started to object, but he knew it was true. He looked at Brann, took a deep breath and nodded. With a sudden movement that took his opponent by surprise, Brann rolled onto his back, trapping the boy momentarily beneath him. Callan nodded again, grabbed the rags and bounded the last few feet to the top. He briefly held the Head two-handed above him, and glanced around at the crowd. With a sudden grin, he slammed the Head into the basket.
The Twofords villagers, accounting for barely a quarter of the crowd, broke into a roar that started suddenly but seemed to go on forever. The townsfolk shouted in shocked anger or merely stood in stunned disbelief.
Rolling to one side, Brann freed the boy beneath him. Taken aback by the sudden end to the game, the lad sat up, swore once at Brann and started to climb down the cairn. Too tired to respond, Brann laid his head back against the rocks and stared at the blue of the sky, listening to the celebrations drifting over to him from one small part of the crowd.
Callan’s face appeared, blocking his view. ‘It worked!’ he yelled. ‘I don’t believe it. It worked!’
Brann smiled. ‘I don’t believe it, either. I couldn’t even think while it was all happening.’ He laughed, an intoxicating mixture of joy and amazement racing through him. ‘There just seemed to be bodies everywhere. Going at high speed. And doing their best to dismember me.’
Callan grabbed him by the front of the tunic, pulled him into a sitting position and enveloped him in a solid hug. ‘Well, thank the gods they couldn’t manage it, little brother. Mind you, they would have had to catch you first. You were dodging like a demon out there. It would have been easier to catch Kevern’s father’s hens.’
Brann grinned back at him. ‘It’s amazing what desperation does for your agility. And sheer terror, too. I just made it up as I went along.’ He grabbed Callan by the arms and shook him. ‘But we won!’ he yelled.
Callan laughed, a sound born of pure joy. ‘Let’s go see the oldies,’ he suggested.
They descended the cairn rather more easily than they had climbed it, and started across the deserted field. Most of the townsfolk had drifted away already, shocked by a result they had never considered to be a possibility. The pair’s younger brother and sister tore across the grass towards them, with their parents following behind. Brann had thought that he barely had the strength to walk, but he suddenly found himself running towards them, laughing loudly in a release of tension and joy. As the children met in a maelstrom of grabbing hands, dancing feet, and exultant laughter, the adults caught up. Their mother joined the celebration, her slim figure slipping easily between the cavorting children and her long blonde hair swirling in their faces as her easy laughter mingled with their celebrations. Brann and Callan looked to their father, standing to one side, watching the situation with his habitual dour appraisal.
He nodded at the two of them. ‘I would have preferred you to have won it conventionally. Trickery like that is not my style. But you worked well together, as brothers should. And after a dozen years of defeats, a win is a win. So well done.’ He turned to leave, and called over his shoulder, ‘Don’t get carried away with celebrating. We’ll be waiting with the wagon outside the town gate at six o’clock. If you don’t want to walk home, be there.’
The boys watched his retreating back until he was out of earshot.
‘Don’t you sometimes wish we had the sort of father who would go now and enjoy himself? You know, go and get blind drunk and lose control for once,’ Brann murmured.
Callan frowned, and Brann remembered his brother’s short-lived dalliance with Ciara, the tanner’s daughter, when he had talked of seeing first-hand the effect on a family of a man who habitually returned home of an evening after turning to too much ale to relax at the end of a working day.
‘No,’ he stated emphatically. ‘No, you don’t.’ His face brightened. ‘Anyway, did you hear that? He actually said, “Well done.” We are indeed honoured.’
He nudged Brann and, laughing, the boys turned back to the rest of their family.
In the sparse remnants of the crowd, the scruffy baker stood shaking his head, unable to accept what he had seen. ‘It can’t be. It’s not possible. And that little runt? What a fluke.’
The black-clad warrior’s eyes narrowed in a faint show of amusement. ‘He used three things: his head, instinct and determination. A powerful combination… if channelled properly.’
The baker turned away, his expression dark. ‘I still say it was luck,’ he muttered, trudging away.
The warrior looked back at a small group far out on the field, as the subject of the brief conversation was enveloped in his family’s hugs.
‘If it is channelled properly,’ he repeated softly. ‘May the gods do so, little one, and you could make your family prouder still.’
He started awake, eyes wide, searching for danger. His right hand was on his left hip, reaching for a hilt that had last lain there more years ago than he could remember. He snorted in derision. His reactions mocked his infirmity.
He needed air. He rose stiffly, moving slowly past the brazier that was his barrier from the starkly chill night air. He slipped between the heavy drapes and onto the balcony, his skin prickling at the cold and the strands of his hair shifting against his shoulders at the merest touch of the soft breeze. Once that hair had demanded so much more of the wind or the gallop of a horse to lift it and when it had, it streamed like a banner behind him.
But times change, and men with them. Fight that change, and you lose. That much he had learnt. But observe the change, and you can use it. That much he was realising.
He returned to bed. But he did not sleep.
****
Brann laughed loudly and battered the ground like a drummer.
‘Yes, yes, yes!’ he shouted, lying back on the grass of an undulating hillside above Twofords.
Callan sat up. ‘I take it you are still a touch happy about the game,’ he said. ‘Last night’s celebrations not enough for you?’
Brann laughed again, exuberance bursting from him. ‘Nothing will stop me feeling like this, ever. I will remember yesterday for the rest of my life.’
Callan smiled. ‘Oh, it was good all right. I’ll give you that. Did you see the townies’ faces? If they had looked any more sick, old Rewan would have put them down like the animals that are too far gone for him to heal.’
Plucking blades of grass, Brann nodded. ‘They just didn’t consider that losing was possible. How could they be prepared in any way for something they had never even thought about?’ He laughed delightedly. ‘That’s what made it so wonderful.’
Callan stretched. ‘Oh yes, life is good. You’d better believe it, little brother.’
He stiffened, staring past Brann, his voice suddenly harsh. ‘Please tell me I’m seeing things.’
Brann twisted round squinting in the direction of Callan’s pointing arm. To the left side of the village, two fields separated it from a small wood. Beyond the trees lay one of the pastures where the village’s sheep occasionally grazed. There were no sheep there today. There should have been no movement. But there was. Sunlight glinted off metal, flashes of brightness that drew attention to the figures spread out across the field and moving with purpose in the direction of the village.
‘Armed men,’ said Callan, confused. ‘What are they doing?’
‘Maybe they are the king’s men, doing a check or a patrol in our area, or something,’ Brann offered hopefully.
Callan rose to his feet,