Firebrand (Rebel Angel Series)

by Gillian Philip

  Wincing, I gave her a look out of one eye. ‘Finished?’

  ‘Aye. I wish they were still alive to feel that.’

  ‘Sorry, I’m sure.’

  ‘Don’t apologise. Your timing’s great. Though it could have been twenty minutes better. Who’s with you?’

  ‘You want the good news or the bad news?’

  She swore.

  ‘Hey, don’t worry.’ I winked at her. ‘The good news is I’m a one-man army. Where are the other fighters?’

  ‘Everyone who refused to fight Conal is locked in the store rooms. That’s every one of us, by the way. Naturally,’ she added dryly, ‘the stores have been moved to the guard quarters.’

  ‘What about the others?’

  Strictly speaking everyone over the age of fifteen counted as a fighter. But apart from the children, there were some who simply were not fighters, either by inclination or profession.

  Sorcha looked uneasy. ‘I don’t know. We were split up days ago. Something changed. There was a sickness. It passed, but they said some people were infected, and others were carriers, it was a plague. They were lying, of course. They split us fighters from non-fighters, no other reason.’

  My stomach felt hollow. I was about to curse, but I changed my mind. ‘Sorcha. I really, really need a diversion.’

  ‘Murlainn, right this moment you could ask me to kiss you and I wouldn’t poke out your eye. Don’t ask tomorrow, though.’ She winked. ‘What do you want me to do?’

  38

  That great silver lantern of a moon was unforgiving, but no-one was watching for a single fighter strolling round the courtyard perimeter and ducking into a side alley. I could almost hear her whistling. From the shadow beneath the steps I watched Sorcha disappear towards the stores, two stolen swords slung across her back, and in my head I wished her luck. That would have to be good enough. At the very least, she’d enjoy dealing with the guards who held her comrades captive like so many cattle.

  Calman Ruadh did not expect revolt from within, and though someone would miss those two fighters soon, they’d obviously been expected to take their time with Sorcha. The young guard on the parapet was more of a worry, but I’d dragged him as well as I could into hiding. I knew the crannies and shadows of my own dun; I wouldn’t be much use if I didn’t.

  From my hiding place I couldn’t see the gate, so I took a deep shaking breath and slithered back up to the battlement. When my fingertips were hooked over the edge, two more guards passed, but I hung there, unmoving, till they’d passed, then hauled myself up and scrambled behind a buttress. I was appropriately angry now, and it was overcoming my fear. I had no business crawling round my own father’s dun like a worm, and Calman Ruadh would pay for making me do it. I’d have liked to feel the weight of a sword on my back instead of one small dirk at my waist, but what mattered for me now was speed and cunning. The dirk would have to do.

  Now I could see the gradient of the battlement where it began to rise over the arch of the gate. It swarmed with Calman Ruadh’s fighters, but that didn’t matter. The important thing was the great wheel that lifted the gate. The pulleys that operated it were well-guarded too, but at least I could see my path to it, and I was hoping to manage without the pulleys. Piece of piss. A run, and a rope to sever, and a mad leap, and the hope that my weight would carry the wheel round. Piece of piss.

  Gods. I shut my eyes. I must be insane.

  I edged closer, and closer yet. I had to be in position when Sorcha returned, or she’d never let me hear the end of it in the afterlife. When I was as close as I thought I could manage without actually tapping the nearest guard’s shoulder and introducing myself, I stopped. I pressed back, trying to make myself part of the wall. Pain lanced through my head from temple to temple. Reultan knew I had reached my endgame. Her block was ferocious and no doubt impenetrable, but it hurt like teeth round my brain.

  The nape of my neck prickled. Block or no block, I’d been seen. I knew what a stare felt like, and this one could have cut me in two.

  Looking to my left, I saw her. She sat against the wall, her bound hands hooked around her knees. Her face was bruised, her hair dishevelled, and her eyes were huge and hostile.

  And my mind was blocked. Shit. I lifted my finger to my lips.

  An assessing stare. Narrowing of her eyes. Then she stuck out her tongue.

  The child was guarded, but they weren’t taking any notice of her. I smiled at her. She didn’t smile back.

  Please, I thought, please don’t let the guards turn in the next thirty seconds. As I slunk down beside her, she moved her wrists towards me, and I sawed carefully at the cords. Impatiently she shook her hands, and though the blade of my knife nicked her before I could pull it back, she didn’t flinch or gasp, just glared at me meaningfully. Grinning, I worked my dirk under the cords and sawed hard this time. It took seconds, and I cut her, but her hands were free and she grinned back. Then she grew serious, and lifted her eyebrows.

  I gave a tiny shake of my head, and looked towards the courtyard.

  The whole place was still. A bored sentry yawned, kicked at a loose stone, turned on her heel towards us.

  My heart practically choked me, and the child pressed against my side. Instinctively I wrapped an arm round her, but the guard didn’t have time to catch sight of us. There were yells and cries of rage in the courtyard, and the ring of sword blades. The guards who didn’t instantly leap down to the courtyard waited up on the battlement, swords drawn and watching. Sorcha’s ban-Sithe shriek of defiance split the air, and the released fighters behind her gave a howl of fury, and then the two forces collided.

  Sorcha’s makeshift army was seriously outnumbered, but they were seriously angry too, and humiliated, and out for revenge. This was as good as it was going to get.

  ‘Run,’ I told the child, and grabbing her arm, I shoved her towards the steps. She only had to stay out of their grip for minutes, and the fighters in the courtyard weren’t going to bother with her. For myself, I sprinted for the wheel that opened the gate.

  The distracted guards saw me then, all right. One yelled, and brought up his sword too late, and my dirk was in his side. I yanked it out just as his friend came for me, and leaped and rolled, slashing at his hamstrings as he tried to turn. Then I was up on a buttress and taking a flying spring over the third as he ducked reflexively. And I was running, running for the wheel, and leaping into space.

  I think I shut my eyes. Stupid, but true. I crashed into solid wood, found purchase more by luck than judgment, and dragged on a jutting spoke, legs flailing. The rope that held it jerked taut, and I slashed ferociously at it. The blade found purchase; grimly I sawed it back and forth.

  It gave sooner than I expected and I swung wildly, not just trying to move the wheel but trying to make myself a moving target, too, as arrows whined around me. Beyond the gate I could hear the roar and thunder of Conal’s fighters storming across the machair. Oh, gods, the gate had to open. It had to open now.

  Trouble was, up here on the wheel, the leverage wasn’t the same. The chains we used to pull on it hung down fifteen feet and more; that was what turned the thing. My weight was dragging it, slowly and surely, but not fast enough. I kicked and swore, felt it give, grabbed for the next spoke, kicked again. It turned, inch by inch, and an arrow slashed across my thigh. It enraged me. I screamed at the wheel, kicked, grabbed another spoke. The thunder of horses was close. Too close. The gate had opened inches. Wide enough for a ferret, not a horse.

  I wasn’t going to do it.

  Something slammed into me and I thought I was dead. Shock almost made me lose my grip on the spokes, but I fumbled, regained it. The thing hanging round my neck, arms almost choking me, was a nine-year-old child. I laughed, though it came out like a gasping cough.

  See? I didn’t need extra height. I didn’t need extra weight. Not when there was another shortarse to help me. The wheel groaned, and swung round, and I managed to clamber up two, three more spokes. Grunting, I clim
bed again, the weight of the child almost killing me now. Her legs were locked round my waist, clinging on like a human grappling hook.

  The arrows had stopped flying so thickly, and I saw the courtyard was filling. They could not concentrate on us any more, dangling like bowshot-practice, because Conal’s troops were forcing the gate wide and slashing their way through Calman Ruadh’s fighters. Out of the corner of my eye, through blood and sweat, I could make out only the fast flash and glitter of blades, the agile twist and leap of bodies. I heard screams, and war-cries, and above it the agitated howl of Calman Ruadh.

  ‘Get the CHILD. THE CHILD. HANG THAT FECKING GIRL…’

  I smiled at her, and she smiled back, still locked round my neck. My arms were about to give way.

  ‘Good girl,’ I said. ‘Thanks.’

  Her smile faded. ‘I think my father’s dead.’

  I thought about lying. ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘he is. But he’s proud of you.’

  The smile came back, and then my sweating palms lost their grip and we fell together.

  I managed to twist so that she fell on me, not that it did my lungs much good. If the fighters around me hadn’t been so preoccupied, I’d have had it, because I couldn’t breathe for a while. We lay there like corpses, the girl on top of me, and that’s what they all must have thought we were. At last I sucked air into my lungs in a great whistling gasp. I took her arms.

  ‘Run,’ I said. ‘Do as you’re told this time.’

  I caught the flash of her pixie-grin and then she was off, running and lost among the dun alleyways. I couldn’t worry any longer. I snake-crawled to the nearest corpse and wrenched the sword out of its bloody fingers.

  There comes a moment, luckily, when instinct takes over. Later that dawn I found that the arrow-wound in my thigh was quite bad, but I didn’t feel it then, and it wasn’t bad enough to bleed me to death. I just fought like I was fighting Eorna, like I wanted to thrash him, like my clann was watching and wanted to see me beaten, like I wanted to prove them wrong. My flying bare feet found bellies and throats and other points where flesh was soft; my blade whipped and snapped with a precision I couldn’t have achieved if I was thinking about it. I was in a trance of ecstasy. Ecstasy.

  Later I thought: is this how it feels for a Lammyr? But I didn’t think it then. Just as well. It might have stopped me in my tracks.

  I saw Sionnach and Eili, fighting like mirror images, catching one another’s moves and echoing them with a deadly efficiency. I saw Aonghas, and Reultan, and Sorcha; Carraig, Righil, and Orach. No fast moves from Torc, who was simply hacking his blunt and brutal way through the fighters who came at him. Most of Conal’s fighters were off their horses now; being mounted had given them an advantage but now they were hungry for close-quarters duelling. Nor did my horse, or Conal’s, or Torc’s, need a rider to encourage them to join a battle. The blue roan had one of Calman Ruadh’s fighters by the throat, shaking him like a dog with a rat.

  I needed to find Conal.

  Reultan’s block was gone now; she had abandoned me to my own efforts, and fair enough. At least my head had stopped hurting. The minds around me were a chaos of violence and fury, and I couldn’t lock onto Conal at all. Furiously I rubbed my eyes. They were blurred once more with blood; the wound on my forehead had split open again.

  There. I caught a brief glimpse of him as he leaped and turned in the air, then he was gone, and I had to fight my way through to him. Someone else was doing the same, hacking down Raonall to get closer to Conal. Raonall staggered back with Calman Ruadh’s sword in his guts, cursing his killer in a spray of bloody spittle as he stumbled and went down, jerking.

  Luthais’s scream: I never heard anything like it. The man hurtled though the ranks, at the last minute springing up to run on heads and shoulders towards Calman Ruadh, who reached swiftly to whip his sword from Raonall’s belly. The wide slash as he brought it round just missed Luthais’s ankles. He was quick to recover his balance, though, and Luthais’s rage was too wild with grief. He hacked violently, and missed, and Calman Ruadh’s backswung blade half-severed his head from his neck.

  The clash had brought Calman Ruadh closer to me than to Conal, though only just.

  ‘Mine!’ I screamed.

  ‘No!’ yelled Conal.

  ‘Mine! I claim him!’

  All right. That may have been impetuous. Conal stared at me, not just livid but horrified, but I had no time to endure a bollocking from him, and he had no time to give me one. I turned and raised my sword as Calman Ruadh, grinning, came towards me.

  A space cleared around us. Partly it was that the battle was reaching its end, and only the last small deadly squabbles continued around us. Partly the survivors were intrigued that I’d been stupid enough to claim Calman Ruadh, and in front of so many witnesses, too. It was between him and me, now, till one of us was dead. No-one had the right to intervene on a claimant’s behalf. True, accidents happened. But unless Calman Ruadh had an unforeseen heart attack right now, or a meteor fell on his head, it was up to me to kill him. A claimant laid his claim, and took the consequences.

  I hate these ridiculous traditions.

  I rubbed my eyes with my arm, not letting go of my double-handed grip on my looted sword as we circled each other. Damn it, I wasn’t even carrying my own weapon.

  That reminded me of Raineach. My heart chilled as I looked into her killer’s pale eyes.

  A child crouched by the steps, her eyes fixed on me. Of course: she still couldn’t do as she was told and stay out of the way. My small comrade who’d been due to hang.

  ‘And she will,’ smiled Calman Ruadh, reading my thoughts. ‘After I’m done with you.’

  ‘After I put in all that effort?’ I said. ‘Not bloody likely.’

  ‘Don’t be scared, I’m not going to kill you. I still want the fun of gelding you.’

  ‘What, like my friend Sorcha gelded your man in the guardhouse there?’

  He can’t have known. Calman Ruadh frowned, his gaze searching out Sorcha. She gave a yell to attract his attention, and grinned, and gave him two fingers.

  ‘He was my cousin, Murlainn,’ he snarled.

  ‘Well, he wouldn’t be adding to your family tree,’ I told him. ‘Even if he wasn’t dead.’

  ‘You kiss my sword,’ he said, ‘I use a sharp knife.’

  ‘You kiss my backside,’ I retorted, ‘I won’t let you suffer.’

  He came at me. He was fast and flying. I ducked and rolled and was on my feet again, lashing out and spinning back out of his reach. I heard his blade cut the air just in time to bend out of reach of his strike, and when his backswing went at my hamstrings I jumped high. I could have had his head off then if I’d been fast enough, but I wasn’t. The sword in my grip was heavier than my own, and it felt clumsy in my grip. I swung at him and he somersaulted backwards, landed like an elegant cat and eyed me.

  I breathed hard. He smiled.

  Hell, he was fast. He flew at me again, light and lithe. He knew I was having trouble with the sword. It was all I could do to parry his rain of strikes, and I didn’t have a moment to riposte. He beat me back almost casually, and as I leaped to save my feet being severed at the ankles, I tumbled clumsily back and came to rest on one knee, unbalanced. Lightly he swung his sword across my ribs, smiling, then backed off.

  I thought I was dead. When I felt the blood swell and trickle down my belly, I knew it was a flesh wound, a calculated insult. I was no good. He’d cut me to bits before he killed me.

  I got to my feet, but panic was creeping in now, and with it pain. I could feel the slash across my chest, my own blood mingling with dried mud and sweat. Now I could feel the hole in my thigh, and even the irritating sting of the wound on my forehead. My head swam. There had been no need for me to die, no need for me to claim the man. Idiot that I was.

  The watchers were wordless: the only sounds were rasping breath, and the moaning whimpers of the wounded. And then, the clean sibilant sigh of a blade sliding out of
its scabbard.

  I blinked blood out of my eyes and stared over Calman Ruadh’s shoulder towards the sound. Idiot or not, I would rather die than face the shame of an intervention, and I was about to yell in fury at whoever had drawn his sword.

  It was Conal, of course, but it wasn’t his own sword he’d drawn. That was in his left hand. In his right was the blade he’d just taken from the second scabbard strapped on his back. Raising it, he smiled.

  ~ He’s yours. So kill him.

  I dropped the strange sword. And I sprinted empty-handed at Calman Ruadh.

  I had enough time to see shock dawn in his eyes, and confusion, before his confidence reasserted itself. Then, as he raised his own sword to kill me, I saw the flash of a thrown blade spinning in the first murky dawn.

  I reached for it as it passed me, snatched it from the air, flung myself skywards and came at him from above. He was looking up at me in disbelief as I drove Raineach’s beautiful blade down into his throat, let go of the hilt, and twisted to make my own cat-landing.

  Calman Ruadh fell awkwardly to his knees, clutched at the hilt beneath his jaw, then pitched forward and died.

  39

  There was no time for feeling pleased with myself. There was only a moment to plunge my head and shoulders into a water trough, scrub off the worst of the mud and blood, then strip the shirt off a corpse. My hands shook, so Conal took the shirt from my hands, helped me put it on, then pulled me into a brief fierce embrace.

  ‘Where’s Branndair?’ I asked.