Chapter 6 #4
Uathach’s breathing deepened. The color flowed back into her face. Her eyelids fluttered and opened. She gazed up at her mother and touched her face with a shaking hand. “What did you do?” she whispered.
“Nothing I wouldn’t do over and over again if it means I do not lose you.” Scáthach pressed her forehead to her daughter’s bloody brow and wept.
Tabiti fell to her knees beside them. She brushed back Uathach’s hair gently and used a strip ripped from her tunic to wipe the blood and sweat away to expose the gash that still wept scarlet.
Uathach flinched and Tabiti murmured soft reassurances.
“You will heal, but this will leave a scar,” Tabiti told Uathach.
Uathach’s smile was shaky, “The Goddess of the Underworld once told me scars add character to one’s body.”
Scáthach used the back of her sleeve to wipe the tears from her face. “So says a goddess who doesn’t scar. But that does sound like your grandmother. Did she tell you that after you fell and scarred your knee?”
Uathach started to nod and then sucked in a sharp breath at the pain the movement caused.
Scáthach touched her cheek. “Can you stand, or shall I send for a litter?”
“No litter,” Uathach said sharply, cutting her eyes to the students, who had joined them but were clustered far enough away to not crowd them.
Scáthach gritted her teeth to keep from shouting, I do not care what they think!
I only care that you survived! But she knew in her daughter’s place she, too, would not want to be carried away in a litter in front of her students.
She could not ask her daughter to be less proud or less concerned about her students.
Scáthach patted Uathach’s arm and nodded.
“Tabiti, Cuchulainn, help me lift my daughter into my chariot. I’ll drive her back to the castle.
” She stood, noting that Cuchulainn hadn’t moved to join the rest of the group.
As soon as she spoke, he nodded and closed the few feet between them.
They steadied Uathach and half-carried, half-guided her to the cart.
When Uathach was seated, leaning against the inside of the cart, Scáthach faced the students.
“Go ahead of me to the castle. You have done well today and you deserve a hearty meal and a midday break before your bareback riding drills.”
The group nodded and turned to their chariots. Without being asked, Cuchulainn strode toward the water and the stallion who still stood there, head low, breathing hard and trembling.
“Sentanta.”
He stopped and turned around, looking back at Scáthach. As the students watched, the Queen of Shadow went to him and bowed deeply, respectfully saying, “Thank you for my daughter’s life.”
Cuchulainn took her shoulders in his hands and straightened her. “You need not bow to me. It was your feat that saved her; I only did what you would have done for any of us.”
“Cuchulainn! That feat! The leap! It was magnificent. I shall sing ballads about how you saved the Queen of Shadow’s daughter from certain death,” said the bard between gasping breaths as he jogged through the sand up to them.
Filled with a rage so hot it burned away everything except her need to make the idiot of a man pay, Scáthach whirled around, fisted her hand and struck the bard’s face.
He staggered back, and she followed, stalking him as her eyes narrowed with rage.
“It was your foolishness that caused this.” She spoke with deadly calm.
“But! But! The viper!”the bard stuttered.
“Adders do not attack unless provoked!”
Scáthach hit him again. Sechan tripped over a rock and fell hard on his backside, coughing and spitting out blood, saliva, and a tooth.
Scáthach closed the space between them and stood over him.
She leaned down and lifted her balled fist, preparing to strike him again and again until his face bled as freely as her child’s.
“Mama.”
Uathach’s voice was weak and sounded so, so young. She almost never called her Mama anymore. Immediately Scáthach looked up from the cowering bard to her daughter.
“He made a mistake, Mama. That is all. A foolish mistake. Be merciful.”
Scáthach drew in a deep breath and released it slowly with the blinding rage that had filled her.
She relaxed her fist and managed to smile and nod at her daughter.
Then she turned back to the cowering bard.
She reached down, offering him her hand.
He cringed at first but then took it and with a shaky smile stood, wiping the blood from his face.
“F-forgive me, great queen,” he said. “I did not mean to cause harm.”
Scáthach trapped his gaze with hers. “Had my daughter died today I would have burned you alive on her pyre, an offering to her grandmother, who is far less merciful than Uathach or me.”
His face blanched. She held his gaze for several more breaths before she turned her back to him and joined her daughter in the cart.
She clucked softly to the horse and, as Uathach sighed and leaned against her leg, slowly and carefully the Queen of Shadow guided the chariot to the road that led back to Dunscáith.