The castle looked over the route they had just come, with tree cover thick for miles but in the distance the snaking course of the Forth was visible, and the firth where it opened to greet the sea.
'Here is Campbell the smiling Constable.' Bradan said quietly, 'keep your sword sheathed and your words guarded with this man, for there are six bowmen with their arrows pointed to us even as we speak.'
Melcorka resisted the temptation to draw Defender. Instead she looked toward the large man who shambled toward them from the door of the tower. He was as wide as he was tall, with red hair forming a curtain across his face and abnormally long arms hanging loose at his sides. 'He looks like a farmer.'
Bradan grunted. 'That man has a habit of lifting up prisoners and throwing them over the walls and once he bit the throat from a Saxon invader.'
'And it was the sweetest bite I ever took,' the Constable roared, proving that there was nothing the matter with his hearing either. 'Well met Bradan the Wanderer.' The hilt of his sword protruded above his left shoulder as he looked at Melcorka. 'You are quiet for a woman.'
'You can make enough noise for both of us,' Melcorka nearly said. Instead she gave a little curtsey. 'Thank you, Constable,' she said.
The Constable's grin was wide and easy. 'I am always kind to my guests,' he said. 'Unless I take a dislike to them.'
'Then let us hope we remain friends,' Melcorka said easily.
'Are there any of my people here?' It was a question that Melcorka had wanted to ask since she had first stepped inside the grounds of Castle Gloom. 'Any people of the Cenel Bearnas?'
The Constable shook his head. 'I have only one of the Cenel Bearnas here; a warrior named Baetan.'
'Can I see him?' Although she had expected ill news Melcorka tried to fight the sick grief that threatened to overcome her.
'Of course,' the Constable said, 'come this way.' He led her to the central tower, where a spiral staircase wound its way upward. 'We have quite a number of people here,' he said, 'refugees from the troubles all across Alba.'
Melcorka nodded, unable to say more as the loss of her mother hit her again. That grief had hovered in the back of her mind since she had left the Forth. She looked away to hide the tears that would shame her as a warrior.
'You knew all the Cenel Bearnas?' The Constable sounded genuinely concerned.
'Bearnas was my mother,' Melcorka said.
The Constable nodded. 'It is a hard thing to lose a mother, Melcorka. Baetan may be able to tell you more,' he said.
Bradan followed as Melcorka stepped into a stone chamber filled with men and women. The first thing that greeted them was the smell of unwashed humanity; the second was the sensation of overwhelming depression. People filled every square inch, standing in small groups, squatting against the walls or lying on the stone floor, some with weapons, most without, some wounded and all looking utterly dejected.
'I am Melcorka of the Cenel Bearnas,' Melcorka said. 'I am looking for information about my people.' She looked from person to person until she saw Baetan, lying asleep under the window. Stepping across the apathetic mass, she poked him with her foot. 'Baetan: wake up!'
He woke with a start, rolled onto his back and stared at her. 'What … Melcorka! I thought you were dead!'
'Not yet,' she said. 'How did my mother die?'
'She fought well,' Baetan told her abruptly. 'The dragon ship ploughed straight into the middle of us. Bearnas jumped on board to fight but she was killed. A tall Norseman with a tattooed face killed her with his axe.'
Melcorka nodded. 'I saw him from a distance,' she said. 'If I meet him again, I will kill him.' She searched the room for a familiar face. 'Did any of my people survive?'
'No,' Baetan shook his head. 'They were all killed. The Norse hunted them down like animals, shooting them with arrows in the water. The few who boarded the dragon ship were butchered.'
'Yet you survived,' Melcorka said, 'again.'
'I was lucky,' Baetan said. 'A current took me away from the dragon ship.'
'It was your panic that caused her death!' Melcorka's voice rose.
Melcorka felt Bradan's hand on her shoulder. 'Not now, Melcorka,' Bradan's voice was quiet in this place of despair. 'Come with me; come on!' he pulled her away when she wished to remain.
Melcorka stumbled up the stone stairs to the battlements where all of Scotland seemed to unfold before them. She took a deep draught of fresh air.
'My mother is dead,' she said.
'I know,' Bradan said. 'I heard you tell Baetan that.'
'All my people are dead,' Melcorka said.
'I heard that too,' Bradan said.
'I have nobody,' Melcorka said.
Bradan did not answer as Melcorka stepped to the furthest corner of the tower and looked to the north and west, in the direction of the island where she had spent so much of her life. There was nothing for her there now. The island was empty; it was a place she once knew, with memories of people who were now dead. Whatever secrets her mother had from her previous life had died with her.
She took another deep breath and felt the shuddering grief well up from deep inside her. It was many years since she had cried and she had not thought it would happen again. She shook Bradan's arm from her shoulder as she gave in to her emotion.
'Cry,' Bradan said softly, 'cry as though the world will end. I will ensure that nobody sees you.'
Melcorka felt the grief erupt from within her, taking over so she was no longer in control of her body. It consumed her with great hot tears pouring from her eyes and rolling down her face to drip from her chin and fall, unheeded, onto her clothes so her tunic was as saturated as if she had been dipped in salt water. She felt as if she was tearing herself apart.
Eventually, when the sun had long dipped and the cool air was playing on her face, Melcorka stopped. She had cried herself dry. Bradan stood nearby, silent and unmoving.
'You must think badly of me,' Melcorka said, 'crying like a baby.'
'I would think more badly of a woman who did not cry at the death of her mother,' Bradan said softly. 'Wait now if you wish to hide your grief from others. The rain will be here in ten minutes.'
Melcorka did not feel the bite of the rain that washed the grief from her face, or the chill of the wind that accompanied it. She lifted her face to the skies and allowed nature to cleanse her of the marks of her loss. The reality was locked deep inside her; she knew it would be these always, hidden, and she could call on the memory of her mother in any bad times that lay ahead. She also knew that although the grief would never totally disappear, it would fade in time. The memories hardened within her; the time for crying had ended. Now it was time to strike back at the men who had killed her kin.
'Come, Bradan,' she said at length. 'I have much work.'
'What do you wish to do?'
'Kill Norsemen,' Melcorka said as the vision of that tattooed man in the Dragon ship loomed in her mind.
Chapter Eight
'Wake!' Melcorka kicked her heels against the door of the chamber in which the refugees slept. The noise echoed around the crowded room. 'Wake up!'
They stirred slowly, men and women, with two of the three children waking and the third snuffling as she ignored the peremptory order from this strange woman with the long sword and haunted eyes.
'What time is this to wake us?'
'Who in God's name are you?'
'My name is Melcorka the Swordswoman.' Melcorka ignored their protests. 'We have been badly defeated by the Norse. Our army has been slaughtered, our king captured, our women raped, our warriors tortured, our people taken into slavery, our land ravaged and occupied, yet all we have done is run for sanctuary.'
They looked at her through old, defeated, hopeless eyes.
'It is time to strike back!'
Baetan pulled himself upright. 'You are only a youth,' he said, 'untried in war and with no experience of life. Who are you to tell us what to do?' He looked around him, gathering support. 'You are only a y
oung woman. Alba needs a man with skill in arms and experience of warfare to lead.'
'A man like you?' Melcorka injected a sneer into her voice. 'A man well versed in defeat? A man who survives when all others in his village die, and a warrior who panics at first sight of a Norse warship?' She shook her head. 'No, Baetan; Alba does not need you to lead any fightback.'
Baetan grabbed the hilt of his sword. 'A man the Norse could not kill; a man who has fought them before by the skill of his arm and not some magic weapon.'
Melcorka slid her hand around Defender, until Bradan touched her arm.
'This is not a good idea,' Bradan said. 'Surely it would be better to combine against the common foe rather than fight amongst ourselves?'
Melcorka took a deep breath. 'You are right. We have lost too many good warriors to start killing each other. We must decide on a strategy.'
'What is all the noise?' Two of the Constable's guards barged in, glaring suspiciously around the room. 'What's happening in here?'
'We are having a discussion,' Bradan told them mildly. 'We are working out what is best to be done.'
'Does the Constable know?' The older of the guards asked.
'He does not,' Melcorka told him.
'The Constable likes to be informed of everything that happens in his castle,' the guard said.
'If you wish to advise him,' Bradan said, 'we will wait until he comes before we continue our discussion.'
They sat on a stone shelf that ran around the entire upper room of the castle, with Campbell the Constable on a carved wooden arm chair, listening as Melcorka took the floor. A few days ago she would have been nervous to speak to so many strangers but now she thought only of the end result.
'The Norse have sacked the royal dun and the capital; they have soundly defeated us in battle,' she said. 'We now have a number of choices. We can spend the remainder of our lives hiding from them, fugitives in our own land. We can flee and be exiles in the land of another. We can surrender and become slaves, or we can fight.'
Melcorka felt the despair inside the room deepen as the refugees either refused to meet her eyes or looked around at their own pitiful numbers.
'They captured the royal dun and defeated our army in a matter of hours,' one long-faced man said. 'What can we do? I say we should leave the country and seek sanctuary elsewhere. Go south to the Saxons or west to Erin perhaps, or Cymru.'
'Wherever we go, the Norse can also go,' a woman said. She held her child to her breast. 'I say we surrender to them. They have won the war; surely they will be merciful in the peace. It is better my children live as slaves than they are killed.'
'The Norse will not be merciful,' Baetan spoke quietly.
'How do you know?' The woman asked. 'They have no reason to kill us. We are defeated.'
'They killed my household,' Baetan said. 'All of them; men women and children. They tore babies from the breasts of their mothers, threw them in the air and impaled them on the points of their spears. They butchered the men and raped the women, whatever their age, from toddling children to wrinkled oldsters. Surrender is not an option.'
'Then we fight,' Melcorka said simply. 'We gather all those warriors who have survived and we fight.'
'Here we are,' a red-haired man of about thirty said. The scar across his face was recent and weeping. 'We are all the warriors who have survived: enough to fill a small boat.' He grinned, 'The Norse must be pissing themselves in fear.'
'There will be others,' Melcorka said. The Norse have not killed everybody. There will be farmers and fishermen, woodsmen and hunters.' She stopped as ideas flowed to her. 'There are the MacGregors.'
'The Children of the Mist?' the mother said, 'I'd rather trust the Norse.'
'We can ask the Lord of the Isles for help,' Melcorka said. 'He has ships and men.'
Baetan shook his head. 'He will not help. He has more kin with the Norse than he has with Alba.'
'The royal family of Alba were kin to that of the Norse,' Melcorka pointed out. 'That did not save them.'
'Now that Alba has fallen,' the red haired man said, 'the Lordship of the Isles is vulnerable. The Norse will have ships all along the western coast of Alba as well as in the north. They could raid and strike at will.'
'They are not as foolish as that,' Baetan said. 'They will no more pick a quarrel with the Isles than Alba would. The Lordship has its own powerful fleet and their gallowglasses are battle-tried in Erin's wars. They will not fall as easily as Alba has.'
'Leave the Isles out of it for now,' Bradan advised. 'There are other allies who may help.'
'Who?' the woman asked. 'The Saxons of the south? Give them an excuse and they will take the kingdom and say they are doing you a favour; they are not to be trusted. Cymru is too busy watching its eastern border with the Saxons and its western coast for Erin raids and Erin is always fighting itself. We are alone, just this little handful of us.'
Melcorka lifted her voice. 'There is Fidach,' she said. The silence that followed was as much of shock as surprise.
'Ask the Picts?' Baetan said. 'As well ask the Devil to don a halo and write the Bible.' He looked around the gathering for support. 'The Picts were our blood enemies for centuries before the Norse arrived.'
'When did we last fight them?' Melcorka asked. 'When did anybody last fight the people of Fidach? Not in my lifetime.'
There was a long silence before the Constable spoke. 'The Picts are not a people to fight without due cause and much thought,' he said. 'Only the Picts could repel the legions of Rome, and only here did the Romans build a great wall of stone to keep them out. The Norse leave Fidach well alone.'
'They will be good allies to have,' Melcorka said.
'It would be a dangerous job, an emissary to Fidach,' Baetan was sober. 'Nobody has ever been in their lands and returned. I heard that they collect heads and eat their enemies.'
'I have been in Fidach,' Bradan said, 'and I returned without being eaten.'
'Ha!' the Constable smacked a meaty hand on his thigh, 'everybody likes Bradan the Wanderer! Why did they let you live, Bradan?'
'Because of this,' Bradan held up his staff. 'A man with a stick is no threat to anybody. If I had led in an army, the wind would be whistling through my bones even as we speak, but I travelled in peace and parted in peace.'
'If you had led in an army your bones would be in a soup pot by now,' The Constable roared, and laughed at his own joke.
They all started as a hard fist hammered at the door. The Constable stood up as a sentry entered.
'Sir!' Ignoring everybody else in the room, the sentry addressed the Constable. 'There is an armed party approaching the river.'
'How many?'
'Over twenty men, sir, all mounted.' The sentry stood at attention as he spoke.
'Oh dear God,' the woman wailed. 'The Norse have found us!'
'Silence!' The Constable said. 'Are they Norse, sentry?'
'I cannot tell, sir. They do not ride like fugitives.'
The Constable grinned. 'Well Melcorka, it seems that you may have your wish to fight the Norse.' He stood up. 'Call out the guard!'
'I am coming too!' Melcorka touched the hilt of Defender. 'I have people to avenge.'
'Come and welcome, as long as you do not get in the way of my men.' The Constable was bellowing for his chain mail before he descended the stairs to the ground.
'Take care,' Melcorka,' Bradan said. 'Watch your back.'
'I will watch all around,' Melcorka promised.
'Do not watch only the Norse,' Bradan said. 'I think there is a threat much closer to home.' His glance toward Baetan was significant as he repeated, 'watch your back.'
The Constable led twenty men to the river, all with full chain mail, close fitting pot-helmet, spear and bow. They marched in step, obeyed his orders without question and joined the two men already in prepared positions overlooking the crossing point.
The warriors on the opposite side were congregated in a clump, some on horseback, others stan
ding, holding their reins.
'These are Norse horses,' the Constable said quietly. 'Make ready, bowmen.' He raised his voice. 'Strangers! Announce yourselves!'
One dark-haired man walked his horse three steps in front of the others. 'I am Douglas of Douglasdale,' he shouted. 'And these men are survivors from the battle of Lodainn Plain.' Despite the raw wound on his forehead and the blood that had dried down his face he stood erect and proud.
'You are riding Norse horses,' the Constable said.
'Many of us are also carrying Norse arms,' Douglas said. 'The old owners no longer have any use for them.'
Melcorka narrowed her eyes. 'I have seen that man before,' she said softly.
'What do you want in my castle?' the Constable asked.
'I heard there was resistance being organised here,' Douglas said at once.
Melcorka nodded. 'I believe him,' she said. 'I saw him at the battle in Lodainn Plain. He wore ancient mail and carried a sword that would be old fashioned fifty years ago.'
'Did he fight?'
'He fought,' Melcorka confirmed.
'Extend the bridge,' the Constable ordered, 'stand down, lads.'
Melcorka watched as the two watchmen pushed aside a log and hauled on a rope. She did not see the mechanism that worked the long plank bridge that slowly pushed over the river to the far bank.
'You did not extend that bridge for us,' Melcorka observed.
'You did not need it,' the watchman said.
Despite the narrowness of the plank and the terrifying fall beneath, Douglas did not waver as he mounted and led his men across. He dismounted at the castle side of the bank and checked each of his men, one by one.
'Who is organising the resistance?' he asked the Constable. 'All the champions were killed in Lodainn Plain, and the king is a prisoner.'
'I am,' Melcorka said. 'I am Melcorka the Swordswoman of the Cenel Bearnas.'
'How many warriors do you have?' Douglas asked directly.
The Swordswoman Page 11
