Foxmask

  Small One’s song sounded through the night air, piercing and sorrowful, telling of loss and loneliness, of hurt and misunderstanding and waste. Creidhe bowed her head; it did not seem right for her heart to be so full of joy, for her body to glow thus with anticipation, while the child gave voice to this music of deepest melancholy.

  “Always he sings thus, after the hunt,” Keeper whispered. “Always the same. It is not for you and me.”

  “Then who is it for? Himself?”

  “Perhaps. There are no words in it; I think each listener takes a different message. He is sad, maybe, because the hunt must continue, year after year.”

  “Or for the men killed,” Creidhe suggested.

  Keeper spat on the ground at his side. “They are nothing,” he said, his voice held quiet as the child’s song rang on, out in the night. “Why would he grieve for them?”

  Creidhe did not answer, for to do so honestly would be to cause bitter offense to Keeper, and she would not wound him, not ever. Especially not tonight. But she asked herself a question in silence, a question that had no good answer. If he is so sad, does that not mean he wishes the hunt had ended differently? Perhaps all he wants is to go home. And perhaps, for him, home is not the Isle of Clouds. This powerful creature, whose song traveled straight to the heart, was at the same time just a little boy. How could he understand what the Unspoken intended for him? How could he know that to travel back to his birthplace, the wellspring of his wisdom, was to give up sight and movement, perhaps to sacrifice his life before ever he grew to be a man? The yearning to return seemed to her a powerful part of the song. Promises were difficult and perilous things. Just possibly, what held the seer to the Isle of Clouds was no more than a child’s undertaking to his brother, to be quiet, to be good.

  “What in Odin’s name is that?” hissed Sam, who was struggling to find a comfortable position for his long-limbed body in the depression under the rocks where the two men had sheltered for the night. “It sounds like those voices they’re always talking about, the ones that come to steal souls. If we ever get back across that wretched strait and then home, I’ll take great pleasure in personally throttling you, Thorvald, you stubborn wretch. Give me an honest storm on the open sea any day.” He put his hands over his ears and squeezed his eyes shut. “It’s as if it’s right inside my head. No wonder Asgrim’s people are so frightened. This is a cursed place, and I can’t imagine how you bullied me into staying. When I agreed to that, I didn’t know we were letting the others take the Sea Dove.”

  Thorvald sat cross-legged, straight-backed, maintaining his calm by careful breathing, though that distant, piercing song threatened the balance of his thoughts, speaking as it did of death, blood and errors. “You’re the best sailor in the Light Isles, Sam,” he said. “Of course you can get us back to Council Fjord. Of course you can do it. Even in that.”

  He jerked his head in the direction of the small boat hauled up on the shore not far from the place where they had concealed themselves. While Thorvald had led the men in their fruitless quest for the seer, Sam and Knut had followed their own set of orders. As Thorvald had suspected, the enemy had boats on the Isle of Clouds, hidden away in a narrow inlet whose only landward exit was a challenging climb up steep rock walls where sharp-beaked birds nested. Shallow hollows and indentations allowed the craft to be stored in semishelter. The boats had lain where they were a long time; it did not appear that the enemy ventured out to sea with any frequency. Nonetheless, all seemed efficiently maintained, some bearing signs of eccentric but effective repair work. Sam had chosen the strongest. There was one pair of oars and a sail of sorts. The vessel was small, light, a craft suited to shore fishing in calm seas. Beside the Sea Dove it was a gnat to a gull, a vole to a hunting dog. Thorvald sighed. Sam was right; in the Sea Dove, they might have had a fair chance of getting safely across the strait, even after the time of lull was over. In this shell of wattle, driftwood and skin, they’d need every scrap of seamanship they had, which in his case was next to nothing, and every bit of luck the gods deigned to bestow upon them. It had been the only way, however. The Sea Dove was large, strong, conspicuous among the flotilla of smaller boats. The enemy wasn’t stupid. To count craft coming in and craft going out was only common sense, as Einar had pointed out. The number of boats would match. The number of men would not, but Thorvald thought that hardly mattered. They had lost four; if one or two more had disappeared before the vessels quit the shore for the last time, it was unlikely the enemy would notice it, or if they did, understand what it meant. To remain here once the Fool’s Tide had ceased to be navigable was, on the face of it, utter stupidity. The rest of Thorvald’s campaign, though unsuccessful in its primary objective, had not been foolishly planned or carelessly executed. They had gained ground; they had lost far fewer men than was usual for Asgrim; they had retreated in orderly fashion and sailed away with no further casualties. The enemy would judge him on that; this foe would have no idea of the surprise that awaited him. Them. How many were there? Ten, five, as few as three? Few, Thorvald thought, very few. Given the right moment, he knew he and Sam, between them, could take the seer.

  “Shut up, shut up,” muttered Sam, hands clapped over his ears. He was the picture of misery, huddled in his cloak, eyes squeezed shut as if, by not seeing, he might cease to be tormented by that eldritch voice.

  “Sam,” said Thorvald, “don’t forget, I owe you a favor. I did promise, remember, when I offered to pay, and you said no.”

  Sam growled something.

  “What?”

  “I said, forget it.” Sam’s tone was constrained, almost angry. “What I had in mind can’t happen now. Forget favors. If I reach home in one piece, I’ll be content enough.”

  “What did you have in mind?” Thorvald asked. Not only was he curious, but he, too, welcomed the distraction from the song that echoed in his mind as if to awaken all that lay hidden there.

  “Nothing,” growled Sam. After a moment’s silence, he added, “Creidhe’s gone. You can’t bring her back, so you can’t repay the favor. Now let’s drop the subject, shall we?”

  Thorvald was silenced. Life was full of small surprises. With the music drifting around him, he allowed himself to dwell, briefly, on another kind of future, one that might have been expected if there had been no voyage, no battle, no Long Knife people, no Asgrim. It was a life that followed a pattern such as fellows like Sam welcomed, a life in which one worked and wed and raised children, in which one farmed or fished or participated in councils. He tried to imagine that cottage in Stensakir with both Sam and Creidhe in the doorway. He pictured Creidhe waiting on the jetty as the Sea Dove sailed in at dusk, Creidhe with Sam’s child in her arms. That was stupid. Wrong. It made him angry to think of it.

  “What’s biting you?” Sam asked, eyes open and fixed on Thorvald in the shadows.

  “Nothing,” Thorvald snapped. He was annoyed with himself for losing control so easily, and over something so unimportant. Creidhe was dead; he had to accept that. Let Sam have his little dreams, then; they were harmless enough.

  “Made you angry, I see that,” Sam said flatly. “No point getting upset. It would never have happened, her and me. Doubly impossible, it was.”

  “Why’s that?” Thorvald could not stop himself from asking.

  “Well, it’s obvious. Eyvind and Nessa were on the lookout for a suitable match for her, and another for Brona in a year or two’s time. They weren’t looking at fishermen, nor even at clever fellows such as yourself, Thorvald. It was chieftains and lords, the princes of the Caitt, maybe some petty king of the Dalriada. Stands to reason. Nessa’s daughters carry on the royal line of the Folk; their sons could be some sort of kings, and since Nessa’s got no boys of her own, that’s doubly important. Who’s going to choose me as the father of royalty? Dreams, that’s all it was.”

  Thorvald felt his lips stretch in something approximating a smile. “Of course, we know Creidhe had a mind of her own,” he commented. “If
she had her eye on a certain fellow, I dare say she could talk even Eyvind around, given time.”

  There was a silence.

  “Sam?”

  No reply.

  “Sam, what is it?”

  “You know,” Sam said in a tone that was oddly muffled, “for a clever man, you’ve got some remarkable blind spots. Creidhe, want me? Impossible. She never thought of me that way for a moment.”

  “You can’t be sure—” Thorvald began, though privately he agreed with this.

  “I can be sure, sure as I am that the sun goes down at night. Creidhe never had room in her heart for anyone but you. It made me sick sometimes to see all that love wasted on a man too wrapped up in his own concerns even to notice her. I’d have been there when she needed me. I’d have given her anything she wanted.”

  “Oh yes,” Thorvald spat before he could stop himself, “a two-roomed cottage, and a husband who talked of nothing but fishing, and a new babe in her belly every spring: a fine sort of gift that would have been.”

  Once these words were out, he could not take them back. It became impossible to sit by his friend anymore. Thorvald got up and stumbled down the shore in the half-dark, to stand gazing across the murmuring water with his fists clenched tight. Curse friends, curse the island, curse that unsettling song that now swooped down to a plangent ending, leaving only its echo behind. Curse this cruel darkness within him that made him hurt those who sought only to tell him the truth. Curse his father for making him the man he was.

  “Thorvald?” Sam had come down quietly to stand on the rocks by his side.

  “Leave me alone.”

  “Best come back up,” Sam said softly. “We could be seen here. No point in wrecking what little chance we have.”

  “Shut up.”

  “You’re a man, not a child.” Sam’s voice was remarkably even.

  “I don’t want to talk about this.” And I will not shed tears, for you are right: I am a man.

  Sam waited a little, and then he said, “They’re honest things. A house, food on the table, a babe in the cradle. You shouldn’t scoff at them. They’re the things Creidhe wanted. Even so, I knew I had no chance. Different for you. If you’d put your mind to it, you could have made a case for yourself: educated, clever, the son of a nobleman. Suitable enough, if the lady happens to favor you.”

  “Huh!” Thorvald attempted a nonchalant shrug. “Me? I’d have been bottom of Eyvind’s list, well after you, my fine fisherman. He had only to look at who my father was to rule me right out of contention. Bad blood. You know what Somerled did in the Light Isles. You’ve seen what he’s done here. I told you about Sula, and about Creidhe. That man’s son is not husband material for the royal line of the Light Isles. He’s not a fit partner for any woman. I’m sorry I spoke to you as I did. I can’t swallow those words now. They were cruel and heartless, because that’s what I am. I’m a man just like my father.”

  There was a brief pause, and then Sam said mildly, “That’s the stupidest thing I ever heard. I don’t believe it for a moment.”

  “It’s true. I feel it like a shadow I carry inside me, which I can never overcome. I’m not a good person to have as a friend, Sam. You’ve only got to look at where we are and what we’re doing to know that.”

  “Shall I tell you what I think?”

  “If you have to. It can’t change the truth.”

  “I think you bear no resemblance at all to Asgrim. I look at him and I see a tired, dispirited leader who’s resorted to fear as his only way of keeping control; a man who’s so worn down by defeat after defeat that he’s lost sight of what’s right. Why else would he give up his own daughter like that? I look at you and I see a clever, capable fellow who thinks about himself just a bit too much. A man who sets his standards high, and punishes himself if he doesn’t quite match up to them. A man who keeps himself to himself and sometimes doesn’t recognize that he needs his friends. A fellow who’s afraid to laugh, afraid to love, afraid of his own heart, because it’s the hardest thing to set controls on. You know what? I see a man who’s very like his mother, and not at all like Asgrim. Not that you’re Lady Margaret all over again, either. A man’s himself, when it comes down to it. It’s our own path to make, Thorvald, it’s not governed by some quirk of our ancestry. You’ve started to move ahead here. I saw the way the fellows looked at you yesterday. You’ve started to change things, change them for the better. I’m sorry Creidhe’s not here to see that. I’m sorry you’ll never get the chance to tell her what you told me: that losing her was like losing part of yourself. Oh yes, I remember that; how could I not? Now come on, we should get back under cover. That wretched singing’s stopped, and we’re a lot more likely to attract attention standing out here talking. And I do want to get home. There’s a powerful wish in me to sit before my little hearth fire again.”

  “Even without Creidhe?”

  Sam did not reply, and after a while the two of them went back up to the overhang and settled uncomfortably into the meager shelter it offered. They could hear the sea grumbling to itself, the perilous message of the Fool’s Tide. There was no need to speak of tomorrow; they had planned it carefully, and each knew his part. In time, Sam fell into a half-sleep, but Thorvald sat wakeful, the sound of the waves a background to his recall of Sam’s astonishing speech. Sam was a simple man and saw things in simple terms. One did not expect a deep analysis of one’s own situation from such a man. One did not expect him to expose, in clear and uncompromising terms, what was undoubtedly the truth. A kind of truth anyway. If one could believe it to be the whole story, one might find a great deal of reassurance in it. Hope, almost. Such feelings were somewhat strange to Thorvald; they did not visit him often. He was not entirely sure that he welcomed them. He sat quietly in the darkness, pondering this and waiting for morning.

  Worn out by the power of his inner voice, the child fell asleep as soon as he lay down. Keeper and Creidhe stood watching him for a little. Now that the moment was here, Creidhe felt a strange uncertainty, for despite the clear messages her body had been giving her for some considerable time now, this was new territory, uncharted waters, and she was not entirely sure of the best way to move forward. She knew the basic elements, of course; she had grown up on a farm. She knew a few of the subtleties, too, for Eyvind and Nessa had been a fine pattern, a tender, comfortable example. She had seen their care for each other, their sweet touches, and the messages their eyes carried, still full of passion and promise even now, with five children born and years of service to the islands’ community shared. All the same, to know something in theory does not necessarily mean one can do it with confidence. She felt, in a word, shy.

  “What you said,” Keeper’s tone indicated he shared her confusion, “about it being customary to wash and change our clothes, I mean . . . I think perhaps there should be more to it. If I remember well.”

  “More?”

  “Words,” he said. “Words of a promise. Should there not be that? A ring, or other token?”

  Creidhe smiled, seeing his pallor and the dark solemnity of his eyes. It was she who must take the initiative here and move things along, nerves or no nerves. “There are words,” she told him. “You must take my hands, like this, and then we should say what we vow to each other, what we promise.” All of a sudden, as Keeper folded her small hands within his long, thin ones, she became very still, aware that his seriousness was entirely appropriate. This moment was a turning point; it was the end of I, the beginning of we. To experience such a moment was to give a precious gift, and to receive one in return.

  “You must speak first.” Keeper’s voice was constrained. “I do not know what to say.”

  The words came unsought; Creidhe spoke quietly, for Small One lay curled in his blankets not two paces from where they stood with hands clasped and eyes locked. “I promise that I will be yours, and love you, and stand by you as long as we live,” she said, her voice shaking.

  Keeper cleared his throat nervously. “I swea
r that I will guard you and love you always,” he said. “That I will cherish and protect you. My walls will shelter you, my hearth fire warm you, my feet walk beside yours until our journey’s ending. I give you my solemn vow.”

  “I thought you said you didn’t know what to say,” Creidhe whispered. “That was beautiful. Now you’ve made me cry.”

  “Oh, no—oh, no, please don’t—”

  Alarmed, Keeper put up a hand to wipe away the tear that rolled down her cheek, and was immediately encircled by her arms, for she could not hold back any longer. Her lips against the hollow of his neck, her whole body on fire, she murmured, “We should not end it thus, with our vows half spoken. I would say, I swear this by stone and star . . .” Her mouth brushed his skin, drunken with delight. She felt his hands stroking her back, then pressing her hard against him. And she heard his words, still tender and shy, for all the power in his lean, strong frame.

  “I swear it by wind and wing. This promise binds me until death, and beyond. You are my dear one, my goddess, my wife.”

  “And you are my lover and my husband, the other part of me. And I think it is time, at last, to try this . . .”

  When it came to it, inexpert as they were, they managed to work it out with no difficulty at all. Eager hands dealt swiftly with the impediments of tunic or belt or skirt; ardent lips imprinted their subtle message on the soft skin of shoulder, of breast, of the secret crevices of the body; breath turned to sigh, to gasp, to half-formed murmurings of love and need. It was true, neither had attempted this particular task before, but they were young and healthy, and they were made for each other. Through the narrow opening above the hearth, the waning moon gazed down on the fine patterns of it; his thin, rough hand tracing pathways on her pearly skin; her wheat-fair hair falling like a golden torrent across his wiry body; their lips clinging, teasing, tasting until, all too soon, there was no longer a possibility of delay, and they came together in dark, sweet urgency. Keeper moved as the sea moves, steadily, strongly, the fierce tide of his need held, somehow, in check by his reverence for her, his goddess, his wife all pink and gold and white as he had first seen her revealed by firelight, yet now, astonishingly, here in his arms, her cheeks flushed with passion, her lips, her hands, the soft readiness of her body inflaming his desire. And Creidhe, who might have expected a little pain, and perhaps some disappointment as is quite usual for a young woman on her wedding night, discovered with a warm flood of delight that in this, she was her father’s daughter, generous in the gifts she gave her partner and robust in her enjoyment of those he bestowed in return. So, at last, he thrust hard, and she rose to meet him, and the two of them trembled and cried out as Keeper released himself deep inside her, and Creidhe’s own body responded in arching, aching fulfillment. After that, they were silent. Dazed, shocked, disbelieving, they lay in each other’s arms as their hearts gradually slowed from the ferocious drumbeat of that moment, and the moon shone above them, remote and impartial, and the small snuffle of the child’s breathing was the only sound in the stillness of the summer night.