Cormac smelled both vomit and fresh urine and bethought him that feasts began better than they ended.
Then the king himself rose to depart-aye, and lurching a bit, as befit the ruler of triumphant sons of Eirrin. In passing he paused to do words on “Partha mac Othna our most valuable import.” Cormac flushed. King Ulad passed on, and out of the hall with his family. Instantly Cormac was up, stumbling over Cethern and then hurrying past and over and around other fallen comrades. Those whom the Meathmen had not scathed now lay downed by the sharp edge and point of fermented grains and honey.
The door led not directly outside but to an inner gallery of passing dimness. There waited the so-slender servant of the princess herself. She led him-by the damp hand, like lovers-into even darker realms and to a closed door of richly carven oak. She tapped, released his hand, patted his backside, and departed on swift feet.
He entered a most private chamber, and paused; all within was darkness.
“Do close the door, and bar it, and I shall light this candle.”
He did; sparks were struck; again; a candle came alive in a yellow point that drew the eyes.
“Ah, Partha! I admit to some dizziness-I hope you drank but little!”
“Ye did dissemblage on me-why?”
“Ah. You use ‘ye’ to me then, do you?” Aine/ Samaire sighed. “Ah, Partha! My father does do his best to keep me most sheltered indeed-and watched! His only daughter-valuable trade-goods, you see. So… my brother Ceann and I make our own plots. It’s good friends we are, though siblings. We disguise ourselves and slip out from that prison called the King’s-house whenever we can, to wander Carman as people-real people!” She held high the candle; now she shrugged, and watched his eyes drop their gaze from her face. She smiled. “Hence the ‘Aine the merchant’s daughter role. How was I to know I’d be… be taking a-a liking to your huge self?-and brainy self too, isn’t it, Hero of Boruma!” She gave her head a swift shake and little curls flew, dark gold in the candle’s light. “Never have I heard poets compare a living man with a Cuchulain afore, Partha mac Cuchulain!”
And why not, he mused in his confusion, for I was he, once…
He but smiled. He’d say naught. Now he knew her name, and accepted that she’d dissembled for no reason to do with him. As for himself… he, must maintain the lie of his name, even to her darling self. Feeling guilt and that strong urge to tell his real name, he tugged his lower lip in under his teeth and studied the floor.
“There… there is another lie ye’ve had of me, Partha. I have no sixteen years on me; it’s Ceann who’s sixteen, and he older than I.”
At that he looked up, suddenly smiling happily. “Ah-and will you be keeping my secret-” he paused over the name-“Samaire?”
“Aha!”
“Will you now?”
Her bantering expression vanished. “For ever, Partha.”
“My age is not sixteen, either. It’s big I am for my years-”
“Oh.”
He grinned. “-and I feared I’d not gain weaponish employment or respect, an I spoke true of being but fourteen.”
She clapped her hands and her smile was like her name, for “samair” was the word for “break of day.” “Ah! As if ye needed worry about respect… but… why it’s little more than a darling young boy ye be…”
His dark brows lowered and his eyes went serious and not happy; that he accepted not well, she saw, and she spoke swiftly while she moved to him.
“And I little more than a girl…”
“A dairlin young girl, aye…”
“Your dairlin girl, Partha, drettel…”
Their arms went around each other, and he had to bend well down to join his lips to hers, and then they were holding each other more tightly, and their mouths moved, pressing, and their hands…
…and he woke hours later beside her, and smiled, and touched her beside him, asleep, and he smiled the wider. Then he saw, even through the heavy drape at the window, that the sky was going light. He knew it was close onto cock’s crow.
Lugh’s arms and blood of the gods, he thought (for he was training himself to warlike oaths) to be caught here thus would be sorest trouble for her and death for me, sure!
Very slowly, sneakily like unto a thief, he eased himself from the bed. He dressed without waking her, and was able to make his way through the deserted assembly-house. Then through the just-waking city he strode, humming as he went, and smiling upon those who stared or scolded, and he realized: I love her!
Aye, and he did.
And she loved him.
And the days passed, in Leinster, and the weeks. The hero of the Plain of Sorrow was offered a post as second in command in another Fifty, and he asked to remain with Forgall though Forgall had a second, who was Bress. And so he stayed with those men, without rank in a Fifty whose members now called it Tara-Baiter.
Six days Partha spent on special duty, at the palace. Each evening the winsome, spear-slim Devorgill came to him on behalf of her youthful mistress Samaire, and each evening the Hero of Sorrow’s Plain said no and was adamant, for duty was duty and honour was honour, and he’d not creep like a thief for love in the House of the King. On the seventh day, as on that day before the first of the six, he met a girl named Aine in a wood at the west end of the pasture of one Bresal An-gair, and they endeavoured to make up for those missed times together. The more fool he for not coming to her in her room, she told him; the more man he, he thought.
The Blueshirts were not idle, but only at training. Now there were stories of Pictish incursions from the far side Lock Derg over to the west. The Cruithne seemed more and more bold in raiding into the north tip of Munster, that strip of Munsterish land separated Leinster from the western land south of Connacht. There Picts were settled still, and entrenched the way that Munster’s king left them alone. Along that western border of Leinster, snuggled to Munster’s “chimney,” lay little Osraige or Osry, in a thin line forming a tiny realm. Were its king to cry for aid, Ulad’s men would march. Already a few companies had been sent there, to crowd the border outposts lest the Picts come in force.
And so the Blueshirts waited, and talked of Cruithne, and kept limber with their daily training.
And the days passed, in Leinster, and the nights. On some of those nights Cormac and Samaire trysted, and, even more seldom and with greater care, during some days.
Even Cormac’s new stature and the golden torc conferred on him by King Ulad did not dissuade Bress from his weening dislike. He called his chosen enemy “Partha n’Allmurach”: the Foreigner. Nor was Bress deterred from his strong pressing of the youth. The Long-arm seemed bent on goading Cormac into drawing steel on a superior, thus to be disgraced-and perhaps slain into the bargain. Clinging to his sense of honour with difficulty, Cormac would not be so provoked. He was the better for it, in the minds of his fellows. The supposed Ulsterman was well-liked, and respected as well; Bress’s fixation cost him much respect and, as it later fell out, considerably more.
The malevolent, watchful eye of Bress mac Keth made the meetings of Cormac and Samaire more and more difficult, and thus perilous.
Now Behltain was on Eirrin; Cetsamhain that those of the New Faith called after some Gallish person or legend: Walpurga’s night. The eve of May Day; the season’s beginning and its observance more ancient among Celtic peoples than any could know.
On that happy occasion of the beginning of growth that would culminate six months later with Samhain, the end of harvest, Partha mac Othna shared words, and kisses, and much more with Aine ingin Fol, merchant of Ailenn, and they snuggled and murmured their love.
A forbidden love, they both knew. A hopeless love, he was sure. That she would not admit; Samaire held ever hope that the morrow would see to the morrow, as the old women of Eirrin were wont to say. Even her brother Ceann was more sympathetic to the clandestine lovers now, though he disapproved. Third in line or no, Ceann mac Ulaid was aware of being royalty and of the impossibility of anything good
’s coming of the liaisons of his sister and the foreign weapon-man. Ceann and Devorgill-with whom indeed Ceann was known to have disported himself, but he was after all male and even in Eirrin that was different. Different-he and Devorgill were the only two who knew about the adolescent lovers. So all hoped, at any rate.
Samaire owned that Ceann kept silent because she knew about his dalliances with the very, very young wife of the old, old Condla, once called Airechta, or King’s Champion-and now called Condla Taeb-trom: Big-belly. Cormac disagreed with her, feeling that Ceann was manly, and loved his sister, and was imbued with sympathy and empathy. And Samaire told him he was both naif and over trusting.
Better had we never met, mac Art thought too often during that idyll. But it was impossible to be so dismal in her company, and her body white as the privet’s dainty blossom. Nor, in youth and in love, could he exert strength sufficient to part from her for good and all.
“A pity it is to give love to a man, and he to take no heed of it,” she said, reaching for a cup of mead that should have held hazel-nuts that night before May dawned. “It is better to be turned away, if one is not loved as one loves.”
“You are loved as you love, and more, dairlin girl.”
“Impossible that it be more, mo chroi… but don’t be tellin’ me: show me!”
And he did.
And later she told him, tracing Oghamish on his bare chest with her finger, “The colour of the glossiest raven is on his hair, and his skin like the finest new copper or a fawn’s coat, his cheek like the blood of the speckled red calf, and his swiftness and his leap are like the salmon of the stream it fights and conquers, or the fleet deer of the grey mountain… and, sure the head and shoulders of Partha Othna’s son are above all the other men of Leinster.”
“Not all of Eirrin?”
“Be not greedy, my love.”
“Hmp. And have you no pretty words for me, dairlin boy?”
“None,” he told her, but he showed her instead, so that she had need of few words.
Chapter Twelve:
Picts!
Cormac returned to a garrison in uproar. Torches blazed on high and bobbed about in the upraised hands of his fellows. Voices rose in a cross-ranging cacophany of commands and queries and replies. Harness jingled, and mail; swords and knives in their oiled sheaths were being buckled on over armour of leather and linked chain. Horses whickered or neighed shrilly in apprehension or plain displeasure as they were hauled forth and harnessed. Men hurried in a dozen directions on a score of errands, their paths crossing and crisscrossing. Cormac heard the wheels of waggons and carts. Men grunted while they loaded on supplies.
“Eochu! What-”
But the Lightning-hand ran on, on someone’s orders, buckling on his sword the while.
“Here you, get your-Partha! Malingering?”
Cormac stared into a pair of icy grey-green eyes above a long nose. “The opposite, Bress. I have night’s leave; it’s early I’ve returned. What is all this?”
“Picts!” a man shouted, rushing by all ajingle. Two spear-butts dragged behind him.
Cormac echoed the word, gazing about at a semi organized bedlam of preparations. “Picts! Here?”
“Idiot!” Bress snarled. “Duck’s anus! Of course not here. Into battle gear with ye-we march at once.” And after a glower, the Long-arm executed a self-conscious heel-and-toe and stalked off.
Cormac hadn’t time to seethe. He learned the situation while he made himself ready for battle-march. The Cruithne had raged across that tip of Munster that surged up betwixt their land and Osraige. They were in Osraige; across that tiny realm’s northern strip leaving a wake of blood; the Picts were in western Leinster!
A fort of Osraige was overrun and its garrison slain to the last man; a fort of Leinster, too, had been attacked and burned out. Of its garrison, as well as the two hundred Blueshirts so recently sent to firm up defenses… who knew how many lived, if any? Farmhouses were ablaze in Leinster. Women and children lay dead, having been raped and mutilated; men were dead and a whole little settlement destroyed. Priests had been deprived of those bodily parts for which they claimed no use; druids lay headless.
Munstermen marched northward; Leinsterish forces hurried down from the garrisons along the Meathish border; now the forces of Forgall and others were to hurry westward “with all despatch and more,” in hopes of stopping the incursion, and surrounding the Pictish invaders, and destroying them.
Hurriedly Cormac gathered up armour, weapons, and field-kit. Within an hour, Forgall’s Coichte and several other such Fifties were amarch through the night. Supply-wains creaked and rattled along under cursing drivers. Mayhap it was midnight, Cormac mused; mayhap before. It was either the eve of Behltain or the day itself; one of the Celts’ two great annual celebrations.
What a day for the onslaught of those Pictish demons, with great fires being readied for the spring rites!
Chapter Thirteen:
In the Glen of Danger
Mist rode the post-dawn air so that the sun was but a pallid glow somewhere beyond a sky the colour of dirty pearls, hanging low over the fog-cloaked glen. Through this chill gloom moved weary Blueshirts, seeking the Picts who’d eluded them for a full week.
Oh, they’d found evidence enow. Bodies they had found, mutilated corpses caked with blood and eerily alive with flies. Burned homesteads. Slain dogs, butchered horses. But of Picts…
Twice had these men come on Pictish war-parties, but only that: small groups of the nearly naked, black-eyed devils, all too many of whom wore Celtic trinkets and carried Celtic weapons taken from corpses. Twice had the searching Gaels crushed the burly dark men in blood-letting combat. Leinsterish losses were few. But these had been rencontres with two little raid-parties, hardly anything approaching a main Pictish body.
And that was all there had been in a full seven days of marching, tramping, sweating, searching. A week of tension. A full week of searching, and of constant disappointment mingled with their tension. A week: plenty of time for men to grow disgruntled and apprehensive and tense and, naturally enough for soldiers forced to walk and walk in full battle array, spears ready but without the release of battle, to complain.
Contrary to their expectations, there was no such entity as a Pictish army.
Oh, the invasion was a major one, right enough. It consisted, though, of the warriors of several separate tribes of Pictdom. Each was intent on its own purposes, and booty, and glory. All pillaged and murdered in several directions at once. Without unified purpose, without semblance of unified command or a single strong leader. There were tales of one, and of a powerful shaman, too. But no soldiers had seen them.
The men of Forgall mac Aed’s Coichte, part of Commander Conan Conda’s Notri da Ceadach-Three-hundred-wanted and needed action, the adrenalin release of tension, the clamor of battle and the joy of doing something. Even men who had little stomach for blade-reddening were more anticipatory than aprehensive, now.
Partha mac Othna who was Cormac mac Art had taken a cut from a flint ax on his cheek and another across his right forearm, from a captured Celtic sword. The sword was re-captured. The wounders were dead. And while his wounds were but minor cuts, Cormac knew they’d be scars on him, all his days.
He was tired. All the Blueshirts of Conan Conda’s command were tired; as much downcast they were, as weary. And ever, ever wary, despite their growing conviction that the Picts were as unseasonable frost giving way to the sun of a clear morn; the devils had always been there afore them, but seemed to have melted away. This doubly damned slog-work enforced quiet and care, the skin prickling; this constant tramping about in tension without the relief and release of combat was maddening. It made men feel far more tired than they were.
And now-now, this morning, it was worse.
Visibility was such that one’s shield, held out from the body by a strong arm, was but a dark blurring blob without detail or even its proper round shape. Someone to Cormac’s left muttered qui
te succinctly, “Excrement.”
Cormac agreed in silence. Cess. This cess-pool of a soupy fog, cold through leather leggings; this whole maddeningly frustrating quest: cess. It was Glean na-Guais they tramped, Danger Glen; it should have been called Glen Cess or Cess-pool!
He waded through it. Tall grass wheeped against his boots.
All around him others waded through it. Occasionally there was a little splurch or splash followed by a muffled curse, as a man stepped into a pool of water based in mud. Elsewise there was only the whisper of cloth, the occasional jingle of mental fittings, the creaky rustle of armour of boiled leather, and the strange, metallic susurrus of mailcoats.
Fog and mist. And the sun up. Cormac frowned, considering, glancing about-at pale greyness.
The picts had their druids or priests: shamans; sorcery was hardly unknown to them. Here, now Cormac was most wary of the position of his little company, on quest apart from the main army of three hundred. He was most aware and wary of the environment. It was unnatural, mist-haunted, tained with the reek of dark sorceries. For three days now they had been at the seeking out of a band of a hundred or so particularly vicious and successful foes. This band of savages was apparently led by a madman-that leader who might well become chief of a united Pictish force, for it was known he had begun with but twenty.
Too, according to words accompanied by blood from the lips of an old woman dying of obscene wounds, this band of fivescore was accompanied by a shaman she swore had sent a writhing foggy darkness on the tiny settlement of Baile Ablaich. Ablach! No more; all its apple trees were tattered, chopped, seared and singed and some still smoking with their smoldering.
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