Calgaich the Swordsman by Gordon D. Shirreffs

paused in the doorway and looked back at her. “No matter what might happen below, don’t leave this room until daylight.” He vanished into the stairwell.
    Cairenn made the fire in the rude circle of stones set in the middle of the floor. She could hear him moving about in the center of the tower. Once she looked down at him. He was working swiftly, tired as he must be, and now and then he would look back over his shoulder toward the gaping doorway as though expecting someone, or something.
    Calgaich blocked the tower doorway with timbers. He carried several armloads of wood up into the room and then closed the sagging door. He braced a short length of timber against the door and placed his spear beside it.
    He looked about the low-vaulted room. The fire was roaring. Moving firelight was cast on the lichened walls. The smoke was drifting through a hole in the outer wall. He grunted in satisfaction.
    The fire died down to a thick bed of embers. Cairenn heated some of the meat. “Where are your brothers the wolves, fian?” she asked teasingly.
    “Listen,” he said.
    The eerie howling of a wolf rose from somewhere beyond the far side of the loch.
    “They know we are here,” Calgaich explained. “One of them followed us the last hour. There will be others. Many.”
    “I didn’t see any wolf.”
    He looked at her. “Once he was only a spear’s cast behind you. Maybe he was waiting for you to drop.” He grinned as Cairenn turned away.
    They ate well of the food Calgaich had looted from the rath. Cairenn washed it down with some of the clear stream water with which Calgaich had refilled the jug of whiskey he had emptied that day. His face was flushed from the spirits but he showed little sign of haying drunk that much.
    They could hear the rising chorus of the wolves. They were prowling now about the base of the structure. Cairenn surreptitiously watched Calgaich as he tore at the food with his strong white teeth. She could not help but think that here, too, was a wolf, a lean wolf of a man, seemingly as lonely as the howling wolves, and just as deadly.
    Calgaich started on the second jug of whiskey. He drew his sword from its sheath and placed it across his lap as he sat crosslegged on the man’s side of the fire. He studied the fine weapon. He hefted it, and felt it with his hands. He hummed softly to himself as he did so. “ Na tri dee dana ,” he murmured appreciatively. “By the Three Gods of Skill—Gobniu, Credne and Luchta—this is a weapon fit for a warrior. Aye, a chieftain! A king! A god!” He looked at Cairenn with that faraway gaze of his and she knew he was somewhere else in spirit beyond that room. “It did its red work well this day, eh, woman?”
    She nodded, shivering a little as the firelight danced along the fine blade. If the sword had not done its “red work well” she would have become a plaything of those bloody-handed Picts.
    Calgaich nipped at the jug constantly while he tirelessly examined the weapon. He was completely absorbed and fascinated by it. He turned it back and forth to let the firelight play upon its polished surface. He tested the keen edges. Now and then he would tap the metal against the stone wall and then would listen to something that only he could hear emanating from within the blade itself. His scarred face grew flushed with the outer heat of the fire and the inner heat of the usquebaugh.
    Cairenn leaned back against the wall and drew her cloak about her. "Why did you bring me with you from Eriu, fian ?” she asked him.
    "A gift from a king is not to be scorned.”
    "I have held you back.”
    He shook his head.
    "Perhaps you would not have had to fight Girich if it had not been for me.”
    He swung the sword and then eyed her across it. "You think that I fought only for you?”
    She blushed. "I did not know.” She picked at the handle of her dirk. "You haven't treated me as a cumal , Calgaich.”
    "There has hardly been time, woman.”
    She looked at the bed she