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

at the body of Girich. The Picts were silent.
    Aengus walked forward. "Your name is truly given, Calgaich—the Swordsman."
    "He was a good opponent," Calgaich admitted. "I've met none better. You'll miss your champion, Aengus."
    Aengus shrugged. "I never trusted him," he said in a low voice. "His weapons are yours, Calgaich."
    Calgaich shook his head. "Take his weapons back with his body. He was a warrior."
    The Picts waited, as if expecting something. Cairenn watched them curiously. Suddenly Calgaich raised his sword for a two-handed downstroke. The sharp iron cut cleanly through the neck of Girich and his head rolled to one side. A great gout of blood poured from the gaping neck hole. Cairenn turned aside and vomited.
    Calgaich picked up the head and placed it on top of one of the ring stones so that its sightless eyes looked toward his former companions.
    The Picts wrapped Girich's headless body in his cloak and carried it down to the shore of the sea loch. They pulled two long, lean rowing boats from the thicker shelter of the reeds, loaded them with their loot and the women prisoners, then shoved off and thrust out their oars. Aengus called out the stroke as the two boats moved out toward the sea mouth of the loch. In a little while the grinding of the oars between the hole pins died away.
    Calgaich held out his left arm to Cairenn. "Bind it,” he said. He ignored the look of horror and distaste on her face, pale now from being sick.
    Cairenn wiped her mouth and did as she was bidden. She cleaned the blood away first, pleased to see that it was only a slight puncture wound, before binding the arm tightly. She could smell the strong male odor. Neither of them §poke as she worked, nor did she raise her eyes to meet his.
    Then Calgaich took his war spear. "Come. There's little time to waste. The Damnonii will be along all too quickly. They'll kill any strangers they find in the glen.”
    He walked between two of the stones and strode toward the distant smoke pall. The snow-covered hills were bright in the rays of the rising sun.
    "But why, Calgaich?” Cairenn asked.
    He looked curiously at her.
    "The head,” she said, not looking at the thing of horror on the stone behind her.
    He shrugged. "He was too dangerous an enemy in life to have him haunt me after death.” He jerked his head backward. "That way, without a head, his vengeful spirit will not have eyes to see me or ears to hear me.”
    They walked on.
    "Perhaps the Damnonii are already at the rath ,” she warned him.
    “We’ll have to risk it. We need food and you need clothing. Perhaps the Picts left something behind them other than the dead.”
    She shivered at the thought. High in the bright sky she could see circling ravens. Ravens soon find the newly dead.

CHAPTER 4
    The thick smoke lay close about the smoldering huts. A wraith of it rose slowly high above the ravaged path to stain the blue sky. A miasma composed of the smoke, thick piles of manure, heated stonework and the sweetish, stinking aura of burned flesh poisoned the fresh morning air.
    Cairenn stopped at the edge of the rath. “No, I cannot go in,” she whispered when Calgaich impatiently motioned for her to keep up with him. “It is too soon.”
    “Too soon?” Calgaich repeated. He hesitated as if about to force her to his will, but finally told her to wait there. She was not: sure he had understood.
    Cairenn crouched low in the snowy bracken on a hill-slope at the edge of the rath , watching Calgaich as he walked slowly about the huts. She could not follow him. She knew what he would find. It was too close to what she had left behind in her father’s rath as she was dragged away by the Scotti when they were through with their killing and plundering. Perhaps it was well that she had been spared the aftermath of their ravages of her settlement, that her hiding place in the dog’s shelter had been found. How would she have buried her dead? Her parents and brother? Her betrothed? And where