He kissed them, ran his lips from swelling slopes to jutting nipples, bit and probed with his tongue, felt the way they gave and swelled, as if reacting to his every move. Beneath his mouth Grania twisted and writhed, a growing ecstasy that added to his own desire.
‘Free my hands,’ she said, ‘so I can caress you.’
‘I daren’t,’ said Niall, rising up and staring at the woman’s spreadeagled body, slick with sweat, dark between her legs where brown hair concealed the entrance to her body, a tight, thick triangle that he was urgent to touch, to penetrate. ‘I daren’t.’
‘Never mind. Kiss me again, kiss my lips … quickly …’
He lay out upon her, the swollen staff of his manhood stretched between them, hurting with his weight pressing it into the bone of her hips. His lips touched hers, then pressed against them more fiercely, moving against the wetness of her mouth, answering the darting explorations of her tongue with probings of his own. Their mouths opened wide and he explored her teeth and her tongue, and all the time he was conscious of her warm body beneath him, the hard swellings of breasts, and the gentle slope of her belly across which he lay. He slipped between her legs which slowly slid along his own;
her feet (cold, so cold compared to the rest of her body) slipping inside his knees, pinning him to her, drawing him closer to her loins.
‘Unfree my hands. I’ll guide you into me …’
‘I daren’t,’ he said again, reluctant to spare the time for speech, pushing his mouth back against hers, not letting her twist her head away again to speak.
With his own fingers he tried to find the hole in her, but his member buckled and twisted against her groin, and she winced with the pain of it.
‘Untie me,’ she gasped, her eyes screwed tight shut. Panicking, Niall almost obeyed, so urgent was he to join with the woman.
‘I
daren’t
!’ he said, angry, terrified, torn between doing as she said and obeying his instinct which told him her request was part of a trick to gain her freedom.
‘If I tell you where the speaking stone is buried,’ she said, leaning up as best she could to kiss him, to lick his lips, and bite his lip in a way that made him start with pain, but enjoy the pain and try and bite her back … ‘If I tell you where the stone is, will you release me then?’
‘No,’ said Niall. ‘Fergus would kill me … and that means I would kill Fergus, because there is no man alive who can beat me at mortal combat.’
‘If I can help you enter me,’ said Grania, kissing him again, staring straight into his eyes in a way that made him surge with love, ‘there will be no man alive who can better you at love; for all your shyness, Niall, you are a powerful and sexual young man.’ She seemed to think for a second, then said, ‘Whatever happens, whatever you come to believe in days ahead, believe that, Niall, believe
that.
Unite me, I beg you!’
She hissed this last and such was her hypnotic power that Niall’s hand strayed to the small dirk that was tucked into the leather thongs of his belt, lying close by. But he stopped himself, and shook his head.
‘I promise you this,’ he said, almost unable to think because of the pressure and the pain in his groin, and the thick, throbbing stalk of flesh that lay so redundantly between them. ‘If you tell me where the stone is buried I shall insist that Fergus spares your life. I promise that, with all my heart.’
‘Oh Niall,’ she gasped. ‘Would you? Would you? Will he spare my life? Will he listen to you?’
Niall nodded, brought the bull pendant up to his lips and kissed it. ‘I swear on this precious stone that your life will be spared.’
‘I agree,’ she whispered. ‘The stone is buried quite shallowly on the western slope of the mound, facing the setting sun. It is just outside the palisade, several feet down.’
‘Thank you for that,’ said Niall.
‘Oh sweet Danu, oh Morrigan and Mucha, this man keeps talking …’ her eyes were closed, her body arching and thrusting against him, ‘and his
massive, beautiful member lies outside me. Guide him, goddesses all, guide him, to love me …’
Almost screaming his desire, almost lost in the intensity of his passion, Niall again thrust at the woman’s body, but his clumsiness and his inexperience brought him hard against her, unable to find the angle or the aperture.
‘Cut my bonds,’ she gasped, eyes still closed. ‘For Danu’s sake, quickly, quickly, or I shall achieve release without you.
Quickly
!’
And this time he obeyed, pulling her over, still held tight against him, still kissing her face, still rammed hard between her legs, and cut through the three leather straps that held her arms.
As he tried to roll back on to her, waiting for the touch of her fingers on him, helping him into her sweet, soft fleshed body, he felt his head spin, and an intense and incredible pain in his groin …
Agony!
He tried to scream, but a fleshy palm pressed against his mouth.
He tried to move but a shocking, paralysing pain in his genitals rooted him to the straw, and gradually he realised that she had kneed him with all her strength, and was now on top of him.
Grania’s face was a mask of triumph, an evil, ferocious grin stretched across it, her eyes wide with the anticipation of revenge in the form of Niall’s head hacked slowly from his torso. She held his knife. With two swift blows from her hand she numbed his arms, then she kneed him expertly in the thighs and his legs went dead. He lay helpless beneath her, while she reached down and pressed the cutting edge of the blade against the base of his stiff and aching member; her thumb closed round the other side, and pressed, so that the metal cut into his skin. To add embarrassment to agony he spilled his seed across his belly. He wanted to both cry and scream, but her hand still held him dumb.
She grinned as she started to cut his manhood from him. Then she stopped.
Her eyes stared deeply into his, and her gaze flickered occasionally to his lips, still concealed beneath her hand. She was unsure.
At last she said, ‘I can’t do this. I don’t know why, but I can’t. I ought to mutilate you where you lay, but … I can’t. Let me just say that I shall spare your sex and your life, Niall. Despite the warrior that I am, at heart I am a woman, and I enjoy men, and certain men, and certain loves and lusts, and that joy does not ashame me. Shyness is a quality that I find becomes a man, and you are the shyest most sincere man who has ever nearly become my lover. For all that I needed your naïvety, Niall, I enjoyed your touch, and your innocence, and the feel of you, and I wish we could have finished what you so desire. Perhaps one day we shall. For the moment, though, I feel that Eriu has seen the last of me. I flee to the east, where my sword-skill will earn me
power and fortune. Take care of yourself, young warrior, and never be beguiled again.’
And with that she struck him on the temple and knocked him dizzy, though he remained conscious enough to feel the way she ripped the pendant from around his neck, and then to watch as her body blocked the entrance to the stable for a moment, and then vanished into the night.
Later he found the strength to cry out, and Fergus ran to him, and discovered what had happened.
For a while the two men crouched together in the tiny, unused stable, staring at each other. In both their minds was the thought of combat, fought in the river near to the mound. But Fergus did not really desire to fight in close combat with Niall, and Niall had no such desires to take the life of this man who had brought him so near to so many dreams.
‘In future …’ said Fergus.
‘I shall be more careful,’ said Niall.
The Bear laughed. Niall swore, and when Fergus looked questioningly, he explained that the spectre that haunted him was intolerant of his naïvety.
‘Their horses were all killed in the fight,’ said Fergus, ‘And our own are still safe, I noticed that when I came in answer to your cry. On foot she cannot pass more than a mile beyond the river before dawn. I shall soon catch her.’
‘You alone?’
‘I should have killed her when I could,’ said Fergus. ‘But I shall not make the same mistake again.’
And then came Conan’s agonised cry, and both Niall and Fergus raced into the house.
The third woman warrior, she whom Fergus had been riding when Niall had regained consciousness, and who was less strongly tied than she should have been, this woman had finally recovered from her exhaustion and had attacked Conan.
The brave and youthful warrior lay across the fire, half his head caved in where a stone axe had been used to expert effect. The weapon, a relic of some farmer’s primitive armoury left here, perhaps, when the warrior women had taken over, glistened red in the woman’s grip.
Fergus dragged Conan from the fire, brushed the flames from his hair and chest, and then drew his sword as the woman attacked him. He threw her aside, and wrenched the stone axe from her hand. In two swift motions he severed her head, flinging the trophy on to the fire. The corpse he dragged outside and opened up so that the carrion eaters of the dawn might feed their fill.
Then he went back inside to where Niall was gently applying some watery oil to the terrible burns on Conan’s body.
The warrior was still alive, and after a while he looked up and smiled. A thin stream of spittle ran from the corner of his mouth, and his eyes closed.
‘Bring him outside,’ said Fergus, glancing at the woman still tied in the corner as he addressed Niall.
‘Kill me,’ said the woman, realising that Fergus had something nasty in mind. ‘I have given you nothing but the trouble that one warrior gives another. Kill me honourably.’
Fergus, dark and looking tired and old, snapped again: ‘Get him outside. I’m going to burn this house to the ground.’
As Niall dragged the half-skulled warrior outside he heard again the woman’s impassioned plea for an honourable death.
Laying Conan down on the cold ground, staring up at the bright stars, Niall rose and went to walk back inside the house.
Fergus barred his way. ‘Burn the house,’ he said, and when Niall hesitated he grew angry. ‘Burn it!’
‘The fire is inside,’ said Niall, and stood while Fergus fetched a brand from the fire, then closed the door. Niall, the flaming wood held tightly in his hand, ran around the house and set light to the thatch, and the wooden and muddy walls. The house blazed, a tremendous beacon that could probably be seen from the four main provinces, and could certainly be seen from the fifth.
Then he went to the very edge of the mound, crouched with Conan against the palisade and watched the fire. After a while the woman screamed, and the scream was seemingly endless. It finally gave way to racking sobs, and then a final shriek … and silence, save for the crackling fire.
Fergus burst through the flame, brushing fire from his own hair, and slowly straightening. He held something fleshy in his hand … not a head … and this he cast into the darkness.
Smoke blackened and furious he stared across the top of the blazing mound at Niall.
‘Here we part, friends Niall and Conan. I shall not rest until I have killed Grania, and since this goes astray from your own destiny, Niall, I feel that here we should say goodbye.’
‘Lug’s strength guide you,’ said Niall.
‘The triple goddess treat you well,’ answered Fergus, and an instant later he was gone, into the night, his horse whinnying at its rough treatment as the warrior rode it too hard, too fast through the darkness.
There was a brief flurry of white as Fergus rode through the river, then nothing … nothing but crackling fire, thundering heart, and the memory of screams of death and cries of pleasure.
Knowing that Ui Neill riders, from Tara and even nearer, would soon
come to find the reason for this fire, Niall dragged the half-living Conan beyond the palisade wall around the giant mound, and located the place on its slopes which faced the setting sun.
He began to dig.
The standing stone was half as tall as Niall but very heavy, and lay shallow in the soil where he soon discovered it. Using Conan’s brute strength, ignoring the fact that great gouts of blood spilled from the man’s crushed skull, the two fiana dragged the stone upright.
Conan collapsed, but he was still alive. Niall ignored him.
The stone was all that mattered.
He placed a knotted spancel loop of alder on its top, caressed its ragged, chipped slopes, and then tried to estimate where the shadow of the loop would be at midday.
He kissed the spot on the stone’s top, then stood back and addressed it directly.
‘How do I summon the giant from the Swamp of the Three Sisters?’
There was no response.
Puzzled he went back to the stone and stared closely at it. Distantly he heard the thunder of horses, and glancing into the darkness to the south he saw a hundred torches bobbing through the blackness; a host of men from a fort, somewhere close by, coming to discover why the mound of Cnocba was aflame. They would certainly kill him if they found him here.
Again he asked the stone his question, while Conan – on his knees – watched and burbled incoherently, touching the crushed and bloody side of his head, and laughing as if, in the feeling of the great depression in his skull, he found a source of great humour.
Still no response.
Then it occurred to him: if they’ve buried the stone, they may have turned it round.
Quickly Niall turned the stone so that it faced a quarter round the other way. He asked his question again, first kissing the place where the midday shadow of the spancel loop would lie.
Nothing.
He could hear the cries of the approaching army. Perhaps they suspected that the terrifying women of Cnocba were dead now, and that they could begin their bloody campaign of vengeance without worry.
Whatever motivated them to so salute the night, they were very close, and Niall was alone and unlikely to be spared.
Again he turned the stone. His horse voiced its pain at being so close to the fire and he realised that time was running out. The brightness of the conflagration lit his slim features, made them seem huge in the darkness against
the empty background of the lowlands. Conan watched him, murmuring happily.