Calgaich the Swordsman by Gordon D. Shirreffs Page B

there awake thinking of this strange and violent man who could kill so easily and who seemed to have no fear at least of man. Yet he had taken time to cover the face of a little dead child to protect its eyes from the ravens. He was the outlawed son of a chief; a man who had killed his own cousin over a woman. Still, he had decided to return to his own country across a dangerous wintry sea, fighting against a score of Picts who had been sent to stop him. He had fought Girich the Good Striker, a champion of the Picts, and had defeated him so that he and Cairenn could pass freely on their way. He held a helpless slave woman in bondage and yet he had never taken her in bed. The wonder and the strangeness of it all ran through her tired mind as she drifted off to sleep again.
    Calgaich awoke in the coldest hour before the dawn. His arm wound had stiffened and his muscles were sore. He winced as he felt about on the floor for the jug of barley spirits. The liquor fumes bedeviled his senses. He placed splinters of wood in the ashes and blew on them until the fire caught hold. He threw the last of the wood onto the rising flames. Then he drank deeply, again and again, until the warmth of the whiskey and the fire crept through his body. As he looked across the leaping flames at the huddled figure of the woman in the bed, the thought of her smooth, white nakedness began to work on him.
    “The vow, Calgaich mac Lellan,” Calgaich said aloud. “Remember the vow that you made in order to return to Morar.”
    He closed his eyes. He had vowed not to bed any woman until he could return to his betrothed Morar as a free man. Any woman? He knew well enough that when he had been in the whiskey, he had bedded women.
    “Whores,” he muttered. Surely they didn't count. Then there had been the women the drink-maddened fianna had raped on several of their wild raids against the enemies, of King Crann. Did they matter?
    Calgaich shook his head. His long fair hair covered his flushed face. He raised the whiskey jug and drank. It sucked dry. He hurled it across the chamber, where it shattered against the far wall. The woman stirred in her sleep and called out a little.
    Calgaich closed his eyes. The vision of her came instantly into focus—her 'high, proud breasts with their pink buds; her smooth, rounded flanks and the lovely long legs. After all, she was a cumal , a chattel, a slave only, and his to do with as he liked.
    He stood up, throwing a hovering giant shadow on the wall. He wet his dry lips as he peeled off his tunic and trousers and dropped them on the floor. He stripped off his breechclout. He wiped his hands on his muscular thighs. “The gods forgive me,” he murmured. He walked to the bed.
    Calgaich stripped back the tartan cloak and saw the warm whiteness of her like a luscious seed within a dark pod. He lay down beside her. She moved a little and spoke out sleepily. The next thing she knew she was jolted out of her warm sleep by a cold firm body being thrust hard against hers. She opened her eyes and looked up into his shadowed face. His dry lips bruised her soft lips. His hard hands passed down her shoulders to toy with her full breasts, tarried there awhile and then felt down her belly to the triangular meeting of her lower belly and thighs.
    For a moment or two she struggled silently and fearfully, while his hilt-callused hands, now surprisingly gentle, toyed with and caressed her tense body. She relaxed gradually and slowly began to respond to him. She wrapped her arms about his neck and drew him closer to her. She placed her hands alongside his sweating face and tried to look into his eyes in the dimness. Calgaich quickly turned his head aside to avoid her gaze. He was fearful that he might see something in her eyes to prove she was a witch.
    The fire gave a last dying flicker, and, as if it were a signal, Calgaich forced apart her legs and thrust his knees in between them. She raised her legs and spread them as far apart as