Chapter Nineteen
T he sound of weeping filled the stand of trees where Liadan and her party had come to rest. They were supposed to keep silent, yet Liadan did not suppose a group of displaced women, many with children and guarded only by old men who shared but a few weapons, could hold their tears.
They had bunched up in small groups high on the flank of the hill. Up any higher, they would lose the cover of the trees. Terror gripped them all, and as the sun came up it was joined by grief.
Below them, the settlement lay in ruins, great gouts of smoke trailing up like desperate prayers. Here and there flames still leaped. Liadan could see distant figures rushing about. Trying to put the fires out?
She did not know who remained alive down there. Who lay dead. Indeed, the women around her spoke of nothing else. Whispers of “My man.” “My son.” The old men spoke instead of the attack, pondering how and why it had come about.
Liadan, having the two most dear to her in all the world at her side, was fortunate. She had only to worry for friends. For cousins.
For Ardahl MacCormac.
She should not worry for him, the serpent. But her last sight of him, Conall’s sword in hand, covered in wounds and racing into the fray, had burned into her mind.
He might even now lie dead. What would it mean to her, and hers, if he did?
They would be free of him. Free of his presence in the hut. In their lives.
With no one to look out for them. Stand for them.
He it was who had got them safe away, neglecting his own mother to do so.
She looked at her mam, who had come awake and sat miraculously quiet at Flanna’s side. No draughts here. Liadan did not know if the healers had survived. If the druids had. The chief and his family.
“’Tis no’ over, this,” said one of the old men who stood in a group near Liadan, Flanna, and their mother. “Dacha will have come to take back his brother. If he has not got him, he will come again. If he has taken him, they will return to destroy us.”
Destroy?
Liadan tipped up her head and regarded the beautiful morning. The clear blue sky. The sparkling stream below them—the same that meandered around the foot of the hill and eventually formed the boundary of their lands. The sweet light flowing over the hills.
She had never known any place but this, and she loved it dearly. How might it be destroyed?
Yet she’d learned, had she not, that the things one loved most could be lost. Her da. And Conall.
Och, Conall. I wish ye were here .
Flanna put her arm around Mam and drew her closer. It seemed as strange for Mam to be quiet as had her endless lamenting, and she had a hollow look in her eyes. One shared by the other women.
Liadan learned toward the both of them. “Mam, are ye—”
“Someone is coming,” one of the lads, no more than thirteen or so, called out.
Everyone stared down the slope. A party of three men had broken from the edge of the settlement and jogged toward them.
“Should we hide?” one of the women asked.
“Nay. They are our own,” declared an aged man, and he started down through the trees to meet the approaching men.
Three members of the guard, they were. Liadan knew one of them—Marc, who had been friendly with Conall. Streaked with dirt, soot, and blood, they climbed the slope and addressed the crowd.
“Ye can come home,” said Marc. “The invaders are gone and the fires almost out. The chief wishes to talk wi’ us all.”
“How many dead?” a woman cried, and Marc shook his head.
“No way to number them yet.”
A woman with a tear-streaked face and two small children appealed, “My husband—”
“I do no’ know, mistress.”
They started off in an untidy chain, stumbling and stopping. The guards flanked them. Liadan, with Mam leaning heavily upon her, found Marc at her side.
She knew she shouldn’t ask, but couldn’t help it. “Ha’ ye seen Ardahl MacCormac?”
“Him?” The man raised his eyebrows at her.
What was that supposed to mean?
“Is he alive, d’ye know?”
“I do not, but he’s hard to kill, that one. Though none would argue wi’ trying.”
Liadan withdrew from him hastily. Aye, Ardahl might be a serpent. Responsible for Conall’s death, though he claimed otherwise. Yet such hate, at such a time, seemed to dim the very air.
“Our house,” Mam whispered in a quivering voice. “Is it still standing?”
It was, and in much the state they’d left it. They stopped there first, and Flanna wept to see all their things. Grateful as Liadan was, she felt guilty about it. Many had not been so fortunate.
The events of the night seemed to have startled Mam out of her deep grief. She sat silent beside the fire where they put her, hands hanging beside her knees. The last draught had worn off.
Liadan tried to persuade Mam and Flanna to stay at the hut while she went to the clan meeting. “I will hear all the chief has to say.”
But they insisted on coming, so the three of them, with Mam supported in the middle, went off.
The clan—what was left of it—gathered near the well at the center of the settlement, the hall being no more than a pillar of dark smoke. The spring was said to be a holy one and had existed here long before the first of them had built a round house. A good place for the distraught clan members to ground themselves.
They gathered in silence, save for the crying bairns. Some folk still filtered down from the hills to which they’d fled. The rest, in small family groups or alone, stood with the shock showing in their eyes.
Scanning the crowd, Liadan saw no glimpse of Ardahl. But his mam stood there on the far side, her shawl up over her hair as if she hid beneath it.
She stood alone.
Liadan’s heart began to pound in big, heavy beats. Had Ardahl indeed lost his life? Had he marched back into the fray only to die there, fighting while wounded?
For an instant, the bright morning broke up into dots all around her, and she swayed on her feet. Then a figure stepped up at Maeve’s side.
A tall figure, spare of build, wide of shoulder with a mop of wild auburn hair and blood showing at arm and chest.
Again she swayed on her feet. She tried to catch Ardahl’s eye and failed.
Chief Fearghal began to speak. The chief himself showed wounds, proving he had been in the thick of the fighting. A bright bloom of red on his arm. Split knuckles on one hand. Face blackened with soot.
He spoke loudly and clearly, in measured tones. Told them the attack had come from their enemies to the west, that Chief Dacha, armed with surprise, had taken back his brother after firing the great hall.
There had been deaths on both sides. “Many of our valiant gave their lives to defend us,” as he put it. “We will honor each one of them. And I vow to ye—Dacha will feel the sting of our swords in revenge.”
He went on to say the warriors’ hall, which had escaped the flames, would be used to house those whose huts had burned, until they could be rebuilt. And he urged those who still had houses to open them to friends and relations.
“What one o’ us has,” he said gravely, putting an arm around his wife, “belongs to us all.”
Liadan’s gaze moved again to Maeve, who looked so isolated even though her son stood beside her. Had she lost her hut? If so, should Liadan offer to house her?
Who else would?
“Mam,” she began. The decision should by rights belong to her mother. But Mam’s eyes still looked vacant, empty of understanding.
The chief’s speech done, Liadan crossed to the group on the other side. Ardahl watched her come, the expression in his hazel eyes guarded and intent.
Exchanging a glance with him, she felt…wary. Awkward. So glad to see him still alive, she had no words for it.
“Mistress MacCormac.” She reached out and took Maeve’s hands. “Your house—did it survive the fire?”
The woman shook her head, her eyes on the ground. “Nay. I was able to save some things, but—”
Liadan squeezed her fingers. “Then ye must come and stay wi’ us. Just until—until things can be made right.”
Maeve’s gaze came up and met hers. “Your mother will no’ want me there.”
“Your son is already with us. I feel it is only right.”
Maeve shook her head. “I have lost my son.”
“He stands here beside ye.”
“He is Beith MacAert’s son now.”
Liadan shot a look at Ardahl. His face appeared drawn with weariness or pain, smudged with dirt and ash.
“Persuade her,” she bade him. “Where else will she go?”
He said nothing. Liadan turned and walked away back to her charges, not quite able to dismiss the gladness lodged in her heart. He lived. He would be returning to the hut.
She should not rejoice in that, yet she did.