Calgaich the Swordsman Read online

  CHAPTER 1

  Caledonia, Fourth Century A.D.

  The rising wind was beginning to shriek again. It beat its wild wings beyond the thick and low layer of clouds that concealed the rock-fanged southwest coast of Caledonia. The cold gray sea writhed in thick convolutions as Nodons, the feared god of darkness and water, gathered his terrible strength anew to try once more to overwhelm the blue-sailed Hibernian birlinn that was drawing precariously nearer to the unseen coast. All that gloomy day and the dark night before, the storm had driven the small bark farther north and away from the great firth, or estuary, that cut deeply into the land of southwestern Caledonia.

  Calgaich mac Lellan stood in the bow of the storm-driven birlinn, steadying himself with one hand on the forestay while with his other hand he gripped the long shaft of his laigen, or great war spear. The wind swept back his tartan woolen cloak and tore at his long, reddish-blond hair and untrimmed mustache. The vessel plunged deeply, showering him with spray that sparkled on his salt-whitened cloak and violet knee-length linen tunic. A great iron sword hung at his left side. It was sheathed in a beautifully figured bronze scabbard wrapped in part of a wolf pelt. A long dirk hung at the right of his narrow waist. His long, sinewy legs were covered with loose saffron-colored trousers, crossgartered from his ankles to just below his knees. The damp tunic clung to his wide chest. His muscular arms showed bare as his cloak whipped out behind him, held at his throat by a bronze fibula, or brooch. A heavy torque twisted from soft Hibernian gold circled his neck, and matching arm rings were above each of his elbows.

  His face was as taut as a death mask. Nothing moved on that mask except the curiously twisted scar on his left cheek, which ran from the comer of his eye to the strong line of his jawbone and which no amount of sun or exposure would ever darken. The hard gray eyes, like glacial ice, seemed to probe into the opaqueness ahead of the craft as if he could see his beloved homeland of Caledonia beyond the mist and flying spindrift.

  Cuill, the Hibernian helmsman and owner of the birlinn, glanced fearfully at the rising seas and looked desperately at the tall Celt in the bow. Here and there on the pitching deck, huddled in their dirty cloaks, crouched half a dozen crewmen. Behind Calgaich, seated against a timberhead, was the Ordovician cumal, or bondswoman, who had boarded the craft with Calgaich two days past. The wind was playing with her thick, lustrous dark hair, whipping it over the low rail of the struggling birlinn. Spray glistened on her pale, heart-shaped face, while her large green eyes with thick lashes watched the broad back of Calgaich.

  Calgaich could sense the fear of the crewmen. There was no need for him to turn and look at them. Fear was no stranger to a fian such as he—a roaming warrior, divorced from the society of his own clan, a man who sells his spear and sword to the highest bidder and who has few peers in the red wet work of the blades. But this time there was no fear in his heart, just respect for Nodons and that confederate of his, Taranis the Roarer, god of the stormy sky.

  Somewhere beyond the shrouding sea mist was Calgaich’s homeland, unseen by him for three years, ever since his sword blade had death-spitted his cousin Fergus. Because of that Calgaich had incurred the galanas, or blood debt, and had been forced to flee from his clan. Calgaich released his grasp on the forestay so that he could finger the twisted white scar on his taut bronzed face. He grinned wryly. Fergus had fought well, he thought grudgingly; his cousin had left his serpent’s mark on the face of his killer. Nothing could ever erase that scar.

  Death was also familiar to Calgaich the Swordsman, as he was called not only in his own country of the Novantae in southwestern Caledonia but also far to the south of that land and into the land of the Britons occupied for three hundred and fifty years by the Romans, the hated Red Crests. A hunted man runs with the hounds if he can. Therefore Calgaich, wanted by both the Romans and even his own people, had fled to Hibernia, there to serve the highest bidder, knowing full well that death now walked the southwestern coast of wild Caledonia. It waited patiently for the sight of him, the son of a chief, the murderer of his cousin, and the hired killer of an Hibernian king.

  "The Hibernians mean you harm, fian," the woman said in her clear, musical voice.

  Calgaich glanced behind him at the woman seated against the timberhead, surprised that she had addressed him. Then he turned back to the rail and laughed into the cold teeth of the wind. "Let the Hibernian dogs growl and show their yellow fangs behind the back of Calgaich, Cairenn, woman."

  "You are indeed An Fear Mor” she murmured to his back.

  Calgaich again looked at her. Her eyes were like emeralds set in her flawless heart-shaped face. An Fear Mor—The Big Man. She had spoken very little to him since he had taken her from the court of Crann, King of the Five Hostages, as a parting gift from Crann to a fian whom he had grown to love like a son.

  "There is death in the wind," Calgaich murmured, as though to himself. He studied her. She was a beautiful chattel. "It might have been better for you to have stayed at the court of Crann."

  She shivered a little and shook her head. "A slave such as myself is oftentimes nothing but bed sport for the king and his kin, only to be thrown to the drunken fianna and thence to the common herd when they are through with her. Their horny hands are always up beneath her skirts, and she can be rutted by any hound in the pack, like a bitch in heat."

  "Do you think it will be any better in Caledonia?" he asked her harshly, still watching her.

  "Perhaps so and perhaps not. I will likely live in body if not in spirit once we arrive at the rath of your clansmen. That can't be said for you, fian. Why do you court death by returning? You are an outdweller, outlawed and exiled by your deed. You are not wanted there. Even the mad sea seems to conspire against you to prevent you from returning. Turn back to Hibernia, Calgaich mac Lellan."

  There was foreboding in her voice. Calgaich looked away from her. The Ordovician woman must have known she had been hated and feared at the court of Crann of the Five Hostages. She had been one of the spoils of a great raid by the Scotti on the Ordovician coast near the holy island of Mona, once the greatest sanctuary and center of the Druids, since almost wiped out, man, woman and child by the Romans because of their fear of those strange and mystical people with their dark secrets. Because of her exceptional beauty and youth she had been brought back unharmed to King Crann and given quarters in his rath. Calgaich suspected that the men had been afraid of her. Her eyes, those living emeralds in a face of exquisite ivory, were thought to have masked the fearsome, ravaged face of a witch, so that no living being, held entranced by those same eyes, could see anything but the shape and semblance of the face the witch herself wanted them to see. It would have been only a matter of time before she would have died horribly, perhaps burned alive in a wickerwork cage, accused most probably by the jealous wife of some man who had become infatuated with Cairenn's evil beauty.

  Calgaich himself was beginning to wonder why he had taken her as a parting gift from King Crann. As he was leaving, King Crann had bade him wait and sent a slave back to the settlement to fetch her. “She's yours for serving me well,” he told Calgaich, and together they had watched the woman walk toward them—a slave, yet bearing her departure with dignity. Had there been a sly look on the face of aging Queen Creide as Calgaich pulled the slave woman up behind him on the war horse to ride to the sea for passage to Caledonia?

  “You return because of your father, don't you, fian?” Cairenn asked.

  Her words brought Calgaich back to the present. His powerful hands closed tighter about the forestay and the ashen shaft of his laigen. A cold trickle of sweat worked its way down his sides. He could not look at the cumal. It was not the First time Cairenn had spoken casually to him of th
ings she could not possibly have known. Calgaich had not told her or anyone else at the court of Crann the reason why he had left the well-paid service of the king. Perhaps Paralus, the Greek trader who annually crossed the Hibernian Sea from Caledonia to trade throughout Eriu, as the Hibernians called their country, had spoken to others of what he had learned in Caledonia. Paralus was welcomed throughout Britannia, Caledonia and Hibernia, not only for the fine trade goods he carried from the continent but also for the fund of news he always brought with him. It was Paralus who had taken Calgaich aside to warn him that all was not well in the clan of the Novantae, that Lellan, the father of Calgaich and hereditary chief of the clan, had been betrayed into the hands of the Romans by Bruidge of the Battle-Axe, the younger brother of Lellan and father of Fergus, whom Calgaich had slain in fair combat.

  How could she have known? She had hardly been in Crann's rath, or settlement, for more than a few days and then only after Paralus had already left for the most northern boundaries of the wild Scotti in Eriu.

  “Look, fian!” Cuill cried, suddenly pointing south.

  Calgaich turned. A lowlying vessel was moving swiftly through the mist tatters. Its long oars beat against the white waves, while its faded square sail was belly-swollen with wind from the howling mouth of Taranis the Roarer. The craft was moving fast—too fast for such weather—and it was between the birlinn and her planned course to the south. Calgaich knew they could not be fishermen, for their boat was far too large and well manned for a simple fishing birlinn. There was a lean and hungry look about it. Parts of the western coast of Caledonia were infested with such predatory sea reivers.

  “Who are they, fian?” Cairenn asked.

  Swift as the strange vessel was, the smaller Hibernian birlinn seemed to be holding her own as she fought her way in toward the unseen coast.

  Cairenn stood up and joined Calgaich at the rail. The keening wind whipped her woolen cloak back from her body, flattening her long green linen tunic and her undergown against every curve of her young form.

  “Get down, fool!” Calgaich shouted to her.

  A thin and eerie wailing cry arose from the other vessel. It sounded like hunting hounds who have at last seen their prey. The approaching oars beat faster and the craft began to gain, plunging deeply and showering back glittering diamond sea spray.

  "It's too late, woman.” Calgaich shook his head. “You have been seen. That was a foolish thing to do.”

  “Who are they?” she asked again, staring past him at the oncoming vessel.

  Calgaich looked slowly at her, then away. His face was set like carved granite. “A reiving ship. Sea raiders.”

  “Britons?”

  “Too far north for them. I am not sure.”

  She drew her damp cloak about her. “It does not matter that they’ve seen me. They were after us before they knew there was a woman aboard this birlinn.”

  “So?” Calgaich would not look at the witch.

  “It is in my heart that they know you are aboard, fian.” He glanced sideways at her. There it was again, that accursed knowledge of hers.

  She smiled faintly. “I heard it said before we left Hibernia that a fast birlinn had departed from there for the country of the Novantae in worse weather than that which we are facing on this wild passage. Someone there knows you are coming home, Calgaich mac Lellan. They do not mean to let you land in your own country.”

  He looked at the reiving craft. “There is nothing and no one who can stop me from landing in my own country.”

  “Even though you’d face possible death to land there?”

  “Yes. I must find out whether my father is still alive.”

  "He is not dead,” she asserted.

  His eyes widened and he hastily averted his face from her. He spoke to her over his shoulder. “How do you know that?”

  “I don’t know how I feel these things,” she replied simply. “It is a gift, or perhaps a curse.”

  “But you do know that he is still alive?”

  She nodded. “He is alive.”

  He looked at her. “It was told to me by the Greek trader Paralus that my father had been betrayed into the hands of the Romans, his deadly enemies, and that he is now their prisoner and hostage. He is a frail old man and his sight is nearly gone. The Romans have a way of making a man die mysteriously just to get him out of the way.”

  “If he is so close to death, why do you want to get him out of the hands of the Romans?”

  Calgaich spat over the side. “A womanish question,” he sneered.

  “You did not answer it.”

  “It is good for a man to die among his own people and in his own country. If he must die among his enemies, it is better that he dies on his feet, reddened blade in hand.”

  “And if he is dead? If I am wrong?”

  Calgaich's eyes were fierce and unblinking. “Then, I am hereditary chief of the clan!”

  “Who leads the clan now?”

  “My father's younger brother,” he replied bitterly. “Bruidge of the Battle-Axe, with whom I served my fosterage and from whom I learned the arts of the hunter and warrior.”

  “Then, whether your father is dead or not, what can you, one man alone, do against such a man?”

  The scar on Calgaich's face twitched. The reiving vessel was getting closer to the stem of the birlinn. “Cuill!” he called, ignoring her question. “Stand by to come about at my signal!”

  “In this wind and sea, fian?” Cuill shook his head.

  “Do you know who they are in that boat?”

  “I don't, fian.”

  “Cruithne,” Calgaich said. That and no more. He unfastened the fibula that held his cloak about his neck and let the heavy garment drop to the deck.

  None of the ashen-faced crewmen moved. They would not look at the pursuing craft. Instead, their eyes were on the warrior in the bow of the pitching birlinn.

  “We're doomed!” a crewman cried out. “We can't even see yonder rocky coast and yet we drive into the blinding mist like madmen!”

  Calgaich again spat contemptuously over the side. He picked up his wooden, lime-whitened shield from the deck and slung it over his left shoulder. He picked up his war spear. It was a fearsome thing and yet a work of art. The foot-and-a-half-long, leaf-shaped blade was socketed and riveted to a stout ash shaft. The length of the spear was a foot taller than Calgaich. Just below the shaft socket of the blade a ruff of heron’s feathers fluttered in the wind. At the butt of the shaft was a bronze balancing ball, chased and enameled blue and green in the fantastic and uncanny style of the skilled Celtish metalsmith.

  Calgaich walked aft.

  “Calgaich, who are the Cruithne?” Cairenn asked, following him.

  He stopped and looked down at her. “The Painted People. The Picts,” he replied quietly.

  “We are doomed!” the crewman repeated. He lay down on the deck and covered his head with a comer of his cloak. He shivered like a frightened dog, ready to die rather than resist.

  Calgaich looked at Cuill. “Have those Hibernian dogs get up. We'll need their help if we want to live.”

  “They are not warriors like yourself, fian,” Cuill reminded Calgaich.

  Calgaich laughed. “I do not need warriors. I need seamen. I am Calgaich mac Lellan, son of that Lellan who once led five hundred war spears! I was a fighting man, a fian for King Crann of the Five Hostages. I will do all the fighting here this day!” he boasted loudly.

  Cairenn could not take her eyes from Calgaich. She knew there were at least a score of ferocious Picts in the fast closing reiving vessel. They were formidable fighters, raiders and killers. Their fierceness and savagery in battle had won for them the grudging respect of the Roman legions and of the auxiliary troops who manned the Great Wall of Hadrian, which spanned eighty miles across the full width of northern Britannia to hold back the barbarian hordes of Caledonia. Cairenn had heard much of these people in her native country. Man for man, in single-combat open battle, the Picts and the Ce
lts could take the match of even the tough legionnaires of Rome, although they had never learned how to cope with the disciplined maneuvers of those same legionnaires, who had conquered all of the known world, with the single exception of Caledonia. Now this madman, this long-haired braggart Calgaich, seemed willing and even eager to face a score of the Picts alone.

  Calgaich pushed Cuill away from the tiller bar of the steering oar. “Stand by to come about!” he ordered.

  “In this wind and sea?” Cuill demanded. “It can't be done and we won't do it!”

  Suddenly Calgaich’s left hand slashed full across the mouth of the Hibernian, smashing him down on the deck in a spray of blood and broken teeth. Cuill rolled into the larboard waterway with blood leaking from his slack mouth. His glazed eyes stared dazedly up at Calgaich. Cairenn turned away.

  “You stupid bastard!” Calgaich’s voice grated. “Don’t you know who those men are? If I let them take you and your chamber pot of a birlinn, our heads will hang in a row from their railings! They hunt heads like other men hunt hares! Now, damn you into the pit of everlasting darkness, get those shivering dogs to their feet and wait for my commands!”

  Cuill staggered up to his feet. He wiped the blood from his mouth and set swiftly to work with foot and fist until his frightened crewmen stood to their lines with their fearful eyes on Calgaich. Now and then Calgaich looked back at the pursuing Pictish craft. It was hardly a good spear’s throw away from the Hibernian vessel.

  The birlinn plunged deeply, rolling wildly as it fought for its normal buoyancy. Spray showered high over its sides to drench both craft and crew alike. Cairenn felt her hands slipping on the rough wet wood. The timbers of the boat groaned as they worked in the wrenching seas.

  A hail came from the approaching vessel. “Let us come alongside!” a Pict yelled hoarsely.

  The words of the Pict sounded different from that of the Hibernians, the Novantae and her own people, Cairenn thought. There was an alien quality in the speech that made her shiver. She looked at the squat, helmeted man who stood in the bow of the reiving craft. There was something peculiar about the face of the helmeted Pict. He had bands of blue paint, or perhaps tattooing, on his cheeks and forehead, and the wings of his nostrils had bluish curves and spandrils about them in an intricate design. The fierce yellowish eyes peering from his grotesque manmade mask were as cold and penetrating as those of a hunting wolf. They seemed to linger on her as he surveyed their craft.