was gone, burned to ashes in the fire cauldron. Tosk held out the reins, offering them to Eefay. The little girl's grasp of Skaaha slackened.
‘It's mine?’ she gasped.
‘If you mean to be a warrior,’ the old man said. ‘If not, they'll be sacrificed.’
Letting go of her sister, Eefay grasped the reins and clambered on to the platform behind the ponies. ‘It's mine,’ she shouted gleefully. ‘Look, Donal, it's mine,’ she yelled, ‘mine!’ as her father led the chariot away.
Anger flared in Skaaha. The water in the kyle should freeze over before she'd go visit Glenelg if she was so easily replaced! Impotent, she watched her sister go, the tears of loss barely dry on her cheeks, hair gleaming golden in the sun, the wheels of their mother's chariot spinning over the grass.
‘The size of her,’ Erith complained, ‘and knows nothing!’
‘She'll learn,’ Ard protested. ‘And she's a girl, worth two boys, maybe more.’ They'd been back a fortnight, and still his wife raged, growing more annoyed each day.
‘Kerrigen's girl.’ Erith was scathing as a crone despite her child-bearing prime. ‘Her life spent learning the wrong things!’ She tutted at the youth responsible as the cauldron banged down on the hearthstone of the peat fire in the centre of their home. ‘We have men aplenty for warriors.’
‘And few wives for them,’ Ard pointed out. ‘I thought you'd be pleased. Skaaha's not to blame for how she was raised. Be fair, Erith.’ He changed tack. ‘The druids thought you'd be good for her.’
‘Don't try getting round me, Ard Greimme. This was your idea. You didn't ask before you left.’
‘I didn't know,’ he objected. ‘She chose me.’
‘And you couldn't say no. Now why does that not surprise me?’
‘She'll make a fine smith.’ Ard ignored the jibe. Erith's ire was due more to Jiya's presence than Skaaha's. ‘I'll teach her myself.’
‘You better,’ Erith warned, ‘or you'll be without a wife yourself!’ It was no idle threat. Unlike Jiya, Ard was not a guest who must be given shelter. He was her husband, the second one of three, and divorce was easily done. If Ard lost favour, he could lose home and livelihood, become dependent on some other woman to take him in.
Outside, Skaaha went through her morning routine of turns and leaps, of handstands, cartwheels, back flips and somersaults. A light sea-breeze kissed her naked skin. In the unfamiliar landscape, she improvised, using a peat stack instead of rock to gain enough lift for a double turn in mid-air before landing. Dew shimmered on the grass, making it slippery under her bare feet. No broch towered near by, only squat roundhouses, their huge thatched roofs almost skirting the ground.
The ironworks of Kylerhea sat on the south coast of the island, separated from the mainland of Alba by a narrow strait. Sheltered on three sides by comfortingly high but passable, rounded hills, the flat river valley of the foreshore looked out across the sound to the bay of Glenelg. Once across the water, it was a short journey to Donal's school for warriors, where Skaaha's sister had settled.
‘Don't care,’ she'd said when Ard had pointed out its position for her.
Alongside her, naked as the girl, Jiya went through the same exercises, except for the warrior's use of spear, shield and sword. Raised voices reached them through the roundhouse thatch. Skaaha had never heard a row before. Warriors settled disputes with competitive feats. Argument, like the one she'd been hearing for days, would have ended swiftly, with bloody finality. It made Skaaha nervous for Ard, and scornful of Erith's authority.
The welcome had been warm at first, excited, yet the people here were wary, distant, and men spoke out of turn, without waiting to be addressed. Her newly prized father lessened in stature when she discovered he shared a wife. Warriors took one husband at a time, and only if they wanted to breed. But she was now the daughter of a man who must do as men did, and took comfort in Erith's jealousy. The forge-keeper had two other husbands. If she divorced Ard, Jiya would steal him to her bed in no time. Then they'd all be happy.
A small, bemused crowd watched the two newcomers go through their paces. Ard came to the door of the house. Equally bemused to find himself guardian to his daughter, he watched her now, lithe and slender, so like her mother, though a child without breasts or buttocks. She was good, confident in her movements, and quick, using the land the way a seal used water. Such talent could be channelled.
Jiya – he frowned – the moonstruck warrior was joyous in training, buoyed up by a strange lightness despite her heavier flesh. The globes of her full breasts swung as she turned in the air, buttocks bouncing as she landed. A fine sweat misted her skin like haar hugging the early-morning valleys. How well he remembered the saltiness of that skin, the firm rounded warmth of those buttocks – and Kerrigen coming in to look for her sister to find she was astride her husband. He shuddered. This was not good.
‘Breakfast,’ he called, his voice rougher than usual.
Both child and woman came to abrupt, poised halts. They looked at each other, not at him. Each thrust a fist forward to head height.
‘Hyaaa-aaaaa,’ they screamed together, then took off towards the sea, yelling as they went, legs scything, feet flashing over the grass.
Although the bystanders had witnessed this every morning since Skaaha arrived, it grew more and more compelling. Today, Ard couldn't help himself. He, too, thrust a fist forward, as did several of the watching women and men, girls and boys.
‘Hyaaa-aaaaa,’ they screamed, and followed their strange guests, pelting towards the lapping waves.
‘Aaaaa-yaaaaa,’ Jiya and Skaaha yelled, plunging in and ploughing on till the depth around their armpits slowed their assault and cold bit into their flesh. Swimming wasn't possible here. Further out, a strong current dragged the tide rapidly through the rocky spout of the narrow Kyle of Rhea. Instead, they drew deep breaths, ducked under, twisted, turned then came up for air, splashing, laughing, chittering before the stumbled, scrambled rush back to land.
Only a few who'd followed them down the shore had actually run into the sea: a couple of children, a woman and two men, one of whom was Ard. He reared up, water running from clothes and hair, to realize, of course, the warriors were naked, their clothes, dry, waiting, conveniently placed on a sandy hummock. He hauled the children out and plodded, dripping, back to the roundhouse. Erith would not be pleased. No matter. They'd dry out round the fire or in the forge after eating.
‘With salt in your clothes, is it?’ Erith complained. ‘You’ – she nodded at Jiya – ‘can wash them in the river. We've nothing else for you to do.’
The insult was gross. Warriors were waited on. It was their due for giving their lives over to defend the island people. Jiya's fleshy lids flickered up till her eyes met the forge-keeper's. The warrior's face creased, and she laughed, roaring, hollering and hooting until everyone joined in, even Erith, who tried not to. Skaaha giggled and chuckled with the rest, though sense told her nothing funny was happening. But everything seemed fine. Breakfast was eventually eaten, punctuated by continued snorts and repeated outbreaks of lau
ghter.
When the meal was over, the sun was fully up. While the damp among them went to their curtained chambers to change, Skaaha and Jiya dressed each other's hair. The rest scattered to their various jobs. When Ard appeared, changed and ready for work, he asked Skaaha to accompany him. Jiya fell in behind. They were outside when Erith called.
‘Wait.’
As they turned, she dumped a pile of sodden clothes in the doorway.
‘Your work for the day,’ she said to Jiya.
‘I cannot laugh twice at the same joke,’ the warrior said. Her hand went to her sword, drawing it from the scabbard in a single, smooth slash of steel, and her face lit with the wide smile she kept for dear friends or when facing an enemy. ‘So I will wash your clothes.’
‘Jiya,’ Skaaha gasped, more shocked than if the warrior had ended Erith's life.
Her aunt held up her other hand to silence her. ‘I am not trained for this,’ she said, keeping her gaze fixed on Erith and sounding strangely pompous, ‘but I am not above it.’ She drew the sword. ‘Only the truly great can stoop with humility so that others may learn the error of their ways.’ She plunged the sword straight through the centre of the bundle, raised it like a traveller's pack over her shoulder and strode off towards the river, cackling as she went. Erith's jaw dropped. Ard grabbed Skaaha by the shoulder of her tunic and whisked her away.
At the river, Jiya found a deep pool, slid the bundle off her sword and crouched to stir the clothes around in the clear water with the blade. This washing was a mysterious chore, and one that merited time. To ensure the sea-salt dissolved thoroughly, she poked and prodded her weapon into air bubbles that formed in the garments. Now and then, she hauled one out to whack it soundly. To entertain herself, she turned the task into training, assigning names to items, issuing challenges, delivering thrusts.
5
Ard led Skaaha past the forge, past the smelting house, on up the river course away from the settlement, until they reached a wider valley, most of which was peat bog. They came to a group of cutters busy at work, lifting and stacking the cut blocks of peat to where they'd drain before being carted down to the village to be piled up to dry ready for winter.
‘I'm not to be a peat-cutter,’ Skaaha objected. ‘I'm to be a smith.’
‘If peat-cutting is needed, peat-cutting you will do,’ Ard said, walking on to where the water grew murkier. ‘But we're here so you can learn about smithing.’ He pulled off one of the leather bags he carried on his shoulder and put the strap over her head, tying it so it hung at her waist rather than her knees. ‘And the first thing to learn is to value what you work with.’ He stopped where the water was coloured a milky orange. Lurid scum crusted the surface among the grasses. ‘Would you tie your skirt up between your legs?’
‘Why?’
‘Because we're going in the bog.’
As she tied the cloth to keep it out of the brackish water, Skaaha grinned up at her father. ‘It will be all right to get dirty,’ she said. ‘Jiya's doing the washing.’
Ard almost chuckled, before he remembered his fatherly responsibilities. ‘Do not be getting ideas,’ he said. ‘Erith's my wife, and keeper of the forge. She's also with child, and you must mind her.’
Skaaha gaped. Pregnant women merited great respect. Druids believed those who died in the otherworld came back through them and, often, birthing women were born into the otherworld as their child arrived in this one. Even though Skaaha doubted druid teachings, Erith became instantly admirable. She tied the knot in her skirt tighter between her legs. Ard was already calf-deep in the orange bog-water, reaching into it. He pulled out a small lump of rough sandy-brown pitted rock.
‘Feel it,’ he said, putting it in her hand. ‘Feel it, look at it, smell it. Taste it, too. Know it when you find it, exactly that. That's iron, good iron.’
She studied the nugget. It was the size of a chestnut but heavier, jaggy and brittle. The earthy, peaty smell was tinged with the smell of metal, metallic on her tongue, too. Sometimes, when the potter at Bracadale allowed, she had played with clay. It was special, a slippery, squidgy soil that baked hard in the hot oven to become bowls and jugs. But the rock she held now was even more magical. It could become cauldrons, spearheads, swords, and rims for chariot wheels. The art of working it would become hers, a magic art warriors depended on, hers to give or to withhold.
‘See if you can find some,’ Ard said. Skaaha stuck the iron nodule in her bag and searched about in the rust-coloured water with her hands, drawing up silt, soil, pebbles. Eventually she had three pieces of ore, and her back ached. Ard talked as they worked. ‘Best you use your hands,’ he said. ‘Eyes are no use in this murk, but fingers see what they touch, once they know the feel of it.’ As morning wore on she found the right lumps more quickly. They took a break then. Ard showed her how to find the bubbling source where springs of orange water brought iron up from the otherworld.
‘If you believe the druids,’ Skaaha said.
‘But you can see it rise.’
‘It comes from the ground is what I see,’ Skaaha argued.
‘So where do we come from?’ he asked, humouring her.
Rau… rau… yip. Yip… yip… Skaaha looked up at the sky, where a pair of white-tailed sea eagles drifted lazily above the coastline. ‘Out of women,’ she answered. ‘You plant the seed, so you must know.’
‘And some seed grows wilder than others,’ he chided. ‘If you want to talk chickens and eggs, talk to Ruan. With me, talk iron.’ They were walking back down the side of the bog, where the water was clearer. ‘You see that?’ He pointed to an oily slick on the surface.
‘The rainbow on the water?’
‘Aye, there's iron there too. Any time you see that slick.’
He sent her into the marsh again, fingers searching through sharp reeds, the greasy slick sticking to the hairs on her arms, making a rim round her legs. She felt like a treasure-hunter, rewarded now and then with a nugget and her father's quiet nod of approval. The ache in her back from constant bending made straightening up difficult when he called a halt. They walked on, heading home, a satisfying weight in the bag at her side. When they passed the peat-cutters, she saw the youngsters with them all had similar leather pouches slung at their waists, some bulging with nuggets of iron, heavier than her own.
‘They bring down most of it,’ Ard explained. ‘Two birds with one stone. But you have to learn.’
She felt cheated of something indefinable, her victory quashed. No one in the village would greet her as if she were a hunter bringing home a stag, after all, especially not Erith, whom she'd hoped to impress. Her joy in her finds shrank.
‘Where is Eefay?’ she asked. They were high above the settlement, with its three large houses, smoke drifting from the cooking fires through their great thatched roofs. Other buildings nearer the hills housed the smelter furnace and forge. Standing between the village and the burial mound of the ancestors, the druid cell's three huts seemed small and isolated. But it was across the water she looked, where the narrow strait widened towards the open sea in the west, to the land beyond.
Ard crouched beside her, pointing. ‘See those hills, like breasts, one larger?’
She nodded, unable to speak for the sudden tightness in her chest.
‘She's in the valley between,’ he said, straightening up. ‘They'll put a fire on top of the smaller hill come Sowen. You'll see your sister then.’
All the way back, she kept looking over at the twin peaks. The cross-quarter festival of blood was a long way off. Lunasa came first, the reaper's moon followed by the hunter's moon. Both would pack the larder for the coming winter. Only when the third, final red moon of harvest died would it be Sowen.
When they reached the valley floor, there were raised voices. She needn't have worried about attracting Erith's disapproval. Jiya had finished the washing. It hung neatly on ropes of twine between the trees, barely recognizable strips swaying in the slight breeze.
‘Rags,’
Erith screeched. ‘They're rags!’
‘Clean rags,’ Jiya corrected, proudly. She sat astride the anvil stone outside the forge, feet planted on the cobbled path, putting an edge back on her sword with a flint rubber. ‘This clothes-washing is a fine thing. I will do more tomorrow.’
‘You'll do no such thing,’ Erith yelled, ‘or we'll all be naked by winter!’
‘And a fine hardy bunch we'd be, the better for it,’ Jiya announced, swinging her leg over the anvil and standing to sheathe her sword when she spotted Skaaha. ‘Hey, iron hunter,’ she cried. ‘Look at you with your heavy pack!’ She patted it approvingly. ‘Soon, you will make me a spear, and they will talk of this great new smith the length of the island.’
‘I might just about have enough for a spearhead,’ Skaaha agreed ruefully.
‘Excellent!’ Jiya crowed. ‘You learned to find iron. I learned how to wash clothes. We have lived the day well.’ She put her beaming face down to Skaaha's till the heat of her cheek touched the girl's, and whispered, ‘And it won't be our last.’
Sunset was when the new day began, as it always did, with everyone reclining round the hearth after eating, supping ale. This time Jiya was begged for a story. Delighted, she began, telling of a man who saw a handsome naked woman wandering the beach and chased after her into the sea. The woman didn't run too fast, because he was a fine-looking man, and she didn't swim too hard, because she could tell, under his clothes, the man had smooth, sensuous muscles and strong thighs. But, in his haste to catch her, the man forgot he was clothed. So, while the irresistible woman plunged further and further out, the man got into great difficulty in the current, a current much like the one that so easily carried coracles across Kyle of Rhea. The weight of water in the man's clothes slowed him down so that the waves lashed over his head and seaweed wrapped round his legs, drawing him deeper and deeper into the salty depths until his lungs burned for breath.
Warrior Daughter Page 4
