Bloodstone (2 page)

‘Oh, right. It’s your baby brain again. Wars don’t wait for you to stop breeding, you know.’

‘Shut it, you two.’ Conal laid his head against the rock, as if he was listening to its voice. ‘Sorry,’ he muttered. ‘But we’ve come this far. We might as
well – ah!’

Four hundred years on and his sudden smile could still catch me by surprise, could still turn my surliness to a matching grin.

‘You found it,’ I said, and laughed.

‘I found it.’

‘Knowledge is power, so it is,’ I said as we rode eastwards. ‘And Leonora wouldn’t want me having that.’

‘Ah, get over it. You know now.’ Conal looked distracted, but I was angry. The tunnel in the rock could have saved me a lot of hassle, a long time ago. It would have saved me a
desperate run across the machair under a too-bright moon, and a climb that nearly killed me, and all to get Conal and me back into our own dun.

‘She could have made it easier. It’s not like anyone else knows about it.’ The Veil had been woven tight, dense, thick as rope around the tunnel entrance, and that was a
witch’s work. No wonder it had been hard to find.

‘And nobody ever should. You can both start working on a block right now. Put it to the back of your minds.’

‘Why did you show us now?’ Aonghas looked happier, now we were on our way home, but that was understandable.

‘She’s only just told me about it,’ said Conal. ‘Believe it or not.’

‘And,’ I interrupted. ‘He’s worried about the old bat.
Ow
.’ I should have learned by now that if I was going to insult Conal’s mother, I should make
sure I was more than an arm’s length away.

But, ‘Seth’s right.’ My brother’s voice was all gloom. ‘Kate only keeps her hands off the dun because she’s scared of Leonora. If anything happens to
her—’

‘And there’s no reason anything should,’ pointed out Aonghas.

‘Want to bet? She’s got that look in her eye.’

Yeah. I’d seen it myself, and I had mixed feelings. Leonora’s death was to be dreaded, and she’d already stayed in life three and a half centuries longer than anyone else
I’d ever heard of, after the death of a bound lover. It was a hell of an achievement, what with her soul being dragged in Griogair’s wake every minute of every day. Didn’t make me
like her any better, but it
was
an achievement.

All the same, if she gave in and went to her death our exile would be over, and I wanted it to be over. How long since I’d stopped believing in the Stone? I’d lost count of the
decades, if I’d ever believed in it at all. Prophecy? Fate? Talismans? Horseshit. Leonora and Kate might be the most powerful witches the Sithe had ever known, but they were both in thrall to
some mad old soothsayer, and I expect the ancient loon was squawking even crazier nonsense by the time Kate’s Lammyr finally killed her. I’d heard what she said about me – try
forgetting it, when you live with a superstitious old Sithe-witch – and I shoved it to the back of my mind with the bad grief and the worse jokes and the old guilt, all the other detritus of
life. No demented half-dead lunatic was dictating my life choices. Not any more. She’d sent me into a four-hundred-year exile in search of a nonexistent Stone, and that was more than
enough.

No bit of rock was going to save the Veil, defeat the queen and return Conal and me to our dun and our people. I knew what was going to do that: fighters and good blades, and the sooner we
abandoned the hocus-pocus and pitched into a proper fight, the better it would be.

I was glad to see Conal in a better mood as we rode back towards the watergate. Maybe he was thinking the same as me, at last. Or maybe he was just baby-headed, like his brother-by-binding. When
Aonghas actually started to whistle, I couldn’t take the surfeit of happiness any more.

‘Do shut up,’ I said. ‘That’s bad luck. And wipe that stupid smile off your face.’

‘Ah, leave him alone, Seth. He’s soft in the head. It’s his hormones.’

‘Wasn’t him that was pregnant.’

‘You’d have thought it was. I swear to the gods he threw up every morning.’

‘And he put on a belly. Still got it, actually.’

‘The pair of you can hide up your own arses,’ said Aonghas cheerfully, patting his stomach, which to be honest was as thin and hard as mine. Well, maybe I was a little jealous. But
he had a right to be happy. They’d waited long enough, him and Reultan.

It was one of those days of intense slanting sunshine and black rain. When the sudden spattering showers lifted, the light would come under the clouds like a torch-beam, bronzing the fields and
making the sodden trees glitter. It was pretty. We were home, for now. None of us minded getting wet. We rode with the sun’s rays, and I suppose that their dazzle was harsh looking the other
way.

Which must have been why the child didn’t see us.

It was under Conal’s hooves before it realised its danger, but its impetus carried it stumbling beneath the black horse and safely to the other side, where it tripped and crashed into the
bracken. It was already scrambling to its feet, sobbing with terror, and I had to haul on the blue roan’s bit to keep it from lunging for the boy. It was a boy, though in that state, to the
blue roan, it was nothing but prey. Conal’s black was showing a hungry interest now, and I could see a food fight coming.

‘Don’t run!’ I shouted, furious. ‘Don’t run, you stupid little—’

I might as well have yelled at the rain not to fall. The boy – seven or eight, I’d guess – had bolted again; luckily for him he ran straight towards Aonghas, who simply leaned
down and scooped him off his feet and onto his rather more biddable horse, holding him tight in front of him.

‘You’re fine. Jaysus, child, you’re fine, this is a horse, not a—’

Aonghas’s words had no more effect than mine; already the boy was hammering him with his fists, biting at his bare arms, struggling and kicking. Aonghas swore and slapped him; the boy
slapped him back and gave as good a mouthful of abuse, and Aonghas finally lost his temper and seized the child’s forehead with one strong hand. ‘Sleep, brat.’

The boy fought him for maybe two seconds, but he was too young to block well, and his body slumped, limp. Well, at least an unconscious child wasn’t such a provocation to the black and the
blue roan. As the two horses snorted and stamped and calmed a little, Conal stared at Aonghas, and the child, and me.

‘What in the name of the gods? Doesn’t he know a frigging kelpie when he sees one? Don’t his parents—’

I looked beyond him, and nodded. ‘Wasn’t us he was scared of.’

We fell silent as we watched the smoke curl beyond the brow of the hill. Now we could hear screams, the thwack and chunk of blades hitting flesh, the hungry crackle of building flame.

Conal lifted his thumb and forefinger, maybe an inch between them.

‘This close,’ he said through gritted teeth. ‘We are
this close
to the dun lands.’

‘But not within them.’ Aonghas eyed him.

‘Chancers,’ hissed Conal. ‘How feckin’
dare they
.’

Aonghas said, ‘We can take the child. Get him away. More sensible.’

I stayed out of it. It was Aonghas’s place to counsel him, not mine. But hell, I was hoping he’d lose the argument.

Actually, I think he was too. A bit.

‘Aonghas, listen to it.’

Aonghas cocked his head. ‘Three of them. Four, maximum.’

‘And they’re not expecting us.’ Conal was seething.

The roan was behaving, now. It had forgotten the boy, and was yearning and tossing its head towards the sounds and smells of a fight. I patted its pearly neck.

‘And famously,’ I said, ‘I’m a one-man army, me.’

Aonghas rolled his eyes. ‘I had to try.’

Conal grinned, a baring of his teeth with no humour. ‘Yes, you did. But you stay here with the child. Me and the one-man army’ll do this.’

‘Aw, come on—’

‘An order.’ Conal winked. ‘I’m not half as scared of you as I am of my sister.’

Aonghas looked down at the unconscious boy in his arms, a smile tugging his mouth. Yup: baby-brained. ‘Well, do it fast. I don’t want to have to come in and save your arse, not with
a child on board.’

They were not expecting us. They were expecting nothing but poorly-armed farmers, who must have refused to give up tithes to Kate or one of her captains. The crofter was dead already, but the
captain of the raiding party hadn’t yet put his sword through an older boy; he was still gripping him by the neck while the youth kicked for air.

‘Put him down,’ barked Conal, and made him do it.

The leader’s death left us only one each, and a spare, and Conal was in enough of a rage not to share nicely. He was flinging himself off the black and slamming the third one to the
ground, his teeth grinding in the man’s ear, while I was still chasing down the last panicking horseman and trying not to harm the even smaller child screaming under his arm.

The fighter backed his horse into a corner by a burning shed, and as if that wasn’t stupid enough, he dropped the child. I didn’t bother with my blade after that, or only to strike
his sword out of his hand. He was so scared of the roan he was barely watching me, so I grabbed the neck of his shirt, pulled him to me and punched him as hard as I could. And again. And again.

I was still punching when Conal yanked my other sleeve. ‘Wasting time,’ he said, and spat out another bit of ear. ‘Get that child. Its mother’s alive.’

Its mother was half-blind with blood and grief and rage, but she was indeed alive and she had enough wits about her to know she shouldn’t have been. And she didn’t have a choice now,
and anyway her croft was gone and her beasts slaughtered along with her lover. She took the smallest infant from my arms, and the middle boy from Aonghas’s, and she and the older boy scraped
up weapons from the raiders’ bodies and limped in the direction Conal showed them. The dun was two days’ walk at most, and they wouldn’t be safe outside it.

I was sucking on my bruised and skinned fist by now, and sulking at my own stupidity.

‘Stings?’ Conal winked. ‘Eejit.’

‘Don’t listen to him,’ Aonghas told me. ‘You’ve got style.’

‘I know I have. He’s jealous.’

‘You’ve got style, and he’s stuck with morals. Course he’s jealous.’

I laughed. ‘You say morals, I say politics.’

‘Cynic.’

I was still grinning at him as his laughter died. He wasn’t looking at me any more; he’d raised his head to stare across the burning croft. I felt my heart shrink.

‘Conal!’ he yelled.

Conal rode to our side, staring with us at the distant riders. They were coming on fast; perhaps the remainder of this patrol. I’d wondered why there were so few of them. ‘Damn.
Let’s go.’

‘It’s okay. They haven’t seen us.’

‘No, but they’ll have to. We’ll have to draw them off.
Shit.
’

Well, of course we would. We knew what would happen if this new patrol caught up with that woman and her children. I swore through my teeth, just to relieve my feelings, and then we put our
heels to our horses’ flanks and rode for it.

We crossed their line of sight in the full flare of that late sun and the burning buildings. They couldn’t miss us, and we couldn’t miss their shouts of shock and triumph.

‘Cù Chaorach! Cù Chaorach, you rebel bastard!’

It wasn’t a chance they’d pass up. Every one of them came after us, and I had time to be glad the crofting family were out of it, and to regret my brother’s suicidal altruism
for maybe the five hundredth time. Then there was only time to draw breath and ride.

There were trees ahead, and that made it easy for us. The roan leaped a fallen log and we were plunged in among birks and thick undergrowth, Conal to my right and Aonghas to my left. I saw them
only as blurred movement broken by silver trunks, and I could hear only my breath, and the roan’s hooves, and the yells and the thunder of pursuit.

It was fine. As I risked a glance over my shoulder, I knew it really was fine. Relief swept through me on a giddy high and I let myself whoop. We’d been far enough ahead and we’d
taken them by surprise; we were going to outpace them with ease. I knew this land and I knew where Conal was heading as I swerved the roan around a slalom of birk trunks. He’d taken a wide
sweep round but we were almost on the north-east edge of the dun lands now, back on our own territory, and Kate’s patrol would never follow there.

As we broke from the trees and galloped headlong onto the high moor, I almost laughed. Luck had held solid for Conal again. Beyond the saddleback hill I knew I would see the first boundary stone
of the dun lands. Thank the gods for fast horses and stupid enemies.

Their frustrated yells were growing more distant, and as I saw the boundary stone flash past my left foot, I knew that one by one the pursuing riders were drawing up. There was a strange note to
their shouts, though; a funny mixture of disappointment and triumph. I didn’t have time to think about it. I swerved the roan down a rocky slope and into the next belt of trees, Conal a neck
ahead of me and Aonghas at my heels.

A few hundred yards on Conal reined the black horse to a halt and spun to face me, laughing. The roan danced to a stop at his side and we turned to meet Aonghas, grinning.