Calgaich the Swordsman by Gordon D. Shirreffs Read Free Book Online Page A

beside the fire and drew his dirk. He swiftly skinned and gutted the hares as Cairenn watched. He spitted them on peeled branches and then rigged a forked rest for them over the fire. It was all done in a matter of a few minutes. He looked sideways at her. “Surely you can sit here beside the warmth of the fire and see that the food does not burn, woman. Or is that, too, beyond a lady?”
    There was a swift shadow of anger across her face. “In my land my father was the equal of yours and commanded many men; and the bravest warrior among them was my betrothed. I did not bloody my hands with the common table fare, nor tend the fires which cooked it. I gave the orders to the serving wenches who did that work. But there are other things I know.” She remembered the warm hearths of her father’s rath, of long evenings of tales and song, and her anger grew. "My fortune has changed, and I like it not—this dark and silent chamber— but I have not changed.”
    He stood-up and wiped his hands on his breechclout. “I will not raise my hand to you this time. Listen to me! We are not in my country of the Novantae. It will take days of living and running like hunted animals, and perhaps some fighting as well, before we can reach it. I can fight for you, but you must run for yourself, and there are other things you must and will do, and one of them is the preparing of the food I will find for us. Is that understood?”
    "Yes, fian,” Her anger was spent. First, they must survive.
    "My name is Calgaich,” he snapped testily.
    "I am a slave,” she said bitterly. That, and no more. It was not the first time she had so answered him.
    Calgaich made a wide bed of the thick bracken while the tempting odor of the roasting hare flesh filled the barrow. He seemed not to notice Cairenn watching him. She looked down at the hares as she turned them. One bed, she thought. He means to have me this night. A fine bridal chamber. She smiled wryly.
    Calgaich looked at her curiously as she smiled. She was a strange one, this woman of the Ordovices. He spread his cloak out beside the fire. "The cloak will be fairly dry when it’s time to sleep. Still, the good wool is warmed by the heat of the body even when it’s wet.” He sat down crosslegged in the fashion of the Celts, on the man’s side of the fire.
    She watched him covertly as they ate, avoiding his curious glances. It was warmer now in the chamber and she was getting deathly weary. It had been a long time since they had left Hibernia.
    "What is your home like, Calgaich?” she asked.
    "Like any other, woman.”
    "That’s not so. I saw the way you looked when you tried to pierce the mist with your eyes as we entered that deathtrap of a bay. No man who did not greatly love his home would have sailed so eagerly into the rock jaws of Nodons as you did.”
    His eyes were like granite chips. It was the same reaction she had gotten from him when she had asked about the lash scars on his back.
    Calgaich ignored her and stood up. 'Time for bed. I want to leave here before dawn light and get into the hills unseen. There is likely a rath not far from here, or at least a small village, and perhaps even a dun, a hilltop fort of the Damnonii. I do not want to be caught like a badger in his hole. The hills and the forests are the friends of the hunted man.”
    Something in the way he said "hunted man” struck home to Cairenn. There was more behind his statement than just the fact that likely the Damnonii and positively the Picts would not be friendly. There was much more than that. It was something that allied itself to the scars on his back and his great hunger to reach his homeland despite all hindrances and dangers.
    He picked up the dry cloak and walked to the bed of bracken, where he placed the cloak on the bed and turned to look at her. She rose slowly. The fire had died low again, leaving red, secretive eyes that peered now and again through the thick bed of ashes and were gone almost as quickly