The Exile (21 page)

Finbar and Fergus were no more fun than usual but anything was better than their precious "cargo".

That didn't stop him from watching Blathnaid from a distance. She moved with an economy that surprised him. There was little in the way of excess about her. Everything, even her body's form, was tailored to minimalising things, be it movement, flesh, even the attention it drew. There appeared to be nothing at all remarkable about the young woman, which was, conversely, rather remarkable in itself. It seemed at odds with her role as the helpless maiden. The longer he studied her, the more he began to wonder if it wasn't an act she cultivated. There was almost certainly more than met the eye about their travelling companion, although what, exactly, he could only guess at.

She retreated into the wagon a little further down the road, and didn't come out again until nightfall.

Mannix amused them with tales of his travels while they ate. The trader had been to places and seen things that Sláine had never heard of. In many ways, the trader reminded Sláine of Tall Iesin. He spun a captivating yarn. He told tall tales of adventure, always painting himself in the hero's role. Sláine chuckled at stories of his escape from the clutches of the witches of Drunemeton, and his escapades with a troupe of female players in Caer Lyonesse. If Mannix was to be believed he had bedded the actresses, fended off the unwanted lusts of an amorous lamia and still had the stamina to rescue a chieftain's only daughter from where she was imprisoned in a high tower.

"It was all I could do to convince the old man that I didn't want the girl as my reward. There're only so many notches the bedpost can take, after all," he finished with a grin.

"I can imagine," Fergus said enviously.

"I can't," Sláine said with a wink. "Some stories are far too tall for imagining, that's what's best about them."

"You really are a man after my own heart, Sláine Mac Roth," Mannix said, slapping the young Sessair on the back. "Come on, let's eat."

He continued to watch Blathnaid over the coming days.

There was something about the woman that didn't ring true but he didn't know what it was.

It made him decidedly uncomfortable in her presence, more so when he found himself alone with her.

"You don't like me very much, do you?" she asked. She had a way of tilting her head that made her hair fall across one eye, and then, when she knew he was looking, she would brush it away from her face. It was decidedly theatrical. He had noticed her doing it whenever she talked to the redheaded mirth brothers as well, but she never did it when she was with Mannix. She was obviously flirting although how she could have imagined it made her more attractive he had no idea.

"Am I supposed to?"

"Well it would be nice. We've got a long way to travel."

"We've managed well enough so far without me liking you," he said. "I am sure we could manage a few more miles without too much trouble."

Blathnaid turned away from him. There was nothing for her to see in the darkness beyond the campfire but he wasn't about to tell her that.

She didn't say a word for a full five minutes.

When she finally turned back to face him her eyes were puffy and her cheeks were streaked with tears. He felt like a complete idiot. Flustered, he lurched forwards not sure whether to hug her or try to wipe her tears away, and ended up elbowing her in the face. Blathnaid recoiled, raising her hands to protect her face from any more of his good intentions.

"Sorry, sorry, ahhh woman, I didn't mean anything by it, I mean, nothing to be getting upset over. Me and my big mouth, I open it without thinking, you know? Say the first thing that comes into my mind, no matter how stupid. You looked like you could handle a bit of banter so I-" He was rambling and he knew it. He didn't know what else he was supposed to say.

She looked at him, vulnerable and suddenly attractive, her eyes wide like those of a startled doe and her cheeks flushed.

He didn't think, he leaned forwards and kissed her.

Blathnaid slapped him, a hard stinging blow across the face.

"I was only trying to make you feel better!"

For that, she slapped him again.

He winced, shaking his head to clear the ringing in his ears.

He turned to see Mannix laughing at him, thoroughly delighted by the whole sorry spectacle.

Sláine shrugged as if to say, what is a man to do?

Over the coming weeks he was doubly attentive to Blathnaid. He apologised several times, making such a fuss of her that she finally grabbed him by the front of his tunic and hauled herself up to within an inch of his face.

"Shut up and kiss me."

It was an offer he couldn't very well refuse.

Thirteen

Simple Magics

They had been robbed by bandits on the Crumlyn road.

It hadn't been some random attack, a robber looking for an easy mark on the highway. It was quite by chance he had ridden around the back of the covered wagon in time to see Blathnaid giving three sharp owl hoots into the darkness - a signal for cohorts to bait their trap. They had a slick operation going, with Blathnaid infiltrating caravans in her guise as the helpless young daughter of the well-to-do local. It took some prior planning but having someone on the inside assured things went down without a hitch.

Three men and a wagon with a broken axle pulled up on the side of the road, greasy with sweat and thoroughly exhausted. They waved Mannix down.

"Got a problem?" the old trader asked, stating the obvious succinctly.

"Aye, the axle snapped," the shortest of the three said, equally obviously, given the broken stave of wood lying on the side of the road. He was bald and slightly rotund. Beside him stood a curly haired fop with his hands on his hips, and a brute of a man with a face that looked as if it had been trampled by a herd of aurochs. The short one was obviously the leader of the mismatched troupe. "We've been caught a bit short. Don't have an axe to chop down a decent sized sapling to make a new one, so we're stuck here. Don't suppose you boys could help us out?"

"Muscle-boy has a big chopper," Blathnaid called from her wagon. "Don't you, Sláine?"

The brute rolled the orphaned cartwheel into the centre of the road. He dusted his hands off and looked at Blathnaid.

"Hello, lady."

Blathnaid smiled. She turned to Sláine who was still eyeing the three men suspiciously. "Come on, Sláine, anyone can see these honest travellers are in need of your strapping muscles."

So he dismounted and shouldered his axe.

"Go with him," the short man said to the fop. "Help him pick out the right tree."

The fop nodded. "Come, let us find a straight tree to chop down shall we?"

He followed the fop into the trees, pointing out several he thought perfectly adequate to do the job but none satisfied the other man. He followed him deeper and deeper into the woods until he couldn't see the road, the wagons or anything else apart from row after row of trees.

"This ought to do it," the fop said.

Sláine couldn't see what was different about this sapling over any of the others. He shrugged, pulled back his axe and swung, sinking Brain-Biter's blade deep into the wet wood.

Then his head was ringing and the world was spinning, and his legs buckled.

The last thing he saw was a blur that was vaguely fop-shaped peering down at him and then the world went black.

He had no idea how much later it was when he came to. His head hurt. Tentatively, he felt out the lump where the fop had hit him. It was tender to the touch. When he drew his hand away it was wet with blood. He shook his head, angry with himself for being taken so easily - from behind - and the world reeled around him. He lurched sideways, heaving up the contents of his guts. He wiped the mess off his mouth and counted to thirty, breathing deeply.

He staggered back out to the road.

The bandits were gone, as was their covered wagon, and Blathnaid.

Mannix was sitting hunched over with his head in his hands.

There was no sign of Finbar or Fergus.

He sat down beside the trader.

"Blathnaid?"

"Gone," Mannix sniffed, wincing as he raised his head.

"They took her?" he asked hopefully, even now wanting to believe that her obvious betrayal was nothing of the sort. He imagined the fop and the brute dragging her kicking and screaming to their wagon, muttering something sinister about how there was no one to hear her scream.

"Don't be an idiot, big man. She was in on it. The minute you were gone she had a damned poniard to my throat and that brute was clubbing the brothers senseless."

He really should have known, of course. Blathnaid had played him for a simpleton every bit as effectively as she had Mannix and the redheaded mirth brothers. She had been quite skilled, and had never told an outright lie. Rather, she had a way of making men hear what they wanted to hear. She hadn't been coy or overly flirtatious. There had just been something about her that made Sláine want to protect her, or at least that was what he told himself. He wasn't proud that he had been gulled so completely and so easily. It was exasperating.

"I can't believe it... I mean she... I don't..."

"That's what we get for thinking with the little fella instead of this," Mannix said, tapping his temple. The trader had taken a bad beating. His lip was split and a cut had opened up above his eye that refused to stop bleeding. He was lucky, an inch lower and he would have been blinded for life.

Sláine grumbled. He shifted uncomfortably. Everything hurt, his pride most of all.

"Ahhh, the kind heart ever did fall for the fair maiden. Quite ingenious really, when you think about it. Paying me to take her on the wagon, then stealing her, the coin they paid me with, and a hefty lump of interest besides. Quite ingenious."

The more Sláine thought about it, the more he realised it was true. By the time the wagons had passed beneath the shadow of Cader Idris - what the locals called the Giant's Seat because of its peculiar rock formation - Blathnaid had more than wrapped Sláine around her little finger. A few tears - he doubted they were even real - had been all it took. It was another new experience for him. It was only natural to want to believe her, he told himself, nursing the lump on the side of his head. His vision swam in and out of focus.

"I knew there was something wrong about that woman," he said, and then he said it again, as if by repeating it he could somehow undo his lustful folly and make things right the second time.

"That's a bit like shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted, isn't it big man? Don't beat yourself up over it. She fooled us all good and proper, and no mistake. Who'd have thought it, eh? Just going to have to chalk this one up to experience and all that."

A Red Branch warrior did not fall for a pretty face, Sláine berated himself. A warrior of the Red Branch's judgement was never clouded by the remembered taste of a sweet woman on his tongue. Sláine was a warrior, not some lovesick fool. He fought battles with his axe. He cracked skulls, broke ribs and snapped necks. He was clueless when it came to fighting battles won with coy looks and pretty words that made his head spin.

He had been making bad decisions since he had been exiled. It was fast approaching the point where it would be preferable to come to a gassy end on someone's infernal petard rather than continually making a complete arse out of himself. He vowed to steer clear of women: even the soft ones, the voluptuous ones, the bony ones, the chiselled ones, the cheeky ones, the elfin ones, the comfortable ones, the flinty ones, the tall ones, the short ones, the blonde ones, the brunettes, the willing ones, the unwilling, and redheads, especially redheads. All of them, but women in general. They were all trouble.

Mannix just laughed at him. "Trust me lad, the world would be a boring place without them."

"How can you laugh about it, old man? She robbed you blind."

"Ahhh but didn't she make you feel good while she was doing it?"

He had no answer to that.

With the coin gone, Mannix had nothing with which to pay his wages. No money meant no food. It was a vicious circle. Their prospects were further reduced by the fact that Blathnaid's crew had made off with their covered wagon and hamstrung two of their carthorses. It was not the most auspicious of circumstances. Mannix was all for turning back but Sláine was determined to follow the road to their journey's end so they came to a parting of the ways.

"You sure I can't convince you that fame and fortune lies this way, big man?"

Sláine grinned wryly. "I'm pretty sure people I don't want to see lie that way, and I met a wench in Breiddin who was fairly insistent that fame and fortune are waiting in a little berg just outside of Crumlyn. She convinced me, let's put it that way."

"Ahhh, but laddie, do you ever learn? A woman you say? How can you be sure that it isn't a ruse? Fortune's a fickle bugger, more likely than not to try and trick you into doing something rash." Mannix winked. "Good luck to you, my friend. It's been an interesting ride."

"Indeed it has, but for both our sakes let us hope it doesn't get any more interesting."

"Danu's perky tit, I hope you are right, big man. So, if I happen to run into these friends of yours, is there anything you would have me say?"

"That I went the other way," Sláine said.

"I think I can do that," Mannix chuckled.

They parted company with a slap on the back and a shake of the hand.

Sláine walked on a while, scanning the trees for crows. For a while he alternated between walking one hundred paces and running a hundred. It felt good to stretch his legs. It had been too long since he had done anything physically demanding. Riding a horse was soft work. He missed the exertion of Bedelia's farm.

He walked for two more days. He dropped into the habit of muttering to himself. His thoughts turned to his exile and the reasons for it. Two women: Niamh and his mother. Three if he counted Danu, although technically the Goddess could also have been four and five. Women seemed to be at the root of all his problems but according to Mannix that was the way for every man. He wasn't sure he wanted to believe the old trader. They had a lot of appealing qualities, their infinite variety, for one thing. No two women smelled or tasted the same in his albeit limited experience. No two women made love the same either, although he would need to find twin sisters and bed them both to test that theory in any detail.