High on a Mountain (32 page)

A man on the opposing team made a goal and,
again, the ball was put into play. A player from the opposing team
tried to pick up the ball with his stick but hit it a glancing blow
instead, and it landed at Ailean’s feet. He scooped it up and two
men immediately closed on him, one on each side, flailing his head
and shoulders with their sticks, bruising him and breaking the
skin, trying to make him drop the ball.

Ustahli threw himself at Ailean’s feet while
his friend banged into Ailean from behind and knocked him down. The
ball rolled free. Ailean’s anger built. Other players, some from
the rival team, some from Ailean’s own team, also joined the
scuffle, all of them kicking and beating Ailean. He caught a
glimpse of one of the game officials watching the fight with his
arms crossed, an amused look on his face. The man made no move to
break up the fight.

One by one, the players attacking Ailean were
shoved away or knocked down from behind, which allowed Ailean to
push himself up from the ground. He stood and came face to face
with Tenahwosi, who had rescued him.

The game officials stopped the game and put
the ball back into play.

Ustahli and his friend went after Tenahwosi.
Ustahli tackled him, knocked him down and slammed Tenahwosi’s head
onto the ground with a sickening thud. Tenahwosi’s body went limp,
but Ustahli and his friend set upon the unconscious man and beat
him with their sticks. Ailean tore over to help Tenahwosi, and
Ustahli tripped Ailean with a thrust of his stick.

Ailean hit the ground, and the men who had
attacked Tenahwosi turned their attention to him. The two of them
piled on top of him while others beat him with their sticks.

Ailean turned his head to the side, saw
Tenahwosi’s slack face, saw his eyelids flutter open. Tenahwosi
tried to rise, but a player from his own team pushed him down
again. Ailean’s anger erupted into a fury that surged through him.
He came up from the ground, yelling with all his might, knocking
his attackers aside.

The game officials stopped the game again.
Tenahwosi was carried from the field and play resumed.

When the official put the ball into play,
Ailean, still enraged, went after the player from the opposing team
who had grabbed the ball. Ailean tore across the field, slapped the
ball from the player’s ball stick and grabbed it with his own.
Instantly, he was assailed by a cluster of opposing players, but he
held the ball above their reach and ran through the group, knocking
them aside as though they were dry leaves swept before a powerful
wind. He reached the goal, and the game official put the ball into
play again.

A man of his team who had attacked Tenahwosi
picked up the ball with his stick and ran toward the goal. In a few
strides, Ailean overtook him and knocked the ball from his stick.
Ailean gathered up the ball and charged to the goal.

The wild pandemonium from the spectators died
down and silence reigned as they watched the bloodied white man
fight his way through the swinging sticks and kicks and saw him
slip from the attempted tackles from his opponents as well as from
some of his own team members.

Blood ran down Ailean’s shoulders, arms and
legs from the numerous cuts that had been inflicted on him. The
copious amount of blood, combined with the grease he’d rubbed on
his body, made him so slippery that no other player could grab him
to slow him down or stop him. And he was so tall they could not
easily reach his ball stick to dislodge the ball.

Ailean’s rage was fueled and renewed by each
assault, and he battered his attackers, letting his wrath pour onto
those hapless players who came within reach. His anger over the
loss of all he loved and over the all injustices he had suffered,
anger which he had suppressed, welled up and spilled onto the
players around him. He fought, kicked, banged into them and sliced
at them with his second stick. He finally flung the ball between
the upright posts of the goal.

The players returned to the center of the
field, many limping, tired and now wary of the big white man. When
the ball was put into play again, Ailean took control of it once
more and ran toward his goal. As he passed an opposing player, he
swung his second stick at the man’s head, but the man ducked and
tripped Ailean with one of his sticks. The ball rolled free when
Ailean hit the ground. He pushed himself up and was on his feet in
an instant.

An opposing player recovered the ball, and
Ailean went after him, fierce and vengeful. When he drew near, he
jumped into the air and tackled the man, both of them hitting the
ground with force and an audible crack. Ailean leaped up, recovered
the ball and sped to his goal. The other man lay groaning on the
ground, his arm broken.

Just before dusk, the Gulahiyi village team
made the final, winning goal which ended the game. The players of
both teams seemed ready to collapse from exhaustion and pain. Blood
from the gashes on his head flowed into Ailean’s eyes, down his
face, and dripped from his beard. It ran down his chest, mingling
with blood from the numerous cuts all over his body.

He could barely see. He stood, head hanging,
chest heaving, wavering and unsteady, covered with blood from his
head to his feet, fatigue and weakness draining away the last of
his strength now that his anger was spent.

Gòrdan approached him and stood beside him,
saying nothing at first. “Are you all right?” he asked.

Ailean raised his head and tried to wipe the
blood and sweat from his eyes with the back of his hand. He
squinted at Gòrdan. “I’m all right,” he said.

“You’re a wild man, MacLachlainn,” Gòrdan
said. “If you play
camanachd
like you play
anetsa
, I
can see why your clan never lost a game.”

____________

Ailean’s status in the village changed after
the
anetsa
game. Men showed him an uneasy respect and young
unmarried women gave him more intense appraising looks. They smiled
at him whenever he looked their way, inviting and coquettish. No
guards monitored him when he walked, slow and stiff, through the
village and its environs. He assumed that if he decided to leave,
he could depart unchallenged, but he didn’t test that assumption.
He remained a guest of Gòrdan MacAntoisch and his wife Tayeni.

“It seems to me that some people here have
changed their opinion of me,” Ailean said one afternoon a few days
after the game.

“Aye, some have,” Gòrdan agreed. “And they’ve
given you a name. They call you Asgayagiga. Means Bloody Man.”

It was a few minutes before Ailean spoke. “I
guess I am a bloody man,” he said. “Blood and torment follow me
wherever I go.”

He hesitated, then spoke again. “I’d like to
rent a plot of land. Could you tell them? Ask if they would
consider it?”

“What are you planning to do?”

“Farming and raising cattle are all I know.
I’d like to have a place of my own, a farm,” Ailean said.

“But you don’t have to farm. If you had a
Tsalagi
wife, she would raise the crops, and you could hunt
deer for meat. No need for cattle.”

“I can’t hunt. I don’t know how. I’ve never
hunted in my life,” Ailean said. “And I don’t want a wife.”

He looked into the fire with his eyes and
into the past with his heart. At last, he raised his eyes to meet
Gòrdan’s.

“Would you tell them I’d like to rent some
land?”

“I don’t know. Let me think about it and
decide how to bring up the question with the elders, if you’re
determined that’s what you want to do,” Gòrdan said. “But even so,
you should think about taking a wife. A man needs
companionship.”

FORTY

Gòrdan’s advice came to mind the next day
when Ailean sat by the river, but he was not yet ready to think
about holding a woman in his arms again, arms which should have
sheltered and protected Mùirne but which had failed her.

He watched the clear water as it rushed by.
At one place, it flowed past a boulder near the bank where he sat
and formed a small eddy behind the rock. A dead leaf was caught in
the eddy, circling, spinning, going nowhere. He felt as if his mind
was entangled like that, caught, swirling, spiraling inward and
downward in a state of confusion.

As he looked past the fields where the women
worked to the mountains beyond, his mind cleared enough for one
idea to form: the mountains. He had to go up on the mountains so he
could think, so he could look beyond the muddle of his thoughts and
find an answer.

As he stood, his eyes fell upon the tall
young woman he’d seen before, the only woman who’d made an
impression on him. She was carrying a basket and seemed intent upon
her errand. She noticed that he was looking at her and demurely
lowered her eyes.

There was a seriousness, a sadness in her
manner that drew his attention, and his eyes followed her until he
lost sight of her when she passed between the houses on the other
side of the village. He turned his attention to the mountains
again.

The next morning, he told Gòrdan of his
intention to climb the nearest mountain, and he started out after
he’d eaten. His stiff, sore muscles made ascent to the summit
arduous, and one of his cuts which hadn’t fully healed broke open.
He stopped, wiped away the trickle of blood and continued up the
mountainside.

He searched for a place to sit where he could
survey the land below, but the trees blocked his view. He couldn’t
see beyond the leafy cover. At last, he chose a spot and sat. He
tried to clear his mind, but, just as he couldn’t see through the
trees to focus his eyes on the scenery below, he couldn’t see
through his inner turmoil to focus his thoughts.

At first, he contemplated the problem of
facing Latharn. He’d made no progress. He had no weapon and no plan
for confronting the man. But considering his dilemma brought him
face to face with his past. It resurrected his memories, and he
couldn’t push them away this time. They swirled around on the
surface of his mind, floated on his consciousness like the leaf
caught in the eddy had swirled on the blocked current.

He remembered his life with Mùirne and
Coinneach-òg, in full, excruciating detail, the moments of
happiness as well as the sorrow of losing them. Coinneach-òg’s
voice echoed from his memory: “
Dadein! Dadein!
” And he
closed his eyes as he felt the silken touch of Mùirne’s kisses.

But his mind traveled on from the joyful
scenes of his past life, and he saw Mùirne with the dead body of
Coinneach-òg in her arms, her blue eyes vacant and staring. His
breath came in searing gasps, and he wrenched his mind away. It
turned to other parts of his past, to Da and to Da’s expectations
of him. He remembered how much he had wanted to please his father
but how often he’d failed.

As a boy, his independent streak led him to
disobey his father at times. As an adult, he had not fought in
battle as his father taught him, fiercely, but with honor,
fulfilling his duty. Each time he unsheathed his sword, he had
become enraged and lashed out wantonly, indiscriminately, as a wild
man, not a powerful, disciplined warrior.

Even in the
anetsa
game, his savagery
came from his anger, not from a purposeful striving to win for his
team. He faced the truth that he had been a rebellious son, had
flouted Da’s desires, had disappointed Da time and again. And he
realized that without his father to provide direction for his life,
he didn’t know where to go or what to do.

At last, he gave up his search for
understanding and clarity and started for the village.

Halfway down the mountain, he caught sight of
the tall, beautiful woman who’d caught his attention before. She
knelt on the carpet of decayed leaves and dug at the base of a
small shrub. She was intent on her work and didn’t hear him
approach.

He stopped, fascinated by her loveliness and
the grace of her movements. He stood watching as she worked. A
delicious, once-familiar stirring claimed his attention, and he
gave himself over to it. A welcome warmth suffused his body. He
felt as if he’d been existing in a cold, airless place, half-dead,
and the desire aroused by the sight of the woman brought him to
life again.

What would it be like to hold this woman in
his arms, to kiss her, to love her? He closed his eyes for a
moment, and his hunger for her became a rushing flood that consumed
him. He opened his eyes again, let his gaze rest on her, her every
move pushing him further into a fire of longing.

When she freed the root, she dusted the loose
dirt from it and dropped it into the basket at her side. She
sighed, raised her head and wiped her forehead with the back of her
hand.

She saw Ailean at that moment, and her eyes
widened. She scrambled to her feet and stood regarding him, as if
she was uncertain what to do. Ailean saw her consternation and
wondered if his craving for her was emblazoned on his face,
wondered if she sensed his yearning and was frightened by it. He
knew the only way he could reassure her he meant no harm was to
either turn and go up the mountain, away from her, or sit unmoving
where he stood. He sat.

She regarded him solemnly for a moment,
unhurriedly picked up her basket and started down the mountain
toward the village, looking over her shoulder at him once. Ailean
watched until she was out of sight. The heat of his desire cooled,
and he was able to think clearly again.

And was appalled.

How could he have felt those feelings for
someone other than his sweet Mùirne? Mùirne, who had laid down her
life to save him. He rubbed his eyes, groaning, wishing he could
erase the sight of the beautiful
Tsalagi
woman from his mind
and could obliterate the memory of the raging fire of passion the
sight of her had aroused in him.