Gathering of Black Skiffs

Could the cedar stilts holding the tavern above the loch survive an hour of soaked pig tallow, or had the Crimson-Sedge already drilled into the load-bearing hearts of the wood? Lorcan-Rhu lowered himself through the narrow scuttle hatch beneath the pantry counter, keeping his left shoulder tucked tight to clear the salt-pork racks. The smell of cold grease and stagnant lake mud rose instantly to meet his nostrils. Below the floorboards, the dead calm held the water as still as black glass. Siorcha crept ahead of him along the slippery cross-ties, her bare feet finding the iron spikes driven into the timber without making a solitary splash.

"Three paces east," the girl whispered into the damp. "The catwalk ends where Master Maolain stores the turnip crates. Step on the header beam, not the spruce laths."

Lorcan set his boots onto the greasy cedar sill. He carried only his shortened ash stave slung behind his shoulders and a six-inch tallow peg wrapped in oiled cloth. He did not strike a spark. Even a flicker of flint against steel would betray their position to anyone watching from the outer sedge. Instead, he reached out with calloused palms, running rough fingers along the wet skin of the center pilings.

The wood was slick with lake weed, but twelve feet out toward the western mooring, his knuckles struck raw hemp.

Lorcan leaned his chest against the header, sliding two fingers along the cordage. The rope was three-strand braided jute, stiffened with mineral pitch to resist the freshwater rot. A heavy weight hung from the bight, suspended eighteen inches above the waterline so the wash would not drench the dry fuses. He traced the loop down to an iron hoop and the swollen stave-belly of a ten-gallon cask.

"Pig grease," Lorcan murmured, bringing his fingertips to his nose. "Rendered mutton tallow and marsh turpentine. Two casks lashed to the prime upright."

"There are more," Siorcha breathed. She crouched on an iron brace beneath him, her fingers dipping into the silent water. "Listen to the drafts under the outer pier. The reeds are not rustling from wind. The hulls are crowding the stems."

Lorcan closed his eyes and set his jaw against the cold cedar. In twenty winters with the Heather-Scythe vanguard, he had crossed fifty rivers on pontoon rafts and hauled baggage wagons through black highland bogs. He knew the distinct, hollow suck of flat-bottomed clinker hulls displacing shallow water. It was a dull, rhythmic thrumming: timber knocking gently against timber through grease-wrapped fenders.

He counted the separate displacement nodes by the vibration against the piling.

One pair near the western ramp where the fuel punts tied off. Three tucked into the willow roots by the fish traps. Three lined along the rear stilt arcade beneath the kitchen sluice, and another four holding station in the open channel to cut off any retreat toward the deep water.

Twelve skiffs. Each carried at least two oarsmen and three fighters in lamellar coats, their iron hooks and sickle-polearms wrapped in wool strips to deaden the ring of metal. Sixty men in total, stationed in a suffocating ring beneath the floorboards.

"They tied the igniters to slow-match cords," Lorcan whispered, his fingers finding the wax-dipped wick coiled around the cask's bung. "Eachann-Ruadh does not intend to burn the house until the bout reaches its third exchange. He wants the duelists committed to the pier before he torches the pilings beneath our feet."

"Master Maolain's floor," Siorcha whispered. Her voice carried a sudden, jagged tremor. "He spent ten summers laying that cedar."

"He will have worse to worry about than the finish on his planks if that turpentine catches," Lorcan said. He took out his small bone-handled knife and reached down, carefully sawing through the upper tension lashings without dropping the casks into the water. He wedged a flat piece of dry pine between the hemp and the stilt timbers, easing the weight onto a slack safety loop that swung the barrels four feet away from the dry piling. If fire touched the cord, the cask would splash harmlessly into the shallow loch mud.

"Come," Lorcan said, tapping Siorcha's shoulder. "We have what we came to find."

They climbed back through the pantry hatch, easing the trapdoor down until the bronze ring rested silently against the wool runner.

Maolain stood beside the big stone hearth, his linen apron stained with tea broth and flour dust. In his right hand he held an iron-banded cedar scoop; in his left, three glazed stoneware cups. Caoimhe sat on the bench near the door, her ash-wood spear resting across her knees. Her gray travel tunic was laced tight, her sea-iron point sheathed in a boiled leather cap. She did not raise her head when the scuttle closed, but her thumb rested firmly against the spear's balance sleeve.

"Twelve boats," Lorcan said, wiping the tallow and marsh grime from his palms with a coarse rag. "Sixty spears and sickles. They have ten barrels of pitch and lard laced to the undercarriage, eight of them along the western pilings."

Caoimhe looked up then, her slate-gray eyes catching the embers of the hearth. "Eachann-Ruadh brought the full vanguard of the sedge. He did not come to collect a blood debt. He came to butcher the sanctuary."

"Of course he brought sixty men," Maolain snapped. He dropped three measures of dried bog-myrtle leaves into an earthen pot with a dry, rustling clatter. "A dog that hunts crippled ducks does not walk alone into an eagle's nest. He knows I keep seventy leagues of peace within these timbers, and he knows he cannot break my threshold without bringing enough pig lard to choke an ox."

"The casks are rigged to slow fuses," Lorcan said. "I slipped the prime tethers on the center brace, but the outer eight remain wired. When the dawn gong rings and we walk onto the pier, his rowers will light the fuses from beneath."

"Then we do not fight on the outer pier," Caoimhe said. Her grip on the ash shaft tightened until the wood creaked. "We break the covenant sitting here, barricade the doors, and take the windows with missile staves."

"No," Maolain said, his voice flat as a dry stone falling on ice. "You break no covenant under this roof. The Rite of the Three Horns has stood since the third king of the braes walked these hills without shoes. If you refuse the dock, Eachann-Ruadh posts a proclamation at the county cross claiming the Heather-Scythe and the Storm-Petrel fled like sheep before the Crimson-Sedge. He makes cowards of both your lineages, and he burns the inn anyway."

Lorcan set his practice stave against the counter. "The innkeeper is right. The rite proceeds."

Caoimhe stood up, tall and lean as a mast in harbor. "You intend to step onto a cedar dock with sixty cutthroats under your boot heels?"

"We step onto the dock because that is where they expect us to die," Lorcan said. "Their boats are packed into the piling alleys where their oars have no sweep. A sixty-man force in twelve skiffs needs five yards of open water to bring their polearms to bear. Tucked under the timbers, they are wedged between two-foot cedar trunks and water weeds. They have no maneuver, no wind for Gale-Braiding, and nowhere to run if the boards drop on their heads."

Maolain set the earthen pot onto the iron trivet above the coals. A faint smile touched the corner of his thin mouth, dry as old bark. "The boy spent twenty winters getting his collarbone cracked, but he still remembers how to bottle a trench."

"I am thirty-eight winters old, tavern keeper," Lorcan muttered.

"And you are still a boy while you stand in my kitchen," Maolain replied without missing a beat. "Now listen to me, both of you. You will step onto the dock when the gong strikes. You will exchange the second horn of warm tea. You will keep your blades blunt and your forms bloodless, as the covenant requires."

"And when the third horn comes?" Caoimhe asked.

"When the third horn touches the table, Eachann-Ruadh will bring his sickle to the rail," Maolain said. The old man reached under the hearth ledge and pulled out a clean linen rag, methodically wiping the lip of each teacup. "At that moment, you will cease being duelists. You will become guests whose host has been grievously insulted by unwashed marsh brigands."

Lorcan looked down at his own thick knuckles. The weight of twenty winters of battle armor pulled faintly at his scarred neck, yet for the first time in two days, the air in his chest felt clean. "And if they drop a torch on the pig grease before the third horn?"

"If Eachann-Ruadh scorches my cedar pilings," Maolain said, his watery eyes narrowing into slits of pure mountain flint, "the Crimson-Sedge clan will pay for forty cartloads of southern river sand to scrub the soot away. Now take your places."

A gray sliver of dawn pierced the chinks in the heavy cedar shutters. The dead calm outside did not stir, but the loch water reflected a pale, cold sheen of slate.

High above the rafters, the bronze roof bell swung on its iron trunnions, driving a heavy iron chime through the ceiling timbers.

Caoimhe unhooked the latch, throwing the heavy cedar door wide to the gray loch. She looked once over her shoulder, her gray eyes hard on Lorcan's stave.

"Second horn or sixty sickles," she said. "Do not drop your guard."