The Exile (22 page)

Sláine rounded a sharp corner in the road, the trail entering the forest it had been skirting for the last three leagues. The shift in the atmosphere was palpable. It put him instinctively on edge. He walked more slowly, paying more attention to his surroundings. The undergrowth grew gradually thicker and less pleasant the deeper into the woods the road went. He turned instinctively to look behind him.

He appeared to be alone on the road but it didn't take him long to realise that wasn't true.

He stopped by a mile marker to break his fast on a mouldy chunk of cheese and a slab of stale bread. It made Bedelia's meals seem like feasts. He chewed the food and swallowed, doing his damnedest not to taste it on the way down.

He knew that he was being watched, but by whom? It occurred to him that the Red Branch hunters might finally have caught up with him. His skin prickled. It was an uncomfortable sensation, what his mother used to call a goose walking over your grave. It was seldom a good sign and he had learned to heed it.

Without being obvious about it, he looked around for any telltale signs that might betray the observer. They were there to be seen, in fact there was an element of conflicting evidence that puzzled him. It was possible that the watcher was not alone. Sláine almost missed one of the most obvious signs: the sudden scurry from the undergrowth of a startled field vole. The little rodent ran blindly into the dirt road, turning in confused circles, its nose twitching at the conflicting scents of Sláine in front of him and the watcher behind. Sláine smiled to himself. He sat in silence, appearing to toy with his food. More subtle signs included broken vegetation where the watcher had pushed his way into the undergrowth. The broken grass was still green, and it hadn't been raining, which meant that the damage was less than a day old. A little off to the left a bramble had been picked clean of berries, another indication that the watcher had settled in for a long wait. At the foot of the bush he saw a faint spray of dirt, the scuff of what was almost certainly a footprint. It had been the gathering of flies that put the matter beyond doubt. They buzzed around fresh dung.

He wondered how long the watcher had lain in wait. Long enough to eat and shit for sure, which meant a few hours at least, perhaps even the best part of the early morning from late last night? It showed a certain amount of patience, something the Red Branch hunters would almost certainly be short on after so many months away from home. The watcher almost certainly wasn't from Murias.

He had his suspicions as to who it was, but why they had gone to such elaborate lengths to snare him he didn't know.

He closed his eyes to listen for anything, even the slightest sound of movement out of place. Nothing. His thoughts returned to women and the fact that they were at the heart of all of his problems. That was when he heard what could only have been a footstep behind him. Sláine forced himself to act as if he hadn't heard anything. He concentrated on the rhythm of his own breathing and the
dub-dub-dub
of his pulse. He tore off a chunk of blue-veined cheese and forced himself to eat it. He heard nothing for a full five minutes, but he didn't need to.

There were other ways the watcher betrayed himself. Sláine remained on edge, alert. Sláine felt certain the watcher would make himself known sooner rather than later, otherwise there was the possibility that he might move on, reducing the watcher's chance of coming up on him unawares.

A foreign smell reached his nose. He breathed it in deeply. It took him a moment to place it. When he did, he smiled and opened his eyes. There was only one person he had smelled that perfume on recently and it was not a him at all. He waited, and still the watcher didn't reveal herself.

"You might as well come out. I know you are there, Blathnaid," Sláine said after a few minutes. "I can smell your bath oils. I've seen some remarkable things since I left Murias but I have never known a squirrel to wash itself in the oil of orchids gathered from the floor of the Burren. Something to think about next time you want to sneak up on a hunter."

"Aren't you just the clever barbarian, muscle-boy?" the woman muttered, abandoning all pretence of stealth. She stepped out of the undergrowth not ten paces from where he sat. She no longer looked the innocent maiden, having swapped her flowing skirts for practical breeches and a figure-hugging hide waistcoat over a simple shirt. Her hair was bound up in a bun and held in place by a short black-wood pin.

"I like to think I am full of surprises."

The fop and the brute came up behind them. There was no sign of the short one. Sláine assumed he was hiding in the trees somewhere, most likely with an arrow trained on him just in case he should decide to make any sudden moves.

"So." Sláine turned to look at the fop. "Can I assume you've come to hit me on the head again?"

The fop smirked. "Sorry about that, but you know, given the circumstances, us robbing you and all that, it seemed like a sensible precaution. No hard feelings, eh?"

"None. It wasn't that hard." He winked at Blathnaid conspiratorially. "But just between you and me, you ought to know that I'll pay the compliment back one day."

"Is that a threat?" the fop bristled.

"Nah, a threat sounds more like this: I'm going to cut your bollocks off and make tathlum out of them, you steaming pile of stinking offal. You see the difference?"

The fop lunged forwards, ready to go toe to toe with Sláine. Sláine grinned, enjoying the chance to make the man look like a fool. "Come on then, girly man, let's see if you can take me face to face." He moved up into a tight fighting crouch. His hand touched Brain-Biter's shaft; it was reassuring to know the old axe was there should things get serious and he actually needed it. The pair circled each other until Blathnaid's voice cut across their posturing.

"Now, now boys, stop flexing your muscles. There's so much sweaty manhood in the air, a girl could positively swoon."

"I don't like you," the fop sneered, cracking his knuckles. It was a petty little gesture that was meant to seem threatening but just came across as pitifully inadequate.

"That's all right, girly man. She does," he nodded towards Blathnaid. "That's what matters." He let that sink in for a moment. "Why else do you think she had you wait around for me? I guess you boys weren't doing it for her so she thought she'd bring in a real man."

"Your arrogance is incredible," Blathnaid said but she was smiling as she said it.

Sláine sketched a mocking bow. "It's not arrogance, m'dear, it's natural superiority. Admit it. It gets your blood pumping, doesn't it?"

"You're insufferable, muscle-boy. I'm beginning to think it was a mistake coming back for you," Blathnaid said but for all her protests he saw that she was still smiling.

"Probably," Sláine said. Despite his realisation that all of his problems began and ended with women, he began to think that it could be a fun mistake. "But what is life without some fun?"

Sláine threw his lot in with Blathnaid and her rag-tag bunch of bandits.

It wasn't as if he had a vast array of alternatives.

It didn't matter that they were not particularly effective bandits. The group offered security, food, companionship and, despite his forswearing the supple delights of the female form, Blathnaid. He quickly discovered that their deceit with Mannix had been their first successful robbery in over a year, and the booty they had claimed quickly dwindled when the short one, Coyle, put a cunningly concocted sleeping draught into their evening meal and made off with their ill-gotten gains while they snored. How ironic, Sláine thought. They hadn't even managed to hold on to the booty for a night. This, he quickly came to understand, was indicative of their entire operation.

Last autumn the fop, Íhomar, and the brute, Keegan, had spent a month in gaol while Blathnaid struggled to raise the ransom to buy them out, because they had been caught, drunk, at the scene of a robbery.

"You truly are pitiful," Sláine said, shaking his head as he pictured the pair, paralytic over the barrel of mead they'd found in the back of the ambushed cart.

"It was good stuff," Keegan said. His voice rumbled around in his gut before emerging like an earth tremor. "And robbing is thirsty work. Heck, it was almost worth being locked up for." He chuckled, thoroughly amused by the memory.

They were planning a raid on a caravan they had gotten word of. It was coming up the road from Crumlyn, supposedly loaded with wares. The temptation was too much for them to resist despite the obvious dangers of attacking a likely guarded wagon.

"You have to be the worst robbers in all of Tir-Nan-Og."

"We took your shambles, didn't we?" Íhomar said as if that proved his point beyond a shadow of doubt.

"No great feat," Sláine said. "The red-headed mirth brothers were hardly a match for your obvious guile, and you sucker-punched me on the back of the head."

"Are you being funny?"

"Do I sound it?" Sláine said.

Like everything else they put their hands to, it went horribly wrong.

There were six fully-armoured guards riding alongside the wagon. Sláine recognised their type. These were hard men used to mixing it up. They wouldn't be out of their depth if things got a little rough. The front two wore thick pelts around their shoulders and blue woad tribal markings on their cheeks. They carried iron swords, which surprised him - metal was soft. It always bent in the end, unlike stone. He patted Brain-Biter reassuringly. This, at least, was in their favour. Perhaps if they got lucky the guards' swords would get bent out of shape from beating the life out of the fop, Íhomar.

Blathnaid stepped into the middle of the road, playing the victim. Her clothes were torn and smeared with dirt, her hair bedraggled, one braid undone, the other tangled with brambles as if she had been dragged through a hedge backwards. The boys had done a good job of roughing her up. She looked the part.

Sláine hunkered down behind an outcrop of granite to watch Blathnaid lie through her teeth. She was, he decided, very good at it. He made a mental note not to trust a word she said to him.

"Ho!" the lead rider called, his horse rearing up as he pulled back sharply on its reins.

"Please, sir," Blathnaid called, stumbling theatrically as she took another step forwards. "We were attacked by bandits. My father... my father is dead. They killed him. I don't know what to do."

The rider turned back to the caravan and gestured two of the other guards forwards.

"Bandits, you say? Where?"

"Here," Íhomar said, stepping out from hiding.

"And here," Keegan rumbled, joining him from the other side of the road. The brute looked menacing with a huge wooden club in his hands.

Sláine winced, so much for the element of surprise.

Blathnaid screamed; a pureblooded scream of absolute stark terror.

The noise had all three horses shying, one of the guards tumbling from his saddle, another getting his foot caught in his stirrup as the horse bucked and reared, kicking out. The animal fled in panic, dragging the hapless guard through the dirt.

Sláine chuckled but his amusement quickly turned to dread as the remaining guards dismounted and drew their swords, steel ringing out coldly as they stepped forwards to meet Íhomar and Keegan.

Blathnaid fell to her knees in the middle of the road, whimpering, "Save me... save me."

"Hush, woman," the guard said. "We'll deal with you later." The two others stepped in behind him, forming a tight triangle of steel.

Sláine almost felt bad about not going down to join them, but it was a fleeting sensation that lasted for about as long as it took for the fop to be skewered and the brute to be emasculated. It was not a pretty sight. He died staring at his own manhood lying on the floor like a bloated worm.

"Is there anyone else following you, woman?"

Blathnaid shook her head. "You saved me... how can I ever thank you? What can I do?" She was still on her knees, looking up imploringly at the guard. She did a very good job of ignoring the blood on his sword. "Just tell me."

"You can start by shutting up."

She did.

"Nostrum, read the scene. I'd like to know if there are any more surprises out there."

The one called Nostrum sheathed his sword. He walked slowly in a sweeping circle, crouching occasionally to examine something more closely. The man wouldn't have to be particularly adept at reading the road to know that they were a set of tracks short. Keegan's heavy feet left deep heel and toe impressions, while the fop's slightly rolling gait left side-heavy prints, Blathnaid walked on her toes, and then there were Sláine's, even heel and toe depressions. They all left distinctive tracks. Nostrum walked backwards, lightly, on his heels. He nodded twice to himself as he came to a halt directly below Sláine, precisely where he had abandoned the road for his current perch.

Sláine watched the man, studying how he moved. A thoughtful warrior could learn a lot about his enemy just from watching him move, for instance if he favoured a certain side or ticks or any of many other hints that were there to be read.

The man moved well. There was a grace to his movement that belied his size.

"At least one more, Bragg." He pointed up the hill at the outcropping of granite that Sláine was hunkered down behind.

"He's gone," Blathnaid blurted. "He was my man, we had a fight. He ran when those ruffians jumped our wagon. He's probably run all the way back to Poulawack by now."

"Oh, do stop lying, woman. Do you imagine for a moment that I believe a word that comes out of your mouth?" Bragg said, cuffing Blathnaid across the face. She rocked back on her knees, spitting blood.

I wouldn't if I were you, Sláine thought.

"Poulawack," Blathnaid repeated, stressing the word. She couldn't help herself. She glanced up the hillside to where Sláine was hiding. Sláine cringed inwardly. Thanks for that, nothing like making my life easier. The fact that she didn't weep pitifully but rather had the presence of mind to repeat her message to the man in hiding was all a battle-hardened veteran should need to know she wasn't what she seemed.