“Should we hide?” one of the women asked.
“Nay. They are our own,” declared an aged man, and he started down through the trees to meet the approaching men.
Three members of the guard, they were. Liadan knew one of them—Marc, who had been friendly with Conall. Streaked with dirt, soot, and blood, they climbed the slope and addressed the crowd.
“Ye can come home,” said Marc. “The invaders are gone and the fires almost out. The chief wishes to talk wi’ us all.”
“How many dead?” a woman cried, and Marc shook his head.
“No way to number them yet.”
A woman with a tear-streaked face and two small children appealed, “My husband—”
“I do no’ know, mistress.”
They started off in an untidy chain, stumbling and stopping. The guards flanked them. Liadan, with Mam leaning heavily upon her, found Marc at her side.
She knew she shouldn’t ask, but couldn’t help it. “Ha’ ye seen Ardahl MacCormac?”
“Him?” The man raised his eyebrows at her.
What was that supposed to mean?
“Is he alive, d’ye know?”
“I do not, but he’s hard to kill, that one. Though none would argue wi’ trying.”
Liadan withdrew from him hastily. Aye, Ardahl might be a serpent. Responsible for Conall’s death, though he claimed otherwise. Yet such hate, at such a time, seemed to dim the very air.
“Our house,” Mam whispered in a quivering voice. “Is it still standing?”
It was, and in much the state they’d left it. They stopped there first, and Flanna wept to see all their things. Gratefulas Liadan was, she felt guilty about it. Many had not been so fortunate.
The events of the night seemed to have startled Mam out of her deep grief. She sat silent beside the fire where they put her, hands hanging beside her knees. The last draught had worn off.
Liadan tried to persuade Mam and Flanna to stay at the hut while she went to the clan meeting. “I will hear all the chief has to say.”
But they insisted on coming, so the three of them, with Mam supported in the middle, went off.
The clan—what was left of it—gathered near the well at the center of the settlement, the hall being no more than a pillar of dark smoke. The spring was said to be a holy one and had existed here long before the first of them had built a round house. A good place for the distraught clan members to ground themselves.
They gathered in silence, save for the crying bairns. Some folk still filtered down from the hills to which they’d fled. The rest, in small family groups or alone, stood with the shock showing in their eyes.
Scanning the crowd, Liadan saw no glimpse of Ardahl. But his mam stood there on the far side, her shawl up over her hair as if she hid beneath it.
She stood alone.
Liadan’s heart began to pound in big, heavy beats. Had Ardahl indeed lost his life? Had he marched back into the fray only to die there, fighting while wounded?
For an instant, the bright morning broke up into dots all around her, and she swayed on her feet. Then a figure stepped up at Maeve’s side.
A tall figure, spare of build, wide of shoulder with a mop of wild auburn hair and blood showing at arm and chest.
Again she swayed on her feet. She tried to catch Ardahl’s eye and failed.
Chief Fearghal began to speak. The chief himself showed wounds, proving he had been in the thick of the fighting. A bright bloom of red on his arm. Split knuckles on one hand. Face blackened with soot.
He spoke loudly and clearly, in measured tones. Told them the attack had come from their enemies to the west, that Chief Dacha, armed with surprise, had taken back his brother after firing the great hall.
