At the last they sat quietly on the bed, sipping cider. ‘I wish there was more I could teach you, Connavar,’ she said. ‘But you are – as you promised – a fast learner. And you will bring your wife great joy. Who is the lucky girl?’
‘Arian – she is the blacksmith’s daughter. You must have seen her. She has golden hair and the face of a goddess.’
‘Yes, I have seen her. She is very pretty,’ said Eriatha, climbing from the bed and putting on her faded blue dress.
Conn sensed the change in her mood. ‘What is wrong?’
‘Nothing is wrong,’ she answered. ‘But it is late and time for you to go.’
‘Was it something I said?’ he asked, rising and moving to his clothes.
‘Foolish boy,’ she said, gently stroking his face. ‘You have said and done nothing to offend me. Quite the reverse, in fact. Go home and leave me to get some rest. You have tired me out and I need my sleep.’
Conn dressed and stepped to the door. Taking her hand he kissed it. ‘I will never forget this night,’ he said.
‘Nor I. Go home.’
Only when he had left and was walking home through light rain did he remember that he had not given her the coin. Slowly he trudged back to the hut and was about to knock upon the door when he heard the sound of weeping coming from within the darkened hut. The sound was plaintive, and more than that, infinitely private. Silently he took three silver coins from his pouch and left them by the door.
Then, lifting his hood into place, he walked home.
As summer waned, and the corn was cut, threshed and stored, the young men of the settlement took to the high woodlands with their elders to replenish the winter fuel stores. Younger boys, carrying long canvas sacks slung over their shoulders, gathered branches for kindling, then hauled them down the hill. Several work teams of adults selected trees for cutting, then set to with axe and saw. There were many dead trees, and these were felled first, then stripped of branches so that the older boys could saw the trunks into rounds that could be rolled downhill.
On either side of a fallen trunk Connavar and Braefar dragged and pushed a four-foot, double-handed saw. Stripped to the waist, sweat streaking their tanned skin, they worked the serrated blade deep into the wood. Braefar had an old cloth wrapped around his blistered right hand. Blood had stained the cloth. Younger than Conn by a year, he was a head shorter and twenty pounds lighter than his half-brother. It was as if nature had played a cruel trick on the swordsman, Ruathain. The son of the slender Varaconn looked more like Ruathain every day, tall and powerful, already showing prodigious energy and strength, while the swordsman’s own son was sparrow boned and puny.
It was a source of some shame to Braefar who, though he could outrun the fastest Rigante tribesman, and shoot a bow as well as most men, could not yet wield a bronze longsword, or wrestle a bull calf to the ground. His skin was soft, and no matter how hard he worked he could build no calluses. Every time he was called upon to use the copper saw his hands bled.
The two young men had worked all morning, and as the sun neared noon they laid aside the two-man saw and sat in the shade of a spreading oak to eat. Scattered clouds drifted across the blue sky, dappling the green valleys with shadow, and darker clouds hovered around the Druagh peaks, threatening rain in the late afternoon.
The brothers shared a meal of bread and honey, washed down with cool water from a cold spring that trickled down the nearby rock face.
‘You have been very quiet today,’ said Conn, tipping a cup of water over his sweat-soaked red-gold hair.
For a moment Braefar was silent, and when he did speak he did not look Conn in the eyes. ‘I think you like the Foreigner more than you like me,’ he said. The comment surprised Conn. His half-brother was never one to complain, and disliked emotional confrontations. Conn understood now why Braefar had seemed so distant these past weeks.