island. A dark creature lumbered toward him out of the fog.
Garth yelped, whirled around, and rowed furiously away. A few anxious moments passed, and he was just about to take a deep breath when he heard a voice rumble behind him, so close he jumped and almost dropped the oars into the water.
“If ya’re goin’ to row away, ya best untie the lash first!”
Garth turned, and McEwan laughed at him with his foot on the rope, still tied to the bent cypress. On his shoulder hung a bound man — the High King. McEwan chucked Uther like a rag doll into the other boat, and the body fell roughly among the seats and extra ropes in the front.
Garth tried his best to picture Anviv’s death at Uther’s hand, but the image of Trothek’s severed head appeared instead.
Three more Eirish warriors walked out of the mist, with O’Sloan leading. His left arm bled profusely, and the blood had soaked his tunic, as well as a cloth-wrapped bundle he carried. Garth gripped the side of his boat as O’Sloan stepped in and set the heavy bundle on Garth’s lap.
“‘Ere. Take care o’ this till we return. McEwan! Grab those ropes so we can tie up the others ‘afore we leave.”
McEwan pulled out extra rope from both boats.
“So McGoss was killed?” one of them asked.
“Weren’t ya there?” McEwan boomed. “We risked our bellies, and where were ya?”
“Leave ‘im alone,” O’Sloan said. “I told ‘im to stay outside and keep watch.”
McEwan coiled the ropes. “Och, then, ‘twasn’t McGoss who died, that worthless lout. We left ‘im back to guard the ladies an’ the ol’ bard. ‘Twas Gilroy that the High King killed.”
O’Sloan groaned, holding up a bloody blade. The same one the High King had killed Anviv with. “Slit ‘im through the heart. A perilous blade, this one.”
Taking the ropes, the warriors climbed the shingle and disappeared into the fog.
“Sit and keep watch,” O’Sloan’s voice called back.
Alone, Garth looked down at the wrapped bundle in his lap. Pulling the thick, bloody cloth aside, he was startled to see little eyes staring at him, wide with fear.
“A littl’ one!” Garth shouted.
He pulled the blood-soaked cloth back farther, and the child’s dark hair emerged. The boy wriggled his right arm free and, reaching up, squeezed Garth’s nose. In his other hand, he held a small crust of barley bread, which he alternately chewed and sucked on.
“Hello to you too,” Garth said. He inspected the child and found no wound on him. The blood must have been from O’Sloan’s injured arm.
“If I know rightly, then yer Arthur, and over there’s the king.” Garth pointed, and that was the first time he noticed the man’s head wound, a dirty gash that bled down across his eye and forehead. He didn’t appear to be breathing.
Garth picked up an oar with his free hand and prodded Uther across the divide between the boats, but the man didn’t stir.
“Yer father’s dead, Arthur. That’s a bad thing. An’ I know, ‘cause I lost me tas too.”
Memories of Garth’s own childhood flooded back. Fishing with his father on the wind-rolled sea. Hauling the full nets up the beach and sorting through their daily catch. Throwing clams at his father and being chased into the waves. Selling the fish together at the village market.
At night they’d sit by the hearth, his father playing the bagpipe in the soft flicker of the fire. They’d eat oat porridge together and talk long after dark, with the starlight shining through the shutters of their small seaside crennig.
And his father would tell him stories about his mother, who had died when he was born. Garth cherished those memories the most.
Then he recalled the fatal day his father drowned. Garth had been sick and unable to go along. That morning a black gale had blown in from the west, piling the foaming waves high and white across the Kembry Sea.
His father never came home. Days later another fisherman discovered his father’s boat capsized and half sunk.
Garth teared up, and Arthur’s little hand reached up to touch his wet cheek.
“Yer all alone now, Arth. Me father’s buried in the sea, an’ yours’ll be buried on land, and you’ll ne’er see ‘im again.”
Anger rose in Garth. Why did they have to orphan young Arthur? Why did those warriors kill the High King? Sure, he’d slain the ard dre’s son — but hadn’t the ard dre killed Trothek without reason? Death. All around him. And the blood from Arthur’s wrappings smeared on