He staggered beneath the sudden surge of earth power that coiled up from the dirt through his feet and up his legs like fire. The sudden flame of power was enough to drive him out of his mind. He roared up against the chains, tearing the pillory clean out of the earth much to the crow's amusement. The bird cackled away merrily as Sláine tore at the chains with his bare hands, peeling them off as easily as a snake sheds dead skin.
He dropped the rope of metal chain at his feet.
Sláine cast one last lingering backwards glance in the direction of Grudnew's roundhouse. In a half-haze of anger he thought of what the king had said: all of them had suffered because of his stupidity. An image of Niamh suffering unseen tortures flared within his mind. He could hear her screaming. The answering roar of his anger was overwhelming. He hurled the wooden pillory like a javelin through the air and heard it clatter away in the dark as it came down. The sound was like icy cold water in the face - it brought him back to the here and now, banishing stupid ideas of tearing down Grudnew's home wattle by wattle and rescuing Niamh like some helpless damsel. The anger leaked out of him, leaving him frightened. Suddenly he was nothing more than a lonely man on a lonely street, with the first chirps of the dawn chorus breaking out all over the town.
The birds' cries sent a shock of fear coursing through him.
It couldn't be dawn, not yet. It was too soon.
Knowing that he would never see his home again, Sláine ran for his life.
Twelve
No Place Like Home
He didn't stop running until the shadow of Lugh's Spike had disappeared behind him. Even then he ran a hundred paces for every fifty he walked, constantly looking back over his shoulder.
His only thought was to put distance between himself and Murias.
He was reduced to scavenging scraps when his trapping skills let him down. For six hours one morning he stalked a roe buck, moving with as much stealth as was humanly possible so as not to startle the animal before he could get close enough to bring it down. It promised a feast and a thick cloak to ward off the encroaching winter, but promises were no good for filling the stoMach or warming the flesh. A misplaced foot cracked a brittle twig and sent the terrified animal bounding off through the trees faster than Sláine could ever hope to follow. Cursing, he slumped to the floor and punched the dirt in frustration. It wasn't a problem yet, but in a day or two his hunger would become crippling and then it would be more than just a problem.
He couldn't sleep. Every noise had him jumping at shadows. He couldn't trust Grudnew's promise that he wouldn't send hunters to bring him down like an animal for escaping. To trust the king would be tantamount to swallowing Dian's poison. If he let his guard down and moved slowly, not worrying about his back-trail, one day he would wake up to the barking of the hunting dogs and the hunter's steel. No, his world had been reduced to two absolutes: he could not go home and he could never stop running, not if he wanted to stay alive.
The next day he caught a scraggy hare, skinned it and roasted it over a makeshift fire. There was barely enough meat on it to sate his gnawing hunger, but he licked his fingers of every last fatty morsel, stripping the bones with his teeth.
It was one of the better meals he managed over the next three weeks, although the one he took most satisfaction over was a crow he brought down with a slingshot. The stone cracked the bird's skull cleanly and even though there was next to no meat on the creature, the thought of feasting on one of the crone's pets pleased him no end.
The weather turned as he neared Craig Rhiwarth.
The rain was uncomfortable, and made bedding down for the night so much more of a chore. He needed to find shelter substantial enough to hold off the elements or at least capable of being used to bivouac down under and weave some kind of lean-too roof across. He wasn't in a position to be picky if he wanted to stay alive. Of course, he knew it would only get worse as the winter wore on.
He made a decision then. He couldn't avoid people forever, not if he wanted to see the next summer. Instead of skirting the next village he approached the wooden stile of the first of the outlying farmer's fields and went looking for good honest work in return for food and a bed. He was greeted by suspicion as he hailed the steel-haired man corralling a flighty sheep.
"Need a hand?" Sláine called.
"Not particularly, sunshine," the farmer said, wrestling with the animal as it kicked and struggled in his grasp. "Not enough work around here for one, let alone two. Assuming that's what you are after, right?"
"Aye," Sláine said. He looked over his shoulder. It was a subconscious reaction. The farmer wasn't an idiot. He caught the gesture and read it right: guilt.
"Looking for someone?"
"No one I want to see," Sláine said truthfully.
"Ain't that always the way." He pulled back hard on the sheep's scruff, showing the animal who was in charge. "You might want to try the widow Bedelia, two homesteads over, closer to the river. Her husband passed on over the spring and me and some of the boys saw to the ploughing and sowing of her fields as a mark of respect for her fella. Like as not she'll be welcome of a strapping lad like yerself to do the fetching and carrying for a bit. I remember what it was like when my Damhnait died five years back. The place was so big and empty without her around to nag at me. I started talking to myself and telling myself I was talking to her, only she weren't there to hear it. I can't really imagine what it would feel like to be the woman left behind, dependent on the charity of others."
"Much the same, I would imagine," Sláine said. "Lonely. Thank you."
Sláine carried on walking along the road towards the village of Craig Rhiwarth. He could see the homestead the sheep farmer had talked about. It was unremarkable. The grain stalks appeared ripe for harvesting. Perhaps he would find some honest work and a roof for the winter after all. He cast another lingering look back over his shoulder, knowing even as he did so that he needed to break himself of the habit.
On closer inspection he saw that some of the wheatsheafs had begun to rot. He broke the head off one of the better stalks and ground the grain between thumb and forefinger. The husk cracked easily. The kernel of grain itself had already begun to soften. It wouldn't be long before the remainder of the harvest spoiled.
He found Bedelia doing laundry down by the river, soapsuds up her arms as she grated the lye and scrubbed the rough spun cloth against a wooden washboard. She looked up, the smile slipping from her face when she saw him.
"Can I help you, stranger?" Her voice was husky. It reminded him of that quality Niamh's took on as they fumbled towards the bed, thick with passion and thinking only of the ecstasy of the flesh to come as he sank into her. He shook off the memory, feeling uncomfortable with the way his thoughts were leading him. He smiled.
"I was hoping I could help you, actually."
"Oh yes?"
"I was talking to a sheep farmer two homesteads over. He said if I was looking for work I could do worse than come see you, assuming you are Bedelia?"
"I am," she said, "and Donagh was right. I could use a man around the place to bring in what's left of the harvest before it spoils."
"I saw," Sláine said.
"You have an odd accent. I don't recognise it."
"I'm not from around here," Sláine said.
"Just passing through, eh?"
"Something like that," Sláine agreed.
"Your trade?"
"I was a warrior, now I am a wanderer."
"Is that a fancy word for bandit?"
Sláine smiled a crooked smile. "Ah, if I was a bandit I am thinking I'd be a piss-poor one. I mean, take a look at me, an axe, a worn-out pair of boots, and precious little else save my dazzling wit and repartee. I am an honest man, willing to work for my keep. That's all that is important, surely?"
Bedelia stood, smoothing down the folds of her skirts. Streaks of water and suds smeared the material and no amount of smoothing was going to make them miraculously disappear. "I can't afford to pay
you," she said, unable to look him in the eye. "Since Orin died things have been difficult. I can offer you a warm bed, and food, not the best of either, I'm afraid, but better than nothing."
"Seems more than fair, seeing as I am in need of both."
"Then we have a deal?"
"We do."
Sláine worked like a demon for the next week. It was backbreaking toil but it had its rewards. There was nothing like honest graft for purging the mind. His days were filled with the repetitive cut, cut, cut of the scythe and the bend and lift of the wheatsheafs, separating them out from the chaff. It was a return to physical labour. His muscles burned from the exertion but it was a gratifying pain. He was working muscles his training with the Red Branch had begun to neglect as its focus shifted to weapons and combat.
The best thing was that he could see his progress as more and more stalks were scythed down. It would take another week at least to clear the field. More of the crop was going to spoil. There was nothing he could do about it. He had to content himself with the knowledge that without him the entire crop would have gone to waste.
He made himself useful in other ways, too. He was the man about the house, carrying out much needed repairs. At night he slept by the door, as far from Bedelia's blanketed-off bed as he could get and still be in the same room.
He enjoyed Bedelia's company. She was quick witted, with a sense of humour and was very easy on the eye. She rarely talked of her husband. Had he wanted to be a farmer he could have done a lot worse than the widow. As it was he found himself stealing glimpses as she scrubbed the floor and stirred the broth, imagining her body moving beneath her shift. She caught him at it more than once but had the good grace to chuckle rather than reprimand him, which of course only encouraged him to wilder flights of fancy. He watched the gentle sway of her hips as she walked, the slight jounce of her teardrop breasts, the curl of her smile, and the toss of her hair. It was no hardship to watch, he found himself thinking more than once. She was different to Niamh, and Brighid. She moved differently, not as lithe as Niamh, nor as soft and round as Brighid; different but no less appealing, he thought, watching her hike up her skirts and chase a chicken across the yard. She had good strong legs.
He laughed as she scooped the chicken up only to have the bird flap its way out of her hands and leave her scratching her head wondering how it had escaped.
"Want me to crack its skull? I'm a dab hand with the sling."
"I can manage," she said, chasing the chicken until she was breathless and laughing at the bird's instinct for self-preservation.
"I can see that, Bedelia. Think it knows you want to choke it?"
"Oh shut up and do something useful, will you?"
Sláine hunkered down and came at the flightless bird from the other side, shepherding it into Bedelia's hands.
"We make a good team," she said, wringing the chicken's neck. The bird's wings flapped violently for a spell as the life fled from it.
There was something about the way she said it that gave her away; a vague sense of longing in the way she shaped the words. It had been too long since she had been part of a team, he realised, and she missed it.
The pair of them had quickly become friends. It was inevitable given the fact that they were alone and that she had been starved of affection and male attention for so long. Suddenly he had walked into her life, paid a little attention to her, sat at her table, laughed with her and listened to her, and she enjoyed it.
Sláine winked at Bedelia.
That night they ate well, boiled potatoes and white meat, and bread made from the grain he had reaped.
With the grease still on his fingers from the last mouthful, Sláine reached across the table and took her hand in his.
"Don't go getting all serious on me, Sláine Mac Roth. I've already had one husband die on me." Although she said it jokingly enough he knew there was more than a grain of truth to it. Bedelia was terrified of anything approaching intimacy with another man for fear of being hurt all over again.
"Me? Serious? Oh ye of little faith."
"What do you call this then?"
He grinned.
"Well obviously I am trying to charm you out of that dress and have my wicked way with you."
She turned away, blushing furiously. She didn't say a word, just stood up and led him by the hand to the small cot she had blanketed off at the back of the homestead. She touched his face tenderly, putting a finger on his lips to stop him from breaking the silence. For a full minute she just looked at him. Then she drew him into a fierce kiss.
He wondered if she was imagining her dead man in his place but the urgency of her tongue betrayed her: this was all about Bedelia. This was about sating a hunger.
He slipped one hand around her back, pressing her close to him so that he could feel her heat, and the other he tangled in her hair.
The kiss didn't end, it melded into another and another until their movements turned frantic and they were pulling at skirts and trousers, desperate to feel the burn of skin on skin. Her dress was cinched with a laced girdle that cut high beneath her breasts, accentuating her curves. Sláine fumbled with the lace, tugging at the bow and unthreading the drawstring. He shook.
"Nerves," he mumbled.
Bedelia shushed him, closing a hand around his and drawing the string out. The dress fell at her feet.
He stared at her nakedness; drank it in. The knotted pewter cross at her throat drew his gaze. It was a beautiful piece, but then it paled beside its wearer.
"Say something," she breathed.
Sláine smiled as she laid a hand on his chest.
"Beautiful."
The coupling was desperate - quite unlike anything he had ever experienced before. Niamh had been more passive, letting him dictate the rhythm of the sex, and Brighid more skilled and assured, guiding him in his devotions. Here he was neither leader nor follower, they were equals and their hungers more than matched each other. Bedelia craved the physicality of the contact as if his touch made her come alive. She drew him into her and wrapped her legs around him, bucking against his thrusts and gasping as she sank her nails into his shoulders, drawing blood. The pain added a peculiar pleasure to the rutting, spurring him on far more than her cries did.
It was over almost before it had begun.
They collapsed back onto the pallet, naked and spent, their breath ragged, their flesh bathed in commingled sweat.
"You know I only intended to plough your fields, perhaps we need to renegotiate our arrangement," he said, earning a cuff around the ears.
"Pah! I'm beginning to think I pay you too much. I wouldn't go asking for a raise just yet."
It felt good to laugh.
He could belong here if he wanted to. It wouldn't have been any great hardship to wake up with Bedelia in his bed every morning.
He found himself imagining what it might like to be a husband - at first his pretend wife bore Bedelia's face but it quickly became Niamh's.
Niamh.
It had been less than a month and already he had begun to forget how her body felt next to his, and her face in his mind had become less distinct and more idealised.
"I won't forget you," he told the memory.
"I should bloody well hope not," Bedelia said beside him as she rolled over and fell asleep in his arms.
Happiness was fleeting.
The villagers talked.
Gossip of a new man at widow Bedelia's homestead was rife.
They commented on the closeness of the couple, tutting at their obvious intimacy as if it was something to be frowned upon. "Her old man's not even dead a year and she's taken up with the first fella that so much as looked at her," one of the fishwives muttered disapprovingly. "It's a damned disgrace is what it is," another crowed. Only Donagh seemed happy for Bedelia.
That was what happened when people had little going on in their own lives to amuse them.
Sláine heard all of their questions but had no intention of answering them: wh
ere had he come from? Who was he? What did he do? He wasn't a farmer, even if he worked the fields, that much they knew. A few speculated that he was a mercenary, after all he had the build of a warrior and carried an axe, others that he was a deserter from a northern army, and more than once he heard someone say he was nothing more than a pretty-faced vagabond come to leech off the kind-hearted Bedelia, to bed her and break her heart.
Let them speculate to their hearts' content, he thought, splitting a thick log in two and then splitting it again into quarters. He dumped the chopped wood into the wicker basket by his feet. It didn't matter. He was, to all intents and purposes, exactly what they claimed. He had no home. He was a wanderer.
He had no need of their approval and so long as Bedelia's name wasn't dragged through the dirt they could gossip all they wanted.
He concentrated on the logs.
He felt himself growing a little stronger every day he spent working the farm. It was good honest labour and it worked up a hell of an appetite. Alas, Bedelia hadn't been lying, the food was basic fare at best, but it warmed his stomach going down and she enjoyed cooking for him.
The sex, however, was far from basic. Released, Bedelia was an uninhibited lover. She delighted in his body and he delighted in hers.
Winter drew in, the rain replaced by the first snows. The ground hardened to the point where it turned away a shovel's blade. He busied himself with other tasks, mending fences, making a chicken coop, and repairing the thatch on the homestead's roof. He enjoyed the simplicity of his new life. He had never imagined something so simple could satisfy him but he was coming to understand that he was not the man he thought he was.
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