“Lift it,” Tamald repeated.
“As unfounded. Ye can surely see it never should have been imposed.”
Tamald hesitated. He looked into Liadan’s eyes before searching Ardahl’s face. His lips formed a hard line. “Forgive me,” he began, and Liadan’s heart leaped.
Was he going to express regret for being mistaken? For believing Ardahl could ever harm his closest friend? Was there hope for them?
Tamald went on, “I do no’ mean to express doubt for your accounting. ’Tis no’ in me to doubt that the departed can return to us, especially in times o’ great need. Yet at such times, we canalso imagine such visions.” He shook his head. “’Tis but a story. Ye ha’ no proof.”
“Proof!” Anger kindled in Ardahl’s eyes. “Am I to summon the shade o’ Conall here to stand before ye?”
“Nay, but the law is the law. Ye ask me to lift what has been imposed so that ye may join wi’ one who is as good as your sister. The only way I may do so is if Cathair—or at the least Mistress Brasha—might come to me and admit full well what they did.”
Ardahl blinked at him. “Ye expect Cathair to confess? Cathair, of all men?”
“Or Mistress Brasha.”
“Then,” Liadan said, sickness settling once more in her gut, “they would be disgraced. Shamed. Master Tamald, neither o’ them is likely to take that on.”
“I am sorry,” Tamald said. “Truly I am. Whether I believe ye or no’, surely ye see I need more than the accounting o’ a tale to bring such condemnation down upon them.”
“Yet ye took Cathair’s word that I slew my dearest friend.”
“And so condemned us,” Liadan half sobbed, “for all time.”
“If Cathair comes to me and admits his fault, I will lift the sentence. I can do no better,” Tamald said. He got to his feet. “Now I must go and prepare to leave. Ye must also,” he told Ardahl. “Time is short.”
He left them. Liadan stumbled to her feet and Ardahl rose after, a hard, bemused look in his eyes.
Liadan seized his hands. “Mayhap there is still hope.”
“Cathair will never admit fault. ’Tis the last thing he will do. And should he perish in the fighting—”
Their eyes met. If Cathair perished, he could never speak. The small flame of hope Liadan had cherished went out like a guttered rush light.
“Ardahl, I am frightened.”
He gazed into her eyes, his devotion plain to see. “All is no’ lost,” he whispered. “No yet. We will be together, Liadan. Have I not promised ye?”
If not in this lifetime, then in the next.
Chapter Fifty-Four
Seldom had Fearghalset out with such a sizeable force. That evening before sunset, every chariot rolled out. Each and every warrior, including some men well past the accepted age of fighting, who had thought they would never march out again.
The rest—aged, young, wounded, and the women who had trained with Ardahl, stayed back to guard the settlement. They had already seen what could happen in the absence of their men.
Ardahl and Liadan had only one moment of parting at the hut, after leaving Tamald. He drew her around the side where so often she’d remained with him while he washed. And he kissed her for what might be the last time.
The parting from his mam proved equally hard. And he knew both women stood watching while he walked off. He would not let himself look back. He must now become a warrior and nothing more. He must devote himself to protecting his chief, without distractions.
Not even those of the heart.
The first person he saw when he arrived back at the field was Cathair. His height and fair hair made him visible even among the milling men.
Ardahl experienced a tightening in his gut—a flood of anger he could not stem. Fiercely he told himself he could not allow even that to distract him, and he turned his gaze away from Cathair as he went to Fearghal’s side.
There, he discovered Dornach had assigned him a new charioteer, a seasoned warrior called Kell who had been laid up with an injury for some time. Ardahl knew him, to be sure, from practice on the field—a big, rawboned man with a crop of dark hair and a beard streaked with gray.
