by Alan Garner
With the noise that club did play.
And when the Fomor saw the sons of Irrua he gave a yell and a laugh of laughter, so that they could count the inside of him with all the opening he gave to his mouth.
Behinya changed shapeliness for misshape, loveliness for unloveliness, with fear for those bright-formed lads falling by the Great Man.
Then Lusca said, “May life be neither good nor pleasant to you, and may the house neither of sun or of moon give welcome before or behind you, hideous Fomor.”
And he rose,
The mantle beyond border,
The flood without ebb
And the torrent without breaking,
The champion who never gave back
One single foot
Before few or before many
In battle or in conflict
Went into his belts of thongs
And his thongs of warrior,
Making marsh of the rock
And rock of the marsh,
Until he gave the Fomor
The merry little heave
And threw him on his back.
“The fruit of vigour and valour to you, son of the King of Irrua,” said the Great Man, “in the mouths of poets and readers of flags for ever, and do not put me to death.”
“I swear before my thongs,” said Lusca, “if the gold of the world were given to me I would not accept it, if I were not to take the head from you.” He struck the Fomor at the joining of the neck, and the head fell from the body.
Lusca and his brothers made ready the ship and straight without staying they left Behinya on the island, and voyaged over the stream of the sea, and journied through the thick red waves, for five years of their time, seeking the Cat of the Free Isle. But they did not find her.
Now, on a certain day that they were listening to the noises of the sea, they saw a ship with speckled sails coming towards them, and a single royal young warrior in the prow of that ship. He had a sickle of thick iron in his hand, and he reached out the sickle and lifted the ship of the sons of the King of Irrua high above the sea.
Lusca said to his brothers, “This is no crouching time.”
They drew their three swords, and hit three blows each man of them on the sail mast of the ship, so that they cut the mast upon the spot and the ship fell again to the bitter waters.
“My joy it is,” said the young warrior, “sons of the King of Irrua, to have combat with you.”
“Your joy it shall be,” said Lusca, “if we did but know with whom is the combat.”
“I am the Big Mokkalve, son of the King of Sorcha,” said the young warrior. “Grey-visioned will be good heroes, sad-palmed the maidens, wet-eyed the queens when this day is done.”
But, away to the Lands of Sorcha, there was a wizard. The Manach was his name. And it was revealed at that instant to the Manach that death and the young warrior were to meet on the sword of Lusca; that Manach was himself the man of most desperate enchantment of all who came in his own time.
The Manach took his harrow-wheel of holly, and he got upon it, and he rose to the sky and put a dark fog of magic round about the ship of the Big Mokkalve, until he stole away the Big Mokkalve with him through that desperate fog.
When the water-mist cleared, the sons of the King of Irrua looked at the ship and were sad that a man should go from them without dying.
“What are we going to do now?” said Lusca.
“We are to find the cat,” said his big brother.
“We are to free you from your crosses and your spells, the decay and sad misfortunes of the year,” said his little brother.
“That is not my advice to you,” said Lusca. “We shall go to the Lands of Sorcha and give battle to the Big Mokkalve; for he came on us to avenge the killing of his father by our father, and he will not be stopped with enchantments.”
Then the sea stood up in wrestle and dispute with the ship, in green waves, rough and laughing; but when it found no weakness in the warriors nor terror in the young men, there dwelt a blossom of peace over the sea, and Lusca and his brothers came blithely to the Lands of Sorcha. They pulled the ship up her own seven lengths on grey grass, and left her, and took their weapons against the hosts of Sorcha.
They were not long there when they saw one youth coming towards them. He had the garland of a poet around his head, a fair purple-bordered cloak about him, and a wand of white silver in his hand.
“It is not well, Lusca. And my advice to you,” said the youth, “is that it would be better now to turn again. I think it a sad pity, the thing you seek to do.”
“What is it that I seek to do?” said Lusca.
“To give furious, high-headed battle is what you seek to do,” said the youth.
“What is your name, poet?” said Lusca.
“My name,” said the youth, “is the Kurrirya Crookfoot, and I think it a sad pity that the two I love best are to fall together this day.”
“What is your friendship with us?” said Lusca.
“Your share of me,” said the Kurrirya Crook-foot, “is that my mother was a daughter of Irrua. And in very truth I have given to you the love of my soul.”
“No less for that,” said Lusca, “go you and proclaim battle against the Big Mokkalve and the hosts of Sorcha.”
The Kurrirya said, “It is a rope around sand, or the closing of the palm at a sunbeam, or it is heat against boiling, for you to meet the Big Mokkalve and the hosts of Sorcha.”
“Lay aside your silly talk,” said Lusca. He put his hand into the hollow of his shield and he took out a ridged and polished lump of gold, and gave the gold to the poet. The Kurrirya took it and threw the gold on the ground.
“Are you refusing the gold?” said Lusca.
“I am not refusing,” said the Kurrirya, “but it is sad grief to me that the two I love best must fall here today.”
The Kurrirya Crookfoot left Lusca and his brothers and went to the hosts of Sorcha and to the Big Mokkalve. He said:
“Though plentiful your battalions;
Though warlike your champions;
Though valorous your warriors;
Yet valorless shall be your champions;
And weak your battalions;
And cowardly your warriors;
And unguideful your strong ones;
And thin your heavy hosts;
And dispersed your war-bands;
And unvalorous your well-born bands;
And championless your young kings.
In the hands of Irrua.”
But the Big Mokkalve took no notice. The Kurrirya went back to the hill where he had left the sons of the King of Irrua.
“What news?” said Lusca.
“Never were created woods, however close,” said the Kurrirya, “that the covering of the purple iron above the heads of the hosts is not closer still.”
Then Lusca gripped his spear against the hosts of Sorcha, and struck a shield blow and a fight kindling, so that there was neither a stone nor a tree but was in one quivering from him, and cowards went into trances of death from that great sound. He gave a kingly rush through the ranks of Sorcha, and neither loving nor friendly was the welcome. On the breaking of blue javelins even dear friends would not trust one man more than another, for the quickness of their striking and for the blood in their faces; but those who know say that fifty armed men went to madness with the wind at the sound of Lusca as he brought signs of death and shortness of life towards the Big Mokkalve, son of the King of Sorcha.
Yet all the more for that did Lusca remember the Manach, how he had brought enchantment of fog on his harrow-wheel of holly, and he looked with exceeding care. He saw the Manach, as a hideous giant, coming through the battle, fierce, red, stripped. Lusca reached into the hollow of his shield and took from it an apple-ball of iron and gave it a choice cast at the giant into the middle of the head and the face. The iron apple took its own size of brain out in fiery slivers through the back of the head of the Manach, and the giant let loose the scre
ech of a scream and turned back the way he had come.
It was then Lusca found the Big Mokkalve and dealt him a blow that split the golden helmet on the head. The Big Mokkalve gave another blow to Lusca, and split his shield and put him down on his left knee, and with his sword opened a gate in the side of Lusca. But Lusca sprang and put a second blow, and of that blow he took the head and the right hand off the Big Mokkalve.
Lusca lifted his helmet, seeking air; and there was at that hour a dark mist above the battle. He looked through the battle and wondered that he did not hear the noise of his brothers in it, and he went to seek them over a closeness of bodies so tight that it would not let blood pools walk and he was under rough-voiced creatures of the sky.
He found his big brother killed in the middle of the battle, his little brother killed near him, and the Kurrirya killed beyond that. He dug them a deep, long, wide grave, made a bed there of green water cresses, and laid them together on it and carved their names in flags above, to put them in remembrance, and in knowledge and poetry, for fear lest a drowning or lasting death of memory should go round upon them for ever. Then he went about the battle again, but it was vain for him, for there was never a body to tell tidings but was slain a long time before that.
Lusca gathered a heap of dead men for shelter against the dark night, and he sat down in his bleeding upon a rock. “Until today,” said Lusca, “I have never been alone.”
A swan flew in from the open sea and swam on the blood. “I think it a sad pity the way I see you, son of the King of Irrua,” said the swan.
“Is it human speech in your mouth?” said Lusca. “If you have chanced on human speech, give me news.”
“If I were as you are now,” said the swan, “I should get that balm of healing, the Great Dug of the World, for my kindred.”
Lusca said, “Where shall I get the balm of healing? Is there a bolt for the gate of my side? How shall I close the blue mouth?”
The swan rose up and flew back over the sea, and, as it went, it said to Lusca:
“I have no skill in the matter of your anguish.
I cannot grasp the flame of agony.
I cannot stop the dark blood.
I am the Swan of Sorcha.
I am the Otter of the Waterfall.
I am the Cat of the Free Isle.
I am not the worst of women.”
Lusca took branches, rods of the thicket, of long wood, and he lit a tower of fire. And the darkness fell on Lusca; and the desolation.
But a short time after that work he saw a hag coming towards him. The hair of her body was touching the earth. One of her eyes was her breastpin. One of her teeth was her staff. She had one jointed sharp foot under her; and she sat upon the other side of the fire.
The hag said, “You are alone, son of Irrua. Bad is the night on which you have come.”
“I am not alone, hag,” said Lusca. “I have you.”
“It is not you who have me,” said the hag, “but I who have you, unless you pay me tribute.”
“What tribute is that?” said Lusca.
“The length of my foot of fair gold,” said the hag.
“Will you not take silver of me?” said Lusca.
“I will not,” said the hag.
“For what cause,” said Lusca, “do you have that tribute abroad on everyone?”
“This hill is my hill,” said the hag, “and the man that makes fire on my hill is my man; and I must have ransom of gold or ransom of the head of the man himself or would you spend this night with me?”
“If a hag more ugly than you,” said Lusca, “were to offer me rest I should accept it this night.”
Lusca shook from him his suit of battle. The hag gave a goblet of precious stones into his hand, and he drank a drink out of that goblet.
“Take a blessing and a victory for the drink,” said Lusca.
The hag said, “Whatever man shall drink from that goblet every day, neither age nor misery rest upon him through time eternal.”
Lusca said, “Is it the balm of healing?”
The hag said:
“It is not the balm of healing,
Nor the Great Dug of the World.
It will not bolt the gate of your side.
It will not close the blue mouth.
It will not stop the dark blood.
Only the maker of iron
Can seal the road that iron makes.
I have no skill in the matter of your anguish.
I cannot grasp the flame of agony.
Look for a man
Born on a black rock
Grown on a burnt hill:
Shasval the Smith:
Born at night, in the Upland of Grief
He walks on boundaries, on the wolf’s track,
He hammers the moon.”
Lusca said, “How shall I find the Upland of Grief?”
“There is a cave below here,” said the hag. “The Upland of Grief is by that way.”
Lusca rested the night with the hag, and no one was earlier on his feet the next day than he. He went down to the cave and found it open, a thin road in it. He followed the road until he came to a smooth plain and a little yellow island and a sea on each side of it. He went up the island, and in the middle of it he chanced upon a fair lake. A beautiful flock of bright-white birds was ever-rising out of the middle of the lake, and never a bird of them was going down again, but always they were rising up.
Lusca said, “What is the place that bright birds come from?”
He lay on the lake and went under it to the bed and the gravel. He looked about to a tower of gold at a distance from him, and he went up and entered.
There was a girl in a room of the tower, a covering upon her head, with gems and with purple-white shimmerings, and silver jewels in her hair; a cloak of satin around her; a cushion of satin under her; that is how she was.
She had a white rod in her hand, a knife in the other hand, slicing the rod. Every whittle she took from the rod went up and out, as a bright bird, through the window of the tower.
The girl looked at him and said, “Which of us does not wonder at the other, for you wonder at me, and I wonder at you? I am Grian Sun-face, and take you this rod to whittle it a while.”
Lusca took hold of the rod and whittled it for a while. With every whittle, every evil and every feebleness that he had met before did not put upon him its hurt, except for the wound of the Big Mokkalve in his side.
“It is a rod never to be whittled away,” said Grian Sun-face, “but to be whittled for ever. My father gave it to save me from thinking long.”
Lusca was filled with a need to be from the place, for the whittle of the rod was great. He said, “My life is not to be for ever making bright birds.” He left the girl in the tower and went back to the shores of the lake, not a hair of his clothing wet on him.
It was only a small time from that out when Lusca passed from the island into a country where there was neither day nor night but a dusk without moon or stars. No one did he see there, there were no creatures, but the land lay in a sweat of hideousness and the trees were broken. High on a hill there was a castle, and in it Lusca found no people except a white-haired warrior, a beardless lad, and an ancient bent grey coughing woman. Between them they had a ball of black iron in the fire round which they lay.
Lusca sat down at the fire, and when he sat down the iron ball turned through blackness to redness in the fire, and the people there rose up and gave Lusca three kisses. Lusca said, “What is that din of dinging I hear?”
“Take you a blessing and a victory for freeing us,” said the white-haired warrior, “and it is Shasval the Smith.”
“I do not free you,” said Lusca. He rose and went from the castle to where the din of dinging was. He found a cave, and before it a dark smith at a red forge, hammering a Sword of Light.
Lusca said, “The Big Mokkalve opened the gate of my side and I must get healing.”
The smith answered nothing and hammered the s
word.
Lusca went back to the castle and sat near the fire. The ball of iron there turned through blackness to redness and the warrior, the lad and the woman gave him three kisses. “Take a blessing and a victory for your coming, and free us from fear,” said the warrior.
“I do not free you,” said Lusca. He went out again to the smith. “The Big Mokkalve opened the gate of my side and I must get healing.”
The smith answered nothing and hammered the sword.
Lusca went to the castle and sat near the fire. The ball of iron turned through blackness to redness and the warrior, the lad and the woman gave him three kisses.
“Take a blessing and a victory for your coming,” said the warrior. “Isbernya is the land in which you are now. There visited us a worm, and she swallowed our heavy flocks and our people after them, and she slaughtered our hosts, both young and old, so that none are alive except the three you see here. But our wise men left prophecy for us, that when the ball in the fire should turn through blackness to redness, Lusca, son of the King of Irrua, should come to free us from fear and to slay that wonderful worm.”
