The Swordswoman - Books 1-3

Chapter 5-1

Observing the mountains from a distance and experiencing them at first hand were two different things. Melcorka bowed her shoulders and trudged onward and upward, ever upward. The deer track had started in the heather of the low country but now wound, narrow and steep, up to a slope of sliding scree. Melcorka slipped, muttered a word her mother would not be pleased to hear, recovered and moved on, one of the short column of Cenel Bearnas.

She looked ahead, past the bobbing heads of her companions to where the path vanished in the scree, and then looked beyond to a smooth, blue granite mountain that stretched into clinging mist. She could not see the summit; she was only aware of the vast space all around and the echoing nothingness of the hills. Twice, she heard something calling from the mist and warned the others.

"It may be a deer," Granny Rowan told her, "or a wolf. The mist distorts noises, so what you think is unearthly is only a beast, altered."

"It could be the Norse," Melcorka said.

"No. There is nothing here for them. There is nobody to e*****e, no monasteries to loot, no warriors on which to test their sword-edge." Granny Rowan shook her head. "No, Melcorka, there are no Norse here." She walked on a few paces before stopping and speaking over her shoulder. "Monsters perhaps, but not Norsemen." Her cackling laugh echoed for second, then altered to a hideous boom as the mist transformed the sound into something unearthly.

"There is no such a thing as a monster," Melcorka told herself, but, now that Granny Rowan had embedded the idea in her mind, she saw creatures and shapes behind every rock and in every swirl and twist of mist. She started at a sudden sound and Defender was in her hand even as she shouted the warning. "Something is coming!"

The others spun around, with Bearnas instantly taking charge. "Over to that rock!" She pointed to a large, wind-weathered lump of granite about thirty yards ahead. "Get behind it!"

Melcorka remained at the rear, sword in hand, waiting to greet whatever emerged, until Baetan reached back with a massive hand and hauled her to the rock.

"What are you doing?" he asked her.

"I"m going to fight it!" She brandished her sword. "I"m not running from a monster, however fierce!"

"You little fool!" He pushed her head down. "Keep down and stay alive. This is not the sort of enemy you can fight."

"I can fight any monster!"

Melcorka tried to stand. She saw the huge cloud of dust and small pebbles roaring down the slope from the mist; the ground itself was shifting as the scree from above slid down upon them, gathering speed and momentum with every yard it travelled.

"It"s an avalanche!" Baetan yelled. "Everybody, get down as far as you can and cling to something solid."

Melcorka looked up to see half the mountainside rushing toward her, with smaller stones bouncing and rolling on top of a mass of scree as the grey and black mass turned and growled down, picking up momentum with every yard it travelled. For a moment she stared, transfixed, and then dived down and tried to carve a hole for herself in the thin soil ground behind the rock.

And then it was on them, with a growl like a hundred dragons, crashing onto the rock and dividing into two vicious streams on either side, until the pressure from above forced the scree to build up behind the rock and overflow across the top.

The noise was horrifying, a constant roar in which the sound of any individual stone vanished in the overall ocean of moving rock. Melcorka felt a sharp pain on her back as a small boulder completed its journey across the shelter rock and landed on her. Others followed in ones and twos and then in a constant stream, as the pressure from the rear pushed the front-line stones over the top of the rock.

Melcorka glanced around. The Cenel Bearnas were sheltering as best they could as a stream of shingle and scree and rolling boulders formed on either side of them. She looked behind, to see another large outcrop of rock only fifty yards in their rear. The avalanche had reached that point and was partly stopped, with a build-up in the upward section.

As a fist-sized stone rattled across their sheltering rock, Melcorka ducked down again, trying to make herself as small as possible. The scree build-up was getting deeper by the second, with the stones climbing toward them at an alarming speed. They were in a small and diminishing island within a sea of moving scree.

"Keep down," Bearnas warned. "The higher your foolish head sticks up, the more chance there is of a stray rock taking it off."

Melcorka heard a loud scream. Fino had tried to find a less precarious position and a bouncing stone had hit her on the leg, smashing her kneecap. She fell sideways, and the right-hand stream of the avalanche carried her away. Melcorka could see her struggling in the mass, trying to escape as a million tons of rock cascaded around her, with stones, some as big as her head, crashing on her injured body. Her screams continued, then faded to a soft whimper and disappeared amidst the roar of the rolling stones.

As if it had done its allotted task, the avalanche began to subside, altering from a roar to a grumble and then into silence.

"We lost Fino," Granny Rowan said quietly.

"It was her time." Bearnas looked over the remainder of her crew. "Are there any other casualties?"

Apart from a few cuts, scrapes and bruises, there were none.

"These stones did not roll on their own accord," Baetan looked upward at the clearing mist. "Somebody caused them to move."

"Or something," Granny Rowan said. "There are strange things in the mist."

"Listen." Baetan put his hand on the hilt of his sword. "Monsters don"t whistle like that."

Melcorka heard it then, the low flute-like whistle on either side of them and from high above. She had been aware of the sounds in her sub-conscious and only now did she realise how prevalent it was.

"The Gregorach," Bearnas slithered out her sword, "the Children of the Mist. Form a circle, Cenel Bearnas. Don"t unsheathe yet."

"Who?" Melcorka asked.

"The Gregorach. The MacGregors, sons of Gregor, son of Alpin – a royal race cheated of their kingship and robbed of their lands." Granny Rowan sounded worried. "Since they became landless, they have lived as wanderers and outcasts, roaming the wild areas of Alba. Kings and lords employ them for clandestine killing. If you wish any dirty work done, any assassinations, any midnight reiving, then the MacGregors are your men."

"Are they dangerous?"

"If somebody has paid them to kill us, then we are all dead," Bearnas did not sound scared. "But they may be only testing us to see who we are."

The whistling continued and then stopped. Only the sound of the wind across the rocks could be heard now, and the scream of an eagle high on the peaks.

"Who are you?" The voice boomed out, seemingly from nowhere. "What business do you have here?"

"We are the Cenel Bearnas," Bearnas answered. The slither as she drew her sword sounded soft and sinister on that scree slope. "We are crossing this land on a journey to see the king."

"Bearnas." Baetan sounded strained. "They are all around us."

Melcorka looked sideways. At first, she could see nothing, and then she realised that some of the stones were not stones. There was movement amidst the scree, a man was standing there. More than one man.

One by one, they rose from the ground until they surrounded the Cenel Bearnas. One minute the ground was empty of people, the next, fifty men surrounded the small group of islanders. They wore stone-coloured shirts or grey chain mail, their faces were dyed grey and while half carried the claymore, the great sword of the Highlands, the others had short and powerful bows, with broad-headed arrows pointing toward Bearnas and her people.

claymore"Drop the weapons, or we drop you." A tall man stepped through the Gregorach ranks. "I am MacGregor."

Melcorka focussed on him; handsome as Satan"s promise, his faint smile gave strength to his neatly-bearded, saturnine face that his neck-length hair only enhanced. He was not above middle height and in build was lithe rather than muscular, yet there was a presence in the man that demanded respect.

"I am Bearnas of the Cenel Bearnas, and we keep our weapons," Bearnas said quietly. "For every one of us that you kill, we will kill four of you."

There was taut silence until Bearnas spoke again.

"Unsheathe," she ordered quietly. "MacGregor is not bluffing. We were unfortunate to cross Drum Alban while the Children were here."

Melcorka felt the thrill as she drew Defender. The sword seemed lighter in her grasp than it had before and even easier to hold. She stepped forward until Baetan shook his head.

"Stand with us, Melcorka. Don"t break the circle." He sounded nervous.

Bearnas looked around. "Well, MacGregor, you have the next move in this game of steel chess."

"Well met, Bearnas!" MacGregor"s smile was of pure pleasure. "Your name is still known across the breadth of Alba. Where are you bound?"

"Dun Edin," Bearnas said, "with a message for the king."

"Royal is my race." MacGregor"s smile did not falter as he gave a small signal with his right arm that saw his bowmen lower their weapons. "We will take you safely across Druim Alba, Bearnas of the Cenel Bearnas."

"Mother," Melcorka asked, "how does this man know about you?"

"Do not ask questions, little one," Granny Rowan said, "and you will not be told lies."

And Melcorka placed her tongue firmly within her mouth and said no more.

It was a seven-day trek across the granite heartland of Alba, with the shadowy Gregorach trotting in front and on either flank. Sometimes Melcorka saw them; sometimes they merged with the granite precipices, or slid in and out of the mist that they now claimed as their only home. They communicated in whistles rather than speech and moved without another sound.

They negotiated narrow ridges where the ground fell away to unseen depths beneath, and up winding paths that only the deer and the Gregorach knew and where one wrong step would mean a fatal slide down a granite slope. They halted on the crest of a rugged peak on the second night, with the wind dragging rain from the west and the sky to the north tinted a flickering orange.

Melcorka stood, mesmerised by the vista of peak after peak running in a series of ridges that spread as far as her eye could see. "There is no end to these mountains," she said.

"There is an end," Bearnas said quietly, "but rather than looking south and east, Melcorka, look to the clouds in the north and tell me what you see?"

"An orange sunset," Melcorka said at once.

"The sun sets in the west," Bearnas pointed out. "What you see is the reflection of fires on the belly of clouds far in the north."

"Northmen?"

"Northmen," Bearnas said flatly. "It seems that they are burning their way south through Alba." Her eyes followed the line of the mountains ahead. "We have to increase our speed, or the Northmen will arrive on the heels of our message." She tapped Defender. "Keep up your training, Melcorka. We are only at the beginning. The Northmen are doughty fighters, and Alba has forgotten the arts of war."

"Come on, then." Baetan unsheathed his sword. "Let"s see how you fare without your magic sword."

"Leave Defender." Granny Rowan tossed over her sword. "Use mine."

Baetan smiled to Melcorka across his blade. Melcorka tightened her grip on her borrowed sword and smiled back. Both of them wore a simple leine and knee-length trousers, with feet bare to enable them to grip the damp ground.