'Fools!' Gern said under her breath. 'They ask magic too late.'
'Four bracelets,' Elac reminded her. Gern sighed and squatted down beside the woman, studied her for a long moment and then dipped her fingers into the pouch at her belt and brought out a small pot of ointment which she began applying to the sick woman's forehead. The woman shivered and opened her eyes. I could see the death-look in them, although under Gern's touch she seemed to revive somewhat. Gern spoke to her softly, using the soothing words of the healer's tongue to ease the fever's grip.
Dipping back into her pouch, Gern withdrew her hand and extended it to me. Into my open palm she dropped a small mass of dried matter – bark shavings, roots, leaves, grass, seeds – nodding towards the iron cauldron hanging over the fire by a chain from the roofbeam. I understood that she wished me to put the mixture into the cauldron, which I did. I poured water into the pot and waited until it boiled. Then Gern motioned for me to bring it to her; under the foul mutterings of the chief, I dipped out a gourd.
Gern lifted the woman's head and gave her to drink. The woman smiled weakly as she lay back. A few moments later she closed her eyes and slept. Gern then went to the chief and stood before him.
'Will the woman live?' asked the chief. He might have been speaking about one of his hounds.
'She lives,' answered Gern-y-fhain. 'See she does keep warm, and drinks the potion.'
The chieftain grunted and removed one of his bracelets. He handed the golden object to his man, who dropped it gingerly into Gern's palm lest he touch her. The slight did not go unnoticed. Elac stiffened. Nolo's hand alreadyjhad an arrow in it.
But Gern looked at the bracelet and hefted it in her hand. Likely, there was much tin in the thing and little enough gold. 'You promised four bracelets.'
'Four? Take what you are given, and get out!' he growled in his sorry speech. 'I will not hear your lies!'
The Hill Folk drew their weapons.
Gern raised a hand in the air. Elac and Nolo froze. 'Chief thinks to cheat Gern-y-fhain?' She spoke softly, but the threat was undeniable. Her hand weaved a strange motion in the air and something fell from her fingers. The fire suddenly became a fountain gushing bright sparks.
The women screamed and threw their hands over their faces. The chieftain quickly reconsidered, glaring with red-eyed anger. He muttered and removed three more bracelets, throwing them into the flaming embers of the fire at his feet.
Quick as a flick, Gern reached into the fire and scooped up the bracelets, to the astonishment of the tallfolk. The gold disappeared into a fold in her clothing and, straight-backed, she turned and walked from the hut. We followed her, mounted our ponies, and together returned to the crannog in the winter twilight.
Two days later, Elac and Nolo took the sheep back down to the pasture and were there when the tallfolk came upon them: three riders as before and the chief with them. I was halfway down the hill and saw the riders sweep down on my fhain-brothers, scattering the sheep. I stopped and hunched myself into a motionless shape, blending instantly into the hillscape.
When the riders halted, I hurried forward.
'Give back the gold!' the chief shouted. Elac's knife appeared in his hand. Nolo's bowstring stretched taut. The tallfolk were not unprepared. Each held a sturdy sword and a small, well-made wood-and-oxhide shield. I wondered about the weapons. Where had these men come by them? Trading with the Scotti? 'Give it back, thief!'
Elac may not have understood the word, but he knew the tone. His muscles tensed, ready to leap to the fight. The only thing that checked him was the horses. Had the Hill Folk been astride their own ponies they would have been nigh invincible to the rogues before them. But it was four against two, and the two were on foot.
The tallfolk chieftain meant to have his gold back, or the heads of those who had it on sharpened stakes outside his house. Perhaps both. As I watched, I felt the same quickening in the air around me as I had felt the day the stones danced. I knew something would happen, but did not know what it might be.
But the moment I stepped between Elac and the chieftain, I saw that the tallfolk felt it, too.
'Why have you come here?' I asked, trying to imitate Gern-y-fhain's unassailable authority.
The tallfolk started as if I had sprung full-grown from the turf at their feet. The chieftain tightened his grip on his sword and grumbled, 'The woman is dead and lies cold in the mud. I have come for my gold.'
'Go back,' I told him. 'If you think to avenge yourself on those who helped you, then you deserve what will happen to you. Turn back; there is nothing for you here.'
A fierce and ugly glee twisted his stupid face. 'I will have the gold, and your flapping tongue as well, bastard!'
'You have been warned,' I told him, then looked at the others. 'You have all been warned.' They were not as brave as their chief, or else they were not as stupid. They muttered and made the sign against evil with their hands.
The chief opened his mouth in a rude laugh. 'I will gut you like a herring and strangle you with your own entrails, boy!' he boasted, lowering his sword to my throat.
Elac tensed, ready to strike. I held up a hand to stay him. The chiefs sword, the blade black with caked blood, came nearer. I turned my eyes to the length of jagged iron and imagined the heat that had forged it, imagined it red hot from the forge fire.
The sword-tip began to glow – duskily at first, but brightening rapidly, the fireglow spreading along the blade towards the hilt.
The chief held the weapon as long as he could, and burmed his hand badly for his stubbornness. His shriek echoed in the valley. 'Kill him!' he shouted; the red welt on his palm was already blistering. 'Kill him!'
His men made no move for their own weapons had become too hot to hold, and indeed the iron in their belt buckles, knives, and arm rings was growing uncomfortably warm.
The horses jigged nervously, showing the whites of then-eyes. 'Take yourselves from here and do not trouble us again,' I said levelly, although my heart was beating furiously.
One of the men turned his horse and made to ride away, but his leader was a bull-headed man. 'Stay!' Rage and frustration blackened his face. 'You!' He roared at me. 'I will kill you! I will – '
I had never seen a man carried away by such hate. And, although I have seen it once or twice since, at the time I did not know that it could kill.
The chief gagged and his words stuck – like fishbones in his throat – and he choked, making a hideous sound. Clawing at his neck, eyes bulging, he pitched from the saddle. He was dead when his body struck the ground.
The men stared at their fallen leader only for an instant, then wheeled their horses and fled back the way they had come, leaving their chief where he lay.
When they had gone, Elac turned to me and looked long into my eyes. He did not speak, but the questions were there. Who are you? What are you?
Nolo squatted beside the body. 'This one is dead, Myrddin-wealth,' he said softly.
'We will put him back on his horse and send him home to his own,' I told him.
With some difficulty, the three of us lifted the body and slung it across the saddle, tying the wrists and ankles together to keep it from sliding off. We turned the horse and gave the unhappy beast a slap on the rump and it trotted after the others. I breathed a prayer for the man – I did not have it in me to despise him. We watched the horses out of sight and then returned to the crannog, Elac and Nolo running on ahead in their eagerness to tell what they had seen.