Highland Dragon Warrior

by Isabel Cooper

Near the top of the stairs, a small crowd came out to meet them. The Calhoun was tall and red-blond this generation, with a beard a small mammal could get lost in. His wife, Glynis, was short and dark, and their three daughters looked like they’d end up with various interesting combinations, though it was too soon to say anything for certain. They were all in that vague stage somewhere between walking and marriage.

  All looked better than they had when Moiread last passed through. She’d come then in rain-soaked darkness, which hadn’t helped, but the change was more than sunlight. The Calhoun—Eachann, Moiread thought his name was—had lost the grim cast to his face. His wife was smiling, and the children were watching the strangers with unmixed excitement, not waiting to overhear bad news.

  “My lord Madoc of Avondos,” Moiread said, belatedly remembering what she’d seen men do in her place and bowing before the assembly.

  Then she stepped out of the way, letting Madoc and the Calhoun take hands and exchange greetings. Behind the younger members of the family, she spotted a late arrival: Uisdean, who’d been the chief of Hallfield the last time she’d stayed there as a noble guest rather than a soldier. His hair and beard had gone from brown to pure white, and the hair was considerably thinner. So was the man. When the crowd moved toward the keep doors, she saw that he’d lost perhaps half his flesh. His brown eyes were cloudy too, and Moiread saw him squint as he peered from her to Madoc.

  That infirmity would aid in her disguise, yet she couldn’t be glad of it.

  “Here, lad,” said one of the guards, putting a comradely hand on Moiread’s shoulder. “Och, but you’re a nervous one,” he added, as Moiread tensed, not quite reaching for her sword. “The war’s over, isn’t it?”

  “It’s been a long trip,” she said, making herself relax. The man’s broad face was good-natured and honest. She put little faith in that, but he was one of the Calhoun’s guards, and not the lowest ranked at that. She remembered playing dice with him when she and her men had camped before the inner walls. “Your pardon, sir.”

  “Easy enough granted. Come along wi’ me. Your gear’s under a bunk already, and I’d wager you’re hungry. Might as well feed ourselves while our lords go through their paces, do ye no’ think?”

  Briefly, Moiread watched the crowd bear Madoc away toward the great doors of the keep. He walked by Glynis’s side, as was proper for a guest. The two talked quietly and with cheerful faces, looking back at Eachann frequently as he spoke. Uisdean followed with the children, a tall figure yet among them.

  “I’ve heard considerably worse ideas,” Moiread said.

  * * *

  “Truth to tell, I know little of these matters,” said Eachann Calhoun as they came out of the castle’s chapel into the evening air. “It was my aunt who’d made any sort of study, ye ken, and I’ve only the tales she told me, nor have I ever tried to use the knowledge.”

  Eachann wasn’t just trying to warn Madoc of his ignorance; his uneasy backward glance at the chapel said as much. He’d worn a brief but poorly concealed expression of relief when Madoc had come with him to vespers, but his guest’s ability to step over the church threshold and say the Lord’s Prayer without incurring a bolt of lightning clearly only went so far toward reassurance.

  It was a pity Sunday was so far off. Communion might have put the man more at ease.

  “Oh, that won’t be any trouble at all,” said Madoc. “I’ll do everything that requires study.” The man’s own half-conscious evasion was a useful one. He spoke again, trying to sound reassuring rather than desperate. If Eachann was having second thoughts now that Madoc was there, it was a bad sign, and Madoc didn’t have many days to be persuasive. “Your part will only be to accept. It’s mostly an oath, truly.”

  Here it was mostly an oath. Here at Hallfield, all the magic would come from the beings Madoc called on to witness the pact, the spells he had cast at the beginning of his journey, and the momentum of the journey itself, with the tracks of foot or hoof a tie between the two lands. At his two remaining destinations, matters would be different: as showy as the rite at Loch Arach had been, or more.

  “Good,” said Eachann. “If it’ll give me or my son or my grandson the upper hand, should the English get greedy once more, there’s not much I’ll not welcome, and gladly.” This time his look toward the chapel was almost defiant, and all the briefer for it. “But I’m glad I’ll not have to fumble my way through.”

  “You don’t strike me as a man who fumbles much,” said Madoc, smiling with relief and trying to pass it off as amusement.

  “That’s because I stick to what I know, life allowing.”

  Madoc, who thought that sounded like a dull way to live, but who knew that Eachann could have easily said I’m glad I’ll not have to meddle with unearthly things and put my soul in jeopardy, or decided he didn’t have to do that, made a gesture of assent and changed the subject. “I didn’t know you had a son.”

  “Adair.” The bearded face split with a proud smile. “Sixteen and already my height. He did himself right well in the war too. He’s been gone as a squire for the last two years. A shame he’s not here now, or he and your lad might have a bit to talk about between them.”

  “That they would,” said Madoc, laughing both because it was expected and because it felt strange to be discussing Moiread in such a manner. “And I can only pray that Michael’s accounts would all be good, and that the word tyrant got used but rarely.”

  He would have liked to be a fly on the wall during such a conversation, even knowing Moiread’s end of it to be more than half falsehood.

  “He’s not given you trouble, I hope?”

  “No,” said Madoc. “He’s quite promising.”

  “And handsome with it.” Eachann snorted. “There’s at least one of my girls making cow eyes over him already, and her not yet twelve. D’ye ken his family at all?”

  “Ah,” said Madoc, not having anticipated quite this turn of questioning. “Only a little. My father knows more of them. A…Seymour, I think?”

  “An English name, that.”

  “Yes, but his mother’s family is Scottish, and they’ve had the raising of him since his father died.” Madoc silently noted all the details and hoped he’d have a chance to pass them along to Moiread before she had to answer any such questions herself. “A bit of bad blood there, actually, I’m hearing.”

  The Calhoun nodded. “And so there would be, I’d think. Well—” He rubbed his chin idly. “Many a young man’s come from humbler stock.”

  “So they have,” Madoc agreed. They climbed the steps toward the keep side by side. The view near the top wasn’t as dramatic as that from the high windows of Castle MacAlasdair, but it had a beauty to it: blue-violet sky over peaceful fields and stars beginning to shine. “They seem pleasant children, your daughters.”

  “Oh, mostly, though Gara, the middle one, has the devil’s own temper when she’s vexed.” Eachann hesitated, resting a hand on the stone ledge, and then added, “Seonag, my eldest, she knew my aunt well. She’s taken an interest—not that I’ve much I can teach her, but there are a few records.”

  “Ah,” said Madoc. “If you think she might be of assistance tomorrow, I’d welcome her.”

  “Well, it comes to mind that, even if ’tis but a vow, I’ll not only be taking it for myself.” Eachann said. “No man lives forever. Best that my children know who they can call on—and who can call on them. Adair’s far from here. And he’s no more given to these arts than I am, truly.”

  Again Madoc heard the words beneath the words, the ones that the Calhoun was too much the host—and too polite in general—to speak aloud. Magic might do well enough for women, sometimes, under the right circumstances, if it stayed firmly on the side of the angels. Men had better, more honest ways of addressing the world, or should. His guest, both man and magician, was an exception, of course.

  Present company ex
cepted. Mostly because it’s present, and company.

  A man did as well as he could with what he’d learned and who he was. Madoc smiled honestly back at his host. “I’d say that was wise of you, sir.”

  Ten

  Lacking magic to heat water and start fires, the accommodations at Hallfield weren’t quite as luxurious as those in Castle MacAlasdair, yet they were a blessed improvement after a week on the road. Madoc came to dinner freshly washed and with the smell of fresh meat and bread reaching him even before he entered the great hall.

  As he passed the lower tables, he spotted Moiread immediately among the men-at-arms. She sat at one end, laughing as an older man told a story with demonstration by way of knife and trencher. Her clear skin was flushed with laughter and the heat of the hall. Catching Madoc’s eye, she gave him a quick, graceful bow from her seat.

  She too had changed from the journey, Madoc noticed. She’d cleaned herself and replaced her brown tunic with a fine linen one of pale yellow, almost white, with a dark green surcoat over it. She wore both belted loosely, no doubt so that the illusion would have less work to do, but left no doubt of her height or her strength.

  Others had noticed as well, including, obviously, Seonag. Calhoun’s daughter made a proper curtsy to Madoc and greeted him in a well-bred, friendly manner, but turned her great brown eyes back in Moiread’s direction as soon as she thought nobody noticed her.

  Madoc kept his laughter silent. There would have been a lesson in that for any lord grown over-proud of his wealth and rank. To eleven, apparently twenty was enough older to entrance, while twenty-five, no matter how finely dressed, was nothing less than ancient.

  That was as well. As they sat listening to the harper after dinner, when the children and the elderly priest alike had departed for bed, the Calhoun leaned over to Madoc and quietly asked, “Does your squire know…ah…” He waggled a hand in the air.

  “No, not really,” said Madoc. “That is, he knows what I’m doing, but he couldn’t do it himself.”

  He thought that was true enough. He hadn’t considered including Moiread as part of the ritual, lest the bonds he’d already strengthened with the MacAlasdairs become tangled up with those he forged with the Calhouns, and out of worry that either the illusion she wore or the power of her bloodline would complicate the spell. When he answered the Calhoun, Madoc thought that he would prevent any expectations of “Michael’s” involvement. He hadn’t expected the slow nod Eachann gave him.

  Ah. Oh dear.

  Madoc hadn’t expected a squire, and one of unfamiliar blood, to attract any lord’s eye. He also hadn’t taken war into account. The benches where Moiread and the rest of the men-at-arms sat weren’t as crowded as he would have expected, and many of her companions sported fresh scars or missing limbs. Men of rank might have fared a little better, generally facing ransom more often than hanging; they were also better targets.

  He wondered how many lords, both in Scotland and England, were looking at their unmarried daughters and adjusting their aspirations downward, wondered how many convents would gain a profusion of novices as men tried to buy divine favor when earthly alliances proved lacking. He wondered whether the same situation had held true in Wales in the years before his birth. Madoc’s aunt had taken the veil. He’d always thought it was a calling, when he’d thought of it at all.

  He hadn’t, really, thought of it at all.

  Speaking as casually as he could, he added, “I doubt he’s had the chance to learn. Youngest son, you see. He’d have gone for the church, but it was the second son who felt that urge.”

  “Ah,” said Eachann, more resigned and less speculative than he had been. At worst, he’d likely decide to wait a few years and see how the boy did for himself, thus letting Madoc and Moiread get out of the castle without many more awkward conversations.

  Madoc cleared his throat and looked to the corner where Uisdean sat with his eyes half closed, listening to the music. “Your father does well, it seems.”

  “He does, by the grace of God,” said Eachann, “but the last few years have been hard on him.”

  “The war?”

  “Aye, that’s troubled all of us, but it’s Father’s eyes that vex him particularly. He’s still sharp as anything.” So Madoc had seen at dinner, when the older man had taken a swift and lively part in the conversation, asking questions, making jokes, and telling stories of his own. “And still hale enough for his age. His sight, though… That started to fail a half-dozen years ago. Now he can get around on his own and feed himself, but that’s all. He can’t tell one face from another, much less read, and he was always a learned man.”

  “A pity it is,” said Madoc.

  Eachann nodded. “I’ve not had a physician in who’s been able to help. ’Tis age, they say, and in truth he’s had more than his threescore and ten. There’s none can change that.”

  At the end, his voice rose slightly, suggesting a question that he didn’t actually come out and ask.

  Madoc shook his head. “None that I know. I’ve met men who could heal blindness from illness or injury or curse, and I’ll send them in your direction if you’d wish, but”—he sighed—“I’ve seen no spell yet that could make a man young again.”

  He’d heard of a man keeping himself young, or middle-aged. That had been Albert de Percy, who’d styled himself “Valerius” and threatened the MacAlasdairs. De Percy had been the blackest of sorcerers. His powers had come from a pact with hell itself, and Madoc suspected that de Percy’s extended life had been part of that bargain. Otherwise, the span of a man’s years seemed a matter of blood and the effects of those years.

  “A saint might help, or a relic,” he said cautiously, never having tried either himself and knowing how many false relics men sold.

  “I’d thought perhaps a pilgrimage to Saint Denis,” the Calhoun replied. “Now that the war is over, we may be able to do it. I’ll wait through this winter, make sure the harvest is safely in.”

  Again the unspoken words: and make sure the peace is going to last this time.

  No truce lasted forever, but a man could hope for room to breathe: a few years to gather in crops, to let sons come to manhood, to visit shrines, to do all the work of peacetime that built against wars to come and made them less devastating when they did.

  Madoc wished he’d thought to say those things before, when he and Moiread had been talking. As Eachann poured himself more wine, Madoc took the moment to look off toward the rest of the hall, seeking her face in the crowd.

  * * *

  “Don’t fret,” said Clyde, a man-at-arms at Hallfield and Moiread’s self-appointed guide. “If your lord wants you, he’ll send a page to call you up. Plenty of the lads running around.”

  “Aye? Glad to hear it,” said Moiread, turning her gaze away from the high table. She’d had only a moment to meet Madoc’s gaze before Clyde intervened, but it was of little import. Madoc looked content, though thoughtful, and certainly suited to the lord’s dais.

  And what Clyde said was true, in its own way. Had Madoc any pressing business with her, it would have been easy enough to call her up and speak under the pretext of setting tasks for her.

  You’re only jumpy, Moiread told herself again. This business of being a man’s only guard was taxing on the mind. She might have preferred war, where she merely needed to watch her own back and mind her men’s in a tactical sense.

  Clyde handed her the wineskin and the dice.

  “Good man, is he?”

  “Very,” Moiread said and rolled, thinking that her duty did have its advantages. There were wine and dice in the camps, of course, but not often with a sturdy roof overhead or a fire nearby. The wine was never as good, and men were more apt to turn murderous over the dice. “Easy service, so far.”

  “Would be, wouldn’t it?” said another of the castle guards. “Away from the wars and all.”

/>   “I was in the wars,” Moiread shot back, responding almost instinctively to the accusation in the man’s tone. Silently she swore, and shrugged as the men looked dubious. “I’ve come to his service lately, and I was a page with the armies when I was young.”

  “‘When I was young,’ he says.” Clyde laughed, trying to soothe the troubled waters. “Hark at the graybeard.”

  “But your lord wasn’t,” said the other man.

  “Well, no,” said a fourth. “I’ve heard the man speak, and he’s not from any bit of Scotland I know.”

  “Welsh,” said Moiread. “So no. Hardly his fault, is it?”

  “English, then.” It was the first guard, a dark-haired man with a scar pulling his upper lip up on one side. “Or as near as.”

  From around them came an intake of breath. “No,” Moiread said again. She set the dice on the table with a clack of bone on wood and leaned forward. “No, and be damned to you for saying it.”

  “Be damned yourself,” the scarred man replied. His face was flushed in the firelight. “The English king rules them, does he not? And they fight in his wars.”

  “Now, Grant,” said Clyde, holding up a hand.

  Moiread snorted. “Losing a war doesn’t make a people, you dolt, else we’d have been English ourselves twenty years gone.”

  “Aye, and we were men enough to rise up again, weren’t we? Which I don’t see your lord doing,” Grant spat back.

  Everything Madoc had said came back to Moiread: the need to bide time before an overwhelming force, to pick battles and save what could be saved, what was worth saving. She thought too of her own military understanding, the difference in borders and ground and troops. And she knew that none of those arguments would aid her against this man. She knew what was expected of her.

  Moiread rose from the bench. “I’m a guest in your lord’s hall,” she said, “and I’ll not disgrace him or my lord by brawling here. If you’d care to step outside, we can settle any questions of manhood you have in mind.”