Finn Mac Cool

by Morgan Llywelyn

  “It is indeed. I am Iruis son of Huamor, who is chieftain of the Burren. He’s given me use of this mountain to build a fort on because I’m taking a wife next Beltaine.”

  “Huamor!” Finn’s voice thawed. “The very man we’re looking for. We must have missed his stronghold somehow. Do you know where he is now?”

  “I don’t know who you are.”

  Finn lifted his chin. In a voice like the ringing of bells, he announced, “I am Fionn son of Cuhal son of Trenmor.”

  Iruis sniffed. “Fionn means “fair,” and your hair’s the colour of bleached linen, so that much is true. As for your being a son of Cuhal, Mac Tremor … he was famous but he’s been dead a long time. Who can vouch for you now?”

  Finn’s lips tightened. He spat the words between them. “No one questions me. I’m a rígfénnid, an officer of the Fíanna.”

  Iruis was openly contemptuous now. “A boy like you?”

  “He is a rígfénnid!” Cailte burst out. “His fían are down below. He has eight armed and dangerous men in addition to me, and when the rest of them learn you wouldn’t take his word for his identity, you’re going to be in real trouble.”

  Iruis braced his legs belligerently and thrust out his jaw. Two strangers were not going to intimidate him on his own mountain. “Go look,” he ordered his companion, “and see if anyone’s really down there.”

  The other man stepped to the brink of the nearest rock ledge, peered over, and hastily moved back. “There are men down there,” he reported, “and they’re looking up this way.”

  “Not just men,” said Finn. “They’re members of the Fíanna, the best army in Erin, and I can summon them with a shout. Every fénnid is an expert with sword and spear. Would you care to see a demonstration?” He smiled disconcertingly, a feral baring of teeth.

  Iruis took a closer look at the strangers in the gathering twilight. Confidence began to seep from him like cold sweat.

  The one who claimed to be a rígfénnid was rawboned with youth, but massive of frame. Hair like molten silver streamed over improbably broad shoulders. His cheekbones were boulders. He wore a huge, rough mantle of wild-animal skins crudely stitched together with sinew, and a plain deerskin tunic; but a belt around his torso held a gilded and embossed leather scabbard. Thrusting from the scabbard was the leather-wrapped hilt of a shortsword, bound with fine silver wire and set with a pommel stone.

  It was unmistakably the weapon of a rígfénnid. To make matters worse, Finn was unslinging his shield from his back and slipping his left arm through its straps.

  Iruis began to fear he had made a dreadful mistake. His father would deny him Black Head if he had insulted an officer of the Fíanna—if he survived, that is.

  Iruis slumped his shoulders in the posture of submission. The deer slid to the ground. Holding out a weaponless hand, he said, “I accept your word, of course. But one can’t be too careful these days. There are outlaws even here in the Burren.”

  “That’s why we’ve come,” Finn replied. “Huamor sent a request to the king of Tara, asking for help from the Fíanna in dealing with your outlaws.”

  “He did? He never mentioned it to me—not that my father discusses his affairs with me. But I didn’t expect him to send for mercenaries.”

  Ice crackled in Finn’s reply. “We aren’t mercenaries. We’re part of the Fíanna.”

  Iruis was flustered. “Of course, I know … I mean … I thought …”

  “Did you?” Finn asked sardonically, pressing the advantage. “Did you indeed? Is it something you do often—thinking?”

  Iruis’s companion rescued him. “I’m afraid you took us by surprise, that’s all,” he said to Finn. “We would like to welcome you so you won’t accuse us of a lack of hospitality. But we have only the one deer. If you and your men will share it with us, however, we’ll consider ourselves honoured.”

  Iruis shot his friend an annoyed glance. He muttered, “I was just about to say that.”

  “Then why didn’t you?” the other whispered back.

  Finn bit his lip to keep from smiling. He was enjoying their discomfiture hugely. “Of course we shall accept your offer of hospitality,” he said, sounding very formal, “and commend you to the king of Tara. Summon the fían, Cailte.”

  Cailte went to the brink and shouted down. Distance distorted his words, but his beckoning wave was clear.

  Blamec groaned. “We have to go all the way back up there? I don’t believe it.”

  “If you’re lucky,” Conan suggested, “you might burst something in your brain and die on the way.”

  “You have a nasty mouth, Conan.”

  “He has a gift tor sarcasm,” Fergus Honey-Tongue interpolated.

  “He has a nasty mouth. Perhaps it’s the result of being as hairless as an eel. Conan Maol has an eel’s bite.”

  “Save your breath for the climb,” advised Gull. He started up and they followed. No one ran.

  Far above them on the side of the mountain, the doe was being gutted and skinned. Finn and Iruis watched as the other two did the work.

  “Your friend is good with his long knife,” Finn commented. “Where’s he from? I don’t recognize his accent.”

  “He’s a Connacht man from Mullach Rua. He likes to be called for his birthplace, in fact. Never uses the name he was given at birth.”

  “Mullach Rua? Red Ridge?” Finn frowned, thinking. “I’ve heard of it. It was mentioned in one of the poems I learned to qualify for the Fíanna. I must admit, I’ve never been to that part of Connacht myself, though.” He caught a lobe of raw liver that Cailte tossed to him, nodded his thanks and tore it in two with his bare hands, giving halt to Iruis. The treat was quickly swallowed.

  Iruis resumed, “No one goes to Mullach Rua if they can help it, it’s as lonely as a cry in the dark. Red Ridge was glad to come here to spend the winter. He’s assigned as a bodyguard to the woman I’m going to marry, who’s also wintering with us.”

  Red Ridge looked up. Coppery curls clung tightly to his skull. There was something friendly, yet uncompromising, in his eyes.

  Finn took an immediate liking to him. “I didn’t care for the name I was given at birth, either,” he confided.

  Red Ridge said, “Mine didn’t suit me.”

  “Neither did mine, it could have belonged to anyone. I prefer being Finn the Fair, which describes me.”

  “I prefer being Red Ridge. That’s the place that shaped me. A man’s name should fit like his skin, not hang from him like someone else’s tunic.”

  “Absolutely,” Finn agreed. He watched as Red Ridge and Cailte completed extracting the organs from the carcass, then cut the hide at neck and ankles, skillfully worked it loose from the underlying connective tissue, and peeled it off the deer inside out. Cailte turned it right side out again, then rolled up the damp bundle and handed it to Finn.

  Finn promptly turned and gave it to Iruis.

  After a moment’s hesitation, Iruis handed it back to him “Take this as my gift,” he urged.

  He knew he had lost ground to recover. He was very aware that Finn’s band would join them at any moment. Indeed, the first head was just topping the nearest ledge.

  Though the others had passed him as they combed, Goll Mac Morna was not bringing up the rear. He had craftily engaged Gael and Madan in conversation so that the three arrived together.

  Introductions were made. Seeing them in a group, Iruis could not doubt they were fénnidi. Though they were very young, they balanced themselves on the balls of their feet like warriors and their eyes constantly scanned the landscape like hunters.

  Their tall leader appeared to he little more than a boy, but a boy with a disconcertingly direct gaze. Beneath that gaze flickered something as hard and cold as iron.

  Suddenly Iruis was glad he had given Finn the hide.

  The atmosphere was quickly established as cordial. The cold quality lurking in Finn’s eyes seemed to disappear; he grinned. he laughed, and his men laughed with him.
<
br />   Iruis told them, “We’ll need to gather a lot of bracken and dead brush for firewood. This is an old doe and she’ll want a long roasting.”

  Donn surveyed the deer with a practised eye. “I know about cooking. She’d be better boiled.”

  “Roasted,” Iruis said firmly. “To boil her would mean leaving the mountain and going to the nearest farmstead for the loan of a cauldron. I won’t leave Black Head tonight. I mean to choose my building site by the light of the rising sun.”

  “That meat’s too tough for roasting.” Donn insisted.

  Iruis scowled at him.

  “We won’t have to leave the mountain to boil the meat,” said Finn

  “Why not? Have you cauldrons with you?”

  Finn gave a disdainful snort. “Fénnidi are men of no property, we don’t burden ourselves with cauldrons. We find what we need whenever we go, ready to hand.”

  Iruis was mystified. “How?”

  “If you plan to build a fort up here. surely you know of some fresh water supply on the mountain.”

  “I do. There’s a spring not far from where we stand.”

  “Lead me to it!” Finn said cheerfully.

  Iruis took him to a small spring that bubbled up in a natural stone hollow fringed with ferns. Crouching on his heels, Finn examined it thoroughly, estimating volume of water and speed of flow with the skill of practise. Then he stood.

  “Dig the pool just … there,” he commanded his men, pointing. “And the ditch from there to there.”

  Dividing into work parties, his fían dug out a pool below the spring. A channel, which they temporarily dammed with stones, was dug to connect the spring to the pool.

  Lugaid and Fergus built a fire beside the pool, using alternate layers of rocks and dead brush to create a draught. With sparks from their flintstones, they lit the fire, while Cael lined the pool with Finn’s deerhide to keep water from seeping away. As they waited for the fire to get hot enough, the others scoured the slope for stones the size of a baby’s head.

  Meanwhile, Lugaid patiently tended the fire. Its heat grew steadily. A deep red glow began to appear in its heart.

  After an interminable wait, Lugaid pronounced the fire ready. The dam was broken and water flooded into the pool. The fénnidi dropped the stones they had gathered into the heart of the fire, waited, then twitched them out again and expertly flipped them into the pool with their shortswords. The water began to steam, then to boil.

  Donn had been gathering plants from the surrounding area, finding what he wanted with unerring instinct even after the sun had set. He threw his collected seasonings into the boiling water, adding strands of seaweed taken from the leather pouch he wore on a thong around his neck. Then he motioned to Cailte and Red Ridge to throw in the by-now-dismembered deer.

  A heady aroma soon rose from the pool. The hungry men crowded around to watch the hunks of meat tumbling in the roiling water. “This is wonderful entirely!” cried Iruis. “I never expected to have a banquet such as this tonight.”

  “The Fíanna hunt all over Erin,” Finn replied, “and we travel light. But we live well. We carry necessities like flintstones for fire and seaweeds for salt in our neck bags and rely on the land to supply the rest. We may be men of no property, but we want for nothing, as you can see. When we need a cauldron, for example, we simply construct a fualacht fiadh, a deer’s bath, like this one. You could track the Fíanna clear across Erin by the cooking sites they leave behind.”

  The night was cold, the men ravenous. They began pulling meat from the pool long before Donn thought it was ready.

  Finn would not allow any of his fían to eat, however, until they performed a set ritual.

  In spite of the cold, every fénnid had to strip to the waist and wash himself in the icy spring. The men then combed their hair—except for Conan Maol, who had none. When it was neatly braided, they performed a complicated set of suppling exercises. Only then did they re-clothe themselves and sit by the fire to eat.

  “What’s all that in aid of?” Iruis asked Finn.

  “Fíanna discipline.”

  “I’d never delay a meal just to flex my muscles.”

  Finn shrugged. “Then you’d never make a fénnid.”

  The hint of condescension in his voice annoyed Iruis. “Why would I want to join the Fíanna? I have everything a man could want. I have this mountain and the fort I’ll build and the woman who’ll warm my bed here. I have cattle of my own and ear rings and arm rings and a storehouse filled with furs. I have all the Burren to hunt in. I might even be elected chieftain someday, when my father’s dead. What have you to compare with that?”

  “We have the songs we sing as we march,” Fergus told him. “We have the thunder of the bodhran, the war drum, and the cry of the trumpet.”

  Donn said, “We sleep someplace new every night, and the stars themselves are our sentinels. People envy us our wild, free life.”

  “We chase the red deer in the south and the wild boar in the north,” Blamec contributed. “We aren’t limited to our tribelands, as you are. We can hunt anywhere in Erin.”

  “From Beltaine to Samhain, we support ourselves by hunting,” said Cailte, “but from Samhain to Beltaine, we’re quartered on the people. They vie for the honour of being our hosts.”

  “They also keep our hounds for the winter,” Cael added, “at no cost to ourselves, no matter how much they eat.”

  “It’s because the people are grateful to the Fíanna,” Madan explained. “A fine, chest-swelling feeling, that is.”

  Conan muttered, “They aren’t always grateful, the maggots. I could, tell you some stories—”

  Lugaid interrupted smoothly, “Of course we don’t complain, it’s our profession. We were born to be warriors, just as others are born to be craftsmen or beekeepers or druids. Or princes like yourself,” he said, flattering the chieftain’s son.

  Only Finn had not contributed to the conversation. Iruis noticed that a gobbet of flesh was dangling forgotten from his fingers. He was gazing into the fire, which set his pale hair agleam and gilded the angular planes of his face. It also revealed an unexpectedly sweet curve to his lips. His was a boy’s mouth, merry and vulnerable, in contrast to the brooding eyes.

  Iruis sensed a mystery. “You’re very young, Finn Mac Cool,” he commented. “Why did you join the Fíanna yourself? Because you were born to fight? Or is there more to it?”

  Finn had not expected the question. Keeping his eyes fixed on the fire, he swiftly sorted through a range of possible answers. He could simply tell the truth, outlining in a few blunt words the loneliness and restlessness of his formative years.

  But on the other side of the fire, Goll Mac Morna had stopped eating and was leaning forward intently, listening.

  The fénnidi were listening too. Beside a roaring campfire on a cold night on a lonely mountain, they huddled into their cloaks and looked expectantly toward Finn.

  They wanted to be entertained. They were young, and the night was long.

  “Blamec,” announced their new rígfénnid, “you’ll stand the first watch. Go as far as the firelight reaches and circle the edge of darkness until I send someone to relieve you Mind you stay alert. Enemies could see the fire and try to sneak up on us from below.

  “As for the rest of you, keep the soles of your feet toward the fire and I’ll tell you something about Finn Mac Cool.”

  2

  BLAMEC RESENTED HAVING TO TAKE SENTRY DUTY. With the possible exception of Goll Mac Morna, none of the fían knew much about their leader. In a race notable for its loquacity, Finn Mac Cool had been closemouthed about himself. His only personal comments were made through his poetry.

  But now he was going to talk openly about himself. In spite of orders, Blamec kept edging back toward the fire, trying to overhear.

  “You know, of course,” Finn was saying, “that the Fíanna is the standing army of the kings of Tara, as the Red Branch once served the kings of the Ulaid. We’re sworn to repel any for
eign marauders, and to make our services available to those chieftains who give their loyalty to the king of Tara—like your father, Iruis. This was the purpose for which Conn of the Hundred Battles formed the Fíanna when he was king of Tara. He wanted an army capable of keeping peace in his territory and commanding respect from other tribes.”

  “Not easily done,” Conan interjected. “Peace is in short supply with the Gael so fond of fighting each other for sport and profit.”

  Ignoring him, Finn continued. “Conn was succeeded at Tara by Airt his son. In the reign of Airt, Cuhal my father became Rígfénnid Fíanna, not just the leader of a company, but the commander of the entire army of Tara.” His voice rang with the words. They seemed to come from somewhere deeper inside him than his chest.

  “How large is the Fíanna, exactly?” Red Ridge asked.

  “The Rígfénnid Fíanna commands seven score and ten rígfénnidi. Each rígfénnid has three times nine warriors in his company. You see but one of my bands of nine here. Two more are waiting for me at Slieve Bloom, where we will winter.”

  Finn’s voice underwent a subtle change as he said, “Before I was born, there was a challenge to my father’s leadership of the Fíanna. He was murdered by members of another warrior clan, men who had served with him in the army.” Finn named no names, however. His eyes did not meet Goll’s eye across the flames, though he felt the weight of its stare.

  “My mother, who was called Muirinn of the White Throat, bore me on the Bog of Almhain while fleeing from my father’s enemies after his death. She gave me into the keeping of two old women, a druid called Lia and a wise-woman known as Bomall. They hid me away in the Slieve Bloom mountains. There I grew; there I learned to hunt and fish and run and hide. I was called Demna in those days,” he added with a careless wink toward Red Ridge.

  “My mother married another man, a chieftain from Kerry. But after six years, she came to visit me. She took precautions so no one would recognize her and follow her to me.” Finn paused to lick the last traces of grease from his lips. With sudden inspiration, he said, “She disguised herself as a deer.”