Chapter 5
He’d never had such a battle partner. Scáthach amazed him. They moved together as if they’d fought side by side for years. He had begun to think that perhaps she’d been correct. Perhaps he was enough without the berserker.
Then the archers arrived, and when Sentanta met her gaze, he’d recognized the fear—not for herself, but for her students and her daughter.
She asked the question with a look. He was ready and answered with no hesitation.
* * *
Scáthach set a much slower pace returning to Dunscáith.
With spring had come longer days, and as her students were visibly exhausted from training, she allowed them to meander along the coast as they retraced their path.
The sun was sinking behind them and marking the beginning of the gloaming when they reached the halfway point between the pools and the castle, where the sea became Loch Eishort as it etched its way into the isle.
She was thinking that they would make it back to Dunscáith before they lost daylight when the fine hairs along Scáthach’s arms and the back of her neck prickled.
She trusted herself too much to question her body’s reaction.
As usual, Scáthach led the group. Her students trailed along behind her like a double row of ducklings.
Uathach and Tabiti were in the rear, riding beside each other and talking easily.
Moving with nonchalance, Scáthach turned her horse and whistled for Leannan.
The big deerhound had been trotting along the rocky bank sniffing out crabs, but she quickly returned to Scáthach’s side.
Fergal and Cuchulainn rode behind her. Scáthach smiled at the two of them and raised her voice. “I’m going to speak with Uathach and Tabiti about tomorrow’s training. I’d like you two to lead the group until I return.”
“Aye,” said Fergal, nodding.
As their horses passed Scáthach, quickly and quietly she added, “We’re being watched. Do nothing except increase our pace to a trot but be on guard.”
Cuchulainn’s amber eyes met hers and he nodded slightly.
She continued down the line, keeping her body loose and her smile wide as Fergal and Cuchulainn urged their horses to a trot, and the group kept pace.
Warriors she passed greeted her, and in turn she murmured a warning to them—she took pride in how they responded.
There was barely a discernable difference in their demeanor.
They continued to talk and laugh. The pace increased to a steady, ground-eating trot.
Only the sharpest of eyes would notice that backs straightened and hands suddenly rested on sword hilts.
“Mother!” Uathach grinned as she rode up. “Tabiti and I were just discussing how well the students did today. Every one of them . . .” Her words faded as she met her mother’s gaze.
Scáthach guided her horse between the two seasoned warriors. She smiled and nodded. “Indeed!” she spoke loudly. “They have done well.” The queen dropped her voice. “We’re being watched. The students know it.”
“An ambush?” Tabiti kept her voice low. She even smiled at Scáthach like she’d said something amusing.
“Perhaps.”
“Just ahead the trail narrows between those two slabs of rock. We’ll have to pass through single file,” Uathach said softly, and then laughed as if her mother had just told a joke. “Excellent for an ambush.”
Scáthach threw back her head and laughed, and then whispered, “Agreed. Uathach, move to the center of the line. Tabiti, remain guarding the rear. I’ll lead the students around the boulders—fast. All we need to do is get within sight of the castle and the Shadow Guard will ride out to join us if we’re under attack. ”
The two women smiled in response and nodded. When Scáthach kneed her horse into a canter and headed back along the line, Uathach went with her, pulling up when she reached the center of the group.
Scáthach halted her horse and raised her arm to signal she wanted their attention. The students stopped and turned steady gazes on her.
“As your last drill today, we will race back to Dunscáith!” Scáthach shouted.
“If any one of you can beat me, I will proclaim tomorrow a day of rest!” Then she whirled her horse around, dug her heels into the young stallion’s sides, and trilled a war cry as she shot away from the group—and away from the narrowing path that hugged the shoreline.
Leannan kept pace with her as the group raced after them.
Scáthach leaned over her horse’s neck, her sharp gaze scanning the concealing boulders she skirted.
As she passed the two rock giants, she saw them.
She counted twelve bows as the ambushers suddenly revealed themselves. The sky rained arrows.
She urged her stallion on, leading her students out of bow range as swiftly as possible.
She heard the scream of a horse behind her as one went down.
She did not slow. Scáthach trusted Uathach and Tabiti completely.
If the fallen warrior lived, they would be certain she or he wasn’t left behind.
It was Scáthach’s responsibility to get the group to safety, which meant she could not stop.
Scáthach turned her head to look back in time to see Tabiti pull Muirenn up behind her. Then warriors who had been hidden moved out of the concealment of the boulders and raced after them, trying to reach their right flank. Scáthach’s stomach tightened. There were so many of them.
The Queen of Shadow had left her castle with only the score of student warriors she was training and her two senior warriors. She counted at least twice that number of ambushers.
“Faster!” she shouted at the students behind her. If they could stay ahead of the enemy until they got close enough to Dunscáith for the sentries to see them, the Shadow Guard would ride out and make short work of the ambushers. If . . .
Suddenly Cuchulainn was racing beside her. “Scáthach!” he shouted, and pointed.
More ambushers had appeared on their left.
The new group was as large as the first. Her twenty-three could handle fifty warriors.
Even exhausted after a hard day’s training, they were talented enough and strong enough.
But twice that? To defeat twice that, she knew she needed more experienced warriors.
Both groups were gaining on them, but the warriors who had appeared to their left were the closest, near enough for her to see the sigil they carried as the ambushers thundered toward them.
Scáthach’s jaw set. It made sense that the horses were gaining on them.
The sigil of the serpent dragon Nidhogg and horses that fast could only belong to one person—her sister Aife.
It was good to know one’s enemy.
It was better to know one’s territory, and Scáthach knew the Isle of Skye intimately.
Scáthach veered to the left, away from the shoreline, as she attempted to cut in front of the group gaining on them.
“Faster!” she shouted, and her students urged their horses on, though the only one of the group who caught up to her was Cuchulainn, whose horse kept pace on one side of her while Leannan raced at her other side.
The ground beneath their horses’ hooves changed as Scáthach found the little inland road the island’s farmers often used to bring produce to the castle.
She and her group were able to pull away from the enemy a little, as the ambushers were forced to slow across the landscape of the isle that was littered with marble and dips, crags and streams.
“There!” Scáthach shouted as the rough hillock she’d been racing toward finally appeared. It peaked like a miniature mountain and held so many boulders of marble that from a distance it appeared as if someone had tossed salt on it.
She and Cuchulainn reached the hillock just ahead of the rest of their group. Scáthach leaped off her horse before it came to a stop. Cuchulainn mirrored her actions. She slapped her horse’s rump, and the lathered animal raced away. Cuchulainn’s mount followed it.
“Have the rest of the group send their horses away, too,” she told Cuchulainn.
“I can call the berserker,” he spoke quickly. “It is not difficult when battle is near.”
“No,” Scáthach said.
“But he will even our numbers. When the red rage is on me, I fight as fifty men.”
“Can you control him?” she asked.
He looked down and shook his head.
“Then you will not call the red rage.”
“But there are too many of them!” he cried.
“Sentanta, you are enough without the berserker. Trust yourself, and if you cannot do that, trust me.” She shifted her attention to Leannan.
Scáthach bent, holding the big deerhound’s face between her hands.
The hound was panting, but Scáthach knew her dog as well as she knew her island. Leannan was nowhere near exhaustion.
She stared into her hound’s eyes and gave her the command. “Home!”
Leannan whined, licked her face, and then sprinted away.
Scáthach knew when her sentries saw the deerhound racing home alone, they would immediately understand something was very wrong.
Leannan would lead them back to Scáthach.
Her guard would follow the hound with the full force of one hundred extraordinary warriors, and they would make short work of the ambushers.
Scáthach’s group sent their horses away and she noted Muirenn’s limp, her bloody forehead, and that Tabiti remained by her side, steadying her.
“Now climb!” Scáthach ran ahead of them, attacking the hillock with long, sure strides.
As she reached the peak, she faced them.
Every warrior in her group focused on her.
Their color was high. They were breathing hard, but there was no sense of panic among them.
They focused on her and didn’t so much as glance over their shoulders at the riders thundering toward them.
They made her proud.