Firebrand (30 page)

She worked us hard. Conal was one of her captains and he had his own detachment, of course, and he kept Carraig and Righil as his lieutenants. The rest of us were split among her other captains. Some were pigs and loved having Conal’s clann to order about. Some were decent human beings. Luthais, Raonall and Feorag were under the command of Cluaran, monosyllabic and shaven-headed and a hard taskmaster but fundamentally a good man. Sionnach and Eili had the misfortune of being in Fearchar’s detachment, as did Raineach’s son Eachann: Fearchar was a spiteful bastard who delighted in giving them the worst jobs and treating them as second-class fighters. Orach and I were split up, Orach to be commanded by a woman named Alainn. Probably just as well, given that I was sometimes separated from Catriona for days at a time.

My captain, and Caolas’s, was a man called Aonghas. I liked him and admired him, and deep down he liked me too, but he couldn’t show it too much, because his lover wouldn’t like it.

His lover was Reultan.

They became bound lovers about a month after I arrived, which was bad news for me because after that Aonghas was less inclined to be friendly to me, though he was fine with Caolas. He would occasionally give me an apologetic look when Reultan treated me with contempt, but rarely spoke up for me. He was besotted with her.

To be fair, the besotting was mutual, though they seemed very unalike. He had cropped dark hair and moss-green eyes and a face that smiled a lot, and one of the kindest natures of all the captains. Gods knew what he saw in her, but there it was, he was bound to her and there was no going back and clearly he didn’t want to go back. He even brought a softness to Reultan’s eyes, though not when she turned them on me.

Aonghas was very like Conal, in many ways, and the pair of them were the closest of friends. As soon as Conal had returned to the caverns, I heard, Aonghas had walked forward to embrace him, right in front of Kate and Lilith and all the courtiers. You had to admire him for that kind of cheek, and for that kind of loyalty.

I say Conal and Aonghas were the closest of friends; that’s a little dishonest of me. The fact is, they loved one another like brothers. I tried not to be jealous and resentful, but sometimes it leaked out and I disobeyed
one of Aonghas’s orders, or gave him cheek, and then he’d have to punish me with solitary confinement or a beating whether he liked it or not. Conal gave me no sympathy on these occasions, saying I’d driven Aonghas to it. I still liked the man.

I don’t know if Kate thought she was knocking the rebellion out of us. Sometimes now I wonder if she was actually playing some elaborate game, provoking us to worse rebellion for some purpose of her own. That didn’t occur to me at the time, of course. What a greenarse I was.

I watched Sionnach being beaten, once, for some minor offence he’d given to Fearchar. He stood gripping the post he was tied to, and his eyes were locked on mine, his jaw clenched, his knuckles white. I could do nothing for my gentle friend. All I could do was watch, and hate, but he made not a sound, and in the middle of it he smiled at me through the cold sweat on his face, and I knew that rebellion was being thrashed into his bones, not out of them.

A year, I kept thinking. It’s only a year.

No-one had a worse time than Conal, despite his captaincy. Kate tested him with the foulest jobs: executions, punishment beatings, croft burnings and confiscations. He had kissed her hand and sworn loyalty. He had to do it. But his eyes grew empty and his face set hard.

I was sleepless as ever one night when I heard his footfall in the corridor. They happened a lot, these night-time pacings. I hadn’t dared follow him before but each time, a fresh line was slashed into his arm by
morning: one for every crofter he’d hung. With Conal she was trying to beat all the goodness out of him: that much I knew. That night I lay beside the sleeping Catriona and had the first terrible sense of being made into something against my will.

Carefully I eased out of bed, determined not to wake my lover. She’d been sick every morning for a week, and there wasn’t a Lammyr in sight, and I had a terrible foreboding. To take my mind off it, I followed Conal again.

Down a long torch-lit tunnel and through two antechambers the caverns opened out into a huge wet-walled space where a silver fall of water filled a clear pool. The noise of the water was a constant sibilant rush, and the underground waterfall was as cold as water can only be when it’s never seen the sun. By the time I stepped into the echoing space Conal was stripped and standing beneath the waterfall, arms propped against the stone wall and his head bowed into the full force of the water.

There was someone else in the cave. Aonghas sat against the rock wall, arms resting on his knees, a silver flask in one hand. He turned his head and looked at me, but he didn’t smile.

~
Murlainn
.

I nodded to him, wondering if I was in trouble again, and not much caring. After a moment he held out the flask to me, so I sat down against the wall beside him and took it. The whisky was peaty and sharp; it burned the back of my throat and made me feel slightly sick, but I drank a good dram of it anyway. Too late at
night. I passed the flask back to him and he took it without a word. In silence we watched Conal.

When he stood up straight and took his arms away from the wall and the waterfall, I saw the dirk in his right hand. I didn’t dare say a word as he carved two methodical neat lines on his forearm, parallel to the rest. Blood flowed from his split flesh, and he thrust his arm back under the water till the wounds were washed clean.

‘Does he want a healer?’ I asked, my throat dry.

‘Never does,’ said Aonghas. And sure enough Conal stepped out of the water and wrapped a cloth round his arm, expertly, as he must have done it many times before, tightening it in a slipknot. He pulled his clothes back on over his soaking skin and sat down beside us.

‘Today,’ he said, ‘I was ordered to kill a child.’

I thought his voice would echo. Instead it seemed to be swallowed up in the darkness and the damp stone. Aonghas held the flask towards him, but he shook his head.

‘He was the age you were, Seth, when I first laid eyes on you.’

Reflexively I swallowed.

‘You didn’t do it,’ said Aonghas.

Conal gave him a sidelong look. ‘No.’

‘Didn’t think so.’

‘I hanged his father and his uncle,’ said Conal, ‘and I turned him and his mother out on the moor where they might very well starve, but no, I did not kill him.’

‘For which disobedience,’ remarked Aonghas, ‘Kate may very well kill you.’

‘If you report him,’ I said. My voice was swallowed by the cave just as Conal’s had been, so I said it again. ‘If you report him I’ll kill you.’

Aonghas did not react at first. Carefully he set down the flask, then sat back against the wall and stared at the roof, unseen in shadow.

‘Murlainn,’ he sighed. ‘Be insolent here and now, if you like. The rest of the time, keep your tongue in order. I do not like having you whipped. I did not like Fearchar setting his thugs on Sionnach. But it’s what must happen if you’re stupid. I have my own life to think about.’

True. I fidgeted uncomfortably, remembering. My back didn’t hurt any more but the scabs itched. Just as well it was dark in that place; I wouldn’t have liked Aonghas to see my flush of shame. Conal wouldn’t have noticed anyway. He was silent, his head bowed onto his arms, his arms resting on his knees.

At last he said, ‘My mother hasn’t returned to the dun.’

‘She had business with the soothsayer,’ said Aonghas.

‘Half a year ago.’ Conal gave a dry miserable laugh. ‘No-one’s business could take so long, even with that old charlatan.’

‘But you must know where she is?’

‘No. Only that she isn’t at the dun. Last time I felt her she was very far away. She’s been blocking me for months now.’

‘Well.’ Aonghas shrugged lightly. ‘If Leonora was dead you’d know it. So would Reultan.’

‘Maybe. But she found it hard not to go with
Griogair.’ He laughed again, high-pitched and desperate. ‘That’s an understatement, isn’t it?
Hard
. Could be she’s stopped fighting it. Could be she’s going to go to him after all. She’s the only person since Griogair died who could stand up to Kate, and she’s leaving us.
Leaving us
.’

Aonghas put an arm round his slumped shoulders.

‘One day this’ll be over,’ he said.

‘So I tell myself,’ said Conal bitterly.

‘No,’ I said, ‘it won’t.’

They both turned their heads and stared at me. I was shocked too. I don’t know what had brought it on, but I knew it was true.

‘She’ll never let us be,’ I said. ‘We may as well walk out now.’

‘You better have your block up, you stupid little shit,’ said Aonghas.

I gave him the filthiest look I could get away with. ‘Indeed. I’m not stupid.’

‘You could have fooled me.’

‘I obviously did.’

‘Quiet,’ said Conal. ‘Both of you.’

He linked his hands behind his neck, digging his fingernails into his skin. I thought he was thinking over what I’d said, but after a while he just put his face in his hands.

‘Won’t stop you seeing it,’ I said. ‘Won’t stop the dreams. Won’t stop the screams.’

Aonghas growled in exasperation. Conal ignored me. I stood up.

‘You hear me? You’re craven. Both of you.’ I
shouldn’t have had that whisky. I’d come here to comfort him; instead I could hear myself losing my temper and I couldn’t hold on to it. ‘She has you dancing on a string, Cù Chaorach. What are you afraid of?’ I spat. ‘Your sister?’

Aonghas half-rose at that, a snarl forming on his lips, but Conal seized his arm and he sank back to the ground, glaring at me. Conal would not meet my eye. Rage burned my throat as if I was going to throw that whisky back up.

‘She’ll go on making you dance to her tune, Cù Chaorach, till you forget what it’s like to sit still. Tell her where to stick her fiddle. What can she do? If Leonora won’t stand against her someone else has to. No-one’s better qualified than you are.’

‘Careful, Murlainn.’ Aonghas’s tone was surprisingly gentle, and he very nearly smiled. ‘He doesn’t want to lose his dun and his clann. And he doesn’t want to lose his brother.’

I said. ‘Neither do I.’

And like a foot-stamping toddler, I stalked out.

Why was I so angry with him? I danced to Kate’s tune too, I kept her beat. My captain too killed for her, killed people who did not deserve to die, and I watched in acquiescent silence as he did it. I told myself I was angry because I would walk out myself if I could, but that I couldn’t, because I wouldn’t leave him. That was not true. It was only an excuse. The fact is, I was angry because it didn’t matter so much what I became. There was not so much in me to change. For Conal to let himself become her golem, though: that seemed like a blasphemy.

Yet what Aonghas said was true. Through Calman Ruadh Kate held our dun and our clann in the palm of her hand, and she had it in her to destroy them both. When Conal could drag his mind out of the black pit it lived in he would yell it at me. Once, he thrashed it into me. He didn’t have to. I understood fine. But he thrashed it into me anyway.

I’d answered Aonghas back, again. Oh, I should be honest. I had muttered a curse at him, under my breath but loud enough for his men to hear, and him. It was more than a curse, it was an accusation—another one on the theme of his cravenness—and I threw in a thoroughgoing insult to Reultan, just to make sure of my fate. There were days, you see, when I welcomed a beating. Usually the days that followed a croft-burning or a hanging.

Branndair had been chained up in the kennels like he always was on these occasions: everyone liked their throat intact. Aonghas’s lieutenant was tightening the rope that bound my wrists to the post when Conal shoved through the press of watchers. Even Reultan had to get out of his way.

‘Leave him!’ he barked.

Aonghas’s lieutenant looked at Aonghas, and jerked the rope tighter as he did so, but Aonghas shook his head. He knew what Conal was about, and so did I. I wasn’t stupid enough to think he was coming to my rescue.

My brother unsheathed his dirk, and sawed through the rope, then cut the bonds round my wrists too.

‘Get your circulation back,’ he snapped. Turning away, he stripped off his shirt.

I rubbed my wrists and hands, but only because they hurt. ‘I won’t need to,’ I said.

Turning back, Conal gave me a deadly look. ‘You’ll fight me.’

I gave him one back. ~
I don’t take orders
.

~
You will after I’ve finished with you
.

~
Not from you, I won’t
. I linked my fingers tightly behind my back. ~
You’re not my Captain any more
.

His first blow snapped my head back and I was flung to the ground. I couldn’t keep my hands behind my back after that, they came forward in reflexive self-defence, but I did not return a single blow. When he ordered me to my feet I got to my feet, and each time he struck me he gave me every opportunity to hit back. I didn’t. Didn’t he know what a stubborn bastard I was? How long had he known me? It almost made me
laugh, except that it hurt so much I couldn’t.

I just kept getting to my feet, or as close to it as I could after ten minutes of this. If anything he hit me harder. I thought my head was going to come off. My face was sticky with blood, I could taste it in my mouth and nose, and my ribs would barely let my lungs draw breath for the pain. In the end I couldn’t get up again.

The watchers were silent. Their hoots and yells of encouragement had faded long ago, and even Reultan looked on stony-faced. Sionnach had his arm round Orach, who was weeping, but she wasn’t making a sound. I lay in the gritty sand, staring up at the arching stone roof above me and the shadows that flickered with the torchlight. I felt almost peaceful and I’d have liked to smile, but my swollen face wouldn’t seem to let me. It felt out of shape somehow, and I had to blink away blood to see anything.

Conal crouched above me, his hands gripping his head.