Maire (21 page)

“And what was that?” Declan leaned forward, over his steed’s neck, curiosity whetted.

“The battle strategy for the soul.”

Declan’s bemused expression reflected Maire’s reaction. There the man went again, talking in mystic riddles.

“Looking death in the face opens a man’s eyes to what is most important, in this world and the next.”

Maire snapped to attention. “You’ve been to the other side?” She’d never heard of anyone who’d passed through death’s gate and come back as more than a spirit.

Rowan sighed, lost in thought. “They said I was dead.”

“In a wounded sleep, no doubt,” Declan ventured. “No one comes back same as he was before.”

“That’s true, very true, friend.”

“Well, you’ve the same body, scars and all. I’ve seen them close up.” Maire bit her lip and glanced at Rowan uneasily. “That is…”

“A wife’s prerogative.”

Condemned whether she agreed or not, Maire sat back in silence.

“So what part of you has changed?” Declan asked warily. “That is, if ye’ve really been to the other side.”

“My heart.”

“Cairthan!”

Eochan’s roar ended the conversation, which pleased Maire more than it bothered her. Chances were the Welshman was spinning a tale to pass the time. He proved to be as much bard and priest as warrior, and all such men were given to embellishment of a good story. If she heard the women dreamily prattling on about how Maire had won his heart with her beauty rather than her blade once, she heard it a thousand times and one too many.

She looked ahead to a ridge where a disheveled line of men gathered. They were armed and watching her troops approach in charged silence. Their faces, unpainted for the most part, told her that they’d barely mustered, not expecting an attack so soon in the making. That they were not already screaming like banshees and advancing downhill with swords raised was evidence of her wise decision to take a show of considerable force.

Would that Morlach would be so intimidated…

Maire dismissed the thought. Better to fight one enemy at a time. She glanced aside at Rowan, who studied the men with the keen edge of his gaze. It was sword blue, the color of a blade as it tempers in the smith’s water, cold and growing harder.

“And ye think they’ve gathered to welcome us?”

“No, lass, they’ve gathered to give their last life’s blood for their honor…or what’s left of it. Faith, they look like death’s own henchmen, nothing but racks of bone swathed in ragged cloth; they are your people, Maire.”

“They’d not kneel to Gleannmara,” Maire exclaimed, indignant that Rowan should cast the shadow of blame on her.

“Glasdom said your mother let them live with their pride, I’ll give her that. Gleannmara was fat enough to feed everyone, and a cattle raid now and then was good sport where none suffered starvation as a result. Morlach stripped them of even that.”

To steal a cow from a man who had two was not nearly as severe a crime as to steal his only beast. The ancient law said as much. Maire couldn’t recall the Cairthan being more than a nuisance in her mother’s day, one that was only given chase when there was no more serious war to see after. Yet it was Rowan’s reference to the mute servant that made Maire’s thoughts stumble.

“They’d not kneel to Gleannmara,” she repeated lamely.
The man speaks like a druid. He talks directly to his god. He says he’s been to the other side. That now he claims to have carried on a conversation with a tongueless servant shouldn’t baffle me so.

“Let me ride up there and speak to them,” Rowan said at her side.

“Aye, he’s already been to the other world and back. A second trip might rid us of at least one menace.”

Maire gave Declan a cutting look. Brude said Rowan would unite the tribes. And if he had been to the other side and back, perhaps there was merit in him, after all. She looked over her
shoulder, scanning the brave men who’d followed her, ready to give their lives if necessary.

For all things, there was a season, or so Brude taught her, even for fighting. Not that it would be much of a fight, from the looks of the gaunt men on the hill. The memory of the fishing villagers so over mounted by Maire and her men still haunted her sleep and churned in her stomach.

“Aye, go on then,” she said at last. “But I’ll go with you.”

“No!”

“No!”

“No!”

The word echoed so many times, almost all at once, that its force nearly unseated Maire from the back of the proud mare.

“We’d not send our queen to the slaughter. I’ll go.” Eochan rode forward.

“No, I shall,” Declan argued.

“They are right,” Rowan told her. “You should remain back, in case something should go wrong. No need to leave the clan without king and queen.”

Maire was taken back by the gentleness, not in his voice, but his look. If she didn’t know better, she’d suspect he really cared for her welfare. A strange warmth embraced her; one she’d not known since basking in the loving care of her parents. It almost made her want to stay behind as he wished.

She puzzled over it, reason warring with emotion. When had emotion moved to such prominence in her thoughts?

“He’s right, Maire. So choose which of us is to go with him.”

Maire looked at Declan then Eochan. If there was the slightest chance that Rowan could talk the Cairthan into an alliance, he would need a cool head at his side.

“Eochan will go,” she said, cutting off Declan’s protest. “Let them get a close look at the size of him, and they’ll think twice about meeting his kin.”

While he neither nodded nor commented, Rowan acknowledged approval of her choice with the slightest dip of his eyelids.

Again Maire flushed. As he urged Shahar forward, he called over his shoulder to Eochan.

“Keep your weapon sheathed.”

Eochan shoved the half drawn weapon back into its etched scabbard and winked at Maire. “Like as not, they’ll either think us daft as swineherds or be so bloomin’ shocked they’ll wait till second thought to kill us.”

“Be careful, Welshman,” Maire called after Rowan.

Rowan swung Shahar around and, to the astonishment of all watching, both horse and rider bowed low to the ground in homage.

“Did you ever see the like?” Maire whispered as he turned Shahar back to the task at hand. The horse trick was a feat in itself, but the Welshman’s smile nearly tugged her off her own steed, heart first.

“He has his own style,” Declan admitted at her side, his tone undecided as to whether he admired or reviled it. “Queer as a druid, that one.”

Maire watched the enemy line for any sign of impending attack on the two lone riders. “Do you really think he went to the other side?”

Declan remained silent as he continued to stare after Rowan’s broad, cloaked shoulders. “I don’t know, little sister, but the way he looked when he spoke of it…” The man shuddered. “I’d as soon not know what he saw.”

The shudder was contagious. Maire rubbed her arms up to the armbands of gold articulated knot work. “Nor I,” she echoed, not completely honest. It wasn’t for naught that Brude once accused her of having enough curiosity for a litter of cats.

It had been years, harsh ones, and a man’s beard shot with premature gray covered Lorcan’s face, yet Rowan recognized his brother standing slightly forward of the others. This was the last face Rowan had seen before he’d been bound, blindfolded,
and carried aboard a merchant ship. What had his mother and father been told?

Tall as Rowan himself, Lorcan leaned on his sword, watching and waiting. A tattered shield on his arm told of many battles; although Rowan wondered if it had protected the winners or the losers.
Prosperous
was the last word that came to his mind.

A slew of others rose like bile, threatening to poison his intent.
Traitor, liar, usurper—
Lorcan was the senior of them, but Rowan had been the popular one. Lorcan was aiccid—had his people not been defeated by Maeve’s forces, heir apparent to the kingship of Gleannmara—but such was his insecurity and desire for power that he’d sold his brother into slavery to make certain of his birthright, for birthright alone was naught without the favor that seemed heaped upon the younger of them. Rowan had plotted a thousand different deaths for Lorcan, all of which were too good for him.

The most recent, the cutting out of his tongue and feeding it to the dogs in front of him before taking his life, sprang to Rowan’s mind, carried on the latent surge of rage spawned by what had been done to Glasdom. The faithful servant had done nothing more than serve their family well, but Lorcan took no chance that his lowly deed would be discovered.

Rowan willed his hand away from the hilt of his sword, where it tightened of its own accord.
Father, give me strength to yield to Your will and not mine, for mine is vile, and Yours is pure.

“Half of them’s no more than lads,” Eochan exclaimed under his breath.

Rowan looked hard, as though the sight might evoke pity stronger than a lifetime of lust for revenge. It was true. Wild-haired youths whose faces had not yet known a full growth of whiskers stared at him and the giant Drumkilly warrior out of eyes blank and hollow. One, at Lorcan’s right, bore a strong resemblance to his elder.

“Lorcan of Gleannmara, I bid you good day.”

That Rowan used his name clearly put Lorcan off. “What’s the good of it?”

“That God has given Gleannmara a new king and queen, who would be your ally, not your enemy.”

“And that would be your god, no doubt?” A ripple of laughter filtered through the assembly, but it sadly lacked humor.

“The One God.”

Lorcan snorted in disdain. “The one god indeed! ’Tis like sayin’ the one pebble on the beach.”

“This God has a message for you, Lorcan. One that can make you a noble chieftain if you choose to accept it.”

“And if I don’t?”

“A dead one, buried in disgrace with all your hidden secrets of treachery made known.”

Lorcan put his hand up to his forehead to shade his eyes. “Step closer, man, that I might see who falsely accuses me of such things.”

Rowan whispered to Eochan. “Stand ready to flee if this goes badly. And take Shahar with you.”

“Ye don’t trust the man!” Eochan’s surprise was clear.

“Nay, which is why you must do as I say. Better one fool die than two, eh?”

“I’ll not—”

“Maire will need you alive more than I will dead.” Rowan handed Eochan the reins. “Not that I expect the worst to happen.”

Leaving the bewildered, red-haired giant behind, Rowan strode, sword still sheathed, toward Lorcan. It was hard to make out his brother’s shaded expression, but there were other signs that told him all he needed to know: the stiffening of his large frame, the sudden ebb of blood from his ruddy complexion, the way his jaw dropped…and the way his lips moved with the syllables of Rowan’s name.

Rowan covered Lorcan’s sword hand with his own and leaned forward, clapping him on the back.

“What will it be, brother?”

Lorcan stared at him, too stricken to speak.

“Will you do homage to Gleannmara as a kinsman or suffer as an enemy?”

“If you must kill me, I beg one favor.”

His brother’s low rush of words, the pleading grasp of his gaze, kindled something within Rowan’s chest. Pity? Rowan hoped for forgiveness, but old grudges were not so easily dismissed. He still yearned to snap Lorcan’s thick neck.
Help me, Father!

“Do not slay me in front of my son.”

Rowan gathered a deep breath. “Would I be asking you to be my ally if I intended on killing you, man?” He squeezed Lorcan’s shoulder, resisting the urge to wince at the poor sharpness of it. “Kneel and hand me your sword.”

“In surrender, before my kinsmen?”

“Nay, in exchange for mine.”

“But—”

“Faith, Lorcan, do not try me more.”

The wiry man dropped to his knees. Behind them a swell of murmurs and grumbles washed over the onlookers.

“Nay, father—”

“Back, boy!” Lorcan roared as the younger version of himself started forward, ax in hand. “I know this man. He is worthy of my sword and trust.”

Disfavor turned to a tide of surprise. Rowan was aware of how the other Cairthan strained to see his face, but his gaze was only for the man kneeling before him.
Father, stay my blade. Temper my heart.

Upon receiving Lorcan’s sword, Rowan felt his knees give and he knelt in turn. He knew the sword. It had been their father’s. “He’s dead?”

“Slain by Morlach’s henchmen just before his grandson was born.”

Rowan glanced at the fiery-eyed youth, held barely in check by Lorcan’s warning. “And Mother?”

“Alive and well.”

Still kneeling, Rowan unsheathed his own sword and handed it to Lorcan. He heard Eochan swear behind him, something about a swineherd. No doubt everyone thought him daft. Indeed, he might think so himself were he to dwell upon his feelings and thoughts rather than the sheer power of the heavenly hand guiding him. This might not be what he wanted, but he knew it was right.

“It’s Roman.”

Nodding, Rowan indicated Lorcan should sheath the sword while he did the same.

“It’s a long story,” he told his brother, clasping his arms as they rose together. “I’ve had a good life, in spite of what you did.”

“I’ve suffered the worse for it, for whatever that might mean to ye.”

The cold hardness knotted in Rowan’s chest dissolved a bit more.

“Make no mention of who I am to anyone, not even our maithre, till I say so.”

Lorcan nodded solemnly. “None could know ye, lad. ‘’Twas only my guilt and shame that knew ye.” His gruff voice cracked. “And I’ve done worse than that, something for which there can be no forgiveness.”

“There is nothing God will not forgive, if the heart is truly repentant.”

“He cannot know.”

“He knows, Lorcan. But now is not the time.”

What Rowan felt was the last thing he’d anticipated. Little did he expect to know the emotions swirling on Lorcan’s tortured face, creating upheaval in his own. He dared not give into them, not now, when Gleannmara needed a leader of strength and conviction. God had chosen him to be that man. God would see he met the task.