Firebrand

by Gillian Philip

  We had little luck that day, but it was good to be out there, a long way from the clachan and death and sickness. When we were far enough from what passed for civilisation, and the deer seemed regrettably far from us, we usually found a clearing and went through our paces with staffs in place of swords, or we practised with longbows or crossbows or throwing knives. Because one day, we kept telling each other, we’d go home, and we’d better not forget all that we knew. And we’d better be able to fight, we’d better be able to defend ourselves and our dun. That was the part we never said aloud.

  If we wandered far enough on our hunts, there were places I could make out the contours of home: an escarpment here, a rivermouth there, a sea loch eating into the land. This world was so like ours: only the towns and the farms and the people were so terribly different.

  Funny: I questioned the gods but I never questioned the Veil. I never questioned why I couldn’t simply reach out my hand and touch home, how it was so completely separated and hidden from me, and yet I could see its outline like a ghost in the otherworld. That was only a taunting mirage, but I knew that if I walked for enough days I’d come to our watergate, and I’d only have to step into it to be at home again, back in the real world.

  Yet I wouldn’t do it. Not while Conal couldn’t. Sometimes it made me laugh, that I could love another human being more than I loved my home, the home that had nursed me when no human being would touch me. Yet I did: I would give up my home forever for him. It ran quite counter to my self-image. All I could do about it was laugh.

  ‘What’s funny?’ Stretched out in the grass below a rock outcrop, Conal sounded too sleepy to be genuinely interested. The stone slabs crowned a high bare hill; around and below us stretched the forest, striped with gold, the pine-tops lit with sunlight. Our weapons lay where we’d dropped them in favour of basking in the late afternoon sun. I was propped against the smooth grey rock, liking its coolness at my back contrasting with the warmth of the sun on my chest and face. We were barefoot as we always were when we hunted, and I felt a spider run delicately across my toes. I wiggled them and it fled into the coarse hilltop grass.

  ‘Nothing’s funny,’ I said at last. ‘I’m happy, that’s all.’

  He gave me a dry sidelong glance. ‘Finally? Good.’

  I laughed again. ‘I’ll be happier when we’re out of here.’

  ‘Me too.’ He sat up very suddenly. ‘Sh. Did you hear that?’

  I stilled. There wasn’t much breeze, only an idle stirring of the pine-tops. I heard small animals about their business in the forest litter, the distant susurration and slap of the calm sea. There was a faint sad whimpering…

  Whimpering.

  Conal’s eyes met mine, then slewed over my shoulder.

  ‘The rock,’ he said.

  It wasn’t just one rock, it was a jumble of them, propped against one another like drunks enjoying the view. One of them had been split by time and weather as if by a giant sword; you could still see the matching veins of glistening white on either side of the shadowed cut. Rolling onto my belly I wriggled between the halves, pausing to listen.

  ~ It’s stopped, I told Conal, twisting to look up at him.

  ~ Heard you, whatever it was. He was crouched above me, one foot on either side of the crack. Staring down, he said, ~ Go a bit further in.

  I did, like a snake on my belly. There were advantages to being smaller than Conal; he’d have been stuck like a cork in a bottle before now.

  ~ By your left hand, look.

  I could see what he meant. Rather, I could feel what he meant. There was a slit of a gap beneath the rock, half hidden by stunted grass and earth. I slipped my fingers in. There was only cold silence, but I could sense something in there, trembling in the stone darkness. Tentatively I reached out my mind, and the something growled.

  I wriggled awkwardly out, shivering with the shadow-cold. Conal, back on my level, hauled me the last few feet by my ankles.

  ‘Ow,’ I said, rubbing my scraped elbow. ‘Something’s there, but there must be another way in. A lizard couldn’t get through that hole.’

  It took us a long time of searching; the slash of an entrance was well-concealed among the rocks and even I had to bend almost double to get round the crook of the short tunnel. Conal couldn’t get in at all. Once inside, I could almost stand upright. The cavern was substantial and there was a little dim light leaking through cracks. My eyes dilated swiftly and I could see.

  Four pinpoints of light glared back at me. Their owners had jammed themselves as far as they could under a shelf of rock, and one of them had begun to snarl again. There was a smell of death, and I quickly saw the scraps of fur and inert flesh scattered around the bare floor. Surprisingly little damage had been done to the tiny corpses; I think the surviving two had mouthed and chewed on their siblings, out of desperation, but they weren’t old enough to make much impression. What they needed was their mother’s milk, and clearly they wouldn’t be getting that again.

  ~ What is it? asked Conal.

  ~ Wolf young.

  ~ Thought so.

  I lay on my belly and gazed at one of them. ~ Little earth-son, I coaxed. ~ Mac tire.

  Snarl.

  ~ Little earth-daughter. Sorry, my love.

  She pulled back her lips to reveal her baby-teeth as I crawled slowly forward.

  Snarl.

  Sighing, I rolled onto my back, tipped back my head and gave her my best smile. Which was a lot like a wolf’s. So I’d been told.

  Crawling forward, she snuffled at my face. I could see now she was very pale-coated. Her eyes were sunken with hunger and when I slipped my hand beneath her body I could feel all her ribs.

  ~ Earth-daughter, I said grimly, ~ I’ve seen one die today already. Come.

  She let me close my fingers around her skeletal body. Getting to my knees, I held her in two hands. Her heart thrashed hard and she shivered, but she didn’t struggle, even when I crawled to the cavern mouth and manhandled her round the tunnel. When I felt her safe in Conal’s hands, I turned back for the other survivor.

  I was expecting another pale shape, so it took me longer than I expected to find him in the murk. The eyes that glared hopelessly at me were set in a black-furred face. I went down on my knees, sliding my hand under him and drawing him gently out from his hiding-place. No need to seduce this one. It couldn’t run or fight.

  ~ Do you have the other? asked Conal.

  ~ It won’t live. Give me a minute.

  I set the cub on my lap. He tried to stand but flopped onto his side.

  ‘Sh,’ I said, rubbing his bony forehead with my thumb. Quietly I slipped my hunting knife from its sheath. ‘Sh, now, earth-son.’

  His dull eyes followed the knife as I tested the edge of it on my other thumb, and he cringed away. A sliver of light caught the blade, flashing into his eyes and turning them briefly alive.

  Which is when he sank his baby teeth deep into the base of my thumb.

  ‘Ah ya wee…’ I dropped the knife abruptly, for fear I’d be provoked into using it.

  ‘What’s up?’ called Conal.

  I didn’t answer, just reached for my knife and slipped it back into its sheath. The little black demon was shivering at my knees where I’d dropped it, all its last effort spent, but it still glared up at me, daring me to kill it. Daring me even to touch it.

  ‘I’ll call you on that,’ I murmured, and gathered it into both hands. One hand I slipped gently around its throat to hold its head away from my flesh, then I held it against my body and ducked down to worm back out of the death-cave. Conal’s hand reached down but I said ‘It’s all right,’ and I slithered out myself, the little wolf clutched against me.

  ‘That the lot?’ he said.

  ‘The rest are dead,’ I said. ‘No dam.’

  ‘Dead too, then.’ He had the white wolf-cub cradled in one arm against his chest, and he offered me a hand. Gratefully I took it, blinking in the bright light, and he hauled me to my feet.

/>   When he released my hand, his own was sticky with my blood. He raised his eyebrows.

  ‘It’ll live,’ I said dryly, ‘the wee bastard.’

  He laughed.

  ‘I’d like to find the dam,’ he said.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘She wasn’t an otherworld wolf. Look.’ He turned the scrawny pale cub towards me. It blinked, its eyes squeezed narrow, but deep in their dullness shone a spark of silver light.

  I never thought about that light. It was in Conal’s eyes, and mine, and every other Sithe’s, and I knew the full-mortals didn’t have it. Sometimes you’d look twice at a full-mortal, thinking you’d seen something, and then you’d realise it was only a reflected light. A Sithe had eyelight when there was none to reflect.

  ‘The miller brought in a dog wolf-head last week for the bounty,’ I told him. ‘He probably went looking for the mate.’

  ‘Found her, then,’ he said. ‘But couldn’t find the den.’

  ‘I’m not going to say the f-word,’ I told him wryly, ‘but these aren’t going to help our image, are they?’

  The scrap of pale wolf managed to lick his nose, and he grinned.

  ‘So let’s keep very quiet,’ he suggested, ‘about our pets.’

  * * *

  He called his wolf Liath, for the greyness of her coat. I called mine every name under the sun, especially when it bit me, which was often.

  ‘Bloody little runt.’ I swore at it. ‘Runt of the litter.’

  But so was I. And I’d learned to bite, too.

  In the end the name that stuck was Branndair, because he was hard like iron. He wouldn’t have survived otherwise, and for a while I was afraid he wouldn’t. But the two cubs grew accustomed to cow’s-milk and pigeon-meat, and eventually they fattened and were fully weaned, and Branndair at last stopped being such an aggressive little bastard and crawled onto my cramped box-bed at night and slept in my arms, grunting and whimpering in happy dreams.

  I grew to love him. And with every new thing I found to love, I grew more afraid.

  14

  FOURTEEN

  ‘Agnes Sampson,’ said Conal. ‘Agnes Sampson and James the Sixth.’

  Branndair tumbled over my foot, so I swept him up in one hand and set him down where he wanted to go. When we were at home it was safe enough for the cubs to be with us; when we were away we always hid them in an old badger sett halfway up the hill. They knew to stay there and stay silent—they were Sithe wolves and they’d learned that before they even learned not to piss in the blackhouse—but still, we hid the entrance of the sett with rocks and branches to be on the safe side.

  In a shadowy corner of the room, a darker shadow himself, Branndair began to stalk a knotted piece of old rope I’d given him for a toy. Far more regal and superior, Liath sprawled on her back in Conal’s lap, pretending to be asleep. Rubbing her belly, he went on doggedly educating me against my will.

  ‘James the Sixth, Murlainn. Whose mother was?’

  ‘Mary Queen of Scots,’ I said in a bored voice.

  ‘Mary Queen of Scots,’ he agreed, ‘who introduced a statute banning witchcraft in 1563.’

  ‘Who provoked rebellion by her captains, was betrayed to a neighbouring state and decapitated after due judicial process,’ I said, only half under my breath, ‘thus setting an intriguing precedent.’

  Conal didn’t say anything. I thought he was angry with me, because absolute silence was often a sure sign of his fury. I used to mistake it for disinterest, till his fist would lash out unexpectedly.

  These days I preferred to see it coming, so nervously I raised my eyes. He was looking at me, but he seemed deep in thought, biting the edge of his forefinger.

  At last he said, ‘Be careful, Seth. Be careful what you think.’

  ‘I could say the same to you.’

  ‘Yes.’ His mouth twisted. ‘Remember, Seth: on your knees. Abasing yourself. Kissing her hand in front of her entire court. Nothing in your eyes but humility. Get used to the idea.’

  ‘Did Kilrevin have to do that after his exiles?’

  ‘Every single time. I’ve watched him do it.’

  ‘Did he sacrifice his pride?’

  Conal hesitated. ‘No,’ he said. ‘No, somehow he never did.’

  ‘Then I never will either,’ I said. ‘Even on my knees.’

  He gave a meaningful sigh. ‘Agnes Sampson,’ he said again. ‘Denounced by Gilly Duncan under torture, a few years ago. Gilly Duncan was arrested for using herbal cures.’

  ‘The moral being, we should keep our noses out of full-mortal business and stop doing them so many sodding favours.’

  ‘The moral being,’ he said darkly, ‘we need the Veil. There is no other defence. Never take it for granted.’

  ‘I thought you said Kate couldn’t affect it anyway.’

  ‘She’ll keep trying. You and I are going to talk her out of it.’

  ‘Oh,’ I said. Hell’s teeth. What was I, some kind of diplomat? Sometimes I thought my brother wasn’t a very good judge of character. ‘Agnes whatshername,’ I reminded him with a sigh.

  ‘Agnes Sampson. Educated, respectable, but it never did her any good. The king was in on her torture.’

  ‘Then he should rot in a hell of his own imagining,’ I said, tapping his Demonologie. ‘Only a halfwit believes a tortured witness.’

  ‘Yes, but unfortunately it went so far with Agnes Sampson, she went crazy and told the king she knew what he said to his bride on his wedding night. And she told him, word for word.’

  I sucked my teeth. ‘That’s not difficult.’

  ‘It is if you’re not part-Sithe, you eejit. She never knew she was, wouldn’t have known she was reading his mind. So James started out a sceptic and ended up writing that bloody Demonologie.’

  ‘What happened to her?’

  ‘Strangled and burnt. Lucky woman.’

  I raised my eyebrows.

  ‘Lucky to be strangled first, I mean.’ Abruptly Conal got to his feet. ‘That’s it for today. Sorry, Seth. I’ve had enough.’

  ‘Don’t apologise to me,’ I said, swallowing my glee.

  ‘I’ve business in the clachan. Meet you in the inn?’ He lifted Liath.

  ‘Yep,’ I said.

  Branndair had his piece of rope cornered. Watching his stillness, the tension of his muscles, his sudden swift mock-kill, I thought: he’s going to be a fine hunter. If he lives.

  I opened my arms, he scrambled happily into them, and I kicked open the back door and carried him out, Liath trotting at my heels. ‘Into your hole, my loves. Just like the rest of us.’

  * * *

  ‘Withered it, I’m telling you. Withered it! And on the man’s wedding night!’

  The men in the corner must have been sousing their heads in Ma Sinclair’s worst whisky for hours. The speaker couldn’t keep his saliva behind his brown teeth, but was spraying his drinking companions as he thumped the table with a fist. They were so far gone they didn’t even mind. At least the one with the fiddle had stopped torturing it.

  I watched, fascinated, leaning on the counter while Ma Sinclair smuggled me a bottle of the good stuff. Her gold grin glinted at me, and I made a face of exaggerated disbelief. No point getting involved. Half of them were going to be senseless on the floor before long.

  Ma Sinclair couldn’t resist a contribution, though. ‘Is that right, William Beag?’ she called across. ‘The way I hear it, there wasn’t much to wither.’

  That earned her a glare from Brown Teeth. ‘You mind your tongue, woman.’

  I was about to snap at him when someone else did: a crofter from further down the glen. He was on his own in a dark nook, nursing an ale, but he raised his head to glare at the rowdy table. ‘And you mind your manners, William Beag. Roderick Mor drank like a fool the day of his wedding. It’s no wonder it wouldna work by nightfall.’

  Brown Teeth’s nose and cheeks were suffused with blood. ‘Roderick Mor was cursed by witchcraft!’

  ‘There’s
no such thing, you credulous numpty.’

  Roars of fury, and William Beag got unsteadily to his feet. ‘Is that so, Mackinnon? And will you call me that to my face?’

  ‘He just did,’ snapped Ma Sinclair. ‘Now sit yourself down, William, or you’ll not be coming in here again.’

  Grumbling, he subsided before he could fall. ‘It’s only servants of the devil that say there’s no witchcraft,’ he muttered.

  It was Mackinnon’s turn to rise threateningly. ‘Will you say that again in a man’s voice?’

  A few of the other men were glancing uneasily at one another; I doubt they fancied William Beag’s chances of staying on his feet long enough to get hit. I didn’t like the atmosphere in the place, and glancing at Ma Sinclair’s anxious face I’d lost the appetite for a scrap too. Nervously the fiddle-tormentor lifted his instrument and drew a funereal note out of its poor strings, and that was when I could bear it no longer. I slapped down my tumbler and went to him, holding out my hand. Startled, he lowered his bow.

  ‘Ach, don’t give it to him! That one’s feel. Stupid in the head. The smith’s brother, ken?’

  ‘Feel disnae mean he canna play,’ said another.

  Ma Sinclair was eyeing me with misgiving, but I kept my inane smile on my face as I winked at her. She shrugged, as if to say On your own feel-head be it.

  ‘Aye, give it to him, Calum,’ she called. ‘I don’t want more of your dirges. He can’t do worse.’

  Reluctantly, resentfully, Calum passed me the fiddle and the bow. I drew an experimental and scratchy note from it, making William Beag guffaw and shower more spittle on his pals. Another dodgy note, then a better one, and it started to speak to me. Poor fiddle, it wasn’t its fault. I tightened a peg, tried another long note, and smiled. It liked my fingers on it. I turned on my heel, tucked it safely beneath my chin, and let rip.

  I don’t think they’d heard the like of it before. They had their jigs and reels, lively enough, but their music hadn’t the thrashing wild beat of ours, the song that got inside your ribcage, made your heart hammer and your blood leap. I had my eyes open, grinning, and I saw their mouths hanging agape. But I saw their feet beat the floor, too, and their fingers drum the table whether they liked it or not. I wasn’t the best fiddler in my clann, not by a long way, and when the drunkest of them rose and lurched into a clumsy jig, I laughed, thinking how Righil could have made them dance till their feet bled.