8 A BLESSING AND A BANE

Rothie fort

The Uplands of Albia

Twenty days later …

“I DON’T WANT any trouble in here.”

Cailean cut the big man with the stained apron an irritated glance before focusing on the mercenary seated at the long table in the ale-hall once more.

“The fight master,” he growled. “Tell me what he looked like.”

The mercenary—a wiry man with close-shaven black hair—curled his lip. “Give me another silver penny and I might.”

Heat swept over Cailean, his temper rising swiftly. He didn’t have time for this horseshit. He needed to know where Eilig was. The whoreson was a hard man to find. Years earlier, the fight master had been successful enough to have left a clear trail behind him. But these days, he’d turned into a ghost.

Cailean had started to wonder if Eilig was dead, when he’d learned a group of traveling fighters had stopped here at Rothie.

He was onto something, yet this greedy bastard had already taken two of his rapidly dwindling coins and told him little in return. After the first coin, he’d revealed that he’d indeed attended a fight and spoken to the man in charge. And after the second coin, he’d admitted that the fighters had all borne iron collars, which marked them as slaves.

His jet eyes gleamed now as he stared up at Cailean.

The mercenary could smell his desperation.

And he was desperate. He’d waited far too long to go after Eilig, although now he had, all he could think about was revenge. It kept him awake at night and drove him from fort to fort. This search was getting to him. He was tired, irritable, and sick of sleeping rough.

This mercenary had the information he needed. But unless he emptied his coin purse, the man wasn’t talking. Finally, he had a lead, but this dog humper thought he could play with him.

He was out of patience.

Reaching out, Cailean knocked the wooden tankard out of the mercenary’s hand. “You’re not getting any more silver,” he ground out. “Tell me what I want to know.”

The amusement on the mercenary’s face vanished, and he shoved himself up off the bench seat, unfolding his long, lean body. The man’s movements had a fluidity that warned Cailean he was dangerous.

He didn’t care.

It had been a while since he’d had a fight. Some violence might improve his mood, might release the anger that had simmered in his gut ever since he’d walked away from that pyre in The Hallow Woods. It might even clear the bitter taste that Bree Fellshadow had left in his mouth.

“Prick!” the mercenary snarled, reaching for the blade strapped to his thigh. “You’ll buy me another drink.”

“No fighting!” The proprietor of the ale-hall—a narrow, rectangular building lined with long tables, where men in oilskins drank and diced—bellowed. His meaty hand grasped Cailean’s arm, but he shook him off.

Instead, he reached out, grabbed the mercenary by the collar of his vest, and hauled him into the aisle between the tables. He then grabbed the man’s wrist, just as he went to draw his knife, and headbutted him in the face.

Reeling back, the mercenary lifted a hand to his bloodied nose. He went still then, his gaze narrowing. “You’ll regret that, enforcer .”

Cailean favored him with a hard smile that showed his teeth as he flexed his hands at his sides. Aye, he was enjoying himself. Hopefully, this opponent would prove to be a worthy one. And after he’d spilled some blood, he’d get him to talk. “Will I?”

Of course, this man knew what he was—the tattoos that covered his arms and snaked up his neck made it hard for him to hide in a crowd. His size too, the muscle that he’d spent years putting on, marked him as a warrior-druid.

The men surrounding them were mostly locals: men who’d just finished work in the fields outside the fort or sold the last of their catches on the wooden docks below and were enjoying a cup of ale before going home to their wives. They scattered, clearing a space in the center of the ale-hall. Muttering followed as they started to lay bets.

“Enough!” the proprietor roared, wading in. “You won’t—”

However, he never finished his sentence, for the mercenary whipped out the knife from its sheath upon his thigh and slashed it across the ale-hall owner’s throat.

Eyes snapping wide, the big man staggered, his hands clasping where the blood now pumped out of his neck.

Cailean’s mouth thinned, his anticipation of a good, bruising, fight shattering. “There wasn’t any need for that,” he growled. “Your problem was with me.”

The mercenary’s gaze glinted. “Aye … and it still is.”

He struck then, his blade flashing for Cailean’s throat.

Reeling back, he avoided the lethal move, even as he felt the whisper of the dagger blade, too close to his skin.

Cailean had enough iron strapped to his body to make a Shee warrior shriek, yet he didn’t draw the dagger at his hip or one of the knives sheathed on the belt across his chest. If he did that, this maggot would be dead within moments.

And he needed him alive.

It was unfortunate that the only person he’d spoken to over the past three moons who had anything useful to tell him was a grasping mercenary with a vicious streak.

That couldn’t be helped though.

Dodging another swipe of the gleaming blade, Cailean grabbed his opponent by his wrist and drove him backward. Violence ignited in his blood, the earth magic that slumbered there crying for release. He ignored it.

Grunting a curse, the mercenary reached for another dagger with his free hand, this one hanging from his belt, but Cailean drove his knee into his groin.

An agonized wheeze followed, but now wasn’t the time to play fair. He was dealing with a killer, and he had to disable him if he was ever going to get what he needed.

Nonetheless, even with a broken nose and injured bollocks, the mercenary wasn’t going down easily. Twisting out of Cailean’s hold, he tried an eye gouge. In response, Cailean grabbed his wrists once more and gave him another, brutal, headbutt.

The two men toppled sideways onto one of the tables, sending earthen cups and trenchers flying.

The mercenary writhed and twisted under Cailean, harder to keep hold of than quicksilver. The Warrior’s balls, it was like fighting an eel. Once again, earth magic surged in his veins. He could have called upon it, yet he was wary of doing so. Ever since leaving The Hallow Woods, he was aware that sacrificers were few and far between in The Uplands. There would be some in Cannich, but elsewhere, should he drain himself of The Warrior’s strength, he likely wouldn’t be able to replenish it through a blood-letting ceremony.

But, as the fight continued, and Cailean became dimly aware of the rough shouting outside the ale-hall that was gradually getting louder, his already stretched patience grew thinner still. Aye, given more time, he could best the mercenary—but time wasn’t on his side. Soon, the local chieftain’s warriors would interrupt them, and he’d never find out if Eilig had been in Rothie.

Heat and strength surged through his muscles, and suddenly, the man he fought was snarling curses at him, pinned hard to the tabletop.

His temper simmering, Cailean pushed his forearm, where the woad tattoos inked upon his skin now glowed silver, against the mercenary’s windpipe. The man’s dark eyes bulged, his fingers biting uselessly into Cailean’s arm.

“The fight master,” Cailean said between gritted teeth, out of patience. “Give me his description.”

The mercenary struggled a little longer, but as his face started to turn purple, and his mouth gasped soundlessly, Cailean spied the fear in his eyes.

Lessening the pressure on his throat, Cailean allowed him to rasp his answer.

“Big. Short silver hair. Grey eyes. Walks with a bad limp.”

A limp . Eilig hadn’t been lame the last time he’d seen him. However, it had been a long time ago.

“Did he bear a scar?”

His opponent wheezed a curse, and Cailean applied pressure once more. Moments later, when he eased his arm off the mercenary’s windpipe, the man’s face had gone the color of liver.

“Aye,” he choked. “A thin one … upon his left cheek.”

Cailean’s mouth tugged into a victory smile. Eilig was still alive, still traveling The Uplands with his band of slaves. And just a few days ago, he’d been here—which meant he’d catch up with him soon. Cailean’s pulse quickened in anticipation.

Finally.

“One more question,” he said, keeping a warning pressure on the mercenary’s neck. The shouts and thunder of feet were louder now. At any moment, warriors would throw open the wattle door behind him and surge into the ale-hall. “Where did they go?”

“Go fuck your mother,” the man croaked, his dark eyes glittering.

“Cease!” A deep, angry voice sliced through the ale-hall, and then an instant later, rough hands gripped hold of Cailean and yanked him off the mercenary.

Warriors clad in leather and fur, their faces grim, surrounded Cailean and his opponent.

Shrugging them off, Cailean raised his hands, palms exposed, in surrender. Then, meeting the eye of one of them—a massive brute with a shaven head—he nodded to where the mercenary rolled off the table and straightened up. The man’s chest was heaving, yet his expression was murderous.

“He’s the one you want,” Cailean said calmly. “He sliced the ale-hall keeper across the throat without provocation.”

The bald warrior eyed him, a blend of respect and suspicion in his eyes—a reaction Cailean was used to, for enforcers garnered a mix of responses from people. His gaze cut to where the dead man lay, face down upon the reed-strewn floor, and his mouth thinned. “So you say.”

“It’s true!” A man wearing an oilskin cape, one of the fisherfolk who lived outside the walls of the fort, stepped forward. He then pointed to Cailean’s opponent. “He killed Iain. We all saw it.”

The warriors converged on the mercenary then and dragged him from the hall.

Not without a fight though. The man’s hoarse shouts of rage took a while to fade as the warriors hauled him up to the broch to face the chieftain’s justice.

Glancing around, marking the mess he and the mercenary had made, Cailean’s gaze then settled upon the dead ale-hall keeper.

His elation at getting the details he needed, and the hunger for reckoning that beat like a drum in his chest, faded. The strength that had pulsed through his veins drained away, weariness replacing it. A chill then settled into his bones.

Shit . That was unfortunate.

Cailean clenched his jaw, watching as his tattoos faded. It had been a few moons since his last blood-letting, when he and his wife shared blood under the full moon outside Duncrag. If he continued to draw upon his magic, he’d be disadvantaged in a fight against Eilig when he found him.

An enforcer’s magic was both a blessing and a bane. Cailean was powerful indeed when his druidic magic was at its height, but vulnerable when it ebbed, for it was tied to his mortality. Without blood-letting, he’d eventually die.

Remembering the last blood-letting ritual, the sight of Fia’s—no, Bree’s —lovely face frosted by moonlight as they clasped hands, made his pulse quicken.

Anger surged then, blistering him.

The Gods damn her.

She’d worked him like a puppeteer, right until the end.

Over the past moons, he’d had too much time to think about that fateful night—and now he was certain that she’d known he’d spare her life, that he’d take her back to the stones and see her safely through. And while he lingered at The Ring of Caith, watching her go, her people had ambushed his camp back in The Hallow Woods.

She’d spared his life but doomed everyone else.

Don’t think about her. With effort, he pushed thoughts of his Shee imposter wife aside, turned, and headed toward the door of the ale-hall.

After drawing so much attention to himself, it was time to disappear.

A crowd still lingered around the fringes of the space, whispering together and casting him wary looks. Aye, everyone would have seen the tattoos on his neck and arms glow as he’d fought the mercenary. Enforcers weren’t a regular sight here, and the locals would be curious as well as wary. Another reason why he had to go.

On his way out, he noted a woman standing close to the wall. Wearing a blue cloak, she was tall and long-faced with straw-colored hair peeking out from under her hood. The woman’s eyes gleamed shrewdly as she tracked his path.

Cailean’s stride faltered. There was something oddly familiar about her—and yet he couldn’t remember where their paths might have met.

It didn’t matter though. He wasn’t interested in pausing to find out.

Cutting the woman a warning scowl, he ducked under the door’s low lintel and left the ale-hall behind him.