The Raven Queen

by Jules Watson

  And she let herself fall.

  Caught up in instinct, Ruán cried out and his fingers reached to snatch her back, but the sídhe disappeared into the veils of spray.

  CHAPTER 31

  The army of Connacht split. The greater part of their forces would hold the Ulaid warriors in the West, including Ros Ruadh’s old commander and the Mumu battle leader. A smaller band headed east, swifter and more nimble.

  Maeve said farewell to Garvan in a little brown-leafed grove on the ridge. His men were nearby with their horses, murmuring together.

  Conscious of them, she drew Garvan into a king’s embrace and thumped him on the back. “Be as crazy as you like,” she muttered, “but do not get yourself killed.”

  “Spitfire, the crazy one of us is you. Still, you have tried hard to kill yourself and not managed it yet.” He searched her face, his smile fading. “Keep it up.”

  The sun had browned him, the cut on his brow hardening his eyes. His dark hair was tangled with leaf-litter. Maeve picked out some stray pieces and dropped them. “I will if you will.” Suddenly careless of who watched them, she held his face and kissed his lips.

  The teasing glint in Garvan’s eye stayed with her as she rode away.

  Traveling fast without carts and women, two days later Maeve’s smaller war-band came down upon the Plain of Muirthemne near the eastern sea.

  Since her disastrous night with Ferdia, he had withdrawn even further, barely leaving his tent when they camped, and riding at the rear of the war-band. Even if he hated her, though, she knew he must be brought into the fold. He was a threat otherwise, unpredictable. Gifts did not sway him. Her very presence obviously now repelled him.

  Maeve called Finn to her tent, and observed her as the girl swept inside. She had bound her amber hair into tight braids, which revealed how these past moons had melted away the roundness of her face. Her features stood out more cleanly now. The sea-wind had stained Finn’s cheeks, and her eyes snapped with life. She looked young and vivid, dressed in trews and tunic and a leather cap.

  Ferdia would dismiss anything too soft or lush. He revered courage; the nobility of a sharp blade, the simplicity of a skilled feat. Bravery. Purity. They ached in his voice when he spoke of Naisi and in his rare mentions of Cúchulainn.

  Did he worship those traits because he feared he lacked them?

  “Ferdia should be attending our councils,” Maeve told Finn, “and readying himself to fight for Emain Macha. We need him.”

  Finn’s bright expression dimmed. “I doubt he will fight,” she murmured, brushing dew from her brow where she’d ducked beneath a tree. “He seems broken, as if he can find no place for himself.”

  “Then we must give him a place.” Maeve paced along her trestle table, picking at blackberries. They tasted like pebbles, sitting heavy in her gut. “Ferdia is an unusual man, daughter. His father was a smith from a poor village in the far west of the Ulaid. The other Red Branch warriors came from kin-lines of great fighters, and gained their swords from the Red Branch hall. Ferdia did not learn such skills at his father’s knee, so he had to train much harder to win his way into the Red Branch as a grown man. This set him apart. In all my time at Emain Macha, he rarely dallied with women for longer than a night. He had no wife, children, hearth, or kin. All he had was Cúchulainn.”

  Finn’s eyes widened. “Poor man!”

  “Yes.”

  “You don’t sound sad,” Finn ventured, cocking her head in the shaft of sunlight that fell through the tent flap.

  Maeve chewed and forced the berries down her tight throat. She rubbed her stomach as if it might ease away this constant dread, but nothing would help. “The lives of many thousands of people are at risk—the very safety of Connacht. Set against that, my sympathy for Ferdia has its limits.” Her smile was rueful as she spread her hands. “He is lonely—if he is going to stay with us, then we need to make him feel he belongs, even a little. Just take him some mead. He won’t listen to me anymore.”

  At last Finn returned an unhappy nod.

  Maeve put her hands on her daughter’s shoulders. “Unlike me, you are sweet-tempered …” She gently rocked Finn on her heels. “… and good-natured …”

  That drew a grudging smile from Finn.

  “And you have a better chance of making Ferdia feel at home with us.” Maeve grew sober, holding Finn’s eyes. “I know some things about warriors, daughter. The pain you see is his shame. If he fights, he can hold his head high again, gain his soul back. It is for his good he should fight, not ours alone. Comfort yourself with that.”

  That night, Finn reluctantly sought out Ferdia.

  It was the coldest night so far, and the wind swept across the grassy lowlands north of Laigin. For once Ferdia had sought warmth, if not company. He was wrapped in his cloak on a knoll at the fringes of one of the Mumu campfires, his head resting on his fists. Sparks streamed into the starry sky on freezing gusts as the Mumu fighters sheltered the flames with their saddle-rolls.

  With a heavy heart, Finn lugged a jug of mead toward Ferdia, her cheeks burning as all the warriors stopped talking to gape at her. “The queen sent me to bestow this gift upon you.”

  Ferdia lifted his head. His eyes were bloodshot in the firelight, his dark hair knotted in clumps over his brow. “So she still thinks she can buy me.” His laugh was a croak. “I can hardly keep it down. She may as well pour it on the ground herself.”

  “It is the best mead in Erin,” Finn stammered. “The bees are grazed on heather, which gives a taste—”

  “Grazed?”

  Finn was arrested by a spark of dark humor in Ferdia’s eyes.

  “Like cows? So she commands bees now, too?”

  The Mumu warriors laughed as they rubbed their swords with pig-fat. Finn’s face flamed brighter.

  “Go back to your warm bed, princess,” Ferdia muttered.

  “I can’t.” Finn bit her lip to stare him down. “Let me pass some time, or I will only have to come back.”

  The others, all shaggy, wild-eyed mountain men, sniggered and leered at her. At last Ferdia took pity upon Finn, shrugging and shifting along to make room. While she lowered herself to the windblown grass, Ferdia gazed hard at the Mumu warriors until they dropped their heads back to their weapons.

  Finn flipped open the stopper of the jug, poured mead into a cup, and handed it to him.

  Ferdia held the beaker before the flames, the curve of transparent horn glowing. His armor was made of the same plates, speckled cream and brown. “I thought my life would come to more than drowning in mead.”

  Finn could not bear to see this noble, gray-eyed man brought so low. “It is worth more,” she blurted. She touched his knee without thinking, drawn to wounded things as she’d always been, with her hounds and horses. “You could leave all this behind, my lord.”

  It was an odd conversation, but the war-camp was untethered from the old world she knew. The familiar scents of her father’s hall had been replaced by the metallic tang of blood, the jingle of iron, and always, all around, harsh voices. There were no warm hearths or lowing of cattle or children crying. Finn had long since fallen into a kind of daze, unsure what was real and what a dream. Now she blinked, the firelight wavering. “You should find yourself a woman and fill your hearth with babies and your fields with cows.”

  Her fierceness surprised them both, for Ferdia laughed. “Should I, now?” He sobered. “How old are you?”

  “Nearly seventeen.”

  “I am twenty-six. And you are giving me advice?” His sagging face was despairing, though, not angry.

  Finn’s pity pained her, and she recklessly grabbed the cup and drank the mead. “You think I am young and therefore ignorant. But people forget that the quietest person sees the most, watching from the fringes.”

  His weary eyes flickered to life. “I know that.”

  The wind blew hair across her face, and she peeled back the strands. “I am the daughter of a king and queen, sister of princes. What
I have seen is that people do things because someone said it is their duty, or because they want something—power, alliances. Few people do what they truly want, when their hearts cry out and they cannot ignore it …” Finn trailed off, for Ferdia was staring at her. She shoved the empty cup back at him.

  “Well, little watcher …” He laughed again, bitterly. “You may be right. It is true I must find a way to breathe again.”

  By the yearning in his face, Finn guessed where his thoughts had flown. She got up. The one thing this poor man never had was peace. She could give him that, at least, and blast what her mother thought. “I will go, then.”

  Ferdia cocked his head at her. “On a dark night, princess, you made me remember there can be a dawn.”

  Finn nodded, confused. At least his face was softer now. He might sleep better.

  She wove back through the tents, and for some reason her heart seemed too full for her chest beneath that swollen moon. Her limbs tingled with the tension of the war-camp around her. She approached a familiar tent with a limp banner hanging from its peak, wriggled into the shadows behind the flap and waited.

  Men thumped by, swords swinging on their belts, their voices low. At last Finn recognized a certain set of shoulders, a proud carriage of head. Her heart banged out of rhythm, unbalancing her, and she cracked a stick beneath her feet.

  Fraech’s chin swung about, and he stepped over the rope and gripped her arms. She yelped, and immediately his fingers softened, rubbing her sleeves. “You’re freezing. Why are you skulking out here?”

  Finn’s breath came in plumes of mist. “Waiting for you.”

  “This camp is full of men with battle in their veins—and loins. You must be careful.”

  His possessive growl sent a shiver up her neck. “If a man did that to me against my will, Mother would roast him on the spit and serve him for supper.” Shyly, she linked her hands about his waist, and then more daring, pressed her breasts against his chest. They had kissed many times, but there had been no more than that. Now, the fire of the camp was running through her limbs. She might die … they might all die. She needed to know the mysteries of him—his smell, the warmth of his skin—before she left this life.

  Fraech’s thumb brushed her cheek. “She will probably do that to me anyway.”

  “She won’t. She needs you.” Finn went up on tiptoe to reach his face. “And anyway … I don’t care …” And after such reckless words with Ferdia, she didn’t.

  Their lips met, and Fraech took a sharp breath at the new force in Finn’s kiss. Then his hand was cradling the back of her head, holding it so he could drink more deeply of her mouth.

  “Be alone with me,” Finn gasped against his cheek, as his lips trailed down to her throat. “In the woods, where no one will find us.”

  In the bloody darkness of a war-camp, Finn blazed for a moment, and all considerations of duty fell away.

  At Cúchulainn’s hall at Dun Dalgan, the shadows had voices only he could hear.

  Emain Macha.

  Red Branch.

  Men are dying.

  Where is your duty?

  Cúchulainn glanced up as those hisses skittered over the thatch roof. It was daybreak and the hall was empty but for Emer, for he could bear no man’s company except Ferdia’s.

  Again he reached for the jug to dull the wound, and again he stopped.

  For many years, Ferdia’s control had enabled Cúchulainn to sometimes shrug off the weight of duty, the pressures of being King’s Champion. It let him revel in being a warrior like any other, drinking ale until his mind blurred, laughing at foolish things.

  Now, only Emer watched over him, her eyes clouded. No sword gleamed in Ferdia’s hand as he burnished it by the fire … only Emer’s needle glinting in the cloth.

  Cúchulainn knew he must keep a clear head for himself now. He had not drunk in weeks.

  The Hound took up his adze instead, peeling the bark off a new spear. The porridge sat in his gut like glue as the whispers began again. Emain Macha. The men were sick, people muttering of a curse. Macha’s curse. Did the fact he tried so hard to hold to his honor save him? He didn’t know. And why had he received no word from the lords in the West?

  At last he could take no more. The spear clattered onto the hearth-stone as Cúchulainn swept out, through the gate in the high timber stockade. In the dawn, he threw himself into the icy river below the fort, seeking to numb himself.

  When the sun was up, Emer found him on the riverbank. Cúchulainn’s home was set on the crest of a hill, guarding a southern pass into the Ulaid. Higher mountains rose on the eastern horizon, bleak and cloaked with purple.

  He sat naked on the meadow, combing out his hair. His weapons were arrayed about him. He had washed them in the sacred spring, and the fittings of bronze and horn were sheened with gold in that low sun, the iron spear-tips and sword-blades embodying a colder light.

  Emer halted. Grieving, Cúchulainn had not bothered with his appearance since returning from that terrible Red Branch feast. Her fists curled up. “You are not going back to Emain Macha now. You said you would not, in case you catch the fever.”

  “I have to. The voices will not let me rest.”

  “That is only guilt talking, husband. Your honor is pricked. That does not make it right.”

  “Of course it’s right!” As Cúchulainn leaped up he knocked over a pot of wool-fat. He kicked at it. “What does a man have to guide him if not honor?”

  Emer reached out to her husband’s chilled skin. Her dark brows were drawn in, wiping away the droop of her eyes he loved so well. “Look what happened the last time you wielded your honor in the service of Conor mac Nessa.”

  Cúchulainn let out a strangled grunt and stalked to the riverbank.

  “All those you loved were lost!” Emer was undaunted, striding behind him, holding her dark curls back with her hands. “Naisi, Ardan, Ainnle, Fiacra, Illan, Fergus—Ferdia! Your duty is to men of good faith. Conor mac Nessa is cursed.”

  “My duty is to the Ulaid!” he roared. “What shield will they have if I, too, abandon them? The king needs me to hold the Red Branch strong.”

  “There is no Red Branch.” Emer turned before him. “If you go to Emain Macha you will also be struck by their sickness, and if you die, you will abandon all of us.” Her hand cut the air. “You will not go!”

  Cúchulainn’s bellow was inarticulate. His hands itched for release, and he caught up a spear at his ankle and flung it into the dappled brown woods with a howl.

  The tip sank into an oak tree, the shaft breaking and catching in the branches. Birds scattered from the trees. Afterward, the only sounds were Cúchulainn panting and the clatter of the broken shaft as it fell among a shower of gold-edged leaves.

  He glimpsed something over the river then, a streak of fawn hide—a deer. Without thought, he threw himself into an old war-feat he’d learned with Ferdia.

  To expend his rage. To imagine Ferdia laughing.

  Cúchulainn ran toward another lance on the grass and vaulted over on one wrist, plucking up the spear with his free hand. On landing, he sent the force of the somersault down his arm, driving the lance through the undergrowth.

  Just as he let go, something barreled into him. Emer. “It’s a boy!” she yelled, both of them falling in a tangle of limbs. The spear yawed and missed, bringing down a scatter of broken twigs.

  Cúchulainn found himself staring into Emer’s blue eyes, his hands crushing her arms. The battle-fury had been suppressed for too long now, rekindled by Ferdia’s memory this morn. It flared brightly, blotting out all his sense. The plume of Source began to rise through him …

  Emer knew only one thing to bring him back. She planted her lips on his, kissing him desperately while cradling his cheeks. The warmth and silkiness of woman-flesh began to penetrate his fading awareness, dragging him back from that font of flame. With effort, Cúchulainn quenched it. He reminded himself who he was.

  A man.

  He took an unst
eady breath, and only then did Emer hop off. “Hurry!” she cried. “The poor thing will flee.”

  Emer splashed across the shallow river and ran up to the ragged boy. He was rooted there, staring at the spear embedded in a tree beside him. Both shaft and boy still quivered.

  “Are you hurt?” Emer dropped her voice.

  The boy’s face was as pale as the goatskin around his shoulders. He opened his mouth, but when the naked Cúchulainn came loping up, he could only gargle something incoherent.

  Emer put an arm about his shoulders. “This is Dun Dalgan, and this is the Lord Cúchulainn,” she murmured. “You are safe here.”

  Dazed, the barefoot boy pointed back the way he had come. “M-Mamaí … Fa … my sisters … behind me.”

  Cúchulainn glanced at Emer and, reading her face, softened his voice. “Take a breath, lad.”

  From within Emer’s arms, the child peeped at the myriad scars that knitted Cúchulainn’s body. “We come from Muirthemne.” Gulping, the boy drew free of Emer’s embrace and clapped his hands along his flanks, standing straight. “Fa said to find warriors and tell them many men have crossed the plain from the South. We fled before them … left everything.”

  “They killed your people?” Cúchulainn demanded.

  The boy shook his head. “They move fast toward the Calleach’s Hill.”

  Emer now looked more frightened than the boy. The Calleach’s Hill was in the East, looming over one of the passes into the Ulaid.

  By dusk more fugitives arrived, families of herders from the South. Emer bedded them down on bracken in their hall. From the older men, Cúchulainn gained an idea of the numbers of warriors, armor and weapons, their clothing and spear-standards.

  “It is Connacht,” he said to Emer when they at last retired to bed. “Maeve is queen now.” He sighed. “Her marriage to Conor was never happy from the start, but by the end I saw how she hated him. And now she is wed to Ailill of Laigin. Laigin, and Connacht.”