Bridei and Gartnait had settled, after several years of training together, into a recognition that each surpassed the other in certain disciplines. Gartnait would never quite have Bridei’s skill with the bow. Bridei could not match his long-legged friend at running, nor did he possess Gartnait’s natural flair for all activities to do with water. Folk had been heard to jest, to Dreseida’s annoyance, that Talorgen’s eldest son had one of the Seal Tribe somewhere in his ancestry. Gartnait lacked Bridei’s affinity with animals, his ability to get the best from his riding horse, his gift for charming household cat or dog. And nobody at Raven’s Well could walk as silently through the forest as Bridei did, a talent, Dreseida was heard to observe in the dry way she had, that could only be acquired through a druidic education. It was true. Broichan’s earliest lessons were lodged deep in his student’s memory: Always travel through the forest as a part of it, Bridei, not as an intruder.
His feet now made no sound, or at least none detectable by man. He went as a creature of the forest goes, wary but sure, feeling each ridge, each hollow, each root and leaf and stone as if his feet were an extension of what lay beneath them. His ears were tuned for the smallest sound, his eyes open for the least sign that might betray an alien presence, a sense of something that did not belong.
He knew where Gartnait was; the faint crunch of cautious boot on pine carpet, the whisper of breath revealed his friend’s position. Besides, there was a pattern to what they were doing and each knew his part in it as they knew the old rhymes of childhood, almost instinctively, somewhere in the beating heart, the pulsing blood. Down the hill they crept on either side until they were close by the spot where the enemy had gone to ground. They could have done with a third man. Failing that, it was clear they must wait, for Bridei could see now that their quarry was hiding in a hollow between rocks where a fallen tree, its splintered limbs still thickly needled, provided a natural barrier and concealment. To attempt an assault into such a neat and secure position would be foolish, perhaps suicidal. Even a single man holed up in such a spot could maintain an effective defense for some time, and do some damage while he was about it. Two or more could last as long as their weaponry allowed. If they had a stock of arrows or throwing knives they might pick off both attackers. It had been a good choice of retreat. But not good enough; the enemy was, in effect, trapped in a space with only one point of exit, and if Bridei and Gartnait could maintain a vigil long enough, eventually their adversary must show himself. Then they would take him. Them. Bridei hoped there were no more than two. Success in this venture was vital. This was not just the capture of a spy, a blow against the wretched Gaels. It was an opportunity, if they got it right, to be accepted as men among men; as warriors deserving of inclusion in Talorgen’s elite.
Gartnait was in view and signaled that he was of the same mind. They settled, on the alert with weapons ready, one on each side and slightly above the hollow. From within there would be no view of them. Now the only sounds in the forest were the gurgling of a stream, the sigh of the breeze through the trees, the rustlings of creatures in the undergrowth.
Standing still and staying silent came easily to Bridei, accustomed as he was to the disciplines of his upbringing. For Gartnait it was more difficult. As their vigil wore on and the man or men in hiding made neither move nor sound, Bridei could see his friend shifting the weight from one leg to the other, changing his grip on his knife, stifling a yawn. Nonetheless, both young men held their silence. The longer this took, the more likely it was that someone else would be on the scene before any confrontation occurred. If any of the men at arms came out, the whole pattern would change. There would be less likelihood of getting wounded or killed. On the other hand, they would lose the chance to do this alone and to prove themselves at last. Bridei’s own thoughts troubled him, for he knew they were not worthy of a seasoned warrior, for whom overall strategy must play a greater part than personal ambitions. Let them not come until we’ve finished the job.
It was the enemy who broke the hush: there came a whispered word, indistinct but with a harsh edge to it that made Bridei catch his breath. The fellow spoke in the tongue of Dalriada; this was indeed their prime foe, and now it seemed he might be on the move.
Gartnait, knife poised, glanced across with raised brows. Go in? Now? Bridei shook his head: Not yet. Then, with the hands, a series of signs he hoped Gartnait would understand. Fingers across throat, then showing a negative: not kill. Pointing to Gartnait, to himself, then indicating where they would jump on their quarry. Wrists together as if tied: We’ll seize them, bind them. There wasn’t time for more, but Gartnait, freckles standing out against a sudden pallor, showed with a little nod that he understood.
This was going to be too close for the bow. It would be hand-to-hand combat with knives. Bridei’s mouth went dry; his breathing became harder to keep in control. What if the enemy was not easily overcome? They had to avoid an extended struggle, for they must minimize damage to this foe so he could give them what information he had: with luck, Gabhran’s positions, his armaments, his forces, his plans. A spy was like treasure, and treasure must be handled with care, even by a very young man who has never fought against a real enemy. Bridei’s heart pumped; his blood surged. Every part of him was on edge. He used the techniques Broichan had taught him, slowing his breathing, calming his thoughts. When the moment came it must be controlled in every respect or all they would carry back to Talorgen, to Donal, to the rest of this influential household, would be a tale of opportunity squandered. Who, then, would want them tagging along on a major expedition, more liability than asset?
A little cough came from within the hideout, a sound almost as subtle as their own signals; an instant later two men erupted from cover, on their feet and bolting across the difficult terrain, so quick, too quick. Gartnait set off in pursuit. Bridei thrust knife in sheath, seized his bow, set arrow to string and loosed it in what seemed the space of a single breath. He had always excelled at this. His first shot caught one fellow in the shoulder, making him stagger before weaving away under the pines; his second took the other in the thigh. Then Bridei ran. Gartnait had downed one adversary and was grappling with him in the undergrowth. He was cursing as he sought to relieve the fellow of his weapons, and his opponent sounded to be returning the abuse in his own tongue. Bridei halted. His quarry, the man with a damaged shoulder, had disappeared as if by magic. He could not have outrun his pursuer, not with such a wound. Bridei had aimed with precision; the fellow would be weakened and in pain. But he’d still be able to use a knife, and it only takes a moment to step out from cover and slit your enemy’s throat. Bridei held his breath, listening for a sound beyond the furious oaths of Gartnait’s captive and the hissing epithets of Gartnait himself, who was now evidently trying to bind the fellow’s arms. He shut those things out, using one of Broichan’s tricks, tuning his ears to a single thread, a rasp of breath, a whistle of agony; he used his nose as a hunting creature would, to fix on the smell of fear. And there he was, the enemy, not far away under the bracken, crouched low, waiting. Waiting for Bridei to walk just a little closer . . . waiting to strike . . .
One step forward, decisive and bold. The bow held ready, the arrow perfectly aligned. “Get up!” Bridei barked. “Both hands on your head! Step out where I can see you or I put this through your heart!”
Silence. Nothing moved.
“Make no doubt of my aim.” Bridei worked hard at an authoritative tone and thought he succeeded. “Want a taste of it?” And when there was no response, he loosed his shaft, praying that he had judged the shot correctly; there was probably less than two handspans leeway in it, judging by the sound of that breathing.
He heard his arrow lodge in wood—thwack!—and felt a surge of relief that he had not miscalculated and killed the man. A moment later the enemy rose to his feet, one hand on his head, the other arm loose and useless by his side. Red seeped across the shoulder of his tunic and down his shirt. His face was ash-white, his jaw set tight
as if his teeth were clenched in pain. His eyes were coolly assessing.
“Move out here!” Bridei commanded, jerking his head, since there was little likelihood his captive understood the tongue of the Priteni. The Gael obeyed him, stepping to a point three paces from Bridei in the shadow of the pines. He stared straight into his captor’s eyes, then spat with calculated precision into his face.
Bridei took a slow breath. He did not raise a hand to wipe the spittle from his cheek. “Turn around,” he ordered, miming the action.
The other raised his brows as if to indicate incomprehension. His expression had become bland and calm; indeed, the impression he gave now was that he thought the whole thing a little ridiculous. He was young, Bridei judged, perhaps not so very much older than himself, although his eyes had an old look about them.
“Turn!” Bridei showed him again, gesturing with the knife and reaching for the rope he carried in his small pack.
The enemy turned his back. A moment later, as Bridei made to fasten his wrists together with the cord, the man’s foot came around to deliver a crippling blow to Bridei’s shin and his good arm hammered back to catch his captor heavily in the ribs. Off balance and winded, Bridei did the only thing he could: lunged and grabbed the other by his injured arm, letting his own weight drag his opponent down until, after a painful, writhing tussle on the ground, he had him pinned on his back, his breath wheezing in his chest and Bridei’s knife held firmly against his neck.
“Try that again and I’ll break the other arm for you,” Bridei gasped. “Gartnait!” Despite the disadvantage of his injury, the Gael was ready for another trick, and another; he would fight all the way. Bridei could see it in his eyes; they held not the slightest trace of fear.
“Tie his hands, will you?” he muttered as Gartnait loped up, his own opponent apparently trussed and compliant, for there was no shouting now.
Gartnait busied himself with the rope. The captive twisted, straining to free himself from Bridei’s grip.
“Stop that, scum!” Gartnait delivered a sharp blow across the ear, and jerked the cord tight so that it bit viciously into the bound wrists. Bridei winced, imagining the surge of pain up the arm to the damaged shoulder. The man’s face showed not a twitch.
“Can the other fellow walk?” Bridei asked his friend. “We’d best move quickly. There could be more of them out there.”
“I put a gag on,” Gartnait said. “Best do the same here.”
“You’ve already made enough noise to alert their reinforcements, if there are any,” Bridei observed drily. “Go on, pick up your man; I’ll handle this one. And thanks.”
Gartnait grinned. “Don’t mention it. No doubt you’ll get the chance to return the favor before long.”
There was a smear of blood on Gartnait’s cheek and a look in his eyes that Bridei had never seen before. He could not quite place it, but it made him suddenly cold. Without turning to look, he sensed the captive’s eyes on him. Bridei wound the end of the rope around one hand, leashing the fellow to him like a dog. He held the knife against the Gael’s back. “Move,” he directed, and they set off toward Raven’s Well. Behind, Gartnait conveyed his own man more awkwardly, for the wound to the leg meant this one could not walk without support. Bridei slowed his pace, not to go too far ahead and seem to be claiming undue credit for himself. They’d done a good job; Talorgen must recognize that. Donal, too, would be impressed in his quiet way. Why, then, did Bridei feel uneasy still, his nerves on edge, his mind teased by something not quite right? Did more of the enemy lie concealed in pockets of the land beneath the pines, ready to strike? Surely not; the ideal moment for such an ambush was already past. Would their captives make a sudden break for freedom and this time make a better job of it? Hardly; Gartnait’s prisoner was flagging, his features ghastly white, his leg buckling under him; there would be no more running for this one awhile. Bridei’s captive had ceased his struggles, although the look on his face was not that of a defeated man. This fellow had not the red hair, the broad, fair-complexioned features that were most common to the men of Dalriada. Instead, the young warrior was long of face, dark of hair, a man of wiry, muscular build. He could almost have been one of their own save that his skin bore no evidence of the tattooist’s needles and colors. Every seasoned fighter of the Priteni wore his battle marks with pride, alongside his signs of origin, the creatures and symbols that told his kinship. After the spring campaign both Bridei and Gartnait should have earned the first of the combat decorations for themselves. This man’s skin bore no such patterns and that, as much as anything, marked him out as alien in this place.
For all his injury, which was bleeding steadily, the captive walked with purpose, eyes straight ahead, shoulders square. Bridei could not shake the sense that he himself was being assessed. If one grew up with a druid as a teacher, one learned to observe men subtly, to read the breath, to interpret the slightest change in the eye. It was the eyes of this man that were disconcerting above all. They were like the eyes of those killers in the Dark Mirror, the forces that had swept through the Vale of the Fallen, long ago, and taken all that lay in their path. Those eyes were devoid of both pity and hope; they saw only the task ahead of them and knew only the will to complete it. An army with such a look would be hard to withstand. It would, Bridei thought with a shiver, be near impossible to lead. Such men would fight without the awareness of their own mortality. They would kill without the knowledge of their enemy’s humanity. A fell force indeed.
By the time they reached the stone walls circling the inner yards of Raven’s Well, Gartnait’s prisoner was leaning heavily on his captor’s shoulder and appeared close to losing consciousness. The other walked with a back as straight as a king’s and a supercilious twist to the mouth. It was not long before both Donal and Talorgen appeared, the council having been interrupted with news of this capture.
It was all Bridei had hoped for. Men gathered around offering congratulations, and as the prisoners were led away, several people commented that it was likely key information could be extracted from them. Talorgen’s eyes showed surprised respect, Donal’s a restrained pride. Yet all through the remainder of the day and into the evening that same uncertainty troubled Bridei. He could not identify its cause. It was a curse, in some ways, to have been brought up by a man like Broichan. Gartnait had been taught how to fight, how to conduct himself in company, how to ride. He was learning how to oversee a great holding such as his father’s. Bridei, by contrast, had been trained in subtler skills: how to look and to listen, how to expect and prepare for surprises, how to read a man’s moods and sometimes his thoughts from a tiny gesture, an infinitesimal flicker of the eye. He had been taught to learn from every single thing he encountered, the good, the bad, the triumphant, and the humiliating. Today, Gartnait’s glowing eyes showed his delight at their success; his flushed cheeks revealed how he craved his father’s approval. Bridei received Talorgen’s congratulations as his friend did and acknowledged them with a courteous inclination of the head and the comment that without Gartnait’s assistance he’d have lost his own man. But what Bridei noticed and Gartnait did not was a little note of hesitancy in Talorgen’s voice, a small quirk of the lip, as if what they had done, courageous and resourceful as it was, had been in some way not quite what it seemed. And what Bridei observed later was that while Cenal, an apologetic shadow of a man whose unlikely job it was to supervise the interrogation of prisoners, did indeed disappear for some considerable time after their arrival, and while there were certain sounds suggesting the usual procedures were being employed, there was only one voice crying out from the isolated but beyond the horse yard and he was sure it wasn’t that of the fellow he had captured.
That could be easily explained, of course. There was a certain value in separating prisoners and playing them off one against another. But Bridei’s unease lingered as the day wore on and the sounds from the but subsided to faint sobs and groans and eventually silence. What was to be said? One did not marc
h up to a powerful man like Talorgen and demand explanations, especially not when one’s doubts were based on no more than a vague misgiving.
At supper time Talorgen mentioned that the prisoners had died under interrogation, and that some useful facts had been gleaned from both. Their deaths had been somewhat premature; from what Cenal had told him, the wounds inflicted by Bridei’s arrows and the subsequent bleeding had weakened them greatly and reduced their resistance to pressure.
“You were not unduly heavy-handed, I trust?” Talorgen asked his interrogator, who sat at the next table.
“No, my lord. I’m a professional.” A wounded look appeared on Cenal’s unassuming features. Bridei set his knife down, his appetite for the fine cut of beef abruptly deserting him. He made no comment; it would have been out of place for him to offer an opinion on this. Maybe he should have taken the prisoners without inflicting such severe wounds. Yet now he almost wished he had killed them outright. It was common knowledge that any Gael foolish enough to be caught on Talorgen’s land was subject to torture; it was expected Gabhran’s chieftains would do the same to the spies of the Priteni, should the situation be reversed. But it was different when you’d caught the man yourself, had wrestled him to the ground, had led him on a rope, had looked into his eyes and seen blood flowing from a wound your own arrow had inflicted. It was different when you had yourself delivered him up to be tortured to death. Bridei recalled those features, implacable as a carving in stone. Not only would the dark-haired man have failed to impart any secrets, he would have died without a sound, Bridei was sure of it. And that meant that when Talorgen had said both prisoners had revealed useful information, he’d been lying.