The White Mare: The Dalraida Trilogy, Book One (6 page)

‘Always so disrespectful!’ he spat, and grasped her bare ankle in a bruising grip, making Liath shy. In the jostling crowd, no one could see. ‘But not for much longer, girl. I have plans for you.’

‘You have no power over me!’ she hissed back.

‘You and I both know that’s not true.’ Gelert’s voice was a sibilant murmur. ‘You’re not witless, though you make me believe so. I’ve watched you shirk your duty for too long. You should have given us another heir years ago, instead of sailing off to that witch camp to dig up roots and weave your petty magic.’ He inclined his owl-head staff towards the King’s bier. ‘Now he is gone, and it is time for the snare to tighten on you at last.’

‘The people won’t force me to marry!’ Rhiann bit out. But they were only fine words, and her fear was a live thing fluttering in her breast.

‘Try them, child! Without a king we are in grave danger from the other clans – and other tribes. Danger makes people think of their own skins, not that of a pale, bony wraith like you.’

She followed his eyes, seeing the nobles of the lesser clans of the Epidii riding so high on their horses, gaudy with their wealth, proclaiming their power. She knew they were circling for blood, hungering to take the kingship from her royal clan, even as they paid their respects. One of the contenders was right in front of her, a young hot-head called Lorn, with hair so fair it shone silver under the moon. He and his father boldly raked the other warriors over with the same slate-grey eyes as they rode.

Suddenly Gelert released her ankle, and though it throbbed, she made no move to ease it.

‘I am no child, druid.’ She strove for control over her voice. Priestess training was good for some things, that was certain. ‘You cannot force me.’

‘Perhaps not. But you always were a dutiful girl. And don’t think that
I haven’t sensed the guilt that rides your shoulder. Duty and guilt … a potent mix. One that will do my work for me.’

He glided away, and she pulled her fur wrap closer about her throat.

As the wailing of women faded away, and harp string, pipe and drum were stilled, Rhiann stood with Linnet on the beach on the Isle of Deer, the waves lifting the hull of the King’s boat as it rolled in the shallows. Gelert’s voice, distorted by his horse-head mask, rang out as he sprinkled water from the sacred spring to the four directions, calling on his gods.

The sky over the island’s dark slopes was aflame with the approaching sunrise, though they still stood in cold, purple shadow. In the faint light, Rhiann saw a mother hush her babe’s strident demands, and Aiveen, daughter of Talorc, the King’s cousin, smiled slyly at a warrior behind her father’s back. Brude’s tear-streaked daughter rubbed her nose, smearing ashes on her cheek, as her mother, hair cropped in grief, bowed her head.

Suddenly Rhiann realized that Gelert had paused, and everyone was looking at her expectantly. Talorc now waited by the bier in the boat with the dead man’s sword in his hands. Rhiann stepped forward as if in a dream, taking the great scabbard flat on her palms and wading into the foam to lay it on the King’s body.

The water was bone-jarring cold, but Brude himself still blazed, with silk thread and exotic cloth, amber, jet and glass rings, his beard oiled and braided, his torc as thick as his wrists. Two gold coins from Gaul lay on his closed eyes. Yet as Rhiann rested the sword across him, her hand brushed his arm, and she jerked back at the chill heaviness of his flesh.

As Rhiann returned to her place she felt the force of Gelert’s gaze. He smelled her fear, she knew it. She returned his look coolly, but her only answer was the glint from the mask’s eye slits, under a fringe of ochredyed mane.

When Linnet had laid down the King’s spear, Gelert took up a flaming torch, calling to Lugh of the Shining Spear to light the way to the Blessed Isles. Sparks drifted out over the water, and as the first fingers of sunlight at last spilled over the hills, Gelert bent and lit the pyre beneath the King’s body.

Flames leaped into the air with a roar, fed by the pitch that soaked the nine sacred woods, and in answer to the hungry tongues of fire, the women’s wailing broke out again, and the harps and pipes skirled into life. Warriors beat their swords on their hide shields, drowning out the druid drums.

With a wave, Gelert signalled to the
curraghs
that were roped to the King’s boat in the shallows. The oarsmen rowed hard, and the ropes grew taut as they drew the boat offshore.

Rhiann’s gaze was fixed on the smoke, unseeing.
The King was gone
.

Desperate, she wanted to reach out and pull the boat back, have him sit up again, laugh again, bellow again.
He was gone
.

The
curraghs
cut the ropes and came racing back to shore, and the blazing boat was soon no more than a speck on the water, obscured by smoke. Dread swept over Rhiann then, and with it came a fevered vision of a man, her unknown husband, laying on her, smothering her with his rank beard, stinking of meat and sweat and ale … She swayed in horror. How could she ever face such an attack, night after night, for the rest of her life? She would not be able to bear it.

I won’t
, she thought fiercely.
I’ll give them what they want and then I’ll leave. Or die!

And then, something happened to sweep these bleak thoughts away in one shocking flash of light. Something … impossible.

A flare of crimson and gold blazed for a heartbeat, cleaving the smoke. Rhiann shaded her eyes. Then the breeze cleared the haze for one brief moment and – there – the flash came again, so brilliant and sharp it hurt. Goddess, what was it?

Abruptly, the singing and wailing died away, and Declan, the seer thrust his way to Gelert’s side. People were peering out to sea, open-mouthed. The shocked silence lasted only a moment, and then a rustling of whispers began to hiss like foam over the sand. When the flash came a third time, the rustling swelled to a fearful murmur. Time was caught, suspended on the cold dawn wind.

But death was all around this day, and fear and tension were running high. And so the first cry of terror at last spilled over. ‘The sun rises again in the west! The gods have come!’

‘An omen!’ someone else screamed.

The panic instantly caught alight, blazing through the crowd as a spark lit to dry tinder.

‘The gods are angry!’ a young woman wailed. ‘Oh, mercy, save us!’

Warriors were wrenching spears from their shield-bearers and unsheathing swords, unsure whether they faced a threat from Thisworld or the Otherworld. Talorc, bellowing orders, got the men into a wavering line facing the sea, and the druids clustered closer around Gelert and Declan. But when Rhiann felt Linnet grip her hand, and saw her aunt close her eyes in the seeing way, she did the same, her senses yearning towards the strange light.
Please, Mother, just this once, let me see!

She held her breath … and then a swirling picture flared into life in her mind. The spirit-eye on her brow blazed with pain, and she gasped, trying to hold the scene steady. As she did, the gasp lurched into a cry of shock. For what faced them was not, as the people feared, an Otherworld sun. It was something much, much worse: sunlight
reflecting off weapons and mailshirts. A boat full of warriors, shining from head to foot, with the glint of swords in their hands.

As she registered this, terror coursed through Rhiann’s veins in a bright flood, so intense that she caught her breath.
Raiders! How could I let them get so close again!
Then a second thought raced on its heels.
No! The blood on the sands … the screaming … Oh, Mother, no …

She heard a low moan, and realized it came from her own throat. Beside her Linnet was swaying, her grip on Rhiann’s hand growing tighter and tighter until flesh lost all feeling.

The image behind Rhiann’s eyes was now clearer. There was a young man standing in the bow, dark-haired, his skin brown and clear, unmarked by the blue tattoos of her own tribesmen, his face shaven. A
gael
of Erin.

The man’s green cloak was swept back to expose an immense gold torc, and under the sleeves of his embroidered tunic, arm-rings shone. The mailshirt over his tunic was burnished so that it glittered, and on his brow blazed a jewel of green fire. In one hand he held an unsheathed sword; in the other a crimson shield, bright-painted with the symbol of a boar.

At last she dragged her eyes open, daring it all to be a dream. But there it was. Goddess, it was real.

The boat was so close now that those of the Epidii without the sight could discern for themselves what the gods had brought them: a battered craft with cracked mast, and inside, a score of men with fierce eyes.

And they were making for the shore.

Chapter 6

I
n an instant, panic broke out on the beach, as women swept up children and raced for the hill-slopes above, old people stumbling after on cold-stiffened legs. Rhiann stood rooted to the spot, her knees weak beneath her. She tried to turn, and faltered, and then Linnet’s firm arms were steadying her.

‘It is all right,’ Linnet murmured, as if she was gentling a filly. ‘We are safe, daughter. We are safe.’

Rhiann tried to gulp a breath, but the panic had taken hold, and it left no room to fill her lungs. The edges of her sight wavered and grew dark.

‘Stop!’

Gelert’s roar split the air, and such was the ingrained fear of him that the tide of people froze. The chief druid wrenched off his horse mask, spilling white hair over his shoulders, and thrust it into Declan’s hands. Then he took back his oak staff and raised it before him. Though old, he was formidable, and for the first time Rhiann felt almost grateful for that daunting power.

The
gael
rowers had stilled their own hands, and the boat now hung suspended, the leader’s cloak against the sky like the first spear of grass after snow. And then the man held his hand up, with fingers open in the trading sign of peace.

‘Name yourself!’ cried Gelert, raising his staff. His voice carried clearly over the water. ‘You disturb a soul’s journey to the west!’

‘I am a prince of Erin!’ the man called. His voice was fair and strong, speaking a language close to Alban, with its own strange lilt. ‘We have come to negotiate a trading treaty, but were caught in the storm. Please, let us land and we will talk.’

Rhiann’s mind was still spinning, and yet his words penetrated the haze of shock around her. These men were not raiders, no matter how well armed. Raiders fell upon people in surprise; they did not approach
a shore defended by spears, or exchange fair words. Still, her shoulders trembled as Linnet released her.

Gelert leaned into Declan and the two druids spoke, heads close together. The chief druid turned back to the boat. ‘You may land, man of Erin,’ he conceded. ‘But only if I bind you by your most sacred oath to do us no harm.’

Without hesitating, the man laid his sword out across both palms. ‘I swear on my father’s honour, and that of Hawen the Great Boar, god of our tribe, that we will not raise weapons against you.’ He swung the sword back down, and broke into a sudden, crooked smile, startling in the grimness of his face. ‘Be assured! I would not wear such finery to attack, honoured druid. I only seek pardon for disturbing your rite.’

Around Rhiann, people who had been crying out moments before began whispering again, and now their voices held a note of … admiration?

Gelert stared impassively at the man, as the boat drifted closer on the incoming tide. ‘So be it, bold prince! Then you’ll hand over your weapons as a surety, until we feast you.’

The foreigner’s smile faded, and angry murmuring broke out among his men before he silenced them with a curt gesture. Rhiann saw that they obeyed him instantly, even though many were older than he.

‘My men will give up their weapons,’ the man agreed, his jaw tight. The crooked grin had fled as instantly as it had come. ‘And you can have my spears – but not my sword. It is worth more to me than my life.’ He sheathed the blade in a bronze-tipped scabbard at his waist. The clink as it slid home echoed across the waves. ‘If I touch it, strike me down. I swear that none of my men will make a move to save me.’

The other
gaels
flinched at this, though said nothing – they clearly trusted him. And it was a clever reply. Unprovoked, no Epidii warrior could harm him without losing honour. And men, of course, valued their honour even more than their horses.

Gelert slowly nodded. ‘Then you may land.’

The line of Epidii warriors fell back as the boat’s hull grated on the sand. Talorc, a thick-set, grizzled warrior who still sported formidable arms despite his age, planted himself before the strangers to take their weapons as they stepped ashore.

Rhiann drew her cloak closer with trembling fingers, stepping back so that she was further away from these strange men. She saw the prince take a ring from his finger and hold it out. ‘I give this to you for your dead,’ he offered, bowing gracefully from the waist.

The rustling of approval around Rhiann grew louder. ‘He speaks fine for a
gael
!’ an old woman croaked.