The Exile (20 page)

He stared at her nakedness; drank it in. The knotted pewter cross at her throat drew his gaze. It was a beautiful piece, but then it paled beside its wearer.

"Say something," she breathed.

Sláine smiled as she laid a hand on his chest.

"Beautiful."

The coupling was desperate - quite unlike anything he had ever experienced before. Niamh had been more passive, letting him dictate the rhythm of the sex, and Brighid more skilled and assured, guiding him in his devotions. Here he was neither leader nor follower, they were equals and their hungers more than matched each other. Bedelia craved the physicality of the contact as if his touch made her come alive. She drew him into her and wrapped her legs around him, bucking against his thrusts and gasping as she sank her nails into his shoulders, drawing blood. The pain added a peculiar pleasure to the rutting, spurring him on far more than her cries did.

It was over almost before it had begun.

They collapsed back onto the pallet, naked and spent, their breath ragged, their flesh bathed in commingled sweat.

"You know I only intended to plough your fields, perhaps we need to renegotiate our arrangement," he said, earning a cuff around the ears.

"Pah! I'm beginning to think I pay you too much. I wouldn't go asking for a raise just yet."

It felt good to laugh.

He could belong here if he wanted to. It wouldn't have been any great hardship to wake up with Bedelia in his bed every morning.

He found himself imagining what it might like to be a husband - at first his pretend wife bore Bedelia's face but it quickly became Niamh's.

Niamh.

It had been less than a month and already he had begun to forget how her body felt next to his, and her face in his mind had become less distinct and more idealised.

"I won't forget you," he told the memory.

"I should bloody well hope not," Bedelia said beside him as she rolled over and fell asleep in his arms.

Happiness was fleeting.

The villagers talked.

Gossip of a new man at widow Bedelia's homestead was rife.

They commented on the closeness of the couple, tutting at their obvious intimacy as if it was something to be frowned upon. "Her old man's not even dead a year and she's taken up with the first fella that so much as looked at her," one of the fishwives muttered disapprovingly. "It's a damned disgrace is what it is," another crowed. Only Donagh seemed happy for Bedelia.

That was what happened when people had little going on in their own lives to amuse them.

Sláine heard all of their questions but had no intention of answering them: where had he come from? Who was he? What did he do? He wasn't a farmer, even if he worked the fields, that much they knew. A few speculated that he was a mercenary, after all he had the build of a warrior and carried an axe, others that he was a deserter from a northern army, and more than once he heard someone say he was nothing more than a pretty-faced vagabond come to leech off the kind-hearted Bedelia, to bed her and break her heart.

Let them speculate to their hearts' content, he thought, splitting a thick log in two and then splitting it again into quarters. He dumped the chopped wood into the wicker basket by his feet. It didn't matter. He was, to all intents and purposes, exactly what they claimed. He had no home. He was a wanderer.

He had no need of their approval and so long as Bedelia's name wasn't dragged through the dirt they could gossip all they wanted.

He concentrated on the logs.

He felt himself growing a little stronger every day he spent working the farm. It was good honest labour and it worked up a hell of an appetite. Alas, Bedelia hadn't been lying, the food was basic fare at best, but it warmed his stomach going down and she enjoyed cooking for him.

The sex, however, was far from basic. Released, Bedelia was an uninhibited lover. She delighted in his body and he delighted in hers.

Winter drew in, the rain replaced by the first snows. The ground hardened to the point where it turned away a shovel's blade. He busied himself with other tasks, mending fences, making a chicken coop, and repairing the thatch on the homestead's roof. He enjoyed the simplicity of his new life. He had never imagined something so simple could satisfy him but he was coming to understand that he was not the man he thought he was.

He hadn't felt the rush of the earth's power in his blood since he rounded Lugh's Spike, and that felt like another lifetime.

He was actually beginning to think in terms of life being perfect right up until he saw Donagh lurching up the bridal path, out of breath from running all the way from the village. He had been splitting logs and still had his axe in his hand. It slipped through his fingers when he saw the old farmer's face.

"It's you isn't it?" Donagh asked, clutching at the fence post to keep from falling. "You're the warped one on the run from Murias?"

Sláine staggered back as if he had been punched. "How?"

"They're here - they are looking for you - five hunters from the Red Branch. They are telling everyone you are a traitor to your king and that they mean to drag you back to Grudnew for execution. You've got to run lad, now."

He looked back at the homestead where Bedelia was cooking his dinner.

"I need to say goodbye."

"No you don't, lad. You need to run."

"But-"

"She'll understand, lad, trust me. I'll see to that. Now get yourself gone. I don't care what you did or didn't do, I ain't about to have her burying two men in a year. She ain't that strong."

Sláine knew exactly what he meant.

"Where are they now?"

"In the town, asking around. Sooner or later someone is going to put two and two together and they'll point the hunters this way. Enough people hate the happiness of others to make that a certainty. You'll need to skirt the village completely. Best bet is over the river and through the forest toward Dun Barc. I'll tell them I saw you heading off two days ago in the direction of Dun Keif."

"Thank you."

"Danu be with you."

"That's what got me into this mess in the first place," Sláine said without the slightest trace of amusement in his voice. He shouldered his father's old axe and looked back one last time at the homestead, thinking he could see Bedelia's silhouette in the window. He turned his back on her.

He hated himself as he started to run but he knew he could live with it. He hated himself for so much else already.

Sláine earned a crust as a mercenary in Dun Barc.

It was not a rewarding experience. He hooked up with a clan chief in a petty dispute over territorial rights and the spoils from a raid, adding his axe to the chieftain's small army. It should have been good to swing Brain-Biter again and crack a few skulls, but all it succeeded in doing was reminding him what he had lost in leaving the Red Branch. When the warp-spasm overtook him during a skirmish Sláine knew it was time to move on. He saw the fear in his comrades' eyes. It hurt him. These were men he had come to call friends in the short time he had known them, drinking together, whoring together and fighting together. He had thought they shared a bond of brotherhood. He ought to have known better. There was nowhere in the Land of the Young that he could truly claim to belong, not anymore.

Each day was an exercise in survival. The next would have to take care of itself.

He deserted long before the conflict was settled.

He didn't care, it wasn't his fight.

Spring came. A new spring deserved a new day beginning.

"Looking for work?"

Sláine studied his would-be employer. The man was a small weaselly individual with close-set feral eyes and a twitching nose. The man was unpleasant and quite possibly dangerous. He harboured no illusions. Whatever the greasy creature was about to suggest, it was almost definitely illegal.

"What have you got in mind?"

One benefit from the dubious nature of the deal was that it promised to pay well. The man's nose twitched through a series of contortions. There was little about his appearance that inspired either trust or confidence. His oily hair was combed flat against his scalp although a cow-lick at the crown refused to lie down, but his clothing was cut well, befitting a man of no small means, and it was one of the finest weaves Sláine had ever seen.

"Ah, nothing too exciting I'm afraid. I'm looking to move some goods from Breiddin to Crumlyn. It's a long road, and often seen as easy pickings by bandits. I'm looking to discourage that line of thinking with some big strong boys guarding the caravan."

There was obviously more to it, but Sláine wasn't about to push his luck. He needed to head south and Crumlyn was about as far south as you could go without leaving the Land of the Young.

"I'm listening."

"Not much more to tell. I need someone handy with a weapon - sword or axe, I'm not fussed - who can ride and has a few other, ahhh, talents."

"Talents?"

The trader chuckled. "You make it sound like a dirty word, lad."

"For all I know it could be, it isn't as if you're owning up to what those talents might be, now is it?"

"You make a good point."

"But you're still not going to tell me," Sláine said.

"I am still not going to tell you," the trader agreed. "So, with that settled, do we have a deal?"

He had met men like this before, always in the same kind of circumstances. They withheld a certain vital piece of the puzzle and then feigned bewilderment when the elaborate construction of half-truths they had built came tumbling down.

"What do I get in return?"

"Ah, a pragmatic soul. I like that in a man. I am thinking the job is worth a good-sized purse, shall we say fifty bits?"

Sláine pretended to weigh up the offer for a moment.

"Shall we say seventy-five? It's a long road after all and if it is worth fifty as an opening gambit it must be worth seventy-five."

"You drive a hard bargain, friend." The trader spat in his palm and held out his hand.

"Should have said one hundred and fifty shouldn't I?" Sláine said, sealing the deal. "You caved in far too easily."

"Ahhh, don't feel bad. It's a fair price. I wouldn't go out of my way to swindle you."

"I don't believe that for a moment."

"You cut me to the quick, lad. You know, I can't keep calling you that, what's your name, big fella? After all, we're old friends now, aren't we?"

"I wouldn't go that far. I am Sláine Mac Roth."

"Now that's a fighter's name if ever I heard one. Good to have you on the team, Sláine. I'm Mannix. Well I was born Mainchin but not even my dear departed mother ever called me that. I've been Mannix for as long as I can remember."

"Mannix," Sláine said.

"Right, well, we're shipping out at first light tomorrow. You know where the cider house is?" Sláine nodded. "Right next door is a narrow gate. It'll be open. Come on through about an hour before dawn. We'll be loading up. Don't forget that axe of yours!"

He was not the only guard on the caravan.

There were two others, brothers, Finbar and Fergus, both redheaded, freckled boys with more muscle than sense. Sláine didn't doubt for a minute that they thought they could handle themselves if things got messy, but there was a peculiar softness - at odds with their bulging muscles - about the pair that didn't inspire confidence. He would have wagered half of his purse on the fact that the brother's had never been in a real fight. The eyes gave them away.

"The best of a sorry lot," Mannix said, following the direction of Sláine's dubious stare.

"Doesn't say a lot."

"Well, we've got you, so all's well that ends well."

"If you say so."

There were three wagons, one covered, the other two flatbeds. The horses looked ready for the knacker's yard. He patted one on the neck. The first flatbed was piled to overflowing with crates and sacks, each bearing the mark of a small monk, which he assumed was something to do with Mannix's trading company. The second flatbed was half empty, and carried the team's supplies, bedrolls, cooking tins and other odds and ends for the journey.

Sláine walked around to the side of the covered wagon and reached up to draw back the canvas flap.

"I wouldn't do that if I were you," Mannix said, coming up behind him and staying his hand. "The, ahhh, beautiful Blathnaid was in a foul humour when I looked in on her earlier. Woe betide anyone disturbing her beauty sleep." The trader chuckled at his own pale attempt at humour. "It always amazes me how a good-looking woman can look so damned ugly in the morning."

"So is she the real cargo?" Sláine turned his back on the wagon. He looked up at the sky, feeling the first few drops of rain on his face.

"You could say that. I was asked as a favour to an old friend to see her safely to Crumlyn. I thought it would be convenient to run some other business along the way, so which is the real business, well that's a matter for interpretation, I suppose. Both pay well, that's what counts."

"Not well enough for decent horses though," Sláine said.

They left a little before sunrise. Sláine rode alongside the front wagon, Finbar and Fergus bringing up the rear. They were not the most talkative pair. Over the next four days Sláine heard them manage only a handful of words between them.

"It's going to be a long journey," he remarked to the trader as the wagons rumbled through another tiny hamlet. Children lined the streets, watching the short procession roll by. Mannix threw a couple of jellied treats down to them.

"They always are," Mannix agreed.

Blathnaid did not make an appearance until the fifth day.

She was an interesting conundrum of personality and beauty all jumbled together and reassembled in a manner that ought to have been pleasing but was just slightly out of kilter, making her an almost-beautiful almost-interesting almost-woman. She wore a simple dress, although it was dyed emerald green, a rare colour, marking it as an expensive piece despite its roughness. The only jewellery was a colourful heather-gem brooch, with a dozen fragments of multi-coloured stone. Again it was a simple piece, and heather stone was hardly a precious gem. It was a cold stone. After a few minutes of trying to make conversation with the woman Sláine decided it suited her, muttered something that made him look busy and rode off to the back of the wagon train to watch the leaves bud with the red-headed brothers of mirth.