Unmarked Skiffs in the Reeds

Where had the tallow come from? Ordinary bog-trappers rubbed their boots with mutton fat to keep the peat water from rotting the hide, but yellow marsh tallow was boiled down from canal oxen three provinces south. Lorcan stepped down from the tavern's low landing onto the sunken timber causeway, his ash practice stave gripped in his right hand. He wanted the man who had brought those siege bolts beneath the stilts before the morning fog burned away.

The causeway sat two inches under the black surface of Loch-na-Cailleach. Cold water rose over the bridge of Lorcan's boots, soaking through coarse wool socks and biting into old winter aches in his ankles. On either side, thick banks of yellow-reed and weeping bog-willow leaned toward the channel, their tangled roots forming dark cages against the silt.

No wind stirred through the reeds. Stagnant air clung to the water, smelling of sour moss and rotten birch leaves. Without open drafts across the surface, Gale-Braiding was sluggish work. He drew a shallow breath through his teeth, circulating the cool peat-spring draft he had stored in his lung meridians at dawn. The circulation kept his center anchored, heavy and low, but he left the surrounding air undisturbed. Out here, ripples traveled farther than shouted warnings.

Ten paces from the tavern's outer pilings, a willow branch drifted against the current.

The loch had no current in the western shallows. The branch moved because something broad had brushed the root bundle beneath it seconds earlier.

Lorcan halted. He lowered the tip of his ash stave until it rested against the submerged cross-plank of the causeway. The damp grain of the wood conducted faint tremors through his callused palm. Two distinct vibrations tapped through the timber: a steady, balanced heel press, followed by the light scrape of iron on peat-stone.

Someone was crouching in the reed bed three rods to the north, watching the tavern door.

Lorcan slid off the causeway into the dark water. The loch reached his hips, icy and thick with decomposed sedge. He did not wade with kicking strides. Instead, he worked his weight forward along the submerged mud shelf, toes digging into the silt to keep his shoulders level. Each step slid under the surface without breaking into white foam.

Through the curtain of willow stems, the outline of a narrow flat-bottomed skiff emerged from the gloom.

The boat had no clan pennant, no carving on the prow, and no iron lantern hung from the bowsprit. Its cedar ribs had been charred black with soot to swallow any reflection from the loch-side braziers. A single figure knelt in the middle thwart, clad in peat-dyed lamellar coats made from hardened ox-leather. Across the stranger's back hung an iron-framed siege crossbow, its double-limb prod strung with twisted horsehair cord.

The scout held a small brass tube to one eye, aiming through a parting in the reeds toward the tavern's floating spar dock. On the thwart beside his knee lay a bundle of three more blackened bolts, identical to the ones Lorcan had wedged from the foundation pilings an hour ago.

Lorcan did not shout. He shifted his grip down the ash stave, aligning his forearms with the grain. The low-drag form Maolain had drilled into him earlier required no grand highland wind to feed it. It needed only the narrow cylinder of air already resting between his chest and the target.

He pushed off the mud shelf.

Water parted around his chest with a soft rush. The scout jerked upright at the sound, dropping the brass tube into his lap. With the reflex of a practiced skirmisher, his right hand snatched a curved sickle-knife from his belt, the inner hook ground to a gray razor finish.

"Sanctuary dog," the scout spat, lunging over the gunwale.

The sickle-hook lashed toward Lorcan's throat. It was a vicious, tearing strike, designed to snag the collarbone and drag a man under the silt.

Lorcan did not give ground. As the curved iron flashed down, he twisted the ash stave across his chest, catching the inner crook of the sickle on the oiled wood. Instead of shoving backward against the blow, he relaxed his shoulders, dropping his center half a finger lower into the water. The stave rotated in a tight half-circle, carrying the attacker's forward rush past his left flank.

The scout's momentum carried him off balance. Before the man could recover his footing in the shallow silt, Lorcan drove the heel of his stave into the mud between the scout's shins. At the same instant, Lorcan stepped inside the arc of the knife, his left palm striking the scout's wrist with the flat, compressed impact Maolain had demonstrated on the cedar boards.

No bones snapped, but the kinetic shock passed straight through the flexor tendon, numbing the scout's fingers. The sickle-hook slipped from his grasp, splashing harmlessly into the dark water.

Lorcan caught the man by the throat of his lamellar coat, slamming him back against the soot-stained ribs of the skiff. The light craft rocked violently, sending concentric rings of dark water slapping through the reeds.

Lorcan did not raise his fist. He held the scout pinned against the gunwale, his free hand planting the ash stave firmly across the man's thighs.

"You brought marsh tallow onto the water," Lorcan said. His voice was quiet, a low scrape against the silence of the reeds.

The scout glared at him through a split leather eye-slit. His breathing came fast, smelling of dried salt mutton and stale grain alcohol. "The Crimson-Sedge does not recognize three rotten horns and an old fool's tea kettle. Your clan scythe is broken, Lorcan-Rhu. The Blood-Tally Ledger still holds your name on twenty-two lines."

Lorcan's grip on the coat collar did not tighten, but his thumb found the pulse beating hard beneath the jawbone. "Those twenty-two lines were bought in open field under clan banners. The Heather-Scythe vanguard fought for territory, not butchery in the dark."

"A debt is a debt," the scout rasped. A thin smirk pulled at the edge of his lips. "Captain Eachann-Ruadh is already on the ridge. Twelve skiffs wait in the willow bights past the west narrows. When the sun hits the cedar rafters, this whole stilt sty burns."

Lorcan looked down at the bottom boards of the skiff. Tucked beneath the rower's bench was a roll of stiff, oiled sheepskin tied with hemp cord.

He reached down with his stave, hooking the cord with the blunt tip and flicking it up into his left palm. He untied the hemp with one hand, unrolling the skin against his knee.

Drawn in charcoal and red ochre was a rough tactical survey of the loch shore. Little black crosses marked the positions of three portable ballistas set among the scrub pine on the bluffs overlooking the tavern roof. Two arrows curved through the western reeds, showing where Eachann-Ruadh intended to plant incendiary pots beneath the outer stilts during the farewell bout.

It was an execution plan. Eachann-Ruadh had never intended to wait for the ceremony to conclude; he meant to pin both duelists to the floating platform with heavy iron before burning the tavern down to its waterline pilings.

Lorcan rolled the sheepskin tight and tucked it securely inside his wool vest.

"Your boots are thick with greasy bog-muck," Lorcan said, nodding toward the scout's heavy footwear. "If you set foot on the tavern sill with those, Maolain will break your knees with a soup ladle and make you scrub the cedar with pumice until sunset."

The scout blinked, caught off balance by the flat remark. "What?"

"Get out of the reeds," Lorcan said.

He shoved the skiff backward into the deeper channel with the flat of his palm. The motion carried no lethal intent, but the sudden surge of compressed air behind Lorcan's hand propelled the small boat ten yards out into the open water.

The scout scrambled across the thwarts, grabbing a pair of soot-blackened sculls from the bilge. He stared at Lorcan across the gray water, his face pale with sudden uncertainty. "You let me go? The Crimson-Sedge does not spare witnesses."

"This loch is for putting down the blade," Lorcan replied. He leaned his weight onto the ash stave, the cold water lapping steadily at his waist. "Tell Eachann-Ruadh that when he comes to collect his blood-tally, he had better bring a clean ledger and unedged steel."

The scout did not answer. He dug the oars into the water, pulling with sharp, frantic strokes until the black hull vanished into the thick blanket of morning mist.

Silence settled over the reeds once more. Lorcan stood alone in the shallows, the cold loch seeping deep into his bruised joints. The oiled sheepskin pressed hard against his ribs, a heavy reminder that the past never stayed buried on the mountain trails.

A faint whisper brushed the water fifty paces to the west.

Lorcan turned his head toward the channel. The fog remained thick, but a single white feather drifted across the glassy surface, spinning gently on an invisible eddy. It was long, slender, and tipped with slate-gray down—the flight plumage of an ocean petrel from the outer sea-cliffs.

Lorcan smoothed the edge of the captured sheepskin with his thumb, tucking it deep against his chest. He turned his back on the open channel and waded slowly toward the wooden stilts of the tavern, ready to set the map before Maolain's kettle.