For months, he had tried to go about his duties. The pain had been paralyzing and had gradually prevented it. Since last winter, he’d been off his feet.
The wound stubbornly refused to heal. In the back of his mind, Quarrie feared if it would not, his father would indeed perish slowly.
That was not the worst of it. Something had turned the man’s mind. All the losses, mayhap. The constant pain and uncertainty. The same things that had Quarrie climbing the stone steps up to the wall this morning.
“Aye, well,” Borald said without conviction, “I am sure it will. He will grow well. He is a strong man, and a strong chief. Ye ken, Quarrie, if ye ever need a hand wi’ him in the night…”
To hold him down, Borald meant. To hold him down when he raved. Did all the clan know Da was slowly going mad?
“Thank ye,” Quarrie said.
With deep sincerity, Borald told him, “There is none here who would no’ gi’ his life for Chief Airlee, and ye need no’ think ye maun keep it hidden.”
And could not, following a night like the one just past.
“He grieves,” Quarrie choked out. “For those lost, for his own inability to defend the place as once he did.”
“Aye, so he has stood between us and those northern bastards many a time. Kept us free.”
“Aye.” Quarrie lifted his gaze to the sea again.
“Now he has ye. That should comfort him.”
It should. It did not always, at least not when the fever beset Da and the pain grew sharp teeth.
“Would ye like to hear somewhat funny, Borald?”
Borald cocked an inquiring eyebrow at him.
“When I was young, I wanted to be a harper. A musician and no’ a warrior. Naught more than that. I would listen to the traveling bards who came to stay with us on their yearly rounds. And I thought, wha’ higher calling could there be in the world than to spread such beauty? Such laughter.
“Then I learned that as well as beauty, the world was filled wi’ treachery and danger. Wi’ duty. And I learned wha’ my role would be. Since my father put my first sword in my hand, I ha’ known it would hold naught else.”
“Ye will be chief one day. I suppose there is nay choice in it.”
“I will be chief some day.” If he survived.
“Ye will mak’ a fine one. And we will stand behind ye even as we ha’ stood behind—” Borald broke off when Quarrie stiffened. “Wha’ is it?”
“There. On the horizon. Is that…?”
“Where?” Borald leaned out dangerously far over the rampart and stared. “I see naught.”
It is a shadow, only,Quarrie told himself. The shadow cast by a cloud. Only there were no clouds. All right then, it was a dark ripple of current or—
“There,” he said despite himself. “Just alongsideOileán Iur. Ducking behind the island.”
Many of the islands just offshore, little more than small lumps of rock, were uninhabited. Attackers liked to use them for cover.
Like any canny hunter.
Please, God, nay,Quarrie beseeched silently. Heartfelt.Nay.
Borald caught his breath. “Could be a flock o’ sea birds.”
Or a sail. One barely glimpsed for the glare of sunrise on the water. A peaceful morning after a tortuous night. It should be peaceful. He had earned that, not more blood, more killing, more death.
He blinked and the sail was…gone. What he’d thought was a sail.
