Chapter 75
LXXV
EVERYTHING MOVES SLOWLY. DISTANTLY. IT IS A KILLING blow.
Even if I didn’t know it from the searing of my stomach or from the helpless groan that wheezes past my lips, I can hear it in the raging protests from the walls.
I manage to look up through the haze. Tara is there, I think.
Supported by Fearghus. Her expression is murderous rage.
Her father, on the other hand, is watching impassively. I don’t know whether he feels nothing for what he is seeing, or whether it’s simply not to show weakness to Gallchobhar or his people, but it is the right choice.
“You see, Rónán.” Gallchobhar is breathing heavily. Steel still buried, his hand on the hilt. “Such is the fate of all you favour.” He pulls me close, hand behind my head, smiling in my face, his breath a hot stench in my nostrils.
Then he yanks the sword out and whips it around. A silver arc flicking crimson in the clean dawn light.
Rónán’s head rolls to the side as his corpse slumps to the wood underfoot, neck spouting bubbling blood.
Silence for a second. Two. Then an outraged scream goes up from the walls, fury and insults hailing down, and even the soldiers around us blanch, shocked eyes darting from Rónán’s headless corpse to each other and then back again.
There is still much I don’t know about this culture, but Rónán surrendered himself to Fiachra and I know that a king—Old Ways or not, enemy combatant or not—would expect to have been shown far more respect in death. Even from Gallchobhar.
There is shouting from within the walls; I can’t make it out through the pain, but it sounds as though the warriors within are clamouring to fight.
What Gallchobhar wants, I assume. To draw them out before Fiachra comes back.
Claim the victory for himself. Everything is vague, remote.
The weight of the silver arm drags at my shoulder, pulls at muscle, leaning me to the side.
I think in the background I hear the Caer’s gate open. War cries and the clashing of steel.
As dawn’s first rays touch the lake, Gallchobhar kicks me over the edge and into the water.
It is icy. I am so tired, so hurt, that the shock barely registers.
My silver arm is an anvil and I weakly thrash to free my real arm from its bonds, but Gallchobhar did his work far too well.
I sink. The clean sunlight seems to follow me, always just above me.
Just light enough to see, though the surface soon fades from view.
The water is fresh and clear but there are only reeds and muck down here.
Down, down. Too deep. I land, metal arm first, in the sludge.
Still holding my breath, though I don’t know why at this point. Instinct, I suppose.
And then my father is there.
It takes me a second to understand as he crouches beside me, movements exaggeratedly slow thanks to the water. Barely recognisable in the murk, hair floating around him. I see an echo of Cari, and I almost let out my remaining breath in a sob.
But it is him. No pulse of Will from him, but he is here anyway, at the end.
Blood drifts like smoke from my stomach.
I am barely hanging on. He is tugging at the bonds that hold my good arm behind my back.
Freeing it. But he sees that I am fading, and fading fast. There is urgency to his actions. I still trust him to save me.
He rips the rope loose. Crouches by me as I remain on my knees, silver arm still anchoring me to the soft lake floor.
He unloops the medallion from his arm, and secures it around my neck.
A pulse in the water, a jolt as it settles against my chest. Energy.
Life. The agony in my stomach eases. My lungs no longer feel as though they are about to burst. It takes me a moment to understand, and when I do, I shake my head madly.
No. I do not want him to do this. Not for me.
Not again. I scrabble to take it off, to give it back.
He smiles at me, and restrains my hand firmly. Dark bruises beginning to blush around his neck. Impossibly, barely visible in the murky water, smiling. Comforting me. Him comforting me.
I am a child again, and all I want is for my father to be here. All I want is for him to stay.
His embrace is long and gentle. Cupping the back of my head, forehead against mine. I look at him pleadingly. Still weighed by my arm. I want to tell him what I should have, three nights ago. He told me that all he wanted was for me to be my own man.
But all I ever wanted, all I still want, is to be like him.
I want to tell him that I love him. I want to tell him just how much I love him. One last time. I mouth the words.
His eyes soften and he mouths it back. His arms slacken. He grits his teeth and makes one final effort, gripping my shoulder.
Courage, he adds. Still smiling.
Then he lets go, the light gone from his eyes.
I howl my pain into the water as he drifts into the darkness, taken by the current toward the river’s mouth. I clench my fists against the wash of grief, against the pain, against the nightmarish hopelessness of everything that is happening.
The air is gone from my lungs but still I am aware, still conscious.
The blood pumping from my stomach has eased, I think.
It aches, hasn’t magically healed. But my father’s medallion is flooding me with Will, keeping me alive.
Preserving me, just as he said it would.
Refusing to let me die as I sit, forlorn, on the bottom of the lake.
After a few seconds, I sense the faintest of pulses. Unnoticeable if it were not so close. Right behind my eyes.
And I realise that I am holding my head in my hands.
Dawn’s light is burning its way down to me as I hold my left arm up in front of my face. Turn it back and forth wonderingly. Slowly, disbelievingly, flex the fingers as they glint silver in the scything rays.
I can feel my hand.
The weight of it is gone. It’s not just the water. I can feel it, in the same way I could feel my spear when I used the nasceann. And yet, this is even deeper. Something more. I reach across and loosen the painful leather straps that bound the arm to my shoulder. It does not fall away.
I’ve imbued it. I know it’s true, can feel its certainty even as the impossibility of it staggers me. Just like in Fornax. Some distant instinct rather than knowledge, a reflex that I shouldn’t have and yet somehow do. The image of the arm locked in my mind.
Finally, through all the confusion and disbelief and continued pain, I stand.
Push aside my grief and understand that whatever is going on, now is not the time to question it.
For a wild moment I consider chasing the current, trying to find my father’s body and returning the amulet that gave him life.
But I know that if I did, I would not survive. I know that he would not want me to.
And I know from what I heard before Gallchobhar tried to drown me, that the battle for Caer áras is beginning up above.
I start to walk back in the direction of the shore; I may not feel the weight of the arm, but I have no idea how it will go if I try to swim with it.
My surrounds become lighter. The water clearer as I climb.
The green and murk is behind me. Flashing steel ripples up ahead through the lake’s undulating shallows.
I press forward at a steady, determined pace. My head breaks the surface. As soon as my mouth reaches air, I breathe in. Not that I need to, not with the medallion on. But it is an unsettling thing to not, and my body feels immediately stronger for the act.
Nobody notices me at first. Most of the warriors are facing toward the gate, where the fighting is heaviest; the gate itself is open and I cannot see what is happening due to the crush of people, but I imagine the conflict is significant and bloody.
Gallchobhar has retreated to the shore but is still standing there with his men, watching.
Sword in one massive hand and spear in the other. A pleased expression on his face.
“Gallchobhar!” I roar it, the name ripping from my throat as I wade higher. Chest emerging from the lake. The sounds of battle are loud, but we’re still far enough from the worst of it that my voice echoes over the water.
He turns. So do most of the men on the shore. They take a few breaths to spot me. Gallchobhar’s reaction is the one I am focused on, though. His eyes meet mine and he just stares for a second, blank. Not understanding.
I take another step. Another. Uneasy murmurs ripple through the ranks of his men and more and more turn away from the gate, toward me.
I take another step. Another. My long hair drips as it hangs about my face.
The tip of my glistening silver arm emerges from the water and there is an audible exhalation from the crowd.
I keep walking. Gaze fixed on Gallchobhar.
I know how this will look to these people—me emerging from the lake at dawn, miraculously still alive—and part of me doesn’t want to take advantage of that, but I know I have to.
Battles for these men are less about strategy and more about courage.
About conviction. Once their fury at Gallchobhar’s treachery ran its course, those in Caer áras would remember they were fighting for a dead man.
But now? Now it will seem as though the gods themselves have chosen them for victory.
The water reaches my waist, and I raise my silver hand high. Clench it deliberately into a fist, so that all can see.
A moan goes through the onlookers. Everything seems quieter. There is still the sound of metal on metal, but it feels more sporadic now, calls coming from both sides to the combatants. They are slowly breaking apart. Retreating.
Before anyone overcomes their surprise, I need a weapon. There is a pulse on the shore at the edge of the causeway, mere steps away. I move to it; if I’m rejected as unworthy again, I’ll simply do what I did in Fornax and take the Will from it.