‘We are at your service, lord,’ said Tobha, touching the back of his hand to his forehead.
Turning to Dearg, Conor said, ‘The ardféne will be arriving any moment. Go and bring Fergal and Donal as soon as they get here.’ To Morann, he said, ‘So much has happened since then, that terrible night seems more and more like a bad dream.’
‘All that and more,’ agreed the Auteini lord. ‘We offered you command of the warband and would have joined you then and there. But wisdom prevailed, and you sent us home to seek the counsel of our people.’
‘Do you remember?’ said Ruadh. ‘You said to come to you in the spring if all the tribe agreed.’
‘We would have come to you sooner,’ Morann told him, ‘but it has taken a little more time to settle the question. Some of the elders and old ones opposed giving up our clan’s homeland of these many generations. They were most reluctant to see us go.’
‘What changed their minds?’ asked Conor, almost dreading the answer.
‘Ach, now, that is why we’re here,’ Morann said gravely. ‘Not ten days ago, Black Ships, seven or eight of them, were sighted off the coast. Four came into the bay and the others continued north.’
‘Did you follow them to see where they went?’
‘Aye, to be sure. But we lost sight of them during the night,’ said Ruadh.
Morann went on to explain how they engaged the first wave of Scálda on the strand, but were beaten back; by the time the Auteini were able to regroup and organize a better defence there were even more enemy on the beach and still the boats were coming ashore. ‘We saw then that it was no raid. The dog-eaters meant to claim the land and everything in it. We sent word to all our settlements and holdings to gather whatever they could and flee.’
‘We stayed to the last man and fought to cover the retreat,’ said Ruadh. ‘We lost half the warband to them and many cattle, but we were able to make good our escape.’
‘They meant to drive us out,’ offered Morann. ‘Having done that, the dog-eaters did not care to pursue us further.’
‘And so you came here,’ concluded Conor.
‘As you see,’ replied Morann. He passed an embarrassed glance around the yard. ‘We had nowhere else to go, and to stay any longer was death, I know it.’
Conor assured the Auteini lord of his welcome and the three fell to discussing what was to be done for his people in the days ahead. They were deep in conversation when Fergal and Donal came threading their way through the confusion. ‘What is this we’re hearing of a Scálda attack on the Auteini coast?’ said Fergal. He took one look at Morann and his two advisors, and said, ‘I see that it is true. How many? How long ago?’
‘Seven ships,’ replied Ruadh. ‘We were just telling Lord Conor that four made landfall in our bay and began unloading things—not weapons or men only, but all manner of gear, too.’
‘Yokes and harness and large wicker chests,’ continued Morann, ‘and wheels—very many wheels.’
‘Wheels,’ repeated Conor. ‘Thin wheels? Too slender for wagons? Iron-rimmed and about half a man high?’ He held his hand to his waist to show the height. He glanced at Fergal and Donal and all three said together, ‘Chariots.’
‘I cannot say what they were, but the dog-eaters put the pieces together to make little war carts,’ Morann explained. ‘Very fast and able to carry two or three warriors into battle.’
‘Aye, chariots,’ agreed Fergal. ‘The Scálda have been making them by the hundreds.’ He passed a hand over his moustache and mouth and said, ‘And now it seems the dog-eaters are bringing them into battle.’
‘How do you know all this?’ wondered Tobha. ‘You’ve seen them before?’
‘We’ve seen them,’ replied Donal. ‘We’ve also seen the forges where the iron for the rims is smelted. We have seen the rims and the finished wheels. We have even seen how these carts are to be used in battle.’
‘You saw them unloading all this,’ said Conor. ‘What else did you see?’
‘Very little,’ answered Morann. ‘We attacked then, hoping to keep them in the cove with the sea to their backs. We thought we could contain them there and drive them out before they could get more men and weapons ashore. But that was not to be.’
‘We made two forays against them,’ Ruadh told them. ‘We could not get in close enough to make good the assault.’
‘Our third attempt fared no better,’ Morann said, the pain in his voice still raw. ‘By then, they had horses ashore and were mounted. We fought hard, but were driven back.’ He gave a gloomy shake of the head. ‘They carried the fight to our very gates.’
‘The battle lasted all day,’ said Ruadh. ‘We held out until nightfall when it became clear we could no longer defend the stronghold—much less the farms and settlements along the coast. We sent riders to all the holdings and told the people to flee with whatever they could carry.’
‘The dog-eaters were burning everything they could set their filthy hands to,’ said Tobha. ‘We had no choice. It was save what we could, or be slaughtered. We were lucky to get away—those of us that got away, that is. We lost many during the night.’
‘The barbarians took no slaves. Old men and women, children too young to lift a blade—all of them cut down where they stood.’ Morann looked hopefully to Conor. ‘Whatever tribe we have left is yours, lord. Our people are your people—if you will be having us.’
Conor merely smiled and said, ‘As I said the night you lost your king, anyone who will join us is welcome. We need every man, woman, and child working with us to defeat the Scálda and rid Eirlandia of their curse. Will I have you? Aye, I will.’
Conor told Morann to go and gather the elders of the tribe to come and meet him in the hall to discuss their future at Tara. Morann and his men moved off to speak to their people. When they had gone, Fergal and Donal stepped close to Conor. ‘Are you certain you want to do this?’ asked Fergal. ‘It will stretch us tight as a bodrán skin.’
‘I know it,’ agreed Conor. ‘But, I stood before the gathered lords and noblemen and swore that Tara is for everyone or it is for no one at all.’ He put out a hand to the refugees scattered across the hilltop. ‘These people are Dé Danann like you and me, and you heard what Morann said—they have nowhere else to go. That is good enough for me. It should be good enough for the rest of us who call this place home.’
Fergal and Donal glanced at one another and nodded in reluctant agreement. Donal said, ‘Aye, you’re right. So now what?’
‘Send word to the northern lords and warn them that the Scálda have taken a stronghold on the western coast.’
9
Over the next few weeks, the Auteini were moved from the hilltop down to Mag Rí, north of Tara Hill, where there was a ready supply of timber from the nearby woodlands, and water from the streams. Their cattle were folded into the herds being reared by Conor’s herdsmen, and Morann and his warriors joined the fianna and began training with them.
Throughout Tara and its surrounding lands, activity of all kinds—from barn raising to sheep shearing—kept every hand employed from first glimmer in the east to last glow in the west. For the fianna that meant weapons practice, scouting parties, hunting, and, most important of all, collecting the tribute horses Conor had won from the kings in the airechtas judgement— a chore that turned out to be more onerous than anyone imagined at the time.
The collection teams rode out to the ráths and dúns of the lords, returning, days later, with the tribute—albeit only rarely in the form of the promised five horses. This failure was not viewed as the misfortune it might have seemed, however; such were the needs of the new settlement and its burgeoning numbers that the equivalent values in the form of seed, or lumber, tools, cloth, or cattle, were happily bartered. Two good milk cows, for example, were considered equivalent to one untrained horse; or, a cow, ten cloaks, six bushels of seed barley, four pigs, and a plough might be negotiated in payment. Thus, the return of the tribute collectors quickly came to be greeted with keen
and enthusiastic interest and Eirlandia’s newest realm began building up its stores and bolstering its ability to provide for its increasing population.
As Tara gained greater substance, its resemblance to a transient camp faded, taking on the lines and definition of an established ráth. Conor increasingly found that he was entangled in lengthy discussions regarding some detail or other concerning the ordering, planning, or allocation of this or that structure, division, commodity, or provision. Each day had fresh demands: supervising the various building works; visiting the new farms and holdings to gauge the progress of the fields and herds; meeting with Dearg and Fíol on apportioning provisions, and with Fergal about the training and readiness of the fianna—all of these necessary and important in their own way, all of them distractions of varying degrees. And, now that spring was marching resolutely toward a long, hot summer, the demands on him came thick and fast as decisions multiplied, each one begging for individual attention. Any spare moment, he spent with Aoife, making sure she was not overtiring herself with all the tasks she was undertaking with the women of the tribe.
Improved weather also brought increased raiding and enemy incursions into tribal territories along the coasts. Oddly, although the raiding season dawned fair, all remained quiet and peaceable along the southern borders and elsewhere. Fergal said it was because the Scálda were busy strengthening their hold on the Auteini coastal lands. Having driven out the native population, the dog-eaters had secured a prime place from which to launch new forays into the very heart of Eirlandia. This, he said, was an outrage that could not be suffered to continue.
Fergal was not alone in this opinion. In the middle of one particularly fraught day, word reached Tara from the Laigini that the lords of the north and west were raising a warhost to go and confront the Scálda and drive them from the region. Conor agreed to support the effort. Fergal and Donal were with him, and as the messenger departed, Conor ordered his battlechief to ready the fianna to ride.
‘How soon?’ asked Fergal.
‘As soon as enough supplies and pack animals can be prepared,’ Conor told him. ‘I’ll see to it.’
As Fergal moved off to find Médon and Galart to tell them the news, Donal said, ‘You look like a fella that’s just been kicked by a horse and is looking for a place to fall.’ Conor opened his mouth to protest, but Donal continued. ‘Don’t bother denying it, brother. I can see it in your poor haunted eyes and pouty mouth.’
‘I do not have a pouty mouth,’ insisted Conor. ‘Do I?’
‘You do, you know, but I think I know the cause.’
‘Ach, aye? And what would that be?’
‘Walk with me and I’ll tell you,’ said Donal. Taking Conor’s arm, Donal turned him around and started toward the rim of the plateau and the path leading down to the surrounding plains. At the hill’s edge he stopped to look out upon the land below. What had once been only great green swaths of grass and small clumps of elder were now ploughed fields and cattle pens and the beginnings of two separate holdings with dwellings and barns and storehouses. Out on Mag Teamhair were a breeding pen and a training ground, and on the edge of Mag Rí, near the river where the Auteini were erecting their settlement, the beginnings of a forge.
They stood gazing down upon all this for a moment and then Donal said, ‘Before the airechtas, we walked these boundaries, you and I—do you remember?’ He indicated the plains below with a broad sweep of his hand. ‘That walk would take longer today. See what you have done—what we all have done?’ He turned and smiled at Conor. ‘All this, brother, in so short a time. Aye, and it grows.’
‘It grows, so it does.’
‘And it does not take my second sight to see that Tara will become even larger—and so, too, the duties and obligations of its lord.’
Conor looked out upon his burgeoning realm and felt the pride of this achievement and, at the same time, the fatigue of so many demands to be met, decisions to be made, difficulties to be resolved. His spirit plummeted once more.
‘It is too much for one man alone,’ Donal told him. ‘And I would not be a true friend if I stood here and told you otherwise.’
‘Other kings and lords do it.’
‘Perhaps they do,’ agreed Donal. ‘But other kings are not having to raise both a ráth and tribe from a scrap of bare nothing. They are put to rule with a realm already established and a people long in the land. Only very rarely must they create a settlement where there was none—and even then they have the help of their kinsmen.’
Conor glanced around and saw Donal looking at him with a curiously determined expression. ‘What is it? What are you seeing, brother?’
‘I see a man sinking in a bog that will soon pull him under and drown him if he does not reach out and take hold of the stout branch offered to him by the hand of a friend.’
‘I take help when I need it,’ Conor declared. ‘You should know. You are always by my side. We’ve discussed this already.’
‘I can do more.’
‘Nay,’ said Conor, dismissively. ‘I thank you for the thought, but it is for me to—’
‘I can do more,’ Donal insisted, ‘but you must allow it. In short, you must give me authority.’
Conor frowned and crossed his arms upon his chest. ‘I need you with me, brother. When we take up arms and ride into battle—as soon we must—I look for your strong arm beside me.’
Donal shook his head gently. ‘Once of a time that might have been true, but not anymore. And, truth be told, not for some little time now. You have the fianna to ride with you and fight beside you. With the addition of Morann and the Auteini, you now have the largest warband in Eirlandia. Think of it! Fifty-six men, Conor—men who will brave the vile enemy and death itself at your merest word, aye—men who will stand beside you in every battle and defend the realm with their last breath.’ Donal offered a wry smile. ‘All that, brother, but you do not have a solitary soul who will stand beside you and defend you from the carpenters.’
‘True enough,’ Conor conceded with a smile.
‘I can be that man,’ Donal said. He could see Conor thinking, and pressed home his argument. ‘Who else knows you as well as Fergal and myself?’
‘No one,’ said Conor. ‘Aoife maybe.’
‘Aye, not anyone at all—save only Aoife, to be sure. And Fergal you have on the field in battle.’
‘And Aoife, my lady, helping here when I am away.’
‘But your lady is soon to have your child who will be all her care, and the demands of a new ráth and settlement should be the least and last of her daily concerns. See now,’ said Donal, adopting a grave and solemn tone, ‘I learned long ago that as much as you like to pretend otherwise, Conor mac Ardan, you cannot be in two places at once.’
‘And is this not what Aoife is saying, too?’ Conor laughed. ‘Tell me, now—what is it that you’re asking of me, old friend?’
‘Only this,’ he said, ‘that you make me ail-duinn of this new realm of ours—with the power of your name and authority to carry out your will and have my commands obeyed as if they were yours.’
‘Ail-duinn … second-chief…,’ mused Conor. To share his many burdens a little, to be able to rest of a time, to have a quiet meal with Aoife now and again … modest pleasures, to be sure, but ones that he had denied himself far too long. And, no doubt, new demands would rise soon enough. With two of them managing the new settlement, twice as much progress could be made in its development.
‘I like this,’ Conor said, feeling the heavy low clouds lift a little. ‘I like it right well.’ Beaming, he slapped Donal on the back. ‘Ail-duinn it is! When do you propose to start?’
‘Here and now,’ Donal told him. ‘I will see to the packhorses and provisions for the fianna. Leave it to me.’
10
Five days of hard riding brought Conor and forty-seven of the fianna to Laigini territory where they soon learned that King Laegaire and his warband were fighting up near Lough Emain. Morann and Ruadh guided them
swiftly and unerringly to their former homeland: a region of lumpy hills covered in gorse, scraggy rocks, low boggy marshes around shallow loughs, and many-fingered bays spattered with tiny islands.
As they came in sight of the spreading grey waters of the reed-fringed lough, they met four Laigini clansmen with a low wagon bearing wounded warriors away from the battlefield; the clansmen told them the fight was now concentrated on a muddy plain to the south and west nearer the coast.
‘Aye, that will be the place,’ Morann told Conor and the ardféne when he heard the news. They had stopped to rest the horses and talk. ‘There is a plain beyond the lough—Mag Cró it is. No doubt that is where they’ll be fighting.’
The sight of the wounded languishing in the wagon sobered some of the younger warriors, but made the more experienced among the fianna angry. They shouted encouragement to the suffering warriors as they passed along the wagon and continued on to the battlefield.
Mag Cró lay between two scraggy hills; an expanse of damp ground dotted with tussocks of saw grass, it sloped gently westward toward the sea, the gleaming silver arc of which could be glimpsed in the distance.
The plain itself was abandoned; the current skirmish was over and both sides had withdrawn to regroup. The struggling Dé Danann warhost—made up of Laigini, Cauci, and Concani warbands—had withdrawn to the edge of the plain below the hills and, away to the southwest at the farthest end of Mag Cró, the Scálda camp could be seen as a wide dark splotch with the glimmering sea beyond. The fianna reached the crest of the last low hill and paused to take in the situation before riding down to meet the defenders who were clustered into three groups below. Two more wagons carrying wounded from the fray lumbered up the hill as they passed. Fergal halted the fianna and ordered Médon to take charge and see to the horses while he and Conor and Morann made straight for the central body of warriors where they reckoned they would find the warleaders. Word of the fianna’s arrival flew before them, so that by the time they reached the place where the commanders had gathered, Aengus mac Millan, King of the Cauci, hailed them and beckoned them to join the war council.
In the Kingdom of All Tomorrows--Eirlandia, Book Three Page 9
