The Boar Stone: Book Three of the Dalriada Trilogy (64 page)

T
he next morning the glow was only sunlight. It fell through the Roman window on the flagstone floor, creeping across a carved wooden chest and then the hem of the faded wool coverlet on the bed.

It gleamed along the edge of Cahir’s battered shield, propped against the cupboard, and touched the gold in his sword hilt, the stained leather scabbard lying on the chest.

Minna watched its advance through weary eyes, then snuffed out the lamp and shifted on her stool to look at Cahir, rubbing her aching back. She had gone for two nights with only snatches of sleep, but she was exultant rather than drained.

Hands braced on the mattress, she leaned over and drew in his scent, watching closely the rise and fall of his broad chest under the sheet. His lashes lay long and dark across cheeks in which the colour had bloomed again, and his skin was warm and dry to touch. The wound was slight and knitting well now. Minna could not understand why it had caused him any fever at all, but when she pressed him that first night, he would only mutter, ‘On the war-trail men march and sleep close together, and the food and water are bad. We pick up camp fevers too easily, that is all.’

She had added that he drove himself too hard, and didn’t let the cut heal well at the start. Well … it did not matter now. She allowed herself a small, tired smile, and sat still, content to hold his hand and watch him breathe.

Some time later, when the sun reached Cahir’s face, his eyes flickered. She held still, as, after a struggle, his lids opened and he blinked at the window like a little boy waking. ‘
A stór,
’ he said faintly.

When she leaned over him his eyes opened properly, gradually clearing of sleep. And though there was love there she also glimpsed a shimmer of something else, something unearthly. She sat back, knowing he had journeyed into the Otherworld with her, and they had returned together.

To her surprise, he reached out a trembling hand and placed it on her belly. ‘I saw the child,’ he whispered in awe, and his smile broke over his tired face and lit up the room. ‘And it is a son. You have given me my heart back.’

She nestled into his side, and they murmured together as the sun bathed them. They shared words of love and soft touches that soothed the hurts of the body and heart. Most of all they spoke of the baby, patting Minna’s still-flat belly and arguing over whether they could see a swell at all; catching the awe and wonder in each other’s eyes and sharing secret smiles.

Minna gave Cahir stern orders to rest for a few days longer, but when she crept back into the room the next afternoon, her fists full of yarrow stalks, he was up and looking out of the window.

Her hands slowly fell to her sides. His posture was not that of a sick man, but a king – head proud, shoulders braced, one hand resting gracefully on the sill as if he were at peace. Could he have thrown the weakness off so soon? How …? She took a step forward, he turned, and she was left speechless.

For she could see all the god-light she had drawn into him, shining now in his face, blazing from his eyes. The same fire flickered about his head and shoulders, like the luminosity she had heard lit the night sky of the far north.

‘I can rest no longer,’ he said swiftly, mistaking her expression. Even his voice was different, richer and more powerful. ‘My people need me. My men need me.’ He smiled at her confused frown, then laughed. ‘I swear my limbs are strong,
a stór
, and alive – they force me from bed when I would have waited there for you a little longer!’

Awe warred with Minna’s concern, for that glow was like gazing into a star, a sun. And though she had drawn it, she almost felt afraid of this power. Unsteadily, she set the yarrow down and took his outstretched hands. She could hardly see the lines wrought by illness and the healed bruises, for his skin seemed almost translucent, the radiance obscuring his strain and weakness.

‘And now I am up,’ he declared, ‘I must address the army, for something came to me in my sleep, my—’ he broke off, wondering, ‘yes, my vision. When I was sleeping I saw Eremon, I know I did, and he told me what I must do.’

Minna tried to speak but his passionate kiss took her breath, and the faint glimpse of a shadow around him simply faded as his mouth drank her in. ‘As to what we should do,’ she eventually murmured, ‘I would rather it was home so you can heal properly, and gain your strength.’

His eyes dancing, he released her to gaze out at the riverbanks, where the thousands of cookfires smoked. There, his men waited for their king, their weapons flashing in the sun over the water. ‘I cannot. The news may have travelled of the attack on me, and that is not good when there has been so much upheaval, when the people know of the destruction and disruption on the Wall, when they will be afraid of what might happen now. I have to show my face to them, so they will know they are safe.’

His dark hair flowed over his shoulders, glossy now Minna had brushed it, and she longed to lift it and kiss the nape of his strong neck, never letting him stray from her side again.

But as she opened her mouth to protest that surely they must return directly to Dunadd, she took a step back instead, her words dying on her tongue. One could do nothing in that moment but surrender to what surrounded him, what had filled him.

As she had given her life-force, her essence to him, he must do the same for his people. The light was not him, Cahir; it was the God coming through him. Suddenly humbled, she knew she could not hold that power for herself.

Minna wandered far downstream on the riverbank, scattering flowers on the dark green water for Donal and his men, singing the death-song she had been unable to sing before. She squatted on the muddy bank among the bullrushes, letting the sun play over her eyelids. The warmth could not touch the cold place inside that held her guilt, and the weight of responsibility.

Perhaps she would carry it always, another thread wound into the fabric of her soul.

Her reverie was broken by all the war-trumpets calling from the walls of Luguvalium at once. She turned her head. Three short blasts and a long one came again: a royal summons.

She bowed to the water and finished her prayer, for it would take some time for all those men to down whatever they were doing and gather in to the town. By the time she got back to the gates, warriors were crowding the market-place, climbing the walls and ramparts, and eventually, pressed by space, being forced back out along the riversides, straining to hear and see their king.

Minna squeezed inside the fort and wove her way between the men. They turned, towering above her, smelly and noisy with their clanking armour, their dirty, bearded faces alight. Then the whisper went before her, ‘The king’s
lennan
,’ and they shuffled back further for her, nodding respectfully. Eventually, she came to the fountain at the centre of the square that she had drunk from before being seen by Maeve. Holding the headless marble nymphs, she leaned up on the fountain’s plinth to see.

The Attacotti had already sailed for home, and many Dalriadans were on duty at other forts or further afield, but still there were five or six thousand warriors crowding the town.

The trumpets clamoured again, rousingly, and the men pressed closer to the street that led to the royal hall, their voices a restless rustle and murmur. Cahir’s guard then came out into the square, Mellan on horseback holding aloft the boar banner, which was proudly stained by blood and the smoke of many fires.

But when Cahir himself appeared on a long-legged Roman horse, all the buzzing and chatter was lost in an enormous cheer that shook the walls and towers. Spears and swords were waved wildly and dangerously over heads, and in the midst of the frenzy Minna, propped on her fountain, looked over the throng and simply drank Cahir in.

The sun flamed on his boar helmet and mail-clad shoulders, and the fire of his eyes was framed by his dark brows and hair, intensifying its heat. As the warriors went wild, Minna realized her spirit-eye was only revealing to her sight what the men instinctively felt. Their god-king had been returned to them from death.

‘Hail, my bright warriors, my brave brothers!’ Cahir boomed, and the volume of acclaim rose to fever pitch. Minna closed her eyes as his voice penetrated her chest. ‘We have secured a great victory over the Romans, and, as foretold, they have been banished from our lands. They will bleed us dry no more.’ An enormous cry of pride beat on her ears. ‘But this is only the start of a story, not the end. Now we must hold what we have fought for: Alba without Romans, without forts and ports, taxes and tithes, scouts and burning duns. Some of you will be left to garrison the Wall forts, and some to hold Luguvalium as long as you are able. The outpost forts – those to the north of this Wall, in Alban land – have already been burned, their soldiers slain.
No Roman now walks our land, and we will keep it that way
!’

Minna opened her eyes as swords were thrust towards the sun and spears danced against the blue sky. Cahir raised a hand. ‘Those warriors not guarding the Wall will set out for home today. I, however, will not be going straight to Dunadd.’ Cahir’s hand shifted to his sword as he laid it across the saddle and told them how many in Dalriada would not know of the victory, and could be mired in fear and uncertainty. Trouble could arise with no strong guiding hand, which is why they had to see him and know his will.

The noise grew at this announcement, and Cahir smiled into the sun and shouted above the crowd. ‘So I will see you at my hearth when I come home, and together we will make a song to last a thousand years, a song of your bravery, a song of your courage.
To the Boar
!’

Cahir’s men took up the chant, bellowing the war-cry as they lifted their swords in unison with Mellan’s dipping banner. The cry spread through the crowd of warriors, clashing shouts resolving into one song at last, rising up and down.
The Boar
!
The Boar
!

The king sat on his horse with an exultant smile, and Minna’s heart took up its rhythm again, banishing any remains of the shadow. She was pulled into that conflagration that encompassed all the warriors, the triumphant army, and if it burned her to ashes it would still be glorious.

And one day soon, when this was over, she would be able to rest her head on Cahir’s shoulder and be strong no more.

Chapter 61

C
ahir sent his army ahead with orders for messengers to summon all the northern and island chiefs and the Attacotti leaders to Dunadd.

And then, in the glory days of that long, golden summer, he wove his way home in a royal procession that passed through every dun in the south and west, and every cluster of steadings in the major valleys. As news went ahead, people poured down from the mountains and remote glens, waiting for a glimpse of him and his dazzling retinue of warriors.

Travelling at his side, clinging to the mane of Cian’s sturdy pony, Minna slipped into a parallel existence where her body walked on Alba’s soil but she looked upon Cahir and the land with eyes of the Otherworld, seeing what lay beneath the surface. Standing at his shoulder, she witnessed the Source being drawn to him at each place he stopped, gathering where he spoke words of love and strength to his people. She saw the heart-fires flare in those who hearkened to him, and how they joined with his and made Dalriada stronger, the roots of light going deeper into the land. As they left, she looked back on people who had a new hope to lift their weary bodies, relief in their lined, fearful faces.

At night, in rude huts and grand halls, Cahir spoke long by the fires with the chieftains and warriors, and when he came to bed, he curled about Minna, resting his large palm over the baby in a silent communion.

Only once did she argue with him to return home. She saw a flicker through the god-light, glimpsed a drawn face and heard harsh breathing. ‘Surely you’ve done enough now?’ she said. ‘Surely we should go home?’

But he only gazed at her with those luminous eyes and said softly, ‘You helped me find my kingship, Minna, and so now I must be king.’

She did bow to that in the end, but because she loved him, fear lodged in her breast like a tiny sliver of bone and pained her dreams.

He saw how quiet she became, however, and one day, after he had spoken and feasted all afternoon, he took her hand in the dusk and, with a smile, led her to his horse. Everyone stood still in the courtyard to watch them go.

Far up in the mountains he rode, where the heather was in full bloom in whorls of purple, and the bracken beginning to turn copper. The valleys below were rivers of gold, thick with nodding heads of barley, the falling sun hazed by whirring insect wings and the damp heat coming up from the ground.

‘See,’ Cahir murmured, as Minna clung to his waist in the saddle. ‘The chiefs say no one has seen such a summer harvest, such growth. The cattle are in twins again already.’ He gazed at her over his shoulder. ‘Our love did this at Beltaine, just as you said.
You
did this.’

She reached out a finger and softly outlined his nose, chin and jaw just as the sun did, and he twisted around far enough to kiss her, until the horse nickered and shifted restlessly under them, and they laughed. Up on the slopes where the bracken ran out to heather, he stopped the horse and helped her down.