Winter Serpent (41 page)

Only the mask of its face moved, run together like melted tallow, chaotic.

The thing groaned stiffly and turned from her. It shuffled off.

She did not wait to see what was to become of it. She walked quickly between the staring Vikings at the door and out into the night.

There was still not rain enough to break the drought, only great sheets of wind scouring the valley of the Coire, bending and snapping the trees, raising bitter clouds of dust. The scattering showers had been less than useless. In the thick gritty dark Doireann could make out the attackers pulling down parts of the stockade in order to drag off the livestock and plunder from the barns. She walked through a gap and met figures carrying bulky shapes, driving cattle before them. From their height and their voices she knew they were the Vikings, not men of the Coire. They could not see her distinctly and she was silent and steady, holding the child close, as she passed.

Near the new buildings put up for the guests she saw a knot of shadows, heard a girl’s screams writhing above the sound of the wind. She shut her ears to the sound and went on.

She came upon a bare place, which she guessed in the darkness to be one of the pastures near the sheep pens, and saw a hut, but veered away from it, fearing what might be inside.

She went as steadily as she could, working away from the voices and the sound of driven animals, not sure of the place nor her direction. As she went the sounds faded and there was only the howl of the wind in the cove.

She began to follow what she hoped was the shore line of the loch, although it was difficult to tell when the whole world seemed to be blackly swirling. But there were reeds. She felt them with her hands, and was reasonably sure this was the swampy end of the Coire. From this she judged that she would not wander out into the treacherous shallow water if she stayed to the left of them.

She was empty of feeling now, without fear, or desperation, although it was a struggle to go forward in the capricious wind which blew first from one side and then another, stirring up unseen clouds of dust. The grit was in her eyes, in her mouth, and she drew the plaid closer over the child’s face. She went slowly. The night was just another obstacle to be overcome before she could arrive at what lay beyond. As for the ending of it, she did not know or care. At least, she thought, the child was safe with her, in her arms.

It began to spatter rain and the feel of it was cold. Doireann sought the protection of an oak rising above a little knoll, and sank to her knees there, still holding the child, and rested her face against the trunk. The raindrops came fitfully through the canopy of leaves above.

The night was a well of darkness, nothing showing to give a clue to her surroundings. She was somewhere at the head of Cumhainn, but away from
the Coire and the smell of its burning buildings. The thought of the Coire brought back an instant remembrance of what had happened there: the noisy crowds in the hall, the nightmare wedding feast, the slaughter which had followed it. They rose like alien, vivid pictures in the blackness, and she examined them calmly, finding little meaning in them.

Perhaps she had been dulled by horror, she thought. Later, when she was not so occupied with her own survival, the memories might return to her and wake some feeling of pity. Perhaps she would feel the appalling things which had happened. There were enough bodies now in Coire Cheathaich for a hundred women to keen over, enough death, spilled blood, and suffering for all of Lorne to rise up in convulsions of grief and anger. Yet so much death glutted grief. One cry, one tear was enough.

All the vengeance of the Scots would not put right what had been done. And she knew with this last thought that in time it all would be forgotten, as other dreadful things happened to obscure it, things worse than the destruction of the house of the macDumhnulls. The world was sinking in its own night, drowned in the onslaught of terror.

Yes, now could one say that there was no meaning in life. Flann had struggled against it and had cried that the ways of God could not be measured by man’s reason. If all that had occurred in Cumhainn had been intended by God, then she understood what the Culdee had been saying. No God such as this, both hideous and kind, could exist. Not in this way, with such things come to pass.

And Kevin the monk—who had insisted in the wastes of the crannog of Glen Laghan: God loves that which He has created—Kevin, too, had felt the weight of desolation.

She put her hand wearily to her head and rested it. This was not the time nor the place to seek a meaning in the things which were beyond her. She tried to put the pictures, restless and terrible, from her mind. She tried to listen only to the wind which shrieked down the peaks and stirred a storm of leaves up around her. The very earth seemed to be buckling in anger.

“God, God,” she cried out silently and was startled to find that she had used

His name. Even when she cried out into nothingness she used God’s name.

You may defy Him, love Him, curse Him, entreat Him, yet He exists. Someone had said these words to her, Wilfrid the Saxon, Flann, it did not matter, she could not remember. She nodded now. Unknowing, but He exists.

Then with a great clarity she was seeing the Norse chieftain in his ghost world, slobbering, weeping, the firelight and blood staining him.

She put her knuckles to her mouth and stared into the darkness. Yet without God, she thought, we are this. Before the vastness we would be the small image of the beast with its stains.

She crouched under the tree and could not move, shivering. “Without God,” she said aloud, “we are in evil and despair.”

She grew chill and cramped with sitting. The child had not moved and she had not uncovered his face to the dust and the showers. She got to her feet and started along the shore once more. The valley marsh soon narrowed and the shore-line path was steep. She left the loch and began to climb.

She had not gone far when she heard a hail through the thinning dark. She looked up and saw one of the shepherds from the Coire standing on a ridge, his sheepskin pulled up over his head.

“Who is it?” the Pictish voice came anxiously. “Doireann nighean Muireach.”

Two heads bobbed up beside him, and then the faces of women and children. A figure jumped up and ran down the incline.

“Do you know me?” it cried. “Barra! How are you still alive?”

“Yes, I am alive.” But he did not smile. “Is it the child you carry?” She stopped.

“Yes.”

“Does he live?” “Yes, I think so.”

The Picts made a sound of wonder.

“Princess,” Barra wrinkled his forehead, “do you truly have a magic on you that you can walk through the Norse demons with a dying child, face the storm, and still hold death from you both?”

“Your magic is great also, my friend. How did you leave the hall alive?” “But it was not hard for me. I fell on the floor on top of my enemy Calum

macDumhnull and they took me for dead. I was able to creep away as they worked to set fire to the hall and the corpses in it.”

“All is destroyed,” a woman piped, “and nothing shall live there again.” “The nobles are dead,” a herder said, “and also many chiefs, and now the

Scots in Lorne will be quarreling and fighting to choose new ones.”

“It was like the stroke of an ax,” Barra told her. “One blow from the Northmen, and the Scots in Cumhainn are like a man without a head on his shoulders. But the body still lives, and it shall not be long before it will seek its vengeance.”

“Ah, the terrible things which were done!” a woman wailed. Some of the others began to weep.

“Quietly,” Doireann told them. “You will wake my child.”

“But there are no Northmen at the embers of the Coire now,” Barra said. “They have stripped it and gone. Yet I understand from the men in the hills
that their ships still stand off Eileen nan Ron. Perhaps the Ard-Ri will hear of this and turn back to attack them.”

“Have you any food?” They shook their heads.

“It cannot be helped,” she sighed. “But I am hungry.” The Picts exchanged looks.

“What is it?” she asked, frowning. It was Barra who spoke.

“Doireann nighean Muireach, you cannot stay with us.” “Why not?” she cried. “Is Calum macDumhnull alive?” They shook their heads.

“Then there is no one to pursue me. And I am the only one remaining of my father’s line! I claim the clans now.”

“This is a matter for the Scots to decide,” Barra said, “and no affair of the Cruithne, the Picts. As for any claims on us through your kinship, the Picts here know what happened in Inverness when Nechtan sheltered you. The Picts say you are a witch. It is plain that although you are not harmed yourself you bring destruction upon others.”

“You, Barra,” he cried, “can you say I have been safe from harm or that I

would hurt others willingly?” He would not look at her.

“It can be argued,” he answered. “I have a loyalty to you through my oaths to your mother and the old chieftain, your father. Many dangers have I faced for you, and I birthed your child in the snow. It was my knife which let the life out of the macDumhnull’s body and your debt of revenge is owed to me for this act.”

“I no longer care for revenge,” she said softly. “As for Calum macDumhnull, I wish that he still lived, that his blood had not been taken for me.”

“Nevertheless you cried for revenge and with my own ears I heard you. It is this vengeance which I have taken for you.”

“What is it you want of me?” she said quietly.

“I wish you to break the oaths for me. It was your father who bound me, and although I owed Calum macDumhnull nothing I stayed to serve you. I claim your blood debt for the death of the chieftain of Cumhainn. Say that I am no longer your bound man and there is no tie between us.”

“I say it,” she replied. “You are no longer bound to me or my kin, for the debt is paid. But why must you have this from me? It is only words. You could have left me many times.”

Barra was interrupted by one of the men who pointed to the west and muttered.

“It is not wise to stand like this on the hillside,” he said abruptly.

“We would not have you with us, Doireann nighean Muireach,” a woman cried. “There is only death where you are!”

“Also,” Barra added, “some of the Norse ships have departed, but still one remains. It is the ship of the demon bear. He waits to kill you.”

“We will give him what he seeks,” a squat man cried. He seized her arm. Doireann was stunned, her eyes on Barra’s face. But his look was averted. “Do not despair, Princess,” he muttered. “We will not harm you. We seek

only to satisfy the Northmen.”

“But you could hide me!” she burst out.

“There is no place for you here,” they told her. “The demon is not a man, but magic. He would find you.”

They hurried her over the steep ground and she clutched the child, trying to keep from falling.

“Barra, help me,” she pleaded.

“No, Princess,” he answered. “I can help you no more.”

They took her to a little cove where two coracles were hidden in the over-hanging trees. There was room for only one person and a paddler in each. Doireann was parted from her child. They laid Ian in the bottom of the boat gently enough, but the bundle moved and he wailed.

“Give me my child!” she cried frantically.

“You shall have him when we reach the islet,” one of the Picts told her. She turned to look back at the men on shore as the craft pulled away, but
the remnants of the dwellers in the Coire had melted into the hillside.

There was silence as they paddled. The coracles were perilously close to the water and the Picts struggled with the currents. Slowly the showers and the haze lifted in the valley and ragged tears appeared in the mass of clouds. All at once gray light crumbled, and dazzling sunlight poured down between the peaks, making great pools of light on the water. The boats traveled from grayness into brilliance and out again, and the paddlers squinted their eyes. A circlet of gulls came in from the sea and wheeled between the cliffs.

The water under the paddles was choked with dead swirling leaves. The current carried the boat swiftly toward the sea and they reached the island in the loch quickly. The coracles ran aground under the willow banks and the Picts wasted no time in handing Doireann ashore.

“What shall I do?” she cried. “Will you leave me here to starve, and my poor child also?”

“Oh, no,” they assured her, “for we will help the demon find you.”

Her boatman pulled a long length of tartan from his sheepskin and gave it to the other man. He climbed swiftly to the top of a tall tree and hung it there. It unfolded, the green and yellow of the plaid hanging brightly, like a banner.

“He will come back for you,” they told her, “for his anger is terrible and you are what he seeks.”

She followed them to the edge of the water.

“Have you nothing to say to me now?” she demanded. “Can you do this knowing that the Scots will have revenge upon you?”

Their eyes were hard.

“We do not claim you,” they told her, “and the Scots who would seek revenge are dead and gone.”