Chapter Forty-Five
T he next evening when Ardahl and Liadan ventured out to the same place to train, they found a small gathering of women waiting. Still more filtered in after they arrived, drifting up in ones or twos.
All carried weapons in their hands—if weapons they could be called. Most were makeshift at best. An ordinary household did not run to surplus weapons. Swords and even knives were valuable and hard earned.
So these women came with what they could find. What, indeed, they might snatch up if their homes were attacked. Pokers from the hearth. Hoes and barley hooks. Fishing gaffs and boning knives.
They all brought something. And they all held their weapons tentatively, though, young and old, they stood firm.
Ardahl stared at them in horror. He had not foreseen this, though perhaps he should have. Fearghal had given him permission to train Liadan, not half the women of the settlement.
What to do?
He glanced at Liadan uncertainly. She’d refused to admit this morning how sore she was from yesterday’s training. He’d been able to tell, though, by how carefully she moved.
And he’d been gentle with her.
Was he to be responsible so for bruising other men’s women? Mothers, wives, sisters, daughters. They all gazed at him with similar expressions of hope and desperation.
“Ye had best all go home,” he told them. “I ha’ permission to train Mistress Liadan. No others.”
A woman stepped forward. Of middle years, she clutched for a weapon a length of iron so rusted, it glowed bright orange.
“I was there, master. I am a servant in the chief’s house. He did no’ deny ye permission to train others o’ us.”
“Only because he did no’ expect all o’ ye to come to me.” Ardahl waved a hand. “Else he would ha’ done.”
She lifted her chin. “My mistress sent me. Chief Fearghal’s wife. She says someone among us must be ready to fight, if he is awa’.”
Ardahl puffed out a great breath. “Master Dornach will no’ like it. Nor will your menfolk.”
“My man,” declared one woman stonily, “is dead.”
They all stared at Ardahl, unmoving.
“Very well. Form up ranks, and pay heed.”
*
It might have been amusing, had it not been so pitiful. Ardahl was not in the mood to laugh. The assortment of weapons proved less prepossessing than the women who wielded them. The length of bright orange iron snapped at the first pass. Its possessor fought on with the remnant.
By the end of that session, they once again had an audience, silent and grim faced. Apparently none of them ran off to tell Dornach, because he did not arrive puffing flames. The dire little session drew to a halt when the women began to stumble and sway on their feet.
No one was bleeding. Ardahl considered that a victory.
Moreover, all the women gave him grateful glances despite the abuse. As they drifted away, one stepped up to him.
“Same time tomorrow, master?”
If he had not been brought up before Fearghal and chastened by then. Banished from the clan. “Aye.”
When the others had gone, he turned to Liadan. She drooped with exhaustion, sword trailing on the ground, stray hairs stuck to her cheeks and neck with sweat. At least this time she’d thought to braid the bulk of her hair, to keep it out of her eyes.
That thought brought another—her braiding his hair for him, an intimate act. Her fingers weaving the tresses, brushing against his skin. He half closed his eyes in a moment of remembered bliss.
“Ah, and what is that look supposed to mean?” she asked. “Was I truly so bad?”
“No’ bad at all.” She’d been better than the others. Of course, she had a proper weapon. “I was just thinking—”
“What?” She took a step closer to him.
“How much I want to kiss ye.” He should not say it, he truly should not. But there was no one left to hear, and anyway, his whole body longed for her.
A gleam took hold in her eyes. “No’ half so much as I wish to kiss ye. I am that surprised I have the strength for it.”
He smiled. She had heart, this woman he adored.
“Let us make an agreement, Ardahl—since we are no’ at leave to touch one another. When I look at ye—this way—that is as good as a kiss. And when ye wink at me—”
“Wink?”
“Ye know.” She gave an overtly emphasized wink. “Ye ha’ kissed me back.”
“I am no’ at all certain I can wink. Both my eyes tend to close at once.”
She smiled still more broadly. She stood so near, he could reach out for her. He had to fight the impulse.
“A blink, then.”
He blinked at her and laughed. A miracle, that he could still laugh. “Folk will think there is somewhat amiss wi’ my eyes, I will be blinking at ye so often.”
“The women will no’ care. They adore ye. But no’ so much,” she breathed in a whisper, “as I do.”
Suddenly their connection became deadly serious. “Liadan—”
“I know. I should no’ say it. Ye are as good as my brother.”
“Go home and put a poultice on the worst o’ your bruises. I am goin’ to my post.”
“Be safe,” she beseeched him as she moved past, not looking at him now. “For ye carry my heart.”
*
The next morning when Ardahl left his guard post and walked home through the misty morning, for it looked like rain, folk sidled up to him—mostly men, many of them aged. A few women. A few younger men, all wearing sheepish expressions.
They handed him weapons. Passed them to him in a secretive fashion with whispered words.
“A sword I do no’ use anymore.”
“Have this for the women.”
“It belonged to my brother, it did.”
Ardahl accepted the offerings because he did not know what else to do. When he got home, he placed them in a clattering pile inside the door, beside his own.
Mam and Liadan, who were both there making breakfast, stared in astonishment. He shrugged in response.
“Passed to me by tribesmen, mostly, on my way home.”
“Our men worry about their women as much as they worry for themselves, it seems,” Mam commented a bit dryly.
As usual, Liadan followed Ardahl out to watch him wash. “All quiet on guard duty?” she asked, touching him with nothing but her gaze.
“Aye. The men are jumpy, though. Every sound sends them scrambling.”
“The women too. And I—”
She stopped speaking abruptly, so he looked up at her, hands running with water.
“I have this feeling,” she said, “one I cannot dismiss, that somewhat is going to happen. Somewhat terrible.”
“Aye, so.”
“You have it also?”
“I think everyone has it.”
Such was proved the case. By the time Ardahl awoke later in time for training, the pile of weapons inside the door had grown.
“People have been dropping them off all day,” said Liadan, busy braiding her hair. “I ha’ no idea where they all came from. Most are old and no’ very good. But better than what we had, and a far sight better than nothing.”
He stepped up to her. When she raised her arms to braid her hair, he saw a spreading bruise on one of them. He touched it softly.
“I hurt ye.”
“Nay, ’twas no’ ye. Aenodh from the chief’s house gave me a mighty swat there.”
“Liadan.” Emotions fair overwhelmed him, and he drew her to her feet. He had no idea where his mam might be. Not here. “I canna bear the thought o’ ye being battered and bashed about.”
“Is it no’ better than the thought o’ returning fro’ battle to find me dead?”
Agonized, he whispered, “Do no’ even think—”
“Yet ’tis a truth with which we live.”
“Och, lass.” He drew her into his arms and up against him, closed his eyes against the rampant feelings pounding through him. “I would give my life to defend ye. Ye know that.”
“And ye may, yet.” She backed off just far enough to gaze into his eyes. “If we have another life after this one, I pray it will be together. I ask Brigid for that every day. Life after life wi’ ye, Ardahl.”
That made him smile, if sadly. “Plait my hair for me, lass. Help me gather up all these weapons. We will go.”