“Aye,” Fearghal echoed her. “Some. But use your head now. Just a few pointers, mind.”
“Aye, chief.” Ardahl smiled to himself as he stepped back out into the sunshine, but not so Fearghal could see.
Chapter Forty-Five
The next eveningwhen Ardahl and Liadan ventured out to the same place to train, they found a small gathering of women waiting. Still more filtered in after they arrived, drifting up in ones or twos.
All carried weapons in their hands—if weapons they could be called. Most were makeshift at best. An ordinary household did not run to surplus weapons. Swords and even knives were valuable and hard earned.
So these women came with what they could find. What, indeed, they might snatch up if their homes were attacked. Pokers from the hearth. Hoes and barley hooks. Fishing gaffs and boning knives.
They all brought something. And they all held their weapons tentatively, though, young and old, they stood firm.
Ardahl stared at them in horror. He had not foreseen this, though perhaps he should have. Fearghal had given him permission to train Liadan, not half the women of the settlement.
What to do?
He glanced at Liadan uncertainly. She’d refused to admit this morning how sore she was from yesterday’s training. He’d been able to tell, though, by how carefully she moved.
And he’d beengentlewith her.
Was he to be responsible so for bruising other men’s women? Mothers, wives, sisters, daughters. They all gazed at him with similar expressions of hope and desperation.
“Ye had best all go home,” he told them. “I ha’ permission to train Mistress Liadan. No others.”
A woman stepped forward. Of middle years, she clutched for a weapon a length of iron so rusted, it glowed bright orange.
“I was there, master. I am a servant in the chief’s house. He did no’ deny ye permission to train others o’ us.”
“Only because he did no’ expect all o’ ye to come to me.” Ardahl waved a hand. “Else he would ha’ done.”
She lifted her chin. “My mistress sent me. Chief Fearghal’s wife. She says someone among us must be ready to fight, if he is awa’.”
Ardahl puffed out a great breath. “Master Dornach will no’ like it. Nor will your menfolk.”
“My man,” declared one woman stonily, “is dead.”
They all stared at Ardahl, unmoving.
“Very well. Form up ranks, and pay heed.”
*
It might havebeen amusing, had it not been so pitiful. Ardahl was not in the mood to laugh. The assortment of weapons proved less prepossessing than the women who wielded them. The length of bright orange iron snapped at the first pass. Its possessor fought on with the remnant.
By the end of that session, they once again had an audience, silent and grim faced. Apparently none of them ran off to tell Dornach, because he did not arrive puffing flames. The dire little session drew to a halt when the women began to stumble and sway on their feet.
No one was bleeding. Ardahl considered that a victory.
Moreover, all the women gave him grateful glances despite the abuse. As they drifted away, one stepped up to him.
“Same time tomorrow, master?”
If he had not been brought up before Fearghal and chastened by then. Banished from the clan. “Aye.”
When the others had gone, he turned to Liadan. She drooped with exhaustion, sword trailing on the ground, stray hairs stuck to her cheeks and neck with sweat. At least this time she’d thought to braid the bulk of her hair, to keep it out of her eyes.
That thought brought another—her braiding his hair for him, an intimate act. Her fingers weaving the tresses, brushing against his skin. He half closed his eyes in a moment of remembered bliss.
