“He is dead.”
“Nay.” Ardahl huffed the word. “It cannot be.”
But the warriors standing around them had heard. A shiver of a whisper did go up then, like a cold wind in the barley.
Cathair, ignoring them, fixed Ardahl with a stern look, the sort he gave his companions when they proved careless on the practice field, or uncertain before a battle.
“How could it be otherwise, wi’ all that blood? Ardahl, is this your dagger in his chest?”
“His. He drew it on me. He began a quarrel—”
“He drew upon you? His closest friend?”
“Aye.”
Conall had many friends, and, aye, Ardahl held that honored place of the dearest. That much, no one could deny.
“I do not believe it.” Ardahl stared again at the blood on his hands. Conall’s blood? Another whisper rippled through the air around him, sounding like an echo of the word.
Believe.
Believe.
Believe.
“Get up. Ardahl, get up.” Suddenly Cathair was on his feet, and Ardahl climbed to meet him, nose to nose. For aye, they were nearly of a height, even if Ardahl did not have Cathair’s girth. Pale blue eyes gazed fiercely into Ardahl’s hazel ones.
“Conall would not draw a weapon on ye. You be closest to him o’ all the men. Tell me what truly happened. I will have to call the chief. The druids.”
Ardahl went hot and cold in turns. He saw no mercy in that stare. A quick look about, as he turned in a circle withhis bloodied hands hanging at his sides, showed him none anywhere.
Dornach, their war chief, came bulling up, clearly summoned from the far side of the field. He took in the scene, almost stumbling over his own feet when he saw Conall, now stretched on his back upon the ground.
“What has happened?” Swiftly he turned on Cathair. “Cathair?”
“Conall lies there dead. ’Twas no’ me, but Conall’s best friend who took him down.”
Dornach, a stout and hardened man of middle years with black hair and dark eyes, swayed where he stood. As had Cathair, he bent to touch Conall at the throat before sweeping Ardahl with a look that took in his reddened hands. “I do no’ believe it.”
Nor do I.
“Ardahl,” pronounced Cathair with ponderous scorn, “claims Conall drew the weapon on him.”
“Nay!” Dornach said before bending and touching Conall once more, as if hoping he was mistaken.
“He did, Master Dornach,” Ardahl ground out. “He’s lately been changed. Quarrelsome and angry—”
A high-pitched, keening sound pierced the air. Someone came running, pushing at the barrier of gathered warriors. Her terrible cry preceded her like that of a gull wheeling above the water.
Dornach stepped away. Horror clawed its way up from Ardahl’s belly when he saw Conall’s mother, Beath. Face white as bone, eyes burning blue, she threw herself upon the figure in the grass.
“Nay. Nay! My son, my son, my son!”
The world once more spun around Ardahl. Light and darkness flickered before his eyes. He saw faces, those in thegathered crowd and Beatha MacAert’s, as she lifted it to him, all grief. All pain.
“By all that is holy, I have lost my only son.”
*
