Calgaich the Swordsman Read Online Free PDF Page A

and drew her close to look down at her. His face was hard and set like amber. “Listen, woman! Only by the grace of the gods did you get to leave Eriu alive!” He bent closer to her face, trying to see through the beauty of it into the real face of this feminine creature whom men suspected of being a witch. It was no use. Her loveliness and great eyes effectively concealed whatever fearsome sight might lay hidden behind them. “I will tell you only once,” Calgaich added. “Do not prophesy in this country of mine, or your death will come so swiftly you will not know that it’s coming. Or perhaps they will sentence you to the long death, with hours of agony and hell before you die. Do you understand?”
    She nodded. “I will remember,” she promised.
    He turned away. “We’ve got to find shelter. We can’t survive on this open beach.”
    Calgaich led the way up from the lonely strand, which was haunted by the screaming of the low-wheeling gulls as they hovered over the place where the birlinn had gone down. Cairenn trudged after Calgaich, bruising her slender feet on the rounded pebbles of the shingle. Now and again she would look up at his broad back. She remembered all too well the look on his face as he had eyed her naked body when she had stood on the deck of the birlinn. She remembered, too, the touch of his hands as he helped her straddle the plank that carried her ashore. She shivered a little thinking of the harsh rape that was bound to come sooner or later. Was that why he had saved her? Yet she shivered not only from fear but also from a strange anticipation of his body on hers, forcing her to his will. Yes, that time would come. She pulled the tartan cloak more tightly around her shoulders and hurried to catch up to him.
    They stopped at the crest of a low hillock that overlooked the sea. The gray-bearded waves rolled in against the shoreline in serried ranks, and a thundering shock could be felt through the trembling earth at their feet.
    She looked up at his taut face. “What is it, fian? The Picts again?”
    Calgaich shook his head. “The birlinn was a good craft. She was as swift as a seal, and she rode the white-maned sea horses like a gull. It was a terrible sight to see her die like that, a broken thing at the mercy of the seas.” It was almost as though he spoke of a once living thing.
    "And the men who died with her, fian? Do you not think of them?”
    He looked at her. "They were there by choice, woman. The birlinn was not.” He turned away from her and strode on across the sandy, hummocked ground, wigged here and there with coarse furze bushes.
    A great land-cup lay within a grim circle of lowering hills whose tops were crowned with thick lowlying clouds of dark gray that seemed to be racing inland, driven by the powerful western wind. A sea loch of leaden-colored water probed into the land. Drifting mist hung throughout the great land-cup within the embrace of the hills. The strong salt smell of the sea hung in the air. A light drizzling of cold rain began to descend.
    A humped earthen mound stood not far from the steep slope of one of the hills, as though a giant of nature had lain down to rest and covered himself with a thick cloak of bracken and heather. The sea wind ruffled the growths as if beneath them the huge chest of the giant were rising and falling in his deep sleep.
    Calgaich stopped short. He quested with eyes, ears and nose as if he were a hunting hound. His hands tightened, white-knuckled, on the shaft of his spear.
    "What is it?” Cairenn whispered.
    He shook his head. His eyes were fixed almost hypnotically on the huge earthen mound.
    Cairenn waited uneasily, puzzled and shivering. She looked curiously about herself and made out a rough circle of great, lichen-covered stones standing on end, half-sunken in the thick turf. The stones encircled the mound. She eyed the mound more closely. A cold and eerie feeling came over her. This was no curious feat of nature. The mound