‘The rags will be taken to your boat,’ he told the men.
‘I'm not done,’ Skaaha said, her voice stronger. Fighting down the disgust heaving in her gut, she walked the line of posts, staring at each man in turn. Stick's blank eyes stared back. Bartok slobbered, trying to speak. Cut-eye was the only one who looked afraid. It was unbearable that they should walk the same earth she did, breathe the same air. ‘I want their heads,’ she said.
A gasp rose from the villagers. Standing together next the posts, both Eefay and Jiya punched the air.
‘Aye-yaa!’ Jiya shouted.
‘Aye-yaa!’ Eefay echoed.
Murmurs arose. Some sided with Skaaha, some not. The consequences of punishment should be lived with. Death gave these men an easy way out.
Ruan went to Skaaha's side. ‘If they killed,’ he cautioned, ‘the law would give them death. Their crime is greater, the punishment more severe. There is no justice in their escape to the otherworld. We don't send such offenders there.’
She faced him. ‘They killed me,’ she said, quietly, ‘because I am not Skaaha.’ She walked to the centre of the court, hauled the shift off over her head. ‘Look at me.’ Like the bruises on her misshapen face, great black and blue stains patched her body, turning yellow. Scars crusted her left breast, swellings on her limbs distorted her shape. ‘This is what the law addresses, as if I am a piece of meat.
‘Does it live, does it not? What lives in me, isn't that what justice ought to ask? Druid teaching speaks of body, mind and spirit. The punishment does not address what lives here’ – she gripped her head – ‘what dies here’ – she punched her heart. ‘He can't speak,’ she spat towards Bartok, ‘but he can think of me in ways he should not know. All of them stole knowledge of me, taken by force. I claim it back, and my right to remove it from them as they took from me. Their heads are mine.’
26
It was inarguable. Offenders could keep nothing obtained by criminal act. Skaaha had clarified the law. What was taken from her must be given up. The three druids searched their combined learning but found no method of removing memory that wouldn't, inevitably, cause death. The captives' heads were forfeit. Already convinced, the villagers roared agreement. Vass put his sword into Skaaha's hand.
‘It still has the edge you put on it,’ he said. ‘Aim through, like chopping wood, and if you flinch, I'll gladly finish the job.’
But it was to her sister Skaaha turned. ‘Haul him up, Eefay,’ she said, nodding at the blubbering Bartok, who'd slid on to his knees. Eefay yanked the tether, pulling the man back against the post. Jiya added weight to the rope.
‘Higher,’ Skaaha said. He was yanked again, till his face was at the level of hers. Holding the sword with two hands, Skaaha put the point of the blade against his solar plexus, pressing it into the soft flesh below his ribs, aiming upwards. She pushed her face into his, the greasy beard brushing her skin again. ‘This is what you put in me,’ she said, and thrust with all her strength behind it, up into his heart.
To assist, Eefay and Jiya let the tether slacken just enough. Tongueless, the man could still howl, and did. His body shuddered, jerking. Blood gushed over Skaaha's hands.
‘Let him drop,’ she said, stepping back. Juddering, he was dropped to his knees, the body weight taken by the rope. He swayed out from the post, head falling forwards. Skaaha raised the sword, drew deep for breath and strength. ‘Haa-yaaaa!’ she shrieked, bringing it down across his neck, aiming beyond, as Vass had said. The head thumped on the grass, rolling over.
‘Aye-yie-yaaa!’ the cheer went up. Jiya released the rope. Eefay let the twitching body drop.
‘Yes!’ The young warrior danced a little jig. The other women warriors joined in, chanting a victory. Skaaha was doing just as they would have, if they'd met these men as armed enemies on the field. This was warrior justice, and they sang the dance in praise of it.
Cut-eye was a snivelling wreck. Skaaha turned her attention to him.
‘I do not want your head,’ she told him. His one eye swivelled skywards. ‘My sister can have it.’
Eefay, dancing, flung both arms in the air with delight then drew her sword.
‘When I have given back what he gave me,’ Skaaha said, directing Jiya to drag the man to his knees and haul his head back by the hair. Blade pointing downwards, Skaaha gripped with hilt again with both hands, forcing the tip between Cut-eye's rotted teeth.
‘G-no-o.’ He gagged on the blade, trembling.
‘But you like this,’ Skaaha told him, and thrust down, ramming the shaft deep into his gullet, her weight leaning behind it. When she yanked it up, stepping clear, blood frothed, bubbling over his face.
Eefay shrieked, and swung her blade. Without the strength of Skaaha's arms, won from the forge, the young warrior had to take a second swing before the head was off clean. Another wild yell went up from the villagers. Skaaha was telling them a story, the story of her pain. They hadn't understood. Now they did, were with her and, like her, wanted the brutality avenged. All the warriors danced, stamping the rhythm with their feet, howling the victorious chant for the blood of vengeance.
Stick's expression hadn't changed, but his limbs shook. Following Skaaha's requests, Jiya dropped him to his knees, wound the tether so he remained crouched, unable to prostrate himself, put her foot on his neck.
‘His head is yours,’ Skaaha told her aunt. Feet apart, straddling Stick's calves, she took her two-handed grip of Vass's sword, pressed the point into the man's exposed backside. ‘Now you gets it,’ she said, loud enough to reach his terrified ears, and thrust the weapon home, driving deep. ‘Now you know.’
With screams, yells and cheers battering her ears, Skaaha twisted the sword, withdrew it and plunged it into the earth, cleaning it for return to Vass. Jiya had the head off in one stroke. She and Eefay danced around the cheering circle of villagers, showing off their trophies. Skaaha retrieved Bartok's head, gripping it by the hair, and limped off up the slope, following the river course, its filthy beard sweeping the ground.
‘Suli was right,’ the master druid murmured. ‘Danu is among us once more.’
Ruan lifted Skaaha's discarded shift and followed his charge. There would be no escape into the otherworld for the spirits of the men who harmed her. The warriors would preserve and keep the heads they'd taken off. Skaaha took the other to the bog. She had kept the law, using it to resolve its own difficulty. Now he understood the barbarity she'd undergone. The death she delivered spoke more clearly than what he'd seen, or what he heard from the outsider's silenced tongue. It showed the body of man used as a weapon. Shamed that masculinity could be so debased, a stone settled where his heart should be, a stone like the world with a furnace in its heart. Justice was done, but would not erase the wrong. One mind still held those memories – Skaaha's. There had been no joy or sorrow in her eyes, and no relief.
He followed her up river, the gory trophy in her hand snagging sometimes on gorse or bramble, swivelling its dead face towards him. Driven by her intent, she limped on, hobbling round obstructions. When she reached the furthest bog, where the sleeper slept through its eternity, she found a rock, rammed it into Bartok's gaping maw. Her arm drew back, swung. The head sailed out, splashed down into the murky water, and sank. She sank too, as if her strength gave out, on to hands and knees, as if everything she could do was done. He was beside her then, her shift thrown over his shoulder, raising her up, feet sinking in the marsh.
‘Don't give up now. You have more courage than you know.’
Trembling, she spread her arms, gazed down at her bruised, naked body. ‘Their blood is on me.’
‘Come.’ He took her to the stream, a stream where he had washed her once before. As tenderly as then, he washed her clean. ‘Skaaha’ – he didn't know what to explain – ‘what you heard, it wasn't you I wanted to escape from. It was my own fear of a time when…’ his voice broke ‘… of the future.’
Her wet, cold hands cupped his face. ‘You saved me
from more of it.’ Dark eyes, bleak as storm-washed moorland, looked at him as if she knew why a man might cry. ‘Don't be sad,’ she said. ‘It's done.’ Her lips brushed a kiss against his mouth, soft and fleeting as the velvet wings of a moth. Then she stood, pulled on the shift and set off, still limping, back down the hill.
It wasn't done. Skaaha returned from the bog empty-handed and emptied out. Eefay returned to Glenelg. Jiya left with the men of Ardvasar. With all the warriors gone, work resumed. The presence of intruders was erased, their blood washed into the soil with river water. Seed moon passed. But each night Skaaha sat from dusk to dawn on rocks above the sea. Each day she slept, shut away in her chamber. Before and after sleep, she walked the perimeter of the village thirteen times, sunwise. She ate, but little. She talked to no one. Her body healed. So did the village. A baby was born in Lethra's house, a boy. Mother and child both survived. Kaitlyn would be its foster-mother when it was weaned. She had inherited an inland farm from an aunt. Falling into step with Skaaha, she told her this.
‘Come visit,’ she said, ‘when you're fed up being crazy.’ They passed behind the druid huts, past the mound of the ancestors. Skaaha's stride was steady, the rhythm never breaking. ‘Even if you're still crazy, you'd be better company than them.’ Kaitlyn's husbands stood waiting, ready to shoulder the packs of her few belongings. ‘I meant to divorce that one, but the extra pair of hands will be useful. Half the land is bog. He can farm the ore.’ Her aunt had left husbands too, men to show them the ropes. They walked on, below the cavern where their friendship had begun. Time changed everything. ‘I'll be back to see my foster-son, and to fetch him when he's big enough. I'll see you then.’
Following the curve of the rise, they approached the rear of the forge.
‘Don't come back.’ Skaaha's voice was so quiet, Kaitlyn wasn't certain that she spoke. ‘It's not safe where I am.’ Her stride didn't falter.
‘Not safe?’ Kaitlyn stopped walking. ‘Of course it is.’
Skaaha strode on.
Ard beat out his days in the forge, stripped in the heat except for his leathers. The boy Calum was apprenticed to a woman smith. Men didn't learn from men. The lad talked enough for all of them.
‘Is Skaaha coming back to work? She was going to show me how to bend a hook. Why is she the only one who doesn't work? Is that because she's a goddess?’
Ard plunged the red-hot iron in the cauldron, sending up clouds of steam.
‘Leave off talking about Skaaha.’
‘Why, is she not a goddess any more?’
He took the boy by the scruffback to Lethra. ‘When his foster-mother comes in from milking, tell her he talks too much.’
The old chief sat the lad on a stool. ‘Hand, mouth,’ she said.
Calum dutifully clamped his hand in place. Lethra followed Ard to the door.
‘Do the opposite for your own,’ she said. ‘Loosen her tongue. She holds it all in. That's the real trouble now.’
It was day. Skaaha slept. Soon, when night came, she would sit on the rocks, cradled till dawn by the sound of sea. How could he, father or man, give back what was gone? He went to the dresser in Erith's roundhouse, took out a bundle wrapped in white cloth. It clinked as he walked with it to Skaaha's chamber. Awake, she sat up, long hair tangled like black seaweed adrift. He put the bundle in her lap.
‘This is who you are,’ he said, his voice rough, abrasive as the rasp from the forge. Metal jangled behind him as he left. Erith reclined on cushions by the hearth, nursing Freya's baby.
‘What did you do?’ she asked.
An ear-splitting howl tore the air in two, chilling his blood. He ran back to his daughter's bed. She crouched over the gold and bronze jewellery, clutching her hair, rocking on her knees. Issuing from deep in her throat, unbroken except for quick intakes of breath, a long, mournful note rose and fell, like the howl of a hound bereaved. Her grief beat in his ears, battered his chest. All he could do was hold her. All he could do.
Ruan took her to Tokavaig, to the healing centre at the sacred grove on the west coast of the southern peninsula. Howling hung in his ears, the animalistic sound that had ripped through Kylerhea only days before. Now she rode at his side like an empty shell that held only an echo of the self. Suli waited for them, with the master druids of the cell. The old woman had aged more since Beltane than in the previous ten suns, her face lined, her stoop pronounced.
‘It's a hard fate that works through her,’ she said, ‘harder than we…’ She stopped, controlling a tremor in her voice. ‘It will temper her for what she'll face.’
‘How can you believe that?’
‘Because I must,’ Suli snapped back. ‘Danu is always born of pain!’
It was the first time he'd felt anger with his high priest. ‘She dies of grief!’
‘If you've lost hope, find your faith. Trust the world to do its work.’ Her tone was harsh, breaking. ‘Do not ever think you know better than Bride!’
Skaaha's bed was in his lodge. At night he lay, hearing her breathe, knowing if she also lay awake in the dark. Day broke early, with the dawn chants, and the first visit from the priests. They brought food, ate with them, Skaaha's meals specially prepared. Bathing took place in the pool, deep in the centre of the grove. Fed by sacred springs, its water was clear and fresh. The air was warm, though night fogs rolled in, forming first on the peaks of the black mountains across the bay before snaking down to roll across the water, throw a blanket over Tokavaig.
When Suli insisted he apply the healing oils, he objected. ‘Why me? Won't she see a woman's hands as kinder now?’
‘She trusts you.’
‘It's possible,’ he countered, ‘that the high priest could be wrong.’
‘Possible,’ Suli agreed, ‘but unlikely. You saved Skaaha's life.’
He snorted. ‘I brought her to that place and time. Every step. You know that.’
‘I don't believe she thinks so.’ Suli put the pot of oil in his hands. ‘There is more than the rape of her body in her mind. I see a darker shadow, one she struggles to comprehend. Help her speak of that.’
Skaaha could tell no one. The enemy wasn't dead. It froze her mind. Her own kind had broken her. Not those warped dregs of humanity, but a warrior. All she trusted, all she ever trusted. The honour code meaningless, breached to hunt her with hatred so foul it sought her head by stealth, meant to vilify her with perpetual torment, erased from eternity, as if she were filth. Her life was not saved, nor safe, nor was anyone. She drowned in that hate, her spirit dying every moment of every day.
Ruan laid her down on cushions in their lodge, worked oil into her skin, his hands renewing their knowledge of the curves and hollows of her form, and she allowed it, until that morning. As he worked over her breasts, trying to ignore the red, angry scars, he talked. ‘Tomorrow, we'll try the warrior steps.’ Her spine arched. ‘The routine will do us good.’ In her eyes there was the briefest flare of life before she pushed away his hands, rose and dressed.
They spent the afternoon under the trees, as they had every day since they arrived. It was the place where knowledge was shared. Every tree had its own lessons: medicine, law, history. For the oak, it was time, the sacred mysteries of the universe. Learning followed each strong limb, branching out to different aspects. Recollection did the same. Go to the oak, look, touch, and the voice of the teacher returned, with the lesson. Today, the bards taught, singing ballads of their origins, telling stories of the goddess, speaking the poetry of their beliefs. It was late when the last one finished, fog already creeping white through the ancient trees.
‘Keep close,’ he told Skaaha as they walked back. ‘It's easy to be lost in the wood.’ Stones ringed the roots of each tree. Leading the way, he began to tell her why, why the groves were sacred, each tree nourished as a sapling by the ashes of a past druid at its roots. The type of tree told of each master's knowledge, by which, beside which and under which it was passed on. ‘So we remember,’ he said. There was no sound behind
him, her footsteps silent, her presence gone. He turned, but saw only wizened trunks, twisted branches fingering the mist. His ears picked up the crack of branches, the distant snap of twigs, the fading sound of running feet.
Fog, white as frosted breath, and she was running through it. Turn by rapid turn, each foot thumped down on cushioning grass and sprang away again. A spider's web of water-drops dragged against her face. Her hair dripped, nostrils clogged. Beads formed on her eyelashes. Drawing dank air in, her chest burned, breath came fast. Some way behind, heavier footsteps followed, closing the gap.
‘Skaa-haaa! Wait!’
Skaaha was done waiting. She ran, feet skelping through thick fog, racing over unfamiliar ground, running towards the sea. Blind in the whiteness, she heard waves crash on to rock. The sound spoke of cliffs, sea below. She ran faster, running till the ground ran out. Then she would leap. Falling from sky into water, brine would fill her mouth, flood her ears. The sea would solve her, washing everything away.
‘Skaa-haaa!’ A roar of warning lost in another roar. ‘Stop!’
The edge came, the end of earth. The otherworld waited, a new life. Every muscle burned with effort as she threw her body forwards, leapt up and out. Below her, a great slap of sea flung upwards against a jagged spur of rock. Spume frothed.
Ruan's feet padded to a stop. His hands grasped his knees, breath gasped. ‘Skaaha,’ he groaned. She had jumped or fallen. Only the incoming tide knew which. The smash of breakers against the cliff stole any other sound. The fog closed in, blinding him. ‘Skaa-haaa!’ he roared. ‘Skaa-haaaaa!’
Dancing up the Sun
27
It's done. They were the last words she'd spoken to him. He sat, cross-legged, on the grass edge above the cliff, embalmed by fog. It was done now. They had lost… he had lost her. Just when she might awaken, begin the slow return to life, she was gone. Night rose, darkening the mist. He sat on, in penance, releasing all the sorrow that had gone before, remembering her brightness. Sometimes he thought he saw her, floating in front of him, a trick of moonlight making shadows in the thick, white mirk. Below him, the sea sucked and crashed, drawing out. The shore was rocky here, jagged pinnacles of stone that would trap flotsam from retreating waves. He could hear seals resting on them. Rrrawww… rrrawww… The bulls bellowed, cows bleated. Rrrreh… rrreh… rrreh. When morning came, he would seek her body, take her home.
Warrior Daughter Page 24
