"Speak you any Gael?" the captain asked, threading his way across the cluttered deck to Medraut's side.
The boy glanced around. "Nay, not a word, I'm afraid. I've been wondering since we left Galwyddel last night how I'm to communicate with them."
The captain grinned. "The very act of sailing into Dunadd Harbor is communication of a bold sort, lad. They'll respect you, if nothing else."
Aye, Lailoken thought uncharitably, they'll respect us all the way to the gallows. Or do the Irish lop off heads with an axe? Lailoken had very few words of Gael and when he'd asked Banning shortly after setting foot on the trawler, his guest had responded with outrage. Irish Gael? That barbaric tongue? I would sooner have my tongue ripped out and nailed to a wall than ever speak Irish Gael!
Lailoken hoped very fervently, indeed, that the Irish didn't grant Banning his wish.
The sail rattled and shook as the tillerman turned them inland toward the harbor entrance. The boat rolled broadside on to the heavy seas and Lailoken swallowed hard, managing to stuff the nausea back down before thoroughly humiliating himself again. He clutched the edges of the hammock—which the sailors had rigged so he wouldn't, at least, fall overboard while ill—and literally held on during the long, miserable stretch of time it took to round the headland and reach calmer, protected water.
The coastline here was rugged, with a slope of rocky beach above which rose an outcropping of rock. It was there the Irish had built an immense stone fortress, with a commanding view of the harbor and the sea beyond it. The town which huddled at the fortress' feet was a substantial settlement, housing several thousand people, at least, with smoke curling black as peat from the chimneys of low, solidly built cottages. Thatched roofs rustled in the wind, held down with nets of rope weighted in place with heavy rocks at the end of every single strand of rope netting. The heavy grey stones hung down nearly to the ground along the cottage walls, one for every twelve inches or so of roofline, swaying in the storm winds like beads on a rosary. It was a technique the Britons would do well to copy, Lailoken had to admit, earning a derisive snort from Banning.
By the time the fishing boat had crossed Dunadd Harbor, Lailoken managed to drag himself out of the hammock and reach the boat's rail, tottering but on his feet. Medraut glanced briefly his way, then turned his attention back to the shore, where a group of men had begun to gather, fisherfolk, from the look of them, curious about the foolhardy sailors out in the storm. Certainly they weren't armed soldiers, although movement on the road from the fortress suggested that someone had noticed theirs was not an Irish boat and was taking steps to determine just what the boat was and what its crew wanted. Lailoken was still too seasick to be overly alarmed and Medraut merely seemed excited by the whole grand adventure.
They dropped anchor where the water shoaled and when the sail came rattling down, wet and heavy and ponderous as a sow's belly, the sailors threw a rope ladder across the gunwale, down which Medraut skinned, landing in hip-deep water and holding the bottom of the ladder for Lailoken. He swallowed back nausea, muttered to the captain, "Send someone ashore with the gifts, eh?" and limbered himself awkwardly over the side. The seawater was cold, soaking him to the skin as he waded grimly for shore.
"You'd think they'd build a pier, at least," he growled under his breath, prompting a nervous chuckle from Medraut.
The knot of fishermen on the beach had grown to a lively crowd of curious men and boys. A few women had put in an appearance as well, but stayed back from the water's edge, watching from a safe distance. A babble of voices speaking incomprehensible Irish Gaelic deepened Lailoken's uneasiness, but no one had drawn weapons, which was a mercy, particularly since they'd been recognized for what they were. Several voices sent the word racing outward through the crowd: Britons!
A moment later, the crowd parted for new arrivals from the hill fort above the harbor. The newcomers were armed with long swords and shorter, wicked belt knives, but for the moment the blades remained sheathed, their owners more curious than threatened by a handful of Britons very far, indeed, from their home waters. The man in the lead, a stocky fellow with the characteristic blue-black hair and ice-blue eyes of the dark variety of Irishman, looked them up and down, then spat out a question in language that left Lailoken's tongue aching, just hearing it spoken.
Lailoken, as the designated messenger, spread his hands in a gesture of incomprehension and said very slowly and clearly, "We speak no Gael. Have you anyone that speaks Brythonic?"
The man frowned, rubbed his heavy black beard thoughtfully for a moment, then turned to a lad at his elbow and issued some sort of instructions that sounded like a cat swallowing its tongue. The boy raced across the beach, pelting up the road toward the fortress. While they waited, everyone on edge and uncertain what would happen next, one of the women came down to the water's edge, handing them thick, dry cloaks to wrap around their sodden clothing. Medraut flashed her a smile of intense, crimson-cheeked thanks, which prompted giggles among the younger girls watching from behind their mothers' skirts.
"They're more like us than I'd ever believed possible," Medraut said in quiet astonishment. "I'd not expected them to make such an offer." The loan was deeply generous and very welcome, as the wind whipping across the harbor drew a foul bit of shivering from both of them.
"Aye," Lailoken was getting his stomach back under some reasonable semblance of control again, "it's rare that an offer to trade goes sour at the beginning. It's what you're offered for your goods—and what you think of their offer—that causes war to break out in little sheltered bays like this one. Pride is a fine thing, so long as it doesn't plunge a man into trouble by the refusal to bend his head. A trader's job is never an easy one."
"Nor a matchmaker's."
"Hah!" Lailoken wiped his mouth with the back of one hand and wished mightily for that drinking skin he'd sampled just before coming aboard. "That's the bloody truth."
Another delegation was descending from the hill fort, headed by a woman this time, who was surrounded by a group of older women and a few men with white in their beards. The younger woman's eyes were a soft blue-green shade, like deep waters of a steepy loch in summer's haze, eyes that were violently alive and intelligent. Her copper-flame hair, caught back in one long plait and held neatly in place by a tubular hair net that glinted with threads of gold, hung down her back like a thick and immensely expensive jeweled serpent from some pagan god's pleasure garden. As she approached, several of the fisherfolk whispered, "Riona the Damhnait!" passing the astonishment back amongst themselves.
Lailoken stared, having picked up just enough Gael at waterfront tavernas to comprehend that much of the conversation out of the general babble of speculating voices. Riona the Bard? The king's own councillor?
Lailoken studied her intently as she approached, wondering whether the king's own councillor might be a good omen, or a sign of trouble. She halted before them and saluted them with a gesture of greeting, which Lailoken and Medraut gave back again, taking care to mimic the formal flourish.
"You are Britons, I see," she said, studying them with long and slow curiosity.
Her Brythonic was not, perhaps, astonishing in its quality, for her command of the language was obviously strained. But it was astonishing, nonetheless, that she spoke it at all. "I am Riona the Damhnait, Druidess to King Dallan mac Dalriada, the Scotti, and tutor for Keelin, Dallan mac Dalriada's daughter and heiress, who will one day be queen of the Scots. Why have you come into Dunadd Harbor? Do you seek shelter from yon storm?" She lifted a graceful hand to indicate the low-scudding rainclouds and the squall line even now pouring its way across the long reach of the harbor. The wind picked up as she spoke, rattling sails and flapping cloaks and long-skirted gowns against their owners' knees.