The Swan Maiden by Jules Watson

Author:Jules Watson
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Bantam Books
Published: 2009-11-05T22:00:00+00:00

Though the wind still blew in icy gusts and snow dusted the highest rock-peaks, blossoms began to halo the thorn-bushes with white among the bare, brown trees. A raft of cold, sunny days lit the dead bracken into a glowing swathe of copper, and the slopes were reddened by the russet crowns of the birches. Even at the bleakest time of year, Alba blazed with color, its heart too fierce to be dulled by the gray and cold.

Ainnle was on the marsh stringing nets for salmon in the channels one day when a long, narrow curragh came sweeping up the loch from the west. The wind was whipping the water and Ainnle had been toiling with head bent into the stiff breeze, so he did not see the low-slung hide boat until its occupants were close enough to observe him. He heard a faint hail and straightened to see a hull with so many oars along its sides it churned a white wake as it slowed to a halt. In that moment, Ainnle decided he had no choice but to brave this out.

The curragh glided to a stop just short of the gravel bank. Boatmen jumped over the sides into the shallows, and pulled it to shore by its ropes. Before it was even beached, though, a tall warrior joined them, wading through the clear water. His hand was on a sword at his waist, and a helmet of beaten iron sat on his long, fair hair.

Ainnle stood blowing into his chapped hands, his mind racing. They had come from the west, in a boat, so they could not be Venicones. And this man was a person of some standing, his checked wool mantle held on the shoulder by two enamel brooches, his wrists circled by thick bronze rings. His wool tunic and trews were embroidered in swirling designs worked in many-colored thread.

“Well met,” the warrior said, with all the confidence of command.

Ainnle nodded, chafing his palms together. Like the Venicones, dark tattoos wound over the man’s cheeks and brow, the whorls now suggesting not wolf-teeth and muzzles but horse-heads with pricked ears and flying manes. The other warriors who stepped ashore bore variations of the same designs, giving their faces a fierce cast that chimed with Ainnle’s warrior blood, instinctively quickening it.

Fascinated, Ainnle’s investigation of the leader came to a halt when it collided with a pair of sharp, gray eyes. “I seek a man called Finn, and his brothers, Conn and Bran,” the tall warrior said. His face was long and spare with thin nose and lips, and his slanted eyes were narrowed in the glitter off the water.

“I have heard of no Finn.”

“Really?” The man stepped closer, shaking the water from his boots. He was shadowed by three other warriors, all of them looking up at the surrounding hillslopes. “At my dun in the great glen, we have heard tales passed on from a widow about this man and his two brothers. She said her own valley stretched back from Cruachan, the horned one.

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