Calgaich the Swordsman Read Free

Their fierceness and savagery in battle had won for them the grudging respect of the Roman legions and of the auxiliary troops who manned the Great Wall of Hadrian, which spanned eighty miles across the full width of northern Britannia to hold back the barbarian hordes of Caledonia. Cairenn had heard much of these people in her native country. Man for man, in single-combat open battle, the Picts and the Celts could take the match of even the tough legionnaires of Rome, although they had never learned how to cope with the disciplined maneuvers of those same legionnaires, who had conquered all of the known world, with the single exception of Caledonia. Now this madman, this long-haired braggart Calgaich, seemed willing and even eager to face a score of the Picts alone.
    Calgaich pushed Cuill away from the tiller bar of the steering oar. “Stand by to come about!” he ordered.
    “In this wind and sea?” Cuill demanded. “It can't be done and we won't do it!”
    Suddenly Calgaich’s left hand slashed full across the mouth of the Hibernian, smashing him down on the deck in a spray of blood and broken teeth. Cuill rolled into the larboard waterway with blood leaking from his slack mouth. His glazed eyes stared dazedly up at Calgaich. Cairenn turned away.
    “You stupid bastard!” Calgaich’s voice grated. “Don’t you know who those men are? If I let them take you and your chamber pot of a birlinn, our heads will hang in a row from their railings! They hunt heads like other men hunt hares! Now, damn you into the pit of everlasting darkness, get those shivering dogs to their feet and wait for my commands!”
    Cuill staggered up to his feet. He wiped the blood from his mouth and set swiftly to work with foot and fist until his frightened crewmen stood to their lines with their fearful eyes on Calgaich. Now and then Calgaich looked back at the pursuing Pictish craft. It was hardly a good spear’s throw away from the Hibernian vessel.
    The birlinn plunged deeply, rolling wildly as it fought for its normal buoyancy. Spray showered high over its sides to drench both craft and crew alike. Cairenn felt her hands slipping on the rough wet wood. The timbers of the boat groaned as they worked in the wrenching seas.
    A hail came from the approaching vessel. “Let us come alongside!” a Pict yelled hoarsely.
    The words of the Pict sounded different from that of the Hibernians, the Novantae and her own people, Cairenn thought. There was an alien quality in the speech that made her shiver. She looked at the squat, helmeted man who stood in the bow of the reiving craft. There was something peculiar about the face of the helmeted Pict. He had bands of blue paint, or perhaps tattooing, on his cheeks and forehead, and the wings of his nostrils had bluish curves and spandrils about them in an intricate design. The fierce yellowish eyes peering from his grotesque manmade mask were as cold and penetrating as those of a hunting wolf. They seemed to linger on her as he surveyed their craft.
    ''Fian!” the Pict shouted.
    Calgaich turned quickly. It is in my heart that they know you are aboard, fian , the slave woman had prophesied. Then it was true! A cold feeling came over Calgaich, not because of the nearness of the Picts, but because the woman had prophesied this very thing and in so doing had made it plain to Calgaich that someone did not want him in Caledonia—someone who had most likely made a deal with these bloody Picts to stop Calgaich from landing there.
    " Fian!” the Pict repeated. He quickly tapped the edge of his naked sword against the small, square, blue-painted shield he carried. "Let us come alongside or you will all die!"
    "For the love of all the gods, fian ," Cuill pleaded through his bloody, broken mouth, "do as he says." He cringed at the wolf's look in Calgaich's eyes.
    Calgaich eye-gauged the oncoming vessel. "Now!" he commanded, throwing his weight against the tiller bar to force over the steering oar. The birlinn