The Boar Stone: Book Three of the Dalriada Trilogy (33 page)

Her voice was faint at first, faltering, but as they listened and there was no mockery in their faces, it strengthened. The men’s expressions gradually changed, too, as she spoke, until she was surrounded by a ring of eyes shining in the firelight with awe and wonder.
Wonder
, from hardened warriors, when men had only ever sneered at her before? But that was her life before. Before Dalriada.

For Minna remembered
these
men listening to Davin’s tales of dreams and legends in the hall with rapt faces. And in the wind and rain it had been Tiernan’s stories of gods and great deeds that kept them warm with no fire, and young Ardal’s soft singing that sent them to sleep. The sight was a gift, Cahir had said, and so these blooded warriors hearkened to a slave-girl simply because she was god-spoken, and because she had won their king’s respect. In the cave, they gave her theirs.

The light around Cahir had been leaping higher with every word of hers, like a bonfire. Now it glowed about the men as Minna sank back to the hides, exhausted, and Cahir walked slowly to the far side of the cave, his head down.

‘But,’ a bewildered Mellan asked, ‘who is this Calgacus?’

No one answered, until Cahir spun around, his eyes glittering. ‘I know. I sat night after night with Darach and the druids around their fires, wanting to know everything about our past that was still remembered. When Eremon walked this land the tribes in the east were not all one people known as Picts – they had separate names and separate kings. The Caledonii were the strongest, and their most revered king was Calgacus. Since then, those eastern tribes have merged under one ruler, Gede son of Urp.’ He glanced at Minna, and she felt it as a touch on her face. ‘What I did not know is that Calgacus was allied with Eremon in the most binding way possible.’

The air rippled. Ardal frowned. ‘The Picts and … us?’

Cahir spread a hand on the damp cave wall, looking at the cracks as if they held answers. ‘Our ancestors fought the Romans at the Hill of a Thousand Spears. Now a thought whispers to me …’ he took a deep breath and it rushed out, ‘… that Eremon fought with the Picts under Calgacus at that very battle.’

‘It could not be!’ Ruarc burst out. ‘We sing of that place; we drink to that memory!’

‘I think it is.’

Minna’s hands were pressed across her heart. The dream she had had the first night at Dunadd of a man in battle, his despair as hordes of Romans poured down a slope towards him.
‘My prince, look to the east. More Romans have come!’
Eremon. Her father.

‘How could we have been allied with the Picts?’ Tiernan pulled at his long moustache in agitation. ‘They are our enemy – I have spilt their blood with my own sword.’

‘Now we are enemies.’ Cahir’s face was blazing. ‘But perhaps not always. Perhaps we and the Picts fought together once; faced the Romans and nearly won.’

Minna braced her hands on the earth floor, for the shimmering light around the men had risen up into flames behind her eyes, the currents shifting towards an unknown future. She sensed the paths of fate wavering, twisting.

‘What are you saying?’ Ruarc demanded of his king, clenching his fists.

Cahir looked at each of his warriors in turn: Ruarc, Ardal and the young firebrands, and his steady men, Tiernan, Góban, Fergal and Donal. The sparks leaped between them, the silent communication of warriors and hunters, and Minna found herself urging them,
Give him his honour; let him take it up with you behind him
!

‘It is time,’ Cahir said deliberately, ‘to free ourselves of our oppressors, lest we die of shame in our beds. Our ancestors call us: it is time to fight Rome once more.’

They were all silent with astonishment, the atmosphere taut, on the edge. Then Donal suddenly blew out his breath, his eyes alight. ‘We thought you’d never ask.’

Cahir blinked, and a grin dawned over his face. ‘I never thought I would either.’

Ruarc and Mellan looked at each other, stunned, and then a babble of voices and laughter broke out as it all spilled from them at once, voices young and old rising together. Yes, heed the gods! Take up arms! Mount an attack to force the Romans to battle, to wrest back Dalriadan honour, Dalriadan life-blood!

And as Cahir’s warriors demanded what he most wanted to give – his secret desire to redeem himself – he stood in their midst with hungry eyes and said nothing, drinking in their acclaim as a man who has thirsted and nearly died of it. The cave rang with their shouts, the grate of swords drawn, the tips thrust together.

Minna sat still amid the furs, gazing into the fire as the rock walls sang. The paths of fate settled around her, taking up their new form.

Chapter 31

C
ahir sat at the cave mouth beneath the stars while the others slept. He was exhausted after the hours of discussion, but he would not miss this night for slumber. It still wasn’t clear what to do with this stone, but right now he didn’t care, for every hour that passed took him towards a new hope.

He could just hear the muted murmur of Ardal and Ruarc down the slope, standing watch, but when a light pad of feet sounded behind him he did not immediately turn. He had to brace himself first, and only then could he look at Minna as she knelt and gazed up at the stars, her breath misting the mountain air.

The tension tightened as the silence drew out. ‘Minna,’ he murmured at last. He tried to speak, then shook his head. ‘You are of our blood.’

Her throat was outlined by starlight, so he saw her swallow with difficulty. ‘It’s more than blood. My soul was here with them. If the stone was theirs, then so was I.’

‘But you are of my
lineage
.’ He struggled to think through the storm in his body, for after the calls for war he felt alive as never before, and with her beside him again the pull in his belly was exquisite. He had repeated the litany in his head so many times: there were great barriers between them. Only suddenly, there were not, and he had nothing sure to cling to any more.

The anguish in Minna’s eyes stopped his thoughts. ‘I’ve known this ever since I stepped on to Alba’s soil. Nothing felt right inside me.’ She grasped the slave-ring around her neck. ‘But now I am caught … between.’

Without thinking Cahir reached to uncurl her tight fingers from the metal, and the jolt of that touch ran up his arm. ‘You are Alban now, because of what you’ve done as well as what you are. You have proven your allegiance—’

‘But I did not mean to leave them, Broc and my …’ Her face twisted, her waves of dark hair shadowing her white cheeks. ‘Are they my people any more? I don’t know.’

He caught both of her hands, making her look up at him. ‘Minna,
we
are your people now, as you are ours. It is beyond my comprehension … but it is true.’

‘
You
can say that.’ Minna searched his eyes, her fear raw, naked and terrible in her face. ‘You have your dream, while my parents are gone for ever.
So what does that make me
?’

Her brow, nose and jaw were starlit curves, and Cahir stared at them, knowing it wasn’t just desire that gripped him now, not a sharp, swift heat but a shifting of the very world beneath. She had given him his future.

‘I will tell you this, as King of Dalriada.’ His voice was unsteady. ‘I cannot accept one truth from your visions and not the others. You are of the royal blood of Eremon and Rhiann, and you will stand in my hall as an honoured lady and take the place torn from you. This I promise, for the service you have rendered me and my people.’ It sounded stilted, when he really wanted to take hold of her and set free the fire coursing through him.

She turned to him, wondering, her face shining with tears. ‘I had not thought …’ She trailed off, and Cahir gritted his teeth to hold all that tumult of feeling at bay inside him: that she was the only one to see all the way into him and not turn away. That he
knew
her when first she touched him.

She broke his gaze to retreat to the safety of the stars. ‘Nothing from before can make sense any more.’

‘No,’ Cahir said, watching the silver light graze her cheek. ‘Not any more.’

The next morning the men gratefully turned back for Dunadd, relief and excitement quickening their movements. The horses picked up on it, tossing their heads and whinnying.

Minna, though, had woken to a day of shadowy bleakness, her soul left empty after that tempest. For the Source had gone from her, like a lamp guttering out.

After two days she was mired in too much doubt to feel anything. No more dreams came, no more voices telling her why she had found the stone and ring. The grave had illuminated Cahir’s path, but left her own dark – he had gained something, while she had only discovered what she had lost.

When she looked upon his glowing face, she knew it was worth it, but a small voice in her cried out that she would be a vessel for other’s fates, but not her own.
Foolish … foolish
! she berated herself. She wanted to cling to the memory of her father’s face, her mother’s smile, to take joy in them. To feel the wonder for ever. But she was so cold instead, cold and shaking.

As the triple peak fell away behind the mountains, the rocks closing about the valley, she glanced back, clinging to the pony’s mane as all the warriors gazed forward.

At night, stretching an arm across her forehead, Minna’s mind conjured up many other visions – Maeve’s furious eyes, the contempt in Brónach’s sharp face, the knowing smiles behind her back. It was not enough to stand up in Cahir’s hall and say she was some kind of kin. Who would believe it? Who would accept her? The fear began to gnaw like the cold.

She wondered later if she had not been struggling so she might have sensed the whispers from the moon. If she’d listened, she might have heard a warning.

One moment, there was only the night sky and the sleepy murmurs of the men wrapped in their bedrolls. The next, the rocks all around were moving and guttural voices split the air.

Between one breath and the next, Cahir and his men flew from their hides, their swords already drawn. Minna had a confused impression of babbling men in shaggy furs descending on them from all directions, before Cahir bellowed a war-cry and his men caught up their shields and formed an instinctive knot about him, swords up.

Donal paused to shove Minna into a cluster of boulders, and she hit her head as she fell. By the time she scrabbled around, screaming men were clashing with each other all over the narrow defile, lunging and pulling back. Moonlight and shadows flitted over their features, making it hard to see, but then she recognized the wild, curling tattoos from every Roman child’s nightmare, marking those white, snarling faces. Blueskins.

One Pict was already down, then two, as the patches of snow were spattered by blood, dark as pitch under the moon. Minna stared at a severed hand that fell near her feet with fingers spread, a tattoo curling up the wrist into the shredded flesh, and abruptly she was scrambling backwards, wedging herself into the cleft between two rocks as bile stung her throat.

The moonlight bounced off the frosted rocks and white ground, and by its light, Cahir circled one ragged bear of a man, lunging in then leaping back. His sword drew wild arcs which were met by his opponent time and again in a clash of metal, and Minna stifled a cry when Cahir slid on the ice and the Pict darted in with a stab that was barely blocked by a desperate swing of the king’s shield. She tasted blood on her lip, panting.

Around these two the others fought in pairs, almost evenly matched. Then Tiernan was struck down by a blow to the neck, his long moustache matted with blood, and Minna shoved her fist into her mouth, gagging. He told tales at night, and he had begun to smile at her, his eyes sharp but kind … The Pictish victor was standing there unchallenged for a moment, blood running from his chin. Then slowly he turned and met Minna’s stunned eyes, before lunging towards her.

With a yelp she tried to squeeze through the cleft between the boulders. She had her shoulders through the gap when the man grabbed her ankle and hauled on it, and her head struck rock. In panic Minna scrabbled at the icy stones, but the man pulled her again, growling, and her skull was pounded again, sending stars around it that exploded in darkness.

When she came to she was crumpled like a rag on the ground. The noise of fighting had faded; there were only babbling Pict voices. Minna’s head sprang up, thoughts flying to Cahir despite the flare of pain from the blow that made her whimper. A clutch of bodies were on the ground, but she couldn’t see who was who. As she tried to clear her head, the stink of wet fleece enveloped her and a cold blade was pressed to her throat. A Pict loomed over her, his eyes glinting in the moonlight.

‘Don’t move!’ came Cahir’s faint voice, before it was cut off by a grunt. With a gasp of relief, Minna twisted towards him but was pulled up by the point of the blade.

Amid a confusion of shadows, one attacker held Cahir at the tip of his sword, as the big man who had fought him fingered his fine bronze torc, both jabbering excitedly in their own tongue. Other Dalriadan warriors were also being held at bay – Minna counted seven standing, each with a sword or dagger at their throat. Mellan had been on guard, but he was there, thrown to his knees. She couldn’t see who else had died besides Tiernan.