'I am just a man,' Bradan said.
Melcorka finished her breakfast. 'Thank you for your help,' she said, 'I will be off to Castle Gloom now.'
Bradan stirred the pot. 'If that is your wish.' He watched as Melcorka hitched up her sword across her back and set off along the beach. After a few moments he called out. 'It is to the west; you are heading north.'
Melcorka stopped. 'I was not sure. Do you know the road?'
'I know the road,' he confirmed.
'Could you point it out to me?' Melcorka did not want to admit she had no idea where Castle Gloom was, except it was somewhere north of the Forth.
'I could take you,' Bradan said, 'if you do not object to my company.'
Melcorka tried not to appear too enthusiastic. 'I suppose not, as long as it does not put you out of your way.'
'I am a wandering man. One road is much like another to me.' Bradan lifted a small length of tweed and bundled in his pot, cup and spoon before rolling it up and suspending it across his back. 'Ready?'
'Ready,' Melcorka said.
'It is a three day walk,' Bradan told her, 'perhaps four, and there are Norse on the prowl so we may have a diversion.' He nodded to Defender, 'I see you are a warrior. Can you use that thing?'
'I can use this thing,' Melcorka said.
Bradan grunted. 'Well let's hope that you don't have to.'
He led them west, following the line of the beach for the first few hours and then loping inland with a long, slow stride that ate up the distance without seeming to weary him. She kept pace as best she could, watching the bunch and slide of his buttocks and thighs through the corner of her eyes and saying nothing, although the thoughts and images that came to her mind were unsought, unfamiliar and disturbingly pleasant.
As they walked Bradan gathered food and either ate it or stored it in his bundle. He lifted handfuls of remaining berries from bushes and passed half to her; he plucked plants or slivers of bark from trees to chew, sometimes stopping at farmer's fields to glean what he could from what remained of their long-gathered crops.
'Out there,' Melcorka looked out to the Forth, pleasantly blue under the morning sun. 'The Norse are out there.'
'The Norse are everywhere,' Bradan said. 'Can't you smell the smoke? They are here as well as in Lodainn.'
'They are also in the north west.' Melcorka said.
Bradan put his head down and lengthened his stride even further. 'You should be safe in Castle Gloom.'
They found the first burned farmstead early the next morning, with the bodies of the farmer and his wife spread-eagled amidst the charred remnants.
'Dead,' Melcorka was growing used to seeing bloodied corpses.
'There were children here,' Bradan indicated small items of clothing. 'They must have been taken as slaves.'
They moved on, keeping to the fringes of the multi-ridged fields and the edges of woodland. Once they heard the raucous sound of singing and lay prone behind the raised ridges of an open field as sixty Northmen swaggered past.
'They are not scared at all,' Bradan said.
'They have nothing to be scared of,' Melcorka reminded. 'The king is dead or captured, the Alban army slaughtered and nobody is left to resist. The Blue Boar has been trampled under the Norse heel.'
Bradan shook his head as Melcorka made to rise. 'There are two more Norse to come.'
The Norse stragglers laughed loudly as they strolled in the wake of their fellows. One stopped a few steps from where Melcorka and Bradan lay. He fiddled with his clothing and began to urinate.
When one splash landed on Melcorka's face she exclaimed in disgust and leaped to her feet. 'You murdering Norse …' as she yelled she slid Defender from its scabbard. The Norseman was young, with a neat brown beard. He opened his mouth in astonishment at this raging female who rose from the earth, lifted his hands from his person and grabbed at the axe that hung from his belt.
Melcorka welcomed the exhilarating surge of power as she swung toward the Norseman. She saw the man lift the axe, saw the expression on his face alter from astonishment to anger and then fear, and then Defender sliced through his neck and his head rose in the air, propelled by spurting blood, and descended to the ground. Before it landed, Melcorka recovered her stroke and faced the second Norseman, who tugging at the sword at his belt.
Without hesitation, Melcorka thrust at his belly, decided to turn her feint into reality and followed through. Her blade entered cleanly so he screamed, and she sliced sideways and upward, gutting him. The Norseman collapsed, spilling intestines and blood.
'You are a warrior, then,' Bradan had been watching. 'He won't piss on you again.'
'You don't seem surprised,' Melcorka cleaned her blade on the clothes of her first victim.
'Only a warrior would carry a sword like that,' Bradan said quietly. 'And only an inexperienced warrior would kill two Norsemen with such a noise when there are three score more within hearing.'
Melcorka opened her mouth to protest, realised that Bradan was correct and slid her sword back in its scabbard.
'Time to go,' although Bradan did not seem to hurry, his long strides covered the distance at such speed that Melcorka found it took great effort to keep up with him. She heard the Norse behind her and glanced at Bradan, who continued to look ahead with no expression on his face.
'They are coming after us,' she said.
'Indeed they are,' Bradan agreed.
They continued to move as the roars from the Norse grew louder.
'They are getting closer,' Melcorka said.
'So I hear,' Bradan agreed.
'Shall I kill them?' Melcorka asked.
'Not yet,' Bradan said. 'Only the fastest will keep up with us. The further we travel, the more they will straggle, with the slowest left behind. When there are only a few with us, then you can kill them.'
'What if they kill me?'
'Then you will be dead and unable to ask me any more questions.'
There was so much logic in that statement that Melcorka did not reply. They walked on with Bradan's long stride setting the pace, passing over open fields with no attempt at concealment, ploughing through patches of woodland and fording meandering rivers without hesitation.
'They are close now,' Bradan warned. He did not turn his head. 'There are three warriors in front, with five more four hundred paces behind.'
'And the others?'
'They are too far behind to matter.' Bradan said casually.
'How do you know that?' Melcorka did not doubt his words.
Bradan shrugged. 'I can hear a bit and I can feel the vibrations of their feet on the ground and when the wind blows from them I can smell them.' He glanced at her with the first small smile she had seen on his face. 'Everybody has their own distinctive scent.'
Melcorka had to ask, 'what do I smell of?'
'Sea salt,' Bradan answered immediately, 'and smoke from our fire, and just a hint of blood.' He stopped for a second. 'And woman.'
'Woman?'
'Woman.' Bradan repeated. 'You had better get ready to start killing now, if that is what you wish.' He turned to face the way they had come, sat on the stump of a felled tree and held his staff in front of him.
The first three warriors ran with the blundering steps of men in the final throes of exhaustion. They were young men, dressed in heavy furs above chain mail, with pot-iron helmets on their heads and long swords in their hands. They stopped in disbelief when they saw Melcorka standing so casually before them. She killed the first without a word and had sliced the right arm off the second before the third slashed wildly at her head with his sword. Melcorka blocked the blow with ease, disarmed the warrior with a flick of her wrist and thrust the point of Defender through his chest. The one armed man was slumped on the ground watching the blood pumping from the stump of his arm.
'Well you killed them easily enough,' Bradan said. 'The next five are better prepared.'
'In what way?'
'They are spread out and less tired,' Br
adan said, 'stronger foot-fall on the ground; the middle two are heavier, the outside three lighter armed.'
Melcorka nodded. 'I will kill the most dangerous first, and the others after.'
Bradan tapped his staff on the ground. 'You are a skilled warrior but are you good enough to defeat five Norse at the same time?'
'Ask me in five minutes,' Melcorka advised, 'if I am still alive.'
Bradan nodded. 'In five minutes I will already know the answer,' he said, 'or I will also be dead.'
'You do not seem perturbed at the prospect of dying.'
He shrugged. 'If my time has come, then my time has come.' He tapped his staff on the ground again and gave a crooked smile. 'Or perhaps I have faith in you.'
'You do not know me.'
'Here they are now,' Bradan sounded casual. He leaned back. 'Don't be all day about your killing; we've got a long way to go yet.'
As Bradan had said, the middle two were heavier armed, carrying double-bladed axes and wearing chain shirts that extended to their knees. The three on the outside were in linen leines and baggy trousers, armed with long knives, held point-upward.
Melcorka felt the now-familiar surge of power as she unsheathed Defender. The two axemen halted at sight of her, glanced at each other and laughed.
'It's only a woman,' one said, 'and a man with a stick.'
'You take her,' his companion said. 'I'll watch.' He stopped, grounded his axe and leaned against the bole of a tree.
The leading axeman balanced held his weapon in a two-handed grip as he walked around Melcorka. She waited, watching his eyes, aware that the three knifemen were wide on the flanks. The axeman was about thirty, she judged, and a veteran by the scars on his face. She waited until he was nearly within range of a swing of his axe, then jumped in the air, yelling. As he withdrew a step in surprise, Melcorka did not come toward him but attacked the closest of the knife men, cutting off one of his legs at the knee before facing the axeman again.
'You've lost one of your friends,' Melcorka told him.
The axeman said nothing. He came at a rush, swinging in a figure-of-eight that would have proved formidable to counter had Melcorka not moved to his side and thrust Defender two handed like a lance between his ribs. He died without a sound, crumpling onto the ground with his axe falling at his side.
The second axeman ran forward, swinging his axe from side to side as he covered the ground in great bounds. This time Melcorka balanced the blade of Defender on her shoulder and waited for him, judging his attack until he had completed his swing from right to left and the axe was at its furthest point from her before she swung hard and diagonal to block any possible attack. The Norseman saw her blade coming and twisted away, only for Melcorka to alter her swing with an explosive burst of strength that saw Defender slice through the handle of the axe and send the head spinning to the ground.
'Got you!' One of the knifemen had snaked through the grass and slashed at Melcorka's hamstring with his blade.
'Not at all.' Bradan thrust the end of his staff on the man's wrist, pinning him down.
Melcorka gave him a single look and swung Defender right and left, taking the knifeman's head clean off and ripping the axeman's inner thigh so the great vein burst open and pumped out bright arterial blood.
The remaining knifeman stood erect, dropped his weapon, turned and ran. Melcorka let him go.
'Thank you,' she said to Bradan. 'You saved my life.'
'They were raiders, not warriors,' Bradan shrugged and stood up. 'I am curious to see what you want at Castle Gloom,' he said. 'It is not the most accessible place in Alba.'
'My mother said it would be safe at Castle Gloom,' Melcorka told him. 'She wanted me to go there, so I shall.' Curiously, she did not feel grief at her mother's memory, only a numbness.
'It might be best to do as your mother wished,' Bradan agreed. 'I don't think there will be any more Norsemen from that party following us.'
'The man I let live may bring more.'
Bradan shook his head. 'He will not admit that seven men were defeated by one woman. He will report that they were ambushed by many times their number of Albans.'
'You are a wise man,' Melcorka looked at him with new discernment. 'But it was one woman and one man who defeated them.'
Bradan gave a long, slow smile. 'So it was,' he said.
They moved on with Bradan's deceptively slow lope setting the pace and Melcorka trotting at his side to keep up. As they headed west the countryside altered from small arable farms to expanses of wild moorland where isolated stock-rearing settlements were set within defensive stockades. In time the moor changed to a vast expanse of tangled forest that fringed a range of rounded hills, deeply scored with river valleys.
'These are the central hills,' Bradan said. They are not the highest in Alba and not the steepest, yet they are the home of Castle Gloom.' He paused for a moment. 'They say that when the mist comes down, the spirits of the dead walk here, and warlocks and wizards meet in the secluded denes.'
'Is that true?' Melcorka hid her fear. 'I have never seen a spirit or a witch or a warlock.'
'Neither have I,' Bradan gave a small smile. 'It might be an interesting experience.'
Melcorka took a deep breath as they entered the forest, where trees closed off the view of the sky and the ground underfoot was thick with fallen leaves and bright with the flowers of early spring.
'There are wolves here,' Bradan warned, 'and bears and boars.'
Melcorka looked around; thick foliage blocked her view in all directions. 'I have never been in a forest before.'
Bradan touched her arm. 'It is only another place to be,' he said. 'Most animals will avoid us. Only the hungry or the desperate might attack.' He paused for a second, 'or the bears.'
Melcorka took a deep breath. 'I've never seen a bear either.'
'You'll know if one comes,' Bradan ducked under a low branch, pushed through a patch of nettles and cleared a path through barbed brambles with his staff.
They saw no bears or wolves in the forest, and the only boar they saw was a male that stumbled across their path in a flash of dark brown, only to disappear even before Melcorka reached for her sword.
'Here we are,' Bradan stopped, 'this path leads to Castle Gloom.'
It wound away before them, wide enough for two walking abreast or for one person mounted, while trees not yet in leaf crowded close on either side, with stark branches reaching like skeleton fingers to a sky of weeping rain.
'There are no birds,' Melcorka said suddenly. 'Not a single bird.' She listened, hearing only the hiss of wind through the branches and the distant dark gurgle of a burn.
'No birds,' Bradan confirmed, 'and this is the only route to Castle Gloom.' They moved on with the path becoming narrower and darker with every yard until it stopped at a steep ravine whose edges crumbled beneath their feet. A river growled at the bottom, churning brown and white over vicious rocks. Melcorka could see the path continuing on the opposite side, rising up an ever steepening slope with a rapid burn on either side, both of which thundered into the river in a creamy cascade. A man lounged under a tree on the far bank, leaning on a short throwing spear and watching them silently.
'How do we cross?' Melcorka asked.
'By using that,' Bradan pointed to a double rope that was suspended from the bough of an oak tree and spanned the river to a similar tree on the opposite side. 'I'll go first.'
'What about him?' Melcorka indicated the spearman.
'Either he will allow me to pass, or he will kill me,' Bradan gave a lopsided grin. 'Let's hope it is the first.'
'I will go before you,' Melcorka decided. 'He will not kill me as easily as he may think.' She scrambled up the tree, balanced on the double ropes and inched her way toward the far bank. The ravine opened up below her with the sound of the water a constant roar and the ropes swinging under her weight. She saw the spearman watching until she was half way over, when he lifted a ladder from behind the tree and climbed up to a platfo
rm of rough-hewn planks. From there he could dominate the rope bridge and everybody who used it.
'Hold there,' he spoke casually, 'and state your business in Castle Gloom.'
'I am Melcorka of the Cenel Bearnas,' she was very aware of the drop beneath her.
'And your business?' The guard hefted his spear, ready to throw. There was a rack of spears behind him.
'Refuge,' Melcorka said.
'And your companion?'
'He is Bradan the Wanderer,' Melcorka said. 'He is my guide.'
'His name is known,' the guard raised his voice. 'Well met Bradan the Wanderer.'
In reply, Bradan lifted his hand. 'Well met watchman.'
'Will you vouch for this woman, Bradan?' The guard did not lower his spear.
'I will,' Bradan said and the guard lowered his spear and returned to his post as if nothing had happened.
Melcorka completed her crossing, returned the guard's offhand nod and waited for Bradan to join her. The rain increased, pattering on the trees and strengthening the force of both burns.
'That is the Burn of Sorrow,' Bradan pointed to the rushing maelstrom on his right, 'and that the Burn of Care,' he pointed to his left. 'I recommend that you don't fall into either of them. We go on.' He pointed to the path.
Once over the river the footpath wound between the two burns, slippery under the hammering rain, dangerous with ankle-wrenching potholes hidden under fallen leaves, winding upward and ever upward through the trees. After a further hour of climbing they came to a cleared space that extended for five hundred paces. As if on order the rain and wind both stopped. The sudden silence seemed sinister.
'The killing zone,' Bradan tapped his staff on the ground. If any enemy reached this far, they have to cross to the outer wall with the defenders firing at them.' He grinned, 'Let's hope they don't think we are hostile.'
Two spearmen guarded an arched gateway in an eighteen-foot high stone wall, with others on top of the battlemented wall. A portcullis blocked all entrance.
'This is Bradan the Wanderer and I am Melcorka of the Cenel Bearnas,' Melcorka announced, and the portcullis drew up sufficiently for both to enter. Within the outer gate there was a moat with a drawbridge and then the daunting mass of Castle Gloom itself. Melcorka's first impression was of stone. The building rose sheer from a stone base, with stone walls and a round stone tower soaring up to a clearing grey sky.
The Swordswoman Page 10
