Firebrand

by Gillian Philip

  ‘There’s a whole—frigging—detachment’. Aonghas was so incredulous he could hardly speak.

  It was true. Down the left side of the hall they stood, their skin given a sickly cast by the torchlight. Even the vilest of Kate’s fighters hung back, keeping their distance as much as the cavern walls would let them. I could see Fearchar, his eyes wide, his spine pressed so hard against the stone wall it must have hurt. I was glad.

  I looked for my friends. Sionnach stood far back, with Eili and Orach and Luthais. Sionnach’s eyes were locked, expressionless, on mine; the other three couldn’t take their eyes off the Lammyr. Caolas, Raonall and Feorag were near them, and Carraig and Righil stood together too. All our fighters had gathered close to one another, on the left hand side. Except for Eachann: I wondered where Eachann was. Perhaps he alone had got trapped among the crowd of Kate’s fighters clustered tightly on the other side of the hall.

  ‘Swords!’ snapped Kate, the sweetness gone.

  Reluctantly, slowly, we returned them to the scabbards on our backs.

  ‘Guests,’ Conal repeated, as if he’d never heard the word before.

  ‘Yes,’ said Kate. She was within ten feet of him when she stopped.

  ‘They’re Lammyr.’

  ‘That line is becoming tedious, Cù Chaorach.’

  ‘All right.’ His lip curled. ‘They’re filth.’

  Sighing, she tutted. ‘Coming from you, Cù Chaorach, that shocks me. The Conal MacGregor whose tolerance for other cultures knows no limits?’

  ‘Their culture is death!’ He glowered at Kate, before remembering to make his features expressionless. ‘Nothing else. Nothing but death.’

  ‘They are our cousins.’ Kate’s gaze swivelled towards me, glittering. ‘We have more in common with them than we have with, say…full-mortals.’

  I didn’t react. She smirked.

  ‘I’m pleased you’ve tamed your firebrand of a brother, Cù Chaorach.You seem to have beaten some manners into him, and we’re all grateful for that. Where was I?’ Her fingertip tapped gently at her jaw. ‘The Lammyr, yes. They are closer to us, and far more like us, than the full-mortals. Come, now. They can be very entertaining. A little less contempt, if you please. It’s rude.’

  Conal was lost for words. Slowly he walked into the hall, Aonghas at his side, me at his heels and the wolves at mine. Branndair and Liath pressed close to me.

  Satisfied, Kate spun on her elegant heel and walked back to her chair, flipping out her silk dress as she sat. If cobwebs rustled, that’s what it would have sounded like.

  ‘This is Skinshanks,’ she said. ‘It and its fighters have pledged allegiance to me.’

  As if on cue, my mother slipped her slender hand into the crook of the Lammyr’s arm. It smiled down at her, a skull-smile devoid of every emotion but smugness.

  ‘And what I admire about the pledge of a Lammyr,’ Kate went on, ‘is its constancy. The word of a Lammyr is binding. Its loyalty, once given, is given for the duration of its oath.’

  ‘And why not,’ hissed Conal, ‘if it’s offered death and prey?’

  ‘Does it matter why?’ Kate’s eyes were frosted with suppressed fury. ‘All I know, Cù Chaorach, is that a kept oath is better than a broken one.’

  He lost it, then. ‘I have kept every oath I made you!’ he screamed.

  ‘Did I say you hadn’t?’ The sweet smile was back. ‘I admire the way you controlled your brother’s excesses. I admire your intolerance of rebellion and mutiny. How he must have been humiliated, and yet you were willing to inflict it on him! That’s admirable. What a pity you have so much less authority over your clann.’

  ‘What?’

  There was a horrible quality to the silence that returned to the hall. I felt my spine tense and chill, and I swallowed bile.

  All world-weariness, Kate lifted an arm that might have been made of lead. Tilting her head to the side, closing her eyes as if exhausted by sadness, she languidly snapped her fingers.

  The close-packed ranks of fighters on the right side of the hall parted, shuffling swiftly aside to reveal a long platform some five feet high, four nooses dangling empty in a row above it. Conal sucked in a sharp breath. Before the platform knelt four manacled prisoners.

  So there was Eachann. And his brother, not more than fifteen years old, and Eachann barely any older. And there too was his mother, and his father Uilleann.

  ‘Raineach,’ I said, but not a sound came out of my mouth.

  ‘Calman Ruadh sends me a sad tribute,’ said Kate.

  ‘What the hell is this?’ roared Conal.

  Kate shrugged lightly. At swordpoint the four captives were prodded to their feet, and at a further low-voiced order they stepped up onto a bench and then the higher platform. Eachann was still and calm; his brother was trembling but fierce-eyed and brave. I wanted to weep. The four captains who followed them slipped a noose around each neck.

  ‘This gives me no pleasure, Cù Chaorach.’ Kate pinched the bridge of her nose between her fingers, her eyes shut tight.

  ‘Those are my people!’

  ‘Those are rebels. Didn’t you give instructions that Calman Ruadh was to be obeyed in your absence? Have you no control over your own clann?’

  ‘Raineach?’ Conal stared at his swordsmith, bewildered.

  ‘It’s true, Cù Chaorach.’ Her whole slender body was tense with fear and fury. ‘I’m guilty of all she says.’

  ‘Raineach, why?’

  ‘You don’t live in the dun, Cù Chaorach.’

  He raked his hands into his hair. ‘This is not forever, Raineach.’

  ‘But he’s the man who killed my brother. I’m the one who felt my brother die.’ She glared at Kate. ‘If another chance was given me to kill Calman Ruadh? I’d take it. And this time I’d do it right.’

  ‘We both would.’ Dour Uilleann gave his first and last words on the subject.

  Wearily, Kate shrugged.

  ‘Conal,’ I snarled, ‘Eachann.’

  He seemed to get his mind back for a moment. ‘Kate, not Eachann. Eachann has been under Fearchar’s command since I brought him to the dun!’

  ‘Even worse, Cù Chaorach. Snakes breed nothing but snakes. You’ve kept a traitor under my roof for eight months.’

  ‘You damn well know that’s not true!’ I yelled.

  Instead of slamming his fist into the side of my face, Conal laid a hand on my arm. I was surprised at the gentleness of his touch. ‘Have mercy, Kate. Please. I’ll discipline them.’

  Shutting one eye, Kate polished a fingernail with the pad of her thumb. ‘No.’

  Raineach’s eyes met mine, and their hard defiance softened with something like affection. I’d have thrown myself at her and taken the rope off her lovely neck with my own hands, but Aonghas’s arms were suddenly locked around my chest, holding me back.

  ‘Murlainn,’ he growled in my ear. ‘No.’

  ‘Cù Chaorach!’ shouted Raineach, clear and proud. ‘Both my sons are innocent!’

  ‘Kate!’ Conal swung towards his queen in desperation, but she only smiled, and nodded to the men behind the captives. A swift kick in the small of the back, and each of Raineach’s boys jerked on the end of his rope. Then, her cold-eyed lover Uilleann.

  Kate’s captains were kind in those brutal kicks. She’d have preferred a gentle shove, then the swing and the struggle and the slow choke. Her brow creased in a tiny frown, but the captains were expressionless, and she had no grounds to scold them.

  They might have been less merciful to Raineach, but they didn’t get the chance. As soon as she saw her sons and her lover dangling by their broken necks, she leaped from the platform herself. A crack echoed, louder than I’d have believed possible, as her neck snapped. And then there was only reverberating horror, and the quiet weeping of Eili, and the soft rhythmic creak of stretched rope.

  35

  THIRTY-FIVE

  I thought he would curse and weep and rage and cut his arm; I hadn’t expected such ominou
s silence, such crushed-down fury. I had, though, expected him to come to my room, so I was still awake and dressed when he rapped on the door long past midnight, then walked in uninvited. I was sitting on the edge of the bed by the light of the fire’s burned-down embers, whetting my sword blade. It was my own, my favourite sword: the one Raineach had made me.

  Catriona sat cross-legged on the bed behind me. She didn’t say anything, only watched me work, but her presence was endlessly comforting. We both looked up at Conal without a word as he paced our small stone room.

  After a minute or more he came to stand right in front of me. Only when he was so close could I sense the trembling of his body. He took my head between his hands and forced me to look up into his eyes.

  ‘Am I your Captain?’ he whispered.

  Resting my naked sword on my knees, I examined his gaze. Behind the despair and the self-hatred there was something else. Not necessarily what I’d want to see in him: that part of his soul was still lost to him. What I needed to see: that was something else.

  ‘What I’ve been doing,’ he said, ‘it isn’t loyalty. You’re right. You’ve been right all along.’

  And he was stone-cold sober, too. ‘You’re making me nervous.’

  He didn’t smile. ‘You have been my conscience, Murlainn. I thank you for it. But it’s time I got back my own.’

  Gripping his fingers, I dragged his hands down from my head. With my gaze still locked on his, I dragged his right hand to my forehead and pressed it there, closing my eyes. When I could bear to take it away, I brought it to my lips and kissed it.

  He dropped to his knees. I only just managed to flip the sword away before he pulled me into his arms. A great time it would be to cut himself.

  * * *

  ‘I said I’d serve my year if it killed me.’ Exactly one week later Conal leaned against the wall of the stabling cave, his arms folded, and looked every one of us in the eye. ‘It didn’t kill me. It killed Raineach.’

  Nobody said a word.

  ‘If I walk out of here I become outlaw, so I don’t ask any of you to come with me.’

  ‘If?’ said Carraig, examining his dirk.

  ‘When,’ said Conal.

  Carraig shrugged, sheathing his dirk. ‘You needn’t bother asking.’

  ‘If you ask,’ added Righil, ‘we’ll bloody well hit you.’

  Conal let himself grin.

  A horse stamped and whinnied. I glanced at it, hoping it wasn’t calling to someone. It wasn’t just Conal’s nine surviving fighters who clustered in the flickering shadows of the stable; his whole detachment had opted for desertion. Besides them, there were some twenty more. If fighters of Kate’s were here with us, their decision was already made.

  There would have been fewer of them if Conal’s decision had been taken a week earlier. Kate’s alliance with the Lammyr had as much to do with it as any oath-severing loyalty to Conal. There were some things that even a hardened killer couldn’t stomach. No doubt there were those among the Sithe who had the humanity and the soul of a Lammyr, and would enjoy their comradeship on a battlefield, but I hadn’t met many. Maybe I was just lucky.

  Kate had left the fortress straight after the murder of Raineach’s family, accompanied by her detachment of Lammyr. No-one knew where she was going, and none of us asked. We didn’t care, and she clearly didn’t worry. That’s how confident she was of her hold on us.

  Or that’s what I thought at the time.

  ‘You want to join me, do it now.’ Conal sounded emotionless. ‘I can’t and won’t offer again. It will mean civil war, and if you want to cut me down instead, right here and now, you have every right.’

  Carraig spat.

  ‘You don’t have to ask us, Cù Chaorach.’ Eili leaned against the wall, her shoulder propped against Sionnach’s, her gaze fierce with devotion. ‘But you know that.’

  Luthais and Raonall spoke together. ‘Same here.’

  Caolas just nodded; but then she was desperate to get back to Eorna and had only been waiting for Conal’s word. Orach glanced once at me, then she nodded too.

  Feorag looked utterly miserable.

  ‘Feorag?’ I said. ‘Feorag, for gods’ sake!’

  ‘Murlainn, it’s his choice. Let him make it.’

  ‘As we all do,’ said a newcomer.

  There were murmurs of delight and some of disbelief as Aonghas stepped out of the shadowed doorway into the torchlight. He stretched out a hand as if for luck to touch the soft muzzle of his own horse, the one that had called to him.

  Stiffening, Conal stood up straighter, pushing himself away from the wall. ‘I’m not even going to ask you, Aonghas,’ he said, ‘so don’t offer.’

  ‘It’s my choice,’ mimicked Aonghas. ‘Let me make it.’

  Conal shook his head. ‘Reultan won’t come. You can’t leave your bound lover.’

  ‘Reultan will come.’ Her voice was icy and unforgiving as she slipped from the darkness to Aonghas’s side. Linking his fingers with hers, he kissed them. ‘Though I don’t want to.’

  Delight lit Conal’s face. ‘Reultan.’

  She did not smile. ‘I think you’re both fools,’ she said, ‘but you’re fools I won’t leave.’

  She eyed Aonghas. Then, less forgivingly, Conal. They grinned at each other.

  Conal led a horse from the stable; I took one for myself and boosted Catriona onto the back of another. There were a few saddles in the tackroom, so I’d taken one for her: she wasn’t the first full-mortal to be entangled with the Sithe and she wouldn’t be the last.

  I knew that, even then. I just didn’t think hard enough about the others, and what had become of them.

  We chose horses and mounted quickly enough, but we all seemed hesitant as we rode towards the exit passageway. The horses felt it, and shied and tossed their heads, catching our nervousness. What Conal had said was true: once over that threshold we were outlaw. We wanted it. But that didn’t make it easy.

  And no-one, it seemed, was going to make it any easier.

  Three ranks of fighters on horseback faced us when we emerged into the dusk; at their head were Cluaran, Fearchar, and Cluaran’s big, heavy-built, lethal lieutenant, Torc. Conal’s only reaction was to take a breath and ride forward, halting his horse two sword-lengths from Cluaran’s. Aonghas and Reultan rode to Conal’s right side, and I rode to his left. Behind us, Conal’s renegades fell into ranks. We all waited, wordless.

  Conal ignored Fearchar. ‘What do we do now, Cluaran? Kill one another?’

  Cluaran didn’t answer straight away. His eyes flickered over Conal’s fighters, examining every face.

  ‘We each have some fine fighters, Cù Chaorach.You seem to have seduced some of the finest.’

  ‘A battle would be bloody,’ said Conal, ‘and destructive, and pointless.’

  ‘Yes.’ Cluaran sighed, and looked beyond Conal again. ‘Anyone who wants to change their decision, change it now.’

  Silence. I glanced over my shoulder at Feorag. He looked tormented.

  ‘We do not fight today,’ barked Cluaran. ‘You will not be asked to kill one another tonight. Later, yes. Tonight there will be no requirement to kill your rebel friends, not even Cù Chaorach. Tomorrow they are legitimate prey for fighters of the queen, and we will hunt them down and kill them. Each of you, make your choice.’

  He was looking straight at Feorag as he finished. Feorag was the only one who moved. Putting his heels to his horse, staring ahead, he rode into Cluaran’s ranks and turned to face us.

  Conal’s face was impassive. ‘It’s all right, Feorag.’

  ~ No. It isn’t. I looked right into my friend’s eyes, and I saw them harden and chill as mine did. I knew then that one of us would kill the other.

  Cluaran was his dour unconcerned self, and so was Torc. You’d think we were all standing here discussing a coney-hunt. But we could all sense the trembling rage of the other smaller man at Cluaran’s side.

  ‘This is not right,’ hissed Fearchar.
‘They are rebels and traitors and we should cut them down!’

  ‘You and whose army?’ I sneered. ‘You couldn’t fight a cat that wasn’t tied to a whipping post.’

  Aonghas gave a muffled snort of laughter.

  His face white, Fearchar’s fingers reached trembling over his shoulder to touch his sword hilt.

  ‘You draw that, I’ll cut your fecking arm off,’ I said.

  Fearchar, I noticed smugly, couldn’t look at me. He pretended it was contempt but every fighter there knew it was fear. He jabbed a finger at Aonghas instead.

  ‘That one and his lover,’ he snarled. ‘They are the worst of the traitors. Reultan is an adviser to her queen!’

  ‘Watch it,’ said Aonghas, mildly.

  ‘Tonight,’ said Cluaran, an edge of impatience creeping into his voice, ‘we let them go.’

  ‘To what purpose?’ shouted Fearchar.

  ‘To the purpose,’ said Cluaran, ‘of avoiding a bloodbath. There are good fighters here. I would rather see them crawl back to Kate and beg forgiveness than spill their blood in the heather, and let them spill ours. You, Cù Chaorach,’ he looked straight at Conal. ‘You remain unforgiven to the end of your days. Your fighters have permission to give themselves up at any point. They will be subject to severe punishment but not execution. That goes even for your brother.’

  What? There was something going on here that I did not like. I was about to spit in his face, but to my astonishment Reultan beat me to it.

  Give the woman her due, she had good aim.

  Keeping his temper—gods, but I liked the man—Cluaran wiped her spittle from his cheek. ‘Now go. We’ll call tonight a head start. After that, we’ll hunt you down.’

  ‘Not before I take my dun back from the murderer Calman Ruadh.’

  Cluaran was absolutely expressionless. His face didn’t flicker. ‘That is your business.’

  ‘Then we’re agreed,’ said Conal.

  ‘So take my hand on it, Cù Chaorach.’

  Conal didn’t hesitate, but rode a few paces forward so that he was level with Cluaran, and their hard gazes locked. They had only just clasped one another’s hand when Fearchar yanked his dirk from its sheath.