Calgaich the Swordsman Read Free Page B

of the Pict. The man died instantly between the two surfaces.
    Calgaich jumped back. He screamed above the rising fury of the storm wind. “Abu! Abu! To victory! To victory!” He leaped to the low railing while thrusting once into the thigh of a charging Pict. He reversed his blow and slashed the man's contorted face open from temple to chin.
    Calgaich then leaped like a cat across to the pitching afterdeck of the Pictish craft. He met the determined rush of half a dozen tattooed killers. His great sword blade whirled high and came down like a flash of solid lightning, again and again, battering on shields and helmets, striking musically from the blades of the Picts, darting and hissing like a thing alive and drawing blood at almost every stroke, spattering the droplets in a reddish haze about the knot of fighting, cursing men.
    “Do you hear the wild fowl calling?” Calgaich the Swordsman chanted. He was fey, with the mystical battle madness of the Celt. “The ravens gather for your flesh! Come to the sword welcoming, Cruithne! A red welcome for a feast of sea-wolves! Do not stand back, you who come unbidden! Is my welcome to you the doorway to sudden death?” He laughed wildly.
    “He is fey! The battle madness is on him!” Cuill screamed hysterically to the crew. “He cares not whether he lives or dies just so he can keep on killing! Cut loose the lines, Usnect! Let the mad fian die!”
    Cairenn could remain still no more. Overcoming her fear, she ran along the full length of the deck. She snatched up Calgaich’s war spear, the bloodied weapon, the mighty laigen. It felt strange in her hands, heavy, wet with blood, but she had to learn its use now . She leaned the tip of the blade lightly against Cuill's chest so as to draw a little of the red, just a very little. Her stomach heaved, but she must not falter. “Do not move, Cuill.” The words grated between her even white teeth. Her emerald eyes never left his face. “If you move, I will do thus.” She leaned on the spear, and Cuill shrieked in pain and hysteria far greater than her own. The crewmen slowly backed away from the lines, hypnotized by Cairenn’s threats and the sight of a woman armed.
    Calgaich’s shield was splintered from top to boss; blood splattered its whitewashed surface. A Pict went down screaming and struck up at Calgaich’s crotch with a broken-bladed sword. Calgaich caught him full in the face with a smashing heel, and then he leaped back to parry a vicious sword blow from another burly Pict. He calmly swept his sword sideways to shear through the tough wooden shield of the Pict. The man’s sight was destroyed in the red jelly left in the blade’s deadly track. Calgaich slammed his shield into that of the blinded man and drove him back against three of his cursing mates who called hysterically for a sword stroke or two at this stinging gadfly who had landed in their midst.
    Calgaich retreated to the railing of the Picts’ vessel, holding them in check with reddened sword. He swiftly looked back over his shoulder at the pitching birlinn just yards away. “Cut loose,” he shouted.
    Cairenn hesitated, slightly lessening her pressure on the war spear piercing Cuill's chest.
    “He tells us to cut loose himself,” Cuill wailed. “We must obey.”
    But Cairenn shook her head. The wind whipped her long dark hair back from her face. “Not without you, fian,” she called to Calgaich above the wrath of the waves.
    “Now!” Calgaich roared at her again.
    But again Cairenn held firm, allowing Cuill to feel her weight behind the bloody spear. The crewmen remained motionless, caught in time between two forces they did not understand.
    Calgaich thrust hard and missed. He then recovered and slashed his blade into a Pict’s unprotected crotch to emasculate him. The man reeled back against his screaming mates. Calgaich then hurled his blood-dripping sword like a javelin across the widening gap between the boats and leaped across to catch up