The men lining the parapet began to turn away, all strangely subdued, despite the totality of the victory. As they began to file by us, headed towards the stairs and talking quietly among themselves, Longinus turned to me.
"Brave whoreson, that. I wonder who he was."
I shook my head. "I don't know, but Connor might. You think they'll come back?"
He looked me in the eye and pursed his lips, then shook his head. "I doubt it. Would you? My guess is, they'll go home and raise a bigger fleet, then they'll come back, looking for blood." He glanced away, to where Connor's men were pouring rapidly, in disciplined files, down the stairs from their positions on the wall. "Where are those fellows going in such a hurry?"
I noted the serious expressions on the faces of the passing men, and returned a nod to Sean as he hurried by. Wherever they were going, they clearly had a purpose. "I don't know," I responded, "but they might be on their way to Liam's galleys, to take them out, down to the spot where they concealed their own vessels yesterday. Connor will not feel comfortable until he has his own deck back beneath his feet again, and as long as there remains the slightest chance that Condran's fleet might stay around, looking for vengeance for their admiral, Connor won't lie easy on land."
'The Ersemen will be back, with others, looking for revenge," Longinus said darkly, "and this time they'll know what to expect."
I watched the last of Connor's men disappear from view, then turned back to face him. "Not quite, my friend," I said, smiling. "They'll have respect for your weapons, I've no doubt of that, but by the time they decide to return, Connor Mac Athol will have gone home too. Remember, they don't know he's here. When they come back, they might find their passage contested by a fleet to match their own."
His eyes widened, and then he grinned and nodded. "Aye, I'd forgotten that. Let's find something to drink. By all the gods, man, we just defeated an entire fleet of Ersemen." He turned away, roaring for Derek, and we were suddenly surrounded by a throng whose noisy enthusiasm waxed rapidly with the growing realization of what they had achieved.
Connor and his men were noticeably absent from the celebrations that began immediately following the victory. They had, as I had suspected, gone to collect their galleys. Donuil confirmed it when he came looking for me some time later. In spite of the general euphoria of the gathering, however, I found myself vaguely depressed, unable to stop thinking of the sight of Liam's whirling corpse soaring up and outward from the wall to crash down on the galley beneath. It was a common topic of conversation that morning, laughed over and discussed again and again as people mingled and moved about in the thronged space beneath the walls, but I could find nothing humorous in it. The hanging of the Erse dead I could stomach as a gruesome, even necessary warning of the violence that awaited any who might treacherously challenge us. But the deliberate defilement of a corpse—even the corpse of a creature like Liam—offended everything I had been taught concerning the dignity of the dead. Eventually I removed myself and stood apart from the celebrations, ignoring everyone and thinking my own thoughts.
Lucanus materialized by my side after a while but read my mood and remained silent, content to sip at his drink beside me, A short time later Donuil and Hector drifted over to us, talking quietly, and soon after that Rufio and Dedalus emerged from the crowd and joined us as well. Rufio huddled immediately with Donuil and the others and Ded came towards me. I was surprised to notice that he clutched an ale pot, for Ded never drank intoxicants. He noticed my glance and grinned, toasting me silently before taking a deep gulp that left a white ring around his lips.
"Buttermilk," he said. "Cold. You don't look happy, my friend and commander. What's wrong?"
"Nothing is wrong, Ded. We've just won a bloodless victory. How could anything be wrong?"
"I don't know, but you, from the look of you, evidently do." His eyes hardened. "Should we be concerned?"
"No, not at all." I realized that I was being obscure and shook my head. "I was thinking of Liam Condranson, that's all—about shooting him like that, from the ballista."
Ded's eyes widened now in surprise. "You don't approve of that? I thought it was inspired, the only disappointment being that the whoreson was already dead. It was Connor's idea—brilliant, I thought."
"Brilliant? Why brilliant? I thought—I still think—it was barbarous."
"Barbarous?" He blinked at me, as though wondering if I had lost my wits. "Of course it was barbarous, Merlyn, but so was Liam. And so, for all of his polished charm, is Connor. These people are Ersemen, not Roman-trained aesthetes from Camulod! They fight among themselves constantly and they have different rules from ours. We would never shoot our enemies off castle walls like that, but, by God, perhaps we should! It might make us less vulnerable.
·
Seeing Liam tumbling through the sky towards them like that, his people saw an eloquent statement of Connor's assessment of their best, and of the treacherous whoreson's methods. As I said, too bad he was already dead."
I had no adequate response to that, and so I merely nodded and handed him my empty cup. "Take care of that for me. I'm going for a walk. I've matters on my mind and I must think a while."
Sometime later, I found myself beyond the walls, on the outer fringe of the common marketplace. I was walking towards Shelagh, who sat on a low wall beside Turga with her back to me, both of them watching Arthur and the other three boys at play. A knot of local children stood close by, watching our four but making no attempt to join their game, which was, in fact, a training exercise devised by Rufio to sharpen their slinging skills.
The boys stood roughly twenty paces apart on the four corners of an imaginary square, and their game consisted of hurling a fist-sized pebble from one to the other, the object being for the receiver to catch the flying stone and hurl it to the next. The rules were complex, and accuracy figured highly in the scoring. The stone was almost perfectly spherical, bound in strips of leather that were braided to form a handle two handspans long, and it was thrown with a round-arm sweep, much like a slung stone. One point was won by catching the stone itself, but three points could be scored by catching it by the handle, which permitted the ongoing throw to be carried out without changing grip. The boys could play the game for hours.
The two women heard me approach and turned to greet me, but I motioned to them to stay where they were. I sat on the wall beside Shelagh, and we continued to watch in silence for a while. None of the boys had yet noticed my arrival, so complete was their concentration.
"Who's winning?' I asked, eventually.
Shelagh responded without looking at me. "Bedwyr's in the lead, for the moment, by twelve points. Arthur's not happy. He missed three consecutive catches and threw two fouls, one to the ground and one too far away for Gwin to reach. Those cost him dearly. He had been ahead before that." She paused. "You had quite a successful morning."
"Aye, it went as expected. The surprise was against them. They sailed in and were driven off without casualties to us. Where were you while it was going on?"
"In our quarters. I kept the boys inside until it was all over."
"That must have been difficult."
She turned to look at me. "They were not exactly happy, but they knew there was nothing to be done, so they made the best of it. You sank two galleys?"