by Jules Watson
Cúchulainn gathered together his discarded weapons, the fallen spears, unbroken sling-stones, daggers, axes, and swords. He piled them up on the banks of the stream where he could get to them. They shone rose and gold in the rising sun, and for once that dancing glitter did not make his heart sing, only weep.
Ferdia was slicing the sinew bindings from spear-tips, piling up the blunt shafts. Cúchulainn waded into the stream, and as he crossed the ford he drew in the silvery glints of the water, his body a fountain for Source. When he stepped out the other side, the muttering of the warriors broke into louder rumblings of excitement. The sun flashed off their helmets and swords as they raced to rouse others from their camp.
Soon the drumming and banging of shields began again, an urgency for death forced into Cúchulainn against his will.
Ferdia approached, holding two spears with intact points. “Whoever makes the longest throw can choose whether to leap or defend.” His voice was matter of fact.
Now that Cúchulainn stood close, all he could think about was grabbing his friend around the shoulders, feeling his strength at his side. The longing overcame him, but he crushed it. Ferdia spoke so because it was unbearable not to.
They lined up and threw the spears into the rising sun.
Ferdia’s landed a breath in front of the Hound’s, both points buried in the pebbles of the lakeshore. The sheet of water beyond was as bright as a flame. “I will jump,” Ferdia said. His pained glance went to the warriors baying for blood on the red hillslope above.
Cúchulainn’s chest cramped. The man who jumped the Salmon Leap was more vulnerable than the one who stayed on the ground. The leap was the spectacular move, though, a way to show off. What have they seen of you, Ferdia, that makes you so ashamed? But the Hound only nodded. He could see that Ferdia’s sanity could only cling to pride now.
It was difficult to leap in either horn or iron armor, but Ferdia’s was in segments, and Cúchulainn’s mail-shirt had been made by the finest smith in Erin and was pliable.
The Hound retreated and stood with arms away from his blades. When undertaking the Salmon Leap as a duel, the defender had to keep his feet in one place and his hands off his weapons until the leaper left the ground.
Ferdia balanced the spear-shaft over his shoulder. “Manannán give me strength,” he called.
“Lugh give me speed,” Cúchulainn returned.
The pounding of the war-drums quickened, joined by the shriek of horns. The audience got to their feet and cheered, excited to see the famed Salmon Leap with their own eyes.
Ferdia poised on his toes as the roar grew, punctuated by those galloping heartbeats. His stare fixed on Cúchulainn. Together, their blood coursed.
Cúchulainn was keeping the Source reined in, struggling against being taken over in case he harmed Ferdia. He let its flame pour along his limbs but did not allow it to flood his heart or push his mind out of the way. He was so distracted by the agony in his friend’s eyes he therefore did not see the ripple go through the silver around them.
Ferdia took off without warning.
Racing, he shoved the butt of the spear into the ground, bent the shaft, and twisted his body high in a vault. Looking up, Cúchulainn was blinded by the sun and caught out by the unexpected angle of Ferdia’s body as he tumbled down.
Cúchulainn’s muscles were a heartbeat behind where they should have been, his reflexes blunted by pain. Ferdia came over his head even as Cúchulainn was still turning.
When the leaper was more skilled, he stabbed his enemy before the other spun about. A good defender could skewer the leaper as he hit the ground. There was no way to accomplish either feat without committing to a deadly blow.
Both men were instantly lost to training, to instinct. Ferdia’s blade was heading for Cúchulainn’s throat as Cúchulainn was grinding around on his heel, stabbing toward Ferdia’s groin.
Neither sword met flesh. Perfectly matched, they clanged together.
A shout flew from Cúchulainn’s lips, shock at Ferdia’s speed and his own failing. Ferdia gasped at the impact of their swords, the tendons in his neck standing out. With senseless eyes, Ferdia slashed again, growling, his mind lost to his heart’s pain.
Cúchulainn was too stunned to react, and Ferdia’s blade opened a seam across his hand. The Hound’s first sword-blood.
The Source flared in Cúchulainn, and he saw only an enemy outlined in silver fire, every movement trailing an afterburn. He cried out again, and combat began in earnest.
Back and forth they traded blows. Thrust, block, spin away, lunge in. Swords were bent and thrown aside, fresh ones caught up. Blades locked, they grappled against each other and broke apart, and one after the other launched fiercer assaults, raining down blows.
Ferdia fell first, grappling among the littered weapons and at the last moment blocking Cúchulainn’s downward swipe with a broken spear. While his friend was off balance from the lunge, Ferdia grabbed another sword off the ground and, jumping up, ran at Cúchulainn.
Cúchulainn stumbled back, scrabbling for the grip of a shield and bringing it up just as Ferdia’s sword buried itself in the wood. Cúchulainn tossed the shield away, wrenching Ferdia’s blade from his hands. They grasped new weapons and fell upon each other again.
Their flesh was caught by sword-edges and shattered wood. Blood streaked their faces and mixed with sweat and flecks of saliva, and where it poured from arm wounds it made their hilts slippery. “Drink,” Cúchulainn gasped at last.
Side by side they staggered to the water, drinking and washing the blood from their fingers. By unspoken agreement they did not clean their faces. It was easier to fight a nameless enemy, eyes white within a mask of gore.
Squatting on his heels, Ferdia looked into the tumbling water. “When I’m dead,” he said hoarsely, “take my head and put the skull by your hearth so my shade can find you at Samhain. We will always be one then, until you come to my camp on the other side of the veils. I want our names to be forever joined.”
“They are already.” Cúchulainn swayed on his feet. He hawked up saliva and blood and spat them out. “And you will not die.”
Ferdia straightened, wincing. “Lugh’s balls, what are you doing to me, then?”
Cúchulainn blinked, reaching out and at last clutching Ferdia’s shoulder. “Trying to clobber some sense into you.”
Ferdia snorted, the shoulder bones beneath Cúchulainn’s hand shuddering. For a heartbeat they were together.
Then Ferdia’s face spasmed, and grief roared up in his eyes and sense fled again.
He knocked Cúchulainn’s arm away and staggered, groping for a sword. As he was beaten back by the next attack, Cúchulainn glanced at the climbing sun. Hurry, he said to the remains of the Red Branch, willing them to shake off their sickness. Come and make this a battle, so Ferdia and I can fight and be spared.
In weariness, blows became more desperate. Ferdia landed a cut along the edge of Cúchulainn’s mail-shirt again, nearly piercing his belly. Cúchulainn swiped the back of Ferdia’s leg—a wound that would have crippled another man. Perhaps madness blocked Ferdia’s pain, for though blood filled his boot, he did not break stride.
Eventually the pain blurred even the love in Cúchulainn’s heart. Ferdia’s bloody face became that of every savage who had ever run screaming at him, trying to sever his pulse. The urge for survival swamped everything.
Ferdia also glanced at the sun, and Cúchulainn thought he saw a shadow cross his eyes. Then Ferdia sucked in a great breath and threw himself on Cúchulainn in the fiercest assault yet.
Their blades became a blur of flashing steel, the air filled with the whiz and bite of iron. Cúchulainn was at last forced to let go into the frenzy, his gestures flowing into the deadly dance, divorced from his mind.
They staggered into the ford, water spraying up. Sun shafted through the droplets, enveloping them in bright mist and shutting out everything else. Consumed by flame, Cúchulainn knew when he cut Ferdia’s arm, wh
en his sword snapped the taut flesh at Ferdia’s side. Tears ran down his face as he struck away Ferdia’s weapon and stabbed him in the thigh. “Don’t do this!” he bellowed.
Ferdia’s empty eyes stared through him, though, and his manic smile curdled Cúchulainn’s blood as he bore down upon him once more. With a leap, Ferdia drove Cúchulainn back over a rock until the Hound stumbled and fell in the shallow water.
Cúchulainn was aware of Ferdia scrabbling at his waist again, and thought he reached for another sword. The silver fire roared up and the Hound groped desperately among his discarded weapons at the water’s edge, looking for anything to break through Ferdia’s madness. Anything.
A shaft came to hand. Cúchulainn grasped it and went to throw.
Ferdia staggered back, his smile flaring, and the shining plates of his armor fell away—he had been cutting them free. With a furious yell, Cúchulainn tried to check his thrust, but he had already loosed the spear. It flashed past his eyes toward Ferdia’s undefended body.
Bronze and iron …
Cúchulainn bellowed again. He had grabbed the gae bolga.
Never had that vicious weapon been flung at such close quarters, and the Source had given Cúchulainn the strength of many. The barbed spear flew true, and with a sickening thud sank deep into Ferdia’s belly. He fell to his knees, his gray eyes wide.
Cúchulainn scrambled over to his friend. Push it through … all the way through and bind him and he will live.
The sinew on the spear had tangled with Ferdia’s weapons, though, and the current of the stream dragged the gae bolga even as Cúchulainn reached him. With a deadly snick the tangled barbs sprang out, lodging in Ferdia’s innards. Sprawled in the stream, he whimpered, white-faced.
Cúchulainn clasped his friend in his arms, and his tortured cry rebounded off the hillslopes and far across the shining lake. The baying of the men faded away, and there was silence.
A cloak of red fanned through the water behind Ferdia. His helmet had fallen off, and his black hair trailed through Cúchulainn’s fingers like river-weed. Cúchulainn cradled Ferdia’s face, his other hand trying to hold the gaping wound closed. Blood poured from the runnels carved along the gae bolga’s shaft. When Cúchulainn accidentally nudged it, Ferdia cried out and Cúchulainn let go, his hands flexing uselessly. He could not look at the wound again.
All was hushed; they were alone in sunlit mist among the trees.
Ferdia smiled, blood trickling from his mouth, his breaths growing shallow. “At last … a way out …”
Cúchulainn’s shoulders heaved and he shook his head.
“Use your sword,” Ferdia whispered, beginning to shudder. “A good end.”
It was what warriors vowed to do, but for once Cúchulainn’s oaths deserted him. “No.” He ground his cheek into Ferdia’s wet hair. “Hold on—we will cut the gae bolga. There are druids here …”
“Cú …” Ferdia’s breath bubbled and his head stirred. Could that be a gasp, a laugh? “This time … I will be first.”
Numbness was creeping over Cúchulainn from the freezing water. He rocked Ferdia, lips pressed to his brow. “I’ve seen my death, Fer.” For the first time, Cúchulainn whispered his secret. “I am tied to a tall stone and there are men around me with swords. I’ve seen it, but I don’t know when it will happen.”
Ferdia’s cracked lips parted in a sweet smile. “I will come then … for you.”
Cúchulainn crushed him to his breast, that desperate grip saying everything for him. It took some time before Ferdia’s neck sank back upon Cúchulainn’s wrist.
Ferdia’s eyes still gleamed, but now they were glassy. His body settled into Cúchulainn’s arms. At last Cúchulainn found a voice. “Take care of you as you would of me.” For once there was no answering smile.
The sun of a new day was soaring above him, heartless and bright. But for Cúchulainn all light was extinguished, and darkness claimed him.
Wielding her healer’s authority, Levarcham used the well-being of the unborn child to force Maeve to rest and drink more strengthening brews before she tried to walk. One part of Maeve was ablaze, desperate to discover Conor’s whereabouts. The other was utterly exhausted.
“You will not be able to triumph against anyone if you collapse before them,” Levarcham warned. “And you have scouts on the lookout.” Though the veils had only parted for a glimpse, that silver light shone from the druid now with a quiet force that matched Maeve’s fire.
They made their way back from the west side of the hills as the light climbed the sky. But Maeve was basking in a deeper glow: the spirits of the child and Ruán, woven together. He came for me. She was sure of it. She would not lose this babe—she would not lose any more.
Maeve and Levarcham reached the camp not long after high-sun. It was deserted but for the warriors on watch, the rest of the men at the river.
Maeve’s heightened senses transformed the camp into a colorful weave of bright threads. The smells of ash, meat, dung, and blood. A wash of gold and brown from the trees. Banners flapping on the tents. The dull gleam of tarnished metal.
She heard the distressed breathing of a man before she saw him.
The warrior rushed up to her, very young and white-faced. “My lady!” As he touched his chest and brow he shivered.
Maeve was still floating on the strange sensation that her spirit was now vast and glowing. It expanded far from her body like the flow of an ocean, encompassing the earth and streams, the trees and hills. It was hard to remember that a small part of her was a queen. With a great effort, she drew herself back, focusing her senses down to this body, this mind.
The man was afraid to speak to her.
Maeve gripped his shoulder, her voice welling with power. “Tell me.”
He gulped. “Ferdia mac Daman died not long after dawn. My lord Fraech … he was so angry he caught up weapons and went to face the Hound himself! But the Hound was in a great rage and struck him down, and Lord Fraech collapsed. Morand charged in to challenge Cúchulainn instead, but then we saw Lord Fraech stir. He was only wounded—he lives, though he lies on the field and we cannot get near him.”
Maeve’s relief chilled when the boy’s eyes dropped. “What else?”
He screwed up his face as if expecting a blow. “When the Lady Finnabair thought him slain she screamed and tried to run to him. The men would not let her … so she broke from them and fled. Away. Up the great hill.”
Maeve jolted back fully into her body. “And no one went after her?”
The youth’s head drooped. “Some were trying to get to Lord Fraech and were beaten back by the Hound, others argued over who would go next. We thought her gone back to camp … to you. Men set after her, but she is so fleet she disappeared and …” He trailed off.
“The scouts?”
“They’ve gone out already, lady.”
Maeve dismissed him and turned. Levarcham gripped her cold hands, searching her face.
“There is nothing you can do now, friend.” Maeve did not see her, only Finn. “Put forth your arts to save the wounded, and prepare for Fraech, if he lives.”
As Levarcham hurried away, Maeve summoned all of her willpower. She must blaze again, for Finn.
She swooped through the camp, belting on swords and daggers and gathering the remaining scouts. Finally, she summoned a troop of the fleet-footed Galeóin spearmen that had come with Ailill. A large force of warriors would only reveal their presence—and Finn’s—to an enemy lurking in the hills.
Maeve could feel him now, a darkness gathering beyond the ridge. Conor.
She and her men struck out west. Scouts used birdcalls to each other, and soon the bleak cries of ravens echoed over the bare hills as the trackers cast great circles looking for Finn.
The sun was falling down the sky when they met in the blue shadows of a cold wood.
“We found her trail,” a scout told Maeve. He was clad in deerskins, the mottled hides blending him into the forest. “She was runni
ng, breaking branches and bracken with no thought to hide.” His eyes fell away from Maeve. “The Ulaid have her. She stumbled into their scouts and they took her with them to a camp nearby.”
Maeve stared into the shadowed woods. “I thought there were no Ulaid nearby but Cúchulainn.”
“There were not yesterday,” another scout piped up. “A war-band came before dawn along hidden valleys from Emain Macha. They know the land better than us. It is not a great number—two score at most.”
“Who?”
The man scratched his beard, puzzled. “Boys wielding swords like clubs, their armor too big for them.”
The man in deerskin nodded. “It is an odd sight—a chariot sheathed in gold but drawn by cart-horses, and one tent only, with a red banner, the poles gold-tipped. And … a shield outside. A white shield.”
Maeve took a step to a birch tree and held its trunk, head down. She knew that white shield. It was called Ocean, made of whalebone and bleached sealskin, with patterns picked out in sea-pearl.
A shield fit for a king.
CHAPTER 38
The fighters accompanying Conor were clearly no better at keeping watch than wielding swords. Though they camped upon a low knoll among leafless trunks, Maeve and her men were able to crawl unseen up behind a higher hill nearby and come down a gully on the other side, giving them a good vantage point.
Maeve crouched there in a hawthorn thicket clustered with red berries. The scouts were in brown hides and feathers. The Galeóin bore their lances in back-carriers, the shafts sticking up like bare saplings.
To the Ulaid they would look part of the forest itself.
They peered at the figures moving among the makeshift shelters of branches on the knoll. There were no banners bearing the gold tree, or proud rows of spears and shields. “They do not look like Red Branch, or strut about like Red Branch.” Maeve tucked her hair behind her ears, squinting. “It seems Conor has come with a ragtag bunch of … boys, yes. He must be mad.” She sat back on her haunches, her fingers on her brow.
