“Will the tribute be paid, Forgall?”
Forgall snorted. “Not willingly!”
“Tara will come to collect with steel hands, then.”
“Tara will. Meath will come. And Leinster will fight.”
Tradition, Cormac mused, and the word was as a curse. He contemplated the stupidity and greed of men. Why had no High-king been big enow, man enow to dispense with that which was the prime cause of dissension among all the kingdoms of Eirrin? Why did each crowned Ard-righ sit on Tara Hill and leave the Boruma in force, that had cost so many lives? Why did no man in high office, even the highest in the land, have the nerve and honesty to do that which was manifestly best for all, despite his contemporary detractors? Had a previous High-king caused the insulting, draining imposition to be lifted, he might have been damned by some in his time. Yet he’d be famous now, and beloved, for his courage and that great act, now and for many years to come. Tradition, Cormac mused sourly, and a bit more of maturity came over him like a mantle.
And the time was nigh. And here was Cormac of Connacht, self-exiled lest he be slain and the truth never be got at, bearing an assumed name… in Leinster. And Leinster would resist. That meant combat. The sons of Errin against sons of Eirrin, brothers of this isle, all, and no way to know them apart without the trappings of the very mortal kings who bade them go and die.
Cormac who was Partha thought on it, long and long, as Taraneseach plodded northward through the gloom of early nightfall.
So be it, he decided at last. I shall join Leinster, then. I will fight for Leinster, and pretend it is Connacht!
And Thunderhorse plodded through the first hour of night. Slowly his hooves clopped away the miles, and the mailed men on his back were silent with their thoughts: thoughts of war.
The fortress called Redrock was a small one, though ringed about with walls of earth and mud so thick that a chariot could have been driven atop them. Within was little more than garrison, stables and barracks, with a well and granary and a few other outbuildings round about the space for assembly and exercise. Forgall was greeted with great cheer, and Cormac knew the man was well liked by those he commanded. They entered, dismounted and swung their horse-weary legs while the big chestnut was led away to be stabled and fed. And Forgall led Cormac in to be housed and fed.
Forgall mac Aed was unstinting in telling the garrison of the heroics of the tall youth beside him, “Partha mac Othna”. Partha was immediately accepted as companion. Smiling, friendly Leinstermen offered food and ale to a fellow weapon-man, and one who indeed had saved their chief. The new comer’s apparent youth was marked and remarked upon; Cormac said little, and laughed when he was called “Parthog,” one of his new comrades attaching the word “youth” to his supposed name. He noted that there were those here but a couple of years older than he, and yet smaller than he. He would pass, a man in deed and a boy in age, among men some of whom were but boys in deeds.
Forgall’s second came to him. This was a not-unhandsome, chesty man with reddish cheeks and huge hands at the ends of long, long arms. Bress mac Keth his name, Bress Lamfhada, Long-arm, his sobriquet. (Cormac learned only later that Bress was called Huge-feet, though not to his broad, reddish, and yet slightly equin face.) Mighty Bress the Warrior was not yet twenty. He wore his red brows in two horizontal arcs that ever gave him a perpetual look of superciliousness and disdain, as though all were less than he and it was condescension to speak of them.
“And how is it ye turn up so deep in Leinster, an Ulsterman none knows? Ah-pardon… an Ulsterboy none knows.” And Bress let his face rearrange itself just slightly into a sort of smile.
“I have told the captain,” Cormac said, and repeated his story with brevity. He forbore to comment on the use of the word “boy.” Bress knew what he’d done this day, and Cormac thought he must be in a testing process. Bress was not a fellow-soldier; he was after all Forgall’s second, and due some respect. And… unhappy?
“Ah. And what does your father up in Ulster, third son of Othna whose brother took his sweetheart?”
“He is the lord Othna, commander of the rath near the borders of Airgialla and Dal Ariada.”
“Ah-is that near Armagh, then?”
“Less than a day north-by-west, afoot,” Cormac said. He was not being tested as a man or a weaponman; Bress was treating him as if he might be some sort of spy! Cormac stood erect. Though longer of arm and thus of sword-reach, Bress was an inch or two shorter than the young man he braced.
“Ah. And ye come claiming to be a noble’s son of Ulster, do ye?” ’
The barracks room had gone silent. Cormac’s jaw tightened. He bethought him of Sualtim and his good advice, and he forced himself to draw and expel a deep breath through his nose. His gaze he kept on Bress’s bluish green eyes.
“I come claiming to be naught but a weapon-man proven, Bress mac Keth, with hunger and thirst on him, and a need of oil for his swordsheath.”
Around them men laughed in a break of tension; Bress did not so much as show his imitation of a smile.
“It is a good answer,” Forgall’s voice called, and he came forward through his men after having conferred with sentries outside. “Nor need Partha mac Othna say more. I vouch for Partha mac Othna, who saved my life. Enough. Arbenn-chatha; no more questions. Our new man is proven and this very day, on the field of battle, not on that of practice.” Forgall arrived at the side of the stiffly standing Bress. “The time is past for us to be abed-we’ve a long trek on the morrow, and daily training after that. Enough talk.”
Bress gave Cormac a look that seemed to promise he thought it not enough.
Cormac wondered if Arbenn-chatha were Bress’s military title. Or had his chief called him “Chieftain of battle” as a chide, since the big redhead seemed bent on picking a fight with the new recruit, or at least challenging him strongly?
What a little man he is, Cormac thought, despite his few years, to be jealous unto truculence of his commander’s attentions to a new recruit!
A man whose name Cormac did not catch led him to a sleeping bench. He spoke quietly.
“Best ye be staying clear of Bress, Partha. It’s a fine fighter the man is, with or without weapons.”
“He does well with his mouth, indeed.” But Cormac spoke just as quietly.
“-with a temper on him as mean as his sorrelhorse hair.”
“An odd choice for Forgall’s second in command,” Cormac observed, wishing there were time to go over his mail-links once more.
“It is possible that Forgall be too easy-going,” the other man said. “Bress is our tempering. He is not well-loved by any I know-but it’s a fighting man he is, who has slain no less than ten times!”
Without comment on his own tally-all in Picts-Cormac nodded. He accepted both information and advice with a nod of thanks, and reclined for sleep.
He was so weary that, once his muscles had relaxed, not even the chorus of snores from his new companions or the ache in his shield-arm kept him long awake.
Chapter Seven:
Mesca and Mocci
The soldiers and new recruits of Forgall mac Aed entered Carman of Leinster under a pearl-hued sky lightened by a waning afternoon sun.
Though Carman was on Leinster’s southern border and the stronghold of Redrock up near the northern, Meathish border, Forgall’s company had spent but one night under the stars. The distance from Leinster’s northernmost point to its most southerly was but forty miles. The kingdom was smaller than Munster, which sprawled to its west and south; smaller than Connacht, smaller even than Mide or Meath, which had been created of parts from the other kingdoms, as an expansion of territory around Tara of the Kings.
Carman was the greatest center of population that fortess-raised Cormac had ever experienced, and he saw little while trying to see everything.
To him the human throng was enormous and exotic. Merchants and close-crowding buildings; well-dressed nobles in pearl-sewn mantles, and yapping dogs; slouching rag-tags an
d bustling hawkers of this and that merchandise; all merely formed a backdrop. The Connachtish youth’s eyes swerved this way and that to pick out women, and girls, more females in twenty paces than he’d seen in all his life. With fine clothes on them, and clean, curled hair, and paint or dyes to enhance eyes and lips!
The men tramped; Cormac tramped; Cormac stared. An occasional pair of bold eyes stared in return, and girls there were who imparted more swing to their hips, once they’d become aware of the big tall youth’s grey-eyed gaze. Entranced and enchanted, he heard not the babble of a hundred conversations, nor noted the words of the loud-voiced hawkers of goods. He had seen cod and white haddock before, and pig’s and badger-meat, and prawns and scallops and herring, and sloke and dulse, mace and honey, and fragrant little juniper berries his people used for flavouring and seasoning. He had not seen before so many fine-looking members of the opposite sex, and the Conachtish youth was at an age when his interest in females was passing high.
At the permanent military encampment outside the city-a bit too close, Cormac thought, to the city’s main refuse dump into the Slaigne-forsaw to the entry of “Partha” into King Ulad’s service, and to his outfitting. Yes, he could wear his own fine chaincoat in combat, when and if that became necessary. Otherwise, and for dress, the new recruit would wear the same sleeveless coat of boiled leather as his fellows, over their Leinsterish tunics of speedwell blue.
Cormac learned that he would be charged for both, against his wages…
The captain bade the veterans from Redrock be at their ease and leave, so long as they were back in camp by sundown, for pre-dinner muster. Aye, Cormac could go into Carman too: the newcomer had earned his leave that evening on the beach. With Boruma time so nigh, Forgall warned, many and many a day might pass ere again they found opportunity to recreate themselves.
The veterans welcomed their leave, and most had already accepted Partha as a comrade. Some few of the other recruits, who must remain in camp, frowned; so, Cormac noted, did Bress mac Keth.
A burly farmer’s son named Cas mac Con accompanied Cormac as guide; Cas was a score or so years of age, russet of hair and brown of mustache and called Bull by some of his comrades. Cormac willingly accepted the thickset man’s guidance into and through a city about which mac Art knew nothing.
Cas gave little time for sightseeing, instead taking a direct route that soon led them into a section of the capital that Cormac realized was hardly the best. He followed without thinking, hardly noticing his surroundings apart from the many exemplary examples of femininity; he gawked and girl-watched. A mug of ale? Oh, yes. This place? Certainly. Lasrian’s Blue Shamrock, eh? Noted for his own brew of beer from wheat and honey, with a secret ingredient Lasrian the brughaid would not reveal? Fine; Cormac knew not one place from another, and if Cas vouched for this one, why not? He was no expert as regards ale; an Cas thought Lasrian’s special bew worth the trying, he’d do so.
The two men entered the little tap-room, which was also an inn, with a door leading to private rooms behind.
Places to sit were not hard to find. Neither, as they ordered mugs of ale, was companionship-for Cas. A few minutes later the farmboy soldier was gone; so was the black-haired girl he’d told Cormac was his cousin. The big recruit sat and drank alone, only sipping for he was not overly enamoured of Lasrian’s vaunted brew. He strove to look as if he’d been wearing the blue tunic-over his own leather leggings-and long vest of black leather for years.
Cormac strove, too, not to be too noticeable in his watching of the most handsome girl nearby. Fiery of hair she was, and surely no older than he, though he saw that she was more sophisticated. That she was far from well dressed was of no consequence whatever; she was pretty and more, with a vivacious look about her. Her eyes were marvelous rounds of truly grassy green. Other patrons of the Blue Shamrock were no better dressed.
Indeed, the excellent young minstrel over in the corner wore a tunic of so faded a red it could be called pink. His hooded cloak was threadbare in more than one place and his leggings looked as if they’d been made of a carrion cow found a century ago. In a good clear voice, he sang quietly the while he strummed his lute.
Listening, enjoying the quiet music and verses-in-the-making of some love story or other, Cormac gave most of his attention to the girl. (Young woman, he thought, for I am a young man!) Naturally he pretended to be studying the brown liquid in his mug.
He was mindful of nursing his ale, that he might not empty the mug and have to suffer its refilling. Not so the two older fellows, who had obviously been here longer than he; longer, indeed than necessary. The younger, perhaps twenty, made a teasing remark. It was directed at the girl. She continued to devote much attention to her nails, which she had dyed crimson in the manner of a lady of leisure. Berries had darkened her eyebrows, which Cormac assumed were lighter than her orange-red hair.
The fellow who’d failed to attract her attention with his remark now stretched forth a leg. He tried to toe her ankle. He could not reach. Slouching the more in his chair, he used his foot to tap the leg of her stool. She paid no mind. Her apparent interest in her nails was as deep as Cormac’s in his mug of brew.
“High ‘n’ mighty li’l wench, huh? Nails like a lady-or a…”
She shot the young man a green-eyed stare magnificently notable for its coolness. When she disengaged that look, her glance flashed over Cormac, just in passing. He felt warmed by it. The man glanced his way; Cormac affected not to notice. The youth of Connacht was most aware of being well out of his element.
“It’s mighty fine them nails’d feel digging into a man’s shoulders,” the older of the two drinkers said, grinning, staring at the girl. “The backs of his shoulders.”
“Is it aught else ye’d be having?”
This from the Blue Shamrock’s owner-proprietor, or brughaid.
“Only a room in back, Lasrian-with that pretty drolleen for company.”
Lasrian shook his jowly head. “Och, Scumac, it’s ashamed I am for ye. That wren as ye call her does not work here-and she’s too young for yourself, sure. And yourself here with your nephew… Scumac!” Again Lasrian gave his head a chastising wag.
The older man named Scumac imitated the action. “So I might be, Laz… but yon filly’s not too young for Blai here, is she, boy?”
Blai laughed-a high-voiced giggle that Cormac thought ridiculous and nigh as shameful as the pair’s treatment of the girl… the young woman. And them uncle and nephew! He saw her give Lasrian the brughaid a grateful look, which told Cormac what he’d surmised: she was a youth of tender sensibilities, better than those two, better than the Blue Shamrock, and distressed by the unwanted and lewd attentions of a pair of louts who should have been out slopping the pigs they doubtless slept with.
The minstrel strummed. Lasrian beamed on him. Then, looking at the door, he frowned. Cormac thought he could read the round-bellied fellow’s mind: sure and the minstrel was good, and why then were none entering Lasrian’s bruidean to give listen-having a cup the while?
“Sure and she prettier’n any filly I ever saw, Uncle,” Blai said.
“Hush, stallion!” Scumac said, and he and his nephew guffawed.
Unnoticed, the minstrel had commenced softly singing about Medhbh, the Intoxicating One, and a buachall and a bachlach-cowherd and churl or herdsman and how they trampled blarhnad in their roughness and lack of sensitivity; blarhnad was a little flower. Lasrian was nervous, and Scumac and Blai entirely too caught up in their callous fun to take note of a most clever minstrel.
Cormac was staring, his lips tightened and his hand very tightly clutching his mug. The two took no note of him either, rapt and enwrapt in a diverslon pleasant only to themselves. Cormac glanced at the inner doorway. No Cas mac Con. Good. Cormac was in no hurry to leave. He was minded to ask the minstrel if he knew a lay about a couple of hogherds and how they had such knowledge of fillies, but he held back; this was not his neighbourhood, or his city, or his country.
&nbs
p; Scumac ordered two more mugs of the reddish ale he and his nephew were so assiduously stowing away. Lasrian, frowning, went to his kegs. The minstrel, apparently unnoticed save by Cormac, was weaving a clever system of verses in which appeared again and again the words mesca and mocci: intoxication and pigs.
Of a sudden Scumac, like an outsized cat-though with a lurch in tribute to the potency of Lasrian’s brew-was out of his chair and at the girl. He caught her by shoulder and one breast and began dragging her from her seat, toward the rear; one of the rooms for pleasure, Cormac was sure, to which Cas had repaired with his “cousin.”
Cormac had no other thought. He rose and rushed to the girl’s aid. As neither Blai nor his uncle wore a sword or visible dagger, Cormac did not draw his steel. He placed a big hand on Scumac’s arm and the man jerked, swinging away. In thus evading Cormac’s grip he incidentally let the girl slip free of his. The man of forty or so faced the big youth angrily, and Scumac was red of face. Then Cormac saw the other’s gaze leap past him. At the same time, just as Scumac started to grin, a hand fell heavily on Cormac’s shoulder.
Cormac turned and drove a fist into Blai’s relaxed and ale-filled belly, all in one movement. With an ugly gagging sound Blai doubled half over, then sank to his knees. His eyes bulged and his mouth gaped while he clutched his midsection with both hands. With an “urkk” and a gushy liquid sound, Blai messed Lasrian’s floor.
From behind Cormac came another cheerless sound: a good hearty thud. He whirled, to see Scumac, his eyes rolling loosely, begin to bend both knees. His hands fell loosely open and from one a dagger dropped to the oil-dark floor. The man’s falling to his knees jarred the floor under Cormac’s feet. He stepped back then, as Scumac stretched his length.
Behind the fallen man stood the girl, glaring at Cormac. She held the stool with which she’d tested the hardness of Scumac’s skull. It was hard; though the man lay still, he breathed naturally and there was no blood.
A smiling Cormac mac Art said, “I give ye thanks,” and awaited similar words from her.
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