Éire’s Captive Moon (40 page)

Cowan laughed, a full laugh and a healthy one. It gladdened her mind. “Good, then,” he said. “I can work for a man like that.”

“So, you trust me, then?” she asked, feeling a smile linger on her lips.

He chuckled once more and this time reached up to touch her hair. “
Isea
, lass. I do. For all that I shouldn’t, I do.”

Seven mornings later, when they had sailed up the coast of Éire and up to the fog-beset shore of her birth, Charis felt that, at last, she had redeemed herself in her own eyes. She had gained vengeance on those who had hurt her, had repaid the man who had sailed her away from Balestrand, and had returned to Ragor’s shore, less than a year from the time she had been taken.

Now all that remained was finding her people.

Her personal triumph and future plans were interrupted when Cowan placed his work-roughened hands on her shoulders and whispered over her head. “Well, lass, you’ve taken us this far. Now what?”

The shouts of the sailors—

“Anchor down!”

“Anchor is down, captain!”

—drowned her answer at first. “Now you get us off this ship and into the fog.”

“Me? Ah, so you’ve left me something to do then?”

She heard the resigned laughter in his quiet question. “You’ve said more than once that you’re the fighter, son of Branieucc.”

His hands left her shoulders, taking warmth with them and leaving her feeling the chill of the heavy fog. The white-gray mass moved from land to sea, as if it, too, would aid in their escape. Charis was reminded, suddenly, of Achan’s story of her own birth. It had been a foggy morning . . . her mother had been of an unknown people . . . Who was she really? Did she have special abilities? Where did they come from? Was she truly of the
sidhe
, as the villagers had whispered since she’d been a girl?

If so, could she call the fog to her? Or was it just a trick of her mind that made it seem almost alive?

Cowan made a thoughtful sound behind her and she shook off her unearthly contemplation. “
Isea
, Charis,” Cowan breathed into the morning mists. “I have had to be a fighter. I can be one again.”

“Watch the rocks!” Captain Perot called, his voice seeming cloaked by the thickening fog.

“Aye, sir!”

“Secure our hostages!”

Charis turned, alarm making her heart jump inside her chest. “Cowan?”

She would remember this moment for the rest of her life, she was sure. The fog beading in Cowan’s beard and hair, like small gems against cloth. Eyes flashing. The fierce grin of a warrior of her people.

Two sailors moved quickly toward them, and Cowan called the name of his God as he brandished his knife—his only weapon—and prepared to fight.

Chapter 29

What a joke. A knife against two muscled, wiry men of the sea. But Cowan’s laugh was joyful even as he positioned himself to do battle. From somewhere, he had the awareness that Charis was slinking along the side of the deck, but he did not pay her much heed. He had to deal with men who would—once again—take him captive.

Fog slipped to the mast of the ship, sliding down to the deck as Cowan angled his body. He had no shield, but the seamen were not well-armed. It seemed a fair match.

“Get him!” they shouted, grins on their salt- and sun-roughened faces. The others shouted encouragement to them, which Cowan barely heard, but it made him laugh anyway. He remembered when the
Oran Mór
, the Song of Life, had sung to him, remembered the dance of battle, and he was confident that under Jesu he would be victorious this morning.

One sailor with inky hair and a drooping mustache jumped up and came down, one foot forward, to catch Cowan in the gut. He moved easily aside, plunging his knife into the bald man who attacked on his right.

A splash, shallow in sound, caught his ear as the bald fellow went down, blood pouring from his hip, staining dark trousers.

“The doctor jumped ship!” Cowan heard. He nodded his satisfaction with that and edged to the side of the deck to follow.

Hands reached for him, staffs and even oars were thrown at him, but Cowan still progressed, handspan by handspan, to the railing of the ship. A slice to this man, a thrust at that, and he incapacitated those who would have kept him from the foggy shore of his country. A kick to the middle sent Captain Perot slamming against a brace of water barrels, gasping for breath. This last obstacle overcome, Cowan shouted his thanks to God and leapt without inhibition over the side into the shallows, having slain no one, but gaining his liberty.

“Cowan!”

His name snaked to him from the near-enveloping fog, curling near his ear and reminding him of his mission to protect Charis. He splashed through the water, ignoring the water soaking his boots and much-patched trousers. Over the rocks, up the slight incline to the right of the sharp wall of the cliff of Ragor, he kept his footing over the welcoming green grass. Ahead the fog was a thickening length of cloth, hiding the trees, the distant view of the village to his left, and even the ground itself. It clung to him, drawing him forward, coaxing him to find safety in its thick blanket.

“Up here! Follow my voice!”

Behind him, there were other voices—hard and menacing. “How did you let him past you?
 

“He tried to kill me!
 

“Ransom!
 

“Blood, I say!”
 

Others, too, called out for him by name, promising him fair treatment if he returned voluntarily.

Cowan snorted as he plunged into the fog. “Oh, aye, fair to be sure,” he muttered, clutching his knife and trying to find Charis in the soupy fog.

Then she was there, a slender arm the color of the moon’s white surface. “Come!”

She moved with confidence, as if she could see through the fog’s heavy covering. For a breath, Cowan stopped, a bit unnerved. “Charis? Did . . . did you call the mist?” he whispered, feeling his words hang in the moisture between them.

She snorted, such a delightfully earthy sound that Cowan’s worries were dispelled. “Call the mist?
Na, na
, Cowan. I’m glad it’s there, mind, but fog is fog, man, and you know it.”

He grinned in relief.
I know this woman,
he reminded himself.
She might not be as the rest of womankind, but she is no sorceress sent to steal my soul.
No, just his heart, he reflected with a wry shaking of his head as he slid his hand into hers and walked with her. That was not magic. Madness, yes, but not magic.

The fog parted before them as the voices behind grew confused and more faint. “Lass,” he began.

“Hush,” she whispered before ducking quickly to their left, dragging him behind her. Her lips brushed his ear when she spoke again. A small torment, but not an unwelcome one. “The captain has sent a search party for us. A good tracker could follow our steps on the grass, so we need to disappear.”

“What?” he gasped.

“Up a tree, man.” She brought their still-joined hands to the rough bark of the tree, and only then did he study it. Oak. Sturdy, with a life as long as his people, perhaps.

“There’s a forest of them; we can hide here ’til those idjits go away and then we’ll go to my village.”

He was already fitting his feet and fingers into the jagged grooves provided by the tree. It had been years since he had to do any climbing, but his boyhood memories served him well. Pull up, balance out, find the toe-holds, seek more finger-niches. Half a body length at a time, he rose up the trunk of the tree. At each pause, he checked below to see Charis clinging to the trunk, watching the swirling fog as it shifted shapes and patterns over the grass and through the winter-thinned trees.

When he found a stout enough branch, Cowan hoisted his backside onto it and hissed down for the healer. The fog was thick enough, even now, that he felt protected in its depths. Charis’s pale head and arms moved as she crept up the tree. As she cleared two lower branches and neared him, Cowan held out his arm to steady her and help her to the branch he had chosen for hiding. Without a word, as if it had been planned before, they scooted down a ways and flattened themselves on their bellies against the wood.

“I saw them go this way,” Cowan heard in the language of the tradesmen. “We’ll take the gold out of his hide if Jean doesn’t recover.”

“Out of hers as well, for all she’s a doctor!”

Charis understood none of this, but Cowan did and his muscles tightened against the tree bark. If they touched her, he would kill them.

As the voices acquired bodies, he heard Charis inhale long and deep, so he did likewise. Silence was of primary importance. The Blessed Patrick, it was said, had been able to turn into a deer when he had been pursued by his enemies. Cowan did not know how much truth was in that, but he would not have minded that ability himself at the moment. Though his mouth was closed, his eyes were open. Two of the sailors he had fought with were all but swimming through the mists, muttering to themselves.

One stopped and fingered his dagger. “Saw they came this way.”

“Saw
something
, anyway,” the other said.

The first one knelt to the soggy grass. “The prints stop here. Then all the grass is trampled.”

“Did they just vanish?” the second one wondered, a laugh in his voice. “Like the faerie folk?”

Standing, the first man made a derisive sound. “Those are children’s stories.”

Cowan could not see what happened, but both their pursuers must have seen something, because they jumped almost out of their skins. Their yelps frightened the morning birds into flight, with much rustling of feathers and movement in the surrounding trees.

The motion pushed the fog around enough so that the sailors took off running out of the wood. Cowan let out his breath on a silent prayer.
Thanks be unto you, Lord God!

After waiting for perhaps twenty beats of the heart, Charis spoke. “We can get down now. We’d best get to the village before the fog melts away.” Anxiety edged her words, making him edgy as well.

She slid from their branch, her tunic catching on small twigs. He heard it rip at least once on the way down. He followed, landing with a soft sound on a protruding root under the oak tree. Already the fog was thinning, as if it had been sent for only as long as they would need it. “Where to now?” he asked Charis. Farther inland, he would know the land, he believed. He had grown up a day’s walk from here. But this was Charis’s home and he would follow her lead.

“Up this way,” she instructed, heading through the strip of trees. Sunshine began to burn through the fog, revealing the end of the wooded area and a slope. As they reached the slope, memories washed over Cowan. He’d been tied to a tree, forced to watch the Northmen break the wooden gate of the village. He could remember the smells of the battle. The burning. The screams of the dying. The feeling of utter hopelessness as he realized that the villagers would not be able to free him from his captivity, as they were taken captive as well. He blew out a breath and gave thanks that he and Charis had returned.

Home.

Charis felt her heart still within her as she saw the familiar walls of her village, the edge of the cliff, and the paths that led to both. Tears clogged her throat, but she held them from her vision. It would not do to have the children see her crying.

“Jesu, Mary, and Joseph,” Cowan murmured beside her.

“What?” she asked, moving up the path once again.

“The gate, lass. It’s not yet been fixed.”

“So?” She was irritated when he gripped her arm to hold her back. “Let me go, man! I have to get to the children!”

“The village is deserted,” he told her, his voice flat. “Did the children have instructions about where to hide?”

Charis tried again to move around him. “The tunnels, yes! But they were to come out. Aislinn would have brought them out.”

He studied the broken gate. “Quiet, woman. There could be trouble. Let me go first.” He pushed her behind him and proceeded, but not up the path. Instead, he ran lightly to the wall of the
rath
to the right of the splintered gate. That was when the wrongness of it struck Charis as well, and she followed right behind him. Why had none of the surviving adults repaired the gates against intruders? Why was it so quiet now? Where were the cook-fires? The smells of home?