Tonight he wanted nothing more than to be home, with the cobblestones of familiar streets beneath his feet and the lights of Inverness glowing about him. If he were home, he’d pick Fiona up around seven. She’d tuck her arm into his and look up at him with shy adoration shining from her eyes. She’d smell of lemon polish and beeswax as Wednesday was her day to clean the church. Maybe they’d go to the pictures, maybe they’d just walk until they were up in the hills surrounding the city and the stars seemed so close a man would almost believe he could grab a fistful and give them to his sweetheart. Barring these things, Sandy just wanted a drink, something strong and quick.
The pub was full, only a couple of tables unoccupied, and the odd nod greeted them as they sat at a table in the far back left, regulars who were there for the drink and not concerned with the politics of the man on the stool next to them.
Neil went up to the bar and came back moments later with two pints of black ale for himself and Donny, a nineteen year old redhead who looked all of twelve and had only been in Belfast a week. For Sandy he brought a whiskey.
“Here’s something for the aches then, fast an’ to the point like ye asked.”
“Thanks Neil,” Sandy said, tipping his glass towards the boy with the thatch of blond curls, ruddy cheeks, and merry blue eyes. Neil was on his second month of duty in Belfast, and thus far his cheery disposition seemed unimpaired by the bleakness of the place.
Denny, the publican, gave a two finger wave from behind the bar. He was a nice fellow, a hard-working Protestant who kept his views to himself. Adorning the wall behind the bar was his collection of license plates from the United States. It was Denny’s grand ambition to have all fifty states of the union represented on his wall. So far he had thirty-nine. Sandy, who had family in the US, had managed to procure a Maine plate for Denny, and had drunk free for a week afterwards as a result.
Sandy smiled and waved back, only to see the stout publican return the smile and have it freeze in place just as quickly. There was a breath of chill air behind Sandy that told him the door to the street had opened. His spine, from training and experience, went rigid. He turned slowly, so as not to seem obvious and glanced at the newcomers. Three men in work clothes, lads out for a pint after dinner, escaping the wife and kids for an hour or two. Two on the smallish side, one with a tweed cap pulled low over his eyes, another unbuttoning a navy pea coat, the third shaking droplets of rain from a chestnut thatch of hair. The third was taller and younger than the other two, good-looking in a feral sort of way. The sort that had luck with the ladies. Sandy knew it had something to do with the aura of danger such men projected, though he’d never really understood the appeal.
Though Denny was more friendly to some and less so to others, Sandy had never seen him less than cordial to a customer in his pub. But the normally cheerful publican had a stone face on him at present and his lips were held tight against his teeth as he served the three now lounging against the counter.
Sandy gave them a closer look, while appearing to peer down into the amber depths of his whiskey. They didn’t appear so different from the regular clientele, Belfast toughs, though the youngest had an air about him. As if feeling Sandy’s thoughts on him he raised his head, tilting it up as a cat would to scent the air. Even at a distance, his eyes stood out against his face as though lined in fine pen; pretty eyes, the lavender blue of forget-me-nots. The eyes met his own without warning and Sandy started from the impact and the embarrassment of being caught staring. The man smiled, tipping his head in a friendly manner, except that Sandy felt even such a simple gesture held a wealth of unspoken threat.
He took a shaky breath and re-applied himself to his whiskey. Christ, this city made a man paranoid, where the simplest acknowledgement of one’s presence caused such chilling thought. He’d once said to another soldier—a Glaswegian on his way home after a year in Northern Ireland—that the man must be glad to leave the place behind. The soldier had considered him for a moment, taking in, Sandy had suspected, his youth and inexperience.
“Ye’ll know the saying about the beauty of things bein’ in the backside an’ not in the face, endearing more by their departure than their arrival. Well Belfast has got both an ugly arse an’ face, an’ I’d be a fool to think I’ll not carry her with me the rest of my days,” the Glaswegian had said, and then left Sandy to the un-tender mercies of youth, inexperience and a city with too much history.
A bit of corduroy jacket brushed past his shoulder then, and he realized to his chagrin that the only empty spot in the pub was the table directly behind the three of them.
“Evenin’ to ye lads,” said the young one as he passed, a flash of teeth and eyes and rain-wet hair.
“Evening,” the three of them murmured politely, the mood at their table suddenly as damp as the streets outside.
The tables were bunched tightly, the Cracked Pot being a small establishment. Sandy could smell the wet wool and tobacco scent of the men’s clothes as they sat, as well as a sharp whiff of some expensive aftershave.
“Yon laddies are a quiet bunch,” Sandy heard a voice behind him say, and knew the man was referring to the three of them. A tendril of cigarette smoke, translucent blue, curled around his neck, making his eyes water and his throat itch. He sneezed, three times in quick succession. Behind him he heard the rustle of cloth as the man turned around.
“Smoke botherin’ ye?”
“No, it’s fine,” Sandy said hastily, burying his face in his whiskey glass, the fumes making his eyes water once again.
The man rose and Sandy had to strain his neck to see his face. The Cracked Pot had been built in 1768 and its ceiling was of a height to accommodate the stature of the human species at the time. These, however, were different times and the man’s thick thatch of chestnut hair brushed the low, smoke-blackened beams.
The man made to move past them, his pint in one hand, the half-smoked cigarette in the other.
“Got to piss,” he said apologetically, flashing a mouthful of perfect, startlingly white teeth at the three of them. The space between tables was practically non-existent and the man seemed slightly unsteady on his feet. Odd, Sandy thought, he’d not seemed drunk when he and his companions had entered the pub. Likely this was not their first stop of the evening though. Therefore it wasn’t surprising when the man slopped most of his remaining drink on Donny’s shoulder while trying to negotiate the narrow space between chairs.
Donny jumped out of his chair with an audible curse, knocking into the man who stumbled back slightly, sending the drinks on the table behind him flying.
Two rather sturdy looking, red-faced men jumped up, obviously deep in their cups with fists at the ready. The man with the forget-me-not eyes smiled with distinct pleasure.
“Are yez lookin’ for a fight, boys?” he asked in an amiable tone, then threw his empty pint glass to the floor. There wasn’t even time to hear it smash when all hell, in the form of several drunken Irishmen, broke loose.
Sandy had the impression of several things happening all at once. Fists thunking solid against flesh, chairs being pushed back and then used as weapons, the air ripe with the smell of wet wool, spilled ale and smoke and filled with the triumphal roars of men in the joyous state of a full-fledged donnybrook. A glancing blow off the side of his head brought him stumbling to his feet.
The big man stood dead center of the room, eyes sparking with blue flame, flinging men off right and left as if they were no more than kittens. Which of course only caused more fools to charge him.
Sandy dodged several merrily flying fists, only to feel a chair leg make firm contact with the back of his head. The floor came up at an astonishingly fast rate towards his face. The next thing he knew someone had grabbed him by the shoulder and threw him towards the wall, wedging his head between table legs and wall.
It took a few minutes for constellations to quit wheeling in front of his eyes, and in those few minutes Sandy decided a Scotsman’s pride could only take so much an
d then it was time to weigh in and damn the consequences. Besides, Irish or not, one man against twenty simply wasn’t fair.
Two minutes later, caught in the midst of a heaving, grunting mass of wild, majorly pissed Irishmen, he wondered if he hadn’t made a serious error in judgement. Pinned facedown on the pub floor, which was less than pristine, he could only sense rather than see the flailing limbs and hear the grunts and curses of men having a rollicking good time. He caught a flash of red hair out of the corner of one eye and knew Donny had joined the fray. He gave an almighty heave, managing to extract himself from under several thrashing bodies, only to catch a hob-nailed boot directly under his chin. The constellations came whirling back and the salty taste of blood filled his mouth. He crawled back to the scant protection of the wall, blinking through a haze of pain.
The blue-eyed man was still on his feet, apparently unfazed by the fists, feet and furniture coming at him full bore. He was a fighter by nature, that much was apparent. A man who’d known his size and face would bring him trouble all his days and so had learned the skills necessary to deal with such trouble. Barbarians, the Irish, his captain said, didn’t understand the rules of civility, of where and when to make a stand. The man before him certainly fit the description, his entire being a lit fuse of raw, radiant savagery. And yet somehow his movements were deliberate, instinctual, each thrust and parry of other men’s hands, legs and bodies effortless, graceful as a dance.
From mid-air, the man caught a bottle and tossed it away again. He might have used it to his advantage, but his strength had not yet begun to recede and he was in the throttle of the beast that coursed swiftly through his blood. He had no need as yet for helpful implements.
Sandy found his feet a moment later and got on top of them with only a slight wobble. The air was now so thick with blood, sweat, and liquor that it trundled into his lungs like a dozy creature. He squeezed as much of it as he could into him and then waded back into the battle.
The fight had become an entity unto itself with too many limbs, teeth, fists, and drink-addled brains. The blue-eyed man, still miraculously standing, was the central nervous system of the whole mass. When he moved they all did. When he ducked they accordingly rippled.
The whole lot of them surged as one body toward the back end of the pub. A narrow entrance hall fed down to a back door, passing a tiny washroom on the way. The doorway of the washroom flew open under the duress of straining, heaving bodies, giving all and sundry a view of an abundant bare backside liberally adorned with gray, curling hair. Sandy caught a glimpse of shaking, indignant flesh before sailing onward with the melee.
He caught up hard on the wall opposite the washroom, tossed like flotsam off a thundering wave. Down the wall he slid, looking dizzily upward, uncertain of where he’d ended, only to see a huge white face spinning out of the murk at him.
The bastard slammed into him with a force that rattled the teeth in his head. Sandy thought he could hear his skull crack. At first nothing moved and then the world spun in a dark circle, flipping his stomach over. His shoulders were jammed tight in a small alcove. It afforded some small sanctuary from the violence that had moved back into the main room of the pub. That didn’t explain who’d hit him in the head with the force of a cannon though and now, judging from the weight resting on his head, was passed out on him.
Once big black petals of pain stopped blossoming behind his eyes, Sandy ventured moving his head and found, to his immense relief, that his neck was not broken, nor was his skull mashed to a pulp. He chanced a look sideways and found a familiar face. King Billy of Orange, done in white marble, tipped over in the fight and saved from smashing his lugubrious face on the floor by landing instead on Sandy’s skull.
Sandy tried to move his right arm out to push the statue away only to meet with several hundred pounds of marble resistance. He was, for all intents and purposes, stuck fast and helpless. Just then he caught a glint of something sharp from the corner of his left eye. He turned his head slowly, the pain in his head still making him dizzy.
Directly in front of him, not more than a few inches from his throat, was the broken end of a bottle held firm in a dense meaty hand. Whiskey still dripped from its squared off edges, a whiff of it serving as smelling salts to his brain. He swallowed, feeling the surge of blood in his neck and how close the veins and arteries ran to the surface of the skin. He looked up the arm and into the eyes of his attacker.
The man was barrel-chested, a sheen of sweat gleaming on his ruddy face, brown eyes filmed by alcohol and bloodlust. Sandy knew men could kill with very little feeling in such a state. He also knew that he was younger, stronger, and quicker and that if he’d an inch of room to maneuver he could disarm the man swiftly. It was part of his training and by now as ingrained as the sound of his own name. But his elbows were pinned hard to his sides by the wall on one side and the statue on the other. His throat bobbed involuntarily, thick with panic. He was, he knew, about to be gutted like a fish.
The sound of his attacker’s wrist snapping was as sharp and hard as the shriek that accompanied it. The man’s face turned pale green and then he slid into a boneless faint, crumpling slowly onto the floor. Sandy half-choked on the acid flooding his mouth, his abrupt salvation surprising him.
“Grab yer pals,” the blue-eyed man said, tipping the statue back into place by levering one broad shoulder under it, his words a terse command, “an’ head out the back.” Sandy obeyed what seemed the most sensible suggestion he’d heard all night. It was likely the police would be here soon, and then there’d be more explaining to do back on base than even a man of tender years had time for. He rounded up Donny and Neil by grabbing the arm of one and yelling in the face of the other. They ran, each with unique bumps and bruises, to the back entrance over the inert forms of the first fallen, through a hedge of woolly chests, and a veritable steaming forest of gashed, cut, contused, broken and bloodied flesh.
Outside the night was cold, their breath making long curling streams on the air.
“Car’s this way,” Sandy’s defender said, emerging from the dark to their left and pointing to a Cortina that sat wedged between a garage and another car. He paused a moment to light a cigarette, the glowing tip throwing a red cast over his face. The effect was particularly demonic.
“What about your friends?” Sandy asked, noting the two other men were nowhere to be seen.
“Joe’s got his own car; they’ll follow where we lead.” Seeing their hesitation he added, “I’ll drive ye back to base, ye’ll not want to be out an’ about. Those haircuts are a dead giveaway an’ word on the street is the Republicans are lookin’ for someone to pay for Martin Diggin’s death.”
The car was blue; the front end slightly dented, but immaculately clean and polished. It seemed this Belfast working tough was a man who cared about his vehicle.
Neil got in the front, Donny sat behind him, and Sandy slid in directly behind the Irishman, who gave himself a once-over in the rearview mirror before putting the keys in the ignition.
“What’s yer names, boys?” their driver asked, raising one large hand to wipe some of the steam off the windshield, while giving a quick glance about at the soldiers that surrounded him.
“I’m Donny,” the youngest spoke first, still high on adrenaline and ale.
‘Donald, eh?” The man grinned as he shifted the car into drive, “As in ‘I’ve just come down from the Isle of Skye, I’m no’ very big an’ I’m awf’ly shy.’
The short Scot lurched forward, face flushed as red as his hair with temper.
“Ach, Donny, sit back,” Neil said, then turned back to the dark-haired man. “If he’d a copper for ev’ry time someone sung that he’d be a rich lad would our Donny. It devils him somethin,’ fierce to hear it.”
“An’ what’s yer name laddie?” The man fixed his gaze in the rear view mirror, meeting Sandy’s eyes directly. Sandy had remained silent to this point, trying to assess the extent of his injuries.
“A
lexander,” he said carefully, wary of giving out his name and yet not knowing how to withhold it without seeming rude. Alexander McCrorey had been raised to be polite to a fault. After all, the man had just saved him from a bloody end.
“Do they call ye Sandy then?”
“My friends do,” Sandy replied in a polite tone that could not be mistaken for chumminess.
“And mine,” the man said, with another of those quick, flashing grins into the mirror, “call me Robin, as in ‘for bonny, sweet Robin is all my joy.’ At least,” he gave a wolfish grin, “that’s what the lassies tell me. Now Neil if ye’d be so kind as to reach under the seat there, there’s a bit of somethin’ to keep the blood warm while we drive.”
Neil emerged with a bottle that glinted darkly in the faint glow of the dashboard.
“Have a drink then pass it along Neil, it’s guaranteed to cure all that ails ye.”
Neil took a drink and began to cough immediately. “Holy Christ,” he gasped, passing the bottle onto Robin, who took a long, smooth drink without so much as blinking.
“What the hell is that?” Neil asked, wiping his forearm across his eyes.
“Poteen, an old Irish recipe, me mam could drink it like ‘twas honeyed milk,” Robin said, swinging the car smoothly around and down a dark back lane. Behind them the lights of the other car swung swiftly around the corner as well.
“Tastes like bloody diesel fuel,” Neil said as Robin passed it into the back seat. Not wanting to appear unmanly Donny took a polite swallow, eyes bugging out as he did so. He shoved the bottle under Sandy’s nose and Sandy smelled an aroma that cut his breath off at the top of his throat. Not being beyond the issues of male pride himself, though, he took a tentative sip and thought he might lose use of his taste buds permanently. Neil was right—it did taste like bloody diesel fuel. An uneasy feeling uncoiled in his stomach along with the poteen, which could have had everything to do with the inedible mess rations he’d had that evening, or nothing at all.
Mermaid in a Bowl of Tears (Exit Unicorns Series Book 2) Page 20
