Melcorka looked upward, where birds circled around them, calling. Ignoring most, she focussed on the black-and-white oystercatchers, her totem bird, which circled her three times and then flew resolutely to the west.
'We head due west,' she said, 'and we will find this elusive island.'
'Are you sure?' Tuath asked.
'The birds are guiding us,' Melcorka explained and settled down with the tiller. There was something elemental to be back at sea with the great swelling waves lifting them, affording them a glimpse of far horizons and then dropping them into the trough between two waves. Melcorka felt the thrill of holding the tiller, knowing that she was ultimately in charge of this man-made vessel that seemed alive, as if Catriona possessed a soul of her own, as if she was part of this huge expanse of sea and sky with its mysteries and myriad unseen creatures.
'You are pensive,' Bradan observed, half an hour later.
'We have much to do,' Melcorka said, 'and poor Tuath there is thinking of his wife.'
Tuath looked up from his rowing. 'Poor Tuath is thinking nothing of the sort,' he denied, so emphatically that Melcorka knew it was a lie.
For the first part of the voyage they were accompanied by the host of screaming seabirds, and then one by one the birds peeled away until only the pair of oystercatchers remained and then they too flew off and they were alone, with the sun dipping to the tossing horizon and the chill of evening in the air.
'How far can we sail?' Tuath looked slightly unwell as Catriona dipped and swung to the rhythm of the waves.
'As far as we need to,' Melcorka said, 'and I have no more idea how far that may be than you do. The oystercatchers were heading due west and then so shall we.'
'I would like to sail on and on to the ends of the sea,' Bradan said, 'and see what is on the far rim of the world.'
'Nothing,' Tuath said. 'There is nothing there, and too much of that.' He glowered at Bradan with undisguised contempt. 'That might be a good place for you, man-with- no-reason.'
Bradan smiled and said nothing as he rowed onward, patiently, toward the glorious sunset.
'I could kill you now,' Tuath was obviously frustrated that he could not upset Bradan.
'You could kill me at any time, Tuath,' Bradan told him. 'You could kill me as easily as you could swat a fly, or stand on an ant, yet you will not.'
'I may,' Tuath widened his eyes and glared at him in a renewed attempt at intimidation.
Bradan smiled and looked away. 'What is that on the horizon? It appears to be some sort of cloud formation against the sun.' He peered harder. 'It is cloud; a funnel of cloud that reaches upward from the sea to the heavens.'
'I see it,' Melcorka said. 'I have been steering for it this last half hour while you boys have been teasing each other.'
'I am not teasing,' Tuath gestured toward his axe. 'One stroke is all it would take and his head would be smiling at us from between his feet.'
'And then we would be a man short for rowing and you would be dead and Igraine would miss you greatly.'
'You could not kill me.' Tuath said. The rowing was obviously not agreeing with him.
'I have no wish to kill you … as I have already told you,' Melcorka said. 'Yet if you kill Bradan I certainly would. As would whatever monster is behind that cloud.'
'Monster?' Tuath's teeth gleamed white behind his black beard as his customary good humour returned. 'Where is the monster? Show me this monster that I can fight.'
'I cannot see it, yet I hear it plain enough, as would you if you stopped posturing and pretending to be the bully you are not, and started to listen.'
Resting on their oars, Bradan and Tuath listened as Melcorka had directed. At first they heard nothing but the natural hiss of the sea and the spatter of spindrift from waves that broke on the high stem of Catriona.
'I hear it,' Bradan said, 'and I have never heard the like before.'
'By Bel's fires,' Tuath stretched out his feet to reach for his axe. 'It is a monster indeed.'
'Let's get a little closer,' Melcorka said, 'and we'll see what this monster is like.'
They rowed slowly, pulling in unison as the waves grew more turbulent the closer they came to the pillar of cloud that reached from the surface of the sea as high as the red-hued sky above.
'It is the work of Llyr,' Tuath said, craning backward to scan the heavens. 'Or even of Bel himself!' He made the sun-sign toward the cloud formation. 'I have never seen anything like this before.'
'Nor have I,' Bradan said, 'and I have wandered the lands of Alba and Erin since I was old enough to put one foot in front of another.'
'Keep rowing,' Melcorka said, and steered them to approach the pillar, sunwise, as was the custom.
The roaring increased in volume the closer they came to the great pillar of cloud, until Tuath rested his feet on his axe and muttered prayers to a whole host of gods. 'By the fires of Bel it is strange.'
'The cloud is moving,' Melcorka said, 'it is moving in a great circle, sunwise.'
'I see that,' Bradan said. 'Yet it is not like any cloud I have ever seen before. It is like water, like a water spout but larger, a thousand times larger than any I have ever seen before.' He frowned and lifted his oar from the sea. 'We are moving closer to it; or it is moving closer to us!'
'Back water!' Melcorka said urgently. 'Back water; there is some current here pulling us in!'
Bradan and Tuath obeyed, plying their oars frantically in an effort to haul Catriona backward out of danger. Their oars raised a froth of white water, yet the boat continued to move forward toward the whirling cloud and the great growling roar.
'It is no good!' Tuath said. 'The monster has us!'
'It is roaring its triumph!' Even Bradan sounded afraid. 'The monster is going to eat us!'
'Then we shall fight it!' Melcorka said. Releasing her grip on the tiller, she unsheathed Defender and stood up, staring at the circling grey-white cloud that was only a few yards away. 'Come on and fight, monster! I am Melcorka the Swordswoman of Alba! Fight me!'
'And I am Tuath of the axe!' Tuath had hauled his oars inboard and stood upright, holding his great curved axe in both hands. 'Show yourself or be forever known as a coward!'
And then the cloud swallowed Catriona.
The noise increased in volume until it filled Melcorka's head, a massive roar that numbed her senses and overpowered her ability to think so she could only stand in the stern of Catriona with her shouts of defiance lost in the overwhelming sound. She was aware of water cascading all around her, as if she stood under a waterfall, and she was aware of Tuath standing close by and of Bradan still sitting, clutching his staff as the noise increased.
She shouted her defiance, only for the noise of the monster to take her words and lose them in its all-encompassing roar. She saw Bradan gesture to her to sit down, saw Catriona power forward in huge circles and knew that whatever was happening was far beyond her ability to control. She sat down, gripped Defender and waited for whatever came.
There was nothing except noise and water, no sensation of movement except the falling storm, no monster to fight, no creature from beneath or above the water, only the water and the roar.
'Show yourself!' Melcorka's patience vanished and she slashed sideways with Defender in case the creature came through the water, but felt no resistance. 'Fight me!'
'By Bel's fire I will kill you!' Tuath hacked at the air with his axe, achieving nothing as Catriona continued to move in great circles.
The circling motion ended as quickly as it had begun. The roaring diminished and they were in a stretch of clear water with the whirling cloud at their back, lessening in size until it whimpered away to nothing.
'What happened?' Tuath glared around, holding his axe. 'Where is the monster?'
'There is no monster,' Bradan had not moved from his bench. 'And there never was. That was some sort of water spout, except larger. It was a doorway I think, and we have passed through to wherever we are now.'
Melcorka grunt
ed and replaced Defender in her scabbard. 'That is a pity; I wanted to fight the monster.'
'As did I,' Tuath said.
They looked around them. Behind, where the water spout had been, there was only the hard line of the horizon. The sun had disappeared so they were in brightness without a source. In front there was a stretch of clear water and then an area of turbulence where the sea moved in a great circle, round and round and round.
'The Corryvreckan!' Tuath said with something like awe. 'I have heard the old mariners speak of it but never thought to see it. It is a great whirlpool that eats ships and men.'
Melcorka took a deep breath and viewed the horror that now lay before them. 'I would much prefer a flesh and blood monster,' she said. 'I can fight a monster, but how can we fight that?'
In a direct mirror image to the cloud through which they had passed, the sea was circling sunwise, howling rather than roaring, with a dark vortex in the centre. As they watched, the current caught a huge tree, blown down in some storm on an unimaginably distant shore. The outside of the Corryvreckan seized the tree and moved it around, slowly at first and then faster and faster, sucking the tree into the centre of the whirlpool.
'Oh Llyr save us!' Tuath made the sign of the sun, 'or Bel or any of the great host of gods who preside over us.'
They watched as the tree upended so it stood amazingly vertical for a long moment, and then it vanished into the dark maw of the Corryvreckan.
'We can't go through that,' Tuath said. 'I am no seaman, remember.'
'We have no choice,' Melcorka said. 'If we return without success, then Hector will surely have Alva drowned or burned.' She did not say what would happen to her.
'Igraine will try to defend Alva,' Tuath said. 'She has taken a liking to that young girl.'
'Will she succeed?' Melcorka looked at the power of the Corryvreckan and knew it would suck Catriona down as easily as it had the tree. For a moment she was tempted to turn back rather than be dragged under the sea.
'No,' Tuath shook his head. 'She may persuade Hector to allow Alva to live, but Conall the Steward has no mercy in him. He will have the girl burned or drowned, whichever suits his fancy best.'
'Then we go on,' Melcorka said. 'It is better that warriors die doing their duty than children suffer.'
'We go onward and skirt the whirlpool,' Bradan decided. 'I am already living on time gained by Melcorka; my life is bartered; it is not my own.'
'My wife would hate me if I gave up without trying; I will not exchange my life for that of a young girl.' Tuath gave Melcorka a lopsided grin. 'We live or die together, warrior woman.'
'And I would never die in better company than the men I have here,' Melcorka said. 'Raise the sails, lads, and man the oars. It is us against the Corryvreckan and only God knows who will win!' She grinned across to them and flicked the sodden hair from her face. 'Now we will see if Finlay's Una was right and we cannot drown in his boat!' She heard the hysteria in her own laughter as she pulled up the sail and took hold of the tiller. 'Come on lads: face our fate and laugh at the jests of the gods!'
With Bradan and Tuath rowing until their muscles threatened to tear and Melcorka fighting the madly bucking tiller, they steered Catriona away from the Corryvreckan. The men sweated with effort, grunting with every stroke of the oars, hauling against the force of the circular current. Melcorka saw Tuath put all his strength into each pull, while Bradan, leaner and wirier, launched himself off the rowing bench with every stroke.
For a while Melcorka thought they were going to make it as they skirted the very rim of the giant whirlpool and Catriona eased on, inch after painfully-gained inch, and then slowly, agonisingly but inevitably, the sheer power of the Corryvreckan dragged them in.
'Keep rowing!' Melcorka yelled, with her voice lost against the horrible howl of the whirlpool. She looked left and saw the chopped surface of the sea, and then she looked right and there was the Corryvreckan. It was like looking into concentric circles of water, each one narrower and darker than its neighbour, with Catriona moving around the rim of the circle, slowly at first but faster and faster as they were pulled toward the centre.
'We're all going to die!' Tuath shouted.
'Just you wait until I am dead!' Bradan shouted, with a wry grin on his face. 'I'll tell Una that her words were empty!'
Melcorka stood up in the stern, grasped the tiller and stared forward. She was not afraid; she had done all she could do and now nothing remained but to beard fate in its own den and fight whatever the Corryvreckan brought, be that death or some terrible undersea creature.
'I am sorry Alva' she whispered, 'I have let you down.'
And then they were plunging down and down the inside of the whirlpool with Catriona vertical and the sea hissing and howling all around them and only darkness ahead.
The stores shifted, rattling forward until they piled up in the bow, bags of meal bursting open to spread their white powder over the timbers and a keg of fresh water rolling out of the ship to vanish in the darkness below.
'Hold on!' Tuath roared, needlessly as they all grabbed hold of the bulwarks with both hands and wedged their feet on the strakes or bent their knees around the rowing benches.
'Dear God save us,' Bradan said softly as they plunged down, arrow straight toward the bottom of the sea.
Until Melcorka realised that Catriona was levelling out; they were no longer vertical and she could release her tight grip on the tiller and look around her as the whirlpool took them sideways. They sped along what seemed like an underground river in a tunnel under the sea with a ceiling of seaweed-festooned rock above them and living rock on each side.
'Where are we?' Tuath shouted above the roar of fast moving water.
'In God's hands,' Bradan replied, and continued to sit on his bench with his staff in his hands and his eyes probing into the darkness ahead.
'Well, I wish that God would let me know what he has planned sometimes,' Melcorka said as the walls of the cavern flicked past so quickly that she could see only a blur and the water beneath them churned milky white with the speed of their passage.
'Would that not take the mystery and excitement out of life?' Bradan asked. 'Just wait and see what is coming.'
'I prefer to be in charge of my own destiny,' Melcorka said.
'We are slowing down.' Tuath's voice was tense.
'We are also rising,' Bradan said. 'There is some current pushing us upward.' He smiled. 'I've never known water slide up a slope before.'
There was a sudden onrush of water and the current thrust them out of the tunnel and into a stretch of blue-green sea, with a line of breakers about forty feet high between them and land that Melcorka did not recognise. Catriona sat there, with her initial wild motion gradually subsiding until she was merely rocking with her prow and stern rising and falling in the normal motion of the sea.
'Does anybody know where we are?'
'Nowhere I recognise,' Tuath muttered.
'If this is Tir Nan Og then the story tellers have it all wrong,' Bradan said. 'It is meant to be a place of ease and luxury, filled with apple orchards and with handsome young men and beautiful young women, not a huge sea breaking on rocks and stark granite mountains behind.'
Melcorka gave a short laugh. 'We are not in Tir Nan Og then; this is another place that the story tellers have yet to write about.'
'We will tell them of it when we return,' Bradan said, 'and then they can fabricate all the tales they like.'
'Hold on!' Tuath shouted, 'the tide has us!'
Grabbing hold of the tiller again, Melcorka steered Catriona with all the skill she could muster, keeping the boat level as the sea rushed them onward and upward on the back of the surging tide. One second they were climbing the back of a huge roller and then they were on top, riding the surf as Melcorka steered them around the swirls and eddies of the wave.
'Hold tight!' she yelled as the wave neared the shore and burst with a splinter of silver and white water and a tidal surge that took
them high up a gently shelving beach of sand and small pebbles. The wave receded, sucking a million tiny pebbles in its wake but leaving Catriona remained upright.
'Get out!' Melcorka yelled. 'Drag her out of the tide before the next wave comes.'
Leaping out, she found her feet sinking into the wet sand so it was hard to push Catriona high up the beach beyond the high tide mark. Only when Tuath joined did the boat slide and scrape upward to safety. The next wave burst with a mighty explosion of sound behind them, sending probing tendrils up the beach, only to withdraw with a hiss of failure.
'We're safe,' Melcorka said, gasping for breath. She looked backward at the sea, which was breaking in surf twenty, thirty, forty feet high before retreating to form another wave in the relentless assault. 'I wonder where we are.'
'I would not worry about that just now,' Bradan said. 'I would be more concerned with what is ahead of us.'
'Over there,' Tuath hefted his axe as Melcorka looked ahead.
They were not on the main island itself, but on a spit on land a hundred yards wide. In the sea loch in between were half a dozen birlinns, all with the black sails of the Caterans, and each packed with scores of men.
Chapter Ten
'I think we have found Inch Iolaire,' Melcorka said, studying the birlinns.
'I think you could be correct,' Bradan agreed. 'Unfortunately, we are not quite prepared to defeat them all.'
'That is indeed unfortunate,' Melcorka said.
'We are a little outnumbered,' Tuath said. 'There are two of us against a hundred or two hundred of them.'
'There are three of us,' Melcorka corrected. 'You, me and Bradan.'
'A man with a stick will not matter in a battle,' Tuath said. 'He is best left out lest he gets in the way.'
'There are three of us,' Melcorka repeated, 'and they will be surprised to see us, which we can use to our advantage.'
The Shining One (The Swordswoman Book 2) Page 10
