Two days journey to the sea, but fhain took four, traveling mostly at night. An easy rade without the flock, which Dorelei left to Nebha with the treasure. She held back only three rams and three young ewes to start over with in Tir-Nan-Og. Father-God and Noah might make do with one pair, but three allowed a better margin of husbandry. If she departed the tallfolk world, Dorelei would not leave her common sense behind.

They made southwest toward Cair Ligualid and beyond to the estuary that cut inland past the end of the Wall. There, at the mouths of Lyne and Esk, many boats could be had for hire; not large enough for their venture but, as Padrec reasoned, always bound out for the Isle of Arran. The island had been part of the main trade routes from the Middle Sea since time out of mind. In the looted tombs of Egypt, dropped or ignored by thieves in their haste to be off with more valuable booty, were necklaces of British jet that Phoenicians shipped from Arran while Moses still wandered in Sinai. To Arran came the oceangoing galleys and their mariners. It was the place to start.

The west was sparsely peopled, and those few they met spoke in Irish—tallish, handsome men and women, not timid but with no desire to linger in the path of a

Faerie rade. Padrec explained it from some experience. The Sidhe of Ireland were even less predictable in their goodwill toward tallfolk than Prydn were, very like for familiar reasons. When one met them, one was polite and brief. To meet such nomads on a rade reminded Faerie and tallfolk alike of wrongs done, land usurped, and destinies cut off.

"Irish feel a guilt toward fhains, like Picts," Padrec told his folk. "Guilt be father to fear, and fear to hate."

Dorelei knew from her own pain that it could be that dismally simple. For all the sense it made, that was how they came by the slaves. They were well on their way after the third nightfall, moving out of a low gorge onto open heath, when they almost collided with the tallfolk party in the dark. Riding ahead, Malgon and Padrec heard something approach. Because the strangers were afoot, they were less detectable, but there was the distinct chank-chank of iron chain, then a growing mumble of voices. Then someone called out sharply.

Padrec and Malgon pulled up short, bow and sword ready as the first figures became visible in the moonless dark. The wind was at Salmon's back, carrying sound away from them; they would have heard the strangers far earlier otherwise. There was the tall figure looming up in front of them, not a dog's bark away, surprised and not at all happy about it.

"Who is it there? Speak out. Who's there?"

"Irish," Padrec muttered to Malgon. He let the wind work for him, thinned his voice to a plaintive buzz, and answered in the Gaelic. "Daone Sidhe. Make way ..."

The words trailed off into a keening that floated on the wind to the startled Irish, who heard one voice, then two, half a dozen swelling on the black night air. They weren't warriors but slave traders bound for Esk themselves. They feared Sidhe but lost profits more, and there were ten of them, armed. Their leader decided to stiff it out.

"Merchants we are. Sidhe, creatures of the night, begone. We have no fear of you."

The moon slid out of the clouds then, and Padrec saw the mute, manacled stock-in-trade of these merchants.

''Slavers, Mai."

They both heard more than one sword hiss from a sheath. Malgon didn't hesitate an instant. His bowstring bent and hummed. The nearest Irishman went down with a choked-off grunt. In the moment of shock among the traders, the other-world wailing still chilling about them, Malgon sent another arrow for effect and shot his horse forward.

"We go, Padrec!"

It was like the day of the Coritani patrol in the fog. Howling like Malgon, Padrec kicked his mount after his brother, flailing about with his sword, scattering slavers in all directions from their merchandise. The tactic worked because Malgon didn't hesitate to kill, nor Padrec to follow him. They both remembered Churnet, where one man's hesitation cost so much. Screaming on the wind, counterpointed by the keening of the women, they wheeled their horses this way and that after the demoralized slavers until they were dead or in rapid flight, leaving a dozen terrified slaves all praying to different gods and not at all sure about the sword-bearing man who bore down on them out of the gloom.

"Now, then. Who's Brit here? Who's Pict or what? Speak up."

A moment of uncertainty among them, then the tentative voice of a man ready to drop for weariness. "I am Brigante."

"We are all British."

"Na, there's Crow the Halt. He's Picti like yourselves."

"Be nae Pict," Malgon asserted stiffly.

Then Dorelei was at their side. "Padrec, who be these folk that a be so bound?"

"Slaves for sale," he told her with a note in his voice she'd never heard before. "What's done is well done. Do have nae love for slavers."

Dorelei only shrugged; the men only did what was

necessary then. She might have sickened at Bruidda's death, but she would not shrink from killing now any more than Padrec or Malgon. "Take the iron from them," she ordered. "Let a go free."

The decision was translated to the grateful British.

4 'God bless, lady..."

"Jesu and Mary Virgin bless you."

"Where's Crow, then, poor little sot?"

"He won't last long, Fll be bound."

"Och, don't waste pity on that trash."

"Is he not crippled? He can't help it. Look where he just dropped down in his tracks."

"Dirty sot. Drunk when they took him, drunk when they caught him again and broke his legs—thank you, sir, thank you."

Two by two, with keys found on the dead traders, the iron dropped from the slaves until only one yoked pair remained, a wilted Brigante woman who sat patient as an old horse beside the inert body chained to her, neck and neck. The man looked frail and slight between the sprawled crutches.

"This is the one you call Crow?"

"Aye, sir, and a weary old woman would thank you to part us. Crow's a good soul but not much in the way of company."

Padrec sprang the well-greased padlocks on her neck and ankles. The woman stepped out of them, feeling gingerly at her chafed neck. "Bless you, sir."

"Yes, yes. Let me see to this sad little man."

Crippled as he was, they'd still put irons on him. Feeling at the twisted ankles, Padrec wondered why. The breaks hadn't healed that well, hands could feel out that much in the dark. Even unfettered, the little man would never run or even walk well again. Padrec unlocked the irons and tossed them aside.

"Right, then, Crow. You're free. D'you hear? Wake up."

"He's that ill," the woman sympathized. "Just dropped down there when we stopped, poor sod."

"Crow?" Padrec bent close over the starviing face under short-chopped black hair and a dirty smudge of beard. The head moved slightly. Even in the poor light, the fhain scars were clear.

"Dorelei!" Padrec's exultant shout rose like the trumpet of heaven, no doubt heard by the still-fleeing slavers and anyone else within a mile or two. "Dorelei, it's CRU!"

In a moment they were all about him, leaving the other slaves mystified as they were suddenly liberated. Guenloie, Malgon, Neniane, a shrieking knot of joy about the lost lamb found, and Dorelei tearing through them to dive at Cru like a hawk in love, squeezing him close, her lips against his mouth and bearded cheek.

4 'Husband .. . Cruaddan."

". . . Dorelei? Oh, wife, have been sick."

4 'But healed now, home."

"Nae, did break my legs as Padrec's."

"But healed and home, Cru. Oh, husband, have been so empty without you. Neniane, bring Crulegh. Oh, Cru." On her knees, his head in her lap. "Have been a gern, Cru. Have done such magic, but nae so great as this. See thy wealth, Cruaddan."

She gave him now the thing he'd once been jealous enough to ask. Just as well, Padrec thought. A man should know what was his and what not. He stepped quietly back from the circle of adoration. The fact didn't hurt; not a sadness but a stillness in joy. Cru was home; there was justice after all. Wherever Dorelei went, she'd be the more complete for Cru, halved without him, simple as that, and nothing to do with Padrec himself. When he could wedge a word between them, he pressed Cru's hand between his own.

"Greet thy brother husband. Hast been folly and war, much sadness, and now a joy with thee home. Be fhain again."

But Cru had no ear or eye for anyone but Dorelei and the sleepy, confused Boy.

"Be a match for them an a come back."

Padrec peered down from the hill at the heath stretching away toward Esk, a blue line in the distance. "But keep watch, Mai."

They'd withdrawn into the hills as a precaution in case the slavers had any thought to repossess their goods. Once hidden, the lot of them slept a few hours. At daybreak a fire was made; since they were in sight of Esk, the rest of the tea and oatmeal was shared out to all, including the freed slaves. With Dorelei's permission, Padrec gave each a few coins and pointed them south the few miles toward the Wall and home.

"And you of Eburacum, if you go to hear Mass under Bishop Meganius, ask him to pray for me, Father Patri-cius."

Oh, then, they'd heard of him, right enough. He'd be the one called Raven, the Faerie priest. Och, the tales told about him —that he was dead, that he couldn't die ever, having gone under the hill with the little folk, slain a hundred at Churnet Head, turned water into wine. And here was the clout of him alive in front of them. Dyw\

"Actually, it was wine into water," Padrec informed them gravely. "There was a great deal of wine and no water, and we all needed a wash, but that's another story. Peace be with you. Go and pray for me."

That much was easy. Their problem, evident with the rising sun, was Cru. Fhain vied with each other to show him kindness and that his rightful place was restored. They brought his porridge first and hot, the children were pushed at him to be kissed and complimented for their beauty and resemblance to their mothers. The children squirmed to be away from him, and small wonder. Cru smelled foreign, even after a loving and meticulous shave by Guenloie to free his handsome face from the slothful tallfolk beard. Dorelei bathed him in a slow, sensual act of love just shy of copulation. She would have done that, right and proper as it was, if Cru were not so weak. He smelled like a man who'd drunk more than he'd eaten for months, the fine lines of his face