The Raven Queen

by Jules Watson

  Maeve searched the narrow green valley below. She didn’t like it. For days her band of raiders had skirted the lakes and lush swamps that formed the border. Here, farther into the hills, steadings clung to the drier slopes, and there were sparse fields scratched from the drained soil. But those Ulaid houses were deserted.

  “Now that I am queen, you boss me around more than you did before.”

  Garvan patted his restive horse. “Brothers must enjoy some rewards for their troubles.”

  Maeve grunted. She had promised to drop back with the young warrior Lassar while the rest rode on only because she could not rid her mind of Finn’s stark face. Frustration, however, was gaining ground over promises. “It is too quiet.”

  The plan was for her warriors to head along these valleys to where they spilled into a more open expanse of Ulaid pasture-lands, drive off a few cattle, then loop about and head back the same way. It was a test of the Ulaid defenses. If any Ulaid warriors gave chase, her men would abandon the cattle and lose their pursuers in the great swaths of bog and river-marsh that the Connacht fighters knew so well.

  A simple plan; Maeve only hoped she could glean something from it.

  “If what your harper says is true, and Conor has fallen out with some of his chiefs, the people around here may have retreated inside their lords’ forts. It is a good thing, spitfire. They are more afraid of each other than of us.”

  Maeve relaxed. “You sometimes do speak sense.”

  Over the next three days, Maeve and Lassar went to ground in the woods. Maeve spent the time on her belly, clinging to the ridgeline above the valley so that she would not be seen from below. Wedged into the roots of a rowan tree, she ignored the rain drumming on her oilskin, her aching back and cold feet.

  On the fourth morning she rose before dawn and gazed across the Ulaid, straining her eyes. Where were they?

  Dawn revealed a blanket of mist in the hollows. Maeve blinked as she glimpsed a strange backwash of light, a flicker around the hills and the trees outlined against the sky. She thought it was sunrise, but it was in the north, and silver, not gold. The valley before her was a dark tear through those glowing veils, and she thought she saw a shadow stretching along the horizon in the north. She closed her eyes and opened them.

  It was gone, but the shadow remained on her heart.

  She slid down the hill to where Lassar was breaking his fast with a wedge of stale bread. “Something is wrong.” She swiped her scabbard from her pack. “We have to climb that far ridge so we can see more.”

  Lassar chewed. “The Champion said we must stay out of trouble.”

  She cocked her head as she belted on her sword. “I am your queen, Lassar. Are you intending to obey me or the Lord Garvan?”

  Lassar gulped his bread and hastened to his feet.

  Keeping to the line of oak trees on the slope, they led the horses across to the next ridge. The crest was still obscuring their sightline when, on the morning air, they clearly heard the distressed lowing of cattle.

  Maeve and Lassar clambered to the top.

  The mist had lifted. Some distance down the valley, Maeve could just see a cluster of huts by a shallow river, and the sunlit gleam of red and black hides. Scores of cows were milling about the stockade of brush and hazel saplings. Maeve’s mouth went dry. “I know this steading, and those cattle are not quartered here. The lord keeps them on a high hill, inside a rampart.”

  Lassar looked at her with wide eyes. “Then—”

  “They knew we were coming.” Maeve’s stomach turned. “It is a trap, and our men took the bait.” Her mind galloped on. Who would the border lords appeal to if they had broken with Conor? Who could muster men and ride here so swiftly?

  She was already jerking Meallán on the rein, scrabbling down the slope. “Hurry!”

  Stripped to the waist, Ruán waded into the shallows. He flexed his bare back, reveling in the strengthening sun, then retied the thong that kept his hair off his face. Finally, he spread his hands over the water, calling the spell up inside him.

  He was placing the bream on his hearth-stone, feeling for his scaler, when he paused. He had not heard a step this time, but still he sensed that strange someone. “Who is there?” That glimmer in the air … it was like a deer, shy and delicate. Not Áedán. Ruán tensed and was halfway up when she spoke.

  “Ru.” Her voice was husky with sadness.

  “Orla?”

  He heard a rustle of cloth and a tentative tread. “I wasn’t sure whether you would speak to me after what you said to Áedán.” She caught her breath. “I was never brave like you.”

  Ruán’s fingers unconsciously spread over his blindfold. Orla had last looked upon him when he was whole. He remembered tree-shadows dappling her hair, the amber flecks in her irises. He dropped his hand. “What are you doing here?”

  “I came with Áedán to see you.”

  A trembling had started beneath his skin. It was as if she had walked out of his vision among the stones. He was still raw from those vivid sensations—but that was all she was, a boy’s fiery memory. “If you wanted revenge for my cruelty, you have it.” He touched his brow. “My eyes.”

  “I don’t want revenge!”

  Ruán steadied himself, his new sight coming in snatches. Orla was a small, unflickering light, pale but steady. “Then do you need my apology? For how can you come here after what I did to you?”

  “That is nothing to what Lord Mulach did to you.”

  Ruán groped for his tunic and tugged it over his wet skin. “I brought that on myself. You did no wrong.” His arms fell by his sides as he faced her. “Why did you come, Orla? You are grown, with a life of your own.”

  He heard her picking at the bark on the rowan tree. “We have all suffered for what Lord Mulach did to you. When Lord Donn sent Áedán to find you, I thought … if you would not listen to him, you might …” A shuddering breath. “You might need someone else who knew you before.”

  He sighed. “Then your efforts were in vain. I cannot go back. This is my home.”

  “This is not a home.” She rushed up to him, her little, cold fingers sending a shock through his arm. “Come back to where you belong, to where people can look after you.”

  “Orla.” Ruán took her fingers, curled them up and gently put them from him. He smiled to take the sting away. “I do not need looking after.”

  “No one is meant to be alone!”

  She meant well. Ruán touched the crown of her head, for she only came up to his chest. Her hair smelled of salt and seaweed, so familiar …

  “Ru.” She bent back her head and her light flared. “I thought you might not trust Áedán because he came from Mulach’s kin. But I speak for the people, the ones you helped.”

  Ruán dropped his hand and backed away. He did not help. He had killed someone. And he had hurt Orla. He would not hurt anyone again.

  His legs chose their own path onto the track he had beaten through the undergrowth. He couldn’t think straight and had to resort to halting steps that made his face burn.

  Orla chased after him. “They have not forgotten how you sung over their fishing boats. They remember the nights when you braved the mounds of the sídhe to fast and pray for them.”

  He made an inarticulate sound in the back of his throat. Behind him, she stopped and shouted, “I came because the fishermen begged me to. They thought I knew a boy who was part of the woods and water, who wanted to know everything because one day he would be a druid and do good with that knowing.”

  Ruán halted, his chest tight.

  “And all the moons I wept in my bed, I knew that you had something better to do than mind sheep in my father’s fields!”

  Ruán turned, lifting a hand. “And I’ve found it here.” He gentled his voice. “I want you to have the same peace, for I did you a terrible wrong. Go back to your husband and family, Orla. You always deserved more than a memory.”

  She was sniffling. “My husband was taken by the sea long ago.
My children are years out of breechclouts. And I yearned to see this world you spun for me with your fine words. For once, I wanted more than stone and water.”

  Ruán touched the blindfold and then his heart. “So now you see that time marches on in every world. The boy you remember is gone.”

  “No. Áedán and I will not give up on you as Lord Mulach did.” Her voice receded as she backed away between the trees. “We bide in a steading close by, with the reed-cutters. A druid always gets a bed and broth—you told me that.”

  “It won’t do any good, Orla.”

  She did not answer, cracking sticks as she raced away through the forest.

  As a maiden, Orla had blossomed into a fleeting season of creamy curves. But the Stone Islands did not nurture lush flesh and rosy skin. They wizened people, dried them with salt and wind.

  Ruán returned to the fish and ran his thumbs over its scales. He would never know what Orla looked like now, and though she could see him, a heart had a blindness of its own. To her, he would always be the boy whose touch made her bloom.

  Ruán gutted the fish, and when it was roasting and he sat by the flames, something unexpected happened. His body gradually settled into the damp grass, an old tightness leaching from him. He rested his head back on the log. The spiral scar flexed as he breathed.

  He did not have to fear that any lord was seeking his death anymore.

  Maeve and Lassar slid down a gully on the hill above the river, coaxing their horses behind them. It was hard to make out what was happening among the houses by the ford, the branches and thickets obscuring their view. But their ears soon told them everything.

  They caught the clang of iron. Screams and shouts.

  They reached flat ground where a bank of oak and hazel trees fringed a green pasture. A stony ford led across the stream to a scatter of thatched huts surrounded by a little stockade. The gate of brushwood was standing open.

  Metal flashed in the morning sun. Warriors were fighting all over the steading, churning up the mud paths. Cattle thronged a web of ditches, tossing their horns and kicking out at the stockade as men leaped and ducked among them.

  Maeve’s eyes darted back and forth as she desperately tried to make sense of chaos. The men were strewn about, scattered knots of them struggling in cow-byres, pigpens, and the paths between the huts. The Ulaid must have been hiding in ambush all over the homestead.

  Maeve wiped sweat from her face. The warriors were tussling in the mud, their armor and faces coated in the same filth. Only then did she realize that a few bore shields with streaks of scarlet and gold showing through the dirt, like blooms scattered on dark earth.

  Red Branch.

  Dropping Meallán’s reins, Maeve took off across the riverbank, stretching out her legs and pumping her arms. She splashed over the ford, her hand going to her hilt. Just as she burst through the open gate, Lassar barreled into her from behind, knocking her off her feet.

  They tumbled off the track into a ditch, facedown in a trickle of water that ran beneath the stockade. Maeve spat out mud and dung, wrenching herself from beneath Lassar’s heavy body. “Get off!”

  “I gave an oath to Lord Fraech to protect you,” the young warrior panted. “If you die, I die, whether I return home or not.”

  She threw him off and he crouched beside her, his hand out as if to a spitting cat.

  “Lassar!” She wiped her face and eyes on her sleeve.

  “I raised my voice for you when you killed your brother,” he stammered, white-faced. “You told us you’d protect Connacht, and you can’t do that when you are dead.”

  With a growl, Maeve rolled on her belly. Side by side they crawled to the lip of the wet ditch and peered beneath the stakes of one of the fences.

  Screeching warriors were still hurling themselves at each other as the cattle milled around their pens, lowing in panic. Holding their blades high, other men were leaping from the thatch roofs and the palings of the stock pens, stabbing anyone who came close and bellowing war-cries. Their screams of fury and pain pierced Maeve’s breast, and she gulped for air as the reek of blood grew more pungent.

  She peered around. Connacht men were down, but there were also some scarlet shields thrown into the mud. Of the few Red Branch that were here, two or three had been slain. She recognized those she knew, still fighting.

  Ulaid’s old king Fergus, a silver bear, was swinging his sword while he bellowed.

  Conor’s two sons—Cormac the eldest, with his sire’s proud face, and Fiacra the youngest, flaxen-haired.

  Fergus’s son Illan.

  Maeve blinked, her sight blurred by sweat and the panicked racing of her heart. Something was amiss … something her instincts could sense. The Red Branch were not fighting in that flowing, deadly dance she had watched in training a hundred times, when they fought as one. Instead, they were in disarray, scattered all over the place.

  And then Maeve saw him.

  A golden god stood before the doors of the largest house. He was of middling size, graceful rather than hulking, with his fair hair and beardless face coated in blood. Even from afar, however, his eyes blazed out of that gore like beacons of blue flame. He danced, swinging his sword in an intricate pattern of blows and lunges that formed a cage of iron around him, taking down three men at a time.

  A revulsion took Maeve at the sight of him, a visceral curdling in her belly. “Cúchulainn.” He was the blade in Conor’s hand—the blade that would descend upon her people.

  “So that is him.” A tremor ran through Lassar’s voice.

  That was him: he had become as great an enemy as Conor himself. By habit, Maeve sought Ferdia by his side, and then remembered Ferdia was gone, driven away by Conor.

  Maeve’s breathing was so shallow she must have dizzied herself, for the world lurched as if she dipped below its surface once more. The streaked blades and dented shields, puddles of blood and gleam of cattle, were all cloaked in silver … or was it a trick of the sun?

  No, everything glowed from within. She could see it.

  There was a mystery at the heart of the Red Branch, a bond they kept well-hidden. During those few times she dared risk Conor’s wrath, sleeping with Red Branch warriors in secret, they fell silent when she broached it, turning away from her.

  Now Maeve was rooted to the spot in wonder—and horror.

  Cúchulainn was a towering flame, white-hot. The other Red Branch warriors were fainter spires of radiance. Ruán had showed her the soul-lights in the valley—some drew on a greater power than others. Cúchulainn. His flame sent out great flares as if to encompass his Red Branch brothers.

  A light that joined them all … Was that how they moved as one, thought as one?

  The soul-lights of Maeve’s Connacht-men throbbed in single pulses of desperation and fear, writhing and guttering out alone. The Ulaid appeared as a branch of lightning anchored in their champion, Cúchulainn.

  And then it all changed.

  The flames of the Red Branch fighters were stabbed by dark rents, the glowing streamers that bound them tearing apart. Soon they were only shreds of brightness, and then they began to die out. As they did, more Red Branch warriors fell to Connacht blades.

  The darkness invaded Cúchulainn. The great blaze of him faltered, contracting. Maeve wiped sweat from her face, closing her eyes. When she opened them, Cúchulainn was sending up gouts of red fury.

  He threw off the warriors crowding him and raced down the track toward the cattle-pens, spinning his sword over his head.

  Garvan was in his way, furiously sparring with another fighter, oblivious to the golden storm approaching.

  Maeve’s trance shattered. She pushed herself up on her hands and out of the ditch. Lassar lunged for her, but she managed to slide between the fence palings and stagger to her feet. As Lassar scrambled over the rail, Maeve streaked across the churned mud. Something was wrong with the Red Branch! If she could only rally her men, give them courage …

  The Connacht war-cry was on h
er tongue, ready to fly free. The eagle of blood! The eagle of courage!

  A shout sounded behind her. At the same moment, Maeve was blinded by a flash of light that came at her from the side. Fire seared across her flank.

  Not flame … pain …

  She stumbled and fell.

  Cúchulainn did not wash the gore from his face when he stormed into Emain Macha. He wanted the blood of his dead comrades all over him. The guards at the king’s hall jumped out of the way as he flung back the doors and passed through the cavernous building like a flaming brand.

  Cúchulainn took the stairs to the storehouse behind in one bound. Conor was inside with a druid, tallying the Beltaine gifts. The two men stood in a pool of light from a horn-lamp, which outlined the shapes of barrels and baskets piled against the walls. Chinks of daylight fell through the cracks in the boards.

  The king spun around when Cúchulainn appeared. The Champion was trailing his unsheathed sword from one bloodied hand.

  “Tell me this was no defeat.” The veined whites of Conor’s eyes gleamed in the dimness.

  “The Connacht warriors fled, though many still live.” Cúchulainn’s lips were numb, his voice hoarse from shouting.

  Conor glanced at the druid, whose pen was poised over the sheet of bleached leather to tally the marks. “Go,” the king murmured. “We will continue this later.”

  A storehouse would not have been Cúchulainn’s chosen ground, but the sides of drying beef, the sacks of musty grain, and vats of cheese in the darkness, whispered to him that if his warriors faltered, the fortunes of the people would be next—their safety, their survival.

  As soon as the druid was gone, Cúchulainn snapped, “Maine, Brecc, and Curoi are dead, and many others with them.”

  “Fiacra?”

  Cúchulainn shook his head.

  One of Conor’s cheeks spasmed, an eye flickering. “When warriors fight, they die.”

  “If you had not abandoned yourself to this folly, uncle, Connacht would not have chosen to raid at the time of the Beltaine feast. They must know of our weakness.”

  “No,” the king rasped, eyes flaring. “It is that the bastards have named the she-wolf their queen.” His lip curled as if he tasted something vile. “She was always hungry to humiliate me … always seeking to bring me down. Eochaid spawned her just to plant a traitor in our midst …”