Chapter 5 #3
Relief was a wave engulfing Scáthach. “Uathach! Tabiti! The guard is here! Attack!” She didn’t wait a moment longer.
As Tabiti and Uathach led the charge down the hillock, she rushed from her crouch and tackled Cuchulainn, knocking him to the ground.
He roared again furiously, though when his reddening eyes met hers, she saw she’d reached him in time.
The rage had not fully engulfed him. “Stop the berserker.” She spoke calmly to him, as if it was just the two of them and they weren’t in the middle of a bloody battle.
“My guard has arrived. Look.” She pointed up, and Cuchulainn’s red gaze lifted to follow her finger to see that the new volley of arrows wasn’t arching down toward them, but showered the enemy with death instead.
He drew several long breaths. The flush of his face faded. His eyes softened and returned to their yellowish amber color.
“Under control?” Scáthach asked.
“Yes.”
She stood and held out a hand to help him to his feet, and then together they charged down the rocky hill in time to see the Shadow Guard, looking like avenging gods in their black uniforms, thunder around the hillock trilling their battle cry.
At the sight of them, Drest leaped on his stallion’s back and shouted for his people to retreat.
Those who could raced away with him while a smaller group was cut off from their mounts and had to face Scáthach’s grim-faced guard.
It was over quickly. By the time Scáthach and Cuchulainn joined her people, Drest and his much-reduced group had pulled ahead of the Dunscáith guard who had taken chase, easily outdistancing them. The group Drest left behind was quickly cut down.
Scáthach jogged the last of the way down the hillock. “Amage!” she called to Tabiti’s partner and the warrior leading the Shadow Guard. “Do not kill them all! I need information!”
Amage strode to meet her, wading through bodies and blood and gore. “Are you injured, my queen?”
“Not I, but Uathach and Muirenn and Cuchulainn—” Her words broke off as Leannan rushed to her, whining and pressing close to sniff her mistress as if to be sure she was unharmed.
“Uathach and Muirenn are already being taken back to the castle,” said Amage as she joined Scáthach.
“And I am fine.” As Cuchulainn came to her, he snapped the shaft of the arrow protruding from his shoulder and then reached around, grasped the arrowhead that had gone through his body, and with a yank, pulled the remainder of it from his shoulder.
Blood spurted from the wound and Scáthach began to berate him, but even before she could finish the reprimand the blood slowed to a trickle, and she remembered his parentage.
Cuchulainn wasn’t immortal, but like her, his divine blood made him difficult to kill, and not just because they were stronger and faster than most mortals.
Their ability to heal quickly often saved their lives.
Scáthach nodded to him. “Infection can still set in. Be sure that is cleaned thoroughly.” Then she ruffled the big dog’s ears to soothe her and asked, “What of the enemy? I need one alive.”
“There are none left alive,” Tabiti said grimly, wiping blood from her face with the back of an almost equally blood-spattered sleeve.
“Drest didn’t even leave them mounts. Half of the horses that raced away with him had no riders.
” Her lip curled in disgust. “He sacrificed his warriors so he could escape, but he made sure his swift horses lived.”
“Not one left alive?” Scáthach said as she began to move among the fallen, though she quickly saw that Tabiti had not exaggerated.
Every ambusher was dead. “Place the dead together,” she told Amage.
“Build a pyre for them and their horses. I will return after I check on Uathach and Muirenn to offer libations to Odin’s Valkyries and light it. ”
“Why?” Cuchulainn asked. “They ambushed us and almost killed us. Why show them the respect of a proper burial? I would toss them into the sea to feed your mother’s sturgeons.”
The warriors around Scáthach went silent.
She turned to Cuchulainn. “I do not hold enmity in my heart for these warriors. They fought valiantly and were abandoned unjustly by their leader. They have done their duty. I hold Drest and Aife responsible for this ambush, not the warriors who made the mistake of following them. They have paid for that mistake with their lives. I know something of the dead and I would not have their spirits roaming my isle as they seek Valhalla.”
Cuchulainn’s blood- and gore-speckled brow furrowed. “If any of them were still alive, would you not end them after you got the information you needed?”
“No. I would have my healer tend them and then I would ransom them back to Lethra. When I kill, it is in battle. It is to defend my people and myself. Do Ulstermen know nothing of mercy?” she asked, meeting his gaze steadily.
Cuchulainn shifted from one foot to another before he answered. “It is not one of the strengths of the warriors from Ulster.”
“Then Cuchulainn, I want you in particular to understand that mercy does not equate to weakness. Our greatest strengths can often be found in forgiveness. I would that you take that knowledge back to Ulster even more than the successful completion of our battle feats.” She held his gaze until he looked away.
* * *
Surrounded by her guard, Scáthach rode back to the hillock late that night.
Their mullein torches made a beacon in the night, illuminating the pyre and the bodies of forty-two ambushers and seven horses among the logs that had been dampened with tar.
With Tabiti at her side, she poured a circle of mead around the pyre, hailed the Valkyries, and then lit the tinder.
She paused before the burning pyre and murmured a prayer for the spirits of the dead Norsemen to find peace in Valhalla.
As she mounted her horse to return to the castle, Scáthach noticed Cuchulainn was with the group of guards accompanying her. He urged his horse to trot beside her.
“May I ask you a question, Queen Scáthach?”
Her gaze flicked to him. “Just Scáthach. And yes, you may.”
He cleared his throat. “Scáthach, earlier today you told me your divine mother values you, even loves you.”
“Correct.”
“We came very close to being killed today,” he continued.
“Is that your question?” she asked.
He shook his head. “No. What I wonder is why, if your mother loves and values you so, she did not come to your aid today.”
“I did not call her.” Scáthach paused, thinking that she had never called for her mother to save her. “Also, Béfionn is in Valhalla visiting my father. I am not entirely sure she would be able to hear my invocation there. Regardless”—she met his amber gaze and smiled—“I prefer to save myself.”
He held her gaze and said softly, “Because you are enough.”
Her smile widened at his understanding. “Yes. Because I am enough.”