Calgaich the Swordsman by Gordon D. Shirreffs Page A

had made against the wall. Surely tonight . . . "Was it because you knew what would happen to me at the court of King Crann?”
    He shook his head.
    "Are you telling me the truth?” she persisted.
    He stopped studying the blade and raised his head. The look on his face frightened her.
    "I did not mean that you lied!” she cried.
    Calgaich leaned forward. The sweat dripped from his lean face into the embers at the edge of the fire and little spurts of steam arose to becloud him. "Then, what did you mean?”1he asked in a low voice.
    "They thought I was a witch. You knew that.” Her voice was low.
    "Well, are you?”
    It was very quiet in the chamber. Wood snapped in the fire. The wind moaned about the outer walls. A wolf howled.
    "They said that eyes such as yours can enthrall a man so that he can't see your true face or body, only that which you want him to see,” Calgaich said.
    "Do you believe that?” Cairenn's eyes held his gaze.
    Finally, he shook his head.
    "You don't seem certain.”
    Calgaich leaned back against the wall and drank deeply from the jug. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and eyed her shapely legs, wrapped in the boy's trousers and crossgartered. He raised his eyes to where her sheepskin jacket had swung open. The swelling curves of her breasts, dewed with sweat, now glistened in the firelight. He would not look at her green eyes. Supposing it was true?
    He felt the good usquebaugh working with him. There had hardly been time to bed her. She had a body that could shake a man’s reason. The thought of that body ran through his mind in recurring images as he sat across the fire from her. Still, there was his vow. A man’s honor must come first, above all else, and to Calgaich the honor of his father must be returned to him—the chieftainship of the clan. If a man were to break his vow, he would destroy his honor, and in so doing would not be able to serve his father. It was a rigid code. Calgaich knew no other.
    “Will there be danger in your country?” she asked, breaking his reverie.
    “I told you before that I don’t know.” He eyed her body again. “Not to one such as you. A man would be a fool to use that body of yours and then put you to death.”
    “There are things worse than death,” she reminded him, pulling her sheepskin jacket together.
    He passed a caressing hand along the blade of the sword. “Woman’s reasoning,” he sneered. He looked up at her. “Why are you here but to satisfy a man's hunger—the same as food and drink to him?”
    She blushed and looked away from him.
    Calgaich looked thoughtfully into the fire. “Babd Catha will soon enough fly over the country of the Novantae,” he murmured.
    Babd Catha, the fearsome Raven of Battle. Cairenn shivered a little despite the heat. Babd Catha usually appeared before a battle attired in her blood-red cloak, with her eyebrows reddened, and mounted on a chariot drawn by a grotesque horse. To inspire horror, she would then change into the form of a huge raven who would gloat over the bloodshed, inducing panic and weakness among the contending warriors.
    Calgaich was still hunkered down by the bed of embers when she went to bed in the shadows. She stripped off her trousers and jacket and then made the ritual right-hand turn to ensure good fortune before she bundled herself into Calgaich’s great tartan cloak. Utter weariness overcame her. Her belly was full and it was warm beneath the cloak.
    She closed her eyes and soon lost contact with the little world in which Calgaich and herself alone existed.
    Once during the night she opened her eyes. The only light came from the butt end of a log, which was a rounded mass of glowing red. Calgaich still sat with his back against the wall, the sword across his lap and the whiskey jug between his legs. His head was back and his mouth was open as he slept the sleep of the drunken. Above the moaning of the bitter night wind she heard the distant howling of the wolves.
    She lay