Bare Hands and Broken Rites

Would thirty paces of wet cedar board be enough to settle twenty winters of blood? Lorcan stepped onto the floating dock, the weighted ash stave resting across his palm, his boots gripping the slick planks above the dark water. Behind him, the bronze roof bell ceased its chime, leaving only the lapping ripples against the tavern pilings. Across the narrow sparring square, Caoimhe shook out the folds of her slate-gray tunic, her slender spear dipping once in the formal greeting of the Western Firth.

The dead air pressed heavy against Lorcan's skin. Without the mountain drafts to braid into cutting currents, his lungs pulled only cold, damp stillness.

Maolain shuffled past the threshold carrying an iron kettle and two earthenware bowls, his greasy apron flapping against his shins. He set the steaming vessels down upon a low cedar block at the rim of the dock with an exaggerated clatter.

"First exchange," the old man rasped. "The water from the spring is already drunk. Now drink the heat, strike the wood, and do not mark my floorboards with your heels."

Caoimhe did not answer with words. She slid her left foot forward, the iron butt of her spear whispering against the wet cedar. In the dead calm, she could conjure no spinning slipstreams, yet the spear moved with the sudden speed of a diving sea hawk. The tapered sea-iron point darted toward Lorcan's chest.

Lorcan shifted his center back two inches. The ten-ounce iron sleeve ring Maolain had wedged onto the stave's butt took the drag out of his scarred shoulder. Where his old saber habits would have over-swung into empty air, the balanced timber snapped upward in a sharp, rising arc.

Crack.

The ash met sea-iron five inches below the spearhead. The impact shuddered down Lorcan's forearm, the wood ringing against metal. Caoimhe pivoted on her heel without breaking stride, the tail of her spear whipping in a low sweep aimed at his calves. Lorcan hopped two inches off the deck, letting the stave drop vertically to pin her shaft against the planks.

The cedar groaned under the weight.

"Good balance," Caoimhe said, her breath gray in the raw dawn. "My brother Connall claimed you were too heavy on your heels. He lied."

"Your brother was nineteen," Lorcan said, his chest rising steadily. "He fought like he had four lives to spare."

She disengaged with a clean snap of her wrists, stepping back three paces to salute the steaming bowls. The first exchange was complete.

Maolain poured the bitter bog-myrtle tea into both cups, steam curling into the fog. "Second exchange. Quicker this time, before the leaves stew to mud."

Before Caoimhe could lift her bowl, the water beneath the pilings surged.

A blunt iron grapple shot from the fog, biting deep into the dock's outer mooring beam. Three more hissed through the mist, iron claws tearing into the cedar grain. From the reed channels beneath the stilts came the roar of sixty men.

"Break the treaty!" a harsh voice bellowed from the water. "Burn the rats out!"

Black skiffs slammed against the pilings. Men in lacquered peat-dyed lamellar armor vaulted over the dock rails, their hooked sickles flashing red under torchlight. At the head of the boarding party stood Eachann-Ruadh, his twin-hooked polearm dripping greasy pitch, a lit pinebrand blazing in his left fist.

Caoimhe did not retreat toward the tavern door. She leveled her spear at the rail. "Crimson-Sedge curs," she spat. "You break the truce of the Three Horns!"

"There is no truce for dead men!" Eachann-Ruadh shouted, hurling his torch straight toward the open pantry hatch beneath the tavern eaves.

Lorcan moved before the brand could arc over the water. Trusting the weighted balance of his ash stave, he thrust the butt forward like an iron ram. The stave caught the blazing pinebrand mid-flight, swatting it sideways into the freezing loch with a sharp hiss of steam. Lorcan stepped into the narrowest choke point between the mooring posts, planting his boots wide.

Two raiders lunged at him with serrated sickles. Without wind-braiding to deflect their blades, Lorcan relied on twenty years of vanguard infantry drill. He drove the forward tip of the stave into the first man's sternum, knocking the breath from his ribs without breaking skin, then spun the weighted butt in a low arc that hooked the second raider behind the knees. Both men crashed backward off the pier, plunging into the water with frantic splashing.

"Keep the centerline!" Lorcan called to Caoimhe. "Do not let them flank the posts!"

Caoimhe's spear became a blur of dark ash. She did not use the iron point to pierce flesh; she used the flat of the shaft and the blunt butt to parry sickle blades, deflecting strikes into the open air and sweeping legs with fluid precision. Four Crimson-Sedge warriors tumbled into the loch in rapid succession, their heavy armor dragging them down into the cold silt.

Yet more scrambled over the rails. Six raiders rushed the tavern entrance, brandishing pots of boiling pig fat and sulfur fuses.

"The doorway!" Siorcha cried from the threshold, clutching an iron poker. "They have the coals!"

An ear-splitting clap echoed across the dock as bare flesh met cedar.

Maolain had discarded his tea ladle. The tavern keeper stepped onto the dock, his watery hazel eyes ablaze, his stained apron tied tight around his waist. He planted his bare left foot on the central deck plank and drove his open right palm flat against the timber.

A shuddering wave ripped through the dock. The cedar did not splinter, but the vibration traveled through the grain like an underwater thunderclap. The six raiders charging the door suddenly froze as their kneecaps buckled inward under the transmitted kinetic shock. Their weapons clattered to the planks, and the entire squad was launched bodily off the walkway, tumbling into the icy shallows.

"You swine!" Maolain bellowed, his voice echoing off the misty ridges. "Look at my planks! Scuffed with tallow! Stained with swamp pitch! I scrubbed this cedar yesterday with three baskets of dried reeds!"

Eachann-Ruadh stared at the unarmed innkeeper, his face twisting with fury. "Old ghost! You dare strike the Crimson-Sedge?"

The marshal lunged, his twin-hooked polearm descending in a vicious overhead cleave meant to split Maolain from crown to waist.

Lorcan sprang to intercept, but Maolain did not shift his stance. The innkeeper leaned aside by a mere thumb's width, letting the whistling iron hook pass harmlessly over his shoulder. Before Eachann-Ruadh could recover his balance, Maolain's left hand—the hand missing three fingers—slapped the shaft of the polearm just beneath the blade.

The shockwave shot down the ash shaft into Eachann-Ruadh's arms. The polearm was wrenched violently from the marshal's grip, spiraling thirty paces into the reeds. Maolain followed through with an open palm strike to Eachann-Ruadh's chest plate. The lacquered lamellar armor shattered into flying shards, and the Crimson-Sedge captain was propelled backward through the mist, crashing into the bilge of his flagship skiff.

The remaining raiders scrambled in terror, hauling their bruised comrades out of the water and cutting their mooring lines with desperate hacks.

From the safety of the retreating skiff, Eachann-Ruadh clutched his broken ribs, his face pale with humiliation and agony.

"You shelter deserters, old fool!" Eachann-Ruadh howled through the fog. "The clan will not forget this insult! When the mist clears, we return with sixty mountain ballistas! We will tear this timber sty from its stilts and burn every beam to ash!"

The black skiffs pulled hard on their muffled oars, dissolving back into the cold peat fog.

Silence settled over the loch. The water rippled gently against the pilings, carrying away floating fragments of charred pine and splintered reed baskets.

Lorcan lowered his stave, his breath coming in slow exhalations. Beside him, Caoimhe rested the butt of her spear against the dock, her gray eyes sweeping the empty water before turning to the old man.

Maolain stood over the low cedar block, grumbling under his breath as he picked up a charred splinter of pine and flicked it into the water.

"Dreadful manners," the innkeeper muttered. "Utterly disgraceful. Not one of them offered to pay for the boiled water."

He picked up the two earthenware bowls, still warm against the chill morning air. He handed one to Lorcan and the other to Caoimhe.

"The third exchange," Maolain said, his tone softening by a fraction. "You met your challenger. Wood touched wood, and not a single drop of human blood fouled my planks."

Lorcan took the bowl in both hands. The bitter bog-myrtle tea was dark and pungent, warming his stiff fingers. He raised it toward Caoimhe.

Caoimhe lifted hers in return, dipping her chin in solemn respect. "The vow is fulfilled, Lorcan-Rhu. My brother's debt is paid in full. To the Storm-Petrel School, your blade is dead."

"And to the Heather-Scythe," Lorcan said quietly, "my hand is empty."

Together, they drank the bitter tea to the dregs.

High on the tavern roof, the bronze bell caught the first pale rays of sunrise breaking through the mist. Across the water, the outer hills loomed dark and perilous, bearing the promise of siege engines and vendetta armies yet to come. But on the wet cedar dock of Loch-na-Cailleach, the hearth fire burned steady, and the haven held.