The Raven Queen

by Jules Watson

  A nearby priest was holding one of the warriors down. The sick man was arching his back and swatting the air, filled with horror at something only he could see. His cries were those of a frenzied animal.

  “Where is the chief druid?” Conor barked.

  The priest wiped his face on his shoulder as he pinned the man’s arms. “In the temple, praying this scourge be taken from us!”

  A wave of dizziness took Conor. “How many are sick?”

  “Hundreds, my lord. All the noble houses in Emain Macha and the guest lodges boast men as ill. The warriors from Alba and the east are also stricken, screaming and shaking their hands and feet. But we have run out of herbs, and water does not stop the burning.” His thin face was bloodless. “We do not know what to do!”

  Conor collapsed on the stair, his thoughts slipping as he tried to grasp them.

  The border lords … I need more men.

  No! When they hear of this they will attack and unseat me.

  No one must know …

  A scream split the fetid air. One of the sick men shoved the druids aside and stumbled across the hall, gibbering. Conor could barely make out his words as he fell, trying to burrow into the wall. “She comes … great wings … save me … Nemain, Nemain!”

  Conor snapped straight, his head spinning. Nemain was one of the battle frenzies, the crow goddesses. Red-haired Macha was her sister.

  Fear wiped away his dizziness. He groped for the young guard, who was rooted to the spot with his spear braced, terrified. “Take me to Macha’s temple,” Conor rasped. “We must sacrifice everything we can to beg her favor. Hurry!”

  Maeve left Cruachan at the head of a glittering column of warriors. That day, the cold wind clawed at them, the sky the hue of beaten iron. In defiance, as it flowed over the plains, the great war-band was afire, blazing with scarlet cloth and painted shields, polished metal, red horses and flaming hair.

  The sickness in Maeve’s belly had gone. She was swept along now as part of this great beast, with its teeth of iron and its scales of bronze.

  The north of Connacht was a realm of lakes and bogs threaded with streams. There were few places for a heavy force of horses, chariots, and baggage carts to cross the great river, and few passages between the mud and high ground. They picked the only good trail, a wide funnel of drier land flanked by ridges.

  Four days later the Great Raid had come to a halt.

  Maeve sat her horse on a low ridge with her battle-leaders around her. Down below, the pass was blocked by a ditch, the soil heaped into a rampart behind it, topped by oak stakes. A track through the rampart was guarded by barred gates, and the bank ran for a league over the hills to either side.

  Garvan’s whistle was snatched by the wind. “The Gates of Macha.”

  Maeve realized she was grinding her teeth. She glanced at Fergus. “The stockade is new.”

  Fergus shifted in his saddle, his stocky horse bearing him with a stoic expression. “With the Ulaid forces weakened, I did not think the gates would be heavily guarded.”

  As the scouts had already reported, they were guarded. Ranks of Ulaid men darkened the top of the earth and wood ramparts, their spear-tips clipped by the dull leaf-fall daylight. Their glinting lances waved in agitation as more of Maeve’s forces drew up along the valley.

  “You cannot hide a war-band this big,” Cormac put in. “The border chiefs must be better prepared than we had hoped.” His lip curled, his eyes reflecting the bleak gray of the sky. “Perhaps their hatred of him has brought them together after all.”

  Maeve nudged Meallán to the edge of the ridge. She had galloped over these hills the day she fled Conor, with their coarse marsh grass and wind-bent trees. She’d been friendless then, everyone and everything arrayed against her.

  That had changed, and yet still she sat here and her legs felt the same … the jelly of marrow in bone. She dragged a hand through her fringe to pull sense into her head.

  Fraech spoke up, his horse prancing. “If we do not challenge them, we give the lords time to send to Conor for more warriors, or to gather more themselves. It has to be now.”

  Yes. She could not bear to flee through these hills again, with fear riding her.

  Fraech caught Maeve’s glance. He was arrayed for once in the riches of his kin: a green cloak caught with a gold brooch, a shirt of mail polished to silver, and bronze bands around his upper arms. Feathered iron wings spread up each side of his helmet, and the brow-guard was incised with the suggestion of a beak: the eagle of his mountain home. Maeve’s heart lifted. Her men would follow him, and they would win.

  Fergus and Cormac agreed they should attack. With Fraech and the other battle-leaders, they all hastened down the hill to summon their men. At the last minute, and to everyone’s surprise, Ferdia had joined the war-band. Maeve, though, knew he would not fight; not now.

  She understood what he really wanted.

  As the others left, she dismounted and plucked at the bindings that held her raven helmet and sword to her saddle.

  Ailill spurred his horse up. “You are not fighting, firebrand. You have my kingdom’s hopes as well as others in your hands now.” She glared at him, and his fingers closed upon hers on the strap. “You nearly died last time. See sense for once, woman!”

  Beltaine. Soft hands lifting furs about her naked shoulders as she burned with fever. The rush of life back into her limbs, a sunlit glade. Sired in light.

  Maeve gasped and tried to yank her hand away, but Ailill’s grip was too crushing.

  “Brother.” Finn spoke behind them. “I heard the Galeóin leader calling for you.”

  Maeve turned. Finn teased or cajoled Ailill, but never had Maeve heard her sound sharp with her brother. All that time the girl had spent with her as she went about the business of queen-ship these past moons must have seeped into her, after all.

  “Then you speak sense to her,” Ailill muttered, turning his horse down the slope.

  When he was gone, Maeve ripped her scabbard from the saddle and stomped to the lip of the slope where it dropped to the valley. Her warriors were arming themselves, sheltering in copses of trees that were red-brown and yellow, the leaves already scattering on the cold wind. “Do not bother,” she threw over her shoulder to Finn.

  Ailill was right. She just needed to feel a sword in her grip, in the hope she would feel nothing else. It didn’t work. She ached to her core; a wound, it was dawning over her, that would not heal.

  “Just remember,” she added, “you begged me to let you come, and I did—against my better judgment.”

  Finn reached her side, tentatively resting a small hand on Maeve’s shoulder. “He is right, Mother, but not just because you can’t afford to be hurt.” She braced herself, the wind blowing her copper hair over her face. “You seem … different. Something has happened to make you falter, and … it makes me afraid, like Ailill.”

  Maeve had to dip her head to the sodden ground beneath. Her breastplate was tightly bound to hide the slight fullness in her belly, and she could hardly breathe. Her hand covered Finn’s warm fingers. “Little Red, Garvan calls you.” She glanced sidelong at her daughter. “How foolish for a mother to pass her stubborn will to a child. I should have known better.”

  Finn smiled.

  Squeezing her hand, Maeve turned. “I was not well for a time, but I am not faltering.” I have borne much; I will bear this. She looped the sword-belt around her waist, settling the scabbard behind her thigh. “I will watch from up here, but you will listen to sense and go back to Levarcham at the wagons.”

  Finn’s face fell. “But … No! I need to see—”

  “I order you not as a mother, but as your queen! What is the point of you training at weapons if you will not obey me?”

  Finn chewed her lip, a rueful glint in her eye. “Fraech is the war-leader, and I know he will let me.”

  “Except that I rule you both. Now go, before I get angry.” Maeve kissed Finn’s brow, turned her by the shoulders, and ge
ntly smacked her on the rump.

  Creeping close with a small guard of warriors, Maeve took up position at the end of the ridge near the Ulaid ramparts, sheltering in a clump of trees. As she scrambled into position, war trumpets blew, rebounding off the hills.

  The Connacht war-band began a charge on foot up the valley, and were greeted with a hail of Ulaid spears in return. The attackers dodged the falling lances, hurling themselves at the ramparts like a wave upon rocks.

  Breathlessly, Maeve watched Fergus driving through his milling Red Branch warriors. Fraech was also tall enough to outshine the men around him, his helmet throwing off flashes of silver and bronze. His fighters eddied about him as he calmly shouted orders and encouraged them on. Ailill was bellowing at his Galeóin to throw their own lances back, driving the Ulaid down behind their stockade.

  Spears sliced the air in all directions now, glittering like rain.

  A wave of Connacht warriors swarmed in under the cover of the Galeóin lances to catch at the ramparts and swing themselves up in acrobatic flips. They grappled on the stockade, the Ulaid defenders desperately trying to hack them down as well as strike falling spears away with their shields. Maeve’s gaze darted back and forth. Fergus taught them that. Such feats bore the stamp of the Red Branch.

  More of Maeve’s forces poured in. The great tide of Connacht spread up the sides of the hills that flanked the gates. The Ulaid defenders screamed “Macha! Macha!” stabbing down with their blades. Connacht-men fell into the ditch, tangling in knots of limbs stained with blood.

  Something flashed in the sky, and one of Maeve’s guards bellowed.

  She instinctively crouched. A spear clattered against a nearby birch tree, another embedding itself in the trunk. Showered with splinters, Maeve touched her cheek, her fingers coming away bloodied.

  “Hurry!” her guards shouted, flinging up their shields as they scrambled back. More spears struck the shields and bounced off. Then one came in low, skewering a young warrior’s calf, and he howled and fell.

  Maeve swept up his shield and shoved two warriors toward the wounded man. “Lift him, quickly!”

  She looped her forearm through the strap and hauled the heavy shield over her head, pushing it against the others to form a roof of wood. As they shuffled away, Maeve’s foot caught and she stumbled, landing on her front. Her hand went to her belly, but then another of her men cried a warning and she had to wrench her shield up with both hands.

  An impact shivered through her wrists.

  Maeve stared, gulping for air. A spear had nearly come through the shield, its shaft lodged in the wood. Its glinting tip was frozen in flight toward her heart. Someone had scratched a mark into it—the horned moon of Macha.

  She could hear the roar of blood in her ears.

  She limped away with her men, her thigh strained, the embedded spear and shield dragging down her arm. At last the rain of death ceased and she tossed the broken shield away. As the others tended to the wounded, Maeve threw her back against an ash tree, breathing hard. She looked again to the fighting.

  Ulaid reinforcements.

  The border chiefs had kept the bulk of their men hidden in the hills behind the ramparts, their spearmen creeping out to a distance either side. Now all the Ulaid came pouring out from their hiding places, and the valley rang with their savage cries.

  The momentum of Maeve’s warriors slowed as they clashed with the new fighters, the rivers of men seeping like thick blood now, and not water.

  Standing on each other’s shoulders, some brave Connacht-men had forced their way over the gates; Maeve thought she saw the eagle on Fraech’s helmet among them. The next moment the gates began to creak open, and the fighters from inside and outside all swirled together.

  Maeve blinked cold sweat from her eyes.

  A bearlike figure was striding up the hill toward her, hauling a scrawny fighter. Maeve pushed herself from the tree and limped toward Fergus. His silver hair was splashed with blood, which streaked his wrinkled cheeks like war-paint. His sword was dark with gore.

  Fergus threw down his captive and pinned him with a foot. His chest rose and fell, his face fey with bloodlust. “The cattle-lords have put aside their differences after all, it seems.” He shook sweat from his hair. “We cannot force our way through easily. We’ll be mired in these ditches.”

  “We can if we persevere—”

  “No!” Fergus roared, eyes battle-glazed. “We will spend ourselves before we ever reach Emain Macha!”

  And Conor.

  Maeve looked at the squirming man trapped beneath Fergus’s foot. “What do you bring me?”

  He sneered. “The ones who run are scared enough to bargain.” He leaned on the whimpering Ulaid fighter, who was eyeing Fergus’s sword. “Tell the queen what you told me, and I will spare you.”

  The man turned his face into the churned turf. “M-My lord is Aed son of Cumhall. These are our men and those of the lords Finbar and Cainnech.”

  “Not the king’s men?” Maeve demanded.

  The man shook his head, gathering a mouthful of mud. “No riders have come from Emain Macha for many days.”

  Fergus bared his teeth at Maeve. “There are no scarlet shields on this battlefield, no gold tree.” He pressed again to squeeze the last words from the prisoner. “Tell her why.”

  “W-We hear strange things. The Red Branch has been struck down by a sickness, pangs in the belly. They are abed and cannot move!”

  As the stink of blood swirled around them, the eyes of Maeve and Fergus met, fierce and bright.

  CHAPTER 30

  At dusk Maeve drifted through her war-camp like the pall of smoke on the air.

  The fighting had come to a stalemate by dark, the ramparts and hills giving the defenders an advantage over her forces, even though they were superior in numbers and skill.

  Neither could break through and deliver a crushing defeat. As honor demanded, both war-bands retreated at sundown to nurse their wounded and farewell their dead. The Ulaid hauled trees to fill the gap in the rampart, and bonfires now glowed on both flanks of the valley, the stink of the pyres sickly sweet on the air.

  Maeve would not mindlessly send men to die in that darkness, however close those fires. It was supposed to have been an easy entry into the Ulaid.

  She paused, listening to the moans of pain around her. Piles of scavenged weapons glinted beneath a bronze moon.

  She had vowed that if she sent men to battle, she would not veil her nose from the stink of blood or fevers, or her eyes from the spasms of the wounded. So tonight, as dusk fell, she had knelt beside them with the druids, held their hands and bent to hear their last words.

  This night she was Bríd to them, Eriu, and Danu—the soft, loving Mother calling them home. But her heart stirred, and twisted, and her own gentle words tasted bitter in the face of their pain.

  Now, at the fringes of camp, Maeve knelt at a stream to wash the ash from her throat. Here in the dark, tears could run down her face and drip onto her empty hands, and she did not have to move or speak or mask anything.

  Levarcham found her there.

  The druid had climbed the hills for a view of the Ulaid, she told Maeve, hoping for a vision. A glimpse had come to her in the mist, in water, of the sickness among the Ulaid Red Branch.

  So the words of the captured warrior were true.

  When the druid fell silent, Maeve faced the gathering darkness. The mother goddess Eriu must fade away now. She had to call Macha the battle-queen back from Her shadowy realm.

  Maeve and Levarcham made for the great command tent, strung together from cowhides and rope. Inside, Maeve’s swollen eyes adjusted to the glow of horn lamps hanging from the roof-poles and a brazier filled with coals. Flaming wicks in bowls of oil splashed a brighter light on a folding table set with food.

  Unpinning her cloak, she instinctively sought for three faces: Finn, Garvan, Fraech. They were safe.

  Ailill, Fergus, and Cormac were also sprawled on cushions, drink
ing ale. Hangings of wool and fur kept out the cold night air.

  Fraech was slumped in a chair, filthy from his boots to his bloodstained tunic. His face was black from the ash of the pyres. Finn crouched next to him, darting glances at the scratches up his forearms. The eagle helmet glinted at his feet.

  Maeve went straight to Fraech and bowed her head, touching it with her fist. “You were in the heart of the breach at the gates. Your bravery was the glory of this day.”

  The mask of soot made Fraech’s green eyes more vivid, and despite his weariness, there was a glow of pride in his smile. “I thank you, cousin.”

  Turning, Maeve offered her wrist to Fergus in the clasp of warriors. He snorted as she struggled to get her fingers around his great forearm, until she gave in and slapped his shoulder. He had proven his loyalty, if not to her then to their cause. Cormac had also fought well, and she murmured to him and touched his arm.

  There was a rakish cut above Garvan’s eye, and a scrap of linen about his wrist seeped blood. Maeve could hardly look at it. He had been one of the first to fling himself over the Ulaid rampart. “Get that wound seen to,” she said in his ear as she hugged him.

  “It is nothing.” His smile was wry. “When I agreed to follow you, spitfire, I had no idea where it would take me.”

  “Surely this is better than endless boar-hunts and dice games?”

  “Hmm—a toasty fire, a vat of ale, a girl on my lap … tempting right now.”

  Her smile was weary as she turned, nodding at Ailill, who lifted his cup to her, his mouth grim. He bore no wounds or dirt, having stayed back with his spearmen.

  Gods, her tongue was dry as sawdust. “Here, Mother.” Finn hopped up and poured ale for her.

  Maeve drank, placing the cup on the table. “Levarcham—Conor’s druid and a great seer—has received a vision of the place she once called home.”

  Everyone turned as Levarcham limped across the rug. Fraech hauled himself up and gestured to his chair, and with a nod Levarcham sat down.

  “What your captives told you was true,” she said to Fergus, her voice as dry as wind in reeds. “The Red Branch has been struck by a terrible illness.” She gripped the chair, her eyes far away. “Conor has banished all women from Emain Macha. He has dishonored the Goddess herself, slain Her innocent daughters.” She licked her lips. “This is Her punishment.”