David Gemmell – Rigante 3 – Ravenheart

‘He’ll be a man within the year, Maev. He’ll make his own choices then.’

‘Aye, he will. But until then no more raids. I’ll require your oath on that.’

Lifting the black headband clear of his face, he rubbed at the stitch marks above the empty socket. ‘It troubles me still. Can you believe that?’

Maev was unmoved. ‘Your oath, Grymauch.’

‘Aye, all right, woman,’ he snapped. ‘You have it. No more raids until he is a man. Then perhaps you can find him employment licking the boots of the Varlish.’

She stepped up to him, her green eyes blazing with anger. Even so her voice was calm and controlled. ‘And what will you teach him, Jaim Grymauch? How to puke after too much ale? How to break the bones of men you do not know? How to hide in the heather while other men gather crops or tend cattle? Where is your home, Jaim? Where is your wife? Where are your bairns? You have none. So what are you?’ Maev moved in even closer to the big man. ‘You’re a seed blowing in the wind. You cannot settle, you cannot change, you cannot grow. When you die, Jaim Grymauch, it will be as if you never were. You will leave nothing behind save a few memories, and even those will fade in time. Licking the boots of the Varlish, you say? How long would it take them to defeat us if all men were like you? One generation, Jaim. Then we’d all be gone.’ She swung away from him and moved to the larder, returning the milk jug to its place on the shelf.

‘It might be better if we were,’ he said softly. ‘Once we were wolves, now we are puppy dogs to be kicked and thrashed by the Varlish. And look at you, Maev. You are bright and intelligent. Aye, and you are rich. But you wear old clothes and Kaelin has threadbare shirts. And why? So that you will not appear to shine before the Varlish. They will accept a wealthy clanswoman only so long as she does not stand out. Do not lecture me, woman – especially on the subject of wife and bairns. I had a wife and two sons. Varlish soldiers ripped out her throat and drowned my boys in the weir. But tell me, Maev, where are your sons? Where is your gift to the future of the Rigante?’

‘The man I loved died,’ she said. ‘You know that.’

‘Aye, he died. But it was you who chose to shrivel up inside and turn into a harridan.’

Maev Ring swung away from the shelf and moved swiftly across the room. Her hand lashed out. Jaim made no attempt to block the slap and her hand cracked against his face.

‘Well, at least there’s still some fire in you, lass,’ he said. Then he turned and walked from the room.

CHAPTER THREE

ARLEBAN ACHBAIN SAT BY HIS MOTHER’S BEDSIDE. WHAT HE SAW frightened him. Shula’s eyes were sunken, her cheeks hollow. She was scarcely breathing. A large bruise had formed on the right side of her jaw, and her lips were split. Banny could not understand why Morain and the women in Eldacre had beaten up his mother, but then he had never understood why both clan and Varlish youngsters used to torment and set upon him. It was not that he did not know why. He had been told often enough. It was understanding he lacked. His mother had fallen in love with a highlander. A union between Varlish and Pannone, though not illegal, was highly unusual and both had suffered as a result. The clan turned its back on his father, while the townsfolk, most of them Varlish, shunned his mother. Even so, their love had endured for some years. But it had been worn down and eroded, season by season, by the relentless hatred washing against it. Banny was seven when his father left home, never to return. He had gone north to find employment in an area where none would know of his wife’s tainted blood. He would send for her and the boy, he promised, when he had found a place to settle. They never heard from him again.