Free Calgaich the Swordsman by Gordon D. Shirreffs Page B

was Fergus, the only son of Bruidge. He was my first cousin.”
    She stared at him. "You killed him?”
    "It was fair combat,” he said sharply.
    "For a woman?” Cairenn felt her cheeks bum. Was this woman, for whom he had killed, Morar—the Golden One —of whom Aengus, the Pict, had spoken? Was Calgaich as anxious to return to her as he was to find his father? Yet Cairenn dared say no more, and Calgaich ignored her words.
    "Bruidge hates me now. He has used the ancient right of tanaise ri to usurp my father's chieftainship. When my father dies, I should succeed him, but now I can't because of Bruidge.”
    “Tanaise ri?” she asked curiously.
    "An ancient custom whereby a brother’s right to the succession of a chief is stronger than that of the chief's son.”
    "But if your father is still alive?”
    Calgaich shrugged. "Then he is still chief.”
    "Can your uncle make his claim stand, then?”
    Calgaich grunted savagely. "He has the men and the position. My father is old and weak, nearly blind, and in the hands of the Romans. His only son is an outlaw. The gods curse Bruidge! He knew I was coming home. He set those damned Pictish reivers on his own nephew.”
    Calgaich set off, plunging downhill through the wet brush. Something powerful had driven him from his beloved Albu; something more powerful had drawn him back to it in the face of almost certain death. Again, Cairenn rose wearily and followed him.
    Calgaich pressed on at a steady pace through the empty hills and echoing passes. Now and then the faint howling of a hound, or perhaps a wolf, came to them on the wind. There were no signs of humans in the wilderness through which they passed all that long day. Mist had moved in when the short-lived sun had vanished behind low-hanging clouds. Sometimes, through the forest tangle, the mirrorlike surfaces of small mountain lochs or dark tarns might be seen. Many little streams of rushing icy water plunged down the long slopes and through the passes.
    Darkness was in the offing. A cold, snow-laden wind was feeling its way through the narrow passes when at last they descended from the heights. Calgaich moved on even more swiftly, heedless of the almost exhausted woman.
    "Are you in such a great hurry then, fian, to reach your home and perhaps your death!” she cried out in desperation.
    He turned his head without interrupting his headlong stride. "The night belongs to the wolves in these mountains,” he warned her.
    It was enough to spur Cairenn on with the last dregs of her strength until at last they reached the shore of a leaden-colored loch thickly fringed with conifers. There was a dry stone ruin on a knoll near the loch. It was a bell-shaped defensive tower surrounded by a quadrangle of smoke-blackened stone buildings. Smoke stains streaked the walls of the tower. The gate of the quadrangle lay flat on the ground.
    The light was failing fast when Calgaich dragged away the charred timbers of the tower door. The wind moaned about the gaunt-looking structure. Calgaich stooped to enter the low passageway that led into the interior of the tower. The ancient roof had fallen in long ago and now formed a pile of huge jackstraws. Smoke stained the inner walls. Here and there slitted windows seemed to be looking down on Calgaich and Cairenn like the eye sockets in a skull.
    Calgaich stood there looking around. Memories came crowding back to him. He had been a new and untried warrior when his father had led the Novantae on a raid to this remote Roman outpost. They had put the Red Crests to the sword and then had fired the structure.
    “You know this place?” Cairenn asked, watching him.
    He grinned crookedly at her. “I set fire to it.”
    Calgaich led the way up a steep and narrow winding stairway between the outer and inner walls. At the top was a large room with slitted windows that looked out toward the loch. He grunted in satisfaction, and dropped his pack. “There is some wood. Make a fire. I’ll get more.” He