by Duncan Lay
CHAPTER 40
Rosaleen cursed herself for not leaving a couple of the villagers outside on guard. Hagen’s house was at the end of a tight street, so escape would have been difficult, but at least she would not have blundered out into this trap. The men did not look like soldiers, more like thieves, but that was hardly a comforting thought, especially as they had three times as many and Gallagher and his men only had knives, not swords.
“Did you think you could just walk through our streets, asking questions and flashing gold and not have anyone hear about it?” the leader of the swordsmen asked.
“Let’s back into the house and let them come get us,” Gallagher whispered.
“Not yet, we need to find out where they are from,” she murmured back. Turning away from him, she looked around at the rough group. “If you want gold, then we have plenty,” she offered loudly. “More than you have seen. Walk away and it is yours.”
She held her breath for a moment but even though she watched them carefully, not one set of eyes betrayed interest.
“We are already being paid well,” the leader boasted.
“Who by?” Rosaleen asked.
He laughed at that. “I could tell you, since you will not leave here alive. But even to speak the name aloud is worth more than my life.”
“And I suppose the fact that I am a priestess of Aroaril means nothing to you?” she challenged.
“Only makes this more fun,” he assured her.
Rosaleen took a half-step backwards. “Into the house then,” she whispered. “But we have to take that one alive.”
Gallagher snapped his fingers and the villagers raced back into Hagen’s house.
“Get them!”
The swordsmen ran after them, swords held high and bloodlust in their faces.
“As they come through the door, I will hold them: take them then,” she called quickly, seeing the fear on the villagers’ faces.
There was no time to say anything more, because the swordsmen were about to burst through the open door. She took a deep breath to calm herself and waved Gallagher forwards.
The other villagers were backing away from the door but he stepped in, his wickedly long knives in each hand. She offered up a quick prayer of thanks that he trusted her and then one to Aroaril for the strength to handle this task.
The first swordsman burst into the room with a bellowed war cry. He was tall and heavily muscled, with long, straggly brown hair that billowed around his face, and a thick beard that covered all but his eyes. She brought down her power and froze him, locking his muscles so he could not move, leaving him with his arm held high and his eyes bulging with shock.
Next moment Gallagher swung one of his gutting knives and the razor-sharp edge ripped across the man’s bearded throat, tearing through hair, skin, muscle, cartilage and blood vessels. A crimson spray painted the next man through the door, who blinked in shock firstly at being covered in hot blood and secondly at also being frozen in place, his every limb locked.
He had no chance for escape, because Gallagher stepped around the collapsing body of the first man and ripped his second knife up in a vicious blow that tore into the swordsman’s heart.
“Help Gall!” Rosaleen ordered, waving the other villagers forwards.
The thieves pressed in, jumping over the bodies of their fallen friends, only to be frozen in turn and lose their lives to ferocious stabs. The villagers picked up fallen swords and rammed them into guts and chests and necks, covering themselves in red.
Rosaleen hardened her heart to the screams and pleas for mercy, knowing that she and her companions would not have received any and that it was too dangerous to leave their assailants alive.
But the swordsmen were not fools and after five of them had been slaughtered like pigs, the others hesitated outside the door, unwilling to go inside.
“After them!” Rosaleen pointed at the two closest and held them in place. Gallagher had not bothered with a sword but still had his knives, each more than a foot of evilly curved steel, and he raced through the open door to thrust one into each neck and then rip them clear in a blinding gout of blood.
That was enough for the rest of the swordsmen, who broke and ran.
“Stop that one!” Rosaleen stepped over the corpses, slipping on the blood and entrails, and spotted the leader, who had stayed at the back while his men had raced in and died. Once more she reached out and held him as he tried to flee. He stood frozen on one leg, terror-filled eyes looking over his shoulder.
“Drag him back here and let’s find out what he knows before he joins the rest of his men,” Gallagher said, his face and arms covered in blood.
Rosaleen nodded, thinking he had never looked better to her.
*
A battered chair had been found in the wreckage of Hagen’s house and a space cleared by dragging a pair of bodies over towards the window, where they left a thick smear of blood on the wooden floor.
The dazed leader of the swordsmen was slammed into the chair and held there by two of the villagers while the rest of them changed their bloody tunics for cleaner ones from Hagen’s floor. None fit too well but at least they could walk the streets without exciting comment.
Rosaleen stepped over a body and approached the leader. The smell in Hagen’s house was revolting: shit and blood mingling to make a stench that bit at the back of her throat and made her eyes water. But she did not intend to be here long.
“Who are you?” she asked him.
He glared up at her and spat, forcing her to skip aside or have his phlegm hit her robe.
“Answer the sister!” Gallagher barked, back-handing the man across the face and making his nose and lips bleed. “You saw what we did to your men. Do you want to have your guts decorating this floor?”
The man spat blood from his torn lip, this time aiming for the floor. “Do what you will. I can say nothing,” he said dully. “I am a dead man either way but at least this way my family might live.”
Gallagher drew his knife slowly. “We’ll see if you tell the same story while I’m slicing your balls off a piece at a time,” he growled.
Rosaleen grabbed his arm, keeping him back. “There is another way to discover what he knows,” she said.
The man looked up at her suspiciously as she stepped around the chair and placed her hands on the man’s temples.
“What are you doing?” he demanded.
“I’m using Aroaril’s power to draw out your thoughts. Try to resist me and it could leave you a drooling idiot. I had to be careful not to use this power on a Kottermani Prince and the Duchess of Lunster. But we don’t care what happens to you,” she told him coldly. Partly that was to disguise her nervousness. The last time she had done this to a man, his mind had been guarded by a Fearpriest and she had ended up covered in his brains and skull.
“Gall, ask him questions. As he thinks about them, the answers will come to me,” she said.
“They will not!” the man cried.
“Your mind will be like an open book to me,” she told him, then nodded to Gallagher.
Offering a prayer to Aroaril, she reached out with her power and delved into his mind. Images spun at her, almost too fast to see, and she forced them to slow down.
Beneath her hands, the man twisted and wriggled, his temples slick with sweat, his breath coming in short, sharp gasps. But the villagers held him down and there was no escape for either his body or his mind.
“Fight me and you will end your days with the mind of a newborn babe,” she warned again, and he whimpered and slumped down.
“What do you see?” Gallagher asked, his voice sounding as though it were coming from a long way away.
“His name is Mika. He is a king of thieves in Lunster, employed by several of the big guilds to make sure anyone who does not hand over their fees pays a penalty,” she said, seeing images of him beating helpless traders and even burning out shops.
“Who set him to watch here?”
As t
he man wriggled, those images swam up to the surface of his mind.
“He was handed a bag of gold and told to watch this house. If anyone came asking questions about Hagen, they were to be killed and the house sealed up.”
“Who gave him the money?”
Rosaleen gasped and the man’s head nearly slipped from her grasp. “It is a man in the uniform of the Duke. He is wearing the tunic of an officer!”
“Who killed Hagen? Was it him?”
This time the images were more murky.
“He thinks so but he is not sure,” she said, interpreting what she was seeing in her mind’s eye. “Read out the message Hagen left.”
Gallagher paused as he took the parchment from her belt pouch. “What is important about the Duke’s summerhouse?” he asked.
The images were much sharper now.
“The man who paid him is there. And it was there he met the Kottermanis and told them where to attack!” Rosaleen cried. She let go of Mika’s head. “We need to go there.”
CHAPTER 41
The days crawled past on the ship, while the food supplies seemed to go down far faster. They were catching fish and each one was a joy but, shared out among so many people, it was nothing. Bridgit was forced to give priority to the men working the sails, the nursing mothers and to the younger children. The women and the older ones had to go hungry. The men needed strength to work the ship, while she was afraid the younger children might get sick without a little extra.
Yet that was not her greatest worry. They were still checking their direction at dawn and dusk and thought they were going north-east, although that was more hope than certainty.
On the days they could see the sun, this was easy enough. But there were days when the sun hid behind thick clouds and they could never be sure which way they were going.
And then there were the storms – nothing like the winter tempests that lashed Gaelland but foretastes of what was to come.
The sky turned black and the waves pounded at the ship, tossing everyone around and making the children scream in fear. They took in the sails and the men worked on the pumps instead, forcing a steady stream of water up out of the ship’s bowels to be washed into the waves that scoured across the deck.
The ship groaned and grumbled and Bridgit watched lightning light up the sky and joined the others in praying to Aroaril that it pass, and they would get home safely.
On such days there was no chance of fishing, while the men on the pumps needed even more generous rations, for the exertion of forcing the heavy wooden paddles around left them exhausted otherwise.
Luckily no storm had so far lasted for more than a couple of days, and then they could emerge from below to dry themselves out, try to fish – and try to find their course again.
“It would be nice to see Fallon and the others coming to get us now,” Bridgit said. The three of them were basking in the sun after two days of being cramped below decks as the wind howled and the water lashed the ship. The sea had been so bad they could not even refill the water barrels, for fear the rain would be tainted by the saltwater breaking across the deck, and many had been unable to eat even their meager rations.
“Well, they are certainly not coming to rescue us,” Riona said. “When I see Devlin again I won’t know whether to kiss him or hit him over the head for leaving it all for us to do. He always was lazy when I wanted him to do something.”
“This is not like him refusing to hang the washing out!” Nola said with a laugh, flapping her wet sleeves.
“Exactly. Where are they? And why did they not come for us? I would have sworn they would do anything to get us back,” Riona grumbled.
“Aye. Thank Aroaril for Bridgit or we would still be waiting back there,” Nola said.
Bridgit did not say anything but it had been filling her thoughts as well. What was Fallon doing? She had been so sure he would come for her. Had something happened to him? She felt like imagining a series of horrible deaths for him and, a couple of moons ago, she would have. But now she pushed that aside. There were bigger worries, real worries. She would get them back to Gaelland and then find Fallon. All questions could wait until then.
“What is the word below decks? Are people grumbling too much?” she asked instead.
“Well, everyone is hungry. But they are in good spirits, because they think we are going in the right direction and should be home soon. Besides, after what you did to Blaine and Carrick, they know you are protecting them. And they can see you are eating no more than they are, so they have no cause for complaint there,” Nola said.
“Well, I’d like to complain about it. Devlin won’t even recognize me when I get back,” Riona said. “And Nola should be really unhappy. When your husband is the size of Brendan, you need more than a little padding or you end up black and blue!”
“Well, if you can make jokes like that, then you can’t be too bad,” Nola said with a shake of her head.
“Come on, Bridge, cheer up. We have done so much. Everything is under control now,” Riona said.
Bridgit sighed. “I wish you hadn’t said that. There is always something that could go wrong.”
“Well, there it is over there,” Nola said, pointing.
Bridgit followed her and saw three men lurking by the mast. They were well known. Keegan, Arron and Fitz, a trio of useless lumps who were always the first to complain and the last to do any work. Their stories of how they had been caught by the Kottermanis did not ring true and, after what happened with Blaine and Carrick, she was not prepared to give anyone the benefit of the doubt.
“You three! Get below and ask to be given some work!” she snapped.
The trio looked at her with a mixture of guilt and bitterness, but they sloped off anyway.
“There you go, nothing to be worried about. Problem solved,” Riona said.
*
“Get us out of here,” Blaine growled. “We’re bogging well starving!”
“And you think we are all lying around shoving bread and honey down our throats?” Keegan snapped back. “I’ve spent the past day on the pumps until I couldn’t feel my arms!”
Carrick laid a hand on his brother’s shoulder. “Then let us out and we’ll make sure there’s food for the right people. Like you and us.”
“There’s not much left,” Keegan warned.
“So? We’ll throw some of the brats overboard, more for the rest of us. And we’ll feed that bitch Bridgit and her friends to the fishes. Use them as bait maybe,” Blaine said harshly.
“We can keep some of the younger women. But that’s all,” Carrick agreed. “We’ll even let you have first pick. All you have to do is get us out of here!”
“Easier said than done,” Keegan grumbled.
The two brothers had been shut into a sail locker deep inside the ship. There was space for the two of them to lie down and little more than that. Once a day they were brought a little of the fluffy grain couscous, dates and water and the rest of the time they were left alone. Keegan was not sure how he had come to be given the responsibility of feeding them but he and his cronies Fitz and Arron knew nothing about sailing or fishing and that bitch Bridgit kept making them do all the dirty and smelly tasks. He hated being treated like this but there was no denying Bridgit. Whatever she said, you had to do. Fitz and Arron were back sweating on the pumps, keeping water out of the guts of the ship, but he had been told to bring the food down there before he joined them. He had been surprised but perhaps they had all forgotten he and his mates had once sided with Blaine, Carrick and their two cousins, who had died writhing under the brutal sun, their eyeballs burned to a crisp. After all, they had been careful to stay away from them since then.
“Just give us a knife. One knife and we can be out of here in a night,” Blaine pleaded.
“Are you mad? What if you can’t and they catch you? We’d join you in there!” Keegan protested.
Carrick pushed forwards. “If you don’t help us, we’ll tell them that you were stea
ling the food too. We know how you got caught back home, stealing the tribute people had left out for the selkies.”
“They won’t believe you,” Keegan said.
“Bridgit will. She will remember you from before, that you were with us and Sean and Seamus. And if there’s as little food as you say, she will jump at the chance to throw you in here with us and starve you slowly to death,” Blaine said.
Keegan cursed them but they just stared back at him.
“What have we got to lose?” Carrick asked. “But give us what we want and you will have the pick of the women and the food, not have to lift another finger until we are back home.”
“Or walk away now and join us later,” Blaine added.
Keegan looked over his shoulder but there was nobody down there. “You promise to help me?” he hissed.
“You have our word,” Blaine said.
Keegan drew his knife, a chunky, curved dagger that he had taken from a Kottermani guard. He passed it between the thick wooden bars in the top of the door, designed to air out the old sails and prevent mold from setting in – but which also made the locker look like a prison.
“Keep your word,” he said, then turned and hurried away.
CHAPTER 42
The leader of the thieves in Lunster who had tried to kill them was less than impressed at being dragged along but Rosaleen wanted to be sure she could look again into his memory whenever she needed. They kept his hands tied and two men were always by his side, knives ready.
His memories led them down the coast to a beautiful little home by a secluded bay, where he remembered being taken, given wine and gold and his orders. Gallagher’s sharp eyes spotted men moving around so they sailed past, anchoring in another cove for the day.
“We shall go in at night. There is almost no moon, so they will not see us,” Gallagher said.
“But there are so few of us and we don’t know how many they have,” Rosaleen pointed out.
